While going through boxes of my old work recently in order to compile an accurate and exhaustive checklist for the Modern Masters book, I found the long-buried items featured in the photos below, probably my rarest and least known comics-related work. What makes this work so rare and so unknown is that it's almost all unsigned and uncredited. At times I'm thankful for this, because the art was all done between 1992 and 1994, so it kind of makes me cringe when I see it! I haven't done a lot of work for Marvel Comics, but the first assignments I ever had from the company that Stan Lee built were a series of Spider-Man licensing drawings. These illustrations were never intended for publication in actual comic books--they were for use on various retail or promotional items instead. The Spidey drawings showed up on some lunchboxes and one made it into a calendar. Eventually, the first Spider-Man licensing piece made it into a comic(sort of): a collection of Spider-Man posters and pinups called Spider-Man Hot Shots. Later, I was hired again by Marvel Licensing to design a couple of action figures, Ahab and a Sentinel from the X-Men. The Ahab toy was produced and even featured part of my design art on the back of the package, but the Sentinel I designed was scrapped in favor of a newer design by fellow DC artist Bart Sears. The Ahab drawings were later published in a book of toy photos and designs Marvel released years later. Finally, Nabisco actually hired me to do the artwork for four metal snack tin mail order premiums, each featuring a different set of marvel characters. The tins feature my only Fantastic Four work to date, which is a shame...Anyway, Nabisco created a whole ad campaign for the tins with TV and print ads featuring the artwork, so that was pretty neat!
--C
