A Fantastic She-Hulk Sketch by Anthony Hochrein

My favorite comic book team of all time is the Fantastic Four from Marvel, with their usual cast consisting of Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and Thing. Marvel hasn't published a Fantastic Four comic book in a while due to legal disputes about Fantastic Four films, but I maintain hope that they will be back someday. Over the long publishing history of the Fantastic Four, the roster has seen occasional shakeups. During the mid-1980's, Thing left the Fantastic Four for a while, and She-Hulk replaced him as the team's muscle for a while. She-Hulk is one of my favorite individual characters in the Marvel Universe, so the combination of my favorite team with a favorite character is awesome for me. A statue of She-Hulk as a member of the Fantastic Four is the largest statue in my relatively small figure collection. I've also got a couple of action figures and other assorted stuff featuring her as a member of the team.

When artist Anthony Hochrein listed this She-Hulk sketch for sale, featuring her in her blue Fantastic Four uniform, I had to snap it up. I've purchased Hochrein's work before in the form of a Power Girl sketch, but it's been a little while. With my focus on my Power Girl and Princess Leia sketch collections, I don't get a lot of opportunities to add to other sketch collections. I'm always happy when I can get something for one of my other favorite characters. This one is a pretty cool sketch card, and She-Hulk looks appropriately powerful here.

Hochrein has a Facebook page and an Etsy store. He also has an eBay page, but doesn't currently have anything listed for sale. He's pretty active on Facebook, though, so if you are interested in his work it isn't to hard to get in touch.

A Few Powerful Additions to My Sketch Card Collection

I really like sketch cards, but there are so many of them out there that I can't possibly keep up with everything I like. I have to narrow my focus by limiting my collection to a few characters. I will make an exception here and there for an artist I really like or a card that I just can't pass up (like the Darth Vader lightsaber card I picked up a little while ago), but I try to keep it to a minimum. For Star Wars I stick with Princess Leia; for Marvel I chase She-Hulk, Thing, Cloak & Dagger, Hulk, and Wolverine; for My Little Pony I chase Fluttershy; and for DC I go with Power Girl. If I am chasing a particular artist I try to seek out a card they've done featuring one of those go-to characters.

In the last couple months I have picked up three Power Girl sketches from various sources for that collection. I had been chasing an Amber Shelton card for a while, but the right deal never really popped up. This card sat in my eBay Watch List for a long time before I finally pulled the trigger on it. It comes from the DC Epic Battles card set put out by Cryptozoic. There were a couple of Shelton's Marvel sketch cards sitting in my Watch List competing for my dollars, but I thought this was the best of the bunch. Maybe I am profiling my audience here, bur she recently finished working on a set featuring sketched pinups of dudes in various states of undress, so if you're not into partially-nude guys you may want to wait a couple of weeks to go check out her page [linked here]. Her DeviantArt page features a mix of all her stuff, and actually has this card on it right in the middle of this image.

This is a Personal Sketch card done by artist Anthony Hochrein. It features Power Girl in a slightly different costume. As I understand it, DC Direct put out a line of statues called Ame-Comi Girls which featured various DC super-heroines in anime-inspired versions of their normal outfits. DC took these designs and made a digital comic featuring the characters and then took the digital comic and published a print version.

Going back to the card, Hochrein sometimes will post in-progress shots of his latest batch of sketch cards on Facebook and offer them up for sale. I saw this card in one of his batches and decided to jump in and buy it while it was still in the pencil stage. I think it turned out pretty well, and it was fun to watch as he posted new photos with the flat colors and then the shading and the background and all the finishing touches. I thought about asking for the Ame-Comi Wonder Woman he was working on at the same time, but in the end I didn't like it as much as I liked this one.

Sanna Umemoto's art is pretty popular if you judge by eBay sales prices, but she seems to be a pretty elusive person online. I can find a lot of other people posting her work, but she doesn't seem to have any up-to-date web galleries that I can find. She does post a few sketches on eBay each month, but I didn't get this Power Girl sketch from her. This came from another eBay seller who appears to be selling off an entire collection of Power Girl sketches. This is a sketch done on her personal sketch card stock and it is dated as a piece from 2009, but he art style has stayed pretty consistent from then until now. I was just happy to be able to add a nice example of her work to my collection for a bargain price, relatively speaking. I've been trying to track down a Sanna U. sketch for a long time, and I was fortunate to get one featuring one of my PC characters. There is another card of hers that I've been watching for months, but the price tag is about double what I can stomach for a sketch card at the moment. I put in an offer on it once, but it got rejected and the seller countered with a number that was still well outside my range. I guess I will keep watching it until it goes off the market or I scratch up the funds to put toward buying it.

I've made some good additions to my sketch card collection lately. There is another Power Girl sketch on the way that was a Facebook commission from another artist I've been trying to add to my collection for a long time, but it hasn't arrived just yet.