Monthly Archives: August 2024

Knights That Do Justice‑y Type Things

2 Replies

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”

2 Replies

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

2 Replies

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

2 Replies

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!

2 Replies

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!

2 Replies

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.

Do the Stomp!

2 Replies

We’re still in Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and a new week means a new theme! This is Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age Week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who grew up in that august insti­tu­tion on Dark­sei­d’s Apokolips.

Today’s prompt to kick off the theme is the Female Furies, but I’ve decid­ed to go slight­ly off-menu and give you only one Fury today: Stompa.

Stom­pa (and the oth­er Furies) were first intro­duced in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6. You can prob­a­bly guess her spe­cial­ty by her name. Sounds sim­ple, but she made very effec­tive use of her abil­i­ty. Stom­pa and the oth­er core Furies appar­ent­ly decid­ed to defect to Earth from Apokolips, and became semi-reg­u­lars in the book for the rest of its run.

I had a bit of a time try­ing to nail down her col­or scheme, as it seemed to sort of shift around a lit­tle bit. I end­ed up with this as a good com­pro­mise for consistency.

Stom­pa was kind of fun to draw! I hope you enjoyed my take, and tune back in tomor­row to see who’s next.

Some Enchantress Evening

2 Replies

If you’ve been fol­low­ing along, you know I’ve been doing Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. This has been Asgard Week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters from Jack­’s Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor run. And our final vis­i­tor from Asgard this week is the Enchantress!

Her first appear­ance (in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #103) was a fun sto­ry, team­ing her with the Exe­cu­tion­er. Chic Stone’s inks worked well there, espe­cial­ly with a char­ac­ter like the Enchantress. Only a cou­ple years lat­er, it was reprint­ed in the Thor King-Size Spe­cial #1 (AKA Thor Annu­al #2).

The Enchantress’ col­or scheme was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in her first appear­ance. Instead of the over­all green scheme, her cos­tume includ­ed bright magen­ta! Also, they made her a plat­inum blonde. I liked that idea; it was kind of a unique touch that got lost when they lat­er went with a more con­ven­tion­al blonde col­or. So I made her a plat­inum blonde again here.

Tomor­row’s a new week and a new theme! Tune in tomor­row to see.

“Cross the Rainbow Bridge of Asgaaaard,…”

4 Replies

Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and we’re in the back end of Asgard Week. You knew it was inevitable that at some point, the prompt would have to be Thor!

Many of the char­ac­ters I’ve been draw­ing here, I’ve nev­er attempt­ed before. I can’t say that about Thor, though. I’ve drawn him a few times.

Way back when I was try­ing to break into comics, I remem­ber work­ing up a sam­ple page fea­tur­ing Thor. One of the pan­els fea­tured a close-up of an angry Thor, yelling just pri­or to leap­ing on his foe while swing­ing his ham­mer. I had heard that com­ic artists some­times shot pho­to ref­er­ence, so I shot a Polaroid of myself mak­ing the face I want­ed, try­ing to get it just right. The end result was a Thor face that looked a lit­tle too much like me! The les­son as an artist is that using pho­to ref­er­ence, you have to be real­ly care­ful that it does­n’t take over.

I’ve gath­ered that some Sil­ver Age fans back when Thor was first com­ing out made the con­nec­tion that he was kind of Mar­vel’s equiv­a­lent to Super­man: being able to fly, hav­ing super-strength and vir­tu­al invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. There’s also the aspect of him hav­ing been sent to Earth by his father. A less obvi­ous cor­re­la­tion might be between Thor and the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel, as both char­ac­ters make a big mag­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion to get from their civil­ian iden­ti­ties to their hero­ic ones.

Tomor­row’s the finale of Asgard Week. Who’s it going to be? You’ll have to come back to find out!

No, I Am Not Coming with You!

4 Replies

This is now the 22nd day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son), and we’re work­ing our way through Asgard Week. Today’s prompt is Hela, god­dess of Death! Hela presents a strik­ing visual!

Like some oth­er char­ac­ters in the book, it seemed to take a lit­tle bit before she devel­oped a real “fixed” form. It seems she only appeared four times dur­ing Jack­’s run. I don’t have a copy of her ini­tial appear­ance in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #102 (I think in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up),  but when I looked up her sec­ond appear­ance in Thor #133, I was sur­prised. Not only is the draw­ing a bit dif­fer­ent, the col­or scheme does­n’t even include any green in it! It was­n’t until #150 that we got what most peo­ple have come to think of as her clas­sic design.

I’d nev­er tried to draw Hela before, and it was an inter­est­ing chal­lenge to wrap my head around her design, fig­ure out a way to under­stand it so I could draw it. One lib­er­ty I took was the green lips. They did­n’t do that in her appear­ance in #150, but it felt right to me. It’s like it gives her an even more “oth­er­word­ly” feel.

I had fun with this one, so I hope you like it too. Come back tomor­row to see who vis­its us next from Asgard!