“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!

3 thoughts on ““Don’t Be So Negative All the Time!””

  1. Kir­by cer­tain­ly has a cache of char­ac­ters to work from, which is cer­tain­ly an under­state­ment. I have to say, since I have been engag­ing in your year­ly Month of Kir­by, I have learned so much. I think the genius of Kir­by was that he let him­self be influ­enced. He seems to have seen the world around him as some­thing of a pre­cious resource to mas­sage and bring to life for peo­ple to enjoy. In your today’s image, what stands out are the eyes of Anni­hilus, but for total coin­ci­den­tal rea­sons. We are deal­ing with a hor­nets’ nest in the sep­a­ra­tion between the house and the foun­da­tion wall. Now every time I get the mail, I will be see­ing Anni­hilus inter­fer­ing. Thanks Mark.

    Reply

    1. My sym­pa­thies for your hav­ing to deal with Anni­hilus’ relatives!
      You’ve def­i­nite­ly hit on some­thing about Kir­by being “influ­enced.” From what I’ve read, pret­ty much any­thing he saw or read could become fod­der for a visu­al, or a sto­ry idea. Some­times I real­ize these things (or devel­op the­o­ries about where they might have come from) in the course of try­ing to draw his characters.

      Reply
  2. Pingback: We're Having a Blast!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *