Le Marquis

For the French edition of The Marquis published by Les Humanoïdes Associés, I did new covers for both the "Danse Macabre" and "Intermezzo" tomes. Above is the linework drawing to the Intermezzo cover that was a collage of the devils featured in both Hell's Courtesan and A Sin of One. The printed cover was colored by Jean-Jacques Rouger and is reprinted in the color cover gallery of the new Marquis: Inferno collection from Dark Horse Comics.

Dark Horse Inferno Preview

Dark Horse Comics has put up a six page preview from the first chapter of The Marquis:Inferno over at their website. Just click on the Inferno cover image to get to the preview pages!

Dark Horse Marquis Preview

THE MARQUIS DIABLERIES 6

Joshua Izzo made this great Marquis custom-figure complete with sword and pistol! More of Joshua's amazing customs along with his notes on what he used to make the Marquis figure can be found on his website.

Joshua Izzo

THE MARQUIS DIABLERIES 5

This was one of the first Marquis pinups I got back in '97 from Galen Showman, who did this great take on the Marquis after Goya's (one of my favorite illustrators), The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters!

INFERNO: Hell's Courtesan

The Marquis' entrance from Hell's Courtesan! This was a scene I originally planned to have in chapter three of Danse Macabre, where Vol returns to confront the mask seller from the first chapter~ but it didn't fit in with the flow of the story, so I kept it for his intro to the Hell's Courtesan series reprinted in Marquis:Inferno.

The Children of the Midwife

With work on the Marquis: Inferno collection done, I'm now working away on the next graphic novel~ "The Marquis and the Midwife" (alongside the next BPRD:King of Fear mini-series)! I'll show some peeks at the pages and designs as it goes along and to start off here is a character drawing to one of the "Children of the Midwife" from 2005 (who also shows up a couple times in the background of "Danse Macabre" Chapter 5 if you have a sharp eye).

THE MARQUIS DIABLERIES 4

Keeping up with the Diableries weekend posts~ next up is this cool take on the Marquis dealing with some of Venisalle's armies by crazy talented Chris Houghton, who even went old school with it and laid the tone screens down by hand!

Chris Houghton Art

THE MARQUIS DIABLERIES 3

Along with the wonderful pinups I've gotten in the past for the Marquis, I've been getting incredible new pieces too and will start doing the Diableries as a weekend post.

When Dark Horse returned the original artwork from the Marquis: Inferno, tucked inside the return package was this great surprise pinup from Sam "Catfish" Heimer welcoming the Marquis back.

Thanks Sam! It's good to be back!

Sam Heimer's Ink Well

Inferno sketchbook extras~

For the new Marquis:Inferno sketchbook section, I tried putting in everything I could from the old sketchbook sections along with new art never before printed~ but even at 56 pages, I couldn't fit in everything I wanted. Here are three old illos I did for the original Marquis pitch and to advertise the series back in '98.

HELLFIRE!

Something else we were able to redo for the new Marquis: Inferno collection is the color scenes to chapter 5 of the Danse Macabre storyline! I was limited to a one color red drop in when the book was originally printed, but with the new collection Dave Stewart (all around amazing colorist and BPRD cohort) came in to really set that scene on fire! Above left is the original page with Dave's colored version to the right.

dots and grey

I always wanted the Marquis to be a black and white book (with certain spoiler scenes for those who haven't read it, in values of red/orange). For the original series collected in the new Marquis: Inferno I did all the grey tones by hand using Chartpak shading film~ laying the different textures and values down on the actual artwork and scraping off highlights with an xacto or with whiteout. Yeah, it was time consuming and tedious~ and later on it was harder to find the actual tone screens to use.

For the new Marquis stories I learned how to mimic the tone screens in photoshop, something I used to swear I'd never do~ but I was won over by how much time it saved and also it made it easier to change my mind if I didn't like the look of a certain tone screen. In the old days if I wanted to change something, I'd have to peel it off the actual artwork~ and Chartplak didn't give up without a fight and usually took a bit of the inkwork with it!

The Marquis and the Coachman was a good test to see how the digital versions of the tone would match the original Marquis pages~ I did the test panel (above top) and was able to match all the old screens used, but it didn't sit right with me and the artwork seemed dated and off. So at the last minute I decided to start doing the cleaner photoshop greys (above bottom)~ and will go this route for the remaining Marquis books!

THE MARQUIS DIABLERIES 2

Another amazing take on the Marquis by fellow artists, this time by Alex Sheikman~ creator and artist on ROBOTIKA! Alex sent me a few great illos of the Marquis back in 2007 and I'll show off his other pieces in later Diableries!

Alex Sheikman Moonstruck

The Marquis: Inferno in 3D!

It won't be on sale until Sept. 9, but I got my advance copy of The Marquis: Inferno today and Dark Horse did an incredible job pulling out all the stops for this edition! At 336 pages of old/new and reworked material it was a beast to keep in order, but collection editor Rachel Edidin along with everyone involved really did a wonderful job putting it together! I'll show more peeks to the insides as we get closer to September, but here it is sitting pretty on my grubby inking table above!

Reworking the Inferno~

In the first Marquis mini-series "Danse Macabre", I wanted to recap the previous issues in the story itself instead of running a synopsis in the inside front cover. Seemed like a neat idea at the time, but it was a big mistake since when the book was collected this made each chapter redundant with the premise constantly restated in different ways and slowed the story down when read all at once.

So for the Marquis: Inferno collection I went through and removed some of that text and digitally patched the areas of missing artwork that the lettering covered. Above is the original first page to Danse Macabre #2 and the new version for the Inferno collection that lets the artwork tell the story.

The Coachman~ Start to finish!

Rounding out the Marquis and the Coachman extras, here's a look at page 3 from the initial layouts to the final grey toned page before it was passed to Dave Stewart for coloring of the red tones (you can see the final page on the Dark Horse Presents site). The page was drawn and inked by hand, but the grey tones and lettering were added digitally.

THE MARQUIS DIABLERIES 1

I've gotten some incredible fan art over the years for the Marquis and it's always a thrill to see other artists draw their rendition of the character! Since the Marquis tpb's are filled up with sketchbook material I didn't have an outlet to show the art I've been sent~ so I'll be posting some of them on this blog. And to start off we have an amazing portrait of The Marquis himself by Michael Dialynas.

http://madart84.blogspot.com/2009/07/marquis.html

The Coachman designs~

Since the Dark Horse Presents story was done after Marquis:Inferno was all put together, the Coachman story isn't included in the collection. But here's some of the character designs I did for the Coachman himself~ I originally sketched him out back in 1997 as a random devil to fill up the Confessional scenes but didn't have the room to show him off as much as I wanted, so I shelved him for a bit. When I dug him out for the Coachman short, I redrew him and worked out his body design more including his human form.

The Marquis and the Coachman!

I did a new Marquis short story for the May issue of MySpace/ Dark Horse Presents #22. The Marquis and the Coachman is a special prequel that takes place before the Danse Macabre storyline as an introduction to the Marquis and his b/w and red world! It's FREE online, along with much more Dark Horse goodness at the Dark Horse Presents link in the links section. The link will take you to the current issue, so you'll have to choose #22 from the back issues to find the story.

At first this story was a bit of a puzzle to do~ the only condition Dark Horse had was that the artwork had to have some color on every page for MySpace. The living world of the Marquis was already established in print to be entirely b/w and grey but I figured out a way to throw a bit of red into it that hopefully makes sense to what's established. I also did the grey tones digitally for this short instead of the hand laid screen tones that I did in earlier Marquis stories and amazing BPRD colorist Dave Stewart came onboard to color the Hell tones just as he did for The Marquis: Inferno collection.

Welcome to the Marquis' Inferno!

After a few years hiatus, The Marquis is ready to see print again and I couldn't be happier with it's relaunch at Dark Horse Comics. The new Marquis:Inferno is slated to hit the shelves on Sept. 9th 2009 and will collect all previously published stories from the original mini-series (Danse Macabre, Hell's Courtesan, and A Sin of One) into one huge 336 page volume! Also in this definite edition will be a new 56-page sketchbook section, an introduction by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, newly colored sequences by BPRD colorist Dave Stewart and a full-color cover gallery featuring the covers to the Danse Macabre single issues by Matt Wagner, Mike Mignola, Charles Vess, Teddy Kristiansen, Kelley Jones and Michael Gaydos!

But this blog isn't just for a shameless sales pitch~ right now alongside working on the next B.P.R.D series "The King of Fear", I'm also working on the new Marquis graphic novel~ "The Marquis and the Midwife" for 2010. So along with some images from the Marquis: Inferno, I'll also be showing some sneak peeks to the upcoming "Midwife" book's progress as I get it done. For more information on the Marquis and to see some of my other work including B.P.R.D and the Zombies That Ate The World, be sure to check out my website~ Guy Davis Artworks in the links section.