I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some amazing artists — George Sellas, Norm Breyfogle, Anthony Castrillo, Mitch Ballard, and many more… including one Frank Brunner. Frank is probably best known for his work at Marvel Comics in the 1970s, which included significant runs on Doctor Strange, Man-Thing, and Conan the Barbarian.

I approached Frank with an idea of him doing a cover for my Peregrine series (known as the Rook back in those days when it was still being published by Wild Cat Books) and he seemed genuinely excited to do a pulp-style image for me. He submitted two designs for my consideration:

While I liked both, I felt the one on the left was the stronger image, even if it did mean that our hero’s back would be to the reader. Having selected that one, Frank went off to start work. He did a pretty fast turnaround, sending this one back soon after:

Now that’s beautiful, isn’t it? I remember being stunned when I first received it. I was still very new in my writing career and seeing a legend like Brunner depicting my character? Wow!

We then needed to have colors added before we could say it was all finished. Ver Curtiss stepped in and handled the coloring job. So we ended up with this:

I have so many wonderful images of the Max Davies character but this one always stands out in my mind as a favorite.