We’ve now reached Day 13 of this year’s Jack Kirby Tribute Month, curated by Howard Simpson. The prompt for today is Medusa, of the Inhumans!
I’ve drawn Medusa a couple of times for a previous Jack Kirby Tribute Month (here and here). She was first introduced in Fantastic Four as a member of the Frightful Four, discovered by the Wizard and brought onto the team. But a bit later, it was decided that she would fit in even better as part of a new concept, the Inhumans. It’s no secret that most comics in those days were done spontaneously, on the fly, and sometimes it took them a bit to figure out the best ways to employ new characters. When done well (in instances like Medusa), it made for good story material.
Trying to think of a new way to depict Medusa from what I’d done previously, I thought it might be kind of fun to have her getting the upper hand on the Wizard. Clearly he’s not happy about the situation!
Hope you like my take on Medusa. Feel free to come back and see who’s next tomorrow, if you like.
I appreciate your backstory intros to your daily posts during Kirby Month. Particularly with this sort of comment… “It’s no secret that most comics in those days were done spontaneously, on the fly, and sometimes it took them a bit to figure out the best ways to employ new characters.” As a kid reading these comics, it was a question never asked. You could ask maybe in letters columns, but rarely did you think to do that. As cons were created, you were better able to get to the meat of the matter for these kinds questions: how, what, where, when and why. Good old Jack needs to also be congratulated for being on the ground floor of that effort as well.
Thank you, kind sir.
Wizard looks a little harried. Being folically challenged to a certain degree any hair before hurried…https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8gup56
I think originally, they didn’t want fans asking these kinds of questions. If while reading the books, a fan felt like what they were reading had been made up on the fly, that would take them out of the story, and would mean the creators hadn’t done their job well. The goal was to make it feel like they knew where they were going all along.
I’d say it’s in later years, as adult readers, we can think about those questions of who was initially thinking of which creative direction to go. But their original goal was to make it all feel “seamless,” not raise questions in readers’ minds about changes of direction creatively.