Here’s a scan of the wraparound cover I did to TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #30. The story, also by me, concerned a rogue dimension of endless superhighways, where there were no speed limits. The rogue dimension would suck up cars from earth, turning their drivers into weird-o mutants.

This piece was a painting with a collage backdrop made by using a color copier to zoom in on a cutaway illustration of an engine in a car brochure.

I can’t begin to tell you how enjoyable it’s been doing commissions the last couple months. Writing and drawing a regular series is great, but it’s also a definite grind. I really like the diversity and challenge that producing a nice piece for someone offers.

Case in point is this family portrait of PUZZ FUNDLES, the strangest cast of comic book characters ever created, by one of my favorite artists, Rick Grimes. PUZZ first appeared in the back of my superhero series THE ONE at EPIC in 1984. You can read them today in the KING HELL trade paperback collection of THE ONE. If you are unfamiliar with Grimes’ startlingly strange and original work then you should hop over to this wonderful site which is chock-a-block full of Grimes’ amazing and little seen stuff.

If you are interested in arranging a commission of your own, email me. You can see some recent commissions here.

Here’s a previously unpublished piece of advertising art I worked up for Sover.net. They were rolling out a national plan for dial-up internet access to compete against AOL and wanted a comics oriented ad campaign to run on Comicon.com.

Pen and ink, 2001.

Full review by Adri Cowan on Comic Impact.

They say the first dreams in a series, when you are launching a new endeavor, are the most important. Here’s one of the earliest I had when I began plans to publish my dream comic, RARE BIT FIENDS. Maybe I should have listened to it? But then I wouldn’t have created all that dream art and published three collections of it.

Here’s one of my very first published works; an illustration that was done while Lyndon Johnson was still president! That would put it, at the latest, in 1967, when I was fifteen or sixteen years old.

What you see here is LBJ assassinating J. Edgar Hoover, then catching some hot lead from Dick Tracy. The piece was done for my brother Tom Veitch’s early novel, The Luis Armed Story, which was published in Germany by Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

Looks like I’d just graduated from working in pencils to those new-fangled Rapidographs and zipatone.

Here’s the other side of the advertising mobile I posted about yesterday. I wonder: can BRAT PACK lay claim to the first true zombie superhero?

Here’s another cool advertising ploy we came up with at Tundra to promote the first edition of the BRAT PACK trade paperback in 1991. It was a 17″ tall die-cut mobile, given free to retailers. All they had to do was tie a piece of string to it and let it spin in their stores. The pay-off, of course, was what was on the other side of the mobile. I’ll post that image tomorrow.

Meanwhile be sure to order copies of the new remastered edition of BRAT PACK currently offered in PREVIEWS. Order code: MAR094365 F BRAT PACK NEW EDITION TP

And if you’ve never read BRAT PACK you can get a free taste with this pdf download of the first issue.

This watercolor sketch of the main pavilion at the LUCCA 14 comics festival was done for an article that appeared in HEAVY METAL in 1981. The graffiti on the outside of the balloon honored the great South American comics writer, Hector Osterheld, who had become one of the “missing” in Argentina’s right wing take-over.

When he was in fourth grade, my son Kirby appropriated my DC Comics jacket (even though it was about four sizes too big for him). Here’s a sketch of him, from life, wearing the jacket as he sat drawing in his own sketchbook. These days he’s in his third year at The New Hampshire Institute Of Art, majoring in illustration.