EMPEROR Page 3

Here's more of Annette's gorgeous work. I asked her to play with a different pallette in each scene. An idea inspired by HERO, the Jet Li film.

Just to give you an idea of how long it took me to do these pages... If you flick back to page 2 panel 5... That panel took me all of Xmas afternoon. That was a LOT of work. Page 3 was fun. This was where I got to go crazy. The idea of the Proximity Effect is that you get ONE power. JAn wanted to embody Chi, and had the idea that the Emperor can manifest his chi like the heroes of Hong Kong action comics like the Storm Riders. Roger (our editor) decided that this was too general a power. How can one power stop arrows, help him leap up buildings etc etc. So JAn came up with the idea of his chi manifesting as a forcefield, which in my first draft of this story looked like something the Invisible Girl might have done. In this second draft, I decided that his forcefield looks like a huge Chinese Dragon. It can carry him and protect him. The dragon is also a common anthropomorphic representation of chi also.

Today: More art direction. Approving pages for David Nakayama's Revved #3 and going through Bing Cansino's layouts for Innocents #3.

Tomorrow: Start drawing Zero G! Yay!