I will be attending Wizard World Philadelphia 2009 this June, which will be my 3rd Philadelphia convention in a row and my 9th overall with the Wizard World Tours. Wizard gave me my first break as a comic book chalk artist in the Summer of 2006, and I am forever grateful for that. The Wizard Conventions are always amazingly fun even though I spend most of the time on the concrete floor working on my illustration. With that in mind, I wanted to post about the piece I made for the 2008 Wizard Philly Convention, a J.G. Jones original drawing of the big three from DC Comics; Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman.

At the time, Mr. Jones had come off creating an amazing run of covers for the DC series 52, and was involved in the then upcoming Final Crisis event. The illustration that was chosen was actually the cover to Wizard Magazine Issue 197 which had come out only a short time before. When I had first seen the cover I have to admit I actually didn’t like the image overall. When it was presented as a mural option I was worried about it being too static as the three characters are simply standing in basic poses next to each other. But as is often the case when I dive into the original source artwork, I began to see a level of subtle details that really impressed me. From Batman’s position slightly behind the other characters to the shading and anatomical detail across the entire piece, I found more and more to like about the illustration. As it turned out, this has become one of my favorite murals EVER after the 2008 NYC Comic Con Alex Ross chalk mural so go figure! You can’t always trust first impressions.

This show was also notable as a portion of it was filmed for my appearance on the PBS arts show Expressions even though the episode wouldn’t end up airing until nearly 10 months later! You can find the entire piece on my videos page, and see a little of what my convention experiences are like as well as what went into making this very mural.

Mr. Jones did stop by near the end of the convention for a photo session with the mural. He genuinely seemed to appreciate the work, and was an all around really nice guy. I never got any of the photos from the session though, so if I ever do I’ll be sure to add them to the gallery of images below. Enjoy, and remember comments are always welcome! Hope to see you in Philly this summer.