“A Sunset with You” – A Tie-In Short Story for Pride Month
Happy Pride Month!
This month and every month, we celebrate members of the LGBTQ+ community – real-life superheroes who teach us that being ourselves is in and of itself, a superpower.
In celebration, enjoy this digital tie-in short story that expands on our Marvel’s Avengers lore and features art from legendary Marvel artists!
“A Sunset with You” by Leyla K. follows Dora Milaje trainee Ayo who enlists the help of Ms. Marvel to impress Ayo’s captain (and crush!) Aneka.
Featured artists include:
You can read more about their process of illustrating these short story covers below! As another free treat, each version is also versioned 16:9 for you to use as desktop backgrounds. You can download those below as well!
Make sure to check out the other ways we celebrated Pride Month at Crystal Dynamics this year.
Click HERE to download “A Sunset with You,” or enjoy below:
Cover Variant #1 – Derek Charm
Artist Statement:
“I was super excited when Crystal Dynamics reached out to me about creating a piece for Marvel’s Avengers celebrating Pride month. I really love the immersion that video games offer, and being able to spend time in a superhero world really deepens the connection to these characters (even if I am the Iron Man who always flies off in the wrong direction). I was also really interested in the challenge of reinterpreting these designs back into 2D comic book art while retaining what makes them unique to the game.
“The story I was given features Ms. Marvel helping Ayo as she attempts to obtain the hard-to-reach Sunset Orchid for Aneka to show her affection. It’s mentioned that Ayo sees aspects of Aneka in the rare flower, and so I wanted to showcase these elements and highlight that Ms. Marvel is there cheering them on and offering her support. Marvel and Crystal Dynamics agreed and encouraged me to lean into the romance of the scene. Someone pointed out recently there’s not a bigger presence in the media world right now than Marvel, and it’s amazing to see them use their massive platform to recognize and celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community for Pride Month.”
Cover Variant #2 – Paulina Ganucheau
Artist Statement:
“After I was given the prompt for this piece I knew my number one goal would be to show joy and comfort. I often think in color first, so warm and inviting colors flooded onto the page with my initial sketch. From there the details emerged. The florals, the sparkles, and the softness between them both. Even sweet Kamala, joyously watching. I hoped to render a piece that honors them and their love for each other.
“Eliciting happiness is what I strive for when creating pieces for Pride Month and when I think of what this celebration means to me many emotions stir. It means happiness and a sense of self. Remembering that I am perfect as I am. As we all are. It reminds me to cherish all the small pieces of life I adore, like togetherness, community, colors, and softness. Those details that bring me joy. Things that make me smile. So I try to put those personal comforts into my artwork to share some of that personal joy with the world.”
Cover Variant #3 – Kris Anka
Artist Statement:
“It is always a fun challenge for me to draw video game designs – to try to translate designs meant for 3D back into a 2D platform while not losing any fidelity of the original design. It’s a level of problem-solving that doesn’t normally come up in my every day [work], which is always a nice change of pace.
“Another unique challenge with this piece was that I knew I had planned to have all the elements be able to be moved around to best fit a horizontal orientation for the wallpaper, so I had to draw through everything so that there were no missing details no matter where I ended up placing everyone in the end. I’m really happy with how each version of this piece ended up.”
