Planet AFL intro page

Whenever the announcement for this summer's DU crossover event "Planet AFL" was announced, I found myself really inspired. It looked like a fun, old-school fight-'em-up crossover from my youth. Seeing characters battle against one another is always a blast, especially when the pairings are really interesting and unique. Couple that with the absolutely fantastic character design for the main motivator of the event AngelCrusher and my creative juices really got flowing.

I had pretty much decided I was going to see if I could work up a page I was happy enough with as an introduction that I could (again) enlist in the DU and take part. I worked out the rough layout in my head, for which I then wrote a script. I next doodled a little thumbnail to get my page layout worked out (see it here):

 

I then sat down to actually begin the process of drawing the full page... and that's where things fell apart. I'm SO out of practice that despite repeated attempts I never got past the rough stage. I wasn't at all happy with how I could see it was going to turn out. And I had told myself that unless I was pleased with the end result, I wasn't going to submit it. And so, I once again resigned myself to the role of outside observer.

But the idea for the page kept bouncing around in my head. And one day as I was once more looking over the gorgeous pages by , and , I realized that I had what I needed to at least have some fun. The page wouldn't count or be part of the event or DU canon, but it would make me smile and get the concept out of my head.

The pages Lee drew gave me all the resources I needed to make a remarkably close approximation of the page layout I had envisioned. Coupled with the picture of Steel Wolf he had drawn some time ago, it all came together nicely. I then added backgrounds where needed, the planet panel itself, and of course the scripting and lettering.

Truthfully, I think it works quite nicely. And it still makes me smile. I showed it to Maurizio, Lee and Leigh and they got as much of a kick out of it as I did. And once I made sure they were all okay with me sharing it, I wanted to show it off to everyone else as well.

Now again, this page is NOT in canon or part of the crossover event. This is just me being inspired and wanting to have some fun. I had originally envisioned three pages as an introduction but to continue this I'd need fully-drawn new pages. But that's okay, this is just a fun exercise in the end.

I hope you all enjoy it as much as I still do.

Once again, HUGE thanks to , and especially for being okay with this and allowing me to share it.