Month: August 2025

We’re Having a Blast!

Day 26 now of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and all month, we’ve been focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Blas­taar, “the Liv­ing Bomb-Burst.”

Like Anni­hilus, Blas­taar also comes from the Neg­a­tive Zone. He’s the deposed despot of his home plan­et, sen­tenced by his peo­ple to be put into a con­tain­ment suit and strapped to an aster­oid, float­ing in the void of space when we first see him in FF #62. In an acci­dent, Reed Richards gets sucked through the por­tal in his lab into the Neg­a­tive Zone (all the FF vis­its to the Neg­a­tive Zone seemed to end up being very dan­ger­ous), and he ends up at one point cling­ing to one side of Blas­taar’s aster­oid. Dur­ing the res­cue of Reed, Blas­taar man­ages to break out of his suit and fol­low, escap­ing to Earth and team­ing up with the Sand­man.  Let’s just say: may­hem ensues.

Blas­taar can fire pow­er­ful blasts of con­cus­sive force from his hands, mak­ing him a dan­ger­ous adver­sary. He’s a very intense and anger-prone per­son­al­i­ty, which caus­es Sand­man to won­der whether he’s mak­ing a mis­take in team­ing up with such a wild card.

That’s all for Blas­taar. Tune in tomor­row to see who comes next!

The Klaw!

We’re mov­ing into our last sev­en days of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Klaw, “the Mur­der­ous Mas­ter of Sound.”

Klaw’s ori­gin is very much entan­gled with the Wakan­dans and Black Pan­ther. We learn via flash­back in FF #53 that Klaw was a sci­en­tist who, in a ruth­less pur­suit of his research into the field of sound, decid­ed he had to have access to the Vibra­ni­um owned by the Wakan­dans. When T’Chal­la’s father King T’Cha­ka denies Klaw access, Klaw uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly shoots him dead on the spot! Lat­er, Klaw thinks he’ll shoot the young T’Chal­la, but he under­es­ti­mates the boy, los­ing his right hand as a result.

In FF #53’s present day, Klaw is cre­at­ing mon­sters of “sol­id sound,” using a con­ver­tor of his own inven­tion. Los­ing once again to T’Chal­la and the Wakan­dans, Klaw’s hid­den lab most­ly destroyed, he makes one last des­per­ate gam­ble, jump­ing into his con­ver­tor him­self. We don’t see the result of this exper­i­ment until #56, when he’s revealed to have been trans­formed into a being made of sol­id sound.

There’s a neat thing they do in these issues with the sound crea­tures, where all of them are col­ored bright red to visu­al­ly call them out. And when Klaw trans­forms, he too comes out red. His visu­al for the most part is a lot sim­pler than many oth­er Kir­by designs at the time, though the face is unique.

If you wan­na see who’s next, feel free to come back by again tomorrow!

Let Me Think About This for a Moment…

24 days in to this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme all this month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is the Mad Thinker!

The Mad Thinker first shows up in FF #15. He has an amaz­ing abil­i­ty (assist­ed by com­put­ers) to pre­dict vir­tu­al­ly every angle, all the odds, and to work them in his favor when putting togeth­er his plans. In his first appear­ance, he had the FF basi­cal­ly beat­en, but for one small detail he could not have fore­seen (…and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is, if you haven’t read that story!).

The Thinker shows up six times dur­ing Jack and Stan’s reg­u­lar run of the FF, plus in three Annuals.

Over the course of his appear­ances in the book, like oth­er Kir­by char­ac­ters, he under­went some changes. He start­ed off with his hair only slight­ly longish for the day in his first appear­ance (1963), but it got longer, wilder and bushi­er by the time of his last appear­ance dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run.

In some ways, the Thinker’s look kind of plays against the stan­dard visu­al you’d expect when you think of a “mad sci­en­tist” type of char­ac­ter. Instead of some skin­ny, long-faced bald­ing type, the Thinker is more burly and hir­sute, prone to wear­ing cov­er­alls blue col­lar work­er style. How­ev­er, there was a thing you heard some­times back then about aca­d­e­mics being called “long­hairs.”

I kind of won­der what Kir­by had in mind, whether there was some thought of the Thinker tying in some­how as orig­i­nal­ly being from behind the Iron Cur­tain? His visu­al fits in pret­ty well with oth­er Mar­vel char­ac­ters of the time who they con­nect­ed more direct­ly to that as part of their back sto­ry. Like the Red Ghost.

And as a bonus, I also threw in the Thinker’s Awe­some Android. Though it’s real­ly kind of a sim­ple design, the visu­al has always grabbed me, from the moment I first came across it back when I was a kid. Some­thing about that face­less strange­ly-shaped head, and his malleability/adaptability.

That’s it for these guys. Come by and see who shows up next tomorrow!

You Psycho!

We’re at Day 23 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focus­ing this time all month long on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Psycho-Man!

Psy­cho-Man debuted in Fan­tas­tic Four Annu­al #5. With access to all kinds of advanced tech, he’s a mas­ter of manip­u­lat­ing peo­ple’s emo­tions, and what they see. In fact, even when see­ing him, a hero can’t be total­ly sure of what they’re see­ing. I don’t want to say any more, for fear of spoil­ing things for any­one who might not have read the sto­ry yet. He also appeared in issues #76 and #77 of the reg­u­lar run of the book.

The char­ac­ter’s visu­al is one of those real­ly strik­ing designs that Kir­by came up with over and over again so eas­i­ly over the course of his career. It was almost more of an impressionistic/expressionistic thing with some of these designs, as they did­n’t real­ly seem to be fixed in a rigid way when you study them close­ly (like you have to do when try­ing to draw them). The things that are con­sis­tent are that face (col­ored gold­en-yel­low) with the open eyes, and the white and green of his outfit.

Psy­cho-Man’s hel­met and bare, high fore­head might be seen as some­thing of a design motif that would lat­er also pop up in Kir­by’s Dark­seid for DC.

That’s about all I have to say about Psy­cho-Man, except that he was fun to try to draw! Tune in tomor­row to see which char­ac­ter comes up next!

Just Frightful!

Day 22 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, and the theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt: the Fright­ful Four!

It’s some­thing of a stan­dard device in hero­ic fic­tion to try to cre­ate an oppo­site for your hero (or heroes). So it stands to rea­son that Kir­by and Lee at some point were like­ly to come up with a Fright­ful Four to oppose the Fan­tas­tic Four (which they did in issue #36). You might expect that they would’ve come up with a whole group of new char­ac­ters (Kir­by was obvi­ous­ly cre­ative enough to do so), but for some rea­son, that was­n’t the path they took.

Instead, they took a Spi­der-Man vil­lain (Sand­man), and put him with two vil­lains (the Wiz­ard and Paste-Pot Pete, lat­er known as the Trap­ster) who had each pre­vi­ous­ly gone up against the Human Torch in his solo strip over in Strange Tales. To come up with the req­ui­site four, they cre­at­ed a new char­ac­ter, Medusa, who would lat­er go on to be revealed as a mem­ber of the Inhumans.

Jack and Stan must have liked work­ing with the Fright­ful Four, because they rat­ed no less than six appear­ances dur­ing their FF run, plus they also showed up in a cou­ple oth­er titles around that time too.

You might be a lit­tle sur­prised by Medusa’s out­fit here. Since I had already drawn her some days back, I thought it would be fun to show her here in the out­fit Jack gave her in her first appear­ance, as a mem­ber of the Fright­ful Four. With her very next appear­ance, she was redesigned into what could be con­sid­ered her clas­sic uni­form, with her hair ful­ly exposed.

As some­times hap­pened with Kir­by, the look of char­ac­ters would some­times change a bit over time. The Wiz­ard’s hel­met start­ed off as one height, but end­ed up quite a bit taller by the group’s last appear­ance dur­ing Jack and Stan’s run in issue #94. Ini­tial­ly, Jack had also giv­en him these sort of “face guards” that got stream­lined away lat­er on. I kind of liked those, so I brought them back here (at least sub­tly). It’s kind of a mix of the lat­er hel­met sil­hou­ette with that ele­ment from the ear­li­er helmet.

Fig­ur­ing out col­or was also a bit of a chal­lenge, as it changed a bit over those appearances.

Hope you enjoyed my take, and feel free to come back tomor­row to see who’s next!

J’Accuse!

Today com­pletes three weeks of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son). The theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, and today’s prompt is Ronan the Accuser.

As if the FF did­n’t have enough to deal with between Namor and the Skrulls, appar­ent­ly the Kree Empire also took issue with them! Because of the FF defeat­ing an destroy­ing the Kree Sen­try in FF #64, the Supreme Intel­li­gence of the Kree declares them guilty, and sends Ronan the Accuser to enact their sen­tence in issue #65.

Ronan is a for­mi­da­ble ene­my for the FF! He comes very close to suc­cess­ful­ly enact­ing the “extreme penal­ty.” (Per­haps because of the Comics Code, they weren’t quite able to just come out and say “Death.”). He presents a very strik­ing pres­ence, being about 8′ tall and wear­ing a unique uniform.

Ronan only made one appear­ance in the Fan­tas­tic Four com­ic, but he reap­peared lat­er in Avengers, Cap­tain Mar­vel and Ms. Mar­vel (books in which the Kree Empire was a presence).

It was fun to take a crack at draw­ing Ronan. Swing by tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s next on our hit parade!

“Mole!”

Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, Day 20, and the theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is the Mole Man! The Mole Man was there at the very begin­ning, both of the Fan­tas­tic Four (issue #1), and the Mar­vel Comics universe.

As men­tioned yes­ter­day, those ear­ly issues of FF were kind of tran­si­tion­al. They still read and felt a lot like the mon­ster sto­ries Atlas/Marvel had been doing pre­vi­ous­ly. FF #1 gave us a char­ac­ter in Mole Man who had con­trol of a whole army of mon­sters, hid­ing in his under­ground realm. Today, we would prob­a­bly call him a “kai­ju mas­ter,” as some of these mon­sters were quite sizable.

Mole Man’s debut seemed to be root­ed not only in Mar­vel’s pre­vi­ous mon­ster comics, but also in kai­ju films like Godzil­la, and a tra­di­tion of “under­ground world” sto­ries (such as Jules Verne’s Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth, or the Bur­roughs Pel­lu­ci­dar stories).

For extra inter­est here, I added one of the mon­sters from that first sto­ry which caught my eye. It appeared to be made out of some kind of dark, liv­ing rock! It was­n’t giv­en a name in that sto­ry; no idea whether lat­er cre­ators might have giv­en it a name or not.

I also did the Mole Man for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. You can find it here.

The Empire Strikes Back

It’s now Day 19 of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme all month con­tin­ues to be the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is: the Super-Skrull!

We first meet the Skrulls very ear­ly on in the found­ing of the Mar­vel Uni­verse, in FF #2, where after fail­ing in their attempt to take over the Earth, as part of their defeat, the Skrulls agree to trans­form into cat­tle and let them­selves be hyp­no­tized into for­get­ting they were ever any­thing else(!). At this point, the FF did­n’t even have uni­forms. Much like the first issue, in a lot of ways, this sto­ry feels like it’s still a tran­si­tion­al one between the ear­li­er mon­ster books and the super­hero books they would soon become known for.

In issue #18, we learn that appar­ent­ly the Skrull Empire did not take kind­ly to the defeat of their inva­sion. And they were aware that the Fan­tas­tic Four were respon­si­ble. So they sent their most pow­er­ful war­rior, the Super-Skrull, to defeat the Fan­tas­tic Four and con­quer the Earth.

The Super-Skrull is a lot big­ger than the Skrulls we saw pre­vi­ous­ly. They were kind of puny, while he appears to be about the size of a pro wrestler. Not only that (and his nor­mal Skrull abil­i­ty to change appear­ance), but he’s equipped with all the pow­ers of the Fan­tas­tic Four (minus the Invis­i­ble Wom­an’s force fields; they had­n’t giv­en her that pow­er yet). Plus an addi­tion­al pow­er he reveals lat­er in the story.

He real­ly gives the FF a run for their mon­ey in his first appear­ance, but ulti­mate­ly they fig­ure out his weak­ness and defeat him. This time.

Hope you liked my take, and feel free to stop by tomor­row to see who’s next.

“Don’t Be So Negative All the Time!”

Here on Day 18 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is Annihilus.

We meet Anni­hilus as the ruler and tyrant of the Neg­a­tive Zone in FF Annu­al #6. Sue is about to give birth, and Reed deter­mines that she and their baby are in dan­ger. Sav­ing them requires he risk his life leap­ing into the Neg­a­tive Zone again, and of course, nei­ther John­ny nor Ben are going to let him go alone. And their quest forces them to cross paths with Annihilus…but I think I’m not going to spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t yet had the chance to read it.

Anni­hilus presents a strik­ing visu­al, as sort of a metal­lic insec­toid humanoid. He imme­di­ate­ly comes off as scary and hos­tile from the first glance. Kir­by seems to have had a bit of a fas­ci­na­tion with the idea of insec­toid humanoids, going on to explore it again both in New Gods for DC, and in his lat­er cre­ator-owned Cap­tain Vic­to­ry for Pacif­ic Comics.

I’d nev­er tried to draw Anni­hilus before, and it was kind of fun! The col­or scheme was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly what you’d expect based on the b/w draw­ing, but it def­i­nite­ly catch­es your eye.

That’s all for Anni­hilus. Who’s next? You’ll have to come back by tomor­row to see!

“Where’d You Get That Cool Helmet From?”

As you know, it’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. We’ve moved into the rogues’ gallery, and today is the biggest of them all (lit­er­al­ly): Galactus!

Galac­tus as a char­ac­ter was like noth­ing no one had ever seen before in a super­hero com­ic when he showed up in Fan­tas­tic Four #48 (part one of what would come to be known as the clas­sic “Galac­tus Trilogy”).

He comes to Earth to con­sume our world and the ener­gy it con­tains, with no thought to any of the liv­ing beings on our plan­et. When the FF try to stop him, they quick­ly real­ize that they might as well be insects! Seem­ing­ly there is noth­ing they can do. In fact, if not for the Watch­er step­ping in to give them some assis­tance, the Earth would have met its end!

You might look at my depic­tion of Galac­tus here and feel like some­thing is a lit­tle odd com­pared to what you’re used to. That’s because (as I men­tioned in an ear­li­er post) I’ve set myself a rule to stick to how these char­ac­ters were depict­ed dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. And in this case, I felt like stick­ing with Galac­tus’ por­tray­al in his first appear­ance, “The Galac­tus Trilogy.”

They were still fig­ur­ing out the Big G’s col­or scheme dur­ing the Tril­o­gy. Each issue, it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. In fact, in the first issue (#48), he was red and dark green! It was­n’t until #50 when they got some­thing fair­ly close to what would become his stan­dard col­or scheme (though they weren’t yet using the blue-vio­let). For com­par­i­son, you can see my depic­tion of Galac­tus done for the first Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

Hope you enjoyed this, and feel free to tune in again tomor­row to see which vil­lain comes up next!

The Hand of Doom!

Day 16 of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. We’ve moved from allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters into the rogues’ gallery. And the first prompt is none oth­er than Dr. Doom!

He’s arguably the FF’s arch­neme­sis. Vic­tor Von Doom has a per­son­al his­to­ry with Reed Richards, going back to when they met in col­lege when Doom was there as an exchange stu­dent. His mind rivals Reed’s (though in his arro­gance, Doom would be insult­ed if it was sug­gest­ed in his pres­ence that any­one even came close to being his equal!). He is a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac and per­fec­tion­ist, who can­not tol­er­ate the slight­est flaw. This is part of why he stays masked almost all the time.

The FF had a num­ber of adven­tures dur­ing Jack and Stan’s run where they went up against Doom. And over time, Kir­by gave him­self more artis­tic license to get expres­sive with Doom’s iron mask in show­ing his emo­tions. At times, the imagery could get quite chilling!

I drew Dr. Doom for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month too, and if you like, you can check that out here.

That’s our first vil­lain! Tune in tomor­row to see who comes next!

“Who’s a Good Boy?!”

It’s day 15 (about the halfway point) of 2025’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. On this last day of a group­ing of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Inhu­mans’ giant dog, Lockjaw.

Lock­jaw first shows up in FF #45, along with Crys­tal of the Inhu­mans. He’s large­ly Crys­tal’s pet (“large” being the oper­a­tive word), and is a strik­ing sight. All the Inhu­mans have spe­cial pow­ers, and Lock­jaw is no excep­tion. He’s able to tele­port him­self and oth­ers wher­ev­er he wants to go. In fact, there’s a peri­od where John­ny Storm and Wyatt Wing­foot accom­pa­ny Lock­jaw as he tele­ports around, hop­ing he will bring them to wher­ev­er Crys­tal and the oth­er Inhu­mans are trapped. It ends up being quite a jour­ney before they final­ly reach their desired destination.

I’ve been won­der­ing a bit about what inspired Jack and Stan to cre­ate Lock­jaw. This isn’t some­thing I’ve par­tic­u­lar­ly researched, but the thought of old paint­ed por­traits of nobil­i­ty or roy­al­ty came to mind, where they were some­times depict­ed with their pets. So why not a giant bull­dog befit­ting a roy­al fam­i­ly as unusu­al as the Inhu­mans? It’s only a guess, but maybe that was where Lock­jaw came from.

Tomor­row we move from allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters to the FF’s rogues gallery. Who’s going to be first? Check in tomor­row to see!

Wiggle, Wiggle!

It’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, and the theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. You might have real­ized that we’re in the midst of a group­ing of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. And today’s prompt is the Bax­ter Build­ing’s mail­man, Willie Lumpkin.

Willie first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #11, in the short slice-of-life sto­ry “A Vis­it with the Fan­tas­tic Four.” We first meet the poor lit­tle guy try­ing to lug in a ginor­mous mail­bag of fan let­ters for the FF. Inter­act­ing with them in the lob­by, he gets to show them his own spe­cial ability…

The lov­able Mr. Lump­kin only showed up a cou­ple of times dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run, both of those fair­ly ear­ly on. But lat­er cre­ators liked the char­ac­ter, and so he would show up again from time to time.

For some rea­son in that first appear­ance, the col­orist made the strange choice to col­or his uni­form green. I don’t recall ever see­ing a U.S. mail­man with a green uni­form. So I did some Googling to see if I could find out what mail­men were wear­ing in the ear­ly ’60s, and used that instead. I also took my col­or cues from that uni­form ref­er­ence, get­ting as close as I could with­in the lim­it­ed palette.

Willie was fun to draw! Hope you liked him. Check back tomor­row to see who our last ally/supporting cast mem­ber is.

Stay up Late

On the 13th Day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), the theme (as you know by now) is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue.

Franklin was a late cast addi­tion dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. Just mak­ing sure Sue could safe­ly give birth to Franklin result­ed in the rest of the team hav­ing to risk their lives by leap­ing into the Neg­a­tive Zone in FF Annu­al #6 (more on that in a future post).

I ini­tial­ly thought about try­ing to do some­thing fanci­er with my depic­tion, show Franklin using some of the pow­ers lat­er cre­ators gave him. But with all of these Kir­by Trib­ute FF images, I’ve made a rule for myself to stay with­in the lim­its of what Jack and Stan did dur­ing their run. And dur­ing that time, Franklin was pret­ty much just a nor­mal, healthy baby.

It might throw some of you to see him with brown hair, but that was how Franklin was depict­ed for a long time, even after Kir­by left the book. I’m not sure at what point he was shift­ed over to being depict­ed as blond, but that was how Franklin was being shown by the time John Byrne did his FF run. And doing some Googling, it seems there are now images of him also hav­ing black hair. No idea what that’s about.

That’s it for Franklin. If you like, come by tomor­row to see who’s up next.

Don’t Mess with the Governess!

We’ve reached Day 12 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. This time out, it’s all about Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters from Jack Kir­by’s and Stan Lee’s 100+ issues of “The World’s Great­est Com­ic Mag­a­zine.” We’ve been doing allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters for the moment, and today’s prompt is Agatha Harkness.

She shows up very late in Jack and Stan’s run, in issue #94. Reed and Sue are look­ing for a child-rear­ing spe­cial­ist who can pro­tect new­born Franklin when they need to go off on mis­sions, and have decid­ed to hire Agatha Hark­ness. In that intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry, “The Return of the Fright­ful Four!,” Miss Hark­ness proves her­self to be more than capa­ble of han­dling that job!

I would guess that Agatha Hark­ness was prob­a­bly inspired by some of the oth­er monster/horror mate­r­i­al that was around in pop cul­ture at the time. On TV, you had shows like The Addams Fam­i­ly, The Mun­sters, and new­com­er Dark Shad­ows. Ben Grimm even ref­er­ences Barn­abas from Dark Shad­ows, Drac­u­la, and late show hor­ror movies in his dia­logue. I’d sug­gest the sto­ry is one of the bet­ter ones from the lat­ter part of the Kirby/Lee FF run. It gives Kir­by a chance to stretch some of the hor­ror mus­cles he’d lat­er go on to use in The Demon for DC.

Hope you enjoy my take. Come back tomor­row if you’re curi­ous to see who shows up next!

The “W’s” Have It

On the 11th Day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Month, focused on Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is John­ny Stor­m’s col­lege room­mate and good friend, Wyatt Wingfoot.

We first meet Wyatt in Fan­tas­tic Four #50 (as if there was­n’t already enough going on with­in the “The Galac­tus Tril­o­gy!”). It seems as though per­haps Wyatt might have been inspired by Native Amer­i­can Olympian Jim Thor­pe (one indi­ca­tor might be that Lee actu­al­ly gave the col­lege’s Foot­ball coach the name “Thor­pe”), though at first Wyatt showed no inter­est in athletics.

Wyatt had no super­pow­ers, but his nat­ur­al ath­let­ics, quick mind and brav­ery equipped him to accom­pa­ny the FF on sev­er­al adven­tures. A good friend, he accom­pa­nied John­ny Storm in his exten­sive search for Crys­tal and the Inhu­mans, at great risk.

I believe his last appear­ance dur­ing the Kirby/Lee FF run was in issue #80, where he enlist­ed the FF’s help to find out what was going on on the reser­va­tion with report­ed appear­ances of Toma­zooma, the Liv­ing Totem. In that last appear­ance, Wyatt was dri­ving around a sort of ATV called the Gyro­cruis­er, gift­ed to him by the Black Pan­ther. I thought it would be fun to include it here, add a lit­tle extra interest.

That’s all for the allit­er­a­tive Wyatt Wing­foot. (Stan sure did like those allit­er­a­tive char­ac­ter names!) Come back tomor­row if you’d like to see who shows up next!

Clear As…

Day 10 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, and this year is focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. At the moment, we’re in the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Crys­tal of the Inhumans.

Crys­tal first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #45, where most of the Inhu­mans were also first intro­duced. John­ny Storm encoun­ters her, is fas­ci­nat­ed by her, but she runs away, fear­ful of being seen by nor­mal humans. When John­ny flames on as the Human Torch, she is no longer fear­ful, think­ing he must be an Inhu­man also.

John­ny and Crys­tal quick­ly get very close (most would say she was John­ny’s first love), but they’re trag­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed when the Inhu­mans’ Hid­den Land is trapped under an impen­e­tra­ble dome. John­ny spends a lot of time try­ing to get to her. Lat­er (in issue #81), she actu­al­ly joins the FF when Sue steps away for a time. Often referred to as an “Ele­men­tal,” Crys­tal has the pow­er to manip­u­late earth, air, fire and water.

In her first appear­ance, she just wore a white dress, which helped to give her a sort of inno­cent and ethe­re­al appear­ance (I’m pret­ty sure this had to be deliberate).

Some­thing about the way Jack drew her face in that first appear­ance made me think of Kathy Ire­land. Years lat­er, in the mid-’90s, when Producer/Director Lar­ry Hous­ton was doing a Fan­tas­tic Four car­toon, I got the chance to draw the char­ac­ter mod­el for Crys­tal. Anoth­er artist had drawn her in the yel­low cos­tume that kind of became her stan­dard out­fit lat­er (which I drew her in here). But Lar­ry had want­ed her in the white dress, since they were adapt­ing her intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry­line from issue #45 where she met Johnny.

I chose to also try to keep her ini­tial like­ness to Kathy Ire­land from that first appear­ance. No one told me to do that; it just felt right to do it, since it was a dis­tinc­tive face. But as it turned out, they actu­al­ly got Kathy Ire­land to play the char­ac­ter for that episode! Kind of neat it worked out that way.

I tried to achieve that same face here again, though this time with the yel­low out­fit. No idea how that hair­band and those “end­pieces” in her hair work, but they sure look cool!

Hope you like my take on Crys­tal. Feel free to come back tomor­row to see who shows up next!

A Hairy Situation

It’s now Day Nine of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. This time out, it’s focused sole­ly on the Fan­tas­tic Four and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters from Jack and Stan’s 100+ issue run. Today’s prompt is Medusa, of the Inhumans.

In her first appear­ance, Medusa is actu­al­ly not an ally. She shows up teamed with the Wiz­ard, Sand­man and Pastepot Pete as the Fright­ful Four, in Fan­tas­tic Four #36. She makes a for­mi­da­ble ene­my, with psy­choki­net­ic con­trol over her lengthy, pre­hen­sile hair. It isn’t until FF #45 that we find out about the Inhu­mans, and that she’s part of the group.

Although the FF’s first meet­ings with the Inhu­mans don’t go well, over time, they become allies. After Jack and Stan’s run, Medusa even spends some time as a mem­ber of the Fan­tas­tic Four.

Medusa’s out­fit changes quite a bit over the years. It’s safe to say that what I’ve drawn here is more or less her clas­sic look. Though in her first appear­ance, her out­fit is quite dif­fer­ent! (Stay tuned!)

More often than not in comics, red hair has typ­i­cal­ly been depict­ed as a stan­dard com­ic book orange (50% magen­ta with 100% yel­low). But when they real­ly want the col­or to punch (like with Medusa), some­times they’d go full-on com­ic book red (100% magen­ta with 100% yellow).

Look­ing at it now, I feel like maybe a lit­tle bit of Wal­ly Wood crept into my depic­tion here, sub­con­scious­ly. But I can’t find him ever hav­ing drawn her. How­ev­er, I do remem­ber Dave Simons once doing a draw­ing of her in Wood’s style, so maybe that was in the back of my mind.

Hope you like, and (a hint) tune in tomor­row for anoth­er Inhuman!

“I Always Feel Like, Somebody’s Watching Me…”

We’re at Day Eight of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. In the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Watcher.

The mys­te­ri­ous Watch­er first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #13, “The Red Ghost and His Inde­scrib­able Super-Apes!” The FF and the Red Ghost race to be first to land on the moon, and to every­one’s sur­prise, near ancient ruins in the Blue Area of the Moon, they first encounter the Watch­er. He explains that he comes from a very advanced world where his peo­ple roam the uni­verse, wit­ness­ing events on all sorts of plan­ets. The Watch­er breaks a cen­turies-long vow of silence and steps into their conflict.

He’s some­times referred to by the name Uatu, but he did­n’t gain that name until Cap­tain Mar­vel #39 in 1975. At this point and for the rest of Jack and Stan’s FF run, he was sim­ply “the Watcher.”

The Watcher’s appear­ance changes a great deal dur­ing the course of Jack and Stan’s run. In his first appear­ance, he was col­ored a pale yel­low, with a pur­ple cape and tunic. Lat­er in the run when he appeared, his pro­por­tions had changed, and his head got small­er. I elect­ed to go with his ear­ly look (because I pre­fer the more “oth­er-word­ly” look with the big­ger head and eyes with­out pupils), but his lat­er, more rec­og­niz­able col­or palette.

Why did his appear­ance change so much? I recall read­ing a con­jec­ture about that which seemed pret­ty rea­son­able (though I don’t remem­ber exact­ly where I read it). It was point­ed out that in inter­ven­ing peri­ods, the Watch­er had showed up in oth­er comics drawn by oth­er artists, and his appear­ance had been kind of altered. The the­o­ry was that Jack was try­ing to be con­sis­tent to what had become the Watcher’s cur­rent look, and that’s why he changed so much.

The Watch­er appar­ent­ly took an inter­est in the FF and their activ­i­ties, step­ping in from time to time (most notably in “The Galac­tus Tril­o­gy” in Fan­tas­tic Four #48–50).

Enjoy, and feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s next!

I Feel You!

It’s Day Sev­en of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly this time to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, as of the last cou­ple days, we’re in the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Ali­cia Masters.

Ali­cia was intro­duced as the daugh­ter of the vil­lain the Pup­pet Mas­ter, in Fan­tas­tic Four #8. In the course of that sto­ry, Ali­cia meets the FF, and real­izes she has feel­ings for Ben Grimm, the Thing. Ben has feel­ings for her too, and their rela­tion­ship helps to soft­en and ground him after the tragedy of his muta­tion. We learn that Ali­cia is blind, and also a very tal­ent­ed sculp­tor. She becomes a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, play­ing piv­otal roles in sev­er­al sto­ries. Most notably in the Galac­tus Tril­o­gy, Fan­tas­tic Four #48–50.

Some­thing I real­ized in look­ing back on her appear­ances in the first 100+ issues is that there was a real effort to try to keep her fash­ions and hair­styles cur­rent. I notice that with a num­ber of the female characters.

That’s it for Ali­cia! Tune in tomor­row to see who’s next.

On the Prowl

We’re now at Day Six of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. This time, cura­tor Howard Simp­son has focused on char­ac­ters from Jack and Stan’s Fan­tas­tic Four run. And today’s prompt is the Black Panther!

Though Black Pan­ther was not the first black super­hero (most agree that dis­tinc­tion should go to the Gold­en Age char­ac­ter Lion Man), he was still ground­break­ing. Thank­ful­ly, they did­n’t go with the name “Coal Tiger” that they were appar­ent­ly con­sid­er­ing at one point (based on notes on an ear­ly sketch).

Since this Trib­ute Month is FF-themed, I opt­ed to base how I drew Black Pan­ther on how he first appeared dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF-run. Kir­by and Joe Sin­nott (in the inks) real­ly pushed the black-spot­ting on his cos­tume, plus there was the short cape held on by a strap across his chest.

Instead of the stan­dard blues typ­i­cal­ly used in comics for black cos­tumes like this, ini­tial­ly they went with a col­or for­mu­lat­ed out of all three of the usu­al print­ers’ inks (cyan, magen­ta and yel­low) that mim­ic­ked gray. An actu­al gray was not pos­si­ble inside a com­ic in those days, with the lim­it­ed palette of 64 col­ors. It was a unique look. Lat­er, they changed the Pan­ther’s col­or to a more stan­dard blue. Most like­ly because they could guar­an­tee it would print more con­sis­tent­ly than the fake gray.

I almost drew the Pan­ther in the “tech­no-jun­gle” where he con­front­ed the FF in his first appear­ance. Such a wild con­cept (and very Kir­by), I don’t think they ever used that idea again after his first appear­ance. So I fig­ured going with a more reg­u­lar type of jun­gle foliage would prob­a­bly be best.

A bit of triv­ia: some years back in my day job in ani­ma­tion, I end­ed up (so far as we know) cre­at­ing the char­ac­ter mod­el for Black Pan­ther’s very first appear­ance in ani­ma­tion! It was in X‑Men: The Ani­mat­ed Series. You can read about it here.

That’s it for this one. Come by tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s up next!

Let’s Go Surfin’ Now,…

On Day Five of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, the prompt is Nor­rin Radd, AKA the Sil­ver Surfer.

It’s been doc­u­ment­ed (in Stan Lee’s own words) that the Surfer was ini­tial­ly Jack­’s cre­ation. There was no men­tion of a char­ac­ter like him in any of their plot dis­cus­sions, but Jack felt that a char­ac­ter as big (both phys­i­cal­ly and meta­phys­i­cal­ly) as Galac­tus need­ed some kind of a her­ald. Jack­’s ini­tial idea was that the Surfer had no pre­vi­ous exis­tence, and was a cre­ation out of noth­ing by Galac­tus. That gives more weight to his learn­ing about human­i­ty and turn­ing on Galac­tus in Fan­tas­tic Four issues #48–50, which have come to be known col­lec­tive­ly as “The Galac­tus Trilogy.”

Stan Lee lat­er adopt­ed the char­ac­ter as his own, and kind of devel­oped his own ideas about what he want­ed to do with him. He enact­ed them in the solo Sil­ver Surfer title: giv­ing him a pre­vi­ous exis­tence as Nor­rin Radd, who offers him­self up to Galac­tus as her­ald in order to save his home plan­et and the life of his beloved, Shal­la Bal. Inter­est­ing ideas in their own right, but kind of under­cut­ting what Kir­by had in mind initially.

An inter­est­ing “What If” is the last issue of that run of the Sil­ver Surfer title (issue #18), where they let Jack not just draw it, but also write it. For much of the run, the Surfer had often been depict­ed as depressed, bemoan­ing his impris­on­ment on Earth and the way human­i­ty act­ed. In this last issue (done just before the King left Mar­vel to go to DC), Kir­by had the Surfer final­ly get fed up with all the vio­lence he was con­tin­u­al­ly encoun­ter­ing on Earth. In a full page close-up on the final page, he angri­ly shouts, “Let Mankind beware! From this time forth–the Surfer will be the dead­liest one of all!” The next issue ban­ner at the bot­tom pro­claims “Next: the sav­age­ly sen­sa­tion­al new Sil­ver Surfer!” It would have been inter­est­ing to see where that would have gone!

I’ve drawn the Surfer a few times myself. There’s some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about how sim­ple his design is, yet also strik­ing. He’s a fun chal­lenge to execute!

That’s it for today! Check back tomor­row for who’s up next.

Flame On!

We’re at Day Four of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), this time all Fan­tas­tic Four-themed. And com­plet­ing our Four is John­ny Storm, the Human Torch!

The pow­ers John­ny gained in their flight through the cos­mic rays were arguably the flashiest of the group, and actu­al­ly fit­ting his char­ac­ter (espe­cial­ly as the youngest mem­ber). He flew high and burned hot, much like his emo­tions some­times did in those ear­ly adven­tures. In those ear­ly days, some­times he would go beyond his lim­its and lose his pow­ers until he could rest and recov­er them.

Over the course of Jack and Stan’s orig­i­nal Fan­tas­tic Four run, John­ny grew and went through a lot. Some of which we’ll even­tu­al­ly get to in a lat­er post.

Well, that’s our Four! Who comes next, now that we’ve done them? Tune in tomor­row to see!

“What a Revoltin’ Development!”

It’s now Day Three of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters. And today’s prompt is none oth­er than the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing himself!

It’s been said that every super­hero group needs a super-strong char­ac­ter. And Ben Grimm def­i­nite­ly fills that bill. But he’s more than that. His pow­ers came with an obvi­ous cost, and there’s a sad­ness and regret that peri­od­i­cal­ly come out (some­thing that some lat­er writ­ers have tend­ed to for­get or neglect over the years). He’s got a rough exte­ri­or (lit­er­al­ly!), but a big heart. Strong as he is, some­times the Thing would be in sit­u­a­tions where he was beyond his lim­its. But he nev­er would stop try­ing. And in a tough sit­u­a­tion, he’s def­i­nite­ly the sort of per­son you would want back­ing you up.

One more mem­ber of the group to go tomorrow!

It’s the Ones You Don’t See That You Gotta Look out For!

Day Two of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the whole month is ded­i­cat­ed to Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Sue Storm Richards, the Invis­i­ble Woman!

Sue has a unique role in the Fan­tas­tic Four. She kind of acts as the emo­tion­al cen­ter or heart of the group. When Reed Richards would get too car­ried away in his head with his own thoughts, she could bring him back to earth and ground him. And he always trust­ed her to do that. When Ben Grimm would some­times get angry or depressed, she knew what to say to bring him back again. And when her younger broth­er John­ny would get hot-head­ed or too out-of-con­trol, she knew how to rein him in also. It’s kind of a sub­tle role, but an impor­tant one.

Ini­tial­ly after their flight through the cos­mic rays, Sue only had the pow­er of invis­i­bil­i­ty. But I think Jack and Stan soon real­ized that was­n’t enough for their nar­ra­tive needs, and gave her the sec­ondary pow­er to gen­er­ate force fields. Often those pow­ers have been used in large­ly a defen­sive way, but dur­ing John Byrne’s run on Fan­tas­tic Four, he came up with some inno­v­a­tive uses for her pow­ers that showed once and for all that she could hold her own with any­one else.

Feel free to come by tomor­row to see who’s next!

“That’s Just Too Fantastic!”

It’s August, which means it’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month again! Cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son, this year’s prompts are all Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed. And things are kick­ing off with none oth­er than Mr. Fan­tas­tic himself!

Trans­formed like the oth­er mem­bers of the quar­tet by an encounter with cos­mic rays on a rock­et trip into orbit, Reed Richards is the leader of the Fan­tas­tic Four, and one of the most bril­liant minds in the Mar­vel Comics Uni­verse. He took the stretch­ing pow­ers he gained and found inno­v­a­tive ways to use them, not just in deal­ing with men­aces encoun­tered by the Fan­tas­tic Four, but even in his every­day work in his lab. Not hav­ing his unique abil­i­ties, most sci­en­tists would prob­a­bly find it phys­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult to work on some of the equip­ment he designed.

Tune in again tomor­row to see who’s next!