Today makes day 15 of the second annual Jack Kirby Tribute Month, created by Howard Simpson. If you’ve been following along, you know the theme this week is the D.N.Aliens from the DNA Project and the Evil Factory, as seen in Jack’s run on Jimmy Olsen. And the prompt for today is Angry Charlie.
Angry Charlie was a product and survivor of the Evil Factory, but not really bad in himself. He was more of a chaos agent, acting in unpredictable ways. His appearance was weird and a little offputting, yet somehow also managing to be kind of cute, in a way. The Newsboy Legion (especially Gabby) kind of adopted him as a pet. Angry Charlie had an odd propensity to snack on furniture on occasion.
This isn’t the first time I’ve drawn Angry Charlie! Last year’s Jack Kirby Tribute Month had a prompt for Kirby’s monsters, and out of all the creatures I could’ve done, I chose to draw Charlie. Guess I have a bit of a soft spot for him.
Hope you enjoy, and that you tune in again tomorrow to see the next D.N.Alien!
Much better to see Angry Charlie chewing his food. Thanks. His teeth structure always seemed a bit mysterious. They look like almost one big grinding mass. Your pose of Charlie definitely more reflects his character. And his glorious yellow visual sensors. Gotta love it.
Thanks Mark
Glad you like it. Yeah, there’s something intriguing about him. Like I said, last year I had my pick of any Kirby monster to draw, and I went with Angry Charlie.
As I recall, the other thing that distinguishes Angry Charlie is that he and Morgan Edge were the only characters Kirby introduced that made a reappearance when the book went back to its original editorial staff.
I remember the complaint from the previous creators is that Jack sort of messed up a “sweet book”. Yet, what were sales like when he took over?
Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen under Kirby was a whirlwind of ideas, action and it centered on the titular character (which letter writers also complained about) and not Superman.
I like your rendition here, although I am not getting as strong a sense of narrative in the panels from these last few entries. That’s just an observation, not a criticism.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the issues of Jimmy Olsen from immediately after Jack left, but it seems like I have a vague awareness that Morgan Edge showed up. Didn’t feel like they really quite knew what to do with him.
It’s my understanding that sales on Jimmy Olsen prior to Jack were NOT good. I touched on how Jack ended up enfolding it into his Fourth World saga earlier here. Your comment gives firsthand confirmation of what I’d suspected, that fans of the book pre-Kirby didn’t really know what to make of the wild ride Jack took them on. It wasn’t until much later, the triangle number era of Superman (which you are intimately familiar with), that those creators realized what a gift Jack had given DC in all this story material!