‘Copra’ Creator Michel Fiffe Reveals His ‘G.I. Joe’ Sample Pages, Everything I Love Is Coming Together As One

Considering that we've taken every opportunity to tell you all how great Copra is, I'm going to guess that most ComicsAlliance readers are already pretty familiar with the work of Michel Fiffe. Today, though, we all learned something new. It seems that before he launched his self-published tribute to Suicide Squad, Fiffe made one final effort to try breaking into mainstream comics by submitting two pages of tryout art for G.I. Joe to IDW.

That's right, everybody: Michel Fiffe has drawn Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow, Roadblock, the Baroness and Destro, and guess what? It is rad as hell. Check out the pages with his distinctive style in both pencils and inks below!

Here's what Fiffe has to say about the pages:

This was pre-Zegas, pre-self publishing, trying to work the work-for-hire hustle one last time before submitting to the notion that cartooning was gonna have to be a hobby. I set my scope to IDW thus (I’d worked for them before & they seemed to hire from a wide spectrum of ability that accommodated relative newcomers). Since G.I. Joe was the only title they published I was [very loosely] familiar with, I drew a sequence I thought would show my “strengths”. I don’t remember whether IDW rejected or flat out ignored my knocking on their door, but thank god they did either way! Not being able to land a job I knew I could crush was becoming my personal industry standard, but I wasn’t gonna let that dopey job get me down (no offense). Hence, Copra Press.

As much as I would've loved seeing Fiffe take on one of my all-time favorite comics (specifically the 24th Laird of Castle Destro), I think everything worked out pretty okay. Copra ended up being a critically acclaimed hit, and Fiffe is set to tackle the upcoming relaunch of Marvel's Ultimates.

For more (including larger versions of the pages that really allow you to see Destro and his wrist missiles in all their glory), check out Fiffe's Tumblr. Also of note: The pages were available for sale earlier today, but appear to be gone from Fiffe's Etsy page now. Hopefully that means someone bought me an early birthday present.