Artist Interview: Sam Green’s Peacemaker Fine Art Print

He’ll fight for peace … no matter how violent he has to get to do it. That’s the motto of the DC antihero known as Peacemaker. Star of HBO Max and James Gunn’s Peacemaker series, Christopher Smith is a fighter and a lover intent on saving the world his own way. His methods might be questionable, but you can’t deny those results!

As Peacemaker season 2 comes to a close, we’ve caught up with artist Sam Green to talk about his new Peacemaker Art Print, featuring Christopher Smith (and his alternate Earth counterpart) in shining, shimmering, helmeted glory. Keep reading for insight into Sam Green’s creative process, which integrates cinematography and media aesthetics. Plus, learn how Sam worked with some behind-the-scenes info, and find out which 11th Street Kid he (might) hang out with given the chance.

---

Interview with Artist Sam Green

First of all, thank you so much for joining us for a third interview! It’s great to have you back, this time talking all things Peacemaker.

The Peacemaker Fine Art Print debuted at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 during the Peacefest event. How did it feel as both an artist and a fan of the property to have it unveiled there?

Thanks for taking the time to chat! I always enjoy doing these! San Diego Comic-Con is very much the peak of the pop culture calendar so it was really exciting to not only have this work shown there, but at the incredible PeaceFest experience that DC Studios put together.

Everything over in the Sideshow section at the activation was fantastic (shoutout to the Peacemaker: Eat Peace Statue — just phenomenal), so it was a real treat to be included amongst this. We were against the clock to get this print ready in time, so it was a bit of a squeeze but I’m really proud of what we came up with.

What are some of your favorite aspects about the show? Did you incorporate any of them into this art print?

I really love James Gunn’s signature idiosyncratic combination of irreverent humor and bloody violence, I really wanted to allude to this. When I was working on the artwork, season 2 had yet to be released, and I only had very few details as provided by WB on where things were going.

I really wanted to create contrast between the characterizations of the two versions of Peacemaker – with “our” Peacemaker having that slightly goofy smirk and less serious attitude, compared to the alternate Peacemaker who is more arrogant and ruthless, with his weapon drawn and ready for action.

How has the show’s cinematography influenced the visual aesthetics you utilized, such as the “visual noise” and “film grain” textures?

Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and by extension Peacemaker has a bit of a retro ’70s/’80s aesthetic and I thought it was important to include that here. I’m always a fan of adding some grain and texture to my work – I think it helps make things feel a little more tactile and takes the edge off the digital feel of it all.

Here I really wanted to crank that up and make it more of a design feature in line with the language of these characters and this world. It’s a bit more of a grubby, down and dirty space and having a clinical clean presentation just doesn’t feel right.

Each red and white stripe has a distinct yet unified feeling. What were the challenges of combining two versions of one character into a single cohesive composition?

Getting everything to read as one figure was definitely the biggest challenge, as well as just making sure the details all line up nicely.

There’s some distinct differences between the costumes of the two versions of the character that lead to some head scratchers for how to best align. Things you probably wouldn’t think about such as the scale and placement of the Dove of Peace logo across the two designs, or the cut of their collars or heights of their belts. There was a lot of tinkering involved to get these looking cohesive and flowing as one figure.

Once all of that was done, there was the challenge of having the sliced characters read as both the red and white stripes in the flag, without completely losing the detail and ensuring the two costumes read. For instance, Classic Peacemaker is represented by the white stripes, but his costume is completely red, which needed to remain visible. There’s a lot of little adjustments being done to sort of trick the eye into still reading the flag design overall.

The strong white edge lighting was a key element to glue these two versions of the character together.

Like your previous movie and video game posters made for Sideshow, The Peacemaker Fine Art Print has the series title and studio name. How do you approach composition for pieces that include textual elements?

It completely varies – for instance on Deadpool and Wolverine, I really wanted to evoke the feel of a classic comic cover to tie in with the wacky comic feel of the movie. On Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, I was looking to make something a little more dynamic and akin to what you’d see as a poster or key art, so the logo was placed in a way that drew you immediately into the heart of the composition and creates drama as though everything expands outwards from this point. Here, the composition was all about defining these vertical stripes as seamlessly as possible, so all of the graphics run vertically and align to the stripes. I love incorporating text and graphics into my work wherever possible.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about the process for this particular print?

Sideshow and Warner Bros. initially approached me with the idea to make a poster that incorporated elements from the two different dimensions and we worked together on coming up with a concept for that. I wanted a way to intertwine the two presentations of the character and eventually settled on the American flag concept as seen here. The imagery of the American flag is so synonymous with Peacemaker, right down to the colors of his costume, so it felt a natural fit. It was definitely a challenge making everything align and read correctly across the different vertical slices and colors.

I was working with costume test photography and concept art for the new design as the show wasn’t out yet, so there was a level of figuring stuff out to appear screen accurate. I always really enjoy this part of the process and honing in on details.

Finally, if you could spend the day with the 11th Street Kids, where would you hang out and what would you do?

Honestly I’m not sure I’d actually want to spend any time with these characters in real life – I feel like they’re all kind of intense 😂. I would say Vigilante probably has the most shared interests though (aside from all of the murder stuff), so I think we could probably spend a lot of time nerding out about things.

He was also seen with my Peacemaker print at SDCC when the cast was visiting PeaceFest – so he gets points for that!

---

Learn even more about Sam Green’s work with Sideshow, including the Spider-Man 2: Greater Together Fine Art Print and the Deadpool & Wolverine Movie Poster.

What did you think of Peacemaker season 2? Have you picked up Sam’s amazing art print yet? Dimension hop into the conversation with other DC fans over at Sideshow Social Network or in side.show/geekgroup, and don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!