The Hero Business

Greetings, post-Holiday Heroites!

For this week’s Rough Monday, I’m sharing some preliminary sketches from a commission piece I did for the ever-excellent Aquaman Shrine. The idea: the modern AquaFamily celebrating the Holidays.

Aquaman and Mera retained their present looks, while Arthur Jr.’s design is in keeping with his appearance in the “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” cartoon. The Aquaman Shrine gave me carte blanche with the other characters…. So I really wanted to tweak the AquaTeens…

Here’s some initial thoughts…

Garth, the original Aqualad, is reimagined as a zen surfer dude; I combined his Kingdom Come costume but kept his original Aqualad gloves. Tula, the original Aquagirl, got modernized; I kept her seashell motif and gave her a stylish wild-wave hair-do to echo her original Nick Cardy design.

For Lorena, the new Aquagirl, I redesigned her wetsuit to include an “A” symbol; I also liked her original “edgy” look with the dark eyeliner and short-shag cut. For Kaldur, the new Aqualad, I adapted his “Young Justice” look, which I prefer to the dreads he sported in “Brightest Day.”

Here’s the final Aqugirls:

I then mapped out who’s going where in the Aquacave celebration…

(Storm and Imp…. aw, reindeer games!)

And then debated what Mera was going to be doing….

Aaaaaaand here’s the final:

Happy Holidays Holiday Hangover everyone!