The release of Action Figures – Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect may be a few months away still, but I had to get things rolling on the cover art front after my artist, Tricia Lupien, gave me this great piece of teaser art, which I unveiled last month to celebrate selling 100 copies of Action Figures – Issue One: Secret Origins and Issue Two: Black Magic Women:

This happy young lady is Buzzkill Joy, the central villain of book three. I’d originally intended to use this as the back cover spot illo, but the image was so striking I decided to make it the front cover. Tricia got to work right away, and first dropped this color rough on me:

Tricia, feeling the muse upon her, finished off the color art in a few days, adding some nice touches like the bruising on Joy’s face (“I figure she’s not going down without a fight,” Tricia reasoned, and she’s spot-on there).

The final touch was to re-add the lettering on the mug shot board (or whatever it’s called) and drop in the logo, which Tricia finished off last night. Now, without further ado, here it is: the finished cover for book three!