Author: Mark

The Many Faces of Hela

Every time I do Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (as I recent­ly did), it requires me to go back and look at Kir­by’s work again. It’s nev­er a chore or a hard­ship. An inter­est­ing thing I’ve dis­cov­ered is that Jack often takes what might be called an “impres­sion­is­tic” approach to his cos­tume designs. Spe­cif­ic details can tend to shift from issue to issue, even pan­el to pan­el. You don’t notice it until you have to take a more ana­lyt­i­cal look for things like Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month.

One step even fur­ther are the char­ac­ters whose appear­ance shifts even more dras­ti­cal­ly and delib­er­ate­ly. Odin in Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor was like this. Jack would give him com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent out­fits almost every time he appeared, even with­in the same issue! And I dis­cov­ered that Hela was anoth­er char­ac­ter whose look changed a lot. She appeared in a total of four issues dur­ing Jack­’s run, and each time she looked different.

Hela first appeared in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #102. The young Thor bar­gained with her for the life of Sif. This was also Sif’s first appear­ance, and she looked very dif­fer­ent from how she would lat­er appear when she became a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in the main sto­ries. Just for fun, I includ­ed that orig­i­nal ver­sion of Sif here.

Hela’s sec­ond appear­ance was in Thor #133, also in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up. Note that in this ver­sion, she has a giant col­lar, and the “horn” ele­ments seen ear­li­er have now become attached to it instead of to her head. This time, she’s accom­pa­nied by a troop of Valkyries. In this short tale, the read­er gets to see Hela and her Valkyries con­duct a recent­ly-deceased hero on to Valhalla.

Hela’s third appear­ance dur­ing Jack­’s JIM/Thor run is in Thor #150. This one is a sig­nif­i­cant appear­ance. Not only is she cov­er-fea­tured, it’s also her first appear­ance in one of the main sto­ries instead of the back­ups. Plus this is the look that ulti­mate­ly became her default. The col­lar van­ish­es from this ver­sion, and the “horns” are once more attached to Hela’s head.

Jack­’s fourth and final shot at draw­ing Hela was only four months lat­er, in Thor #154. In this sto­ry, once again Hela is about to lay claim to Sif. It’s prob­a­bly the wildest design of them all: a giant col­lar and man­tle, with big “horns” attached to both the col­lar and Hela’s head.

Though there are cer­tain con­sis­tent ele­ments to all these ver­sions, how they’re con­fig­ured each time changes. And that’s not all on Jack, because obvi­ous­ly the col­orists were being cre­ative each time too. I’ve been think­ing about why Jack might’ve cho­sen to draw Hela dif­fer­ent­ly each time, try­ing to rea­son it out. I have no inside cre­ative knowl­edge here, but it seems like he could’ve been think­ing that death is dif­fer­ent for every­one, and hence Hela’s appear­ance might be dif­fer­ent in each situation.

I also am curi­ous as to why, instead of using Jack­’s last ver­sion of her from Thor #154 as her default look, Mar­vel went with her ear­li­er Thor #150 appear­ance. Per­haps it’s as sim­ple as they just for­got about Thor #154, and since she appeared on the cov­er of Thor #150, they knew she was there. So they just default­ed to that version.

Any­way, as I was work­ing on Hela for this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, I thought it might be fun to do a lit­tle study into all these looks and com­pare them. You might even argue there’s a fifth, as she appears as part of an elab­o­rate mon­tage of char­ac­ters on the cov­er of Thor #154. But I decid­ed not to count it, since that design isn’t all that far removed from her Thor #150 design. Plus every­thing in the mon­tage is knocked in in pale green, so there are no col­or cues.

Hope you enjoyed this lit­tle study!

Kirby Kurtain Kall

Though August is over and it’s now Sept. 1st, I have an estab­lished tra­di­tion of tak­ing all my Kir­by Trib­ute Month images and putting them togeth­er into one big poster image. This year is no different.

Though I drew them all and know each image well by this point, I get a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive when I com­bine them after the fact like this, apprais­ing the work I did from an over­all view.

This is now the fourth year that I’ve done Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and it’s inter­est­ing to see how much more detailed and involved these small illus­tra­tions have become each year. That’s noth­ing to do with the prompts them­selves (though those can cre­ate their own chal­lenges). It’s more to do with feel­ing the need to move beyond just straight por­traits, to come up with some­thing that feels like there’s a sto­ry to it.

That’s about all there is to say. I always learn some­thing when I do these, so hope­ful­ly you’ve enjoyed this year’s journey.

Here Comes the Whammy!

We’ve reached the 31st, the final (offi­cial) day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. It’s always some­thing of a “wild card” day. Or as Howard Simp­son, cura­tor of the event, put it the first year: “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.”

I’ve nev­er been one of those artists who sneezes and comes up with five new char­ac­ter ideas before break­fast (though I do know some peo­ple like that!). So I was wrack­ing my brain to fig­ure out if I had any oth­er char­ac­ters that would fit well with this year’s theme. I dug up a num­ber of old sketch­books I had­n’t looked at in years, and a char­ac­ter popped up that I had drawn a few times over the years. So ladies and gen­tle­men, I give you…Whammy Woman! -ahem-

So yeah,…not exact­ly the most super-seri­ous char­ac­ter. I guess I kin­da liked the allit­er­a­tion, so that stuck with me. Truth is, while I enjoy a more seri­ous super­hero strip along with any­one, if some­one were to push me to write a super­hero com­ic, it would prob­a­bly lean towards being more humorous.

I’ve includ­ed scans of a cou­ple of the ear­li­er sketch­book draw­ings of Wham­my Woman here. The char­ac­ter would prob­a­bly work just as well in a b/w com­ic. Most like­ly because at the time, I was look­ing at a lot of  inter­est­ing ’80s b/w comics like Love and Rock­ets.

Wham­my Woman is ™ & © Mark Lewis. Any­way, I hope you like this. And though it’s the final offi­cial day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, I have one more thing to show. So stop by tomor­row to see!

A Study of the Scarlet Witch

This is the penul­ti­mate day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Offi­cial­ly, only one more day to go! And the prompt for today is the Scar­let Witch!

The Scar­let Witch (Wan­da Max­i­moff) first appeared way back in X‑Men #4, where (along­side her broth­er, Quick­sil­ver), she’s part of Mag­ne­to’s Broth­er­hood of Evil Mutants. Yet unlike the oth­er mem­bers, she’d real­ly rather not be there. Her heart isn’t in it. She’s only there under a sense of oblig­a­tion to Mag­ne­to, while her broth­er is there large­ly just to pro­tect her.

Lat­er, they part ways with the Broth­er­hood and become part of the Avengers. The Scar­let Witch’s mutant pow­er was the abil­i­ty to alter the laws of prob­a­bil­i­ty, so that the improb­a­ble would hap­pen. She’s known for her beau­ty, but has more of a shy and retir­ing personality.

Study­ing her ear­li­est appear­ance, I was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that her head­piece actu­al­ly wrapped all the way around her head, in the style of a wim­ple. Lat­er on, it became more just a frame around her face.

If you read up on her and all the things that hap­pened to her char­ac­ter post-Kir­by, it’s a lot. Some good, and some…not so much. I often just ignore those things, as I find they can make my head hurt. The best pol­i­cy gen­er­al­ly is to stick with Jack and Stan. They got it right the first time.

I hope you liked my take on the ear­ly Scar­let Witch. If you’ve fol­lowed Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month in pre­vi­ous years, you know that the 31st is always sort of a wild card day. “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.” So by all means, you’re wel­come to swing by and see what I end up doing! As I type this, I haven’t even drawn it yet.

“…The Perfection of Thena–!”

This is now Day 29 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Not too many more to go! Today’s prompt is Thena of the Eternals.

I talked about The Eter­nals yes­ter­day in more detail. It was one of the new titles Jack came up with when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. While on the sur­face it might have looked slight­ly sim­i­lar to some of what Jack had done with the New Gods in his Fourth World saga at DC, the inspi­ra­tion for this one came from a dif­fer­ent place.

Thena first shows up in The Eter­nals #5. She’s the daugh­ter of the Prime Eter­nal, Zuras. Thena is no shrink­ing vio­let. She has a strong per­son­al­i­ty, and a direct approach to prob­lems. When she finds out in her first appear­ance that the Deviants have resur­faced and are mak­ing trou­ble among the humans, her imme­di­ate response is, “…The Deviants must be taught to respect Eter­nals! You know that I intend to do the teach­ing!!” With that, she grabs the mes­sen­ger, Makar­ri, by the arm and strides quick­ly out of Zuras’ pres­ence to go take care of business.

But Thena also has a soft­er side. Includ­ed in my image here is Kro, the Deviant gen­er­al, with whom she once had a rela­tion­ship. Jack was appar­ent­ly ref­er­enc­ing the sto­ry of Perse­phone, daugh­ter of Zeus, who went down into the under­world. In The Eter­nals, Kro hopes to rekin­dle their old rela­tion­ship, yet there’s a lot between them that’s seem­ing­ly insurmountable.

As I said yes­ter­day, if you’ve only seen the MCU ver­sion, you don’t know the Eter­nals. You should read the com­ic, if you get the chance. Jack told some real­ly great sto­ries dur­ing his run.

That’s Thena. If you’re inter­est­ed, feel free to check in tomor­row to see who’s next.

“Spelled S‑E-R-S‑I, Thank You!”

This is now Day 28 of this year’s Jack Kir­by trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Ser­si, of The Eter­nals.

The Eter­nals was one of the new titles Jack came up with when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. The inspi­ra­tion for this one seemed root­ed in the ear­li­er best-sell­ing book, Char­i­ots of the Gods?, by Erich Von Däniken. The book the­o­rized all kinds of direct influ­ence on our ancient human cul­tures from alien vis­i­tors to our plan­et cen­turies ago. It was def­i­nite­ly ripe mate­r­i­al to inspire the imag­i­na­tion of a sto­ry­teller like Jack Kirby.

The Eter­nals in the com­ic were actu­al­ly just a more devel­oped and longer-lived race than humans, and had often been mis­tak­en for gods by ancient man because of their advanced sci­ences and amaz­ing abilities.

We first meet Ser­si in The Eter­nals #3. In #4, she tells about being vis­it­ed by Ulysses and his crew, being offend­ed by their lack of man­ners and turn­ing them into pigs. Mean­ing she was the Circe of legend.

Ser­si is a fun char­ac­ter. She’s strong (like a lot of Kir­by’s women), has a sense of humor, but does­n’t take any non­sense off of any­one. I inked a draw­ing of Ser­si by Kir­by awhile back, which you can see here.

If your only aware­ness of The Eter­nals is via the MCU film of that name, you are seri­ous­ly miss­ing out. Any resem­blance between the com­ic and that film is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal. That’s all I’ll say about that, because I pre­fer to try to keep things as pos­i­tive as I can here. I high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing Jack­’s Eter­nals, if you get the chance. There are some sto­ries he did there that I believe are just as good as any­thing else Jack ever did!

Hope you like my Ser­si. Tune in again tomor­row to see who’s up next, if you like.

“Thunderbolt and Lightning, Very Very Frightening!”

It’s now Day 27 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. The prompt for today is Goldie Gold (from the car­toon Goldie Gold and Action Jack). But (as always seems to hap­pen at least once dur­ing these Kir­by Trib­ute Months), I’ve elect­ed to go off the reser­va­tion today. Instead, I’ve drawn the Light­ning Lady, from Jack Kir­by’s Cap­tain Vic­to­ry, pub­lished through Pacif­ic Comics. I thought she’d be a good fit along­side the oth­ers on this list of Kir­by women, and I did­n’t want to miss this opportunity!

Cap­tain Vic­to­ry was a big deal when it was announced. Jack Kir­by was doing a new com­ic, and he was­n’t doing it for Mar­vel or DC! He was doing it for a brand new pub­lish­er called Pacif­ic Comics. Not only that, but he would own all the rights to this new com­ic and all the char­ac­ters! And hav­ing Jack on-board meant that oth­er top comics cre­ators were also inter­est­ed in doing things through Pacific.

I’m hav­ing a hard time find­ing this now, but I recall read­ing some­where that Cap­tain Vic­to­ry was inspired by Jack­’s reac­tion to see­ing films like E.T. and Close Encoun­ters, which he thought were far too opti­mistic about first con­tact. Instead, he thought our first alien encoun­ters might be more like what has often hap­pened his­tor­i­cal­ly when an advanced civ­i­liza­tion meets a more prim­i­tive one. Spoil­er: it often does­n’t go well for the less-advanced civ­i­liza­tion, even when it’s unin­ten­tion­al. That was the idea Jack was work­ing with.

The first six issues of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry dealt with Capt. Vic­to­ry and the Ranger crew of the Galac­tic Dread­nought Tiger chas­ing down the Insec­ton horde. Unfor­tu­nate­ly in the course of the chase, the horde finds a new world to invade and infest: Earth. Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and crew track them there.

The leader and queen of the Insec­tons is the Light­ning Lady, com­mand­ing their inva­sion. Per her name, one of her more vis­i­bly impres­sive pow­ers is gen­er­at­ing pow­er­ful bolts of elec­tric­i­ty. She’s one of Kir­by’s more strik­ing late peri­od char­ac­ter designs, and I could­n’t pass up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include her among this list of Kir­by women!

I hope you enjoyed my take on the Light­ning Lady! Please feel free to come back again tomor­row to see who’s next, as I return to the prompt list.

Make Way for the Princess!

Here’s Day 26 now of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Today’s prompt is Princess Zan­da, from Jack­’s Black Pan­ther run.

I snuck her in as part of a pre­vi­ous piece for Jack Kir­by Month here. When Jack returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s, the land­scape there had changed quite a bit while he was away. And Jack now pre­ferred to have his own lit­tle cor­ner sort of away from every­one else, where he wrote and drew his own books, not hav­ing to track the con­ti­nu­ity of what was going on with the rest of the Mar­vel universe.

Fan recep­tion to these books at the time was kind of mixed. When it was announced that Jack was going to do a new run of Black Pan­ther sto­ries, many fans expect­ed that he would tie in to what had been done by oth­er cre­ators pre­vi­ous­ly. But they did­n’t get that. Jack had his own take on Black Pan­ther, seem­ing­ly more informed by the sort of sto­ries writ­ten by H. Rid­er Hag­gard (like King Solomon’s Mines and She). Dis­ap­point­ing maybe to those who had pri­or expec­ta­tions, but inter­est­ing to those who were will­ing to accept Jack­’s new take on its own terms.

Princess Zan­da was one of the new cast of char­ac­ters Jack came up with for this book. She was part of a group called the Col­lec­tors, who sought out rare, arcane arche­o­log­i­cal items. Often these items would grant rare pow­ers and abil­i­ties. And some­times Black Pan­ther end­ed up in the way of some of the Col­lec­tors in their search­es. When he would get in Zan­da’s way, she could be dangerous.

Here, she’s seen hold­ing King Solomon’s Frog, an item she and the rest of the Col­lec­tors were hunt­ing for right off in the first issue of Jack­’s Black Pan­ther run.

I don’t know whether you’ve seen the list of prompts, but if you have, you may be in for a sur­prise tomor­row. By all means, feel free to come by and see who’s next!

“Sing, Izaya! Let Me Hear Your Voice when It’s Not a Battle Cry!”

I’ve made it here to Day 25 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Avia, wife of Iza­ya the Inher­i­tor (bet­ter known in Jack­’s Fourth World saga as Highfather).

First, a word about the Fourth World saga. Pro­mo­tions at the time were that this was “Kir­by Unleashed,” and that was truth in adver­tis­ing. You can find a lot of great sto­ries and char­ac­ters in the whole body of Kir­by’s work, and the Fourth World saga stands out as a sin­gu­lar work among that body. And con­tained with­in the saga, there are indi­vid­ual issues that are stand­outs. New Gods #7, where we meet Avia, is one of them.

We don’t get to see a lot of Avia, but her role in the Fourth World saga is no less sig­nif­i­cant for that, or for her effect on oth­ers, and on events. I don’t want to say more for fear of spoil­ing a great sto­ry. If you haven’t read it, you’re miss­ing out!

It was fun to try to come up with my ver­sion of this qui­et moment between Avia and Iza­ya. Hope you enjoyed it. I was­n’t sure I was going to get this up in time, so I’m real­ly glad I made it! Please feel free to swing by again tomor­row to see who’s next!

“…Wake unto Meee!”

It’s now Day 24 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Beau­ti­ful Dream­er of the For­ev­er People!

The For­ev­er Peo­ple was one of the four titles com­pris­ing Jack­’s “Fourth World” saga at DC Comics. New Gods was sort of Jack­’s con­tin­u­a­tion of a thought: if the old gods of leg­end were the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the things the ancients val­ued or feared, what kind of char­ac­ters would per­son­i­fy the qual­i­ties that we val­ue or fear in our mod­ern world? Hence, “new gods.”

For­ev­er Peo­ple seems inspired by Jack see­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion at the time, the “flower chil­dren,” and think­ing, “If the new gods had young peo­ple, what kind of a per­spec­tive might they have?”

Dur­ing their trav­els on Earth, the For­ev­er Peo­ple at first glance pre­sent­ed as a bit of a strange and mot­ley crew, but were quite friend­ly when peo­ple stopped to get to know them. Each had their own per­son­al­i­ty and spe­cial abil­i­ties. Beau­ti­ful Dream­er’s abil­i­ties were psion­ic in nature, allow­ing her to influ­ence what peo­ple see. For exam­ple, in ear­ly one adven­ture, they came across the care­tak­er of some old build­ings who was threat­ened by their unusu­al appear­ance, so Dream­er caused the man to see their group in old­er Earth attire that felt com­fort­ing and famil­iar to him.

Dream­er got abduct­ed more than once by Dark­seid, because he sus­pect­ed that some­thing in her abil­i­ties would aid him in his quest for the Anti-Life Equa­tion, which would give him con­trol over the minds of all who live.

The For­ev­er Peo­ple were all close friends, but Kir­by clear­ly had in mind that there was some­thing more between Dream­er and group leader Mark Moon­rid­er. In Kir­by’s last issue of For­ev­er Peo­ple, when he shows the group on the plan­et Adon walk­ing off towards the hori­zon, Mark Moon­rid­er and Beau­ti­ful Dream­er are hold­ing hands.

When putting this image togeth­er, I thought it might be fun to also try to get the For­ev­er Peo­ple’s Super-Cycle into it. Even though I kind of had to squeeze it in. It’s kind of an icon­ic vehi­cle for the strip.

What’s next? Depends on if I can get through the next part of the prompt list in time! Tune in tomor­row to see whether I make it!

 

Oh My Goodness!

We’ve now reached Day 23 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and today’s prompt is Granny Goodness.

Granny first appeared in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #2. She runs the Orphan­age on Apokolips; the twist­ed, iron insti­tu­tion where the young were pro­gres­sive­ly beat­en down (men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly) to shape them into troop­ers who always sought Granny’s “love” and were more than will­ing to sac­ri­fice them­selves for Dark­seid. The walls of the Orphan­age were cov­ered with 1984-esque slo­gans like “You’re not a liar–if you lie for Darkseid!”

Dur­ing Jack­’s Mis­ter Mir­a­cle run, we got occa­sion­al flash­back glimpses of the bru­tal for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences the young Scott Free expe­ri­enced on Apokolips in Granny’s Orphan­age. Those events went a long way towards build­ing his need to escape, to find a bet­ter world.

Inter­est­ing­ly, when Warn­er Bros decid­ed to intro­duce Granny Good­ness in Super­man: The Ani­mat­ed Series, they chose to cast Ed Asner as her voice. You’d think that would be a strange choice, but some­how it worked!

That’s Granny. You’ll have to come back again tomor­row to see who’s up next, if you’re curious.

“No Shish Kabob for Me, Please!”

It’s now Day 22 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Bernadeth of the Female Furies!

I drew her for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here. Among the Furies, she projects a more con­trolled and sto­ic pres­ence on the sur­face, but with an under­ly­ing inten­si­ty. Her weapon of choice is the extend­able Fahrenknife, which can pen­e­trate a per­son and bar­be­cue them…from the inside, no less!

Bernadeth also has the dis­tinc­tion of being the sis­ter of Desaad, Dark­sei­d’s lead torturer.

So that’s Bernadeth. If you’d like to see who’s up next, feel free to swing by again tomor­row to find out!

She Really Put Her Foot in It This Time!

Day 21 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, and today’s prompt is Stom­pa of the Female Furies!

Stom­pa first appeared in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6 (like the rest of the Female Furies). I took a shot at draw­ing her on a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here. Her spe­cial­ty is kick­ing and stomp­ing. That may not sound like much, but her skills make that quite the effec­tive threat!

I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly about col­ors shift­ing on Mad Har­ri­et, and it hap­pened with Stom­pa dur­ing her appear­ances too. Some­times she had two dif­fer­ent shades of orange. Some­times her hel­met was yel­low, and oth­er times orange. In one issue, it was gray! So like I said with Har­ri­et, when you try to draw her, you have to make some deci­sions about color.

Hope you like my take here on Stom­pa. If you’re curi­ous who’s next, feel free to swing by tomor­row to find out!

Don’t Let Her Sink Her Claws in You!

Here on Day 20 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, today’s prompt is Mad Har­ri­et of the Female Furies. Like all the Furies (except Big Bar­da), she first appeared in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6. I drew her for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

A thing I’ve real­ized over the course of doing these Jack Kir­by Trib­utes is that Jack would some­times take what could be termed an “impres­sion­is­tic” approach to his cos­tume designs. While they would look con­sis­tent to read­ers, often the details could shift from issue to issue, and some­times even pan­el to pan­el! The aver­age read­er would­n’t notice this or be both­ered by it, but you only start to see it when you have to ana­lyze these designs to draw them for yourself.

Mad Har­ri­et is par­tic­u­lar­ly tricky. Once you get beyond her face and hair, things fluc­tu­ate and change quite a bit. Adding to this is the fact that the col­orist (or col­orists, for all I know) would change things around too! So you have to make a num­ber of deci­sions when draw­ing her.

Any­way, that’s Har­ri­et! Hope you enjoyed this take. Who’s next? swing by tomor­row to see!

This Is Gonna Sting!

I’ve made it now to day 19 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Lashina, of the Female Furies. She first appeared in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6.

I pre­vi­ous­ly drew her for Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2024 here. Only Kir­by could come up with a char­ac­ter skilled with flat-shaped whips that are stored all over the sur­face of her uniform!

I dis­cov­ered the first time I drew her that there’s a trick to it. You kind of have to start with the fig­ure first, then apply the whips and rings after the fact. That’s the only way you can make it work. I made the mis­take the first time I drew her in 2024 of pay­ing too much atten­tion to the whip and ring design to start with, and end­ed up hav­ing to cut my first draw­ing out and cut in a new re-worked one. I did­n’t make that error this time.

But then, it’s true that a lot of Jack­’s designs can be tricky when you try to trans­late them into your own style!

Any­way, that’s Lashina. Hope you liked my take. If you’re inter­est­ed in who comes up next, feel free to stop by again tomor­row to see!

Big Barda Lays Down the Boom

It’s now Day 18 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Big Bar­da, who first showed up in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #4.

She made an impact from her very first appear­ance on-pan­el, and con­tin­ued to from that point on. Bar­da did­n’t real­ly look or act like your typ­i­cal comics hero­ine. Arriv­ing on Earth from the pri­va­tion and harsh­ness of Apokolips, it took her a lit­tle while to adjust.

Some months after she first appears in the com­ic, we meet sev­er­al mem­bers of the Female Furies bat­tal­ion she for­mer­ly com­mand­ed back on Apokolips. The reunion is, shall we say, a bit awk­ward at first.

I’ve drawn Bar­da for a cou­ple pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Months here and here. Jack gave her a cou­ple of very strik­ing cos­tume designs. One is her uni­form (the hel­met feels vague­ly Egypt­ian inspired to me, some­how). The oth­er is a sort of bikini/workout outfit.

Since I’ve drawn her in her uni­form the last cou­ple times, I debat­ed putting her in the biki­ni this time. But I could­n’t think of a sce­nario for that which would work all that well with­in the para­me­ters I’ve placed for myself in doing these Kir­by Trib­ute images.

From what I under­stand, Jack liked Big Bar­da and the Furies so much, he actu­al­ly want­ed to do a com­ic star­ring them. The lay­out for the cov­er is out there on the inter­net, if you look for it. At one point, artist Frank Fos­co took the lay­out and fleshed out the pen­cils, then Mike Roy­er did a lit­tle fur­ther tweak­ing and ink­ing. It appeared as a cov­er for The Jack Kir­by Col­lec­tor.

Hope you liked my take on Bar­da this time. As I write this, I’m still not sure whether I’ll make it in time to get through the whole list of prompts this month. Will I? You’ll have to come back tomor­row to see if I can pull it off.

Love and Death

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!

“What’s a Norn?”

Wel­come to Day 16 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. The prompt for today is Karnil­la, the Norn Queen.

While I’ve drawn oth­er char­ac­ters from Jack­’s Jour­ney into Mys­tery/Thor run for pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Months, this is the first time I had a prompt to draw Karnil­la. She plays an inter­est­ing role in Jack and Stan’s JiM/Thor run. She’s a witch-queen, basi­cal­ly, and in the vil­lain camp (she often would help Loki with his plots). But at the same time, she loved the noble Balder the Brave, Thor’s best friend, who would nev­er betray Thor or the gods of Asgard.

Ini­tial­ly, Jack kept Karnil­la’s design pret­ty sim­ple. Lots of dark blues. But lat­er in his Thor run, he began to mix things up and give her dif­fer­ent looks. Not quite as wide-rang­ing as the out­fits Odin showed up in, but still inter­est­ing. So I com­bined a few ideas togeth­er for Karnil­la’s look here. Plus I thought the lit­tle pet drag­on would be a fun thing to include.

I hope you enjoyed my take on Karnil­la. As always, feel free to swing by again tomor­row to see who comes up next.

“Take My Hand…”

This is now Day 15 (about the halfway point!) of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Hela!

I drew Hela once before for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here. You can see for your­self how strik­ing her char­ac­ter design is. Hela appeared dur­ing Jack­’s run on Jour­ney into Mys­tery/Thor exact­ly four times. And every time, she looked different!

Part of this was how Jack drew her, while anoth­er part of it was col­or. Hela was col­ored dif­fer­ent­ly each time. Usu­al­ly in purples!

A thing I’ve real­ized over the course of these Kir­by Trib­ute Months and research­ing these char­ac­ters, is Jack was some­thing of an “impres­sion­ist” when it came to his char­ac­ter designs. Some­times even char­ac­ters you think of as hav­ing a fixed design can shift their appear­ance, from issue to issue, and even pan­el to pan­el. When you look at them casu­al­ly, you think they’re all the same. But when you study the details ana­lyt­i­cal­ly, as an artist, you begin to see how things actu­al­ly shift around.

You’d think that the default look for Hela (seen here, based on how she looked in Thor #150) would’ve been based on the last time Jack drew her. But sur­pris­ing­ly, this is not the case! Jack drew her one more time, in Thor #154, where she was col­ored in pur­ples, pink, and with a dark blue cape. All of the dif­fer­ent depic­tions involved a full body­suit with some kind of sur­face designs, a hood, a cape, and some kind of horned con­fig­u­ra­tion around her head.

I don’t know if Stan Lee and John Romi­ta (Mar­vel’s de fac­to art direc­tor by then) for­got about this final appear­ance drawn by Jack, or just decid­ed they pre­ferred Hela’s look in #150. I was almost tempt­ed to draw her in one of those oth­er looks, but decid­ed it might be a bit too far removed from what’s become the default look for peo­ple to rec­og­nize her right away. Plus, this real­ly is a strik­ing design!

Hope you like Hela. Swing by tomor­row to see who’s next, if you like.

The Lady

On Day 14 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, the prompt is Sif, from Kir­by’s run on Jour­ney into Mys­tery/Thor.

I drew her for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here, as well as giv­ing the sto­ry of how she was intro­duced into the book. One thing I did not men­tion is that her actu­al first appear­ance was in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #102, in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up. Her appear­ance there was very dif­fer­ent from what we’re famil­iar with in that tale, as she was a blonde!

When Jack and Stan retired the run­ning Jane Fos­ter roman­tic sub­plots and want­ed a new love inter­est for Thor, they need­ed some­one who would work bet­ter with­in the increas­ing­ly more epic sto­ry­lines they were doing. And Sif fit the bill. She was brave, and will­ing to stand up against any trolls or oth­er antag­o­nists who might show up.

As I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, when first intro­duced as a reg­u­lar, her look was a bit more detailed than what it lat­er became. For this illus­tra­tion, I thought it would be fun to use that ini­tial look she had on the splash page of Thor #137.

So there’s Sif for you! Who’s up next? You’ll have to come back tomor­row to find out.

Formerly Frightful, Now Inhuman…

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.

“Elemental, My Dear Johnny!”

(Apolo­gies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for my post title)

This is now Day 12 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Crys­tal from the Inhu­mans, who were intro­duced in the Fan­tas­tic Four com­ic. I also drew her for last year’s FF-cen­tric Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

As I men­tioned then, Crys­tal and her strange fam­i­ly of Inhu­mans make for lots of great sto­ry mate­r­i­al after they’re intro­duced in the FF com­ic. She becomes a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing cast mem­ber after awhile, as John­ny Stor­m’s love inter­est, and even joins the FF for a time.

At one point in the ’90s post-X‑Men, my friend and men­tor in ani­ma­tion Lar­ry Hous­ton had moved over to Mar­vel to do an FF car­toon. I got to do a lit­tle bit of free­lance for him (My day job on the X‑Men car­toon was still keep­ing me pret­ty busy).

On one of the episodes, they were intro­duc­ing Crys­tal and the oth­er Inhu­mans. I end­ed up get­ting to do the char­ac­ter design for Crys­tal. Lar­ry want­ed it based on her very first appear­ance in the com­ic, where she’s in a white dress and looks kind of ethe­re­al at first when John­ny Storm sees her. He’s not quite sure if she’s real­ly there, or he’s just imag­in­ing things.

I also thought that in that first appear­ance, her face looked a lit­tle like Kathy Ire­land, so I tried to hang onto that in my design. When they picked the voice actors for that episode, they actu­al­ly did cast Kathy Ire­land in the part (some­thing I had no idea was even under consideration)!

For this one, I thought it would be fun to have Crys­tal with her pet dog, Lock­jaw. Of course, being an Inhu­man, Lock­jaw isn’t just a nor­mal-look­ing dog.

That’s my take on Crys­tal this time. Who’s up next? You’ll have to come back again tomor­row to find out!

“What’s This Buzzing around Me?”

This is now day 11 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Janet van Dyne, AKA the Wasp!

She first showed up Tales to Aston­ish #44, as part of the Ant-Man strip. Hen­ry Pym sets her up with the same shrink­ing pow­ers and the like that he had been using as Ant-Man. Pym’s first appear­ance in Tales to Aston­ish #27 was more like a holdover from the ear­li­er mon­ster sto­ries Marvel/Atlas had been doing in the ’50s. But in issue #35, they brought him back, appar­ent­ly think­ing it was time to turn him into a superhero.

A lit­tle while after Janet van Dyne part­ners up with him as the Wasp, Pym dis­cov­ers he can use his tech not just to shrink, but to also go the oth­er direc­tion and become large. He renames him­self Giant Man in Tales to Aston­ish #49.

Since the Wasp and Giant Man were around from very ear­ly days, when the time came for Mar­vel to team up their char­ac­ters as The Avengers (more or less Mar­vel’s equiv­a­lent of the Jus­tice League), they were in on that team from the start. In fact, the Wasp is the one who comes up with the new team’s name!

Janet van Dyne as a char­ac­ter was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from most of the Mar­vel women of that peri­od. She had a bit of a play­ful­ness and a sense of fun to her that most of them did­n’t usu­al­ly dis­play. Which prob­a­bly also served to light­en up Hank Pym a lit­tle bit.

You get a twofer here. I want­ed to show a reduced-size Wasp in flight, and thought it might also be fun to show a bit of Giant Man in the back­ground, since they’re a team.

It should be said that while this is her orig­i­nal out­fit, she became known over the years for chang­ing her cos­tume often, out of a sense of style and fash­ion. Though if I’m not mis­tak­en, this was the only uni­form Kir­by ever drew her in.

That’s my take on the Wasp! I hope you enjoyed it, and that you’re inter­est­ed enough to swing by tomor­row to see who’s next!

Seen and Unseen

It’s now day 10 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and the prompt for today is Ali­cia Mas­ters. I drew her pre­vi­ous­ly for last year’s FF-cen­tric Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

As men­tioned in that ear­li­er post, Ali­cia was first intro­duced in Fan­tas­tic Four #8 as the daugh­ter of the vil­lain Pup­pet Mas­ter. She went on to become a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, and the love inter­est of Ben Grimm, the Thing. As with Bet­ty Ross and Bruce Ban­ner, Ali­cia pro­vid­ed a bit of bright­ness in Ben Grim­m’s life, despite his being stuck as the Thing.

Ali­cia was an accom­plished sculp­tor, and often she’d be depict­ed in her stu­dio work­ing on some­thing, sur­round­ed by oth­er sculp­tures she’d made. I thought that was a good way to go here too.

I hope you enjoyed my take on Ali­cia this time. Feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s up next!

“I Can’t See What’s So Great about Her!”

On day nine of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), today’s prompt is Susan Richards, the Invis­i­ble Woman from the Fan­tas­tic Four!

I’ve drawn her for pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Months here and here. And this counts too. Fan­tas­tic Four was the foun­da­tion­al book from which Mar­vel Comics real­ly sprout­ed. The FF is Mar­vel’s “first fam­i­ly,” mak­ing Sue by default the first lady of the Mar­vel universe.

I’ve point­ed out the impor­tance of her role in the group in my pre­vi­ous Invis­i­ble Woman posts for Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, so I’m not going to repeat myself. But one more inter­est­ing thing of note: Fan­tas­tic Four #1 debuted on news­stands in August of 1961 (also the month Jack Kir­by was born). If you do the math, that means that this year (and this month) are the 65th anniver­sary of the Fan­tas­tic Four!

Last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month was ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to the Fan­tas­tic Four, so we’re not repeat­ing that this time. Is Mar­vel doing any­thing to cel­e­brate this anniver­sary? If so, I haven’t heard any­thing about it, which is surprising.

So, this was my lat­est take on the Invis­i­ble Woman! Hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to come back and see who’s next tomorrow!

Thunderbolt’s Daughter

This is day eight of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Today’s prompt is Bet­ty Ross, daugh­ter of Gen. Thun­der­bolt Ross, and long-run­ning love inter­est of Dr. Bruce Banner!

Bet­ty Ross was a nor­mal, non-pow­ered human (at least back when Jack and Stan were writ­ing her) in The Incred­i­ble Hulk. But she was one of the char­ac­ters in the ear­ly days of the strip who served to cre­ate the dynam­ics of it. Her love for Bruce Ban­ner, despite her dom­i­neer­ing father’s dis­like of the rela­tion­ship, was an aspect of those sto­ry­lines that helped to pro­pel them for quite awhile. With­out her as a bright spot, Bruce Ban­ner’s life would’ve been quite dark. It’s exact­ly the sort of plot ele­ment Stan and Jack played with very well in those days.

Try­ing to think of how best to por­tray Bet­ty, I hit on the tri­an­gle of show­ing her with Bruce Ban­ner, and the Hulk loom­ing over them.

Hope this works for you. And feel free to return tomor­row, to see who appears next!

 

 

Who Were Agents 1–12?

We’ve reached day sev­en, the first full week of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, today’s prompt is Sharon Carter, also known as Agent 13!

Those famil­iar with the char­ac­ter only via the MCU may be a lit­tle con­fused. Orig­i­nal­ly in comics, she first appeared in Tales of Sus­pense #75. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, in his civil­ian ID as Steve Rogers, spots her on the street and at first thinks she might be his lost love from WWII (remem­ber that when these sto­ries orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the ’60s, it was only twen­ty years after the War).

He soon dis­cov­ers that she is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Which of course com­pli­cates their bud­ding romance, as both work with the inter­na­tion­al spy agency. Jack and Stan got some pret­ty good sto­ry mileage out of all that.

Her look here comes from a sto­ry in Cap­tain Amer­i­ca #103 (after Mar­vel’s dis­tri­b­u­tion deal final­ly allowed them to split strips off from their anthol­o­gy titles into their own sep­a­rate titles). I thought it was a strik­ing look. And I liked the idea of her infil­trat­ing an A.I.M. base.

So that’s my take on Sharon Carter! Hope you enjoyed it. Tune in again tomor­row to see who shows up next, if you like.

Peggy Carter and the Resistance

It’s Day Six of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Peg­gy Carter, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca’s WWII love.

Most peo­ple are prob­a­bly more aware of the MCU ver­sion of the char­ac­ter, played by Hay­ley Atwell. The char­ac­ter was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in the comics. We first see her in a flash­back in Tales of Sus­pense #77, where Cap­tain Amer­i­ca meets her as she works with a group of French resis­tance fight­ers going up against Ger­mans flee­ing Nor­mandy via the Falaise Gap.

This issue was drawn dur­ing a peri­od when Mar­vel kept Jack very busy. Not only was he pen­cil­ing (and like­ly dri­ving the plots of) Fan­tas­tic Four and Thor, he was also gen­er­at­ing page lay­outs for sev­er­al oth­er titles, which were giv­en to oth­er pen­cil­ers to work from. So they could devel­op a feel for “the Mar­vel style.” This par­tic­u­lar sto­ry fea­tured John Romi­ta’s pen­cils over Jack­’s lay­outs, so it’s fair to say that Romi­ta had a hand in shap­ing Peg­gy Carter’s look too. You can def­i­nite­ly see it in the comic.

For what it’s worth, rather than just fak­ing her rifle, I did a lit­tle weapons research. Based on that, I gave her an M1 Garand. It’s con­sid­ered an icon­ic U.S. Army or Marine Corps WWII-era ser­vice rifle.

Any­way, this is my take on Peg­gy Carter. Feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s next.

“Oh, Nurse?”

On Day Five of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, the prompt is Jane Foster.

I’ve drawn oth­er char­ac­ters from Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor for pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Months, but this is the first time I had a prompt to draw Jane Fos­ter. She was a key char­ac­ter from the ear­li­est days of the strip in Jour­ney into Mys­tery, work­ing as Dr. Don Blake’s nurse. Oh, and Thor fell in love with her.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this did not make Odin a hap­py pap­py. It cre­at­ed lots of sto­ry fod­der for a long while, Odin get­ting angry with Thor and pun­ish­ing him in var­i­ous ways over time because he refused to stop lov­ing Jane. It’s kind of a soap opera device, but it played well for a long time. It was just the kind of sto­ry device Stan Lee loved to work with.

Even­tu­al­ly though, I think they real­ized that they had played that ele­ment out for as long as they pos­si­bly could, and it was time to move on. That’s when Thor #136 came about. Odin final­ly gives in, brings Jane Fos­ter to Asgard and gives her god­like pow­ers, so she and Thor can be togeth­er. But things don’t work out the way Thor would’ve hoped.

In pick­ing a moment to illus­trate Jane Fos­ter, I decid­ed I want­ed to show her in the cos­tume she was giv­en for this sto­ry. Plus it’s just a real­ly good, piv­otal sto­ry, where they resolve that long-run­ning plot thread.

Though a ver­sion of Sif had pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #102, Thor #136 was Sif’s first appear­ance in the main tales. Her visu­al had been reworked into some­thing clos­er to what most read­ers rec­og­nize as Mar­vel’s Sif.

Any­way, this was Jane Fos­ter, at a piv­otal moment in her sto­ry­line. Who’s up tomor­row? Tune in and see!

Yes, Miss Harkness!

It’s now Day Four of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Agatha Hark­ness, whom I drew once before for a pre­vi­ous Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

Those who’ve only heard of her via the MCU might be a lit­tle con­fused, but this is how she looked when she was first intro­duced in Fan­tas­tic Four #94, when the FF were look­ing to hire a gov­erness to look after young Franklin when they need­ed to go out on cases.

My pre­vi­ous ver­sion sort of hint­ed that there was more than meets the eye to Miss Hark­ness. This time, I thought it would be fun to show what hap­pens when some­one misbehaves!

That’s it for Miss Hark­ness today. You’re wel­come to return tomor­row to see who’s next.

Driving You to Ruin

It’s now Day Three of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Nor­ma Rich­mond from Jack­’s Sil­ver Star comic.

In the ear­ly ’80s when it was announced that Jack Kir­by was going to do new comics, and they were not going to be for Mar­vel or DC, but for a new com­pa­ny named Pacif­ic Comics, this was a big deal! Not only that, but he was going to own what­ev­er he cre­at­ed for them. Because Pacif­ic was offer­ing cre­ators own­er­ship of their cre­ations, they had a num­ber of big name cre­ators who were hap­py to step up and also take a shot at doing work for them.

Jack­’s two books for Pacif­ic were Cap­tain Vic­to­ry (whom I drew for a pre­vi­ous Kir­by Trib­ute Month), and Sil­ver Star (same). Unlike most comics in those days, Sil­ver Star was envi­sioned as hav­ing a def­i­nite end­ing. My under­stand­ing is that the sto­ry start­ed life as a screen­play, which Jack retooled to turn it into a com­ic. It may not have been the very first lim­it­ed series, but it was among the ear­li­est ones.

The sto­ry revolved around the tit­u­lar lead, whose civil­ian name is Mor­gan Miller. Sil­ver Star has strange pow­ers because of genet­ic muta­tion. Not only that, he dis­cov­ers he’s not the only mem­ber of this new breed of man, Homo-Geneti­cus.

As he trav­els around try­ing to find and pro­tect the oth­er mem­bers of Homo-Geneti­cus, he meets Nor­ma Rich­mond, who is also part of this group. Nor­ma uses her gifts to make a liv­ing in movies doing death-defy­ing stunts. The first time she and Sil­ver Star meet, she per­forms a car crash stunt that she could­n’t pos­si­bly have walked away from, but she does.

As the sto­ry pro­gress­es and they have to deal with some close calls togeth­er, Mor­gan and Nor­ma devel­op feel­ings for each other.

Any­way, here’s Nor­ma! Feel free to come by again tomor­row to see who’s next.

Something’s Fishy around Here…

It’s Day 2 of the Fourth Annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed and curat­ed by Howard Simp­son). Today’s prompt is anoth­er obscure char­ac­ter: the Witch Queen.

I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post that one of the things that Jack want­ed to do when he left Mar­vel for DC was to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent for­mats for pre­sent­ing comics. To that end, he did a cou­ple of themed mag­a­zines intend­ed for reg­u­lar news­stand dis­tri­b­u­tion: In the Days of the Mob, and Spir­it World. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only the first issues of those mag­a­zines ever came out, though Jack had done sto­ries and mate­r­i­al intend­ed for sub­se­quent issues.

Some­one at DC must have felt that it would be a waste to just shove all that mate­r­i­al into a draw­er some­where, nev­er to be seen. So when they decid­ed to intro­duce a new “mys­tery” mag­a­zine enti­tled Weird Mys­tery Tales, they kicked off the first issue with one of Jack­’s tales orig­i­nal­ly done for Spir­it World, enti­tled “Horo­scope Phe­nom­e­non or Witch Queen of Ancient Sumeria?”

The art was refor­mat­ted in order to fit the pro­por­tions of the com­ic, but it’s an inter­est­ing 10-page sto­ry done by Jack in that “mystery/horror” genre. As you’d expect from Jack Kir­by, it’s not quite like what any­one else did in that genre. He did some real­ly inter­est­ing sto­ry­telling in this.

The Witch Queen did­n’t have a fixed appear­ance through­out the sto­ry! She appeared dif­fer­ent­ly in each instance, depend­ing on the Zodi­ac sign of the indi­vid­ual she was appear­ing to. I decid­ed to go with her first appear­ance in the sto­ry, which was inspired by Pisces. But I could also have gone with one of her oth­er incar­na­tions lat­er on. I just real­ly thought it would be fun to go with this one. It’s a real­ly strik­ing design.

Hope­ful­ly you like this one too. What’s next? You’ll have to come back tomor­row to find out!

On the Green

August 1st means it must be Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month once again! This is the fourth one, I believe. Once again, I’ll be work­ing from a prompt list gen­er­at­ed by Howard Simp­son. Hope­ful­ly, I can get through all of them in time. Howard’s come up with an inter­est­ing theme this year. Just for fun, I won’t tell you what it is, but you should be able to fig­ure out what’s going on fair­ly quickly.

Today’s prompt is Galaxy Green and her “Astro-Chicks” (Hey, don’t get mad at me; I did­n’t name them that!). If you’re not famil­iar with these char­ac­ters, there’s good rea­son for it.

If you know any­thing about Jack­’s career in comics, you know that he worked in mul­ti­ple gen­res, and was also inter­est­ed in try­ing dif­fer­ent for­mats. Ear­ly on when he left Mar­vel to go to DC in the ear­ly ’70s, he exper­i­ment­ed with a cou­ple of themed mag­a­zines for reg­u­lar news­stand dis­tri­b­u­tion: In the Days of the Mob, and Spir­it World. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only the first issues of those mag­a­zines were ever published.

From what I’ve read, Jack was aware that there was also a mar­ket out there for more adult comics. Galaxy Green was his sort of qua­si-attempt at cre­at­ing some­thing in that vein, though clear­ly he was­n’t com­fort­able get­ting too bla­tant. He only drew two pages, both of which were inked and let­tered by Mike Roy­er. The pages only hint­ed at spici­ness in the most oblique way, and it’s safe to say they prob­a­bly would­n’t have been all that sat­is­fy­ing to your aver­age under­ground comics fan. So Galaxy Green and the “Astro-Chicks” are a bit of an odd­i­ty in Jack­’s body of work.

I’m not sure if the two pages were ever actu­al­ly used to pitch the strip to a pub­lish­er or not, but they were only done in b/w back then (Roy­er had added a lit­tle zip-a-tone in spots to give them a lit­tle more punch). Makes sense, for an under­ground com­ic in that era. I debat­ed just doing these char­ac­ters in b/w here, but then decid­ed they might look a lit­tle odd along­side the oth­ers if I did that.

So I col­ored them. I picked up my col­or cues from an instance where a French pub­lish­er did some­thing with Galaxy Green years lat­er, and had Jack­’s first page col­ored. But I’ve changed the col­ors a lit­tle bit, tweak­ing them so they all fit with­in the stan­dard 64 col­or palette comics used dur­ing most of Jack­’s career. It’s sort of a self-imposed rule I have with my Kir­by Trib­ute draw­ings, to work with­in that palette.

I hope you enjoy my take on this group. Feel free to tune in again tomor­row to see what’s next!

Update: Check out Howard Simp­son’s take over on Face­book, where he drops a lit­tle more knowl­edge about these char­ac­ters and what they were done for! 

Getting the Lay of Things

It’s occurred to me that recent­ly I’ve kind of trapped myself into almost every­thing I post need­ing to be a big pro­duc­tion: a ful­ly-real­ized cov­er, with inks, let­ter­ing and col­or­ing. I’m giv­ing myself license to not always have to do that, hence this post of work from the past.

Reg­u­lar vis­i­tors to this site will know that I’ve had a long­time asso­ci­a­tion with Big Bang Comics, going back to when it first was pub­lished through Cal­iber. And I’ve kept that con­nec­tion even to today. Over the length of my asso­ci­a­tion, I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute in var­i­ous ways. I’ve pen­ciled sto­ries and cov­ers, done ink­ing, col­or­ing, designed char­ac­ters and logos, and even con­tributed ideas to sto­ries here and there.

But you would­n’t know that I also got to do rough lay­outs for oth­er artists to work with! What you see here are lay­outs done for a sequence in Big Bang Comics #14, which was part two of some­thing we referred to as the “Time­bomber” sto­ry­line. Erik Larsen saw fit to loan Gary Carl­son his Sav­age Drag­on for this sto­ry, where Drag­on end­ed up with a lit­er­al time­bomb strapped to his chest that kept explod­ing and bounc­ing him around through dif­fer­ent time peri­ods (and art and writ­ing styles). Along the way, Drag­on met up with var­i­ous Big Bang heroes and villains.

For the final sequence of Big Bang #14, it was sup­posed to have a “Bronze Age Jack Kir­by at DC” kind of feel to it. As I recall, when this job came up, I was too busy at the time with my day job in ani­ma­tion to actu­al­ly pen­cil it myself, but I did agree to do lay­outs (seen here) for anoth­er artist. If you have a copy of the com­ic, you’ll see that my lay­outs were giv­en to pen­cil­er Joe Zier­man, who did a pret­ty good job of tak­ing the “Kir­by-ness” of my lay­outs and fol­low­ing through with it in his pencils.

Oh, by the way: I also did Ster­anko-style lay­outs for the sequence pre­ced­ing this Kir­by one, AND a cov­er rough/thumbnail lay­out for this issue that was giv­en to Rich Buck­ler (which I even did a col­or guide for). So I was kind of all over this issue, but in sort of an “invis­i­ble” way.

Though I love see­ing oth­er peo­ple’s roughs, I always feel a lit­tle fun­ny about post­ing my own. So hope­ful­ly vis­i­tors enjoy this.

Seeing Red

…Yeah. Pret­ty silly.

The ori­gins of this one go back a lit­tle over a year now, to this post. I’d also post­ed that Red Tor­na­do cov­er on LinkedIn, where peo­ple start­ed bring­ing up oth­er humor­ous super­heroes who’d also based their cos­tumes around red long underwear.

Over time, that grad­u­al­ly sparked an idea: why not put all those char­ac­ters togeth­er on one team? I had to make a list first, to be sure not to for­get any of them that were men­tioned to me. While that was per­co­lat­ing, I remem­bered the cov­er of Jus­tice League #1 from 1987, by Kevin Maguire and Ter­ry Austin. Seemed like a great basis for assem­bling this team of longjohn-suit­ed heroes for a cov­er shot.

For those who might not rec­og­nize all these char­ac­ters, I’ll clue you in. The front row (L to R) fea­tures For­bush Man and Her­bie, the Fat Fury. In the mid­dle row is Super Goof, the Red Tor­na­do and Cap­tain Klutz. And the big guy there in the very back is Supersnipe.

If this were a real com­ic, it would def­i­nite­ly qual­i­fy as quite odd! Includ­ing Go-Go checks also made sense to me, for some rea­son. Hope you enjoy!

“T,” and Sword and Sorcery

This one will require a bit of explain­ing. Per­haps I say that more often than I should here, but it’s def­i­nite­ly jus­ti­fied this time.

It’s a fun­ny thing; you can know some­one for years, and still learn new things about them. That hap­pened to me recent­ly with my friend Vic Dal Chele. Vic (like most of us work­ing in ani­ma­tion) may not be a house­hold name to you, but most like­ly you’ve seen some­thing he worked on at some point. I met Vic ear­ly in my ani­ma­tion career, but we did­n’t actu­al­ly get to work togeth­er on the same project until a few years lat­er. We end­ed up col­lab­o­rat­ing on a num­ber of projects in the years since, and got to be good friends.

Recent­ly, I had the chance to meet up with Vic at a local restau­rant for lunch. Spur of the moment, I asked him a ques­tion which had nev­er occurred to me to ask before. Both of us knew that our mutu­al friend Lar­ry Hous­ton (of X‑Men: The Ani­mat­ed Series fame) had pub­lished his own comics pri­or to get­ting into ani­ma­tion. Remind­ing Vic of that, I asked whether he’d ever done any comics of his own before. He con­fessed that he had!

Back in the mid-’70s (well before his ani­ma­tion days), Vic pub­lished an issue of a com­ic he did called The Leg­end of Tau­ran. He was a bit embar­rassed to admit it though, because of the lev­el of the work. I became a lit­tle intrigued to look it up, and dis­cov­ered some­one actu­al­ly had a good qual­i­ty copy avail­able for pur­chase (at a rea­son­able price) on eBay, which I bought. When Vic found out I’d done that, he told me, “You’re a nut!”

The com­ic con­tained three strips: “The Leg­end of Tau­ran,” “Tom­mie Gunne” and “F.O.R.C.E.” It leans towards being an under­ground com­ic in spots (most­ly the Tom­mie strip), hence a “Sug­gest­ed for Mature Read­ers” advi­so­ry on the back cov­er. I can under­stand why Vic was a bit embar­rassed by the lev­el of his work. It shows a young artist still fig­ur­ing out how to draw, and grap­pling with how to get his ink­ing tools to do what he wants them to.

But under the rough sur­face, you could see he was try­ing. Hard. He had some inter­est­ing ideas in the sto­ry he was telling, and it made sense in ret­ro­spect that he man­aged to find his way into enter­tain­ment, and ani­ma­tion specifically.

I got inspired to take a crack at doing a cov­er for a sec­ond issue of The Leg­end of Tau­ran, just for fun. And as I often do, I put a bit of a spin on it, mak­ing it look more like a main­stream com­ic that might have come out around that time.

There are many who get into ani­ma­tion who were always aim­ing them­selves in that direc­tion from the very begin­ning. How­ev­er, it’s also true that there are a num­ber of us who orig­i­nal­ly aspired to work in comics, but end­ed up in ani­ma­tion instead as our day job. Vic and I are def­i­nite­ly mem­bers of the lat­ter tribe.

So this is my trib­ute to my friend Vic. And to all those oth­er fans and aspir­ing artists who are dri­ven to cre­ate their own comics and put them out there, warts and all. Get­ting some­thing done and pub­lished puts you miles ahead of oth­er artists who are always talk­ing about the great com­ic they’re going to do one day, but they nev­er actu­al­ly get around to doing it.

The Leg­end of Tau­ran, Tom­mie Gunne and F.O.R.C.E are ™ & © Vic Dal Chele.

It’s a Blast!

Long­time vis­i­tors to my site might know that I was a con­trib­u­tor to Gary Carl­son’s Big Bang Comics. But before Big Bang Comics, there was Mega­ton!

There was this whole eco-sys­tem of fan and semi-pro inde­pen­dent comics going on in the ’70s and ’80s that I had bare­ly any aware­ness of at the time. If a com­ic showed up in a comics shop, or if the pub­lish­er had suf­fi­cient funds for an ad some­place like The Comics Jour­nal, Amaz­ing Heroes, or oth­er sim­i­lar mag­a­zines back then, then I might have heard of it. But there were a lot of self-pub­lished comics that nev­er got that expo­sure. It was kind of “the wild west” for peo­ple who want­ed to get eye­balls on the work they were putting out.

Mega­ton was one of those comics that I had no clue about its exis­tence when it was orig­i­nal­ly com­ing out. The com­ic fea­tured the title char­ac­ter, while also serv­ing as an anthol­o­gy show­cas­ing oth­er char­ac­ters. Gary Carl­son had a knack for find­ing artists to work for him who were right on the verge, sort of “almost ready for prime­time” play­ers. But this was a dou­ble-edged sword, in that often he’d only get a sto­ry or two out of an artist before they’d get the call from Mar­vel or DC. Gary was either the first to hire, or gave very ear­ly work to, artists like Butch/Jackson Guice, Erik Larsen, S. Clarke Haw­bak­er, Angel Med­i­na, and Rob Liefeld.

Gary man­aged to get eight issues of Mega­ton out, with col­or cov­ers and b/w inte­ri­ors. In August of 1987, plans were announced to expand into a whole Mega­ton Comics line (start­ing off with four titles), this time with col­or inte­ri­ors. Mega­ton vol­ume 2 #1 was slat­ed to be one of those titles. The artist was going to be Gary Thomas Wash­ing­ton (here­after GTW), who had drawn the Mega­ton strip since vol­ume 1 #7.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, none of those comics ever came out. The bot­tom had kind of fall­en out of the mar­ket at that point, and Gary was forced to pull the plug. GTW had com­plet­ed art for all of #1, part of #2, and a char­ac­ter con­cept sketch for #3 when the order came down.

Here’s where we get into “fan­ta­sy world” ter­ri­to­ry. While I got in pret­ty close to the ground floor on Big Bang Comics, if I had even the slight­est clue about Mega­ton back then, I prob­a­bly would’ve reached out to Gary to try to get work. So maybe I could’ve end­ed up becom­ing a con­trib­u­tor to Mega­ton in 1987.

I did­n’t want to over­write the work GTW had done, so I avoid­ed the first two issues of vol­ume 2. #3 seemed fair game. If you’re famil­iar with Big Bang Comics char­ac­ters, the visu­al for the vil­lain in the back­ground may be con­fus­ing to you. He does­n’t look like the Pink Flamin­go who’s the Knight Watch­man’s arch­neme­sis. That’s because this is the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the char­ac­ter (based on a con­cept sketch by GTW), who was intend­ed as a vil­lain for Mega­ton in vol­ume 2 #3. He got retooled for Big Bang. This will prob­a­bly be the first time any­one out­side the Big Bang/Megaton orbit has ever seen this ver­sion of the character.

Any­way, folks, I hope you enjoy this cov­er of a com­ic from anoth­er timeline/universe!

Art Vs. Artist Again

It’s appar­ent­ly that time of year, when artists look back and post a sam­pling of the work they’ve done the pre­vi­ous year in this for­mat on social media. I’ve been see­ing some of these pop­ping up on LinkedIn the last few weeks or so, with the #ArtVsArtist hash­tag. Look­ing back, it’s been awhile since I did one (2020!), so I thought maybe I’d do it again, join in on the fun.

Any reg­u­lar vis­i­tors here will prob­a­bly rec­og­nize sev­er­al of these from posts I’ve made this year. I debat­ed using a more cur­rent image of myself in the cen­ter, but ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to stick with the same one I used last time. It’s a 12-year-old me, and if you saw the whole pho­to, you’d see I was attempt­ing to do a paint­ing (in oils, no less!) of the USS Enter­prise from Star Trek (the Orig­i­nal series, of course). We all have to start some­where (though the truth is I had been draw­ing for years even before this).

Any­way, thanks for stop­ping by, and a Hap­py New Year to you!

I Knew in a Moment It Must Be St. Nick

Long­time vis­i­tors to my site might recall I have a tra­di­tion around this time of year of doing some­thing San­ta Claus-relat­ed. For awhile, I was­n’t quite sure whether I was going to be able to make it this year, but here we are! It’s a Christ­mas mir­a­cle! (Okay; not really)

This is an unusu­al one. I was work­ing on a Christ­mas-relat­ed project these last weeks that real­ly kicked my butt chas­ing the dead­line. It required a lot of research, and I had to work kind of at or beyond the extent of my abil­i­ties. Sort of out­side my com­fort zone, as I’m real­ly more of a cartoon/comic guy. But as is some­times the case with real­ly chal­leng­ing projects, this end­ed up also very rewarding.

This image was one of the illus­tra­tions gen­er­at­ed for the project: the real St. Nicholas, 4th cen­tu­ry bish­op of Myra (in mod­ern day Turkey). Also known as Nicholas the Won­der­work­er, he was the real life basis for San­ta Claus. Based on what images I could find online (like old icon paint­ings), I thought an illus­tra­tion with the two of them togeth­er would make for an inter­est­ing comparison.

So in a way, this year you get a “twofer” of San­tas. I guess that’s all, except to wish all my vis­i­tors a very Mer­ry Christ­mas, and all the best in the New Year!

Those Little Monsters!

Long time vis­i­tors to my site might recall that around Hal­loween, I have a tra­di­tion of doing some­thing Franken­stein-relat­ed. This year, it’s a fake com­ic cov­er for Gold Key’s The Lit­tle Mon­sters!

If you grew up in the ’60s, and you want­ed a com­ic book fea­tur­ing your favorite car­toon char­ac­ter, most like­ly you were going to buy a Gold Key com­ic. They had man­aged to sew up the rights to pret­ty much all of them. And with edi­to­r­i­al offices here on the west coast (most of the pub­lish­ers were based in New York City), it placed Gold Key in a unique posi­tion, giv­ing them access to artists who in many cas­es had actu­al­ly worked on those cartoons.

Though the bulk of Gold Key’s books were licensed prop­er­ties, they also came up with some of their own indige­nous cre­ations. This book was one of them. Some­thing that was def­i­nite­ly part of the pop cul­ture land­scape at the time were old mon­ster movies and TV shows (one of the cool parts of being a kid in the ’60s), and clear­ly The Lit­tle Mon­sters was inspired by that.

The Lit­tle Mon­sters must have sold fair­ly well, as the book made it through 44 issues spread over some 14 years (though based on the cov­ers, some issues look to have been reprints). Appar­ent­ly, who wrote and drew all these comics is a bit of a mys­tery. I found cred­its on comics.org for one issue that list­ed John Carey and Pete Alvara­do as hav­ing done art on some sto­ries. Both artists had worked for the ani­ma­tion stu­dios, and also did a lot of comics work for Gold Key. So maybe Carey and/or Alvara­do con­tributed to the oth­er issues too.

I’ve only got one issue of The Lit­tle Mon­sters myself (#7), but it’s a lot of fun. The art has a lot of charm to it, who­ev­er did it. One sto­ry, “The Return of the Spi­der,” seems to have been inspired by the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Bat­man TV show that would’ve been air­ing around that time.

Hope you enjoyed my take on the Lit­tle Mon­sters. Have a safe and hap­py Halloween!

“A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating…”

So as you know if you were check­ing in all last month, I made it all the way through the 3rd annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. For awhile, I was­n’t sure I was going to get them all done in time, but I did! And just like in past years, I’ve com­bined all the pieces into one big image.

It’s inter­est­ing to see the char­ac­ters all togeth­er now in this con­text. It def­i­nite­ly ham­mers home the point that Fan­tas­tic Four in Jack and Stan’s hands gen­er­at­ed a huge cast of inter­est­ing char­ac­ters. The list of 30 prompts hit many of the high points, but the fact is that there were many more char­ac­ters that could also have been on the list. I know that the cov­er copy, “The World’s Great­est Com­ic Mag­a­zine!”, was Stan Lee using his usu­al gift of hyper­bole in pro­mot­ing the com­ic, but I think you can gen­uine­ly make a case that those first 100+ issues were, at the very least, in the run­ning for that award!

Along the way, I also came to real­ize (first­hand) that the list includ­ed some of the most detailed and visu­al­ly com­plex char­ac­ters Kir­by ever came up with! I tried to do them all justice.

That’s about all I have to say. Hope you’ve enjoyed my trib­ute to (and cel­e­bra­tion of) the King this past month.

“And You Are…?”

And now it’s August 31st! The last day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Just like in pre­vi­ous years, the prompt for today is a wild card: “Your cre­ation.” Or as Howard Simp­son put it the first year, “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.”

Because this year’s theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, I’m bend­ing the rules. So here’s a char­ac­ter I came up with back in 1981 as my own addi­tion to the FF cast: the Wiz­ard’s niece.

At that point (thanks to old comics I’d been loaned by some col­lege friends), I was sort of under­go­ing a crash course on a lot of Mar­vel char­ac­ters and sto­ries that I did­n’t pre­vi­ous­ly know about. I appar­ent­ly knew about the Fright­ful Four and their clas­sic line­up, and had become aware that in the years post-Kir­by/Lee, with Medusa no longer part of the group, the Fright­ful Four tend­ed to have a rotat­ing fourth mem­ber when­ev­er they would show up again (I think I had seen Thun­dra show up in that capac­i­ty). Some­how, the idea of the Wiz­ard hav­ing a niece who would join the group occurred to me. It seemed like the fam­i­ly rela­tion­ship might make for an inter­est­ing dynam­ic in the group.

Before any­one asks, I don’t remem­ber her name. Maybe I nev­er came up with one (A pro tip, kids: jot notes to your­self, in case you’re look­ing at your work years lat­er and don’t remem­ber things)! I do remem­ber that her pow­er was either men­tal or mag­i­cal in nature, and I believe it was sup­posed to be focused through the jew­el on her fore­head. Around that time, I’d also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to read some of Jim Star­lin’s Adam War­lock sto­ries, so that may have been in the back of my mind with the jewel.

I don’t think this was part of Mar­vel con­ti­nu­ity yet back when I did my orig­i­nal draw­ing, but prob­a­bly the gem would’ve worked as being part of the Infin­i­ty Stones.

I always feel a bit embar­rassed when post­ing real­ly old draw­ings, but at least it’s proof that I maybe got a lit­tle bet­ter in the inter­ven­ing years!

So that’s a wrap (at least offi­cial­ly) for Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025! I was­n’t entire­ly sure I was going to get through every­thing in time, but here we are! If you’ve seen what I’ve done in past years, you may right­ful­ly be expect­ing a sort of “encore” tomor­row. So feel free to swing by for that.

“That’s Just Impossible!”

30 days now of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and this year focused exclu­sive­ly on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is sup­posed to be the Hate-Mon­ger, but I felt like going off-menu just this once and doing the Impos­si­ble Man! How could I resist?

The Impos­si­ble Man is anoth­er ear­ly char­ac­ter, appear­ing in FF #11. We find out that he comes from the plan­et Pop­pup, where the Pop­pu­pi­ans have a born abil­i­ty to instant­ly change into what­ev­er form they want in order to pro­tect them­selves from all the dan­gers on their plan­et. When Sue asks him his name, he replies, “Name? We Pop­pu­pi­ans have no names! We know who we are!”

I.M. explains that he got bored on Pop­pup, and decid­ed it would be fun to come to Earth for a vaca­tion. And not real­ly under­stand­ing how things work on our plan­et, in amus­ing him­self, he man­ages to cre­ate all kinds of hav­oc. Some of it actu­al­ly quite dan­ger­ous! But there’s no mali­cious intent behind any of it, as he’s kind of child­like and more just mischievous.

“Impy” only shows up this one time dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. Issue #11 was kind of atyp­i­cal­ly struc­tured, in that instead of one long sto­ry, it con­tained two 11-pagers: this one, and the also-mem­o­rable “A Vis­it with the Fan­tas­tic Four.”

While typ­ing this up, a visu­al asso­ci­a­tion occurred to me. Back in the ’50s, there was a low­er bud­get sci fi movie enti­tled The Man from Plan­et X. Some­one put a lit­tle effort into design­ing the title char­ac­ter, as he man­ages to present a strik­ing visu­al even on a more lim­it­ed bud­get. I took a crack at draw­ing the char­ac­ter myself awhile back. Visu­al­ly, he’s a got a sim­i­lar­ly long head which comes to a point on top. I can’t help but won­der whether the Man from Plan­et x might not have been in the back of Kir­by’s mind (maybe sub­con­scious­ly) when design­ing the Impos­si­ble Man.

One more day left of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month this year. What will I do? You’ll have to swing by tomor­row to find out!

“You’re Dragon, Man!”

On Day 29 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is Drag­on Man!

D‑Man starts off as an inan­i­mate fig­ure cre­at­ed by State Uni­ver­si­ty Prof. Gilbert. But Dia­blo (in his sec­ond appear­ance in FF) man­ages to bring life to Drag­on Man! Pre­dictably, chaos ensues.

Drag­on Man isn’t real­ly bad; more just sim­ple-mind­ed and eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed. He’s very strong, very tough, flies, and…oh yeah; he can breathe fire! In his first appear­ance, Sue’s pres­ence seems to be a calm­ing influence.

The char­ac­ter makes five appear­ances dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run, and ends up being part of the batch of issues that intro­duce the Inhu­mans too. He also seems to be a favorite “toy” for lat­er cre­ators to play with, as he’s shown up in a bunch of oth­er titles.

I feel like Jack must have had at least a slight fas­ci­na­tion with the idea of “Drag­on Men,” as this was­n’t the first time he was involved with a con­cept like that. Way back in the Gold­en Age, he and part­ner Joe Simon did the first issue of what would soon become Faw­cett’s Cap­tain Mar­vel Adven­tures. One of those sto­ries fea­tured a race of Drag­on Men who had enslaved humans on Sat­urn. More about it here.

The penul­ti­mate post is com­ing up tomor­row! What will it be? Come by and find out!

The Devil, You Say!

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.

Just an Old-Time Puppet Show! Nothing Wrong Here!

On the 27th day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Pup­pet Mas­ter, Philip Masters!

The Pup­pet Mas­ter is a very ear­ly antag­o­nist, intro­duced in Jack and Stan’s FF run way back in issue #8. At the same time, we also meet his daugh­ter Ali­cia for the first time, who ends up being a very impor­tant sup­port­ing character.

Apart from look­ing kind of creepy and ven­tril­o­quist doll-like, the Pup­pet Mas­ter does­n’t real­ly cut all that impres­sive of an appear­ance. He’s not on any list you might find of “best or most inter­est­ing­ly cos­tumed Kir­by char­ac­ters.” But he does have quite the pow­er! Using a spe­cial radioac­tive clay, he can make fig­ures of just about any­one, and force them to do his bid­ding. In his first appear­ance, he man­ages to take con­trol of the Thing, send­ing him against his team­mates! So heroes under­es­ti­mate him at their risk.

That’s all I have to say about the Pup­pet Mas­ter. Hope you enjoyed my depic­tion. Who’s next? Tune in tomor­row to see!

We’re Having a Blast!

Day 26 now of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and all month, we’ve been focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Blas­taar, “the Liv­ing Bomb-Burst.”

Like Anni­hilus, Blas­taar also comes from the Neg­a­tive Zone. He’s the deposed despot of his home plan­et, sen­tenced by his peo­ple to be put into a con­tain­ment suit and strapped to an aster­oid, float­ing in the void of space when we first see him in FF #62. In an acci­dent, Reed Richards gets sucked through the por­tal in his lab into the Neg­a­tive Zone (all the FF vis­its to the Neg­a­tive Zone seemed to end up being very dan­ger­ous), and he ends up at one point cling­ing to one side of Blas­taar’s aster­oid. Dur­ing the res­cue of Reed, Blas­taar man­ages to break out of his suit and fol­low, escap­ing to Earth and team­ing up with the Sand­man.  Let’s just say: may­hem ensues.

Blas­taar can fire pow­er­ful blasts of con­cus­sive force from his hands, mak­ing him a dan­ger­ous adver­sary. He’s a very intense and anger-prone per­son­al­i­ty, which caus­es Sand­man to won­der whether he’s mak­ing a mis­take in team­ing up with such a wild card.

That’s all for Blas­taar. Tune in tomor­row to see who comes next!

The Klaw!

We’re mov­ing into our last sev­en days of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Klaw, “the Mur­der­ous Mas­ter of Sound.”

Klaw’s ori­gin is very much entan­gled with the Wakan­dans and Black Pan­ther. We learn via flash­back in FF #53 that Klaw was a sci­en­tist who, in a ruth­less pur­suit of his research into the field of sound, decid­ed he had to have access to the Vibra­ni­um owned by the Wakan­dans. When T’Chal­la’s father King T’Cha­ka denies Klaw access, Klaw uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly shoots him dead on the spot! Lat­er, Klaw thinks he’ll shoot the young T’Chal­la, but he under­es­ti­mates the boy, los­ing his right hand as a result.

In FF #53’s present day, Klaw is cre­at­ing mon­sters of “sol­id sound,” using a con­ver­tor of his own inven­tion. Los­ing once again to T’Chal­la and the Wakan­dans, Klaw’s hid­den lab most­ly destroyed, he makes one last des­per­ate gam­ble, jump­ing into his con­ver­tor him­self. We don’t see the result of this exper­i­ment until #56, when he’s revealed to have been trans­formed into a being made of sol­id sound.

There’s a neat thing they do in these issues with the sound crea­tures, where all of them are col­ored bright red to visu­al­ly call them out. And when Klaw trans­forms, he too comes out red. His visu­al for the most part is a lot sim­pler than many oth­er Kir­by designs at the time, though the face is unique.

If you wan­na see who’s next, feel free to come back by again tomorrow!

Let Me Think About This for a Moment…

24 days in to this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme all this month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is the Mad Thinker!

The Mad Thinker first shows up in FF #15. He has an amaz­ing abil­i­ty (assist­ed by com­put­ers) to pre­dict vir­tu­al­ly every angle, all the odds, and to work them in his favor when putting togeth­er his plans. In his first appear­ance, he had the FF basi­cal­ly beat­en, but for one small detail he could not have fore­seen (…and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is, if you haven’t read that story!).

The Thinker shows up six times dur­ing Jack and Stan’s reg­u­lar run of the FF, plus in three Annuals.

Over the course of his appear­ances in the book, like oth­er Kir­by char­ac­ters, he under­went some changes. He start­ed off with his hair only slight­ly longish for the day in his first appear­ance (1963), but it got longer, wilder and bushi­er by the time of his last appear­ance dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run.

In some ways, the Thinker’s look kind of plays against the stan­dard visu­al you’d expect when you think of a “mad sci­en­tist” type of char­ac­ter. Instead of some skin­ny, long-faced bald­ing type, the Thinker is more burly and hir­sute, prone to wear­ing cov­er­alls blue col­lar work­er style. How­ev­er, there was a thing you heard some­times back then about aca­d­e­mics being called “long­hairs.”

I kind of won­der what Kir­by had in mind, whether there was some thought of the Thinker tying in some­how as orig­i­nal­ly being from behind the Iron Cur­tain? His visu­al fits in pret­ty well with oth­er Mar­vel char­ac­ters of the time who they con­nect­ed more direct­ly to that as part of their back sto­ry. Like the Red Ghost.

And as a bonus, I also threw in the Thinker’s Awe­some Android. Though it’s real­ly kind of a sim­ple design, the visu­al has always grabbed me, from the moment I first came across it back when I was a kid. Some­thing about that face­less strange­ly-shaped head, and his malleability/adaptability.

That’s it for these guys. Come by and see who shows up next tomorrow!

You Psycho!

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!