ACO’s (Alex Cal Oliveira) Near-Perfect Scarlett Cover for G.I. Joe 17 Cover A IDW

Alex Cal Oliveira (ACO) knocked this Scarlett cover out of the park. I reached out to him hoping he’d have it and ended up getting a number of great pieces from him. He was so kind and generous and I loved his style on G.I. Joe and a few issues of IDW’s Cobra (which was the best G.I. Joe series ever, outside a few classic ARAH arcs over the years). During the next few weeks, I’ll put up the other ACO pages which also have cool sketches or practice-ink sessions on the back. For this piece, he had the original penned drawing. For me, he then did the following as he wrote:

“I would cut Scarlet's figure, the original drawing you see next to Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow… (from another cover which I’ll post separately)… I would paste that figure onto a new sheet and recreate the background, inking it anew, adding the background texture, Scarlet's shadow, and the Cobra logo. It wouldn't be "the same" as the one used in IDW because I used a wall texture for the background, but it would all be done by hand. What I showed you was the final result, the one used in IDW.”

I couldn’t be happier with it! Absolutely stunning! In the other photos below, it’s fun that he signed the recreated background with his new signature, as he has been ACO in his art since 2016 but was listed as Alex Cal back in his early days when with GI Joe.