The Cool Kids Table: Art Attack: Groomsmen gifts by Todd Nauck

I'm back! It was an absolutely incredible weekend experience where I got to see my friends and family, eat great food, smoke cigars, belt out hair metal tunes, party like a rock star--and oh yeah, get married! Megan Morse (not to be confused with Megan Morse) and I are blissfully happy and enjoying our one day off before it's back to the work grind (Honeymoon coming in 2010), but I had to duck away from my lovely bride quickly to write this post, which I've literally been holding back on for weeks.

For my elite team of groomsmen, I was fortunate enough to have Megan's brother, Chris, my buddy since childhood, Matt Corley, my college pal, Jordan Geary, and of course our own Rickey Purdin. They did a fantastic job keeping me cool, running the show (with help from elite ushers Taylor Cunningham, T.J. Dietsch, Dan Hartnett and Alex Verdaguer) and dealing with a limo driver who told them stories about whorehouses in Thailand and openly admitted to driving drunk and destroying private property in the process.

As groomsmen gifts, I wanted to do something special that not everybody could necessarily make happen. I figured given my occupation, it would be neat to contact a comic artist friend and see if they'd be able to mock up some super hero identities and sketches for my boys.

From the start, my amigo Todd Nauck was the perfect and only choice for this gig in my mind and I was just hoping he'd have the time, as he's currently hard at work on Spider-Man: The Clone Saga. Still, besides just being an awesome guy, Todd did an amazing job on a piece for me and Megan a few years back depicting us as Superboy and Wonder Girl as well as a wedding present for my friend Tim with him and his bride as Lex Luthor and Mercy Graves, so I know how great he is at capturing the look of folks, plus he's an incredible costume designer, as clearly evident in his Wildguard series.

I gave Todd a call and he said he'd love to do it but had to think about it, given his workload, which I completely understood.

About a day later, he e-mailed me his concept sketches--the guy is nuts and I love him.

All I gave Todd to go on was a few pics of each guys plus snippets about their occupations and personalities (Chris likes to play poker, Jordan loves Transformers, Matt's a political blogger and Rickey obviously works at DC); from that he was able to create magic.

Enough yakking from me--here are reference shots of each dude, then the penciles and inked versions of their gifts. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did (and as much as the guys did). Thanks again, Todd!

CHRIS