Takes All Kinds

Here’s day 14 of of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the month of Jack Kir­by’s birth. The theme this week is the D.N.Aliens of the DNA Project and the Evil Fac­to­ry in Jim­my Olsen. And today’s prompt is Arin, the Armored Man.

Arin only appeared in one short tale, part of a few one-shot extras Jack did under the umbrel­la title, “Tales of the DNA Project.” Arin was cre­at­ed by the Project to be able to live and thrive in the vac­u­um of space. He had with him a red back­pack that…well, I don’t want to spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t read it. We only get to see him for three pages in Jim­my Olsen #146, so who knows what comes next?

Arin seems to be metal­lic in nature, but he appears dif­fer­ent from the kind of shiny met­al com­pos­ing char­ac­ters like the Sil­ver Surfer. I tried to get that sense here too.

I hope you enjoy my take, and feel free to tune in tomor­row for anoth­er D.N.Alien!

 

2 thoughts on “Takes All Kinds

  1. joe musich

    Anoth­er great effort. It sure looks exact­ly like Jack had done the work. But of course, your “sig­na­ture” is a reminder that the piece is a Lewis.You point put the dif­fer­ence between the metal­lic sur­faces of Sil­ver Surfer and Arin. I won­der if the flat sur­faces on Arin were meant as a form of cam­ou­flage? Thanks.

    Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      Glad you liked my shot at Arin, the Armored Man. I’m actu­al­ly not try­ing for “dead-on” Kir­by (which would sort of defeat the goal of the trib­ute thing, bring­ing your style or ver­sion to it), but I sup­pose it’s hard not to get him in there, giv­en I’m ref­er­enc­ing his work for these, and he’s always been a big influence.
      No idea if Jack had in mind cam­ou­flage or not. I’d guess he was think­ing metal­lic as pro­tec­tive in space, and want­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent from the Sil­ver Surfer. I got the sense Arin was intend­ed to be more iron-like, where his sur­faces would still catch light some­what (hence the squig­gles), but not be as reflec­tive as the brighter sil­ver met­al of the Surfer.
      It would be inter­est­ing to see how Alex Ross would approach this character!

      Reply

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