Thursday 2 May 2019

That One Time Jim Cheung Drew Spider-Girl

Recently I've been thinking about well-established artists in the comics industry who's take on the MC2 characters we've yet to see. Then I remembered there are a bunch of artists outside of MC2 mainstays such as the wonderfully talented Ron Frenz, Pat Olliffe, Paul Ryan, Ron Lim or Todd Nauck who've in some way worked on my favourite fictional universe. Every so often I'll try and dedicate a short post to each artist's brief foray into the MC2 Universe.

Jim Cheung

As a fan of Jim Cheung's work on the Young Avengers characters, I've sometimes wondered what his take on the MC2's various teen heroes of Spider-Girl. While I'd long thought I wouldn't get to see Cheung's rendition of my favourite character, it turns out I'd already missed it! Thanks to regular reader arias-98105 for bringing to my attention to the Marvel Chronicle: A Year by Year History reference book by Tom Defalco published by DK (formerly known as Dorling Kindersley) and first released in 2008. Here's the cover:



   
Now, Mayday isn't visibly featured here and as near as I can tell, isn't featured on this editions back cover either. Some future releases of this book use different artwork too, but the copy I found online features a variation on this cover art. Luckily, if you want the full piece Mr Cheung produced for this book, it comes bundled as lithographs both in colour and black and white. Here, at last, we can see Jim Cheung's rendition of Spider-Girl:


It's a truly gorgeous piece of art from Cheung...but can you spot Spider-Girl? She's way off to the left there next to Tigra! Here, I'll crop the picture:



It's not much but I'll take it! Let me know if there's any other instances of Jim Cheung drawing Spider-Girl! I'd love to see more from him as I think his talent for drawing teenaged heroes is a great fit for the MC2.

Until I find more connections and every hidden gem, I remain

frogoat