Frank Cho and Doug Murray Announce Winner of 50-girls-50 Talent Search!

From the Official Image Comics Press release:

Liberty Meadows and New Ultimates illustrator Frank Cho announces artist for upcoming series co-written by The ‘Nam legend Doug Murray!

3 November 2009 (Berkeley, CA) – For the past several months, Liberty Meadows creator Frank Cho and The ‘Nam writer Doug Murray have searched for the artist to illustrate their all new miniseries, 50 Girls 50. Today they’re proud to announce the search is over with winner Axel Medellin!

“The number and quality of the submissions really blew me away. I mean, I knew there were a lot of talented comic artists out there, but I hadn’t expected so many to try this out,” Murray said. “Judging was very difficult. We had to grade the entries on multiple counts: the fidelity to the model sheets produced by Frank, the story-telling displayed, the quality of the layouts—all of these factors came into play. We managed to pick the final four artists, but choosing a winner out of the four was extremely difficult since each artists had what we were looking for in terms of quality and clear storytelling skills. Frank and I went back and forth till the very last minute on who the winner should be, with Axel beating out the competition.”

Axel Medellin will be illustrating next year’s 50 Girls 50 based off a story conceived and co-written by Cho and Murray. In addition, he will be working alongside Cho as he works off the New Ultimates illustrator’s character and world designs. Cho will also be providing covers for every issue.

Cho added, “Thank you all for the time and effort you put into this. Also for the simple humanity and kindness you showed each other within the various threads of the 50-GIRLS-50 blog. I was as impressed by that as I was by the artistry of your entries.”

50 Girls 50, a full-color 32-page comic book for $2.99, will be released in early 2010.