As of today, we’ve reached 28 days (AKA four full weeks) worth of drawings for this year’s Jack Kirby Tribute Month. The theme has been the Fantastic Four and related characters, and today’s prompt is Diablo.
Diablo, the evil alchemist, first shows up in FF #30. While the FF are taking a vacation in Transylvania(!), they go exploring and find an old castle buried in a forest. One night, the Thing hears a voice in his mind, calling out to him from a crypt within the castle. The Thing frees Diablo from his imprisonment, and in return, Diablo gives Ben a more human appearance. But then we eventually find out…
Oops! Nope! Not going to spoil the story for those who haven’t read it. Let’s just say that with Diablo, not everything is as it seems, and the Transylvanians had reason to fear him and his abilities.
Strangely, Stan Lee apparently would often say that Diablo was “the worst character we ever did.” Some have wondered if maybe he was thinking of an earlier monster character they did that used the same name. But when John Byrne later got his shot to write and draw FF (second best run only to Jack and Stan’s, in my opinion), with a “back to basics” approach, he chose to kick everything off with Diablo as their opponent in his first issue. Apparently he saw potential in the character that Stan didn’t.
This is off the topic of Diablo, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that today is also Jack Kirby’s birthday! Born August 28, 1917, if my math is correct, that would make this his 108th. So with much love and respect, long live the King through the great body of work he gifted us!
We’re moving into the last few days of the Tribute! Feel free to come back again tomorrow to see who comes next.
Diablo had a good run as villains go. Great costume colors gave the character more bad guy life points. I especially like the sort of star pattern surround his neck. Maybe he is to be slightly remindful of a certain Hollywood actor? And the mustache cannot be topped. And you capture all of of it. And a handsome fellow with a great jaw structure and some brilliant white teeth that could have made for an interesting Superbowl dental commercial. Cheers to Diablo; may the elixir not destroy his teeth. But I digress once again. I have to say these daily posts for Kirby month collected into a compilation with all your remarks would be a great resource for beginner fan or professional. Thanks, Mark.
Were you thinking of someone like Ricardo Montalbano, perhaps? He would’ve had about the right vibe for this, back when the issue first came out. But maybe he was a bit too “leading man” handsome. Thinking about it, with the horror movie vibe as a background to Diablo’s first appearance, I wonder if maybe Jack had John Carradine in mind? Carradine did have that long oval face and the strong jaw.
Diablo was one of those cases like I mentioned in a comment previously, where Kirby’s design was more of an impression than something where the details were rigidly fixed. So there is a bit of a challenge to take all those visuals, and try to arrive at something more fixed.
The other thing about the design is the interesting color choices. The green used in his first appearance is a little different from the standard comic book green (100% cyan, 100% yellow). It took a little experimentation on my part to figure out what the formula was.
When it comes to the copy for my posts, I kind of wonder sometimes about whether anyone will really care about it. But I feel compelled to at least say something, to give visitors a context for what I’m trying to do, in case they’re not familiar with whatever character I’m drawing. Some artists will post their work and basically say, “Here’s a new pitcher I drawed.” I like to try to come up with something hopefully worthwhile. So it’s good to hear that I may have succeeded.