Spawn Kills everyone cover by J.J. Kirby

A fun cover of a super deformed/chibi Spawn to that one shot that stirred its little buzz upon its release in 2016 (up to a 3rd print, which was not that common back then), before Spawn enjoyed its current renaissance.

The main (and to be clear only) incentive for me to buy that title was the too scarce art from J.J. Kirby whose work I have been closely following since his early Wildstorm days on Backlash.

His versality, the precision of his line and amazing technique never cease to delight me and this one shot provided great (goofy) cartoony fun.

(Just look how great the juxtaposition of pure pencils and maker works here).

So I was surprised and delighted to see this one pops up at Anthonny’s, who never fails to seemingly loot JJ’s art table (and has been doing for years), for less than what the rare pages from that one shot had been selling so far.

I find quite fun that lil’ Spawn here is clearly thinking himself quite seriously like the badass he is not while the proportions used for the character result in that attempt being just ridiculous. And yet I find he does reach some small level of badassness. I’ll leave it to you to decide which works for you 😉

This my second 50th posted piece by JJ, a suitable replacement for an unpublished page I sold during a previous CAF live.

If someone knows why JJ is not a superstar or simply a more popular artist, please tell me but (sadly for him) I certainly don’t mind if that means I can enjoy purchasing his work away from the (fabricated?) craziness of our nice hobby.

Happy new year to everyone and happy collecting in 2025.