Sometimes a cover idea immediately pops up when you’re putting together a book, comic, or graphic novel—as you’ve witnessed in my previous posts, outlining the process involved in putting together the covers for the Pandora Zwieback novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign, and the cover for IndyFest Magazine #85. Other times, you just kind of stumble into one, as in the case of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0…

Around mid-2010, I’d decided that I’d make the announcement of StarWarp Concepts’ triumphant return to publishing at New York Comic Con, that annual geekfest held in October. But rather than just set up a booth and hand out bookmarks and catalogs promoting the company’s upcoming titles, for Pan I wanted to go an extra step to really get some attention: StarWarp Concepts was going to publish its first comic book in eight years—and it was going to be a giveaway. But first, it needed an artist.

I’d just worked with a Portuguese artist named Eliseu “Zeu” Gouveia on a proposed revival of my succubus character, Lorelei—and one of these days you may get to see those pages—so I e-mailed him and asked if he’d be interested in this new project. Well, of course he was! And he could deliver final art and digital color by the deadline I gave him. What he needed, though, was a script, so I got to work on my part of the job.

Here’s where the unexpected cover comes in. With the script delivered, Zeu started penciling pages, one of which involved Pan making a sales pitch for Blood Feud directly to the comic’s readers:

PAGE 6
PANEL 1: LARGE PANEL (so we can fit in the important information about the book). Pan holds up a copy of Blood Feud [a Photoshopped insert of the cover image] next to her head so we can all get a good look at the cover.

1. PAN: PRETTY WILD, HUH? AND THE FUN ALL STARTS IN THE FIRST NOVEL:

2. DISPLAY TYPE: BLOOD FEUD: THE SAGA OF PANDORA ZWIEBACK, BOOK 1

3. PAN: THAT’S WHERE ANNIE AND ME WIND UP IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR AMONG RIVAL VAMPIRE CLANS, WITH THE SAFETY OF THE WHOLE WORLD AT STAKE! (no pun intended)

4. PAN: IT GOES ON SALE [Date to be inserted].

5. PAN: IN THE MEANTIME, YOU CAN ORDER A COPY BY USING THE COUPON ON PAGE 8 OF THIS COMIC, OR BY VISITING MY WEB SITE

6. DISPLAY TYPE: WWW.PANDORAZWIEBACK.COM

7. PAN: WHERE YOU’LL ALSO FIND ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT MY BOOK SERIES!

PANEL 2: A smaller, inset panel near the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Pan, interrupted in the middle of her sales pitch, looks off-panel at a voice calling to her.

8. PAN: AND DON’T FORGET TO VISIT MY PUBLISHER’S SITE, STARWARPCONCEPTS.COM, TO CHECK OUT THEIR OTHER PROJ—

9. SHEENA: (off-panel) HEY, ATTENTION WHORE!

But when Zeu e-mailed jpegs of his penciled pages, what I saw instead for page 6 was this:

Which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is an awesome image of Pan happily running toward danger and dragging Annie along with her, and which perfectly sums up my approach to Pan, who as a horror fan is thrilled to go on horror-related adventures…but it wasn’t an image of Pan doing her best impression of a huckster selling Blood Feud to the masses.

A revision would be needed…

To Be Continued!