Mary Bellamy Sketch Card Commission

Mary Bellamy is one of the artists that posts occasionally on the Blowout Cards forums. She has worked on many sketch card sets, self-published several comic books, and also has done work for publisher-owned comic book properties. Her most high-profile work is probably the covers she has done for the My Little Pony comic books.

  

A few months ago she posted a thread offering discounted sketches to help cover some unexpected car repairs she was getting done. I jumped at the chance to get a My Little Pony sketch card from her, featuring a situation from an episode of the Friendship is Magic animated series. In the episode, the character Fluttershy steals the Princess' sick bird, Philomena, in an attempt to restore it to health. After Fluttershy has tried many remedies the bird escapes and leads Fluttershy on a chase, which ends with the bird combusting and falling into a pile of ashes just as the Princess shows up. Fluttershy offers many apologies, and in the midst of the apology the bird comes back from the dead as a beautiful Phoenix. It's a pretty funny episode, and I asked Mary if she could draw Fluttershy and Philomena for me. It wasn't too long before I had this Personal Sketch Card in my mailbox:

I also selected three more cards from her sketch binder, featuring some of my favorite comic book characters. Before sending the cards off to me, Mary took some time and added extra details to the background of each card. I thought that was a nice addition.

The first sketch shows Cloak and Dagger, two relatively minor Spider-Man characters who became fan favorites and still pop up in books from time to time. For a while they even had their own series. 

In the middle is She-Hulk, Bruce Banner's cousin who received her powers after he gave her an emergency blood transfusion.

Last is Power Girl who, like most DC characters, has a complicated and ever-changing back story. She is Superman's cousin from an alternate universe, or basically another universe's Supergirl. She gets bounced back and forth between the different universes. I think that currently she is back on her original adopted home planet, Earth-2.