The Amory Wars: Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Vol II, #1 variant cover (2024)

Few rock bands have committed to world-building as diligently or consistently as Coheed and Cambria have, a story that extends across numerous albums and spills over into other forms of media. The various Amory Wars comic series have added the mythology spun by Claudio Sanchez and his wife Chondra Echert over the last twenty years.

Jonathan Wayshak's energetic style was the talk of OAX 2024, so I was happy to catch up with him a few months later at Heroes Con, where this cover was one of the finished pieces he had available. My scanner rendered it a bit darker than it really is; see additional image.

It depicts General Deftinwolf, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Deathlok (or maybe Cyborg, since he still has his nose), thinking about the mountain of corpses which his duties require him to generate in warfare.

This large (15"x20") mixed media painting sits on a very stiff board. One of the marks of excellence in Renaissance art was the ability to accurately depict the human figure in extreme poses, and Wayshak rises to that challenge here not once, but many times in the pile of corpses strewn in the background.