Evolution of a Cover, part 1

It all started with the idea of doing a flip book.

Last Summer, I had been pestering Head Apes Brent Erwin and David Hedgecock about the Athena Voltaire relaunch and wanted to do an entry-level book; something inexpensive to remind longtime readers that AV wasn't gone, and to introduce the book to new readers.

It turns out that Black Coat mastermind Ben Lichius was thinking similar thoughts for everyone's favorite Revolutionary War super-spy.

While tearing down the Ape display at Comic-Con, David offhandedly remarked "You and Ben should do some kind of flip book crossover." And that was pretty much it.

In researching the concept further, we learned that Diamond would only include one cover in the catalog. So much for the idea of a flipbook, right? Since the book is an introduction to both universes, and since we're producing it at a loss, we opted to rethink our cover strategy. After all, how well does it serve both series if only one of them gets a picture in the Previews catalog?

The solution we went with was the multiple covers making up one larger image. Shown here are a concept sketch by Ben and a penciled version of that sketch by me.

More tomorrow...