Entry 273: Blast From the Past- Part 18

Hey hey. This IS another entry of old stuff, but let's start off with a little current news.

Infinity Gauntlet #3 came out a few weeks ago and I really appreciate all the positive response. #4 should be coming out soon and I think it's super fun. 

In S.H.I.E.L.D. news: I've seen the colors for the final issue and they look so amazing! Sonia Oback is doing such great work. Still no word on the release date for the last two issues. All I know is that it has to happen after all the Secret Wars stuff. 

With that out of the way, here we go, back to 2004, with another Blast From The Past entry.

This is a page from Assassins Guild #0. That's right, number zero.

I talked about working on Assassins Guild #1,2, & 3 in Blast From The Past- Part 11

While I was working on The Tenth Circle and trying to get other work in the comics industry I was also continuing to chip away at Assassins guild, the comic series I had been working on before my internship at Wildstorm.

The page at the top of this entry is the first of the five pages I did for Assassins Guild #0. I had chosen to do The Tenth Circle in a kind of intricate and labor intensive style. AG#0 was a chance to take a break from that style and do something much looser.

Here are the other four pages I did for AG#0

Also during this time I pencilled covers for AG#3, #0, and #4

Here's the cover for Assassins Guild #0 with inks by Joe Fauvel and colors by Jason Borne.

Here's Assassins Guild #3 with inks by Joe Fauvel and colors by Jason Borne.

And here's Assassins Guild #4 with inks by Joe Fauvel and colors by Reggie Themistocle.

The guys I was making Assassins Guild with were making a web sight at this time and I pencilled and inked an image that was just for that sight.Here is that image.

This was colored and it was used on the web sight, but that sight doesn't exist anymore.

I even did 3 banner images for the sight.

I drew a cover for a collected Assassins Guild graphic novel that never got used. In 2014 I put some screen tones on it. My hope it to include an art gallery in a future version of the collection and use this cover as the first page of that gallery.

I fantasize often about getting my hands on all the Assassins Guild pages, going through it with an editor, and getting it printed in it's best possible form. I just feel like I put so much effort into it that it would be a shame to not get it out there in a more significant way... But one of the big things that stands in the way of me doing that is that I was never able to finish issue #4.

With Assassins Guild #4 I was able to layout the entire issue, but I was only able to pencil the first 10 pages. In 2005 I started getting more paying work in comics. My career was getting started and I just didn't have the time anymore for Assassins Guild.

Here are some of those pages from Assassins Guild #4 with inks by Joe Fauvel.

The rest of my layouts for issue #4 were given to a different artist to finish and it was eventually published years later.When I saw how the other artist had finished the pages I was really disappointed.

For the final page of the issue my layout was somehow lost and the other artist created it himself. All of the finishes on those pages were disappointing to me, but the final page was particularly painful.

In 2013 a collection of the series was being put together for a very small scale release. I decided that, for the collected version, I would create a whole new final page. I also thought I would take the time to re-finish the other pages from that issue by scanning my original layouts and finishing them digitally.

I WAS able to create a whole new final page, but re-finishing my layouts was really wishful thinking. I was only able to do the re-finish on one of my layouts. I just couldn't find the time to do more than that.

Here's that one page. Most of these lines are directly from my layout drawn in 2003.

And here is the final page for the series that I did in 2013.

It was so fun to draw this page almost ten years after I had drawn anything for this series. It felt like seeing old friends and catching up.

So yeah, that's the end of Assassins Guild. I started drawing it in 2001 and it's last page was drawn in 2013... but maybe it's not the end. Maybe someday I'll make the fantasy a reality and finish the pages I couldn't finish before and put together the definitive Assassins Guild collection...

Maybe.


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