Thanks to the number of pre-orders on my gold foil Harley x Ivy Pride 2023 variant cover, DC reached out to me about doing a 2nd version in a different colorway, and I decided to go full on bi-lighting with a nighttime version! Both covers will be available at your LCS this June.

Remember how I said I’d be staggering posts out this month? Welp, what a total fail on my part. It’s been a super busy March and somehow it’s already about to be spring and I’m still trying to find time to take down some last remaining xmas decorations, so that’s where I’ve been mentally. 🫠

I have been working on a ton of projects that can’t be shared just yet, but I have been going through my backlog and posted a bunch of art that I never officially shared here (or in some cases, anywhere, lol.) I even snuck in a little spicy Tifa sketch for club members 👀🔥 so if you have a minute, please check out the archive on jenbartel.club for all the new posts!

I hope you all had a good March, and that you’re hanging in there. I’ve been trying to limit my time on social media (read: twitter) lately because the platform just continues to get worse and worse, and on top of that there’s just been an overall sense of anxiety and doom regarding the role AI will play in creative jobs moving forward. I did write a post about my thoughts on this a while back, but with how quickly the technology is evolving I’m considering following up on it.

As a person who graduated from college during the height of the Great Recession, I can tell you a thing or two about persevering in the face of (seemingly) insurmountable odds in the job market, but it’s definitely going to be tough for a lot of different types of workers in the coming years, including artists. I’ve seen some really disheartening posts from fellow creatives about how all of this has been affecting their mental health, and I just want to express solidarity without also descending into total doomerism. We desperately need worker protections and at least some level of regulation around data protection and privacy ASAP.

How are you guys feeling about AI and the challenges ahead on the horizon for creatives and workers in general? Do you think it will be impacting your line of work? I think it would be good for folks to chat about this stuff, just… not on twitter.

On a more positive note, I’ve got some really fun covers coming up, and the people have spoken re: my next set for JB After Dark 🌙 (lol) so keep an eye out for that on the horizon..!

Finally, here’s a snippet of a super secret thing for you guys! Thanks for sticking with me. 🙏✨

DC reached out to me for a 3rd consecutive year to do a Harley x Ivy variant cover for their annual PRIDE event, and this time around we decided on a tarot theme! The actual cover will have spot foil on all the gold areas. 🤩

Here are my DC PRIDE covers from 2021 and 2022..! Very thankful to get to join for a third year. 🌈💖

Nightwing street style variant concepts! As you can see I hadn’t figured out the cover dress yet—normally that part is handled in-house but I wanted to incorporate some graphic elements in addition to the corner boxes on these so I decided to do it myself. 🤓

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This one actually never went into production, but it was originally created for an exclusive collectible pint glass. I would have loved to see how it turned out had it actually been made, but looking back through my work from 2020 and beyond, the pandemic just made things way too unpredictable. Ah well. I figured I’d at least share it, especially given the news about Mondo.

I for one will not be working with Funko’s version of Mondo moving forward, regardless of whether the poster division survives or not—and any projects that were in the pipeline have been killed. It’s unfortunate, but the thing that made the Mondo special were the very people that Funko laid off, and I have no desire to contribute to the company now that they’re not there.