Santos Sisters - issue 9 cover (Greg and Fake)

Some three decades ago, I was watching "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" late at night with some college friends, when one of the guys lamented that he always felt that there was some deeper meaning to show that he was missing. Another friend responded with something along the lines of "You're laughing and enjoying it, so who cares?...". I mention this because, based on some of the reviews I've seen, especially after the recent Eisner win for Best Continuing Series, there seems to be a certain subset of readers who similarly think that maybe there's some deeper meaning to the Santos Sisters that is going over their heads. Or even worse, there are some who think that there should be more to the book than the sitcom-style misadventures of a couple of reluctant heroes.

At the end of the day, comics should be fun. And the Santos Sisters is definitely fun. There's a certain Gen X ironic detachment to the humor of the book, where nothing is taken too seriously and everything is fair game, but still there is an internal logic and consistency to the characters and the world of Las Brisas.

All of which is to say check out the series if you haven't already, and in the meantime I'm happy to be able to share the original cover art for issue 9 of the Santos Sisters.

I have always been a fan of what I loosely describe as "space girl art", so when I first saw this image being used for a teaser, I was very interested in it - Ambar and Alana floating in space, making repairs to a satellite with hand tools while wearing both skirts and space helmets? Sign me up! I soon realized that this would in fact be the cover to their next issue when a solicitation for issue 9 appeared, complete with "lorem ipsum" placeholder text (and with the Santos Sisters, it's the one comic I could actually imagine going to press with this on the cover).

The timing of all this was fortuitous, as I was in the middle of a commission project with Greg Petre (the artist half of Greg and Fake) at the time and I gently inquired if he might be interested in selling the original art for the cover. Happily, we were able to work out a deal for it and I was even more happy for this to be the first issue to hit the shops after the team's Eisner win.

Greg's inking on the piece is impeccable. I'd seen his original art before at conventions, but those were all panel pages versus the large single image of this piece. As you can imagine, when it arrived in the mail I was blown away. Obviously there's a lot of work that goes into making something look easy and effortless, and Greg has been grinding away, developing his craft for decades. The same can be said for the rest of the crew behind Santos Sisters and it's great to see them getting the recognition they deserve.