The NEW HUMANS #1 Title Splash Page

Hi Gary, I'm David Lawrence, writer & cocreator of Ex-Mutants & New Humans, and I can solve the mystery of your New Humans #1 page.

The publisher of the books, though sort of hidden in the shadows, was Scott Rosenberg, a name familiar to those who are up on their comic book scandals. In retrospect the shadowy nature of Rosenberg's involvement should've given me pause, but I was young, stupid and getting paid to write comics.

Ron Lim was drawing Ex-Mutants & Hero Alliance at the time New Humans was launched. Despite being as preternaturally fast as any artist I ever worked with he didn't have time for a third book. So the assignment ended up going to Gary Washington, who would go on to considerable success in his own right. And we liked the idea of the two books having very different looks. That "we" did not, however, include Scott Rosenberg. When he saw the pages he hated them.

A scheme was cooked up where Ron Lim drew the pages, using Gary's pages as layouts. Not sure what we did technically. My guess is that Ron was sent photocopies & most likely worked from a lightbox but I'm not sure.

It's far too long since I've seen the pages side by side but to my recollection Ron followed Gary's very closely. I did stand up for Gary a little bit but in retrospect I should've fought much harder. My own permanent falling out with Rosenberg came not long after, before the book was actually printed in fact. I'm glad that Gary was not irreparably harmed but the whole thing was shitty.

Never knew if Gary's pages survived. Glad to see at least this one did. This book actually was published twice by the way, but to my knowledge Gary's never was. Ron's was published first by Pied Piper, and then later by Rosenberg's Eternity as our ability to continue the legal fight petered out.