Some time ago, I’d posted the pencils to this illustration featuring the old MLJ comic book private eye, SAM HILL, and his secretary, MOXY. You can see that stage here:
http://fernandoruizeverybody.com/sam-hill/
Here is the final piece after my ever-talented ultra-reliable colorist Anwar Hanano got done with it.
As I mentioned when I posted the pencil stage, this piece was done as a reward for Gisele Lagace’s Pixe Trix Comix Kickstarter Campaign. You can visit Pixie Trix and check out their incredible library of the best webcomics out there here:
The original along with a color print are on their way to the very patient commissioner who lives in France.
I mentioned this before but Sam Hill was an Archie Comics character going back to their days as MLJ. The character was your typical private eye in the tradition of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, a genre that was of course popular back in the 40’s. A few years ago, I was able to use Sam in a two-part story in Archie & Friends entitled “A NIGHT IN THE COMIC SHOP” which made use of a lot of long-dormant MLJ characters. Later I also got to draw Sam in a couple of issues of Life With Archie.
A few years ago, Archie actually commissioned a new original Sam Hill mini-series… which I believe was written by Tom DeFalco, but I could be misremembering that. Archie Comics’ notorious fickleness afflicted the project and it went from being a mini-series to a graphic novel and then finally to languishing in a drawer for years! Literally for years! I have no idea why the just sat on it. The pages were done and paid for and left to rot in a drawer. Earlier this year, this series FINALLY saw light when Archie released it as a digital comic. If they have any plans to do a print version, I don’t know about it. I’d guess it would depend heavily on how the digital version did. I wouldn’t expect to see it in print anytime soon.
Poor Sam.
He deserved better.
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