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!
All I know about the Demon series would not even fill the tip of one his horns. But your bright yellow presentation as well as your comment about Mr. Kirby’s interpreting the character through childhood stories is motivation to check out the series. Human possession is definitely a twist. I have to wonder if there was ever a thought about a film of the character. Thank you.
There’s also another ingredient in the mix that made up the Demon, which I didn’t mention in my post. Part of the visual inspiration appears to have come from an installment of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, where the Prince disguises himself as a monster, using the skin of a goose as a mask, in order to gain some kind of advantage over a larger foe he has to go up against on his own. https://boingboing.net/2023/04/30/was-jack-kirbys-demon-inspired-by-prince-valiant.html