Crowdfunding John Paul Leon’s 'The Winter Men' Artist's Edition

In an effort to celebrate the life of comics artist John Paul Leon, who died earlier this year, and raise funds for his family, friends and supporters have organized a Zoop crowdfunding campaign to create an artist’s edition of his 2009 graphic novel The Winter Men.

The Zoop campaign to create an artist’s edition of The Winter Men launched on October 20 and has already raised nearly $90,000 (the goal was $35,000) with more than two weeks until the deadline. Written by Brett Lewis with art by Leon, The Winter Men is the story of a Russian policeman who is the product of a secret Russian program to develop superhumans. The series was originally published by Vertigo and released as a trade paperback by Wildstorm in 2009.

An artist edition is an oversized production of the original work that reproduces the pages at the size of the original artwork. The final work will include blue pencil marks, erasures, and other corrections that exist in the original drawings. Leon was a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and an acclaimed comics artist who worked on a variety of series for the Big Two including Marvel's Earth X series, in addition to drawing the original run of Static, a key title in the legendary Milestone/DC Comics universe.

The Winter Men artist edition will be edited by Scott Dunbier and includes additional artwork by Sean Phillips, Bernard Chang, Tommy Lee Edwards, Duncan Fegredo, Sean Phillips, Walter Simonson, Denys Cowan, Kim Jung Gi, Joe Quesada and more. John Paul Leon’s The Winter Men Artist’s Edition features 184 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.