Cloak & Dagger Sketch Card by Ryan van der Draaij

Cloak and Dagger are some of my favorite under-the-radar comic book characters. They first showed up in comics in 1982 as minor characters in a Spider-Man book, but were popular enough to get their own run of titles (sharing a title with Dr. Strange for part of their run) that lasted for a total of 49 issues. I've got all of those comics in my collection, but it's been a while since I read them. In the years since their stand-alone series was cancelled, they have popped up from time to time, but never for more than a few issues. Apparently they are slated to get their own TV show in the near future, but I don't know anything about it beyond the announcement of the series. I am even worse at keeping up with shows and movies than I am at keeping up on reading my monthly comic subscriptions.

I picked up this sketch card featuring Cloak & Dagger from eBay. The artist is Ryan van der Draaij, whose work I've had on my watch list for a long time. The sketch was drawn for 2013 Upper Deck Marvel Fleer Retro. I think it's a nicely-done sketch that captures the characters very well. I think this is my 4th sketch card featuring Cloak and/or Dagger, so this is turning into a real PC for me. I'll be keeping an eye out for more, as their light/dark power sets make for some good artwork.

Comic Book Sketch Cards by MRAM

A few months ago I saw these sketch cards on eBay for cheap and I grabbed them up. They are from an artist who calls himself MRAM. The character on the left is DC's Power Girl and the character on the right is Marvel's Dagger, who hails from the Spider-Man universe but has also shown up in the X-Men universe, hence the 'X' logo on her uniform. DC has changed their universe's continuity so much that I am not 100% where Power Girl fits in right now, but in my view of the DC universe she is her parallel universe's Supergirl, a cousin to Superman. Through various events she makes her way to the main DC universe where she carves out a role there and interacts with Superman and Supergirl. Dagger is a product of the 80's, and is usually paired with a character named Cloak. They were kidnapped and injected with drugs that activated their latent powers. Cloak possesses dark powers and experiences a hunger that can only be fed by absorbing energy from other people or the Light Daggers that Dagger produces as part of her power set.

You can see from the similarities between the two sketches that he's got a formula for drawing these so he can basically draw the same stock body, change the clothing, hair, and a couple of facial features, and have a sketch card to sell. He seems to be quite capable of doing other things, but he's always got a few of these sketch card auctions going and seems to sell all of them for between $6 and $25 each. I guess if you can find a niche like that and make some extra cash every day it is a good way to pay for your art supplies and receive a fairly reliable baseline income stream, freeing you up to pursue your other artistic impulses without necessarily having to make money from them. At least that's the way I see it. I didn't interview him or anything to get his reasoning or his business model.

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.