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!
Great choice of imagery for your today’s panel. And great execution. And a great worthwhile topic to consider. It is not so much of what the individual thinks and feels as how they come to that. I remember meeting Larry Tye at SDCC when his superhero book Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero was released (or just about to be released) to discover he had written a book about master manipulator Edward Bernays entitled The Father of Spin. I know that somehow having people understand that they can be manipulated is important, for them to know it can happen. The representative or metaphorical character of Psycho-Man is another way to accomplish that task. Big thank you, sir.
Glad you enjoyed my take on Psycho-Man. I felt like I had to include his tablet that helps him to manipulate people’s emotions. I was about to say this would be the first time I did any lettering as part of one of these images, but in looking back, there’s part of a pockmarked “S” (for Subway) in the Kamandi image I did for Kirby Tribute Month in 2023.