Batgirl #50 Cover by James Jean.

James Jean, to make ends meet early in his career, picked up illustration work with DC Comics, soon becoming their go-to guy for covers. While he is best known for his work on the covers for the Vertigo fantasy series, "Fables," by Bill Willingham, he also created a number of covers for Batgirl.

Batgirl #50 features a fight between Cassandra Cain and her mentor, Batman, and this cover pulls no punches (or kicks). These are the finished pencils for the piece that he laid over another image and colorized digitally.

Jean's fluid lines lend to a potent sense of kinetic energy not wasted in this piece. I intend to have this one matted in a tight cropping of the image. While instinctively I disdain covering up a piece of any image (especially with work as beautiful and James Jean's), I've found that limiting the scope of the view in this particular case captures the energy even more effectively, as the viewer's eye is led around the image by Jean's fluid lines, bouncing off the matting, and redirected on a continual search around the image. When I've got it matted and framed, you'll see what I'm talking about.

James Jean is now a fine artist in high demand, with a recent exhibition in South Korea being his largest yet.