More Reign of the Zodiac Concepts and Designs with Keith Giffen
on August 17th, 2011For the background of Reign of the Zodiac, check out this previous post for story and more unpublished art.
Reign of the Zodiac, drawn by me, and written by Keith Giffen.
As you see, we put a lot of thought and background work into this gig, but things don’t always work out as we would like. The book got canned despite our best efforts.
Here’s another scan of my pencils for a double page spread. As I wrote before, large portions of Zodiac were inked by me, including most of issue #8. I got to keep all the art I inked, and Bob Wiacek got the page rate and credit.
The series was supposed to last 72 issues, with each eight issue story arc featuring a conflict between two houses of the Zodiac. I did a good deal of ghost writing on the final issue, because Keith was so despondent over the series getting the axe he had trouble bringing the book home. I take the hit for my clumsy job trying to tie the book up. Keith had the most incredible plans for this project!
One of our plans was to create Tarot cards and Zodiac themed items to tie in with the series. Here’s some sketches I did for these cards. Alas, my old scanner was very poor quality, as you see.
My final pencils were very tight. Nowadays, I suppose we could just scan and print from this.
In this scene, Romeo and Juliet lovers from the Zodiac world Eidelon step through a mirror into the basement vault of the Vatican archives.
A page of icon designs. At the same time, I was hired by a British magazine to do Zodiac icons and designs. However, the magazine had no idea that I didn’t have any digital skills, and when they asked me to do my colors “in layers” I had no idea what the heck they were talking about. After producing some thousands of dollars of work for them, I had to quit the job, but decided not to invoice for it so I could keep all rights to the work.
More costume sketches:
I was to do ten issues a year, but finding someone who could (or would) draw the clothes and sets as I designed them was a bit of a challenge. This was not the kind of job for someone who wants to crank out a monthly comic and collect a check.
I’m posting pages from this and other works on ebay for sale over the next few weeks. Here’s my shop. All my art will go back off the market after this series of sales.
I have lots more to show you. Be back soon.
This is very beautiful. I’m kind of feeling a bit melancholy that this did not make it to publication. But don’t stop revealing these gems!
Question – knowing that artists use themselves for reference, is there a character that is mostly “you”? Looking at the books I have, I don’t know if I can see a “Colleen” look-alike. Have you done any self-portraits?
Only once, in the upcoming Stealth Tribes graphic novel. I may regret that.
Um…am I misunderstanding your post, Doug? Reign of the Zodiac was published. 8 issues worth.
The series was canceled. Considering almost every note I get is from someone wondering why it was never published, well, there you go.
I was collecting this along with Marina as it came out… And out of Tucson’s 4 comic stores only Charlie’s Comics would even think about carrying it and Charlie brought in 6 copies and sold 3 a month while the series was in print. I know he eventually sold all the back issues but it was a difficult comic to sell monthly to the average Marvel/mainline DC customer.
Yep. I was aware of the 8 issues. I was not clear (didn’t use my english skills too good) – I would have liked to have experienced the entire series.
Looking forward to pre-ordering Stealth Tribes!