Posted in: Comics | Tagged: adventures of superman, Comics, dc comics, entertainment, jerry ordway, steve rude

The Dude And Adventures Of Superman

Published Tue, 04 Mar 2014 17:00:13 -0600

I grew up loving Steve Rude's artwork. Nexus was just a gorgeous book and always caught my eye as something unique and different. So when I reported a few days back about the new line up for the digital-first Adventures Of Superman, it made me very happy to see Steve's name along with Jerry Ordway. Well, on his blog, The Dude tells us about how he got involved with the project and shows us the cover to one of his issues.

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN!

Superman. OMAC. Together.

Who would've thought?

Well, me, for one. Me, being Steve Rude the Dude, as well as the brass at DC West who asked me to come on board for this project.

It was editor Alex Antoine, a cool and hip, barely 30-something who made the initial contact to the Dude's home in sunny AZ. many months back. You may recognize Alex's name as editor on many of the IMAGE books, before he gravitated to DC West, to supervise many of their online/print comics.

To begin the process of Dude recruitment, Alex submitted several scripts to entice my interest for the Adventures of Superman project, but it wasn't until we settled on something specifically catered to "The Dude Mentality"-with characters most memorable to the 60's and 70's– that things finally clicked.

And what would fit the Dude mentality?

How 'bout OMAC? Of the One Man Army Corps? As created by the great Jack Kirby back in '75?

That, I decided, was the character I wanted to feature along with Superman, in the 10-page comic which would mark my artistic debut with DC West. Smartly, editor Alex was from the

"let the talent do their thing and get outta their way" school. And soon I was off to do just that.

But hey, I'm an artist not a writer. Who was gonna write this thing?

No sooner than did the question launch itself into the comic book ether than did the answer return with a resounding boom. The writer, it was decided, would be actual one-time Adventures of Supermanwriter/artist himself–Jerry Ordway. And what kind of writing job would Jerry end up doing?

Here's your answer; Jerry submitted his script and we all loved it. And after a hour or two of of finely tuned script discussion over the phone one afternoon, he and I were able to up the dramatics even further on the cool-meter.

No sooner was our script fully refined and on track, when out came my collection of the great Kirby OMAC comics. With my memory still fully intact with the groundbreaking concepts common to all Kirby comics, I needed little brushing up on OMAC history as I proceeded to get up to speed and draw the 10 pages with Superman and OMAC in record time.

And let's not forgot about the lettering. I had to complete that job before breaking out my pens and finest sable brushes for the critical job of inking over my pencil work. With that finished, the pages were then submitted to both editor Alex and writer Jerry, where the final highly-skilled part of comic book production would come into being-the coloring.

Fortunately, I've already been working with the best colorist in the biz-he's been coloring my work on Nexus and the Moth for years now. And that name would be–Glenn Whitmore.

Glenn it turns out, was another actual alumni of The Adventures of Superman, the very series that I'd just mentioned that Jerry Ordway himself was drawing and writing back in the early 80's. Yo–the chance that these two creative talents would finally reunite after all these years–is that amazing or what?

And so the momentous wheel of creativity that is COMICS would grind and turn, until the project was ground smooth enough to be scheduled for public release. Now, it would be turned over to the fans themselves, where their buying power prerogative would eventually point their thumbs in the north or south direction.

Superman Rough Take 2 Finally, I should mention that though DC's budget didn't permit the rates normally required by the Dude to paint this issues cover-I painted it anyway. Such sacrifices does one make in the name of proper presentation.

So-release date ————- APRIL 1, 2014.

Be there-or be left behind in the kryptonian dust!

Till then I remain, humbly yours,

Steve Rude the Dude

If you would like to see more prelims, roughs, and thumnails, support our Kickstarter! If we reach our stretch goal we are including an exclusive section including those!