Aah, Ray. Easily my favourite member of the extended supervillain team, and the most adorable mad scientist. She was the quickest design to nail down - something about those dreds and the rasta-buck rogers look appealed to me.
Concept sketch for some of the varied villains of Unmasked. We ended up simplifying Claude’s trousers a tad, because redrawing that lot a dozen times would be bloody murder. This is as close to Simon’s final look as we got.
I adore Claude. Think of him as Wolverine of Finland, and you’re pretty damn close to how he rolls.
Simon van Zandt has been on the losing side of one too many sanctimonious smackdowns. His days as Blacknight are over - he’s hung up the cowl in favour of nine to five, TV dinners and blue jeans. Normality is safe. Normality is boring.
So when he’s given the chance to enter a life of crime, he jumps at the chance. But is it enough to satisfy a man used to the larger-than-life thrills of supervillainy, or will Simon’s lust for dangerous thrills put his career - and his life - on the line?
Unmasked is full of broken teeth and grim humanity, with all the grit, blood, sweat and swearing left in. I cut my publishing teeth on this story, and I couldn’t be prouder to work on such a wonderfully filthy title. Mr Christian Read has spun a hell of a tale, and my effort on the art ain’t so shabby either, for a first try.
Unmasked is available from Graphicly.com (click the picture for a link).
Marvel Knights: Spider-Man Vol. 1 #6 - Venomous, Part Two (2004)
Writer by: Mark Millar Penciller by: Terry Dodson Inker by: Rachel Dodson Colorist by: Avalon’s Ian Hannin Lettering by: VC’s Cory Petit Editor(s) by: Axel Alonso with Warren Simons Publisher by: Marvel Knights (Marvel Comics)
“The intersection between activism and the arts is an eloquently rendered theme in Kaz’s extraordinary memoir, Un/Masked: Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl on Tour, out today.”
