"Lady Death started following you"!

I’ve been in to comic books all my life, long before there were conventions across the world drawing 80K fans. The 90’s was an abysmal decade for fashion, and music […in my opinion], but comics were having an absolute renaissance! Image comics had published Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, and I was immediately drawn in to the violent anti-hero that tore bad guys limb from limb. As Image found an audience […more miscreants like myself], some incredible fringe titles emerged. Creech, Pitt, Sam Keith’s The Maxx, Witchblade, The Darkness and one of my all time favorites, Brian Pulido's Lady Death!

Lady Death was a scantly clad demoness huntress. No damsel in distress and not wooeded by handsome hero-esk male counterparts. She would only be released from her curse when life on earth ceased to exist, and so she went forward attempting to single handedly extinguish every living person on earth. It was Dead Alive level violence at the hands of a smoking hot anti-hero babe, and I was in my late teens. Love at first sight.

Lady Death went through a few iterations. A few of publishers went out of business over the years. I heard the rights bounced around, but in 2010 Lady Death made a resurgence! I picked up a few early books from her most recent reboot. A few days ago, though, something happened!

As I’ve mentioned on here, I’m transitioning to comic book illustration full time and as such, I’ve been posting a lot of drawings and sketches on my social media pages. I grabbed my phone to a notification that “ladydeathofficial started following you”, and in that moment, 19 year old Lars Kommienezuspadt just…fucking…died!

I don’t fanboy often, but it was seriously what I needed, as these last six months have been a lot of ups and downs […more downs]. I’ve been facing some really humbling limitations in my drawing ability […mostly story telling and backgrounds/environments] and general stressors in life pursuing this new career path, which you can read in my last blog “When does pursuing your dreams become irresponsible?”.

That little confidence boost inspired me to work on a Lady Death sketch, which I just finished this evening. Appropriately, the encouragement […although, most likely unintentional, having no idea how much such a gesture would impact me] did seem to improve one of my problem areas, as backgrounds are always a bitch for me. I’m relatively happy with how this turned out.

Here’s a time-lapse video of the progress as well. All drawn on iPad Pro using Apple Pencil and Procreate.

I used to follow everything Lady Death. Even had a band in the mid 90's that wrote a song about her.

Nice work there. I mostly missed the image stuff besides few issues Spawn that time. Fascinating time

@mikkolyytinen Spawn definitely left a big impact on me. Not just because it was more mature, but Todd McFarlane's ability to write, pencil and ink that first year worth of issues was incredible.

Cool drawings!
@richman started following you ;D

@richman thanks for the follow! I'll be posting a lot more illustration!

As always, thank you for all the support @thecryptofiend

It's cool to watch the features flicker in and out over the course of all the editing. How long did it take in real time?

I loved The Maxx so much that I developed a course around it to teach about mental illness. I've taught it five different summers, and students are always enthusiastic about it. We watch one episode from the MTV series a day, and tie it in with readings and discussions. Loads of fun.

Thanks @plotbot2015! It took about 6 hours total, but I'm slower than I used to be. Trying to get my skills back to where they should be. The Maxx was amazing. Follow my friend @swarddraws! He's hugely inspired by Keith's work.

Great drawings ... they are screaming out be let loose though. You have a certain unique style in what you draw. Do you first visualise it and then draw it or do you let it emerge from the page? Following ...

Thanks @nazmood. Unique makes me happy. I feel that goes a long with in any industry that's got a lot of great competition. Right now, my process is just trail and error sketching things from my imagination. It's usually a while before something sticks. Once it does, it's just refining it again and again and finishing with a lot of details. In the next year or so, I'll be working on color a lot more.