As mentioned in the Adam Hughes “Mary Marvel” entry, Jim Starlin is another one of my holy grail artists to ink. Not only was I a HUGE fan since the late 1970’s when I discovered him, but anyone who has read my bio, contributors page or several of my interviews knows that Jim is the direct reason that I was able to break in as a professional in 1992 (Bernie Wrightson indirectly since it was through his kindness that we met). My first pro work as a creator was WARLOCK & THE INFINITY WATCH #5 inking over Angel Medina and written by Jim. I longed over the years for a chance to ink him but it didn’t happen until my client Damon was able to commission him and, lucky for me, we know where Damon’s jobs go to receive ink!

Jim’s pencils only had the Black Racer character (from Jack Kirby’s 4th World, the New Gods, as published by DC Comics) with no background so I added the starscape. My 29th commission for the client, I inked it in brush, brush marker, marker, zip, China marker/crayon, razor blade and white paint spatter. I considered doing the stars by hand as clusters like Jim or his regular inkers would have but being that Jim drew the figure not expecting a background he had the parts of the body in shadow that would be adjacent to the black of space and I didn’t want to just add halos to separate them so I decided to do the star with ink spatter like I normally would since that approach would solve my dilemma far better than Jim’s would have in my humble opinion. This 11X17 commission was finished on 6/25/2005. Special thanks to Damon and Bob Shaw for making this happen.

Pencils by James P. Starlin- Sorry for the lightness of the pencils. I didn’t scan the original pencil art and the photocopier was not able to get a dark image since Jim’s pencils were very light. I darkened this file a LOT in Photoshop.

Bob’s Inks