'COVER'-ING CROSSGEN'S WARRIOR WOMEN AND MYTHIC MEN

[Eric J. Moreels]

by Chris Partin, ComiX-Fan CrossGen Editor

CrossGen Comics has had its fair share of some of the industry's most talented artists from legends in the likes of George Pérez and Butch Guice to rookies like Josh Middleton and Steve McNiven. In December, CrossGen will release Warrior Women & Mythic Men, a new hardcover collection celebrating three years of CrossGen cover art. The publisher's Art Director, Brandon Peterson, took some time out to discuss the book with ComiX-Fan.

When considering the massive volume of comics that CrossGen has produced in just a short time, the task of sitting down and putting together this illustrated book would overwhelm anyone. Peterson is no different.

"It was a bit staggering." Peterson explains. "There was so much material to go through, so many computer files to find and sort through, so much organizational stuff that it was a bit numbing. Luckily, I had done something similar to this before with CrossGen Illustrated, and I had several ways to organize materials and plan the structure already tested that we could use."

"I also had excellent help from our crack production department, most notably from Erin Flanagan, who is the book's designer." admitted Peterson. "Everyone in production helped out a great deal as we all pulled together to create a stage that would showcase our art for years to come."

In order to work on something of this nature there must be a great deal of motivation behind the project. Peterson tells ComiX-Fan, "As CrossGen's Art Director from 1999-2002, I spent a huge amount of my time guiding our covers. The single most important image in a comic book, covers are the one piece of art that can dramatically affect sales for the positive or the negative. They have to convey story points, excitement, attractiveness, and great imagery in a single piece, and that piece also sells everything else inside."

"Earlier this year, CrossGen had hit our 400th issue mark, which blew me away as I realized how much good work our artists put out in under 3 years. Around the time of that big 400th issue, I had heard from our book sales department that the CrossGen Illustrated book that we had published in 2002 had sold tremendously well in bookstores, and that we were almost sold out, even though we had done a huge overprint. Since I edited that book, Mark Alessi, our publisher, asked me to come up with some more good bookstore offerings to compliment CrossGen Illustrated, and Warrior Women & Mythic Men was the idea that Mark liked the most. I proposed it as a showcase of our over 500 covers worth of artwork, in a beautiful presented package, with unpublished works and variants we never used. Once Mark OK'ed the project, away I went."

Peterson went on to explain that Warrior Women & Mythic Men is not just for CrossGen fans, but is directed toward anyone who loves comics, fantasy, and science fiction.

"The design is very sophisticated, much like the quality art books produced in Europe and the Far East, and the print quality and presentation is phenomenal," he said. "We feel that our covers are a universally appealing art, not limited just to comics fans, and anyone who's seen a Lord of The Rings or Star Wars movie and who liked the fantasy and Science Fiction themes those movies will enjoy the images in this book. This is the type of book a comics enthusiast could present to their friends and family to showcase that comics art is as high an art as any other. I would feel proud to have it on my coffee table... well, if I had one!"

Die-hard CrossGen fans will definitely be looking for this hardcover, but many may wonder on the content of the book and if the cover price of $29.95 is something that will represent the amount of content that they will see within the book?

"They will see EVERYTHING," Peterson reassures fans. "I made a decision early on to show everything and fit it into a reasonable size, rather than make a humongous 500 page monster or have to selectively edit out over half of the covers we've done. We have alternate versions of published covers, partially completed covers that were never used, several versions of the same cover, and so forth. The only covers we didn't put in are some of our trade paperback covers that were often reused pieces of already existing art. I only wanted to put art that was purposed for covers specifically in the book."

"There is a minimum of commentary," Peterson continues. "CrossGen Illustrated had an immense amount of information provided by Barbara Kesel, and we wanted to do a very different product than that with this book. As CrossGen Illustrated can be thought of as a pictures 'illustrating' text, this book can be considered a pure art book."

Pre-order the Warrior Women & Mythic Men HC online now from X-World Comics and save!

[Victoronehalf]

What does George Perez illustrate?

[Chris Partin]

He's currently working on SOLUS and will begin working on the WAR miniseries soon for a Spring 2004 release.

[Eric J. Moreels]

Originally posted by Victoronehalf
What does George Perez illustrate?

PÉREZ PACKS A PUNCH IN SOLUS #6

[Victoronehalf]

Originally posted by Eric J. Moreels


PÉREZ PACKS A PUNCH IN SOLUS #6

I THINK I'M IN LOVE!

previews of good looking stuff like this is why you guys becoming comiX-fan was very worthwhile

[Alex Guillen]

my fave crossgen book has to be sokourn, Greg Land's art rocks.