Continuing my series of "Gerhard projects" (pairing Gerhard with other well known comic artists) and the theme of famous battles... I present to you the ultimate Kraven's Last Hunt piece. You knew it had to happen sooner or later... a pairing of the great Mike Zeck with Gerhard. Ironically, the very first Gerhard collaboration piece (for another collector) was a Punisher piece that Mike had drawn in the 80's and Gerhard later modified. For this one, I started fresh with the intent of having them work together on a piece.
Here's the back story on the piece. For the last few years, I've been wanting a stellar standalone Kraven's Last Hunt piece from my friend Mike Zeck. (As many of you have), I always wanted to get Mike to do a commission, but he hasn't taken commission requests in years. Just my luck, earlier this year... Mike decided to make a rare appearance in Toronto and I decided to join him to help run the table. In advance of the show, he prepared a number of sketches to sell. One of them was this image of Kraven on top of a ledge. When I saw it, it clicked in my head that this would make the start of my ultimate Kraven piece and the next Gerhard project. My idea was to turn this piece into a full color painting, leveraging Gerhard's unique style (which had some similarities to the style Mike used on the cover of the Kraven TPB). Unfortunately, since Mike was going to sell these as sketches, he had cropped the paper down to fit the image. Giving him insight on how I wanted to transform the piece, Mike kindly agreed to draw me another version of the piece on illustration board with room for Gerhard to add the background. And, he completed it just in time to bring to the Toronto show.
Well, what do you know, Gerhard is Canadian, so it was actually somewhat convenient to hand-deliver the piece to Gerhard. Gerhard (for the first time) went to a comic book show as an attendee and picked up the piece from me at the Toronto Comic-Con. It was great to finally meet him after all the e-mails we've exchanged.
A few weeks later, Gerhard showed me the initial draft of what he was working on. I gave him some small comments and in the spirit of collaboration, Mike did as well (the spiders though were all Gerhard's idea - a nice touch that really added to the piece). The B&W inked piece that came back blew me away... so much so, that I couldn't bear to have Gerhard paint on top of all the delicate linework he had done. So, the plan changed a bit. I would keep the B&W piece in its original form and have Gerhard paint the rest on a print made on watercolor paper. It took a little longer, but now there are two "originals" for this piece.
Frankly, I'm thrilled with the way this turned out. I may not have any of the covers to Kraven's Last Hunt, but I'm very happy adding this piece to my collection.
Thanks Mike and thanks Gerhard - job well done!
