Wednesday 7 January 2009

Captain America Theater of War - America the Beautiful.



January sees the release of Marvel's Captain America Theater of War - America the Beautiful. Written by Paul Jenkins this is my first full artwork with Marvel in over ten years. A great opportunity to team up with Paul after following his work for so long. Colour is by my favourite Chris Sotomayor. We have previously worked on Thunderbolts and Zemo and he has produced some lovely colour on my Dare and Transformers portfolio pieces and covers.

The third part of the Theater of War series chronicles the adventures that made Captain America the hero we know today, Paul Jenkins does what he does best, weaving a tale of war, brotherhood and legacy. From skinny Steve Rogers at boot camp to the Super-Soldier leading a battalion of men against the Nazis, this is the Captain America you thought you knew but you’ve never seen. And when the choice is between his country or his best friend, this is the decision he had to make.

Loved drawing the Omaha Beach landing sequence and Captain America. The story was particularly poignant and emotional to work on too. The last page will explain all.

4 comments:

Anthony Schiavino said...

Still in the middle of reading this but the artwork looks great.

Just curious about your take on Cap. Any reason for not adding the wings?

Gary Erskine said...

The ommission of the wings on the old version was a deliberate choice to differentiate the two Captain's. It could have gone either way as I was a big fan of the Bryan Hitch Ultimates' version (with the additional chin strap) My editor Jeanine Schaeffer and I muled over which design for each Captain and it could have gone either way. The choice of colour to was in discussion. Whether we went with a desaturated pallette as seen in Saving Private Ryan or keep the darker days for the present day sequences.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the book. Chris Sotomayor did a wonderful job on the book and brought a lot of subtlety and mood to the piece.

Anthony Schiavino said...

Thanks Gary. I enjoyed the rest of the book. I like hearing about the creative process because when working on a project I really tend to produce it like a movie. I could write a book on the everything and I have! (Some of it is in my own blog)

I'm a big fan of the Ultimates design by Hitch (even more so the WWII era version) and you can really see a fusion of the two Caps with what you brought to the book. Many people I know don't care for the more military look, as opposed to superhero, but Cap is a military man.

MaGnUs said...

Gary, why is Baron Zemo in the crowd in the funeral at the end? An easter egg?