I spent my childhood and my teenage years reading Marvel and DC comics, and occasionally I read them nowadays as well, although not as much as back in the day. Comic books and their adaptations are an endless source of inspiration for me.
Genzo
First off: why did you pick Peacemaker as the subject of your poster series?
Poster series are a fun thing to make, you just have to find a great topic (and of course a lot of free time). Last year I did a Best Picture Oscars series, but now I wanted something different. I’d had this idea for a long time, to make a comic cover style series of artworks for a superhero TV show, with one cover per episode. Peacemaker seemed the perfect subject, because I loved that show and I think its style fits really well with my concept.
Could you walk us through your process? How did you choose the subject of each poster?
First of all, I had to watch all 8 episodes at least twice. I didn’t mind that, it’s such an entertaining show! The first watch was for the story, the second (or even third) for inspiration and for picking representative scenes and moments that would look great as comic covers. Since James Gunn is a master at adapting comic books, there were a lot of these moments in every episode.
I also saw that some great artists did the same concept with Peacemaker, and I tried to be different from those artworks for obvious reasons. I’d like to give a shoutout to Davi Alves, Shbz the Fanatic and one of my favorite artists, the legendary Butcher Billy. They also had their Peacemaker comic cover series, and they truly nailed it!
Your posters, very appropriately, play into the tropes of comic book covers. Are you a comic book fan?
Absolutely! I spent my childhood and my teenage years reading Marvel and DC comics, and occasionally I read them nowadays as well, although not as much as back in the day. Comic books and their adaptations are an endless source of inspiration for me. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy these superhero movies and TV shows. There are a LOT of them these days, but I’m not tired of them yet. This teenage boy inside me is constantly punching the air in excitement, because all my favorite heroes and villains are appearing in theaters and on my TV screen. If you go through my portfolio, you find many posters based on comic adaptations, and there’s many more to come. So yes, we can say that I’m a fan.
Which of the posters is your favorite?
All of them turned out exactly how I imagined them so I’m satisfied with the whole series, but Episodes 2 and 5 are my favorites.
Which poster did you have the hardest time with?
Episode 5, and maybe that’s why it became one of my favorites. The scene I chose was really dark, and I couldn’t figure out all the details on the reference screenshots, for example Adebayo’s hands holding the gun. So I took a photo of my hands holding a stapler, and that’s what I used for that detail in the poster. Just a little behind the scenes trivia, those are my hands holding a gun instead of Danielle Brooks’s.
Are you going to be making posters for Season 2 of Peacemaker once it’s out?
I haven’t thought about it yet, but sure, why not! Not necessarily for every episode, but I think I will create something for the second season too. I can’t wait to see it, James Gunn has never let me down so far with his works, so I’m pretty sure that it will be an amazing season with a lot of surprises, and hopefully inspiring moments for art.
Finally: any other creative plans you’d like to share?
There are always a lot of those. One is a similar comic cover series for every WandaVision episode. I’m also planning to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of my all-time favorite movies, The Godfather. I already have a rough sketch of the poster. To name a few more titles from my WIP folder: Jessica Jones Season 1, Last Night in Soho, Thor: Ragnarok, Army of the Dead, High Plains Drifter, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Don’t know how many of these will be finished, but these are some of my plans for this year.
