The Spectre

I was messing around with an old sketch of The Spectre I did a couple years ago. I had picked up issue #1 of the new DC series in the dollar bin at my local comic shop and had drawn a really fast head sketch. I'd scanned it in and never did anything with it until the other day when I was surfing through my hard drive and ran across it. I spent a little time in Photoshop, extending the body and adding some cool effects and it ending up looking kind of nice- too nice considering that the initial sketch had some real weaknesses. So, I decided to start over from a new (and hopefully better) drawing. It came out looking quite a bit different than what I'd planned as I tend to follow the "happy accident" theory of picture-making where I sort of experiment and mess around and see where the picture leads me instead of following a pre-planned formula.

This is a character I always liked even though I never really read anything with him in it. I missed the 70s supernatural superhero wave by a few years but I always saw the back issues in the comic shops and have been drawn to those characters. The Spectre is a dead cop superhero and so he provides a nice mix of three genres- crime, horror and superhero- all in one character.