Brainiac 5 by Scott Kolins

One night a few months ago, I was doing my usual round of eBay searches, and found about fifty new pieces waiting for me in the "Legion" category - all of them by Legion veteran Scott Kolins! Turns out a collector had commissioned a ton of Legionnaires from him, but had decided to sell them off all at once. If you've noticed a sudden influx of Kolins Legion pieces added to CAF in the last few months, that's why!

I found the pieces early, so I had my pick of any character I wanted. To absolutely no one's surprise, the first piece I added to my cart featured Brainiac 5, my favourite Legionnaire. What's neat is that I had actually seen this artwork before it ended up on eBay, because there's a digitally coloured version floating around Pinterest and Google images. I'm not sure whether the colours were done by Kolins, some other industry colourist, or just a very talented fan, but it's in the additional images gallery, and I'd love to be able to give it the proper credit (so let me know if you know the colourist!).

As for the piece itself, well, it's up to interpretation. I'm not sure where Brainy is, exactly, but my two best guesses are it being some kind of energy generator (think a souped-up nuclear reactor) or an elaborate trap in a super-villain's lair. Either way, Brainy looks perfectly unimpressed by the danger surrounding him, with his trusty forcefield belt working just as well as he designed it to.

Kolins' use of grey markers is absolutely incredible, here! He really nailed the lava lamp-esque globs of energy in the background. There's so much going on in the piece, but it doesn't feel cluttered or messy. I think having the pure white outline of Brainy's forcefield to keep him separate from the chaos of the background was a fantastic touch, too. This is my first commission-style piece with a full background, and I love that Kolins gave every bit of it the same care and attention as he did the main figure in the middle.

I also know Kolins tends to sell the prelims to these pieces separately, so if anyone happens to own the prelim and has gotten tired of it, I'd be more than happy to reunite it with the finished product!