The Artistic Actuary Comic Cover Gallery

I’d seen a few posts on LinkedIn where people had used ChatGPT to create images of action figures of themselves, bubble wrapped in fancy packaging with extra props like briefcases and laptops and stuff. So I thought I’d have a go too. But action figures aren’t my thing. I went for covers of a limited series of twelve comics. It took me a while because I kept getting told that I’d used up all my allowance for the day. But I got there in the end and created twelve covers. I’m putting all of them into this one post rather than diluting my blog with AI creations.

Here’s the first issue. The Artistic Actuary is taking on Giggsy. Giggsy is based on a former work colleague. We called him Giggsy because he had a photo on his desk of his wife AND his sister in law. I didn’t want to submit anybody’s photos to the AI so I told it that Giggsy looked like Nigel Farage, which is vaguely true.

It’s not a bad cover, this one. The only problem is that the third word balloon should be pointing at Giggsy but is instead pointing at the damsel in distress.

The second issue and we have Donald Trump as the villain, wanting to invade Greenland and turn hundreds of Inuits into burgers.

It’s close to perfect, this one. Definitely does the job.

For issue 3, the Artistic actuary is up against Miss Ann Thrope and the Monkees.

Ann is based on a former work colleague who plays guitar and is a big fan of the Monkees and of the late Mike Nesmith in particular. I gave her a full face mask rather than submitting her photo.

I was hoping that all five Monkees would appear on the cover but we have two generic cloned musicians instead. Or are they both supposed to be Davy Jones? And I did ask for them all to be attacking me with their instruments but the AI decided that they should instead be torturing me with their music, which is a twist that I quite like.

In issue 4, the Artistic Actuary competes in Landscape Artist Of The Year with the fate of the world at stake.

I asked for the most famous artists of all time to be watching me but this looks like three clones of the same artist (Van Gogh?). Not only that but one of them is clutching a guitar! It’s the AI that threw in the guitar, definitely not me. I’m wondering now whether that artist is Miss Ann Thrope, from issue 3, in disguise. And are the others two of her Monkees?

Issue 5 of The Artistic Actuary and it’s my favourite cover so far.

Fantastic Four #6, Amazing Spider-Man #7, Avengers #7, X-Men #4. It’s not cheating to bring back a newly created villain before you’ve made it past ten issues: it’s an unwritten rule.

And not only is Giggsy back, he’s being unmasked! All this time I thought he was just another actuary sitting next to me in the office but it turns out that he was just someone completely different in a Nigel Farage mask!?

Who is it though? Don’t ask me. I only came up with the concept for the cover; it’s up to the artist to turn it into a story. What I will say, though, is it has to (i) be a huge shock revelation, and (ii) create the potential for some fascinating future stories based around Giggsy’s thing about sisters in law.

Any one of these three would be great:

• Rhodri Giggs (Ryan would be too obvious, with Rhodri we get a tale of revenge)
• Prince Andrew (watch out Camilla)
• “Darren” (whose sister in law is, let’s say, already part of the Artistic Actuary’s supporting cast)

Issue 6 is another Marvel trope: the origin issue.

This is me (using the same source photo as Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man). I attended the Knights Templar School in Baldock, with uniforms just like these. And Mr Dobb was my maths teacher for four or five years. Mr Dobb was a really good guy. He knew I was going places in maths and he both loved and hated having someone in the classroom who wouldn’t let him get away with errors. I hope he’s well and that he has a good chuckle at this cover if he ever sees it.

What lets this cover down, of course is the extra coffee cup and hand on my desk. Blame the AI for that. Again. I like to think it’s some prankster in the class sneaking something horrible onto my desk disguised as a coffee.

On to issue 7.

In one of my previous jobs, it was the custom for everybody to head out for a lunchtime curry once a month. The guy organising it (who is referenced somewhere on the cover) liked a hot curry and would look despairingly down on the chicken tikka masala brigade. I was in that club for a while but ended up becoming more adventurous, while not being brave enough to go back to the phalls that I used to down like a fire eater in my younger days.

Not too bad a cover, this one, even if I’m holding the calculator strangely. I like the AI’s choice of story title. It sounds like a hot dish (albeit Chinese rather than Indian) but is based on a mnemonic for memorising the first three trig ratios, which is genius.

In issue 8, we get to meet a new villain: Crazy Pete.

As you can probably guess, Pete’s based on yet another former work colleague. I didn’t submit his photo but the description I gave the AI seemed to work. Pete used to sit opposite a guy called Declan and would often accuse him (with a wicked laugh) of trying to play footsie with him. The rest of us all suspected that it was Pete who had the footsie fixation. So I’ve given Pete multiple rubbery legs (that the AI has interpreted as tentacles) and left him ready to play footsie with whoever is unlucky enough to have to sit opposite him while Declan’s on holiday.

I decided to leave the Artistic Actuary off the cover this time but I think it works well. And the orange in the Blackpool football shirt works well as a complementary colour to the blues.

In issue 9, the Artistic Actuary enrols on a course that will turn him into Picasso but that instead turns him into someone looking like a deconstructivist, cubist portrait..

It took a few attempts to get the AI to create this one. It started by not letting me say anything about being as ugly as Giggsy and, once I’d sorted that out, didn’t give me the look I was after until I dug around a bit on Google and hit upon the idea of referencing Picasso’s portrait of Dora Maar.

And before I hit upon the idea for this one, I made several attempts at a cover where my paintings were coming to life but ChatGPT didn’t like me distorting what might be images based on real people, even if they were my own self portraits.

It’s not a brilliant cover, this one. Even allowing for the weird painting style, it doesn’t look as if the guy on the cover is based on me. And he’s wearing a hat but his reflection isn’t. Oh well. I’m allowed one duffer.

It just had to happen. After issue #6 got so many likes on the Facebook page for Knights Templar Alumni, I had to let Mr Dobb make an appearance in the present day and here he is. Once again I didn’t submit a photo but brown hair, a neat beard, tinted glasses and a suit made of the same material as Rupert The Bear’s trousers was all I needed to tell the AI for it to be able to create an unmistakeable image of Mr Dobb.

You know how when there’s a school reunion in a film or on the telly, someone always comes across someone else whose life they made a misery at school and who wants to take their revenge? Well, it’s like that here but the someone else is my favourite maths teacher.

I like this one for its shock value: no readers would have expected to find an angry Mr Dobb when looking through the spinner racks.

In issue 11, The Artistic Actuary is up against The Stomper. The Stomper is based on a former work colleague who would stomp around the office whenever he was under a bit of pressure. He’d have his head bent forward and his right hand would be on the back of his neck. Whenever I meet this guy in real life we have some crayon related banter: that’s why he’s carrying crayons here.

It’s a great cover, this one, suggesting The Stomper is the most powerful nemesis that the Artistic Actuary has been faced with.

I’d lay down good money that this one is settled with a beer or two to calm down The Stomper. In the same way that the best strategy against The Hulk is to calm him down rather than winding him up even more.

And finally we have issue 12 which was always going to be a tribute to Amazing Spider-Man #50, “Spider-Man No More” which, as well as having a famous cover, features an even better mid-story splash page showing Peter Parker walking into the distance having given up being Spider-man and dumped his costume in a dustbin.

In the real world, I gave up my FIA qualification after retiring, so this would be a semi-autobiographical story about retiring from actuarial work to spend the rest of my life as an artist.

I like this cover. The AI wouldn’t let me wear just boxers, shoes and socks (too sexual) so I threw in a string vest too. And then the AI left out the boxers which I think is hilarious.

I’ve ended up with what I think is a great collection of covers. I can imagine looking at these on the back on the back of a hardback collection of comics in the Virgin Megastore in Brighton and feeling nostalgic.

And I’m finding myself starting to understand Stan Lee a bit more. In the 1970s he would throw out random creative ideas to his artists and leave them to turn them ideas into covers and stories. Then the work would come back pencilled and Stan would write out everything that he wanted to appear in captions and speech bubbles. Then the letterers, inkers and colourists would finish the job. Stan called it “The Marvel Method” and it produced great results. I’m sitting here thinking that Stan’s creativity was the easy bit and that the scripting would have been a tough, time consuming chore.

It was an interesting exercise putting ChatGPT through its paces and creating something other than the action figures that aew all over LinkedIn right now. It’s not something I plan on repeating any time soon but if anyone else wants to create their own superhero comic to star in, I’d be interested to see the results. And I don’t mind crossovers: feel free to let The Artistic Actuary pop up as a guest star in your comic!

Excelsior!