The First Line in Day of the Mandarin

I was always very frustrated that Byrne's Lost Generation characters never really got chance to shine. It just seemed that the whole I was abandoned before the first issue even hit the stands. Relegating the series to an Elseworlds project. It's something that I'd wanted to get a commission for but couldn't figure out what to do with them. I was trolling around looking for reference pics for something else when I came across a picture of the Mandarin with this outfit and was, like, "Yeah, would work." It made sense that First Line, the main heroes from the Lost Generation series, would have had dealings with the Mandarin at some point. From there it was easy to figure out the layout. Taking into account the crazy amount of detail Byrne puts into his commissions these days a fight in the middle of some south Asian jungle made perfect sense.

I think Oxbow and Flatiron are my favorites here. Great JRJR vibe to Flatiron's inks. It's got the same look, that I really like, that JB's been using in the last few years on Doctor Doom's armor and I think it works really well here. Oxbow's my favorite, though, but that's mostly because he had my favorite design in the First Line. Plus I love the chunkiness to the Mandarin's boots.

Original size 11x17