The Rick Veitch commission

I talked before about how lucky I was to get to meet Chris Sprouse and get a commission of the Family Supreme from him. Well, I had one other commission I wanted to get and it was from the artist who was there from (nearly) the beginning to (nearly) the ending and best represents what Supreme was about: Rick Veitch.

I knew what I wanted for a commission, and there was only one artist who would be perfect. While Sprouse probably is better known for Supreme, as it really launched his career, Veitch made Supreme into something special, capturing the heart of Superman comics as they evolved over the decades.

He sometimes takes commissions at his website. So I bugged him and bugged him and bugged him for more than a year before he finally said that he'd do it. This is what I asked for:

I was wondering if you would have any interest in doing a cover for an imaginary Supreme #64? A cover for how the series should have ended.

Considering that Supreme was a homage to the silver age of Superman comics and about the incredible power of the imagination, I thought maybe something similar to Curt Swan’s cover of Superman #423. After all, this would be a cover for a true “imaginary story!”

It could suggest that it was going to tie up all the loose threads: the attack by the Daxes, the return of Radar and Talos, the secret of supremium, the marriage of Supreme and Diana Dane, the final battle with The End, or whatever else you might like to do.

He said sure and I worked out a rough layout for what I was looking for.

My art skills are sick!

I mentioned about how I had heard Alan Moore had planned for Radar's planet as well as Judy and Talos's planets to come help battle the Daxes, so that's why I wanted it on there. I also mentioned that I had heard Moore planned to do a third year exploring inside the supremium meteor, to which he replied: 

About the rumor concerning Superme going into the Supremium.  I can confirm that Alan had planned a new story arc with that very plot. Supreme would have met all the Superman knock-offs in there.  Whole thing went up in smoke when Leifeld went bust.

He asked me to send reference images, because he didn't remember all the characters. He even asked me for images of The End's face, which of course, there never were any. Eventually he settled on a Darkseid-like face, which is awesome since I had heard Moore planned for The End to be a version of Darkseid.

I also asked him a number of questions, to which he was nice enough to answer for me: 

Q: Did you ever read the New Men, Prophet or Allies proposals? There’s been so much speculation about those. 

A: Didn’t read them.  But I did work up about 20 character sketches for the Awesome Universe that Alan was building. [Ed -- You can see them here] 

Q: Why did you stick around for the back-up story in Supreme The Return 3 and the amazing Kirby story in 6 when both Moore and Sprouse left after Awesome went under (the first time)? 

A: Alan and I knew Rob was poison but we loved working the Silver Age stuff so much we kept doing it even with the late checks etc. 

Q: How did you come on the series? There were quite a few mentions that Swan was going to do some of the flashbacks? 

A: Alan originally envisioned Swan but his health had taken a bad turn.  So he asked me. 

Q: Did you reach out to the other artists who had worked on Superman and Supergirl comics to help you on the flashbacks or did Moore (I assume it wasn’t Eric Stephenson)? Like Jim Mooney for the Suprema flashback and Bill Wray for the Mad Magazine homage? 

A: Eric Stephenson brought in Jim and Bill.

He then sent me this rough:

Then a tighter sketch:

The only change I had was Judy Jordan's costume didn't have two Js.

I couldn't get Todd to do a commission (he's much too busy), so Rick connected me with Steve Conley to handle the Klein-like lettering. I told him that I wanted it to be from Image and be #64 but to otherwise feel as much like Superman #423 as it could. He did a great job:

It then went back to Rick who did the inking over the lettering, making it feel all of a piece. And here's the result:

Just for fun, I had it colored in a flat style much like Superman #423:

 
It's been a dream of mine to get something like this for a long time. It's beautiful and will be hanging in my office very soon. I'm also thinking of using it for a little project I'll talk about later.

Here's what Rick said about the final piece:

It was a blast doing. I like the idea of printing the lettering too. Makes for a lovely final piece!

I couldn't agree more!