Because nothing says “robot samurai” like a French name…”
One of the books Neill Brengettsey was hired to draw for Silverwolf Comics was Guillotine. The main character was basically a Samurai version of Robocop (with a french name). In the issue, Lance (from The Eradicators) is hired to hunt down and bring in Guillotine after he escapes from his creators.
There were a cover and 9 pages intended for Guillotine amongst the trove of art shared by Neill for his interview. From that interview:
“Guillotine was going to start off as a skeletal type robot and then he was going to get a more complete robotic body with clothing — with a Samurai type outfit…Guillotine was that old shoe about a man stuck in a robots body…
When I first began drawing the robotic characters I wouldn’t put any emotion on their faces. I thought that was kind of silly, robots with emotional faces. But as I got into it, I began to push that envelope, reality versus the creativity of art as an expression of your view of the world.
We like comic book artists not because their art is a reflection of reality, we have cameras for that (everybody has a camera on their cell phone how special is that?), but we look at it as comic book artists expressing their view of the world. Looking back I think his idea of the robots was not in keeping with his theory on what come book readers want to see…”
Neill noted that these pages were done before the Stech pages, and he had not yet gotten used to drawing in the larger 10×15 scale used for production, but was a very quick learner.
Like before, I am going to post these in high quality, so this page is going to load slowly for some. The pages are posted in order, Cover and page 1, pages 2 and 3 (a Double Page Spread), and so on.
Updated: Just for fun I also did a mock up to get an idea how the cover might have looked like with the title and distinctive band Silverwolf was known for, and have added it below.
As usual at Moby’s, you can click on these Images for much larger versions.
Moby’s
Proudly Presents
Neill Brengettsey’s
Original Artwork for Guillotine
As always, a huge thank you to Neill for sharing these!
For collectors and old fans, these pages are true treasures.
For comparison purposes, here are a few pages from the version published in February 1987 as Guillotine: The Robot Ronin, with art by Paul Martin and Emilio Soltero. These images were taken from the review at Stupid Comics, which has a review of the published issue complete with many of the pages for your amusement.
Still more to come from ‘The Stack’…Neill’s Stech pages coming soon…
Kick ass stuff. As badly written as Kris’ books were, to think that if he just had less emotional and ego problems his company could have lasted years just by recruiting great young artists and keeping them as long as they could.