Happy Friday, DC Nation! Elisabeth Gehrlein here, DCU editor of…well, a really nice range of titles. One of the things I love about my current slate of books is how varied they are – I’ve got everything on my plate from JONAH HEX to TINY TITANS, with ADVENTURE COMICS and DOOM PATROL and WONDER WOMAN in between. So every day is a genre-bending journey where one minute I could be thinking “Where did those penguins get rocket packs in the first place?” and then suddenly a colorist calls with this disturbing question: “What color should I make the fragments of his shattered legs?”

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I’d like to show you some of the fantastic stuff that has crossed my desk recently.

Let’s start with WONDER WOMAN, where Aaron Lopresti’s beautiful covers are a joy to get in my inbox every month. Here’s a sneak peek at the cover for #39, first in sketch form and then with full tonal work:

Oh, and I just got an email from Tony DeZuniga, co-creator of JONAH HEX, who is hard at work on the art for the Hex hardcover graphic novel, due in-store next spring. Tony and writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have teamed up before on Hex, and here’s what the results looked like:

I thought you might like to see some of Tony’s work-in-progress, though. Here are three pages of his roughs from the hardcover, also written by Jimmy and Justin, that tell an awesome little story all their own. That story is “Don’t mess with this man while he’s drinking.”

Moving on to ADVENTURE COMICS, where Francis Manapul and Brian Buccelato are turning out some gorgeous variant covers. Here are Francis’s inks for the #2 variant:

And then Brian takes Francis’s lovely ink washes to a whole new level with his color. Here it is with color and all:

Sticking with variant covers for a minute – you’ve seen the Matthew Clark/Kevin Maguire jam variant covers for DOOM PATROL issues #1 and 2 in previous posts. I love these covers very much, so I wanted to show you the final one for issue #3, starring Negative Man and a Metal Men obstacle course. We’ll start with Keith Giffen’s layout, and then there’s Kevin Maguire’s inks, Matthew Clark’s pencils over Kevin’s inks, Matthew’s and Kevin’s inks together at last, and finally the color by Guy Major.

Oh, and speaking of DOOM PATROL, remember that thing about the shattered legs? Yeah. When BLACKEST NIGHT comes to Oolong Island, things do not go well for the Chief. These wonderfully creepy cover pencils for issue #5 by Justiniano tell the tale:

Writer Keith Giffen’s comment? “Well, he won’t be getting far on foot.”

Yeesh.

But let’s end on a lighter note, shall we? TINY TITANS! This month in issue #20, Art Baltazar and Franco answer the age-old question, “After you win the Eisner for Best Publication for Kids (AW YEAH EISNER!), where oh where do you put the award for safe-keeping?” Well, where could be safer than Wayne Manor?

OK, I think I’ve spilled enough beans for one day. More to come next time – stay tuned!

It couldn’t happen to a nicer pair of guys, really.

Last night, at the 2009 Eisner Awards ceremony, Art Balthazar and Franco, the creative team behind the critically acclaimed TINY TITANS book won the Eisner for Best Publication for Kids, for their funny, off the wall and lovable work on the series.

Congrats to Art and Franco, and everyone else involved in the creation of the book. Take a bow, folks.

Swing by The Beat for the full list of winners.

Let’s start off Monday with a laugh, eh?

This is one of those instances where you let the pictures do the talking.

No words.