Greetings Loyal Airmen, this week we want to do another little essay on how some wonderful art is achieved when producing our Airship 27 titles. Recently, as many of you know, we released our 12th Volume of our bestselling series, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. The uniqueness of this particular entry was that our own super talented Art Director did all the art for the book, from beautiful penciled interiors to his wonderful cover. But how did that all come about…and where has it led?  Let’s take it one step at a time.

Rob did up two pencil roughs. We looked at both and chose the one you see above. We liked that it showed both Holmes and Watson in a dramatic fashion.

What we knew before hand was that Rob would naturally model his Sherlock Holmes after the late Jeremy Brett who was his favorite Holmes. No surprises there. What was a nice surprise was how he found “his” Watson.

While surfing the internet, Rob found photos of another British actor named David Robb. This fellow perfectly suited the mental image of Dr. Watson Rob had always had in his mind. And so naturally, Rob used him in his drawings.

Next came his detailed pencils and finally the finished, colored cover. Which then became a huge hit with our readers.

Among these was artist Graham Hill, who had already done a Holmes cover for us last year. Apparently Graham was so taken with Rob’s Watson, he decided to paint that figure himself. Above is the finished piece and we absolutely love it. Thanks so much, Graham. Now the Air Chief needs to find a place where we can print this beautiful piece so that the world at large can enjoy.  And that Loyal Airmen is just how one of our covers came together and then went beyond by inspiring as yet another artist.

The mail was particularly fantastic this week finally delivering Scaldcrow Games’ Ron Fortier’s CAPE NOIRE rpg module. Above, included in the packet was a map of Cape Noire, a soft paperback edition of the game, a Bones button and playing dice.

Above is the Hard Copy of the game which we posed next to the Brother Bones bronze statue done for us by the super talented Kenneth Stock. Anyway, the rpg book is just great, detailing so much from all the Brother Bones novels, anthologies and comics. A tip of the pulp fedora to the Scaldcrow Games crew, T Glenn Bane, Theresa Bane and Drew Meyers. They did a fantastic job.

Finally over the past week, the Air Chief has been working with super talented British writer I.A. Watson to reboot a classic pulp hero from the 1930s who appeared in magazines, books, novels and movies. Once we have the kinks worked out, the Air Chief is hoping to get Ian to write a full length novel. If he agrees, then an official announcement will be forthcoming.  Wish us luck. And there you have it, Loyal Airmen, thanks for dropping by and see you here next week.

Ron – Over & Out.