Next up in the cover gallery is a beauty by Russ Heath. I had talked to Russ at Comic-Con about doing a cover and had even suggested one riffing off of two of his signature strips, The Silent Knight and The Haunted Tank, where we would see a knight jousting with a tank. I had given him some of the Starbuck Jones covers as examples and, when I got his cover, much to my surprise, it turned out to be a Starbuck Jones piece.
I had finished the hunt for the Starbuck Jones story arc in Funky, but I was able to repurpose this work as a coloring book cover in the Cliff Anger story and it worked perfectly. That story drew heavily on my younger days and one of my pride possessions back then was a Superman coloring book. So I found that cover online and “borrowed” the lettering style from that book and incorporated it into the Starbuck cover.
I went back to Russ again with my earlier idea and this time he nailed it, but you’ll have to wait until that cover pops up in the Gallery to see how cool it really is.
