This Thursday, the good folks at Mondo will release two brand-new King Kong posters. Designed by artist Jonathan Burton and chosen by attendees at last year's MondoCon (more on that in a moment), these prints are absolutely killer.

Let's take a look.

King Kong by Jonathan Burton

24x36"

$50 Screenprint Edition of 325

Available this Thursday at a random time at Mondo's website

King Kong by Jonathan Burton

24x36"

$50 Screenprint Edition of 325

Available this Thursday at a random time at Mondo's website

As previously mentioned, there's a cool backstory on these prints: last year's MondoCon included a panel called "Mondo Talk", wherein Mondo's head honchos (Jay Shaw, Rob Jones, and Mitch Putnam) took to the stage to discuss the company's creative process. They showed off prints that never quite came together, prints that didn't make it through the studio approval process, and - towards the end of the panel - they showed the audience several options for a King Kong print and asked them to vote on which version they'd like to see fully realized.

Three of artist Jonathan Burton's concepts were displayed, and when it came time to vote, the audience ended up split between two very different concepts: the first pictured Kong in his natural habitat, while the second featured Kong's disastrous tour of New York City. Here's what those initial concept sketches looked like:

Because the audience was so divided on the concepts, Rob Jones decided (on the spot) that they'd just go ahead and print both. Ultimately, the prints were retooled a bit (you can see the changes they made by comparing the concept sketches to the finals), but the final versions are truly spectacular.

Here's what Jonathan Burton had to say about the creation of these prints:

"The KONG project has been a huge pleasure to work on particularly as the ideas were voted on by Mondo fans at the MondoCon 2 panel. The audience was split between these two and I’m flattered to be asked asked to produce both. The challenge for me was to make them both work as individual posters and as a pair. The ‘Jungle’ poster is a nod to the spirit of the original 1933 posters playing on the fear of the immense monster. He is KING in his own habitat. Whereas the ‘City’ version (paying tribute to the Art Deco style of the film’s opening credits) shows us Kong on the defence dwarfed by the man-made skyscrapers fleeing from the human captors. As Carl Denham says, “He’s always been a king in his world, but we’ll teach him fear” Linking them together we have Ann Darrow in each, Jack Driscoll and Carl Denham are in both with very similar poses. The titles are in exactly the same place and the tag-lines help express the connected themes of a strange giant beast obsessed with the beauty of Ann Darrow ending up being controlled and destroyed by man."

Both of Burton's King Kong prints will go on sale via Mondo's website sometime tomorrow afternoon, and my guess is that they'll go quickly. If you're interested in picking one (or both!) of these up, be sure to keep an eye on both the Mondo homepage and Mondo's Twitter account, where the sale will be announced once the prints go live.

What do you guys think? Happy with how these turned out? Prefer one over the other? Going for both? Let us know what you think in the comments below!