Superstar comic book artist Alex Ross has announced a brand-new exclusive variant for World’s Finest Comics #29 that features a classic lithograph that he drew with fellow superstar artist Jim Lee that will be available only for purchase at Comic-Con International at San Diego (and on Alex Ross’ website).

The original lithograph, featuring Batman and Superman, dubbed “Legendary Heroes,” was done years ago, but now Ross will be releasing the piece of art (which, again, to this point had been available only in prints) as a special variant cover for SDCC.

How often have Alex Ross and Jim Lee worked together?

As noted, the cover is based on a lithograph that Ross and Lee did years ago, with Ross painting over Lee’s pencils (and then Ross adding the gorgrous colors)…

These two superstar artists have not worked together all that often over the years, with one of their other most prominent collaborations being for the cover of Countdown to Infinite Crisis, featuring Batman holding the dead body of the murdered superhero, Blue Beetle…

Last year, though, Ross paid tribute to Jim Lee with a series of variant covers homaging Jim Lee’s iconic X-Men #1 covers (only with Ross drawing his figures just a second after Lee’s cover)…

Ross and Lee have long had a nice working relationship as fellow star artists. Ross once noted that Lee’s success as a draftsman is what led Ross to concentrate instead on photo-realistic art, “But I’ve been so focused upon making these things seem real that that becomes my overwhelming desire and ambition as an artist. Because I figure that there’s plenty of other more exaggerated styles of drawing – say draftsmanship like Jim Lee. His way of drawing the human face, figure, shadow – all that stuff is stylistic. You know, there’s plenty of people out there doing that, that I can be this person out there trying to achieve this separate goal.”

How can you buy this special variant cover?

Back when Ross launched JLA: Liberty and Justice in 2003, he noted of his admiration of Lee, “With other popular people, I always want to be supportive of talent, in terms of somebody who I think deserves the interest they’re getting. Or appreciate where the goods lie… like, say, Jim Lee’s very successful run recently. It’s a quality run of work. He’s doing great, great artwork, and he deserves the attention he’s been getting,” and then explained that Lee’s then-recent success on “Hush” for Batman directly inspired him to do his then-new work, JLA: Liberty and Justice, “So I’m going to try and fulfill things I’ve never done before , and some of this comes from inspiration – a lot of this comes from inspiration – from Jim Lee’s recent success, and thinking, “You know what? If he can pull it off there, I got to try and see if I can do the same. Let me see if I can out my money where my mouth is.”

You can order the special World’s Finest Comics #29 cover on Alex Ross’ website on July 16th at 3PM EST. You can join the waitlist now.

The cover alone is $40. A signed copy of the cover is $80, and a special CGC version of the autograph including a Certificate of Authenticity for $250.

The variant cover will also, of course, be available at the convention, and you can come to SDCC Booth #2415 to purchase it.

Source: AlexRossArt