El Dave Photography

Peter David, if you're reading this, please write Captain Marvel again. Bring Genis back from whatever happened to him in Thunderbolts. Grab Chris Cross and dust Genis off again. Phyla has come into her own as Quasar and the "real" Captain Marvel- well, I won't spoil it for anyone. Please, PAD?

If you are somehow unaware of Genis-Vell, here's a brief summary, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Genis-Vell first appeared in Silver Surfer Annual #6 (1993) using the codename of "Legacy". He appears in the various Marvel titles in 1994 and 1995, primarily Silver Surfer and the Cosmic Powers miniseries. A six month guest appearance in the former culminated with the launch of his own series.

Legacy was featured in Captain Marvel by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Ed Benes with an initial publication date of December 1995. The series was abruptly cancelled after only six issues; the unpublished issues #7-12 were later summarised by Nicieza in a fill-in issue (#14) of the next Captain Marvel series in 2000.

Legacy appeared in Avengers Unplugged #5 (June 1996) wherein he meets Monica Rambeau, who at that time was the bearer of the "Captain Marvel" title. Monica cedes the title to Genis and adopts the codename "Photon" instead. After a single appearance in Silver Surfer later that year Genis-Vell wouldn't appear for another two years, when he was included in a new Warlock title for four issues. An appearance in the Avengers Forever 12 issue miniseries led to a new partner with his father's former companion, Rick Jones, and the second Captain Marvel series featuring Genis-Vell starting in the fall of 1999. The numbering would last for 35 issues, until October 2002.

In 2002 Marvel launched the U-Decide campaign in an attempt to bolster sales on several comics. Although critically popular, sales for Captain Marvel were flagging. U-Decide was initiated as a contest between Captain Marvel, Marville (written by Bill Jemas) and Ultimate Adventures (written by Ron Zimmerman), in which the comic that sold the most copies would remain while the others would be discontinued. In order to compete against the other two series, Captain Marvel was renumbered to issue number one, and Peter David, its head writer, took the book in a new direction. The Captain Marvel series won by a decidedly strong margin, and Marville and Ultimate Adventures ended after seven and six issues, respectively.

Eventually the Captain Marvel ongoing series was cancelled with issue #25 in 2004 due to low sales. Peter David was given the chance to wrap up the plot in a single over-sized issue. He brought back the pastiche of the Endless, and joked that Rick Jones could sense the impending end of the series via his "comics" awareness. Genis-Vell appeared sporatically until the character was killed off in Thunderbolts #100 (May 2006).

For today's shot, I wanted to do something nice and easy to get back into the swing of things. I'm no longer working 3rd shift, so my sleep schedule will (hopefully) return to normal any day now and I'll be able to get some more regular photo time. I went with Genis today for two reasons.
1) He's a great character, despite his original pony(rat?) tail.
2) Bowen crafted a beautiful bust that is a real pleasure to photograph

I've shot Genis before, fairly early on in my photography education.


I wanted to try something a little bigger and bolder than just, "Here's Genis, looking all tough". In a moment of inspiration, I had the idea of Overlaying a field of stars on top of Genis to match his cosmic awareness. Or, in this case, Overlaying the Great Orion Nebula. Flickr member Jimkster was gracious enough to provide the image through a Creative Commons license and it worked perfectly for what I was going for.

Cleanup in Photoshop was next to nothing. It was quite simply Open photo of Genis, Copy the Great Orion Nebula and Paste onto Genis (as a new layer, natch), then set the Nebula Layer to Overlay. I did a little more fiddling with the colors, tried some blurs, sharpens. But in the end, I decided to keep it simple and just go with the stars and Genis.

You always hurt the ones you EXIF. And Dad, I EXIF you a lot.

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	0.4 sec (2/5)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	50 mm
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	0/3 EV
Flash:	Flash did not fire

Orientation:	Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution:	72 dpi
Y-Resolution:	72 dpi
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows
Date and Time:	2008:05:09 22:25:56
YCbCr Positioning:	Co-Sited
Exposure Program:	Manual
Date and Time (Original):	2008:05:09 21:27:37
Date and Time (Digitized):	2008:05:09 21:27:37
Shutter Speed:	86634/65536
Metering Mode:	Pattern
Color Space:	sRGB
Focal Plane X-Resolution:	3210.946 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution:	3230.241 dpi
Exposure Mode:	Manual
White Balance:	Manual
Compression:	JPEG
Image Width:	1880 pixels
Image Height:	2816 pixels

Be good,
-Dave

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