I drew a comic book cover today.

In honour of Todd McFarlane hitting the 300 issue milestone with his comic book Spawn, I decided to make the first sketch cover for Lady Phantom issue 3 an homage to his iconic Spider-Man 300 cover. It is perhaps the most homaged, parodied and copied comic book cover in the history of comics, and for good reason!

Here’s the result : a one-of-a-kind hand-drawn comic book cover.

McFarlane’s Spawn blew me away when I was young, long before I ever seriously dreamed about making comic books, and here I am 300 issues of Spawn down the road, getting ready for my second year as an exhibitor at the Stockholm Comic Con, with the third issue of a comic book I co-created fresh from the printer (well, technically the fourth issue).

It feels surreal, and drawing this homage reminded me of all the comic book magic from when I grew up.

There is something humbling and empowering about following in the footsteps of your idols, and the journey I’ve had during the three years since I thought ‘hey, how hard can it be to make a comic book’ (hint: a lot harder than it seems) has been nothing short of amazing.

McFarlane has made a huge imprint on the comic book industry, through his art as well as his stories of course, but perhaps mostly as the co-founder of Image Comics: a handful of creators who took on Marvel and DC and not only persevered, but raised the quality of comics and changed the industry forever.

And here I am, on the verge of putting pen to paper in the creation of not only my own comic book character or comic book mini-series, but my very own comic book universe with a whole pantheon of characters and ideas for at least thirty issues worth of stories – an insane undertaking, to say the least, and something only a handful of comic book creators have succeeded in bringing home, but hey…

…how hard can it be to create a comic book universe?