Some Old Pencil Art

MUTANT X












Back in 2000 I became the penciler for MUTANT X and got to work again with Howard Mackie, my co-conspirator on SPIDER-MAN. I was generally enjoying the book and definitely enjoying the work, but two things were causing problems at the time. One: my mom had suffered a stroke in June of 2000. She was in the hospital for some time, but when she didn't die some people wondered why I was affected by it. Not my editor, Jason Liebig, but some others. Two: the atmosphere in comics at the time was highly charged because Marvel had fallen on hard financial times and everyone was seeing books get cancelled and artists losing their jobs. I had started drawing with a "got to please the editor" attitude first and foremost in my mind when I had always drawn with a "got to please myself" attitude first for all of my career before that.
In the end, my art suffered because of an atmosphere of fear.
No one can do well with that going on.
That said, here are four pages from issue 23 of MUTANT X. My figure work is good, but I'm skimping on backgrounds BIG TIME in an effort to save time. Not good.
I like the look of these overall. If you want, you can fill in the "X" areas with black as that was what the inker was supposed to do and you'll see that the pages would have worked fine as they are, but they should have and could have been so much better.
What do you guys think?

SEPTEMBER IS HERE!!!
Where did the year go?????