Meridian 1 p 17 - Middleton and Vines

Kessel, Middleton, and Vines did an exceptional job world building in Meridian. Crossgen launched with four new, mostly realized worlds. I can't imagine the sheer creativity it took to assemble these free standing worlds and launch them right out of the gate.

And you can see how raw Middleton and Vines were in this issue. They were still getting used to each other and to the world building they were doing. I love this stage in a book, when everything is still jelling and you get to see some of the development - including elements that stuck with the series through artist changes. In this page in particular, you can see how lush the fabrics are. That lushness - perhaps because of the many sails that Meridian featured - played a large part in the visual construction of the series.

After Dexter Vines did a show on Comic Art Live with Bill Cox, I reached out to him about additional Meridian pages he may have laying around. Lucky for me, he had two more issues which were sequentially on either side of a page I already owned. The result is a three page sequence from the earliest days of Crossgen.

Reach out to Dex about any of his books. He has various pages from a lot of eras. You can reach him at https://dextervinesinkworks.bigcartel.com/