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MTIO 35-36 (unpublished original commission)
Artist: Ernie Chan
April, 2009: Ernie Chan was scheduled to be at the Seattle Emerald City Comicon, and as he'd drawn the first comic book I read (Marvel Two-in-One #36), I decided to attend the convention and solicit my first real all-out "commission" (I have a few convention sketches, but this is a bit bigger!). Unfortunately, the never-ending winter of 2008-2009 decided to push into April, and as it was still snowing here two days before the convention, my wife and I were unable to do the 300 mile cross-state drive. Disappointed, I decided to email Mr. Chan anyway, and you see here the result of that commission...
If you read my MTIO 36 page, I mention the pterodactyls and rockets that caught my eye back in late '77 or early '78. So, my request to Mr. Chan was that I wanted a pterodactyl as the focus; the Thing and Jaguar Priest as major elements, and the rocket in the background with more of the pterodactyls. If he wanted to and if it fit, he might include Skull the Slayer and Mr. Fantastic from that issue somewhere in the background, but it wasn't necessary. Armed with that request, he came back with this. That pterodactyl seems almost 3-D to me, just popping off the page at you, and I think I would have been happy with this just for that. The other dinosaurs were an unexpected bonus- there's a slight continuity problem as Mr. Fantastic and the rocket were never in the same place as the land-based dinosaurs, but screw it, this is mine, and doesn't have to be true to the comics! Well, well, well worth the money, and one of my instant favorites.
I paid Mr. Chan at 10:31 PM on April 7th. He emailed a scan of the completed project (and put it in the mail on the same day) at 11:10 AM on April 9th. What is that, just under 37 hours? If you were interested in work by Mr. Chan, I was strongly recommending him, but unfortunately in May of 2012 he passed away. His website is still there at www.erniechan.com, but I have no idea if there's family there still selling the listed art, or if it's simply a defunct site.
My apologies to those whose monitors are set to display not-that-much side-to-side. Reducing the size on the display image really destroys the quality, so I'm leaving it large.
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