Vortex #7 pages (1994): Interrupted date

Writer/artist Matt Martin started this series in junior high, drawing equally on Image Comics and Christian archetypes. The eponymous hero is a Bible-quoting spirit of justice along the lines of The Spectre, but looking more like Spawn wearing a giant cross necklace. It ran for six black-and-white issues. None of them contain this spread, which seems to have been intended for early in the unpublished issue #7.

These two pages re-introduce our hero Michael "Vortex" Auburn and his blind supermodel girlfriend Stacy Campbell. They're trying to enjoy a night on the town ("Cats" on Broadway, according to the signage in panel one) when duty calls, and he must transform into his super-suit and leave her behind again. With great power, etc.

I was amazed to find that each page is only 11"x7", and thus quite minute in its detail. The whole affair is delightfully over-the-top in its "early 90s-ness." Vortex has outrageously long ears on his Wolverine cowl, longer than Acroyear's head-fins even. The phases of the moon in the second and third panels don't match, leading to a defiant marginal notation after panel five. The final panel uses a color photograph of a nighttime skyline as a background collage.