I know that this is slightly off-top for me, but I really couldn’t resist…

Let me preface this by saying that I love comic book art. I have original pieces from Alex Savuik, Pop Mhan, and Zeke Savory Jr. I’d just like to say that whomever came up with the idea to print blank cover variants of popular books is a genius!

So as most of you know, when I write about elves, I use my Skyrim companion as the example image:

Well, my local comic book store was having an event where a couple of known (and talented) artists were going to come, sign autographs, sell prints, and if you got there early enough, do commission pieces. I’ve been a fan of one of the artists, Chrissie Zullo, for some time. Her work in the Fables series has been nothing short of extraordinary. I’d tried to buy an original piece from her in the past, but always got to her online store two seconds too late (wish I knew how some of these people do this!!!!). So I was determined to have her do one for me.

In all her wisdom, my wife told me that I’d better get up their early and be ready. To my wife’s credit, she was right. I came back later and overheard Chrissie turn down another piece, presumably because she didn’t have time. (She was only at the store for a few hours)

So I went up to the store and that’s when I saw the blank cover variant of Batgirl. I knew she’d done a few Batgirl pieces in the past and frankly, they were my favorite of her work. So I figured, what the heck, I’d try it out. Most of the time, I’d just have the artist use a sketch pad, but I thought this would be more interesting.

There was one person already there ahead of me. He also wanted artwork done. So I waited and then it was my turn. I asked her if she could do the pic like she had done of batgirl, but then I stopped, did I want the same thing? Just a copy of the image she had already done and sold? I like one-of-a-kind stuff… so that wouldn’t be cool, but what character would I like?

Well the guy before me had given her a character that she didn’t know, so he brought it up on his phone and took a picture of it. That’s when the idea popped into my head, what about my Skyrim companion? I had a picture of her on my phone and it would be awesome to see her done.

So I asked, and Chrissie was more than up to the challenge. She took a picture of it and said that she preferred doing original stuff anyway. So she took the comic, though she warned me that two characters might be a little crammed, but I said that whatever she could do would be fine.

Well… the work speaks for itself…