The late, lamented CrossGen Comics published a cornucopia of fantastic material in its roughly 7 years of publishing. Eschewing the superhero genre altogether, they ran head first into every other imaginable genre instead. One of those was a high seas pirate adventure called El Cazador, which was beautifully illustrated by Steve Epting, himself often inked by Mike Perkins due to their artistic similarities which were very synergistic. Epting preferred inking himself whenever possible, but he wasn't fast enough to do that for very long on a monthly schedule. Enter: Mike Perkins.
El Cazador was very popular from the start, so after only a few issues of publication, a couple of one-shot specials were published and Perkins was asked to illustrate the cover for one of them. This is that cover. You'll notice immediately that he elected to create the cover purely in tonal pencils, something I don't believe he has done since, which in and of itself makes this a very unique piece from his oeuvre.
To the best of my knowledge, Epting only ever parted with 1 cover from his run on the title and none of the interiors, while this is the only other published piece of El Cazador art to ever become available. I'm only parting with it now after having owned it for 22 years. So if you were a fan of this title, please recognize what an incredibly rare opportunity this is for you!
