Rubel on a Rooftop

Later that summer I picked up the missing back issues at a convention and, armed with 17 issues of art, I decided it was time to try again. Like Cheetah, he has a wooden base covered in Sculpey and a coat hanger armature running through his limbs. Varkias on his shoulder has a fine wire armature going up through his legs and into his wings. I'll never do that again. Sculpey grows and shrinks as it bakes and cools, and armatures are tricky enough when they're not 75% of a limb's thickness.

So this was almost my first statue.

Back in the spring of '97 I was looking for my first project, and having read a few issues of T&K I thought the style was perfect for starting out. However the few issues I had pretty much involved Heath, Quinton, and a jail cell. Originally this was going to be based on the cover to issue 16, which you can see here. I decided though that I didn't have enough reference material to do it right, and I really wanted to do Rubel instead anyway, so I moved on to Cheetah and Madman.

By the time I'd finished the piece I'd become a die hard fan of the series, and decided to send the statue to the books creator as appreciation. I'd nearly forgotten about it, being well into construction on Quinton's Tower, and so was much surprised when these 2 pictures arrived printed on the back of issue 19. Shortly after, Mark contacted me and asked if I was interested in doing another piece, and I've been doing them ever since.