The Hero Business

In my last “The Line It Is Drawn” assignment, the rules were this: “In honor of the Emmy’s this weekend, mash-up comic book characters with any of the TV shows nominated for Best Comedy or Best Drama.”

I chose the brilliant suggestion, “Several inmates from Arkham as the cast of Mad Men.” I started by looking for Mad Men cast photos to get inspired….

So I started thinking of who would be who. I immediately like the idea of Joker as Don (the idea man) and that naturally placed Harley Quinn as Peggy (the eager apprentice). Poison Ivy is so natural as Joan. The duplicitous Roger plays a nice Two-Face. And squirrely Pete would make a good Riddler.

So I started sketching them out, mashing up the inmates with the office mates….

So that’s just the start. I needed to make them more playful, pushing the poses to capture that sinister air of Batman’s worst villains.

So now, some of the fun visuals jokes emerge. Joker holding a pencil (we know what he does with pencils). Harley with the spiked drinks. Posion Ivy’s lethal plant on the desk. Some playful file folders…

So one final pencil rough to finalize…

I toyed with placing Joan/Ivy on the desk, but she was pulling too much focus. So, I used the pose of her standing. And…

… inked and colored the final piece. This ended up being one of my favorites, so I’m tickled that  i09 picked it up.

This will also be available as a print at New York Comic Con on October 11th-14th, this upcoming weekend. I’ll be in Artist’s Alley at table E15, not too far from the Kickstarter booth. Stop by and say hello!