No, we didn’t forget our star. New Man is in the building and the action is about to begin!

Christopher Torres sent us a couple copies of pencil pages with New Man battling Cyber-Tech, and we hired him on the spot! I’ll get those scanned in soon and let you see them. There is not a lot of difference in the battle you are about to see and those two pages except the local was a warehouse setting and New Man was in full uniform and battle gear. Chris of course like nearly everyone at the time was heavily influenced by Jim Lee and Rob Liefield. This would have been their pre-Image Comics days when they were still doing X-Force and X-Men. Hmmm… didn’t Liefield do New Mutants too?

Dr Jonathan Thunderstorm, A.K.A. Chief Thunder reveals a little more info about the Thunderhawks and the Fortress Foundation on this page. In case you are new here Project: New Man is a partly secret joint venture of the U.S. Government and the Fortress Foundation, a private sector, non-profit, philanthropic organization dedicated to public defense and scientific research. The Fortress Fighters are the security team for the Foundation which is headquatered at the Moriah Building in downtown New Harbour city. Whew! That should bring you up to date!

Christopher Torres did an awesome job and we would have asked him to do a lot more penciling had Legacy Continued. If memory serves me he might have also done some backgrounds on Humants # 3 or 4. Can’t remember which.

The…uh…guy does not look the least bit happy. But Cyber-Tech isn’t gunning for New Man. No, he’s got a beef with the Thunder Hawks. In this chapter we will see a little character development of Jonathan Thunderstorm, Thomas Jeffry McBride, and Percival Patton Parker.

Also please welcome the long awaited debut of penciler Christopher Torres!

This is not what anyone would want to see in their living room after coming home from a nice jog in the park! Just look at this mess!

A cool shot of the Moriah Building. This building was inspired by an actual skyscrapper in Birmingham, Alabama. I almost got arrested getting reference photos for this. Those guys in the Bellsouth Building were pretty ticked off that I got all the way up to the top floor without a security pass! It’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

I always loved the scenes where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had The Thing of the Fantastic Four entertaining some kids on one of his leisure outings in New York, which was what inspired this little exchange.

Off for his morning jog! I like pages like this where we take a break from the action and place the hero in ordinary surroundings.

Running a bit behind so I will save comments for tomorrow.

My artwork at this point was influenced mostly by Jack Kirby and John Byrne . Byrne was always imitating certain aspects of Kirby’s work so the two influences complimented each other. Kirby influenced my layout and dynamic sense in the penciling. I always tried to get the most action packed pencils I could or in the case of quite scenes, such as this one, the most interesting angles in telling the story. Telling the story with pictures was always Jack Kirby’s priority!

In finishing the pencils, I was trying to use Byrne’s inking style along with a good dose of Terry Austin and some Joe Sinnott. I like to keep the art clean with a good balance of contrast and detail.