New Crusaders Issue 02 - The Lost Crusade Prelude Page 02

Oh Yeah! 80's Crusaders? Check! Great Norton art? Check! Glorious Terry Austin inking? Double check :)

I love, this page from the current Archie New Crusaders series. A great back up based around the 80's relaunch. The top two panels show the retroconned 40's line-up of the Golden Age Shield and his teen side-kick Dusty, Zambini the Miracle Man, Kalthar (think Tarzan meets Giant-Man), Mister Justice and the Wizard and his teen side-kick Roy the Super Boy. The next has the 80's line-up of the Golden Age Shield, Jaguar, Fly-Girl, the Fly, Doc Reeves, Darkling, Comet and the Black Hood. The last two panels show the rather brutal means the series took to write out the two new characters who were added to the series to bring some diversity to it (Darkling and Doc Reeves).

It took some doing but I was finally able get it! Mike's got a wonderful style and I really think it's fits just perfectly with the Crusaders. That legendary inker Terry Austin went over the pencils only makes this cooler. Wonderful stuff :)

Original size 11x17

Note - there was a point where it looked like this page was just gone. Lost in that never never land of lost art and it wouldn't be MINE! Knowing I'd come across a decent res scan of the pencils I asked the Formidable Brian Fraim if he'd ink it for me. A wonderful job he did and even though I was, eventually, able to put my hands on the original I have them both in the same sleeve. Brian did a really cool job. His own what I think of as curved line style fits very nicely over Norton's pencils. I'd actually like to see some more of the two of them working together. I've posted Brian's version here as well for folks to take a gander at.