That time Rafael Albuquerque saved our ass

Sometimes, a creator’s already hectic schedules get turned upside down by some reason or another and they’ve got to bow out of extra cover work. That happens! That’s hap

pened to me a few times. The brilliant Mitch Gerads was scheduled to do Love Everlasting #1 Cover H but his crushing deadline on his Joker series prevented him from doing it. But no fear, Gerads fans, we’ll have him for a later issue!

Thankfully, the amazing Rafael Albuquerque was able to come to the rescue and 100% saved our ass on this one. It’s the kind of email I dread to write. Who I am going to corner and guilt into bailing us out? Rafael didn’t seem to hold it (too much) against me, delivered a wonderful piece, very different from other covers we’d gotten so far AND was enough of a sweetheart to even send some process over for our cover series.

We owe you one, buddy.

Rafael Albuquerque’s Love Everlasting #1 COVER H (1:50 copy incentive) is available for pre-order using this Diamond Code: JUN220031

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Step 1

When Elsa asked me for this variant I was completely swamped with work, so I had to do a really simple, yet striking image. So I came up with this initial sketch.

Step 2

Once approved, I felt the best way to approach this was a vintagy and pulpy novel feel, so the idea of pure and basic colors would work really well here.

Step 3

This is a shape cover, so, basically, the less details, the better. I decided to go basically with heavy shadows, almost a silhouette of the lovers kissing.

Step 4

To resemble the pulp covers I was taking as a reference, I decided to go for a handwriting logo, something that could work both as a title but also as a graphic element on the cover. Something that would match perfectly the kind of aesthetic I was looking for.

Final Cover

Here I decided to add some heavy printing textures (very common in those vintage covers) and some crisp textures on the colors, which came out really nice in my opinion. Hope you like it too!

Rafael.