This painting has a long history. The original concept was a cover I pitched to Moonstone for the book The Spider: Judgement Knight. My rough and pencil studies were approved, and I did a painting. It was one of my early oil paintings. The painting was not approved. A friend had pointed out that in the original drawing, one of the arms was wonky. I think that was part of the issue. But it had more to do with my learning curve for oils.

Forward many years, and the license for the Spider had traded many hands. Will Murray now had the license and discovered the unpublished cover on this site. He wondered if he could use that cover. I made some tweaks to it, and it became The Spider: Fury in Steel. I told him about this other unused cover. He liked what I had done and wondered if I would be willing to rework it for a new cover. I was excited to give it another shot. Instead of revising what I had, I started from scratch, and it is now to the cover for The Spider: Scourge of the Scorpion.

The Spider copyright Altus Press