Lady Death Scorched Earth #1 alternative cover by Eric Ebas Basaldua

Ebas is an odd duck for me. In the mid to late 2000's, I tried getting one of his famous copic marker commissions at my hometown convention show, San Francisco Wondercon. And for a couple of years I was playing his game of bringing bottles of rum to him while hanging out at his booth and just being friendly in general. So naturally over time, as he was starting to recognize me always popping up at his table, my efforts almost paid off when he said he would take on a commission for me. It was really exciting, and I began emailing his art handler about what all I needed to do - what I wanted, how to pay, where to pay, etc. But then Eric got weird and started ignoring me. He would ignore emails entirely (I wasn't harassing the guy), and his art handler could never get confirmation that Eric agreed to do anything at all. Circumstances then got harder for me to see him in person as SF's Wondercon left entirely for Anaheim in 2011, and there wasn't another local convention that he would really attend. So, I eventually had to give up. And probably the biggest linchpin in me just ending my chase of his art came when Eric straight up had a blank look on his face the last time I saw him at SDCC '15 when I asked if he even remembered me - I guess bringing rum for him to drink at all those Wondercon's was a double edged sword, lol. Then there were various other things that got in the way which prevented me from pursuing other avenues to try and get a commission from him (San Diego Comic Con became impossible to attend, he stopped letting people kinda "hang out" at his booth the last times I saw him, and all my family stuff noted on my Turner art write up happened in the last decade). So my efforts in getting to know him just kinda fizzled out...

Still, I never stopped liking his art, and I've been following Ebas on social media ever since I quit going to conventions. His style has changed over the years since his copic commission days kinda ended (he does copic blank covers for the most part now), and sadly nothing new of his has looked all that special to me - special in a, "I need to own that!" sorta way. So, when he initially posted this Lady Death piece on his FB account I simply thought, "Eric's doing another ass drawing. Cool." And I quickly forgot about it. But then, a couple weeks after these raw pencils were revealed, Sabine Rich's colored version was shown on Coffin Comics' Kickstarter page, and the completed piece immediately captivated my senses. Originally, I couldn't recognize Eric's larger scaled ideas for this cover, and I couldn't make out how Lady Death was supposed to be standing in a throne room in juxtaposition. At a glance, I thought his lighter pencils in the upper background looked scatterbrained. And me not being artistic, I definitely couldn't see the finer details Eric included that were placed all around Lady Death's actual person - I didn't see her left hand holding her cape to the side, I didn't see that her left leg was actually standing in between the extended arms of a throne, I didn't see that those skulls were supposed to be the arms of a throne, and I certainly didn't see the middle-ground pillars and chains that created the (almost) large colosseum-depth of space behind her. But because of the vivid colors provided by Sabine Rich, all of those gorgeous details were finally visible to me, and I rushed to re-examine the penciled piece almost immediately. It was then that I finally took the moment to re-read Eric's Facebook comments from when he first posted this art up (I had read it before, but didn't pay much mind to it), and I was able to understand and appreciate his explanations about the overall design for this:

"March 4, 2019[...]I've wanted to do a bumbum shot of her for a long time but didnt want to go the cheesecake route and go with a power stance instead, so I planted her firmly on the ground and just moved her cape[...]I wanted to bring "more" to #CoffinComics than my usual pinups and tried to add as much detail as I could to a "throne room" looking place with fire effects added by the amazing Sabine Rich[...]These are among my fave lines to drawn, I do not like using rulers at ALL and the organic lines in the background are just perfect for me, very H.R. Giger-est structure type lines[...]" -Ebas

(The write up is continued in the comments section...)