2019 Fan Expo Boston Invincible colors by Sid Ven Blu

It's funny, because I'd read the first trade of Invincible and a few odd issues besides, but it wasn't my bag, so he was the character of least personal interest at the time of commissioning Tom Yeates. Since then, I've watched the first season of an animated show that probably wasn't in production in 2017, and am now much more informed and enthused about that property. Anyway, the core art for the jam was done during a weekend stay in North Carolina, and finished out of state. Once I got the original art back, I wanted to try to maintain a non-Texas approach and get the colors done on a road trip. The first new color job ran into problems, so I was apprehensive about the second, but how could I just have two characters done and stop?

So at the piece's third show, I was on the lookout for a color artist, and stumbled upon Sid Ven Blu. To my knowledge, she was an unknown at the time, so I only had her color originals at the table to judge from, but was impressed. It's also a really unusual request in my experience to have one artist color another's, at least in the realm of commissions. As I recall, Ven Blu generally worked in water colors, but that would have warped the paper and possibly interacted with the ink. I think she had some markers, or got some on loan, but still approached the project with trepidation. Thankfully, everything worked out swell, and she has since gone on to professional coloring work on IDW's Transformers (with the accompanying fan wiki stub.

"Isadora Venturini Blu, alias Sid Ven Blu, (born 1992) is a Chilean artist. Born in La Serena, Sid Ven Blu initially graduated from la Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago to study digital illustration. She later attended The Kubert School of art in New Jersey, USA, to focus on coloring by hand. Sid Ven Blu enjoys drawing mechanical designs both traditionally and digitally." My girlfriend was especially pleased to see a fellow Latina done good, and I really enjoy the subtle colors with cool lighting effects (the scan doesn't do it justice.) This pass made me much more confident that the coloring would turn out in the long run, but like the Butthole Surfers, we'd be doing it in Texas (with Daniel Dahl!)

Sid Ven Blu

• sidvenblu-art.com
• Deviant Art
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2017 Heroes Convention Invincible Jam Figure by Thomas Yeates

Truth to tell, Frank has never been particularly passionate about Mark Grayson, if for no other reason than he's guaranteed to never be the most famous and iconic comic book character with that surname. He even looks a lot like Dick. However, the Image "I" costume is distinctive and positions Invincible as a standard-bearer for what remained of the company's shared super-hero universe by 2002. Co-creator Robert Kirkman himself became the most successful of the post-founding creators, mostly due to the enormous impact of The Walking Dead, which eventually earned the writer a partnership. Despite the end of both series and Kirkman's rapidly decreasing comics output, his Skybound Entertainment is still one of Image's most profitable production studios. It was basically a given that he would rate inclusion in this jam, and Invincible fits the group shot a lot better than Rick Grimes (though Michonne would have helped the gender balance.)

Thomas Yeates was perhaps an odd choice, given his tendency toward more grounded comics fare, like supernatural horror (Frank was introduced via Swamp Thing) and old timey pulp characters (Zorro, Tarzan, Prince Valiant.) Because of the complicated parameters concocted for eligibility for participation in the jam (he's included thanks to the creator-owned '80s Epic series Timespirits,) and Frank simply wishing to reach out to some new talent amidst the smorgasbord that was HeroesCon, Yeates was always an option for a spot. By this point in the jam's progress, it was probably the sixth addition, so the marriage of character and artist was more about which remaining options seemed best suited to Yates' strengths. Savage Dragon? Not so much.

Thankfully, Yates was a sport about doing a super-hero, and cramming his figure between a couple or three prior installments. It blessedly turned out quite nice and quite quick (can't recall if it was done while Frank waited or more of a one hour turnaround.) This part was probably done late Saturday or into Sunday, and time was running out...