John Paul Leon’s The Winter Men Getting an Artist’s Edition, Artists Selling Originals To Benefit His Family

The Winter Men is the magnum opus of the late comic book artist John Paul Leon, and to benefit his family, IDW and a number of superstar comic book artists are collaborating on a The Winter Men Artist’s Edition. The book, which is being crowdfunded via Zoop, takes the original art that Leon elected to keep after the book’s publication, and reprints the series (along with previously-unseen production and promotional art) at 12″x17″ in a beautiful hardcover collection. The good folks behind the crowdfunding campaign have provided ComicBook with a first look at some of the pin-ups, the original art for which will be made available for sale to benefit Leon’s family.

Simonson is auctioning his original art featuring The Rocketmen, with bidding
currently at $2,000. Phillips’ The Winter Men original art is currently at $1,200 and climbing; Fegredo’s art has climbed to $1,400 as of today.

You can check some of the pinups out below.

And below, you can see Lee Weeks’s pinup for the project, which we are debuting here at ComicBook:

Here’s how the project is described on the Zoop crowdfunding page:

The Winter Men is the project John Paul Leon was most proud of. Its artwork has never been sold or left his Miami studio, except to be scanned for this book. Now, as a tribute to the renowned artist, JP’s closest friends have united to publish an Artist’s Edition of this modern comics masterpiece, with all proceeds proudly going to JP’s wife and daughter.

Please pledge your support and join JP’s studio-mates and Project Organizers Tommy Lee Edwards & Bernard Chang, Book Editor & Project Initiator Scott Dunbier, and artists Bill Sienkiewicz, Lee Weeks, Duncan Fegredo, Sean Phillips, Kim Jung Gi, Denys Cowan, Peach Momoko, Walter Simonson and Joe Quesada (who are all contributing brand new pin-ups) in celebration of an astonishing and inspiring body of work. John Paul Leon’s THE WINTER MEN Artist’s Edition features 192 pages of full-size 12 x 17 scans of all of the original comic art pages, along with never-before-seen concepts, layouts, sketches, unused art and pin-ups.