Maybe once a year or so, I indulge in a column that’s mostly self-promotion. So here’s your warning that the following is largely a commercial announcement. If you want, you can skip past it to another section that starts “Now this is interesting…”

When George Perez and I were first embarking on Sachs & Violens, we would be attending conventions and eyeing covetously the sort of statues produced by Randy Bowen Designs and thinking, “Wouldn’t it be really cool if there were a J.J. Sachs statue?” (J.J. being our whip-cracking, lip-smacking heroine).

Eventually, with the help of colorist John Stracuzzi, we hooked up with Randy himself and worked out the details. For Randy, producer of such pieces as the Sandman, Death and Doc Savage statues, it would be a pleasant change of pace since there would be no convoluted legal and approval system for him to go through. In this case, every step of the way needed the okay from exactly one guy: George, since he had final say over all artistic matters relating to Sachs and Violens. George worked closely with Randy and his diligent art team because—since this was the first 3-D rendering of any Perez-drawn character—he wanted to make sure it was done right.

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