We interrupt our regularly scheduled programme…

Hey, I am sure you will all remember after some great feedback from Matt Seneca, I did a super-sized degenerated panel just for him?

But, before I get too carried away, why not head over to Death to the universe if you haven't already (or maybe you should just go around in an endless loop of blog entries -- degrading forever.. right, Matt?!) and read an infinitely better blog on the same subject

This blog is of course the copied and degraded version, m'kay?

Well the panel above was not quite the end of our shenanigans, I am sure you may remember that the week following I was a bit quiet?

Well one reason was I had lost a bit of time waffling on endlessly about my "methods" the week before but there was another reason…

And as before it was all down to Matt Seneca… and the conversation we had in around the panel above..

Here's part of a letter I sent Matt..

"I guess I was still hyped from Fridays excitement and had all these thoughts and ideas floating round, Steranko degraded, straight to ink rollerball, exploding conventions, my terrible hand lettering, the pose of the figure in that Outland panel..

And then you mentioned you are getting into two-panel grids and that was it - BOOM was born in my head almost there and then, I somehow knew exactly what I wanted to do, a second panel, flipping the figure from the first completely destroying the background and filling up the panel with a huge BOOM!"

"I suppose it is the figure and his pose that does it for me, in either panel he is standing there as if he has nothing to do with the panel he is in, in no way does he look like a man who is stepping in airlock out of his clock on drugs, yet there he is blithely ignoring enough warning signs to choke a whole state of lawyers on…. I wont even ask how a man that drugged and can successfully fully sequence a airlock?!

I hated trying to letter all of that stuff so took a distinct pleasure in cutting all to shreds, so in a way "BOOM!" is my reaction to the "coldness" your talking about, what's it going to take to get this guy to notice his predicament?! Even a explosion makes no odds...

And also the size of the figure, I mean this person is supposed to be the central focus of the pages I am working on, not those anonymous three or so miners that take up the whole entire other page… man, only Steranko can do that!

And I sure as heck am no Steranko"

Does it end there?

No.. as I also suggested that Matt could "copy it then slap paint all over it, that would be cool"

And what do you know, Matt has delivered and delivered in spades…

Matt's painting on these is absolutely awesome it puts a whole entire fresh level of perspective and artistry on top of those panels breathing even more life into that still locked in figure

Starting off with a cool blue - clearly showing us how cold / neutral the first panel is, while there is still some hints of life and blood flowing through our "hero" contrasted with the bright light distorted orange caution sign overlaid - the painting on this for some reason reminding me of Dash Shaw

Flipping then straight to to full on red explosion of colour over emphasising the intensity of feeling and anger in the need to just destroy all that background and just leave the figure mostly untouched even by this level of intensity, who is now devoid of anything just stark black and white

or you could just say it rocks!

Added to this Matt has Put a black and white striped and distorted background referring back to the original locked in contrast of sterenako's original work and my careless use of the rollerball pen

In short Matt has made a work of art

I wish I could get Jaunty Jim to clap his eyes on this one, this pop art meets I don't know what, it almost defies convention or description!

But is that ALL?… ohhh that WOULD be telling now wouldn't it ;-)