Tuff-Girl vs Thunderkill

Digital composite with ink on bristol board.

Tuff-Girl takes on Thunderkill in this piece to commemorate my appearance in this year’s Charlotte, NC based Heroes Con. The image and style is an homage to the fantasy and comic work of artist Frank Frazetta. Here the hero is in a desert setting facing this strange adversary that I currently refer to as “Thunderkill.” Thunderkill is part man and part bison, seemingly covered in mushrooms and fungi. He’s also wielding a hatchet.

To promote my Unstoppable Tuff-Girl comics, I have been creating art for mini prints for every comic book convention at which I have a table. Admittedly, there have been a few cons in which I got too busy to do so.

Draft - Scarlet red pencil on Bristol Board.
27.9 cm x 43.2 cm (11.00 in x 17.00 in).

Further inspired by Frazetta, Tuff-Girl’s clothes have been shredded, no doubt by encounters with Thunderkill leading to this moment. I could not escape, nor did I really want to, having the whole scene strongly echoing Captain Kirk’s well-known hand-to-hand conflict with the Gorn from the Star Trek 1967 episode “Arena.”

You can see in the pencil draft, changing silhouettes of the distant rock formations, as well as the abandoned dust cloud.

Inked - Black India ink and scarlet red pencil
on Bristol Board. 

These images aren’t considered cannon to the Tuff-Girl mythology, even though any of them may yet serve as inspiration for future stories. Thunderkill hasn’t appeared in any of the books (yet). He has however can be seen in part in a previous commemorative image. Take that as you will.

A last bit of minutiae – some of the Frazetta-isms that he puts into his paintings aside from his fantastical cool palette, led me to incorporate a few curls in the rocks’s shading which intern led me to form some of those into seahorse shapes. Seahorses are a motif that I put into every Little Tuffy and the TufGurlz” comics and is kind of that comic’s logo. Seahorses are pretty intricate shapes and I doubt that I can hide them in all ongoing images, but you know that I will if I can.

PRELIMINARY SKETCHES & THUMBNAIL DRAWINGS

Ink and color pencil on paper.
22.23 cm x 15.24 cm (8.75 in. x 6.00 in.)

Ink on paper.
22.23 cm x 15.24 cm (8.75 in. x 6.00 in.)