Making comics: The evolution of Corin Howell's cover for Dead Seas #4

Dead Seas issue 4 came out last week from IDW featuring covers by three of my favourite collaborators.

There’s Nick Brokenshire, who I created the series with (and who is also the artist in our upcoming Star Wars Jaxxon annual!), Ario Anindito, the main artist on Marvel’s Star Wars: The High Republic and Corin Howell, co-creator on Shadow Service, our supernatural spy series from Vault.

To celebrate, I thought I’d share the process behind Corin’s variant so you can see the development.

We started with four rough sketches to give us an idea of what Corin was proposing…

Nick and I immediately went for 3, as did our editors Chase and Jake.

Yes, that was super rough, but I’ve worked with Corin for a long time now. I could already see where she was going.

And she didn’t disappoint!

I think I approved those pencils in, oh, all of two seconds. Maybe even one.

And here are the inks.

Peak Howell there.

Here’s a fact: Shadow Service wasn’t going to have as many demons and monsters in it originally… and then Corin started submitting her pages and I fell in love with how she drew the denizens of the underworld. Suddenly, I was finding every opportunity I could for her unleash literal hell. And it all got a lot more Fangoria too, with blood and guts galore - so much so that the magazine invited us to pick our favourite gore-soaked moments from the book. As a life-long Fangoria nut, this was a real career high!

Anyway, I digress. After inks came colours courtesy of the wonderful Adam Guzowski and

I

loved

it!

All we needed to do was to add the dressing and, voila, monster mayhem on the deep seas.

Our aim with the Dead Seas variants was for the guest artists to give their own interpretation of our watery death dealers and Corin definitely did that! Tentacles and skeletons? Yes please?

Are you reading Dead Seas? Let me know your thoughts below. And what other horror comics are on your pull list? Give me recommendations!