My First Comic Book Cover!

Behind the Art

My first comic book cover was revealed a few days ago! It’s a variant (an alternate cover from the main one) for the final issue of The High Republic Adventures, which I’ve been writing since 2021. I am, obviously over the moon. It’s not my first drawing publication — more on my weird career as a tween political cartoonist some other time! But it’s definitely a milestone.

If you haven't seen me talking about it online much it's because I still don't really know how to celebrate career stuff when we’re still funding a livestreamed genocide , and honestly, I don’t want to know how to do that. It should be a struggle. I also know we still gotta make art and celebrate art and somewhere in there is the impossible balancing act that this time demands of us.

I do want to talk some about the process and journey to this cover coming to be. it’s been very intense to suddenly have so many eyes on my work after mostly doodling in my sketchbook and occasionally posting here or on IG. Had a bout of imposter syndrome, as one does, and mostly defeated it, and I’m really proud of this piece. I absolutely love how much Kevin Tolibao’s incredible color work lights it up even more. He’s done most of the color art for our covers and he constantly amazes me, so seeing his work over mine was an extra treat.

I was hoping to contribute some art before the run ended since that’s been such a focus for me lately. I initially thought doing a page or two for the Wedding Spectacular issue would be a cool way to start, since we were using a lot of different artists for that. So I drew up some panels as basically audition pages. One of them had a tricky upward angle on a whole crew of characters, which led me to create this absolute banger of a pose reference (artists feel free to use it for you own characters!) that still cracks me up:

Left to right: me, me, me, me, me.

And you know what — if that’s all that had come out of this whole thing, it would’ve been worth it, because ART!!! But I did in fact finish the page — it became this:

Left to right: Maz, Gavi, Zyle, Dex, Sav, DRRN, Therm. Up front: Uttersond.

Also lots of fun, and if you want to see more samples from my submission, check out the paid subscriber bit at the end of this post!

Aaaaanyway, the response from the good people at Dark Horse/Lucasfilm (and they are truly some of the best people I’ve worked with) was Let’s focus on finishing the writing and then talk about art. Which, first of all LOL that was either the comics version of Actually let’s just be friends or a very insightful take on my totally-underwater-with-deadlines situation at the time. Thinking more about it, I realized it was definitely the second one, because well yes, for the first time since I’d started THRA I was missing deadlines, coming in just under the wire, struggling to get it all done. And art takes time! Anyway, all the artists who contributed are incredible so it was a win-win situation basically, and I kept it moving (and actually got my actual work done haha thud!)

Fast forward a few months and we landed on the idea of doing a variant for the final, so, excited, I drew up a sketch of the design I wanted to do:

Lula and Zeen laughing hysterically in the dining section of a space ship as it takes off! Adventure awaits!

And then sketched a couple others (which you can also see in the paid tier area below) because a) that’s the right thing to do and b) I figured that one was so cool, there was no way they’d pick one of the others and then they immediately picked one of the others. This one:

Lula and Zeen pulling the hyperspace lever together as they blast off to new adventures!

I was like ummmmmm that’s not what was supposed to happen! It’s not that I didn’t like that design (I wouldn’t have submitted it if I didn’t) — it’s just that it felt like a tricky one to make work. It’s very evenly balanced and straight forward, which can be dangerous for dynamism, plus it has some gnarly anatomical perspective AND there’s a whole spaceship control panel — not my area of expertise.

Soooo I took a day or two to be like wtf perspective noooo whyyyy and then got to work. I am, if nothing else, a Capricorn. People — this shit was hard! Fucking! elbows! Fucking wrists! interlocking fingers! WHY DANIEL WHY! Just regular hands being regular are like impossible to freaking draw (just ask an AI bot LOL do not do that thanks) but having them wrapped around something and seen from the back and receding toward the vanishing point and overlapping AND wearing cool engagement/wedding bracelets… it was a lot.

That part was also a challenge because I knew some of the hard work of making these hands feel like they existed in three dimensionality was going to be in Kevin’s colors, and much as I trusted him completely and know him to be waaaay more advanced at this game than I am, it was still hard turning in final work that felt kinda flat no matter how many ways I tried to shade it. And of course, he nailed it and brought them to life more than I ever could have.

Anyway, it took a long time and lots of starting from scratch, especially trying to make the ship around them look legit and lived in and not too busy and not too flat, and then I turned it in and the editors were like hmmm something might be off here with the resolution… That was weird because I’d made sure to get the correct DPI and all that as specified in the etc etc! I did my homework(ish)! so it should’ve been right!

Dear reader: the DPI was right. The size was not. The image I turned in was about as big as a postage stamp. Here’s what it looked like when put up against a full, correctly sized canvas:

meep!

You know — it was kind of a relief in a weird way, once I was done laughing at myself. I’d been wrestling with why the resolution seemed so low even tho I’d made sure to get the DPI right, and lo! There was a reason! So I used that Lilliput-ass version as a reference and re-inked, feeling much better about the whole thing and BAM! The cover was done!

Isn’t she beautiful??? Yes. Yes she is.

On a related note, one of the aspects I’m most proud of about the whole High Republic initiative is that we’ve been able to give some outstanding fan artists their Star Wars debuts, including Cherriielle, Isobel Rees, and Jake Bartok. Check out their fantastic work!

See below for some outtakes, and as always, this is a reader funded publication and publishing is in absolute shambles, so your support means the world and helps me feed my dogs! Please consider joining the paid tier because yes, there are cool goodies, but mostly to support my work. Thank you!