We’ve reached Day 17 now of this year’s Jack Kirby Tribute Month. Today’s prompt is the Enchantress, from Kirby’s Journey into Mystery/Thor run.
I’ve drawn the Enchantress before for a previous Kirby Tribute Month, and you can see her here. As mentioned there, her first appearance was in Journey into Mystery #103, where she was paired up with the Executioner. I thought it would be fun to put them together here. They typically did seem to end up working together, a sort of “Beauty and the Beast” team.
Jack and Stan seemed to be having fun with the Enchantress right off the bat in her first appearance. She had a way of wrapping men around her little finger, and that was usually how she got the Executioner to do what she wanted too.
Anyway, I hope you like this. Who’s next up? Feel free to come back tomorrow to find out!
You captured the Enchantress’s eyes perfectly. There is no doubt what she is up to here. Last iteration, you included the magical pulse indicator lines in the art. Totally makes sense not to this year. The call to the Shazam lightning bolt is the class audiovisual enhancement of all time. Those other sorts of audiovisual adds can be questionable, unless they are huge, which it seems Jack used to do more with color. However, I am not necessarily the most astute observer. Speaking of audio, were you ever near the recording studio when recording was done for X‑Men: The Animated Series?
Glad you like her expression.
In answer to your question: no, I never got to visit an X‑Men recording session. They did all those up in Canada!
A lot of cartoons in those days were recorded up in Canada using Canadian actors. One of the reasons for it was that it was a way around having to pay residuals to the voice actors. If the shows had been recorded here, my understanding is that SAG/AFTRA agreements would’ve required them to track and pay residuals to the voice actors every time an episode aired. Canadian voice talent wasn’t covered by that.
For that matter, I kind of wish the Animation Guild had an agreement where repeated airings of shows you worked on meant residual money in your pocket. As often as X‑Men aired over the years, that might have worked out to a nice bit of pocket change for us X‑Men contributors now and then!