Monthly Archives: August 2024

Jolly and Green

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We’re at Day 11 of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, start­ing the sec­ond full week of the month. A new week means a new over­all theme: D.N.Aliens (from the DNA Project and the Evil Fac­to­ry in Jim­my Olsen). Today’s prompt is the Giant Jim­my Olsen.

When Jack Kir­by decid­ed it was time to leave Mar­vel for green­er pas­tures and jumped over to DC, it was a Big Deal! Report­ed­ly, Jack was offered his pick of any DC book he want­ed. Jack though was very much a work­ing man at heart; while he was an artist, he was also very con­scious of the fact he was work­ing hard to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly as best he could. And he was mind­ful that oth­er artists were in the same boat, so he was ret­i­cent to get any­one boot­ed from a reg­u­lar assign­ment that helped to pay their bills. As a result, when offered his choice of any book in the DC line, Jack said, “Give me your worst-sell­ing title,” since he would­n’t be putting any­one out of work by doing that. This is how Jim­my Olsen (of all books) wound up being an inte­gral part of Jack­’s Fourth World Saga at DC.

I’m sure that any reg­u­lar Jim­my Olsen fans’ heads were prob­a­bly spin­ning, over all the wild, crazy action and con­cepts Jack threw at them. DNA? Cloning? The Hairies? The Moun­tain of Judg­ment? In some ways, Jack was prob­a­bly a bit too far ahead of his time for DC, or for most read­ers then. It was­n’t until years lat­er that sub­se­quent Super­man cre­ative staff seemed to final­ly catch up with Jack and revis­it­ed some of his concepts.

Even before Jack took on the book though, there was some­thing of a tra­di­tion of Jim­my Olsen under­go­ing strange changes or trans­for­ma­tions from time to time (look up Giant Tur­tle Boy, for exam­ple). Bring­ing DNA into the sto­ry­telling mix allowed Jack to put a fresh spin on this idea. The Giant Jim­my Olsen was genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered from DNA sam­ples tak­en from Jim­my by the Evil Fac­to­ry. He was cre­at­ed to break into the DNA Project , kill Super­man and destroy the Project.

I don’t know if Jack was respon­si­ble for his col­oration, but some­one must have amused them­selves by col­or­ing Giant Jim­my green, which gave him some­thing in com­mon with a cer­tain big, strong, rag­ing (ahem!) Incred­i­ble char­ac­ter at anoth­er company.

Hope you enjoy, and tune in again tomor­row to see the next D.N.Alien!

I Can Dig It

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It’s now the 10th day of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, devised by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the cre­ative genius of the King. Howard intro­duced a fun new wrin­kle this year, of themed weeks. This week’s theme has been the Fan­tas­tic Four, and on this last day of the week, the final prompt is the Mole Man.

The Mole Man may not be con­sid­ered the FF’s arch­en­e­my, but he has the dis­tinc­tion of being the very first antag­o­nist they faced in their ori­gin sto­ry. Like many of the FF vil­lains, he had more com­plex­i­ty to him than your aver­age com­ic book vil­lain. He com­mand­ed an army of Moloids (which I’ve includ­ed some of here, free of charge) as well as var­i­ous giant under­ground mon­sters. He was bit­ter, yet not entire­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic, hav­ing been shunned and basi­cal­ly dri­ven away by most of the rest of mankind.

While I have (on rare occa­sion) pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed to draw some of the oth­er FF char­ac­ters I’ve drawn this week, this is the first time I’ve ever tried to draw the Mole Man. It was fun!

And that wraps up Fan­tas­tic Four week. Tomor­row’s a new week, and a new theme!

You’re All Doomed!

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Today makes Day Nine of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the cre­ative genius of Jack Kir­by dur­ing his birth month. We’re in the first full week of the month, and the theme for this week is the Fan­tas­tic Four. Today’s prompt is Dr. Doom.

Vic­tor Von Doom views him­self as being above oth­er men. And yet (though he’d deny it), he’s clear­ly threat­ened by Reed Richards’ genius. He’s a bit more com­plex of a char­ac­ter than your aver­age supervil­lain. Kir­by has been quot­ed as say­ing he was inspired in part by The Man in the Iron Mask, and was try­ing to make him “the clas­sic con­cep­tion of Death,” with­out a hint of mer­cy, by mask­ing him in cold, unmer­ci­ful steel. He viewed Doom as being para­noid, and Doom’s per­fec­tion­ism was what ulti­mate­ly tripped him up and bent his mind.

Dr. Doom’s mask is kind of tricky to draw! It sort of morphs a bit between pan­els and appear­ances, so hope­ful­ly I’ve done it jus­tice here.

Tune in tomor­row for the finale of Fan­tas­tic Four week!

Stretching the Point

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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.

Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed

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We’ve reached the sev­enth day of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son. A cool new aspect he’s intro­duced is themed weeks, where each day’s prompts fit with­in that theme.

If you’ve been fol­low­ing along, this week’s theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four. Today’s prompt is the Thing.

Ben Grimm as the Thing is a char­ac­ter who might appear fair­ly sim­ple and straight­for­ward on the sur­face, but if you’ve read the orig­i­nal run by Jack and Stan, you real­ize there’s more to him than meets the eye. He can be fun­ny, but there’s also under­ly­ing pain and regret, being stuck in this mon­strous form. Lat­er cre­ators have some­times lost that aspect, focus­ing more on the comedic elements.

The Thing is not an easy char­ac­ter to draw! I had a bit of a strug­gle here before I felt like I had it rea­son­ably correct.

Hope you approve. Tune in tomor­row to see who’s next!

He Thinks He’s Hot Stuff!

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It’s Day Six of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, we’re in the midst of Fan­tas­tic Four week, and today’s prompt is the Human Torch.

In his ini­tial appear­ances, he was per­haps a bit too form­less. Jack quick­ly fig­ured this out, and cod­i­fied what we now think of as his clas­sic look. From time to time, some sub­se­quent artists have tried to get cre­ative and find oth­er ways to draw him, but some­how he does­n’t look like him­self when you get too far removed from the tem­plate Jack set.

As men­tioned ear­li­er, I’m try­ing to get some sense of nar­ra­tive into these shots. Where exact­ly is he? Some­place unusu­al, no doubt. Feels like a sto­ry there.

Hope you like what I’ve done here. Tune in tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s up next!

Now You See Her,…

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By now you know I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to mark the month of Jack­’s birth (he would turn 107 lat­er this month if he were still with us).

The new thing Howard’s intro­duced this year is weeks that have an over­all theme to each day’s prompts, and this week’s theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four. I did a group shot yes­ter­day, and today’s prompt (the first of the indi­vid­ual shots) is the Invis­i­ble Woman.

At first, her only pow­er was to turn invis­i­ble. But I think Jack and Stan real­ized pret­ty quick­ly that this did­n’t quite give her enough to ful­ly hold her own with the rest of the group. So they had her devel­op an addi­tion­al pow­er: the abil­i­ty to cre­ate force fields. That did the trick.

Sue Storm was orig­i­nal­ly known as the Invis­i­ble Girl, and it was­n’t until John Byrne’s run on Fan­tas­tic Four in the ’80s (sec­ond best in my opin­ion only to Jack and Stan’s orig­i­nal run!) that she was re-chris­tened the Invis­i­ble Woman. Byrne came up with some of the most cre­ative uses for her pow­ers that had ever been seen, and man­aged to show once and for all that she was a force to be reck­oned with!

Hope you like, and feel free to come back tomor­row to see who’s up next!

Fantastic!

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Here’s Day Four of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and begin­ning the first full week of August means we also have a new theme this week: the Fan­tas­tic Four. And the first prompt is…the Fan­tas­tic Four?!

Since we also have sep­a­rate prompts for each indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter com­ing up, I thought I might do a “before and after” thing, today being the “before” part of the equa­tion. This was a moment with a lot of dra­ma in their ori­gin sto­ry, so I went with it. I always thought it was cool how Jack chose to ren­der the cos­mic rays as these sort of “lozenge” shapes. Kind of not all that threat­en­ing in them­selves indi­v­d­u­al­ly, but fear­ful because they’re an unknown, and there are so many of them!

I ful­ly admit to appro­pri­at­ing the col­or scheme used in the orig­i­nal ver­sion, because why not? I thought it looked great, and it also kind of reminds me of the almost “pop art” col­or­ing approach used in Alex Ross’ Fan­tas­tic Four: Full Cir­cle (which in my opin­ion is the best ver­sion of these char­ac­ters that I’ve seen in years!).

A note about the FF: while pret­ty much any Mar­vel book Jack had a hand in is worth a look, there are two absolute­ly essen­tial titles he did at Mar­vel that I feel are the tent­posts of his work there, which have to be tak­en into account when apprais­ing that body of work. In them, you see not just an artist and sto­ry­teller work­ing at the height of his craft, but you also get to see some­thing of the man him­self and his inter­ests. Fan­tas­tic Four is one of those books. In it, you get to see Jack­’s fas­ci­na­tion with sci fi, the unknown, and with what might be out there. It’s a theme that runs through much of his work, and we got to see a bit of it pre­vi­ous­ly in Chal­lengers of the Unknown at DC.

I did say two titles, so I’m not going to hold you in sus­pense wait­ing days to hear the sec­ond one. It’s Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. That’s where you see Jack­’s ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion with myths and leg­ends, which runs through­out his career.

So who’s first up when we move to the indi­vid­ual mem­bers tomor­row? I’m not going to spoil that. You’ll just have to check in and see!

Buncha Dingbats!

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We’re at day three of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son! The week’s theme (at least for the three days that fall into August) has been char­ac­ters cre­at­ed by Jack who appeared in DC’s 1st Issue Spe­cial. Today’s prompt is the Ding­bats of Dan­ger Street! From left to right up top are Good Looks, Krunch, and Bananas. At low­er right is Non-Fat.

As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, I nev­er saw any copies of 1st Issue Spe­cial on the spin­ner rack when it was first pub­lished, but lay­ing hands on copies years lat­er did­n’t prove to be too cost­ly. Appear­ing in 1st Issue Spe­cial #6, the Ding­bats is kind of a quirky strip. You get to see Jack­’s sense of humor, but there’s also a bit of an edge to it too, the sense things are dangerous.

Jack and Joe Simon were the pio­neers of the “kid gang” genre in the Gold­en Age, find­ing fun and dra­ma in pulling togeth­er dis­parate per­son­al­i­ties who might rub each oth­er the wrong way on occa­sion, but ulti­mate­ly had each oth­er’s backs. They came up with the Young Allies, Boy Com­man­dos, the News­boy Legion, the Boy Explor­ers, and Boys’ Ranch (maybe oth­ers that I’m not think­ing of at the moment). So this was Jack­’s lat­er attempt at anoth­er group in that vein. Maybe there’s a bit of the Bow­ery Boys in there, or maybe it’s just Jack­’s own expe­ri­ence of grow­ing up in a tough neighborhood.

Though DC only pub­lished the one sto­ry, there were at least two more issues of Ding­bats Jack drew, which were ulti­mate­ly “writ­ten off.” If you want to see those (in col­or, no less!), I high­ly rec­om­mend get­ting your­self a copy of TwoM­or­rows’ Ding­bat Love, which final­ly brings to light a lot of mate­r­i­al Jack did for DC in those days that pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er got to see the light of day.

If you’ve seen the one pub­lished issue, you might at first think, “He col­ored Non-Fat wrong!” Nope! DC got it wrong in the orig­i­nal com­ic! Jack intend­ed that Non-Fat be African-Amer­i­can. There’s even a draw­ing he did of the cast where there are brief descrip­tive notes for each char­ac­ter, and next to Non-Fat, Jack wrote, “Non-Fat is an eager beaver Black kid.” Appar­ent­ly the col­orist who han­dled that issue of 1st Issue Spe­cial did­n’t get that memo!

Like with the oth­er 1st Issue Spe­cial char­ac­ters, this is the first time I ever tried to draw these guys. Hope you enjoy! Stay tuned for tomor­row, and a new theme!

He Always Gets His Man…or at Least He Did that One Time

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This is day two of the online sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by artist Howard Simp­son. Like last year, I intend to try to par­tic­i­pate in the fun, and see if I can’t hit each day’s prompt.

As men­tioned yes­ter­day this (short) week’s theme is the three issues of DC’s 1st Issue Spe­cial that fea­tured cre­ations by Jack. Today’s prompt is the ver­sion of Man­hunter that appeared in 1st Issue Spe­cial #5.

This is a dif­fer­ent take on Man­hunter from what Jack and his part­ner Joe Simon had done back in the Gold­en Age, and was also dis­tinct from the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed ver­sion Archie Good­win and Walt Simon­son had done a cou­ple years ear­li­er as a reg­u­lar back­up strip in Detec­tive Comics. I don’t want to spoil any­thing for those who haven’t yet had a chance to read Jack­’s ver­sion here by say­ing too much, even this many years removed. But I found this take to have sort of a clas­sic, pulpy inspi­ra­tion that I enjoyed. If this had gone on to a series, I would’ve been along for the ride, to see where Jack would’ve tak­en it.

Like I men­tioned yes­ter­day, though I nev­er saw this title on the spin­ner rack when it orig­i­nal­ly came out, I found it not too expen­sive when I went look­ing for it sev­er­al years later.

I’d nev­er tried to draw this ver­sion of Man­hunter, so it was fun to do that. I did­n’t men­tion this yes­ter­day, but some­thing I’m try­ing to do with all of these this time out is to cre­ate some sense of nar­ra­tive, the feel­ing that each of these might be a moment from the midst of a sto­ry. I did some of that last year, but I want to try to con­scious­ly do more of it this year.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s!