X-Force #42 pg 8 (Davidson pencil pre-lim art) - DEADFOOL

In X-Force #42 (The Ghost Calendars pt 3, July 2023) DEADFOOL came into our world (not to be confused with FOOLPOOL, as seen in Deadpool #1000, 2010).

This X-Force series was nearing its end as the Krakoa Era X-Men was coming to a close. Percy and Davidson tell the story of a futuristic Beast who has joined forces with Nimrod and has taken over, becoming the NIMROD BEAST (see the prelim splash I have from X-Force #40 pg 20 for more). This page features some fun antics of DEADFOOL entertaining NIMROD BEAST (his name is coined on the prior page, see image below), before he catches on and sees that Colossus and old-man Kid Omega (Quentin Quire) have found him 1000 years into the future.

I enjoy seeing Paul Davidson’s preliminary work as it’s not too far from the final. In this page we see the layouts and overall designs have stayed the same, just some new placement for word bubbles. I thought it pretty cool that even most of the dialogue bubble structure was placed in the prelim. The details of all the shading, action, weapons and even blood are generally all thought out. To see this much of the final designs, done on regular paper first, is pretty great and a fun part of the process for what is ultimately published. Some artists work in thumbnail size for design and initial layout and some work on full size art pages from rough to final pencils; but this example being same size as the usual art board for better than rough pencils and designs (seeing a variety of stages in the artist’s process from first thoughts to final publish).