Thing sketch cards, part 1

It's been a while since I've updated the ol' Thing sketchbook on the blog, and that's because it's been a while since I've gotten any new sketches.  But convention season is just around the corner and I'm sure to grab a few new sketches once that takes flight.  In the meantime, there's plenty of the Thing to go around thanks to the sketch cards that I'll start sharing to fill in some of the gaps.

Sketch cards don't hold the same emotional appeal that the sketchbook does, but since they do involve the Thing, I've accumulated a few over the years.  It is a nice way to collect a sketch that I otherwise couldn't; location keeps me from meeting some artists, and no matter how much I'd like, there's never enough time to pass the book around at a show.  And I'm certainly not going to trust it to the postal service on a two-way trip.  So without further ado, here's the first installment of the Thing sketch card series!

This is the first sketch card I bought, a March of Dimes eBay charity auction by none other than the great Fred Hembeck.  Fred was kind enough to put his name and the date on the top of the card so I can keep all of the important information straight.

After I got the Hembeck card, I poked around online and saw that plenty of people were selling sketch cards of the Thing, and the beast was born.  This next card is by Erik Burnham, and it remains one of my favorite cards to date.  It's the jaw, I think, that does it.

One nice thing about sketch cards is that you're much more likely to get color work than in a sketchbook.  This card is by Peter Simeti, who, interestingly enough, I would later come to work with as members of the FUBAR team.  Peter is in charge of distribution for the books, and it took me a little while to put two and two together.

I'm...honestly not sure who drew this card.  And it was never my favorite, but it sat in my eBay watched items list for far too long so I had to buy it (it was cheap at any rate).  I do, looking back at it, enjoy the pen points that must have taken some dedication to produce.

Five is the magic number for these things, so I'll end with this last one.  It's by Denise Vasquez, and at first I thought it was a pretty awesome piece of art.  But it didn't take me long to figure out that the reason I liked it was that it's a fairly blatant copy of a particularly familiar piece by John Byrne.  I don't know why it took me so long to make that connection.  Even so, I still like it.  The colors are all done in markers!

There'll be more, so don't despair, Thing fans.  Because everyone loves the Thing.