Kelsey Shannon did his first Stallone piece back in 2002... this was before he hit it big [along with with Mike Avon Oeming] as co-creator of Bastard Samurai published by Image comics. At that time Kelsey said he wanted to take another crack at Sly drawing.

In the past two years Kelsey's career has really taken off. He's now a member of Gaijin Studio and artist on DC's Batman Adventures.

I finally got a chance to meet Kelsey in person at MegaCon this year. He was swamped with requests for sketches, but Kelsey took the time to do up this Stallone piece for me as a gift. What a guy!

Big Beatty is going to ink it up on blueline so I'll be able to keep Kelsey's original pencils untouched. The funny thing is, I think Kelsey was as excited about that as me!

- Craig Zablo [March 6, 2004]