We’re at Day Eight of the second annual Jack Kirby Tribute Month, created by Howard Simpson to honor the King in his birth month. A new element this year is each week having a theme, this week’s being the Fantastic Four. If you’ve been following along the previous days, you might be able to guess today’s prompt: Mr. Fantastic.
Reed Richards as Mr. Fantastic is the brilliant scientist/inventor and leader of the FF. A fun aspect of the original Jack and Stan run on Fantastic Four were those scenes where Reed was intensively working in his lab over some wild Kirby-designed piece of equipment. I kind of had that in mind when doing this drawing.
If you’ve seen the original run by Jack and Stan, you might recognize that the way Jack drew Reed kind of morphed over the time he was doing the book. Mr. Fantastic started off a bit thinner in the face initially, but got a little more “robust” later on. I referenced how Reed looked during the middle issues of the run here, which many consider to be the prime period for the book.
The week’s theme is not over! Having covered the FF themselves, tune in tomorrow to see who’s up next.
Once again, thanks Mark. You nicely capture the intensity of Dr. Richards. And oh, the gimmicks. This one ties in nicely with the device Jack used to reveal Sue Storm’s other more hidden powers. I wonder if this is a hint as to to your developing narrative? Time will tell.
Glad you’re liking this. Kind of like how Howard Simpson observed on LinkedIn, Mr. Fantastic’s stretching is a neat power, but Reed’s real superpower is his mind. And like I said there, while people often (rightly) connect the Thing as being something of an alter ego for Jack Kirby, I believe it’s also true that there’s a bit of Jack in Reed Richards, curious and questing into the unknown.