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(top left) George's pencil art (bottom left) completed inked image (see description below for credits) (above) detail of inked Vision (below) Tom Smith's colors
(above) Sal Velluto's pencil art
Comic art fans: Tom Smith
This was one of those special offers. Larry is a client who has commissioned me for 6 previous jobs: Hulk vs. Thing, Hulk vs. Absorbing Man, Iron-man #100 cover recreation, and Goliath (all by MC Wyman) and Martian Manhunter and B. Panther with 3 floating heads (both by Sal). Then he offered me to participate in a George Tuska drawn X-men image with 6 figures from the team that he wanted several inkers to each ink a character. Sadly, I had to decline that job:-( But a few months later Larry again commissioned George to pencil a similar image but with a retro '70s team of 8 Avengers (fans may remember that George had worked on a few old silver-age issues of the title and had a short run in the '70s from issues 137-140). After George chose to ink Iron-man appropriately enough (he rendered the character for like the entire 70's) and Kevin Nowlan chose Wanda Larry asked me who I wanted and after some thought I chose the Vision. George's pencils are a bit sketchy (he is like 90 now so we can cut him some slack:-)) but there was enough info to elaborate on and Larry encouraged us to do so as long as we didn't lose George's style. I inked the Vision on 2/25/05. Subsequently, but not necessarily in chronogical order, Jerry Ordway inked Thor, Rich Buckler inked Beast, Bob Layton inked Yellowjacket, Alan Weiss inked Cap, and Mike Zeck inked Hawkeye. After this was completed Larry commissioned Avengers uber-color artist and pal Tom Smith to color it. He completed it on 8/16/05.