Kevin Maguire became an overnight superstar on Justice League of America's first major relaunch, Justice League, later renamed JLI (I for International) in the late 1980's. This issue of Secret Files offered a gallery of past and present incarnations of the League. Getting to ink Maguire's JLI reunion on this 2-page spread was a dream come true, and I had then-editor Tony Bedard(where have I heard that name before?)to thank. Looking at it now, I regret not thickening up some of the rendering and contour lines. Maguire looks best with a heavy-handed inker creating a 'caramelized' look to the art.

     The note from the penciller at the bottom reads: "Drew-texture the heck outta this one!". So I did. The dark grassy areas were slightly indicated in the pencil stage, so I took the ball and ran with it, doing many tiny brush strokes, building into the black. I drybrushed the areas around the rose pedals. I did a criss-cross fade on the tombstone before adding splats on selective areas. Either the editor or penciller requested that I add rain, so I managed to restrain myself and draw a light rain in perspective. Too much rain would've been overkill for an already ornate cover. The flat line in the shape of Nightwing was strictly a color hold placement for a shadow.

     This was the first Marvel book I got to do full interiors on (I'd been a DC and CG inker for years), so a lot of my old Marvel influences show. Volstagg's face was influenced by Terry Austin, Balder's face & chain mail by Joe Rubenstein. Naturally, Hercules and his pal The Recorder had a touch of Bob Layton, although I guess I could've added some shine effects to be more Layton. The bottom half of this spread is all me, so this was a fun marriage of past and present styles filtered through one inker. I hand-drew the stars, then filled in around them, to save time in such small areas.