What If: Age of Ultron covers

A while back I was asked to color a series of covers for Marvel's upcoming What If: Age of Ultron mini, which starts in April. The mind-blowing covers were done by the insanely talented Chris Stevens, and I have to say I was nervous that I couldn't possibly do them justice. The good thing was that his work was already so masterfully rendered that I didn't have to do much. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results (minus a few revisions-- more on that later).

The five covers are meant to sit side-by-side creating a giant image, and they just screamed old pulp novel to me. So I ran with that (truth be told, I'm kind of addicted to the whole pulp, noire, vintage, classic look...). Note that the images I'm posting here are slightly different than the ones floating on the internets-- and indeed the ones that will be printed. The editor felt that Ultron and the backgrounds were too colorful and drowned out the characters (Marvel usually has hang-ups with wanting their characters to really pop and be prominent). Personally, I prefer the more vibrant colors (pulp, remember?) so those are the ones I want to show. Enjoy!

Oh, and incidentally I was also asked to color one of the issues in the series. It'll be the third one (with Thor), so make sure to check it out and buy lots and lots of copies. ;)