It's been three years, so a lot of the details of pulling together this jam are lost to my fading memory. The way I think it worked was that we started on Friday, and Joe Linsner had it for most of that day. I had my mind set on completing the project over the weekend, so I begged it off him after he'd just done the finished layout so that I could get in some more contributions on that first day. I believe my second stop was Gilbert Hernandez, because the only character I wanted him to do was Supreme, and I was pretty confident that he was going to turn me down. To my happy surprise, Beto agreed, and his Silver Age influenced style was well suited to Image's Superman. Getting an early start the next day, I think I got Witchblade and Shadowhawk done within the first few hours. My beloved girlfriend meanwhile waited three hours to hold a place for me in Alan Davis' line, so that's when The Huntsman joined the line-up.
Most probably, this is where Jaime Hernandez comes in. I desperately wanted indy creators with the esteem of Los Bros Hernandez on this project, and you'd have thought I'd have tried to wrangle Xaime right after Beto. However, I felt like there were a greater variety of Image characters that fit Xaime's style, and no one that I was married to, so he remained my wild card for a while. He could have done Huntsman, but I really wanted the connection to Claremont that Davis provided. I thought he'd be great for Invincible, and I suspect I gave him that as one of several options, but I believe he went for Fortress instead.
I can never remember Fortress' name, always confusing him with Bunker from the New 52 Team Titans. Obviously, Image co-founder Whilce Portacio is most associated with his creation of Wetworks, which I disqualified because they were ultimately owned by Wildstorm and sold to DC Comics. He'd also done Stone for Avalon Studios, but I don't recall if he holds rights over that. Baxter Montgomery was created for and almost exclusively used in the aborted crossover event Image United featuring all of the Image founders, and "dude in armor" at least alludes to Wetworks. He seemed like the best bet, and I think Xaime get a kick out of drawing him. There's a lot of detailing in the armor, and I especially like how he caught the unique separation between the arms and torso. I feel like Portacio was doing an action figure / Inhumanoids riff that gave Fortress some visual distinction. I also dig how Fortress seems poised for a Kirby punch-out.
Sorry for the low quality jpeg. I only took pictures with an aging digital camera in the hotel room on the second night of the con, and the piece didn't make it back home to me until substantial changes were made to the overall piece. I feel that this is the best representation of Hernandez's original linework in isolation that I have available to present without obliterating his pencils through excessive contrasting brightening things up.
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