The Sensational Spider-Man (Ben Reilly) by John Romita Jr. & Mark Morales

As some of you know, I’m a big fan of Ben Reilly’s story as Spider-Man, partially because of that amazing costume, and because 90s Spidey comics is what I grew up on. John Romita Jr was a big part of that journey, and considering I already had a classic Spider-Man commission/collab by John Romita Jr. & Scott Hanna, I wanted my second pick this time around: the Sensational Spider-Man.

I asked for the classic Ben Reilly Spidey costume, some rain, and a battle-damaged costume. I’m glad John let that last bit slide, as it would have been probably a bit too much & would have hurt the composition. The end result is this full figure piece with background and rain. No one does rain like JRJR.

Interestingly, a week or so after having seen this piece, it was announced that rain now costs as much as a single figure, considering how much time it takes John to do. Pretty great timing, I’d say, and considering how much he put into this piece; it’s definitely understandable.

This piece was part of a charity auction to benefit Clan McDonald who suffered some recent tragedy (and that is why I paid a bit more than what the usual full figure pieces go for (for now)). This also explains the rain, background and tight pencils. Size is 11x17.

A fun detail about the composition: it seems to homage the Authentix Amazing Spider-Man #1 Sketch Variant, but I’d say this one is a bit tighter in terms of figure work. On to finding a great inker for this one!

Update: 20th of June 2023. Late 2022, I reached out to Mark Morales who inked some commissions for me before & has experience in inking JRJR pieces (in the rain even!). Considering Mark's busy published schedule, I was on the waiting list for about half a year, but it was well worth it. When he started working on it, it went very fast.

I mentioned to Mark that I would appreciate a look behind the scenes on social media (as he did that with my Bagley commission), but I did not expect 4-5 posts including video's & process info. Some great ASMR material for us, art fans!

His process was very interesting. First, he printed out the blue line copy & masked the pencil figure with a frisket film. Then he started creating the rain effects with a watercolor brush and watered down ink. The next step is removing the film with an exacto blade - very detailed work, which took him about 20 minutes.

He then inked the main figure & background, before introducing another interesting technique: cutting away some of the ink with the exacto blade. That way he created an additional layer, some looseness & of course more rain. The white lines are NOT white out - they're white paper. All in all, an intensive process with a beautiful result.

To top it all off, I saw complimenting comments from a lot of fans, but also other artists on Mark's posts. Some of them: Olivier Coipel, Rob Retiano, Matt Gaudio, Alessandro Micelli, & more.