Artwork Preview – Earthman Jack vs. The Secret Army

Hey everyone!

We’re getting really close to the release day of the new Earthman Jack book.  I hope you are all as excited as I am about it!  I cannot wait to finally have it out there for everyone to enjoy.  Be sure to tell your friends about the series so they can check out the first book!  In fact, they can actually download book 1 for FREE over on www.EarthmanJack.com.

And not just any regular ebook copy either. I’m giving away a Special Edition version of Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet on that website.  What’s so special about the “special edition” you ask?  Well, lots of things (there’s a reason why it’s “special” after all), but the biggest is that it has artwork in it!

When I was prepping The Secret Army for publication, I wanted to do a special edition for it too.  Luckily, I had met a very talented artist at the 2014 New York Comic Con by the name of Brian Shearer.  When I saw his artwork, I was immediately drawn to it.  He had a fun style that reminded me somewhat of the Harry Potter illustrations done by Mary GrandPré, but with more of a comic book feel.  In fact, Brian has illustrated some of the Transformer, Dr. Who, and G.I. Joe comic books, in addition to doing a great web comic of his own creation called William the Last (which was what actually first attracted me to his booth).

I commissioned Brian to do ten original illustrations for Earthman Jack vs. The Secret Army, each one depicting a scene from the book.  I always liked the old Hardy Boys novels where you’d eventually turn to a page that had an illustration depicting the chapter you’d just read.  The Narnia books also did this, and I thought it would be fun to have the same thing in my book.  Ideally, I’d have liked to have an illustration for each chapter, but that was just out of my price range.  However, I’m extremely happy with what Brian came up with for the illustrations I was able to afford.

Today, I’m sharing with you an illustration from chapter 10 of the book, which is where Jack attends a Royal State Dinner as the guest of honor and is introduced to some of the alien races within the Regalus Empire for the first time.

This scene has Jack very nervous, because, as a kid from a small town in Ohio, he’s not used to having so much attention directed his way.  I wanted the image for this chapter to evoke how small Jack feels in this new world he finds himself in, while also illustrating how big and strange the Empire is.  I honestly didn’t know how Brian was going to capture this feeling, but as you can see from the illustration, it’s perfect.  Jack is facing a Grand Hall filled with strange aliens and people, on a new planet, in the heart of the pomp & circumstance of Regal culture, and you really get a sense from the illustration of how overwhelming it all is for him!

I wanted this chapter to be kind-of reminiscent of the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from the original Star Wars film, where we get to see a various collection of strange aliens and start to get a sense of the larger universe at play.  Jack is introduced to lots of different alien races that I created for my “Jackverse” in this chapter, and it was fun to invent them and introduce them to both the reader and my main character.  This chapter also gives Jack his first real look at how politics comes into play on the capitol planet of Omnicron Prime.  Since Jack is pretty young, he never really cared about or paid attention to politics while on Earth, but now the bureaucrats of the Empire are setting their sights on him, and he suddenly finds himself in a position where he has to mature and understand certain things about how the world works, and quickly.

Let me know what you think of Brian’s illustration.  I’ll be sharing another one very soon.  And on Friday, I’ll be doing a profile of a new character who has a big role to play in the Earthman Jack Space Saga, who is introduced in this book.  So stay tuned!

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