As previously mentioned, I asked Vo Nguyen to draw Drake at Space City Comic Con with the intention of his being the center figure in a multi-character, multi-artist jam. However, the project slowly morphed into being mostly single character, single artist pieces with more background elements and greater latitude for individual interpretation. This piece suffered during that shift, since the black squiggly lines radiating from Drake prevented any other characters from being organically integrated into the piece, but all the negative space left over made the piece look terribly plain compared to others' work. I felt bad about presenting it to the actor who played Drake, Mark Rolston, and got it into my head to return to the jam concept for a background.
Lance Schibi has started a couple of these jams in the past, and was a really trouper in fleshing out this piece. Because of time constraints, I'd gone ahead and gotten Rolston's signature, and he was very gracious and warm during the process. I'd also handed out all my reference materials, even the 1986 Starlog magazine I'd picked up that spotlighted Aliens and included some pull-out posters. I'd gone to the trouble of putting indexing tabs all over it, but the photos weren't great and I mostly stuck with higher resolution internet printouts. Even still, neither were on hand for the artist. Between whatever he could dig up on his phone and pure imagination, Schibi crafted an appropriately grotesque Giger-organic Alien hive shell around Drake, with squirming maggots and draping tendons for good measure. He took the piece all the way home without leaving Houston's Comicpalooza, and I'm grateful to him for jazzing it up!
Lance Schibi
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