This commission by penciler Dheeraj Verma and inker Jason Moore-- picked up at Motor City Comic Con last month -- had a huge, very unforeseen delay. It was originally supposed to be finished by the end of 2018, to be a Superman 80th anniversary piece. Unfortunately, the postal service decided to fold the original pencil piece into thirds, even though Verma had explicitly written on the package NOT to fold or bend it, so he had to redraw the entire thing from scratch and use a different postal company to send it out.
By the time the new pencils arrived, it was already early 2019, so the 80th anniversary was missed completely. Moore was already on tap to ink it, so at February's Great Lakes Comic Con, I handed it off to him to ink, and what you see above is the final result. I think it goes without saying Verma and Moore made a very good team, and hopefully I can arrange for Moore to ink one of Verma's He-Man pinups for me later on.
By the by, here's the original, damaged pencil piece. I flattened it out as best I could, but those creases are painfully obvious in the scan I was able to make. Moore, Bob Wiacek, and Al Milgrom all think it can still be inked over the pencils without too much trouble, so I might look into it down the road.
As for Verma, I have a Batman pencil commission in the works from him as a companion piece to the Superman art. I'll be eager to see how that one turns out.
Dheeraj Verma and Jason Moore do Superman
