Akiko is a pig-tailed fourth-grader prone to fall into crazy adventures where space-travelling, monster-escaping and prince-saving are common happenings, seasoned with names that make The Lord Of The Rings sound as common as the White Pages. The characters are drawn in a deceptively simple style, but then you stumble upon one of the “architecture” pages and your jaw drops to the floor in awe because of the creativity and execution.

I would definitely put this book up there with Bone, Usagi Yojimbo, Castle Waiting and Fairy Godmother: stuff you can give to your kids after reading it (and thoroughly enjoy) yourself. Time after time.

One day, while visiting Mark’s website looking for the latest paperback, I noticed he had a few pieces of art for sale, among which a little something inspired by Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss”. That immediately gave life to a rush of ideas I submitted to Mark who, much to my delight, accepted to develop.

In short, I asked him to go ahead and render Akiko in the style of the masters, effectively reinterpreting some of the all-time art masterpieces.

An excerpt from my first email: “A few off the top of my head would definitely be a different Klimt (like Giuditta I, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I or Portrait of Emilie Floge), Leonardo Da Vinci (like his Vitruvian Man study), Vargas, Michelangelo (the Creation? The Pieta?), Mucha (something very, very flowery), Lawrence Alma Tadema (languidly reclining between marble and flowers), Dore' (remember his Divine Comedy etchings?), Bosch, Giger (no need for background penetrations nor dead babies, if you don't feel like it...) and Caravaggio (shadows and lights!). There, ten already, and we didn't even touch Degas, Monet, Renoir, Dali', Van Gogh, Vermeer, Russian Industrialism, German war iconography, Egyptian glyphs, Photorealism, Rockwell and a gazillion others...”

And so he did, as you can witness in this gallery where I posted the results from the first two batches. More will come as soon as Mark will confirm openings in his busy schedule (and, more important, I'll have money to send him).

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