Recently I've been getting back into comic books in a big way, remembering my roots in The Flash and X-Men which were some of my favorite heroes growing up. My father had a considerable collection of comics he bought for a dime a book growing up in the 60s. He mostly liked DC, so I grew up with Batman, Flash, and Superman, but also a decent number of Spider-Man from Marvel as well.
Getting back into comics, a friend recommended Impulse to me, which excited me because he's an interesting character, and he's related to my favorite line of comics: The Flash. Excitedly I went to the local comic book store and bought myself Mercury Falling, one of the collections of Impulse's 90s run. This book collected some of the comics from the 60s issue range.
Overall it was an excellent miniseries, and I also loved the incredible art. It had some of the most dynamic inking, with impressive blacks, very purposeful laying down of spots of complete black, and lots of detail. The artists (Ethan Van Sciver, Eric Battle), also added in some nice exaggeration. Since Impulse is a kid his head and feet are very large, while his body is relatively small. Along with the animated posing, and dynamic composition, this made for a very enjoyable visual experience.
Reading Mercury Falling, I was very inspired. I wanted to try my hand at both the interesting character design of Impulse, and also the unique inking style. So here I've included the penciling and inking of a pretty tame pose of Impulse standing up so I could try something simple for a first attempt. It was also a great example of the inking style and of the character's proportions. It's not a perfect first attempt (some things are a little off), but it is a first attempt, and I'm happy with how it turned out. It was also very fun to draw.
