Pulp 2.0 Design for Return of the Originals

I am friends with Mike Bullock, the writer of the upcoming BLACK BAT series  for Moonstone Books. As Mike has been out and about  the internet stumping for his book  which you can read about here, those of us over at the Pulp Factory Yahoo Group have been discussing how to market pulp stories and concepts to today's audience -- specifically at the comic shop.

The conclusion is that you have to take every opportunity you can to get your work seen by the right eyes and that means thinking outside the box of just your usual suspects.

Well since I was getting ready to tackle some new design work - I thought it would be good to do some quick design "sketches" as a warmup to the really heavy lifting I'm going to be doing.  Mike had a flyer for Moonstone's RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS and I asked him if I could get an image from him to play around with... he graciously agreed. So  after a couple hours I  fan-ficced their flyer.

And here's the result:

You can add it to your desktop if you want. Maybe it will remind you to ask your local comic shop retailer you want to take a look at these comics.  [Take the hint and just order the books] 

I kept it simple and widescreen - because of course,  I like it like that - and made the color palette something that would play against the deep blue of the original art.  Red, yellow and blue is an excellent color combination. Just ask Superman. 

It sort of reminds me of one of those newspaper box inserts you see in the big cities (which might be a really cool way to sell newspaper sized comics that have tons of big ads in them!) or an old serial lobby card (which might be a cool way to sell more comics - a cool serial adventure!). 

In any case it was fun and a good warmup for the pulp to come.