Vamperotica Illustrated #5 cover. Mechanical pencil, Sable brush & Pigma pens on 11 x17 on Strathmore Bristol
Anyone who is familiar with my comic career knows that I am a big fan of the John Carter of Mars comics that were published by Marvel in 1970′s & 80′s. The series featured art by some of the best comic artists & writers in history including Gil Kane, Dave Cockrum, Rudy Nebres, Walt Simonson, Marv Wolfman and Chris Claremont just to name a few.
For this cover I did a direct homage to my favorite cover of the series. Look closely at the costume Luxura is wearing and you will see that it is based on the spectacular design on the cover of the original comic by Dave Cockrum.
Dark Horse recently published a John Carter, Warlord of Mars Omnibus that reprints the series in black & white and is absolutely awesome!
I recently saw the John Carter movie and it was amazingly cool to Dejah Thoris, Tars Tarkas and John Carter come to life. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie but I must admit that I am a bit biased.
Reviews on the movie are mixed but for me it was a real treat to see Barsoom brought to life on the big screen.
When I was creating the character of Luxura one of the things that I wanted to do was change her costumes from time to time. Much the same way the character of Dejah Thoris did not always have on the same clothes. It’s one 
of my pet peeves about female comic characters. I can understand super heroines who are part of a team like say, the X-men and they wear a regular uniform. But characters like Luxura, Lady Death or Wasp seem more believable to me because they change their looks from time to time.
