Here's something very rare that was only just recently shared publicly.
TMNT art collector "Metropoliskid41" acquired these pages from artist Gordon Purcell and was kind enough to post them on The Technodrome Forums and give me permission to repost them here.
These are pages 9 and 10 of Image's TMNT Volume 3 #12:
You might be wondering why there are pages of TMNT Vol. 3 #12 drawn by anybody other than Frank Fosco.
As Purcell explained, his work at Topps (on The X-Files) got him noticed by Erik Larsen at Image Comics. Larsen asked him to do a sample submission based on 2-pages of a completed script by Gary Carlson for TMNT #12. Evidently, the idea was that if Fosco ever fell behind on his work and a fill-in artist was needed, Purcell would be up for the job. (And if you're wondering about the DC Comics logo, Purcell reused some paper he had with DC letterhead on them leftover from his work on Star Trek.)
As we all know, Fosco got his pages in on time and drew the entire 23-issue series. As such, there never came a need for a fill-in artist and these pages promptly went into Purcell's files as he moved on to numerous other projects in the comics industry.
For comparison's sake, here are Fosco's pages 9 and 10 from TMNT #12:
Both wound up looking very good. I do kind of wonder if there'd have been enough room on Purcell's pages for all the lettering, though. In the end, you can see the similarities on how both artists interpreted the same script and where they deviated in their visuals. I rather like how Purcell overlaid the panels on page 9 atop the outer space background rather than confining the establishing shot to its own panel as Fosco did.
Anyway, thanks once again go to Metropoliskid41 of The Technodrome Forums for sharing these with us, as we'd have never even known they existed, otherwise.
