SUPERHEROES/ART – Spider-Ham vs. Captain Carrot

GASP! In color!

This week’s Superhero vs. Superhero drawing  is a spoof of the famous Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man cover published in 1976:

The cover was drawn by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano.  I had a very short conversion with Greg Willits (of the Catholics Next Door podcast) which lead me to want to draw the spoof. He’s a big fan of Captain Carrot.

I wanted to spoof the cover but I didn’t want to draw that very detailed background.  It would take too long to replicate.  I went online looking for a black and white copy of the cover. I found one but the jpeg had too low of a resolution. I own a reprint copy of the comic, and in the back there’s an explanation of how the cover was conceived.

There’s a black and white version there.  I scanned that version and that’s what I used for my background.

I took out Supes and Spidey and drew the cartoony characters in there instead.  Only, I found I had to adjust the tower.  Spider-Ham has bigger feet and he’s shorter.  when I drew him on the tower, it didn’t look right.

I ended up taking the tower art and enlarging it so that it looked more like Spider-Ham was on the  tower.

Once all the elements where drawn, I printed the black and white drawing on bristol board.  The line work on the characters where printed in non photo blue but the background was printed in black and white.

I then inked Captain Carrot and Spider-Ham using my good Pentel Pocket Brush Pen.

Once I was done, I scanned the drawing back in and colored it, trying to match the colors of the original cover.  That was a pain, but I did it.

I had an absolute blast working on this drawing.  I had a difficult time, NOT working on it.  All wanted to do was draw it.

While Greg is a big fan of Capt. Carrot, I’m a big fan of Spider-Ham.

See, Peter Porker: The Spectacular Spider-Ham #15 was the first comic book I’d ever bought when I was in middle school. I bought it at a Circle K near my house.

I’d had comics when I was a little kid but there was something about having bought the comic myself that made me really own it.

Also, I picked it myself for myself and that made a big difference.  It looked fun and silly.

Once I read it, I wanted more and I went back for more.  They eventually cancelled the book but had short eight page Spider-Ham back up stories on some Marvel Tales comics,  which featured Spider-Man.

I picked those up for the Spider-Ham back ups but eventually ended up reading the Spider-Man stories also.  They hooked me and I’ve been reading superhero comics ever since.

This it the first time I’ve ever drawn Spider-Ham and I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic the whole time. It was fun. I hope you like it as much as I liked drawing it.