the helvetica scenario

I went to Wizard World Chicago a few weeks back, and bought a few things. I just haven’t gotten around to posting pictures, mostly for lack of a digital camera.

The main thing I purchased was a page from Nathan Fox’s run on DMZ. For comparison, you can see the final, colored and lettered version here, it’s page 15 from issue 18. You can sort of get a sense of scale from the paperback holding down the end, but the page is 16″x24″, quite a bit bigger than most artists work at. His prices were really good, especially considering how detailed his work is. Aside from DMZ, he had pages from Pigeons From Hell and the Batman Black and White issue that he did. I’ve never read any Pigeons, but the art looked damn good.

Art Baltazar was there as usual, looking totally ridiculous. I think he was wearing a homemade Superman shirt, along with some kind of hat that seemed to be made of strips of black cloth sewn together. For some awesome reason I don’t quite understand, he only charges $1 per character for sketches. I got one of Zatanna because I’m cool like that, as well as a totally awesome painting of a cheeseburger. The painting is stretched canvas on a wooden frame, but only 2″x2″. I’m fairly proud of it.

The last thing I picked up worth noting was another Zatanna sketch from a guy named Luke Smarto. To be honest I don’t have any idea who he is, and don’t even think he’s done any books, but inked and toned, the sketch was only $10. Quite the bargain. I don’t usually even bother looking too hard at artists that haven’t worked on anything I’ve read, but the example sketch he had up on his table was of Zatanna, so I knew we would be able to achieve a meeting of the minds.

I also got a couple books, filled in some gaps here and there, but nothing too impressive. I was a little less than enthused about going at first, but things turned out pretty well I thought.