Kikyo, the dead priestess from Inuyasha.  I don't remember if this was a request or if I just decided to draw her.

There was always something a little tragic about Kikyo.  She tried to be a good person, but always fell a little short due to her own inadequacies.  Contrasted with Kagome, Kikyo does come across as a little arrogant, a little vindictive.  But there's a lot of good within her, too.

A picture I did contrasting the television Starfire with the comic book Starfire.  Poor TV Starfire is envious of her older, more well-endowed comic book self. 

I always loved the way George Perez designed and drew Starfire.  She was a wonderfully unique creature, ten kinds of sexy, but an innocent kind of sexy.  She was like your little sister, if you little sister happened to be a Playboy pinup.  And the way he drew her hair as this cascading mound of curls was magnificent.  It had to be a lot of work, but George Perez never seemed to shy away from such detail.  Bet his inkers loved him, though.

The way they draw her today is just a little more cynical.  She's like your little sister, but after she's had two failed marriages and a stint in rehab.

In the late 40s, Timely Comics (predecessor to Marvel) got the notion to start producing female superheroes.  It came from the response Miss America got when they gave the character her own title.  Why she got her own title in the first place probably lies in publisher Martin Goodman hearing how well Wonder Woman and Mary Marvel were selling.  That was also about the time Harvey Comics gave Black Cat her own book, so Goodman may have sensed a trend.  So he flooded the market with female-oriented titles and characters: Millie The Model, Tessie The Typist, and other such titles, along with Miss America, Namora, Sun Girl and The Blonde Phantom.  Plus Golden Girl replaced Bucky in Captain America.

Unfortunately, sales on the others didn't match sales on Miss America.  Millie and Blonde Phantom stuck around a few years, but the others quickly disappeared.  It's too bad.  Blonde Phantom wasn't a bad book, although her costume is totally impractical.  And Namora was fairly interesting.  Timely and later Atlas didn't do a bad job with female heroes.  Venus under Bill Everett was very good, and Lorna The Jungle Girl had some nice stories by Don Rico and some nicer art by Werner Roth.  They just never stuck with them, just like Timely and Atlas rarely stuck with anything.  And the next interesting female Marvel would produce would be the Black Widow, and she was a villain in the Iron Man comic.

A very old picture of Jean Grey as Phoenix.  Of course such simple restraints could never really hold Phoenix.  But we can dream, can't we.

Kimiko and Katnappe, two of the more delightful aspects of the show Shaolin Showdown.  I was trying to get a jade effect with the background, but I don't think I pulled it off.

Another cover fake, this one featuring my three favorite members of the Legion Of Super-Heroes.    I kind of cheated a little and had Shadow Lass in her original uniform while Dream Girl and Phantom Girl are wearing the uniforms that Dave Cockrum redesigned for them.  I just like that version of Shadow Lass better.  The art shows one of my weaknesses, that being my impatience with multiple figure pictures.  I also don't know what I was thinking with the background building behind Dream Girl.  That perspective is just psychotic.  Curt Swan could have taken this layout and done a much better cover.

Back in the day, I used to occasionally do what I call "cover fakes", where I'd draw scenes I'd like to see and then add in the logo of an actual comic book so it seemed like it was an actual cover for that comic - - given that it was featuring my semi-pro art.  In this sequence we find Rogue and Mystique captured by a third party who doesn't mean much good to either one of them.  It also fulfills a minor fetish of mine, that being mother/daughter damsels in distress.