Month: August 2023

A Jolly Old Time!

We’ve made it! Day 31 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by trib­ute, in hon­or of his birth­day this month (back on the 28th). The brain­child of Howard Simp­son, you can find the work of par­tic­i­pants on your favorite social media plat­forms via the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for this last day reads, “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.” So I present: the Jol­ly Jaunter!

The rea­son I went with him is that he was a char­ac­ter I orig­i­nal­ly came up with back when I was 14 or 15, when I was heav­i­ly into a phase of try­ing to draw like Kir­by. Kind of a sil­ly, satir­i­cal British super­hero. I’m not sure where he came from exact­ly, as at that point, it was­n’t as if I had seen much of jack­’s humor work (like Fight­ing Amer­i­can) yet. Wher­ev­er it came from, the idea struck my fun­ny­bone, and I had to draw it. Buried deep in my files, I still had the drawing!

It was a lit­tle odd, revis­it­ing a draw­ing and a char­ac­ter I had done when I was that young. How often do you do that? Obvi­ous­ly 14/15-year-old me had­n’t both­ered to dig up ref­er­ence for how a Union Jack flag real­ly works, or real­ly thought through how the col­or would work. What can I say? The idea amused me at the time. But there you go!  For what it’s worth, the Jol­ly Jaunter is ™ & © Mark Lewis.

Thanks for look­ing, and for fol­low­ing all my Kir­by Trib­utes this month!

On to Victory!

We’re get­ting close to the end! Day 30 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute. Suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son, you can find the work online on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I’m going off-menu again today. The prompt sug­gests doing a “Kir­by Col­lage,” of the type Jack was known for doing in his spare time, some­times even find­ing ways to use them in his comics. But I could­n’t think of a way to do that and have it fit in the­mat­i­cal­ly with the rest of what I’m doing. So instead, I chose to draw Cap­tain Victory.

This was the title that launched a brand new com­ic com­pa­ny in the ear­ly ’80s, Pacif­ic Comics. As men­tioned yes­ter­day, the fact that Jack Kir­by was doing a com­ic for a new start­up pub­lish­er and not for Mar­vel or DC again, was a Big Deal. It was thought that the “Big Two” were real­ly the only game in town, so it can’t be over­stat­ed that this was big news.

One of the rea­sons Kir­by was will­ing to do this was con­tained right there in the indi­cia in the front of the book: “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was­n’t some­thing he was ever like­ly to get from Mar­vel or DC, and I’m sure the var­i­ous frus­tra­tions he’d had with both pub­lish­ers at dif­fer­ent points over the years were also part of his inter­est in going inde­pen­dent again (like he and Joe Simon had tried once before with Mainline).

The sto­ry of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and his Galac­tic Rangers was inspired at least in part by Jack watch­ing E.T. and think­ing that “first con­tact” was not like­ly to be so benign. In fact, con­sid­er­ing some of the things that hap­pened when explor­ers came from Europe to the “New World,” Jack thought more like­ly it could go hor­ri­bly wrong..for us! And that was the seed of the story.

Front and cen­ter you’ve got Cap­tain Vic­to­ry. Behind him to the left is Major Klavus, and to the right is Tarin.

Hope you like it. One more to go!

Silver Star

This is Day 29 of our month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute online. The brain­child of Howard Simp­son, you’ll be able to find the work of par­tic­i­pants on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I actu­al­ly post­ed today’s prompt (a Jack Kir­by por­trait) yes­ter­day, in hon­or of Jack­’s birth­day. So today is catch­ing up with yes­ter­day’s prompt: Sil­ver Star.

There are sev­er­al unique things about this char­ac­ter. One is (if I’m not mis­tak­en) the sto­ry start­ed off as a screen­play, and Jack turned it into this lim­it­ed series (The cov­ers have a bul­let read­ing “A Visu­al Nov­el.”). I believe Jack orig­i­nal­ly thought in terms of his Fourth World series at DC as an epic sto­ry that would come to a def­i­nite con­clu­sion, but he was­n’t allowed to do that then. Lim­it­ed series, or minis­eries, just weren’t some­thing comics pub­lish­ers did yet in those days. If a book was a suc­cess, they want­ed it to just keep going and going as long as possible.

The oth­er thing about Sil­ver Star was the fact it was not pub­lished by Mar­vel or DC! Pacif­ic Comics was a start­up pub­lish­er look­ing to estab­lish them­selves as a sol­id alter­na­tive in the mar­ket­place. Though Jack had done work for oth­er pub­lish­ers over the years, at this point in time the “Big Two” were thought to be the only real game in town. So the news that no less a per­son­age than Jack Kir­by him­self was going to cre­ate new comics for a new pub­lish­er was a Big Deal. It can’t be over­stat­ed how big that news was at the time. Pacif­ic kicked things off with Cap­tain Vic­to­ry (stay tuned), but Sil­ver Star was Jack­’s next offer­ing through them.

And this part is impor­tant: the indi­cias for both books read “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was some­thing he was­n’t going to get at either Mar­vel or DC, so I’m sure it mat­tered a great deal to him. Jack­’s inspi­ra­tion for the name appears to have come from the Sil­ver Star Medal award­ed by the US mil­i­tary for val­or in com­bat. In fact, in the sto­ry, Jack has Mor­gan Miller gain­ing the nick­name from his squad after he’s been award­ed the Sil­ver Star.

In the back­ground of this image is the antag­o­nist of the sto­ry, Dar­ius Drumm. I’ve nev­er tried to draw these char­ac­ters before, so that was a bit of a chal­lenge. I’m still not quite sure just how Sil­ver Star’s hel­met works…

Hope you enjoy, and please tune in again tomorrow!

The King

It’s the 28th Day of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. You can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is sup­posed to be Jack­’s Sil­ver Star char­ac­ter, but I’m tak­ing the lib­er­ty of shift­ing things around a lit­tle bit. Instead, I’m doing tomor­row’s prompt: “Jack Kir­by por­trait— Draw a por­trait of Jack Kir­by him­self.” My rea­son­ing is because today is actu­al­ly Jack Kir­by’s birth­day! Born in 1917, this would be his 106th birth­day today (if my math is right). So I feel like post­ing the por­trait today is appro­pri­ate. A con­fes­sion: I’m not real­ly a por­trait kind of artist. It took some work to get this to where I felt com­fort­able with it, but I did get there.

The King’s lega­cy lives on in all the great work he left us, and all the cre­ative inspi­ra­tion he’s pro­vid­ed. There are some artists who make you feel like giv­ing up, break­ing your pen­cils and walk­ing away, because you’ll nev­er be as good as they are. But then there are artists like Kir­by who, although you know you can’t do what he did, there’s some­thing in the work that fires you up and inspires you to go and create!

I hope you like my attempt at por­trai­ture here, and tune in again tomor­row to see my shot at Sil­ver Star.

The Fourth Host

This is Day 27 of the month-long online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, suggest/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. If you’d like to see what oth­er cre­ators might be doing, you can use the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for today sim­ply reads “The Celes­tials.” These char­ac­ters come from Jack Kir­by’s The Eter­nals book, one of the new titles he cre­at­ed when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. As men­tioned in oth­er posts, it appears to me that at this point in his career, Jack just want­ed to have his own cor­ner where he could be left alone to do his own thing, and to let oth­ers do their own thing, no one get­ting in any­one’s way.

The Eter­nals seemed to be Jack tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the Erich Von Däniken book, Char­i­ots of the Gods?, which the­o­rized vis­its by alien astro­nauts to our world in ancient times, shap­ing and influ­enc­ing the growth of our cul­ture. It was fuel for Kir­by to tell an epic sto­ry about three groups of human­i­ty: the Eter­nals (whom many myths are built around), nor­mal mankind, and the Deviants. Watch­ing and stand­ing in judg­ment over all are the Celes­tials, and the begin­ning of the book saw their return to Earth as the Fourth Host.

Kir­by’s designs for the Celes­tials were some of the most imag­i­na­tive char­ac­ter visu­als he’d ever come up with. Beings almost beyond com­pre­hen­sion, they did­n’t even have what you would be able to call faces.

It was­n’t pos­si­ble to draw all the Celes­tials here in this space. There are just way too many of them. So I opt­ed to draw the three I found the most visu­al­ly inter­est­ing. Arishem the Judge is front and cen­ter. On the left is Nez­zar the Cal­cu­la­tor, and on the right is Eson the Searcher.

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

Cap and Bucky

It’s Day 26 of the Kir­by Art Trib­ute, suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. You can find the work of those par­tic­i­pat­ing on your social media plat­form of choice by using the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Bucky. Cre­at­ed by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by for Time­ly (Mar­vel) back in the Gold­en Age, they had a huge hit on their hands. While Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Bucky are most­ly thought of as being patri­ot­ic heroes who fought the Axis, I dis­cov­ered some­thing inter­est­ing on re-read­ing their ear­ly tales: with all the mon­sters etc. they went up against, Cap and Buck­y’s sto­ries seem to be very much inspired by the “weird men­ace” pulp genre. If you think about it, the Red Skull and how they wrote him at that point would’ve fit in very well in a “weird men­ace” pulp sto­ry. Which is why I opt­ed to make this a night scene.

Joe and Jack only did the first ten issues of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Comics, after which they left Time­ly. They believed that pub­lish­er Mar­tin Good­man was not liv­ing up to their prof­it-shar­ing agree­ment, so they jumped over to DC where they cre­at­ed a slew of char­ac­ters like Guardian and the News­boy Legion, the Boy Com­man­dos, and their ver­sions of Man­hunter and Sand­man.

Jack had two oth­er runs with Cap­tain Amer­i­ca. The sec­ond one was in the ’60s, after Time­ly had turned into Mar­vel and “Stanand­Jack” was often treat­ed as if it was one word. That run had some­thing of a James Bond/secret agent feel, hav­ing Cap work­ing close­ly with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. Jack­’s third run was when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s, and that was him work­ing solo that time.

An aside: Cap­tain Amer­i­ca was­n’t Joe and Jack­’s only shot at a patri­ot­ic hero. In the ’50s, they also did Fight­ing Amer­i­can and his side­kick, Speed­boy. An inter­est­ing aspect of that strip is that it start­ed off as a straight anti-com­mu­nist super­hero adven­ture, but then piv­ot­ed fair­ly rapid­ly into a very fun­ny super­hero satire, pre-dat­ing the camp craze of the ’60s.

That’s it for today. Feel free to pop by again tomorrow!

The Black Panther, and His Unexpected Adventures

Amaz­ing­ly, I’ve made it here to Day 25 of the month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute, sponsored/suggested by Howard Simp­son. I was­n’t sure I was going to get through all of these, but here we are! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for today reads: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Black Pan­ther series.” I chose to draw Black Pan­ther him­self, along with Princess Zan­da and Abn­er Lit­tle, two oth­er key char­ac­ters from that run.

When Kir­by left DC to make his return to Mar­vel in the ’70s, and fans heard he was going to do a Black Pan­ther title, many expect­ed he would just pick up the same con­ti­nu­ities and types of sto­ries that pre­vi­ous cre­ators had been doing with the char­ac­ter. But that was­n’t what they got, and some were appar­ent­ly dis­ap­point­ed. At this point in Kir­by’s career, he seemed to want to be allowed to just have a lit­tle cor­ner of his own where he could do his own thing with­out imping­ing on what oth­er cre­ators might be doing, or hav­ing oth­ers impinge on his creativity.

You have to take Jack­’s Black Pan­ther run on its own terms. His view of the char­ac­ter and the sto­ries he want­ed to tell with him seemed to have roots in the types of exot­ic adven­ture sto­ries H. Rid­er Hag­gard used to write, like King Solomon’s Mines, or She. If this com­ic had come out four or five years lat­er, read­ers might have asso­ci­at­ed it with the sorts of arcane arche­ol­o­gy Indi­ana Jones delved into in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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

That Old Devil…Dinosaur

And we’ve reached Day 24 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, in hon­or of Jack­’s birth­day this month! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find their posts on your favorite social media plat­forms via the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Dev­il Dinosaur series.” I’ve drawn Dev­il him­self, and his part­ner Moon Boy here.

When Kir­by returned to Mar­vel in the ’70s, many were expect­ing Jack to be work­ing with oth­er writ­ers (like he had with Stan Lee pre­vi­ous­ly). But this time around, Jack pre­ferred to just have his own lit­tle cor­ner where he did his own thing. Dev­il Dinosaur was one of the new titles he came up with.

The book seemed like per­haps it was aimed at a younger audi­ence (It would’ve made a sol­id Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon). Artis­ti­cal­ly, like all Kir­by books, it had its moments (there’s an espe­cial­ly imag­i­na­tive two-page spread that can stand with the best two-page spreads Kir­by ever did). There was also a bit of fun in the fact they’d play around with dif­fer­ent inkers on many of the cov­ers (like they also did on his Machine Man covers).

Nev­er tried to draw Dev­il Dinosaur before! Bill Stout or Ricar­do Del­ga­do I’m not, but I had fun try­ing it. Hope you enjoy! And tune in again tomor­row to see what’s next.

Mr. Sandman…Again

It’s now Day 23 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute. Any cre­atives are free to play along, and you can find their posts on your favorite social media plat­forms with the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Sand­man series. (Gar­rett San­ford).” That last part threw me slight­ly. So far as I knew, the char­ac­ter nev­er had a name. But I dis­cov­ered it was some­thing added by oth­ers lat­er on.

Once I got past my slight con­fu­sion over the oth­er name, I knew which Sand­man was being talked about. Jack and Joe Simon had done their take on Sand­man for DC ear­li­er, in the Gold­en Age (I drew him ear­li­er here). Late in Jack­’s time at DC in the ’70s, the con­cept was revis­it­ed and rein­vent­ed from the ground up. The script for the first issue was by Joe Simon, which (unless I’m mis­tak­en) was the first time Joe and Jack had been teamed togeth­er on a com­ic since they dis­solved their part­ner­ship back in the ’50s.

This book is a bit of an odd one. It had no con­nec­tion to any of the oth­er titles Jack was doing for DC then, and was tonal­ly dif­fer­ent from all of them, seem­ing to skew more towards younger read­ers. Though that first issue man­aged some creepy scenes with the Werblink dolls.

I recall read­ing Carmine Infan­ti­no say­ing that Sand­man sold real­ly well for DC. I guess they were caught off-guard, because there’s a gap of a year between issue #1 and #2! And while Kir­by did all the cov­ers, he was­n’t back doing the inte­ri­ors until issue #4. They only got six issues out total. Issue #6 had Wal­ly Wood inking!

Any­way, in addi­tion to Sand­man him­self, I drew his side­kicks Brute and Glob. I kind of wavered on the silli­ness of hav­ing Glob give him rab­bit ears, but felt ulti­mate­ly like it would be right for that book and these char­ac­ters, tonally.

Hope you like it, and please feel free to tune back in tomorrow!

New Genesis Is Calling

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

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,…”

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

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!

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!

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!

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!

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?

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!

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!

This Is Rather Challenging…

We’re now at Day 12 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online cel­e­bra­tion of Kir­by, in hon­or of the fact Kir­by was born in August! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by using the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt? The Chal­lengers of the Unknown! It’s my under­stand­ing that this was a left­over con­cept from Kir­by’s ear­li­er part­ner­ship with Joe Simon. As real­ized in the pages of DC’s Show­case #6 (on news­stands in Novem­ber of ’56), the char­ac­ters’ ori­gin might sound a lit­tle famil­iar: four peo­ple attempt­ing an aer­i­al voy­age that end­ed in a crash land­ing which could/should have killed them. But they sur­vived, and came away with a great­ly changed out­look on their lives and their pur­pose mov­ing forward.

The ini­tial install­ments in Show­case were writ­ten by Dave Wood (no rela­tion to Wal­ly Wood). Sales were such that after four install­ments there, the Chal­lengers got their own title by ear­ly 1958. Accord­ing to the cred­its in DC’s Archive Edi­tion reprints, Kir­by actu­al­ly wrote some of the ear­ly scripts in the reg­u­lar title himself.

The strip also fea­tured inks by Wal­ly Wood on many install­ments. Wood was an amaz­ing tal­ent all on his own, and if you’ve nev­er seen Kir­by and Wood paired togeth­er, you might find it hard to imag­ine how it could pos­si­bly work. But it does, and amaz­ing­ly well! It’s like you get the best of both artists: the life, ener­gy and imag­i­na­tion of Kir­by’s pen­cils, with the light­ing and nat­u­ral­ism of Wood’s fin­ish­es. If you’ve nev­er seen their pair­ing, you owe it to your­self to check it out.

Hope you enjoy my salute to Kir­by’s Chal­lengers. And stay tuned!

I Am…

It’s now Day 11 of Howard Simp­son’s online Kir­by Cel­e­bra­tion this month, in hon­or of Kir­by’s birth­day. It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can track what they post on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Groot. Now, some of you are prob­a­bly say­ing, “Hey, wait; that does­n’t look like Groot!” That’s because it’s the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the char­ac­ter as he first appeared in Tales to Aston­ish #13.

At that point in time, pre-Fan­tas­tic Four, Kir­by was bat­ting out many, many mon­sters sto­ries, one after the oth­er, for Mar­vel. Issue after issue, month after month, they had to always come up with new ones. Kir­by was up to the chal­lenge, always find­ing inter­est­ing visu­als for all these monsters.

Groot was just anoth­er among this vast horde, along with mon­sters like Romm­bu, ZZu­tak, Googam Son of Goom, and Fin Fang Foom. Fun, but just a one-off mon­ster, like they pret­ty much all were. Groot was large­ly for­got­ten after the super­heroes took over the spot­light, until the cre­ators behind the reimag­ined Guardians of the Galaxy com­ic in 2008 decid­ed to res­ur­rect him as part of that team, and reimag­ine him. Thanks to the Guardians movies, it’s safe to say he’s a lot bet­ter known now than he ever was before. How­ev­er, it’s still fun to remem­ber how Groot start­ed off.

Enjoy, and feel free to come back tomorrow!

Larger Than Life

It’s now Day 10 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by! Open to all cre­atives, you should be able to find the work being gen­er­at­ed on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Galac­tus. He first appeared in the pages of Fan­tas­tic Four, in prob­a­bly one of the best-loved and remem­bered sto­ries of that book, known by most fans as the Galac­tus trilogy.

The Fan­tas­tic Four car­ried the tag “The World’s Great­est Com­ic Mag­a­zine” on its cov­ers. While it was most­ly Stan Lee play­ful­ly doing pro­mo­tion­al hype, more often than not dur­ing the book’s ini­tial run  by Kir­by and Lee, it was truth in adver­tis­ing. Galac­tus as a char­ac­ter was some­thing very dif­fer­ent. I don’t think any­thing like him had ever been seen before in a super­hero com­ic. Not just a street thug or a reg­u­lar human guy in a super suit, he was more a force of nature, vir­tu­al­ly god­like. He pre­sent­ed a real chal­lenge to the sto­ry­tellers. How can you defeat an antag­o­nist like that?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, I real­ized this is the first time I’ve ever attempt­ed to draw Galac­tus! I’m not gonna lie; it was a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ing to tack­le him. His visu­al, while there are cer­tain con­sis­ten­cies, also fluc­tu­ates a great deal from com­ic to com­ic. Even his col­or­ing seems to change over his appearances!

Any­way, I felt like he came out okay, to my relief. Hope you enjoy it, and hope­ful­ly you might stop in here again tomorrow!

Surfin’ Is the Only Life, the Only Life for me, Now Surf…Surf…

Here’s Day 9 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online Kir­by Cel­e­bra­tion, dur­ing Kir­by’s birth month of August. Open to all cre­atives, you should be able to find oth­er peo­ple’s work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is the Sil­ver Surfer, who first appeared in Fan­tas­tic Four dur­ing what may be that book’s best-loved and remem­bered sto­ry­line, the Galac­tus tril­o­gy. He was­n’t any­thing that was in any plot that Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by had dis­cussed, and Stan else­where has acknowl­edged that he was sur­prised when he ini­tial­ly saw the pen­ciled pages to dis­cov­er him. Jack explained that he felt a char­ac­ter as con­cep­tu­al­ly big and god­like as Galac­tus ought to have some kind of her­ald to accom­pa­ny and pre­cede him, hence the Surfer.

Stan was so tak­en with the Surfer, he made him his own, and even­tu­al­ly spun him off into his own title. Not work­ing with Kir­by, but John Busce­ma. It’s a high­ly regard­ed book (and char­ac­ter), but Stan’s con­cep­tion was dif­fer­ent from what Jack orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. Where Stan had the Surfer pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ing as Nor­rin Rad, who sac­ri­ficed him­self and his iden­ti­ty to save his plan­et, Jack thought of the Surfer as a being who was basi­cal­ly cre­at­ed out of noth­ing, and was learn­ing as he trav­eled. That’s def­i­nite­ly how things read in his ini­tial appear­ance as part of the Galac­tus trilogy.

Any­way, I hope you enjoy my shot at the Surfer. Tune in again tomorrow…

Isn’t It Romantic?

We’re now on Day 8 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by cel­e­bra­tion! Open to all cre­atives, you should be able to find the work of par­tic­i­pants on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Tribute.

Today’s prompt is less spe­cif­ic than those we’ve had thus far. It’s “Romance Comics.” If you don’t already know it, you may be sur­prised to hear that the genre of romance comics was cre­at­ed and pio­neered by none oth­er than Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by! So it’s no head-scratch­er that Howard chose this as a prompt. S&K came up with the very first romance com­ic, Young Romance, and sold the con­cept to Crest­wood Pub­li­ca­tions. The com­ic was a huge hit on news­stands, sell­ing 92% of its print run! Of course, sales suc­cess like that breeds imi­ta­tors, which soon fol­lowed from the oth­er pub­lish­ers. But the orig­i­nal S&K sto­ries had a lot more sub­stance going for them, the imi­ta­tors most­ly pale and infe­ri­or in comparison.

My choice to rep­re­sent romance comics was to depict the one char­ac­ter S&K told more than one sto­ry about. Toni Ben­son first appeared in Young Romance #1, in the sto­ry “I Was a Pick-up.” Appar­ent­ly they liked her char­ac­ter well enough that they thought it was worth revis­it­ing her in a sec­ond tale, “The Town and Toni Ben­son,” in Young Romance #10.

I hope you enjoy, and stay tuned!

On the Hunt

It’s now Day 7 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online Kir­by Cel­e­bra­tion! It’s open to all cre­atives. You should be able to find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Tribute.

Today’s prompt is comics’ orig­i­nal Man­hunter! Cre­at­ed by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by for DC Comics back in the Gold­en Age. Though DC had Paul Kirk as a non-cos­tumed char­ac­ter pre­vi­ous­ly, Simon and Kir­by rein­vent­ed him as a super­hero. They had the char­ac­ter put his pre­vi­ous skills as a game hunter to work now hunt­ing crim­i­nals (many of which were cre­ative­ly ani­mal-themed). Start­ing in Adven­ture Comics #73 in 1942, S&K did a total of eight install­ments. It was pop­u­lar enough that it con­tin­ued beyond that in oth­er hands for quite awhile, but it was­n’t the same.

Kir­by took a shot at a revived ver­sion of Man­hunter when he returned to DC in the ear­ly ’70s, in a First Issue Spe­cial (Kir­by did a few of those, debut­ing new con­cepts that unfor­tu­nate­ly did­n’t go any further).

DC appar­ent­ly liked the Man­hunter name, because peri­od­i­cal­ly they dust­ed it off and did oth­er things with it. One of the more notable of them tied into Simon and Kir­by’s Paul Kirk Man­hunter: a strip cre­at­ed by Archie Good­win and Walt Simon­son (his first work that put him on the map with most fans). It ran as a back­up sto­ry in Detec­tive Comics, which Good­win was edit­ing at the time. Well worth check­ing out, it’s been col­lect­ed a num­ber of times if you haven’t seen it.

But this is about the S&K Gold­en Age orig­i­nal! Hope you enjoy it. Stay tuned!

Mr. Sandman…

We’re at Day 6 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by cel­e­bra­tion online, in hon­or of Jack­’s birth­day. It’s open to all cre­atives, and you should be able to find any posts on your favorite social media plat­form via the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Sand­man and Sandy. Sand­man was actu­al­ly not a Simon and Kir­by cre­ation! Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by writer Gard­ner Fox and artist Bert Christ­man for DC back in the Gold­en Age, he had more of a pulp char­ac­ter appear­ance, run­ning around in a suit and hat, wear­ing a gas mask and gassing crooks with his gas gun. He pre-dat­ed many oth­er super­heroes, first appear­ing in 1939 in Adven­ture Comics #40 and The New York World’s Fair Comics #1.

By 1941, it was appar­ent­ly felt he was out of step with what was going on with DC’s oth­er char­ac­ters, so Mort Weisinger and artist Paul Nor­ris gave him his new pur­ple and yel­low super­hero togs, and added Sandy as a side­kick. Simon and Kir­by picked up the baton from Weisinger and Nor­ris lat­er that year, most def­i­nite­ly putting their stamp on the char­ac­ter! They dumped the cape that Nor­ris had ini­tial­ly giv­en him (mak­ing him look more like an S&K cre­ation), and played around with sto­ries about sleep and dreaming.

Hope you liked my lit­tle trib­ute to the Simon and Kir­by ver­sion of Sand­man and Sandy, and tune in again tomorrow!

Don’t Try This at Home!

We’ve reached the fifth day of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by! Open to all cre­atives, you can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Simon and Kir­by’s Stunt­man. So far, all the char­ac­ters have been ones cre­at­ed for either DC or Time­ly (Mar­vel). S&K cre­at­ed Stunt­man for Har­vey Comics!

It was a fun con­cept. Along with Fred Drake as Stunt­man, you had looka­like actor Don Dar­ing, who fan­cied him­self some­thing of a detec­tive, but had a way of get­ting in over his head. He offered some com­ic relief in the strip. Mean­while, Fred Drake as Stunt­man han­dled all the real heavy lift­ing in solv­ing the cas­es. And then you also had a roman­tic tri­an­gle with Don Dar­ing’s costar, San­dra Syl­van, who did­n’t know Fred even existed.

The strip was qual­i­ty, like every­thing Simon and Kir­by tack­led, but it came out at a bad time. Post-WWII, there was appar­ent­ly less inter­est in super­heroes, and with all the paper rationing no longer in place, there was a glut of titles on the stands. So the sad thing was that they only got three issues out before the plug had to be pulled.

I tried an idea for my Stunt­man por­trait that I thought might be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and inter­est­ing, depict­ing him in mid-stunt. Hope you enjoy, and see you again tomorrow!

Guarding the Legion

It’s now Day 4 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by! Open to all cre­atives, you can find the work on all social media plat­forms hash­tagged #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is the Guardian and the News­boy Legion! They’re anoth­er Simon and Kir­by cre­ation which clicked with fans, run­ning from their debut in Star-Span­gled Comics #7, all the way through issue #64.

The News­boys were a group of orphans who lived in Sui­cide Slum. Offi­cer Jim Harp­er became their legal guardian. Frus­trat­ed with red tape, Harp­er also adopt­ed the iden­ti­ty of the Guardian to fight crime off-duty in more direct ways than he could while on-duty. You can’t see much of it here, but the Guardian had a shield shaped like a badge, which he made very effec­tive use of.

Clock­wise from the Guardian cen­tered at the top are Big Words (in the glass­es), Scrap­per (in the cap), Gab­by, and Tom­my Tompkins.

Hope you enjoy, and maybe we’ll see you again here tomorrow!

Allied against the Axis

We’re at Day 3 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by on social media! Open to all cre­atives, you can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is the Young Allies. I must admit that once you get out­side of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, I am less famil­iar with the Time­ly char­ac­ters than I am with DC’s Gold­en Age offer­ings. Cre­at­ed ini­tial­ly by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by, the Allies were a kid gang group that appar­ent­ly first appeared in the pages of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca under the name “the Sen­tinels of Lib­er­ty.” They proved pop­u­lar enough to be spun off into their own title. Simon and Kir­by did­n’t stick around for that long.

The Allies were anoth­er kid group who fought the Axis. Led by Cap­tain Amer­i­ca’s side­kick Bucky and the Human Torch’s side­kick Toro, the rest of the group (from upper left) includ­ed Hen­ry “Tub­by” Tin­kle, (-cringe-) “White­wash” Jones, Jef­fer­son “Jeff” Sandervilt, and Per­ci­val Aloy­sius “Knuck­les” O’Toole.

The Young Allies sto­ries haven’t been reprint­ed very much, and for good rea­son. If you both­er to dig up art­work online (like I had to in order to do this draw­ing), you’ll see why. Poor White­wash is treat­ed in this hor­ri­bly racist way in the strip. Not that the oth­er char­ac­ters appeared to be much more than a col­lec­tion of stereo­types either (the fat kid who’s eat­ing all the time, the tough kid who’s always look­ing for a fight, etc.).

Any­way, I hope you enjoy what I did with them. See you again tomorrow!

Commandos Calling

It’s Day 2 of Howard Simp­son’s cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by on social media! I explained a lit­tle more about it yes­ter­day. It’s basi­cal­ly open to all cre­atives, and if you want to find out what peo­ple are doing on your favorite social media plat­forms, you can use the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is the Boy Com­man­dos. They were a Simon and Kir­by cre­ation for DC Comics back in the Gold­en Age, and a big sales suc­cess that last­ed well beyond WWII, run­ning from 1942 all the way to 1949. Simon and Kir­by had a lot of suc­cess with kid gangs. The Com­man­dos were a group of orphans from dif­fer­ent coun­tries who fought the Axis, com­mand­ed by Capt. Rip Carter (upper right cor­ner). At the very bot­tom left cor­ner in the der­by is Brook­lyn (I don’t know if he was ever giv­en a last name), and on his right is Jan Haasan from the Nether­lands. Above them are André Chavard of France on the left, and to André’s right is Alfie Twid­gett from England.

I hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for tomor­row’s drawing!

I Have a Vision!

Long­time vis­i­tors to my site will know that I’m a big Jack Kir­by fan! August hap­pens to be the month Jack Kir­by was born, on the 28th. Real­iz­ing this, Howard Simp­son came up with a great idea: a month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Kir­by and his work online, via social media. I believe it’s open to any cre­atives, and the idea is “the more, the mer­ri­er.” If you want to search them all out and see who’s doing what on your favorite plat­forms, they should be hash­tagged #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es. I haven’t usu­al­ly done a lot of social media chal­lenges, but I could­n’t pass this up. Strap in; it’s going to be a busy month!

The first prompt is the Gold­en Age ver­sion of the Vision. If most peo­ple are aware of the Vision at all, it’s prob­a­bly Mar­vel’s Sil­ver Age ver­sion of the char­ac­ter. The Gold­en Age ver­sion was pub­lished by Time­ly (the name Mar­vel was known by dur­ing most of the Gold­en Age), and despite some visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Sil­ver Age ver­sion, he was a dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter. Instead of being an android, this Vision was a super­nat­ur­al being who could trav­el into and out of our world via smoke.

I’ve set cer­tain para­me­ters of my own for my con­tri­bu­tions this month. They’re all going to be for­mat­ted like this, basi­cal­ly por­traits in small squares. I’ve also elect­ed to stick to the lim­it­ed old school col­or palette that com­ic books used on their inte­ri­or pages for many years. There’s a method to my mad­ness that will hope­ful­ly pay off at the end of the month, if I can pull off what I’d like to accomplish.

Hope you enjoy! Stay tuned!