#176: Cover-ed for Nola

Phases Of The Moon Knight & Venom Omnibus out, and more

Jul 08, 2025

Welcome to DECLARATIONS a bi-weekly newsletter by artist/writer Declan Shalvey.

This is a regular workblog featuring exclusive peeks at upcoming projects with advance releases of original art/merchandise.

ALL THE LATEST

Hello all, I was looking at the last Declarations and realised I just blasted right into my worklog. How rude! last week was a lot of Zoom calls, with one artist about a creator owned project, another artist regarding a different creator owned project, and a massive call about future THUNDERCATS plans. Also; some actual work got done. Let’s recap. Worklog:

Two different artist calls about future creator owned plans
Big THUNDERCATS creative call
Coloured PROJECT METAL #1 cover
Notes on PROJECT METAL #2 outline
Coloured Ghost Machine cover
Wrote THUNDERCATS #19
Lettering notes on TERMINATOR #9
Pencilled/inked Marvel cover
Three completed A4 commissions
Roughs for THUNDERCATS #22, PROJECT METAL #2 & indie cover.
Roughs for TMNT cover
Inked PROJECT WESLEY [8 pages]
Inked Coloured Dynamite crossover cover

-My MYSTIQUE series collection is out next week. I’m really proud of it. Hope ye all pick it up. I have no idea how it actually sold, so if you’d like to see me do ore stuff like this at Marvel, buy buy buy!

-Currently trying to wrap a chunk of stuff up [lots of spinning plates, as usual] before I head to GalaxyCon New Orleans. After having to cancel the Croatia show, I’m itching to do a show again and I’ve always wanted to see New Orleans, so I can’t wait.

-I’m wrapping up inks on PROJECT WESLEY today, finally. Will colour when I get back from New Orleans. Here’s the inks for the first page.

-I’ve taken on a new miniseries to write. Can’t say much about it, but it will be an exciting new challenge for me. I’m very excited about it, will be some more moving parts to deal with but I’m just working out a rough outline that the editor and other creative will need to look over. Can’t really say much about it but I’ll be digging into it from now on. Going to call this PROJECT ARMOUR

-DC Comics released my variant cover for Dan Slott and Raphael Albuquerque’s SUPERMAN UNLIMITED #5. So delighted to get a change to draw Supes again.

-No word back on PROJECT LAZARUS yet, but it’s okay, I’m plenty busy in the meantime.

-I had a plan to get ahead on scripts next month but I got offered a glut of covers, and I like money [and drawing!] so I took them. A Bad Idea cover, a Marvel one, a Dynamite cover and the beforementioned TMNT cover for IDW.

-Boom Studios/IDW Publishing released my cover for Ryan Parrot and Vincenzo Viska Federici’s MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS/ TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III #1. Never drawn the Rangers before, I mean I mainly took it for the Turtles to be honest, but still, got a kick out of drawing the Power Rangers.

As it happens, I was offered a new variant for the main TMNT series [yay!]. Have the roughs done, will be starting on the actual piece soon.

-PROJECT WESLEY is all inked! Well, nearly. Wrapping it up today I’ll be looking to get it coloured once I get back next week.

-I got this bad boy in the post last week, a comp copy for the PHASES OF THE MOON KNIGHT TPB. Seems it came out last month. Again, sometimes I don’t catch the odd release, but do track this down immediately! It has a story written by myself with art by Eder Messias where we introduce a future Moon Knight [that I designed]. I was hoping this could have launched into something else as I loved Eder’s work and would have liked to have taken the story forward with him in a kind of ‘street-level/cosmic’ book. Alas, t’wasn’t to be.

Here’s a look at Eder’s work in black and white, that I think looks tremendous even without colour.

PHASES OF THE MOON KNIGHT inks by Eder Messias

The collection also contains stories by current MOON KNIGHT maestro Jed McKay, as well as Benjamin Percy, Erica Schultz, Rod Reis, Jorge Fornés, Bian Level and many more.

-Another comp arrived the following week, a copy of the AGENT VENOM Omnibus. It contains all my issues with Rick Remender[his final issue on the book] and Cullen Bunn. Has great work by many others, including Tom Fowler, Tony Moore and my good pal Robbie Thompson.

It was really exciting to work on VENOM back then, it was a pretty hot book with the Agent Venom run. It felt like a step up career wise after by first run on a Marel book with THUNDERBOLTS. To do an issue with Rick was a big deal for me, I was loving his work at Marvel at the time so was really jazzed to get to work with him a little. I got to work on an actual crossover with Minimum Carnage and was able to estalish myself as a cover artist on my own book.

Here’s an overview of the Omnibus by Near Mint Condition

-GalaxyCon New Orleans is this weekend! I’ll be at my table over the weekend, and on a panel on Sunday, here’s the details…

SUNDAY, JULY 13
4:30 PM - VIGILANTES: HARD-EDGED SUPERHEROES AND THE CREATORS WHO LOVE THEM W/
CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, DECLAN SHALVEY, CHRISTOPHER SPROUSE, & TINI HOWARD
Dive into the world of hard-edged superheroes, exploring the darker side of crime-fighting and the
creators who bring these complex, gritty characters to life!
PANEL ROOM 1 (240)

-Here’s a deskshot for a cover I’m colouring. It’s 95% done, just some finishing touches to do this evening.

Thanks for reading Declarations! This post is public so feel free to share it.

ART DECO

Been trying to wrap up my latest commission list before my trip. Here’s a CROSSBONES, was great fun to draw him again after my years on THUNDERBOLTS and also the CROSSBONES one-shot I drew back in 2011

I also got a couple of TMNT requests, one being the shot of Leo from the move, and another of Raph in his trenchcoat disquise.

If you like, you can checkout the livestreams of me drawing them here.

A new ART DECO ‘project’ is in the works. Something to have in time for NYCC, a publication I really should have done a long time ago but have finally gotten together. Anyway, more on this when I’m ready to talk about it.

THUNDERCATS

As I was saying above, had a big ThunderVerse call with line editor Nate Cosby and Ed Brisson [APEX, SILVERHAWKS, THUNDERCATS LOST]. We had laid out some plans to come that needed some proper groundwork and dug a lot into them oer the course of this call. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but this stage of the process is really fun, where you and your friends are playing with yours and each others toys.

Let us celebrate with an advance look at my cover for THUNDERCATS #21 for an arc I’m calling Return Of The King. Lion-O’s back and he’s …not happy.

There’s actually SO much THUNDERCATS stuff to talk about …that I can’t talk about. Safe to say, I will be getting my head down and trying to concentrate on scripts out of necessity.

TERMINATOR

Issue Nine is all wrapped up by Joe Mulvey with Colin Craker colour. I just handed in the lettering edits, and I’m really happy with it. This issue is a moody but all-out action issue that was great fun to write, and Joe and Colin really knocked it out of the park. Here’s another page as a little peek…

Issue Ten by Luke Sparrow and Colin Craker is also wrapped, ending the series the way I had always planned. Credit to Colin again, doing such great work on two very different artists yet keeping a consistent aesthetic for the book as a whole.