MTG: Morlun, Devourer of Spiders (2023)
Putting it all together
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The original painting for Morlun, Devourer of Spiders is available for purchase.
Morlun was assigned with Aunt May in my first set of assignments for Marvel’s Spider-Man set for Magic: the Gathering. At the time, I did not know whether I would be included in the second wave, so I thought it was cool to get Aunt May and also cool to get a notable enemy within the Spider-verse. Certainly Spider-Man has decades long-running nemeses: the Green Goblin, Rhino, Doctor Octopus, etc.. Morlun is one of the big ones of more recent decades, and I was happy to portray him...but I also had to get up to speed on him as I was less familiar with him than the older ones!
The description here is as it would be if you described it: Morlun stepping out through a dimensional portal onto a city street corner, at night. As I worked on these two cards’ sketches at the same time, it occurred to me that I was already putting a copy of The Daily Bugle in front of what the viewer should presume is Peter Parker’s seat at Aunt May’s table, so why not incorporate these two images? So, I created a mini composition, cropped it sufficiently to not give away the scene but enough that it might be recognizable once you know, and the headline even includes a portion of the name MORLU---.
Perhaps a savvy reporter got the scoop on this guy’s sudden appearance, snapped a photo, and even managed to survive an encounter long enough to ask his name. He got it back to the Bugle in time for Jameson to make it to print. Peter then, is about to sit down for a nice breakfast which is about to be ruined when he gets to reading the morning paper.
I forgot to mention before, but I wasn’t sure what masthead Wizards might use for the Daily Bugle. They subsequently printed some cards having chosen it, which was different than I have it here. Thankfully, they didn’t have me repaint it to match!
A few months later, when I had the opportunity to paint Peter Parker, partially by the nature of the commission request I decided to tie the May/Parker illustrations together explicitly—this wasn’t outlined specifically by the commission. But in deciding to do so, I also decided to put the bottom half of the newspaper in frame sitting before Peter, and minus the text hint, but put more of the illustration itself in.
Two things of note, one of which is embarrassing: first, the newspaper in Peter’s composition runs under the card type bar. This was known as I compose within the frames. So I wasn’t concerned about giving away a spoiler too easy in case these cards were previewed out of order (which they were, Morlun being shown last).
Second, looking at the image above, you can see that I swapped the position of Morlun relative to the street lamp pole in the newspaper shot! I do recall painting in the newspaper freehand, upside-down. I didn’t sketch it and then paint it—I had the shape of the newspaper overall and then just went in with paint and recreated the bottom corner of the Morlun illustration in one go. Funny enough, that light pole has a stronger cast shadow than in Morlun’s actual illustration, as well. Further, I should have included columns of text to the right to make the newspaper wider at the bottom, since when you match up the parts, there’s no room for the word, “Bugle,” in the masthead! It’s an Easter Egg and a blooper, all in one!
A lot of thought for an incidental detail to not see the gag through to the finish line! In any case, imperfect as it was, I enjoyed tying together all three illustrations, with the idea being that the Morlun illustration was essentially the “photo” that got printed on the Bugle in the May/Parker illustrations.
Being a Universes Beyond product, I am unable to show preliminary studies or in-progress shots. So I’m glad I was at least able to use the printed art to tell this little bit of trivia!
