It’s the Red Tomato!…Er, Tornado!”

This is anoth­er one of those things where I was look­ing at some­thing, and an idea popped into my head that I had to do in order to get it out of my brain. A fake cov­er, sort of a “What if DC gave Shel­don May­er a ded­i­cat­ed Red Tor­na­do com­ic back in the Gold­en Age?”

This hap­pened as I was re-read­ing DC’s JSA All-Stars Archives (Vol­ume 1), fea­tur­ing solo sto­ries of sec­ondary and ter­tiary char­ac­ters who showed up with the Jus­tice Soci­ety in All-Star Comics at one point or anoth­er. And part of that col­lec­tion was a batch of sto­ries fea­tur­ing Shel­don May­er’s Scrib­bly, the Boy Car­toon­ist, where the Red Tor­na­do debuted.

Ini­tial­ly, the first Red Tor­na­do char­ac­ter I encoun­tered in comics as a kid was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter! He was an android, and had become part of the Sil­ver Age Jus­tice League. When not in his hero­ic iden­ti­ty, this Sil­ver Age ver­sion of the Red Tor­na­do was in the midst of learn­ing how to be more human (a bit like Mar­vel’s the Vision). After a lit­tle while, I learned of the pri­or exis­tence of the orig­i­nal Red Tor­na­do, a hero­ic iden­ti­ty adopt­ed by Ma Hun­kel in Shel­don May­er’s Scrib­bly the Boy Car­toon­ist install­ment for All-Amer­i­can Comics #20.

The Red Tor­na­do was played for fun and laughs, in that ear­ly era when super­heroes were still some­times called “mys­tery men.” And as mod­ern super­hero comics seem deter­mined to take them­selves ever more death­ly seri­ous, I find myself becom­ing ever more appre­cia­tive of comics that are fun. After all, I think “fun” is a big part of why most of us got into read­ing comics in the first place!

I should talk a bit about Shel­don May­er, cre­ator of the Red Tor­na­do. May­er was a rar­i­ty for the Gold­en Age: an artist, writer and edi­tor all in one. He worked briefly as an edi­tor for the McClure Syn­di­cate (for M.C. Gaines), where he came across Siegel and Shus­ter’s unsold Super­man strip, which he “fell in love with.” He talked it up so much to any­one who would lis­ten, he even­tu­al­ly con­vinced Gaines to take it up to Har­ry Donen­feld, who was look­ing for orig­i­nal strips to run in a new com­ic they were going to call Action Comics. To use a cliché phrase (one appro­pri­ate in this case), “the rest is history.”

A num­ber of Gold­en Age artists cred­it­ed May­er as being very help­ful to them as an edi­tor. Being a writer and artist, he had a per­spec­tive that oth­er edi­tors did­n’t. May­er on his own as a writer and artist did a lot of fun, cre­ative comics! I recent­ly dis­cov­ered that the Scrib­bly strip he did for All-Amer­i­can Comics (where he cre­at­ed the Red Tor­na­do) even­tu­al­ly got its own title for awhile post-WWII. Prob­a­bly his best-known and longest-run­ning title would be Sug­ar and Spike, about two babies who com­mu­ni­cat­ed in baby talk that adults were unable to under­stand. In the ear­ly ’70s, he also wrote and drew a num­ber of large for­mat Col­lec­tors’ Edi­tion comics fea­tur­ing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer for DC. I kind of feel like I need to see if I can get some more of May­er’s work in my collection!

DC nev­er did a ded­i­cat­ed Red Tor­na­do title, but when I was read­ing that mate­r­i­al in the Archive Edi­tion I men­tioned up top, I came across the splash pan­el that kicked off the Scrib­bly install­ment for All-Amer­i­can Comics #23, and real­ized that it would work great as a cov­er. Hence the attri­bu­tion (though I put my own lit­tle spin on the idea).

Hope you like this, and that you’re enjoy­ing the hol­i­day season!

Funky Frankie

It’s that time of year when I have a tra­di­tion of doing some kind of Franken­stein imagery. Right after I fin­ished the one I did for last year, this one came to me in a fore­head-slap­ping “D’oh!” moment.

Unlike last year’s image, this is a real song, as some of you will know. The Edgar Win­ter Group’s “Franken­stein” is one of the coolest rock instru­men­tals of the ’70s. I’ll give you moment to check it out here, if you haven’t heard it before.

…Okay, you’re back now? “Franken­stein” was a big hit and actu­al­ly made it to #1 on the charts. My under­stand­ing is that in record­ing and fig­ur­ing out the song, the band end­ed up hav­ing to do a lot of phys­i­cal edit­ing of the song parts. Today, that’s just a mat­ter of hit­ting a but­ton or two. Back then, you had to lit­er­al­ly take a razor blade to the record­ing tape to cut it apart, then tape it back togeth­er again. With all the var­i­ous tape pieces lying around the stu­dio wait­ing to be pieced back togeth­er, the band’s drum­mer observed that the song had become “like Franken­stein.” The name stuck.

I knew what I kind of want­ed the illus­tra­tion to look like, but think­ing about col­or was anoth­er thing. Then I remem­bered that for awhile now, I’d been intrigued by the idea of try­ing some­thing with flu­o­res­cent col­ors, like a black­light poster. It struck me that this was the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to try that out, so here you go!

Hap­py Halloween!

Getting Blitzed

Ear­li­er this year, I was post­ing a num­ber of fake comics cov­ers I’d done for Big Bang Comics’ “His­to­ry Issues” (#24 and #27) that I had new­ly col­ored. Since then, some oth­ers turned up that I did­n’t pre­vi­ous­ly have copies of the fin­ished inks for, which gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly col­or them too. And giv­en that they’re doing #Big­Bang­To­ber again this year, and today’s prompt is Big Bang’s speed­ster, the Blitz, it seemed a good time to post this (final­ly) col­ored ver­sion of the cov­er I drew for All-Blitz #21. It’s a twofer, in that you also get the intro­duc­tion of Speed Queen!

This orig­i­nal­ly appeared (small, in black and white) on pg. 27 of Big Bang Comics #27, AKA “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics 2.” The pen­cils, let­ter­ing (and now col­or­ing) are mine. Because of how the con­trib­u­tors were list­ed (and how many years lat­er this is), I’m not entire­ly sure who inked this. Per­haps it was Ed Quin­by? I know he inked one or two oth­er fake cov­ers I did for this project.

As I think I men­tioned before, to do these His­to­ry issues, Gary Carl­son need­ed a WHOLE bunch of cov­ers gen­er­at­ed, so all of us artists had a lot of lat­i­tude to cre­ate stuff. On this one, I was think­ing of how much fun some of those old com­ic cov­ers were when they debuted a new super­heroine, and the name “Speed Queen” popped into my head for a char­ac­ter. Seemed like some­thing they would’ve done back then.

I had also pen­ciled a cou­ple oth­er Gold­en Age Blitz cov­ers, and if good copies of the fin­ished inks for those ever turn up, I’ll prob­a­bly col­or them too. For now: hope you enjoyed this one!

…And an Encore!

Well, we just com­plet­ed anoth­er Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed and cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son). I guess you could call this the bonus round. Like last year, I decid­ed to try to assem­ble all of these into one, big image. With the excep­tion of yes­ter­day’s “wild card” round, which was not a Jack Kir­by cre­ation, so it does­n’t belong here. Plus 30 images just group togeth­er a lot eas­i­er than 31!

See­ing all of these togeth­er, I’m struck by how busy the end result is! There’s a lot going on. I guess that’s a result of my try­ing to give each pan­el a sense of nar­ra­tive, as if they were each ran­dom­ly plucked from the midst of larg­er stories.

A lot­ta work there! See­ing them all togeth­er makes me real­ize that. But it’s cool see­ing them all in this context.

Will I do this again next year? We’ll see. I may tweak my process a lit­tle bit. I did this year, by adding the nar­ra­tive aspect.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip with me, found it fun and inspirational.

Knights That Do Justice‑y Type Things

Well, we’ve made it to the 31st here, the final day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (the brain­child of Howard Simp­son). And the prompt for the final day of the month, like last year, is a bit of a wild card. As Howard put it last year, “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.”

I dug pret­ty deep for this one. Pre­sent­ing a super­hero group I co-cre­at­ed with my broth­er Andy when we were kids: the Knights of Jus­tice! From left to right you have Mol­e­cule Man, Sledge­ham­mer, Boomerang King, the Wiz­ard (descend­ing from above), and final­ly… er, sor­ry; I don’t remem­ber the pur­ple guy’s name any­more! I could only come up with a vague rec­ol­lec­tion that he was the speed­ster of the group. My broth­er does­n’t remem­ber either.

I drew the orig­i­nal draw­ing when I was around 15, I fig­ure. And I admit to cring­ing a lit­tle bit at the draw­ing (those lol­lipop calves!) and some of those cos­tume designs. All I can say in my defense is it was the ’70s, and I guess I was influ­enced a bit too much by some of the trendi­er super­hero cos­tumes of the time. And why so many full face masks? Though I do think the Wiz­ard design is actu­al­ly kind of cool still, even all these years lat­er. Kind of brave to just go full black and white like that.

And that’s an offi­cial wrap for Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month this year, but I have one more thing I want to post tomor­row. Oh, and for what it’s worth, the Knight of Jus­tice are ™ & © Andy and Mark Lewis.

It’s “Harriet,” not “Hatter”

We’ve made it to day 30 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month! I was­n’t sure I would make it this far, but here we go. It’s still Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who grew up in that insti­tu­tion on Apokolips. And today’s prompt is Mad Har­ri­et of the Female Furies!

Like all the Furies, her first appear­ance was in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6 (the infa­mous “Funky Flash­man” sto­ry). And she shows evi­dence there of liv­ing up to her name!

She’s a chal­lenge to draw, because while visu­al­ly mem­o­rable, once you get beyond her face and hair, her metal­lic clawed gaunt­let and pow­er spikes, it was like the remain­der of her out­fit did­n’t seem to be quite ful­ly nailed down. Fig­ur­ing out what the rest of her looks like was a chal­lenge, so I took what cues I could from var­i­ous pan­els scat­tered across sev­er­al stories.

I was also unsure what col­or to make her lips, as the col­orist back then kind of did­n’t both­er to give them a col­or. But going with kind of a blue-black for the high­lights seemed fit­ting to me.

One more day left in this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month! What’s up next? You’ll have to come back tomor­row to see!

Lashing Out

We’re in the final days of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and this week’s theme has been char­ac­ters who grew up in Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age, that won­der­ful insti­tu­tion on Dark­sei­d’s Apokolips. Today’s prompt is Lashina, mem­ber of the Female Furies.

Her com­bat spe­cial­ty is the use of the var­i­ous whips or lash­es that are part of her uni­form, which she’s very quick to unfurl and use. Her design is sim­ple, but visu­al­ly strik­ing (pun unavoid­able; sor­ry)! With such a sim­ple design, you’d think she’d be easy to draw, but I found that not to be the case. I end­ed up doing it twice here. After I got my first draw­ing done and inked, I real­ized it did­n’t look right, so I redrew her body a sec­ond time, mor­tis­ing out the orig­i­nal and replac­ing it with my sec­ond (improved) drawing.

Hope you enjoyed my take on Lashina. And feel free to tune in again tomor­row to see our next vis­i­tor from Granny Good­ness’ Orphanage!

The Song of Bernadeth

As you might know, we’re in this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son. A new, cool thing Howard intro­duced this year has been weeks with over­all themes to them. This week’s theme is Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age, with char­ac­ters who grew up there on Apokolips. Today’s prompt is Bernadeth of the Female Furies.

I’ve nev­er attempt­ed to draw her before. Jack gave her a very dis­tinc­tive look. She tend­ed to be a back­ground play­er when the Furies would show up, and did­n’t usu­al­ly get much dia­logue. Prob­a­bly the most screen­time and dia­logue she got was in her first appear­ance, in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6 (the infa­mous “Funky Flash­man” sto­ry, where all the Furies first appeared). We learn that she’s the sis­ter of Desaad, Dark­sei­d’s mas­ter tor­tur­er. A cool and dis­pas­sion­ate per­son, her weapon of choice is the Fahrneknife, which can “pen­e­trate dimensionally–and bar­be­cue [you] from the inside!!” Chill­ing idea!

Hope you like my take on her. For who’s next, feel free to come back by here again tomorrow!

No, Not Barbara!

Still doing Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, we’re in the midst of Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age Week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who grew up in that insti­tu­tion on Apokolips. Today’s prompt is the one and only Big Bar­da, erst­while com­man­der of the Female Furies!

There’s some­thing real­ly neat about her bat­tle armor that makes it a fun chal­lenge to wrap your head around and try to draw it. I took a shot at it last year too.

Appar­ent­ly at one point, Jack had want­ed to star Bar­da and the oth­er Furies in their own book, but I gath­er by that point, DC felt sales on the Fourth World books weren’t enough to jus­ti­fy doing it, sadly.

Hope you like my take on Bar­da here, and please feel free to come back by here tomor­row to see who’s next from the Orphanage!

A Walking, Talking Miracle!

It’s day 26 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and the theme we’re work­ing with this week is char­ac­ters raised in Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age on Apokolips. Today’s prompt is Mis­ter Miracle!

I’ve drawn him before, not just for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, but also a few times when I was younger. Some­thing about the char­ac­ter caught my eye. I’ve got a soft spot for him. Maybe it was the fact he was the clos­est thing in Kir­by’s Fourth World titles to look­ing like a reg­u­lar super­hero, or the bright col­or scheme. Per­haps it was also the super-sci­en­tif­ic escape act, that had him get­ting out of sit­u­a­tions that looked impos­si­ble. Maybe I was­n’t alone in being fas­ci­nat­ed, because appar­ent­ly sales fig­ures prompt­ed DC to keep Mis­ter Mir­a­cle going longer than any of the oth­er Fourth World titles.

It looks bad for our hero, but I’m sure he’ll get out of this at the last pos­si­ble moment! Tomor­row will be anoth­er for­mer res­i­dent of Granny Good­ness’ Orphanage.