COMICS:Joe Quesada Guides Us Through the Creation of His New "Fantastic Four" Cover

Joe Quesada wasn't always Marvel's Commander. Back in the day, he was one of the best illustrators in the comic book industry. He spent some good years sketching the likes of Batman, the X-Men, and Spider-Man. But having spent time at both DC and Marvel, he eventually settled at the latter, leading The House of Ideas to new heights throughout the past decade.

Recently, he was given the opportunity to revisit his roots as an illustrator by composing a cover for the 50th anniversary of "Fantastic Four". Here's a candid look Quesada's 'process'.

A big thanks to the fellas at comicalliance.com for compiling this.

Joe Quesada Narration:

So, a couple of months ago, Marvel Exec Editor Tom Brevoort asked me if I'd like to do a promo piece for the 50 Anniversary of the FF. The rules were simple, do any incarnation of the FF that you want from the 50-year history and design the piece for multiple usage. In other words, it could end up being a poster, and ad or a cover.

So my first thought was to do a large wraparound cover piece, but then I started to think about time, so maybe simple might be best. Here's my very first rough. At this point I'mjust blocking out shapes.

Ah yes, a background that harkens to their origins and sense of wonder that the FF brings. Now, what you're looking at, is my final layout before I got to pencil on board. Notice that you can see Ben, and Johnny through Sue. The slight invisibility aspect of Sue is something that I'll work on with the colorist. This layout done in Photoshop was done at actual art board size and 400 dpi resolution using the pencil tool.

So now here is the never before seen final colored piece and remember it's just between us folk here on Twitter. Oh, and the reason I drew all those characters through in the layout was to be able to get Sue's invisibility power done in the color stage.