Tag Archives: Jack Kirby

New Genesis Is Calling

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This is Day 22 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, in hon­or of the King’s birth­day this month. It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find their trib­utes on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Jack Kir­by’s New Gods. This was a key book in his Fourth World saga. Those who know their Kir­by know that one of the things that always fas­ci­nat­ed him and found its way into his work were myths and leg­ends (as seen in Thor for Mar­vel). The con­cep­tu­al seed of New Gods seemed to be “The old gods in the myths and leg­ends of the past are some­thing of a larg­er-than-life embod­i­ment of the qual­i­ties those peo­ple prized. What are the con­cepts we val­ue in our mod­ern world, and how would you embody those?”

Obvi­ous­ly this isn’t all of the New Gods char­ac­ters. It would’ve been impos­si­ble to do in this space. So I lim­it­ed this to those who appeared in the New Gods title, who I had­n’t already depict­ed (like Ori­on), and only those from New Gen­e­sis, not from Apokalips (like Dark­seid). That leaves (from left to right) Metron in his Mobius Chair, High­fa­ther, and Ligh­tray. At the bot­tom is young Esak. It was still a chal­lenge to try to fit all these char­ac­ters in!

I hope you like it, and please feel free to come back again tomorrow.

The One Man Army Corps

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It’s now Day 21, three full weeks of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute! You can find peo­ple’s Kir­by Trib­utes on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s OMAC series.” I went with Omac him­self, the One Man Army Corps.

Of all the post-Fourth World titles Kir­by cre­at­ed for DC, OMAC unfor­tu­nate­ly was the short­est-lived. It last­ed for only eight issues, and the last issue came to a very abrupt forced end­ing that was jolt­ing and high­ly unsat­is­fy­ing for readers.

The length of the book’s run should not be tak­en as any kind of indi­ca­tion of the book’s qual­i­ty. This title was where Jack put out some of his wildest sci fi con­jec­tures about what The World That’s Com­ing might be like. In the first issue, he had a room where a cor­po­ra­tion encour­aged employ­ees to go in and destroy things, get all their aggres­sions out. This was well before such things came about in real life!

Maybe some of the ideas were just a bit too out there for some read­ers? The rest of us were cap­ti­vat­ed, and wished Jack had been allowed to continue.

Hope you like, and feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

“Gone, Gone, The Form of Man,…”

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It is now Day 20 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute. Open to all cre­atives, you can find par­tic­i­pants’ Kir­by Trib­utes on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Etri­g­an the Demon. One of Kir­by’s post-Fourth World titles he cre­at­ed for DC, this was some­thing very dif­fer­ent. Root­ed in the kinds of word-of-mouth sto­ries about the super­nat­ur­al that Kir­by heard grow­ing up, plus clas­sic Uni­ver­sal mon­ster movies and the like, Kir­by also gave it a tie-in to Mer­lin and the Arthuri­an leg­ends. The title char­ac­ter was a demon pressed into ser­vice on the side of the angels, and anoth­er unique angle on it was that Mer­lin had set things up so that he was a demon pos­sessed by a man (as opposed to the oth­er way around).

The Demon’s orig­i­nal run last­ed only 16 issues, but appar­ent­ly the con­cept was such that it caught the eye of a num­ber of sub­se­quent comics cre­ators, and over the years that fol­lowed they all took their shot at doing some­thing with the character.

I’d nev­er tried draw­ing the Demon before. It was fun try­ing to get that expression!

Enjoy, and please feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

From the Bunker Labelled Command D

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Here’s Day 19 of the month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, in hon­or of his birth­day this month. Suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son, it’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find peo­ple’s work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt reads, “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Kaman­di series.” I chose to depict Kaman­di him­self, along with his friend Ben Box­er in his armored-up form. They’re going down into some bust­ed-up Sub­way, maybe in search of some­thing or some­one, obvi­ous­ly on their guard. On Earth A.D. (After Dis­as­ter), you can’t be too careful!

I have a lot of affec­tion for the Kaman­di book and the char­ac­ter. And it seems like I’m not alone in that. A num­ber of peo­ple around my age seem to have a sim­i­lar affec­tion for the book. And of all Jack­’s post-Fourth World titles he did for DC, Kaman­di sold the best and last­ed the longest, con­tin­u­ing on in oth­er hands for a good while even after Jack left and went back to Marvel.

I think there must have been some­thing in the air at the time. Not just Plan­et of the Apes, but oth­er films (like Logan’s Run) and sci fi that had a fas­ci­na­tion with dystopias that came about after our cur­rent world col­lapsed for one rea­son or another.

On a per­son­al lev­el, I came across Kaman­di just about the time I was begin­ning to rec­og­nize indi­vid­ual artists and remem­ber their names. I’d seen some of Kir­by’s work ear­li­er, but had not been quite old enough for his name to reg­is­ter with me just yet. This was the right time, and the right book. I became a full-fledged Kir­by nut after this. Not hav­ing any con­nec­tion to wider fan­dom as a kid and an aspir­ing artist, I had this naive thought that, “Kir­by’s get­ting old­er. He’s got­ta be like in his 50’s! Even­tu­al­ly he’s going to retire, and some­one will need to pick up the baton from him! Maybe it should be me!”

Of course, I had no idea just how many oth­er fan artists there were out there who had sim­i­lar ideas of try­ing to be the next Kir­by. I went through a lengthy “Jack Kir­by phase” as a young artist, not real­ly under­stand­ing the under­ly­ing “why” of what he did yet. I just saw the sur­face, loved the ener­gy and the imag­i­na­tion, and thought it was what comics should be. Even­tu­al­ly I grew out of my fix­a­tion on try­ing to draw like him, but I can still see Kir­by as a com­po­nent of my artis­tic DNA, whether any­one else can or not. Kir­by and his work still mat­ter a great deal to me. Which is why I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in this Tribute!

Any­way, hope you like my shot at Kaman­di, and please come back for tomor­row’s image!

You Wouldn’t Like Him When He’s Angry!

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We’ve made it now to Day 18 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find their work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt was Ori­on, from the book New Gods. Though he’s most def­i­nite­ly on the side of New Gen­e­sis and fight­ing against Apokolips, he has his demons! His sto­ry is inter­twined with Scott Free/Mister Mir­a­cle’s, and rather than spoil it for you, you can read about it in “The Pact” (New Gods #7).

It was fun to try to cap­ture some of the “angry ener­gy” Ori­on often has in this draw­ing. Hope you enjoy! Please tune in again tomorrow.

Just Don’t Get on Her Bad Side!

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It’s now Day 17 of Howard SImp­son’s month-long trib­ute to Jack Kir­by! Can you believe it? If you’d like to see what oth­ers are post­ing in order to par­tic­i­pate, you can find that work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Big Bar­da. Part of Kir­by’s Fourth World saga at DC, she was a key sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle, first appear­ing in issue #4. Raised on Apokolips to be part of a group of war­riors called the Female Furies, she lat­er met Scott Free (Mis­ter Mir­a­cle) and fell in love with him. Even­tu­al­ly, she fol­lowed Scott to Earth.

Bar­da’s bat­tle armor is one of those Kir­by cos­tumes with a lot of detail. It’s con­sis­tent in the broad strokes, but has a ten­den­cy to morph a bit from page to page or pan­el to pan­el as far as the spe­cif­ic details go. I like how it looks, and thought a straight-ahead pre­sen­ta­tion from the front would be the best way to show it.

Hope you like it, and please come back again tomorrow.

It’s a Miracle!

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We’ve hit Day 16 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of the work of Jack Kir­by! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work peo­ple are upload­ing to your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for the day is Mis­ter Mir­a­cle. The lead char­ac­ter in the com­ic named for him, he was part of the Fourth World saga Jack Kir­by spun over at DC. Known as Scott Free in his civil­ian iden­ti­ty, Mis­ter Mir­a­cle lived here on Earth and worked as an amaz­ing escape artist. Mis­ter Mir­a­cle’s back sto­ry is actu­al­ly pret­ty pro­found. I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t read it, but it’s cov­ered in the sto­ries “The Pact” (New Gods #7), and “Himon” (Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #9).

I recall tak­ing a crack at draw­ing Mis­ter Mir­a­cle a few times back in high school, as I was a big fan of the Fourth World mate­r­i­al. It’s been a long time!

Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned!

It’s Dark Outside!

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We’re almost halfway there! Day 15 of this month-long trib­ute to Kir­by. Howard Simp­son’s brain­child, it’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find what peo­ple are post­ing on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Dark­seid. The pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist of Kir­by’s Fourth World books at DC, Dark­seid was a real gift Kir­by gave to DC: a vil­lain con­cep­tu­al­ly much larg­er than any oth­er DC had ever had up to this point. It could be argued that with the excep­tion of Galac­tus, Dark­seid even topped most of Kir­by’s pre­vi­ous vil­lain cre­ations for Mar­vel. He was in search of some­thing called the Anti-Life Equa­tion, which would enable him to take over the minds and will of every­one in the Universe!

Hope you like my Dark­seid draw­ing, and feel free to come back and see what’s new tomorrow!

Why So Angry?

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We’re at Day 14 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online cel­e­bra­tion of the work of Jack Kir­by! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work peo­ple are post­ing by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt: “Draw a mon­ster or an alien cre­at­ed by Jack Kir­by.” There are many pos­si­bil­i­ties out there! As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly with Groot, Kir­by did a whole bunch of mon­sters dur­ing the Atlas era. But instead of one of those, I opt­ed for the one you see here: Angry Char­lie. His visu­al called out to me.

Angry Char­lie was a Kir­by Kreation dur­ing his run on the Jim­my Olsen com­ic for DC, which he’d made part of the titles where he was unfold­ing his “Fourth World” sto­ries, along with For­ev­er Peo­ple, New Gods and Mis­ter Mir­a­cle. Angry Char­lie was a cre­ation of the Evil Fac­to­ry, which was ulti­mate­ly destroyed at the end of that sto­ry. Char­lie was­n’t real­ly bad, and the gang had a soft spot for him, so they took him home with them.

Hope you liked Char­lie, and tune in again tomorrow!

Let’s Not Force the Issue!

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Wel­come to the lucky 13th Day of this mon­th’s Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute, sug­gest­ed by Howard Simp­son! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you should be able to find peo­ple’s work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Sky Mas­ters of the Space Force. Most of the prompts are com­ic book cre­ations, but this one is from a news­pa­per strip, done in the late ’50s, the­o­riz­ing what things might be like in the near future of the dawn­ing Space Age. It’s not a secret that most com­ic book artists back then had aspi­ra­tions of work­ing on a news­pa­per strip. News­pa­per strip artists were seen as more pres­ti­gious by the gen­er­al pub­lic, and it poten­tial­ly paid bet­ter than com­ic books. So I sus­pect when this oppor­tu­ni­ty came up for Kir­by, he was­n’t going to pass it up. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it ulti­mate­ly did­n’t work out so well for him, but I’m not going to get into all that here.

The strip was a good look­ing one, though it only last­ed a lit­tle over two years (late ’58 to ear­ly ’61). Writ­ten by Dave Wood, it also fea­tured inks by Wal­ly Wood (no rela­tion). As men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous Chal­lengers of the Unknown post, if you’ve nev­er seen the pair­ing of Kir­by and Wood, it’s hard to envi­sion it work­ing. They’re very dif­fer­ent artists. But it works beau­ti­ful­ly! Kir­by’s ener­gy and live­ly lay­outs and imag­i­na­tion are intact, and Wood brings his light­ing and nat­u­ral­ism into it. It’s a great com­bi­na­tion, if you haven’t seen it!

There have been a few col­lec­tions of the Sky Mas­ters strips pub­lished at var­i­ous points, so if you’re curi­ous, you should be able to find one. Well worth the effort!

I feel like a lit­tle of the Kirby/Wood com­bo man­aged to sneak into my trib­ute piece here. At least I hope so. Enjoy, and we’ll see you again tomorrow!