The art sale is going quite well. 9 pieces sold the first day. Since we planned on leaving the sale running for a week or two, we’re going to add new pieces in order to keep a nice variety available. There was a lot of Echo art in the first batch, so Robyn suggested I now dip into SiP a bit more.
Anyway, I dove into the archives and found some surprising jewels. For example, I pulled the earliest page left in my collection of Francine, Katchoo, and David, all on the same page. It’s page 24 from issue 2 of the mini-series… from 1993! It’s not the earliest page left in my vault, but it’s the earliest page of The Big Three all together. BTW, David’s funky haircut in the mini-series was an actual style my coworker was wearing at the video editing facility where I was employed during this time. My job often involved baby-sitting tape machines while hours of tape were copied from one machine to another. I would sit in a chair near the machines, alone, drawing and even inking the mini-series pages on my lap… usually with music playing loudly on the sound system. I got a couple of letters from readers at the time, noting Katchoo’s shirt looked like Wonder Girl or somebody. I didn’t know that. I just drew a thunderbird for pizazz. Oh, and when Katchoo kissed David, I knew they were going to have sex someday, and I would have to draw that. How to do so without coming off as a perv? I was already worried about it, 13 years before it happened. What a dope.
Another vintage page I love: page 20 from issue 3 of the mini-series. This is where Francine exacts her revenge on Freddie, sneaking into his office to grab an incriminating computer disk (which is in the hands of Freddie’s secretary, Margie, who is hiding by the coat rack while Francine distracts Freddie). When Margie makes a noise, Freddie turns his head but Francine impulsively grabs his face and plants a huge kiss on his lips, blurting out the words she knows he longs to hear. In that moment, she has seized all the power in the relationship, and gone from being the victim to the complex Francine we loved in the series. I loved this scene. I love this page.
I also found page 5 from issue 13, where David encounters an 8 year old Bjork on a plane. Unfortunately, Bjork beats the hell out of David by kicking his seat like a jackhammer. This scene came to me on a plane, of course. Robyn and I were returning from our first San Diego con. Across the aisle, a child was kicking the seat back in front of him, ruining the flight for the poor man up front. What were random kicks in real life processed in my brain as an all-out, neck-snapping attack. Every time the kid kicked the seat, I giggled, which only added to the poor man’s frustration. When I got back to the drawing board, David got the honors. Still makes me laugh.
Freddie and Casey’s wedding is one of my favorite scenes in SiP. Who gets married standing naked under a Hawaiian waterfall, and hires an out of work actor to serve as minister? I guess that sounded romantic back in Houston with a couple of bottles of wine under his belt, but Freddie clearly didn’t have his heart in this whole wedding thing because Casey was the rebound girl and Francine was the one that got away. Then, SNAP! Francine is there, and Freddie sees his chance to save his life before he takes the plunge. Hey, I’m not making this stuff up. It’s right here on page 17 from SiP 13!
(note: Francine’s look and pose in panels 2 and 6 were direct lifts from favorite comic strip panels I’d drawn a few years earlier of a prototype Francine. At this early point in SiP, I was still going through the best of all my pre-existing ideas and art notes. That changed with the launch of Volume Three, when I had used up most of that stuff, and began creating everything from thin air—in other words: all new ideas.)
(note #2: did you ever notice that Freddie could hide all his dangly bits with one hand? (last panel) Cold water shrinkage aside, I always thought that was funny. Clearly Francine wasn’t missing much. And while we’re on the topic, I always thought of Chuck (Francine’s boyfriend before Freddie) as being very well endowed—hence he and Francine’s reportedly wild sex life. Just one more dig at Freddie, even if it is between the lines. It all adds up in the subconscious.)
All the SiP covers are gone, sold, except for the covers to the last issue, #90, and SiP 27, which nobody would want because it’s weird. But when I was going through the issues, I found a lost gem… the cover art to issue 28. The image is dark and powerful, Francine looking over her shoulder and crying. This was for a very dark issue. I did take this piece of art to a couple of conventions once, but people like to buy happy pictures, so i stuck it back in the folder and forgot about it. I’m offering it now because it is the last SIP cover I have to offer. And perhaps there is someone out there who will find this image speaks to them. I can tell you where I got the idea. From a photograph I saw back in the ’80’s, of a little English boy, well-dressed and maybe 5 or 6 years old, looking back over his shoulder as he is being led away by an adult. The boy had this look on his face. It just stuck with me. That happens. I see an image once that impressed me and the image is in my head forever. Sometimes, later, I draw them. That was the case here. It is meant to symbolize Francine’s state of mind as she loses Katchoo to the past that finally caught up with her. At the time, I decided I’d drawn enough happy covers. It was time to draw “reality”.
And while we’re looking at covers, I’ve pulled my two best Echo covers for you. The iconic image to Echo 16, and the cover to yet-to-be-published Echo 22! These two are almost before and after pics of Julie as more and more of Annie’s Alloy 618 becomes attached to her skin. (By the way, I have the cover art to #22 so early because I have to draw covers 5 months in advance of a book coming out—that’s when solicitations and ads are due to distributor Diamond Comics.) I originally penciled Julie topless on the #16 cover, but Robyn suggested that was uncalled for. I mean, the shorts stayed on—why was the top always coming off? No amount of evidence of bare-breasted Marvel and Wildstorm chromium women helped my case, (where’s Jim Lee when I need him?!) so I added the shirt and drew the pose before she could finish buttoning up. Naturally this makes it even worse than topless, because the imagination takes over and next thing you know, it’s a mental Mardi Gras.
Echo 16 cover art:
Six issues later, the party is in full swing because Julie is decked out head-to-toe in Silver Surfer garb. To hell with clothes. To be honest, this is the way I always pictured it. The way I first imagined the hero in Echo. Somewhere between human and a cosmic force of nature. I waited 22 issues to get her to this point, and here’s the first, real defining image. (that’s a symbol for nuclear civil defense in the background, BTW.)
Echo 22 cover art:
Those are the new additions to the art gallery. Happy shopping!






















