Martin Powell: Pictures from the Past

Once upon a time, when I was very young and foolish, I had aspirations to be an artist. Thought I'd share a few pieces with you, mostly for the sake of nostalgia and fun.

Let's start with the one above, the first ever drawing I made of my HALLOWEEN LEGION, when I was in the tenth or eleventh grade. As you can see, my little group of weirdos have evolved a bit since those days.

The first stuff I ever remember drawing were dinosaurs. This one was done really early on.

Now a couple much earlier original characters of mine, drawn when I was in elementary school.

One of favorite characters. Someday I will get to write a real POPEYE adventure.

Let's move along into my later high school years, when my drawings were a bit less of an eye-sore...probably because I'd discovered girls.

This one below was drawn from life. My high school sweetheart at that time, around eleventh or twelfth grade.

I had a mad crush on actress Jane Seymour after seeing her in FRANKENSTEIN: The True Story and LIVE AND LET DIE. Little did I realize that year later we'd meet. She's still beautiful.

A zoo sketch.

I think it was around my senior year of high school that I had the totally unrealistic ambition to illustrate the novel DRACULA. They're not very good, but I did try very hard to reproduce Stoker's visual description of the Count.

Now for some classic movie monsters, another favorite subject of mine. This is a poster for an imaginary movie that would have been the companion film to Universal's House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. Plus, some pics of Boris, Bela, and Christopher Lee. I always loved drawing them.

One of my more ambitious pieces. A friend and I were going to pitch a Frankenstein comic book adaptation to Famous Monsters magazine around 1980. Not very good, but at least it has mood. I was trying to capture the essence of one of the original movie posters.

And, yup. I drew some pulp stuff, too. These were done when I was fresh out of high school.

And, yup. I drew some pulp stuff, too. These were done when I was fresh out of high school. Doc Savage's super-firer pistol is based on a design by Steranko. The gun-totting lady is my take on Pat Savage.

One of my more recent pieces, drawn in the mid-1980's. This is a character created by Dale Roberts, penciled by me, and inked by my long time pal, and co-creator of our THE VERDICT, Emmy Award winner Dean Haspiel. Exploitative, yes, but still sort of fun, I suppose.

Okay...the misery is almost over. This is, I think, my most recent drawing. It's from 1992, when I was writing the Necroscope comic book series, and a friend asked me to draw a female vampire in his sketchbook. I'm not sure why I chose to waste two whole pages.