Current Issues No. 2 Back Cover

I dubbed this piece "Chicken Madness" because it's got chickens, and it's total madness.

When Rene Castellano (Instant Press Comics) and David Gruba (Grubbmaster Graphics) told me that there was an opening for the back cover artwork for their anthology series, Currrent Issues, I jumped at the opportunity to draw something.

Drawing the back cover to issue number 1 was a lot of fun, so for issue number 2, I wanted to turn the dial up to 11.

I got a chance to see some previews of the contents of this 2nd issue, so I decided to draw a back cover that would reference some of the stories going on inside the book.

One story was David's original creation, Gondor, Son of Olympus.

Gondor is an earnest, but clumsy hero that has fallen from Olympus, and is now working at a fast food eatery called Clown's Chicken, working alongside his attractive female co-worker.

Another story appearing in this issue is Rene Castellano's CHOW, a heroic cat, protecting the streets against evildoers everywhere.

With these stories in mind I started to piece together an image in my head of how this could all come together in a crazy back cover.

So I thought to myself, they're working at a fast food chicken restaurant - what if some commando chicken suddenly burst in, to liberate their chicken brethren from the humans, and put an end to this fowl practice? (My humble apologies for that terrible pun....but I could not resist.)

Comic book chickens? FUNNY.

Comic book chickens with guns? CRAZY.

So I went all out drawing these hardcore chickens with all this military gear, busting through the restaurant wall.

And in the background, I drew the mastermind of this invasion - The Clown's Chicken Clown himself.

Dave Gruba and Gondor artist Nino Mesarina came up with an original Clown's Chicken logo, which was a small, happy-go-lucky clown that appears on the employee uniforms.

I took that innocent clown logo and jacked him up to Bane proportions, to show that he means business.

For each of the military chickens, I drew unique guns, to emphasize their individuality - one has a pistol, another has a rifle, submachine gun, Tommy gun, etc.

I did research on guns, and tried to draw actual, real life models, to totally contrast with the cartoony chickens.

These are hardcore chickens, indeed.

They even enlisted baby chicks to attack customers and tie up the employees.

(I feel especially sad for that poor Japanese guy getting pecked alive in the background.)

But the main characters of this back cover are our heroes: Suzuki Esposito, a tough street cop, Gondor, and CHOW.

These three heroes are all that stand between our rescue and total Chicken Armageddon.

I picked these three characters to draw because they're so visually different.

Ms. Esposito is an athletic woman, Gondor is skinny and super-cartoony, and CHOW is compact and a ball of fury.

Drawing them all standing next to each other is like putting together a puzzle - pieces fall into place, and I think it makes for an interesing center of attention for a back cover.

I enjoy adding small details and Easter Eggs to my drawings whenever possible.

(Try to find the one I drew here!)

As I was finishing up this drawing, I tried to come up with the most ridiculous image possible.

That's how the tiny chick with the oversized handgun came about.

I smile every time I look at it, because it's just so...absurd.

I submitted the final pencils to Rene and Dave, and it got published as the official back cover for Current Issues No. 2.

Afterwards, they arranged to have it colored by Benny Fuentes , and you can see the amazing final piece on his deviantART website here.

And folks, don't worry, no one - human or chicken - was injured in this incident.

After the Clown and military chickens discovered that the restaurant wasn't serving real chicken meat, they just turned around and left.