In my career with DC and Vertigo I've only done three covers, which were issues 7, 8, and 9 of The Freedom Fighters. Maybe I would've done more, but, alas, the series was cancelled and my career as a cover artist with it. However, I at least got to have a little taste of what goes into the making of a comic book cover.
First, I got the description of what the issue is going to be about. Keep in mind, this is well before I'm working on the issue, or the issue has even been written. At this point I'm still working on the pencils for issue 5.
"In a secret S.H.A.D.E. facility the scientists don't know what to make of the artifacts, how they work together or what they do. The Freedom Fighters are there when Human Bomb says he has an idea. Given access to the artifacts he manages to assemble it - drawing the lantern dust into the gauntlet and holding Sherman's Wrath he turns its power on the Freedom Fighters kicking the shit out of them. In the end he removes his helmet and we see it isn't Human Bomb, but Jester instead. He demands to face Uncle Sam, who still hasn't been reborn. Frustrated, Jester threatens to drop the Human Bomb on Washington if Uncle Sam doesn't face him. The crippled and wheelchair bound Firebrand arrives with a gun in hand to take down the Jester."
Okay, now if you've read the issue, then you know that this isn't at all what winds up happening in issue 7, so my cover designs wind up not actually making much sense. I guess there must have been some behind-the-scenes reworking of the plot. But, oh well, here's what I came up with for my concepts:
They liked them all, but wound up picking the third one. So I did my pencils:
Once those were approved, they went off to Trevor Scott to be inked, but I don't have that image to show you, so I'll just skip to the final product here:
So there you go! That was the making of the cover for issue 7 of The Freedom Fighters. If you guys like this, I'll try to do more behind-the-scenes of the development process for pages, characters, etc. Let me know!
