"A Documentary by Ken Burns" ("Captain America: Civil War")

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I'll be honest - this should not have worked.
For starters, I wanted to capture the narrative 'letters from the battlefield' tone of Ken Burn's "Civil War" documentary without the use of audio. Second, I had three characters giving tragic recollections in three different locales which meant only so much space on an 8x11 page. Third, those stories included three separate pictures; each showing one the main characters, a side character (or device) and a recognizable location; all of which had to be as visible as possible. Fourth, I needed to draw specific characters and vehicles from the Marvel universe not easy to depict; especially the Chitauri alien race. And finally, I was still getting the artistic kinks out after taking a yearlong sabbatical from illustrating.
I think it's safe to say I nailed it.
There are things I wish I could go back and tweak but they're minor details in an homage which otherwise blew away every expectation I had. Obviously the backgrounds are photographs taken from the internet, but everything else was done by hand. The New York Mets logo, the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier in flames, the 'No Strings on Me' slogan on Crispie's t-shirt... there was no extreme Photoshop trickery at work here aside from pasting the backgrounds in because illustrating set pieces are not my strong suit.
And yes, making each character have one of their arms folded across their upper stomach was a deliberate nod. Hopefully, this made some historians laugh. - Jake

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