Category: Comics

Work that’s either done specif­i­cal­ly for comics, or is comic-related.

Big Daddio

We’ve made it to day 20 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son). The theme has been Asgard this week: char­ac­ters who appeared dur­ing Jack Kir­by’s run on Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. And today’s prompt is none oth­er than Odin!

Fans will know that Odin is the ruler of all Asgard, and Thor’s father. If you’ve read a lot of the Lee/Kirby sto­ries, you’re aware that their rela­tion­ship is com­pli­cat­ed, to say the least.

An inter­est­ing aspect to Odin is that visu­al­ly, apart from hav­ing a sol­id frame and the white hair and beard, he has no fixed look! Pret­ty much every time you see him, his attire is dif­fer­ent. And more often than not, it’s quite ornate! In comics, this is very unusu­al. But appar­ent­ly Jack liked the chal­lenge of com­ing up with some­thing dif­fer­ent for Odin each time you saw him. It was­n’t just from issue to issue; some­times his appar­el would change from scene to scene in the same story!

As a result, what I’ve drawn here is inspired by, but not based off of, any one spe­cif­ic out­fit worn by Odin. I pulled my col­or cues from how he was col­ored too (crazy things some­times like the green shad­ows on the blue gloves!). I don’t know that Jack ever hid a face any­where in his designs, but that felt right to me to do that (as kind of a tip of the hat to Walt Simon­son and his Thor run, sec­ond best only to the orig­i­nal. Simon­son would do things like that).

Hope you like my take on Odin, and tune in tomor­row for our next vis­i­tor from Asgard!

Three Is a Magic Number

Here on the 19th day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, we’ve moved into Asgard week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters from Jack­’s Thor run. Today’s prompt is the War­riors Three! In front from left, we have Hogun the Grim and Fan­dral the Dash­ing. Behind them is Volstagg.

As seen in Thor Annu­al #2 from 1966, the War­riors were good friends of Thor. They would often end up going into bat­tle togeth­er. Fan­dral had a dev­il-may-care atti­tude, smil­ing and jok­ing as he bat­tled, seem­ing­ly mod­eled after Errol Fly­nn (per­haps with Fly­n­n’s ver­sion of Robin Hood in mind). Hogun came by his appel­la­tion “the Grim” hon­est­ly, as he rarely smiled or said much in bat­tle (he appeared to be some­thing of a mash-up of Charles Bron­son and Genghis Khan, odd­ly enough). Vol­stagg at this ear­ly point in time was often more of a com­ic relief fig­ure, though lat­er he was shown to be as brave and respect­ed as the rest. He appears to have been inspired by Shake­speare’s Falstaff.

I’d nev­er attempt­ed to draw these char­ac­ters, so it was fun to take a crack at them! Hope you enjoy, and tune in again tomor­row if you’re curi­ous to see who in the Thor cast shows up next!

Sneaky!

We’ve made it to the 18th day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son)! A new week means a new theme: Asgard week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who appeared in Jack­’s run on Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. And this first day, the prompt is none oth­er than that wily ras­cal, Loki!

Loki made a pret­ty good ongo­ing threat to Thor and Asgard. He was always very crafty in how he went about his schemes, and even man­aged to gain con­trol of Asgard at one point! A lot has hap­pened to the char­ac­ter in the years since, but that “trick­ster” ele­ment has remained a part of his character.

I’ve said this pre­vi­ous­ly, but Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor is an impor­tant book to look at when study­ing the body of Jack­’s Mar­vel work. All his Mar­vel work is worth look­ing at, but I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that there are two books that are the pil­lars of his Mar­vel work, that must be tak­en into account. I’m talk­ing about the Fan­tas­tic Four, and Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. Those are the two books where you not only see a storyteller/artist work­ing at the top of their craft, you also get to see a glimpse of Jack Kir­by as a per­son, the things that inter­est­ed and moti­vat­ed him. Thor shows the inter­est that Jack had in myths and leg­ends which ran through his career.

It was fun to take a shot at draw­ing a clas­sic-style Loki here. If you’re curi­ous as to who might be next, pop by again tomorrow!

Wild Thing

Today wraps the sec­ond full week of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. This week’s theme has been the D.N.Aliens gen­er­at­ed by the DNA Project and the Evil Fac­to­ry, from Jack­’s Jim­my Olsen run. Today’s prompt is Jim­my “Homo-Dis­as­trous” Olsen.

As men­tioned before, one of the tropes that had long been part of Jim­my Olsen sto­ries was to put poor Jim­my through strange changes. And when Jack took over the title, using DNA as a plot ele­ment allowed him to take Jim­my through some very strange trans­for­ma­tions! Most were in the form of clones, but in this instance, Simyan and Mokkari of the Evil Fac­to­ry altered Jim­my him­self into this very sav­age and dan­ger­ous form. They over­es­ti­mat­ed their abil­i­ty to han­dle the altered Olsen. Or some of the oth­er crea­tures he freed from their menagerie.

I must admit that it was kind of fun to draw a sav­age Jim­my Olsen! Hope you enjoyed this, and please tune in again tomor­row to see a new week’s new theme!

It’s All Their Fault!

Today makes day 16 of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, which means we’re offi­cial­ly over halfway through! If you’ve been keep­ing score, you know that this week’s theme has been the D.N.Aliens cre­at­ed by the DNA Project or the Evil Fac­to­ry, as seen in Kir­by’s run on Jim­my Olsen. Today’s prompts are the heads of the Evil Fac­to­ry, Simyan and Mokkari.

Work­ing on behalf of Dark­seid to wreak hav­oc on Earth from their secret loca­tion, Simyan and Mokkar­i’s Evil Fac­to­ry cre­at­ed a num­ber of crea­tures that they seemed in some cas­es to not even real­ly have any con­trol of. It was sci­ence run amuck! They were def­i­nite­ly respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing some “inter­est­ing” times for our heroes and the DNA Project. There’s also a sense that maybe the alliance between the two is on the frag­ile side, that each has their own inter­ests and ought to watch their back.

These guys were fun to try to draw. It struck me that those facial tat­toos (or mark­ings, or what­ev­er they are) on Mokkari kind of make me think of some­thing Steve Ditko might’ve designed.

Hope you like my take, and stay tuned! There’s one more day of this week’s D.N.Aliens theme, which you’ll see tomorrow!

Don’t Be so Angry!

Today makes day 15 of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son. If you’ve been fol­low­ing along, you know the theme this week is the D.N.Aliens from the DNA Project and the Evil Fac­to­ry, as seen in Jack­’s run on Jim­my Olsen. And the prompt for today is Angry Charlie.

Angry Char­lie was a prod­uct and sur­vivor of the Evil Fac­to­ry, but not real­ly bad in him­self. He was more of a chaos agent, act­ing in unpre­dictable ways. His appear­ance was weird and a lit­tle off­putting, yet some­how also man­ag­ing to be kind of cute, in a way. The News­boy Legion (espe­cial­ly Gab­by) kind of adopt­ed him as a pet. Angry Char­lie had an odd propen­si­ty to snack on fur­ni­ture on occasion.

This isn’t the first time I’ve drawn Angry Char­lie! Last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month had a prompt for Kir­by’s mon­sters, and out of all the crea­tures I could’ve done, I chose to draw Char­lie. Guess I have a bit of a soft spot for him.

Hope you enjoy, and that you tune in again tomor­row to see the next D.N.Alien!

Takes All Kinds

Here’s day 14 of of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the month of Jack Kir­by’s birth. The theme this week is the D.N.Aliens of the DNA Project and the Evil Fac­to­ry in Jim­my Olsen. And today’s prompt is Arin, the Armored Man.

Arin only appeared in one short tale, part of a few one-shot extras Jack did under the umbrel­la title, “Tales of the DNA Project.” Arin was cre­at­ed by the Project to be able to live and thrive in the vac­u­um of space. He had with him a red back­pack that…well, I don’t want to spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t read it. We only get to see him for three pages in Jim­my Olsen #146, so who knows what comes next?

Arin seems to be metal­lic in nature, but he appears dif­fer­ent from the kind of shiny met­al com­pos­ing char­ac­ters like the Sil­ver Surfer. I tried to get that sense here too.

I hope you enjoy my take, and feel free to tune in tomor­row for anoth­er D.N.Alien!

 

Two and Two Is…

It’s now day 13 of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and we’re in the midst of a week themed for the D.N.Aliens from Jack­’s time on Jim­my Olsen. Today’s prompt is the Four-Armed Ter­ror, anoth­er char­ac­ter I’ve nev­er tried to draw before.

The Ter­ror was part of a batch of D.N.Aliens cooked up in secret by the Evil Fac­to­ry to wreak hav­oc on their oppo­site, the DNA Project. Feed­ing on radioac­tive ener­gy, the Four-Armed Ter­ror and his sib­lings came dan­ger­ous­ly close to end­ing the Project in a nuclear fire­ball! But Super­man saved the day at the last moment.

To be hon­est, the Ter­ror was a bit of a chal­lenge to draw. His appear­ance did­n’t seem to be com­plete­ly locked down, and the inks by Vince Col­let­ta did­n’t real­ly help in that regard either. So hope­ful­ly this com­bines enough of what I saw in all those pan­els to work.

Tune in again tomor­row for anoth­er D.N.Alien!

Think of a Number Between One and Ten…

On day 12 of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son), this week’s theme is the D.N.Aliens from Jack­’s time on Jim­my Olsen. Today’s char­ac­ter prompt is Dubbilex.

Dub­bilex was one of the D.N.Aliens from the gov­ern­men­t’s secret DNA Project, intro­duced in Jim­my Olsen. Though per­haps some­what off­putting at first glance, Dub­bilex was actu­al­ly quite friend­ly and intel­li­gent. Though cre­at­ed at the Project, he worked along­side the sci­en­tists, help­ing with research. He was the face of the Project, intro­duced to any vis­it­ing dig­ni­taries who were allowed through their doors. Lat­er in Jack­’s run, Dub­bilex was shown to have devel­oped Telekine­sis too.

I’d nev­er drawn Dub­bilex before (or most of the oth­er char­ac­ters that are prompts for this week). He was fun to take a shot at. Hope you like my take, and that you come back tomor­row to see the next D.N.Alien!

Jolly and Green

We’re at Day 11 of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, start­ing the sec­ond full week of the month. A new week means a new over­all theme: D.N.Aliens (from the DNA Project and the Evil Fac­to­ry in Jim­my Olsen). Today’s prompt is the Giant Jim­my Olsen.

When Jack Kir­by decid­ed it was time to leave Mar­vel for green­er pas­tures and jumped over to DC, it was a Big Deal! Report­ed­ly, Jack was offered his pick of any DC book he want­ed. Jack though was very much a work­ing man at heart; while he was an artist, he was also very con­scious of the fact he was work­ing hard to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly as best he could. And he was mind­ful that oth­er artists were in the same boat, so he was ret­i­cent to get any­one boot­ed from a reg­u­lar assign­ment that helped to pay their bills. As a result, when offered his choice of any book in the DC line, Jack said, “Give me your worst-sell­ing title,” since he would­n’t be putting any­one out of work by doing that. This is how Jim­my Olsen (of all books) wound up being an inte­gral part of Jack­’s Fourth World Saga at DC.

I’m sure that any reg­u­lar Jim­my Olsen fans’ heads were prob­a­bly spin­ning, over all the wild, crazy action and con­cepts Jack threw at them. DNA? Cloning? The Hairies? The Moun­tain of Judg­ment? In some ways, Jack was prob­a­bly a bit too far ahead of his time for DC, or for most read­ers then. It was­n’t until years lat­er that sub­se­quent Super­man cre­ative staff seemed to final­ly catch up with Jack and revis­it­ed some of his concepts.

Even before Jack took on the book though, there was some­thing of a tra­di­tion of Jim­my Olsen under­go­ing strange changes or trans­for­ma­tions from time to time (look up Giant Tur­tle Boy, for exam­ple). Bring­ing DNA into the sto­ry­telling mix allowed Jack to put a fresh spin on this idea. The Giant Jim­my Olsen was genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered from DNA sam­ples tak­en from Jim­my by the Evil Fac­to­ry. He was cre­at­ed to break into the DNA Project , kill Super­man and destroy the Project.

I don’t know if Jack was respon­si­ble for his col­oration, but some­one must have amused them­selves by col­or­ing Giant Jim­my green, which gave him some­thing in com­mon with a cer­tain big, strong, rag­ing (ahem!) Incred­i­ble char­ac­ter at anoth­er company.

Hope you enjoy, and tune in again tomor­row to see the next D.N.Alien!

I Can Dig It

It’s now the 10th day of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, devised by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the cre­ative genius of the King. Howard intro­duced a fun new wrin­kle this year, of themed weeks. This week’s theme has been the Fan­tas­tic Four, and on this last day of the week, the final prompt is the Mole Man.

The Mole Man may not be con­sid­ered the FF’s arch­en­e­my, but he has the dis­tinc­tion of being the very first antag­o­nist they faced in their ori­gin sto­ry. Like many of the FF vil­lains, he had more com­plex­i­ty to him than your aver­age com­ic book vil­lain. He com­mand­ed an army of Moloids (which I’ve includ­ed some of here, free of charge) as well as var­i­ous giant under­ground mon­sters. He was bit­ter, yet not entire­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic, hav­ing been shunned and basi­cal­ly dri­ven away by most of the rest of mankind.

While I have (on rare occa­sion) pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed to draw some of the oth­er FF char­ac­ters I’ve drawn this week, this is the first time I’ve ever tried to draw the Mole Man. It was fun!

And that wraps up Fan­tas­tic Four week. Tomor­row’s a new week, and a new theme!

You’re All Doomed!

Today makes Day Nine of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the cre­ative genius of Jack Kir­by dur­ing his birth month. We’re in the first full week of the month, and the theme for this week is the Fan­tas­tic Four. Today’s prompt is Dr. Doom.

Vic­tor Von Doom views him­self as being above oth­er men. And yet (though he’d deny it), he’s clear­ly threat­ened by Reed Richards’ genius. He’s a bit more com­plex of a char­ac­ter than your aver­age supervil­lain. Kir­by has been quot­ed as say­ing he was inspired in part by The Man in the Iron Mask, and was try­ing to make him “the clas­sic con­cep­tion of Death,” with­out a hint of mer­cy, by mask­ing him in cold, unmer­ci­ful steel. He viewed Doom as being para­noid, and Doom’s per­fec­tion­ism was what ulti­mate­ly tripped him up and bent his mind.

Dr. Doom’s mask is kind of tricky to draw! It sort of morphs a bit between pan­els and appear­ances, so hope­ful­ly I’ve done it jus­tice here.

Tune in tomor­row for the finale of Fan­tas­tic Four week!

Stretching the Point

We’re at Day Eight of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the King in his birth month. A new ele­ment this year is each week hav­ing a theme, this week’s being the Fan­tas­tic Four. If you’ve been fol­low­ing along the pre­vi­ous days, you might be able to guess today’s prompt: Mr. Fantastic.

Reed Richards as Mr. Fan­tas­tic is the bril­liant scientist/inventor and leader of the FF. A fun aspect of the orig­i­nal Jack and Stan run on Fan­tas­tic Four were those scenes where Reed was inten­sive­ly work­ing in his lab over some wild Kir­by-designed piece of equip­ment. I kind of had that in mind when doing this drawing.

If you’ve seen the orig­i­nal run by Jack and Stan, you might rec­og­nize that the way Jack drew Reed kind of mor­phed over the time he was doing the book. Mr. Fan­tas­tic start­ed off a bit thin­ner in the face ini­tial­ly, but got a lit­tle more “robust” lat­er on. I ref­er­enced how Reed looked dur­ing the mid­dle issues of the run here, which many con­sid­er to be the prime peri­od for the book.

The week’s theme is not over! Hav­ing cov­ered the FF them­selves, tune in tomor­row to see who’s up next.

Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed

We’ve reached the sev­enth day of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son. A cool new aspect he’s intro­duced is themed weeks, where each day’s prompts fit with­in that theme.

If you’ve been fol­low­ing along, this week’s theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four. Today’s prompt is the Thing.

Ben Grimm as the Thing is a char­ac­ter who might appear fair­ly sim­ple and straight­for­ward on the sur­face, but if you’ve read the orig­i­nal run by Jack and Stan, you real­ize there’s more to him than meets the eye. He can be fun­ny, but there’s also under­ly­ing pain and regret, being stuck in this mon­strous form. Lat­er cre­ators have some­times lost that aspect, focus­ing more on the comedic elements.

The Thing is not an easy char­ac­ter to draw! I had a bit of a strug­gle here before I felt like I had it rea­son­ably correct.

Hope you approve. Tune in tomor­row to see who’s next!

He Thinks He’s Hot Stuff!

It’s Day Six of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, we’re in the midst of Fan­tas­tic Four week, and today’s prompt is the Human Torch.

In his ini­tial appear­ances, he was per­haps a bit too form­less. Jack quick­ly fig­ured this out, and cod­i­fied what we now think of as his clas­sic look. From time to time, some sub­se­quent artists have tried to get cre­ative and find oth­er ways to draw him, but some­how he does­n’t look like him­self when you get too far removed from the tem­plate Jack set.

As men­tioned ear­li­er, I’m try­ing to get some sense of nar­ra­tive into these shots. Where exact­ly is he? Some­place unusu­al, no doubt. Feels like a sto­ry there.

Hope you like what I’ve done here. Tune in tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s up next!

Now You See Her,…

By now you know I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to mark the month of Jack­’s birth (he would turn 107 lat­er this month if he were still with us).

The new thing Howard’s intro­duced this year is weeks that have an over­all theme to each day’s prompts, and this week’s theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four. I did a group shot yes­ter­day, and today’s prompt (the first of the indi­vid­ual shots) is the Invis­i­ble Woman.

At first, her only pow­er was to turn invis­i­ble. But I think Jack and Stan real­ized pret­ty quick­ly that this did­n’t quite give her enough to ful­ly hold her own with the rest of the group. So they had her devel­op an addi­tion­al pow­er: the abil­i­ty to cre­ate force fields. That did the trick.

Sue Storm was orig­i­nal­ly known as the Invis­i­ble Girl, and it was­n’t until John Byrne’s run on Fan­tas­tic Four in the ’80s (sec­ond best in my opin­ion only to Jack and Stan’s orig­i­nal run!) that she was re-chris­tened the Invis­i­ble Woman. Byrne came up with some of the most cre­ative uses for her pow­ers that had ever been seen, and man­aged to show once and for all that she was a force to be reck­oned with!

Hope you like, and feel free to come back tomor­row to see who’s up next!

Fantastic!

Here’s Day Four of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and begin­ning the first full week of August means we also have a new theme this week: the Fan­tas­tic Four. And the first prompt is…the Fan­tas­tic Four?!

Since we also have sep­a­rate prompts for each indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter com­ing up, I thought I might do a “before and after” thing, today being the “before” part of the equa­tion. This was a moment with a lot of dra­ma in their ori­gin sto­ry, so I went with it. I always thought it was cool how Jack chose to ren­der the cos­mic rays as these sort of “lozenge” shapes. Kind of not all that threat­en­ing in them­selves indi­v­d­u­al­ly, but fear­ful because they’re an unknown, and there are so many of them!

I ful­ly admit to appro­pri­at­ing the col­or scheme used in the orig­i­nal ver­sion, because why not? I thought it looked great, and it also kind of reminds me of the almost “pop art” col­or­ing approach used in Alex Ross’ Fan­tas­tic Four: Full Cir­cle (which in my opin­ion is the best ver­sion of these char­ac­ters that I’ve seen in years!).

A note about the FF: while pret­ty much any Mar­vel book Jack had a hand in is worth a look, there are two absolute­ly essen­tial titles he did at Mar­vel that I feel are the tent­posts of his work there, which have to be tak­en into account when apprais­ing that body of work. In them, you see not just an artist and sto­ry­teller work­ing at the height of his craft, but you also get to see some­thing of the man him­self and his inter­ests. Fan­tas­tic Four is one of those books. In it, you get to see Jack­’s fas­ci­na­tion with sci fi, the unknown, and with what might be out there. It’s a theme that runs through much of his work, and we got to see a bit of it pre­vi­ous­ly in Chal­lengers of the Unknown at DC.

I did say two titles, so I’m not going to hold you in sus­pense wait­ing days to hear the sec­ond one. It’s Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. That’s where you see Jack­’s ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion with myths and leg­ends, which runs through­out his career.

So who’s first up when we move to the indi­vid­ual mem­bers tomor­row? I’m not going to spoil that. You’ll just have to check in and see!

Buncha Dingbats!

We’re at day three of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son! The week’s theme (at least for the three days that fall into August) has been char­ac­ters cre­at­ed by Jack who appeared in DC’s 1st Issue Spe­cial. Today’s prompt is the Ding­bats of Dan­ger Street! From left to right up top are Good Looks, Krunch, and Bananas. At low­er right is Non-Fat.

As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, I nev­er saw any copies of 1st Issue Spe­cial on the spin­ner rack when it was first pub­lished, but lay­ing hands on copies years lat­er did­n’t prove to be too cost­ly. Appear­ing in 1st Issue Spe­cial #6, the Ding­bats is kind of a quirky strip. You get to see Jack­’s sense of humor, but there’s also a bit of an edge to it too, the sense things are dangerous.

Jack and Joe Simon were the pio­neers of the “kid gang” genre in the Gold­en Age, find­ing fun and dra­ma in pulling togeth­er dis­parate per­son­al­i­ties who might rub each oth­er the wrong way on occa­sion, but ulti­mate­ly had each oth­er’s backs. They came up with the Young Allies, Boy Com­man­dos, the News­boy Legion, the Boy Explor­ers, and Boys’ Ranch (maybe oth­ers that I’m not think­ing of at the moment). So this was Jack­’s lat­er attempt at anoth­er group in that vein. Maybe there’s a bit of the Bow­ery Boys in there, or maybe it’s just Jack­’s own expe­ri­ence of grow­ing up in a tough neighborhood.

Though DC only pub­lished the one sto­ry, there were at least two more issues of Ding­bats Jack drew, which were ulti­mate­ly “writ­ten off.” If you want to see those (in col­or, no less!), I high­ly rec­om­mend get­ting your­self a copy of TwoM­or­rows’ Ding­bat Love, which final­ly brings to light a lot of mate­r­i­al Jack did for DC in those days that pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er got to see the light of day.

If you’ve seen the one pub­lished issue, you might at first think, “He col­ored Non-Fat wrong!” Nope! DC got it wrong in the orig­i­nal com­ic! Jack intend­ed that Non-Fat be African-Amer­i­can. There’s even a draw­ing he did of the cast where there are brief descrip­tive notes for each char­ac­ter, and next to Non-Fat, Jack wrote, “Non-Fat is an eager beaver Black kid.” Appar­ent­ly the col­orist who han­dled that issue of 1st Issue Spe­cial did­n’t get that memo!

Like with the oth­er 1st Issue Spe­cial char­ac­ters, this is the first time I ever tried to draw these guys. Hope you enjoy! Stay tuned for tomor­row, and a new theme!

He Always Gets His Man…or at Least He Did that One Time

This is day two of the online sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by artist Howard Simp­son. Like last year, I intend to try to par­tic­i­pate in the fun, and see if I can’t hit each day’s prompt.

As men­tioned yes­ter­day this (short) week’s theme is the three issues of DC’s 1st Issue Spe­cial that fea­tured cre­ations by Jack. Today’s prompt is the ver­sion of Man­hunter that appeared in 1st Issue Spe­cial #5.

This is a dif­fer­ent take on Man­hunter from what Jack and his part­ner Joe Simon had done back in the Gold­en Age, and was also dis­tinct from the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed ver­sion Archie Good­win and Walt Simon­son had done a cou­ple years ear­li­er as a reg­u­lar back­up strip in Detec­tive Comics. I don’t want to spoil any­thing for those who haven’t yet had a chance to read Jack­’s ver­sion here by say­ing too much, even this many years removed. But I found this take to have sort of a clas­sic, pulpy inspi­ra­tion that I enjoyed. If this had gone on to a series, I would’ve been along for the ride, to see where Jack would’ve tak­en it.

Like I men­tioned yes­ter­day, though I nev­er saw this title on the spin­ner rack when it orig­i­nal­ly came out, I found it not too expen­sive when I went look­ing for it sev­er­al years later.

I’d nev­er tried to draw this ver­sion of Man­hunter, so it was fun to do that. I did­n’t men­tion this yes­ter­day, but some­thing I’m try­ing to do with all of these this time out is to cre­ate some sense of nar­ra­tive, the feel­ing that each of these might be a moment from the midst of a sto­ry. I did some of that last year, but I want to try to con­scious­ly do more of it this year.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s!

Carrying the Weight of the World

It’s August, and that means it’s also the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son). Basi­cal­ly there are char­ac­ter prompts for each day. I par­tic­i­pat­ed in this last year (you can find what I did here on the site), and I’m going to try and do them all again this year.

A new wrin­kle for this year’s Kir­by Trib­ute Month is that each week has a spe­cif­ic theme. There are only three days that fall with­in August this first week, and the theme is Kir­by’s issues of DC’s 1st Issue Spe­cial. Today’s prompt is Atlas, who appeared in 1st Issue Spe­cial #1.

I nev­er saw this com­ic on the spin­ner rack back when it came out, but like most of the oth­er issues of this title, it was­n’t too cost­ly to buy when I final­ly came across a copy years lat­er. Atlas is set in an ancient time, seem­ing­ly before writ­ten his­to­ry, and to me feels a bit like Jack­’s take on a Conan the Bar­bar­ian type of char­ac­ter. Like the vast major­i­ty of Jack­’s work, you get to the end of that issue, and it feels like there’s a lot of poten­tial, if he had been giv­en the green light to con­tin­ue the story.

I’d nev­er tried to draw Atlas before, so it was fun to do this! Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for tomor­row’s entry!

The Supreme Allied Commando!

Here’s anoth­er fake cov­er I drew for Big Bang’s His­to­ry issues. Not only fresh­ly col­ored, but also inked for the first time! A lot of fake cov­ers need­ed to be gen­er­at­ed for those issues, and there was­n’t time to ink them all. Since they were being print­ed pret­ty small, it was okay if some of them were in pen­cils, as long as they were fair­ly clean and tight.

Gary Carl­son had incor­po­rat­ed into the Badge’s back sto­ry that at a cer­tain point dur­ing WWII, he took up anoth­er name for a time and changed his uni­form accord­ing­ly, going into action as the Supreme Allied Com­man­do. I think this is the first time he’s appeared in col­or in this garb.

Ini­tial­ly when I first tack­led design­ing the Badge, I took my inspi­ra­tion from the heroes Simon and Kir­by cre­at­ed for DC (prob­a­bly the Guardian espe­cial­ly). For this ver­sion, I looked back at what they had been doing with Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, of course.

While Cap­tain Amer­i­ca was a patri­ot­ic super­hero (the prime one peo­ple think of from WWII), I real­ized awhile back that Simon and Kir­by’s Cap sto­ries also had some­thing else going on. There was a def­i­nite influ­ence from the “weird men­ace” pulp genre, with the kind of foes they went up against. It was even on the cov­ers, with the mad sci­en­tists per­form­ing unspeak­able exper­i­ments, evil hench­men, deformed mon­sters, and odd men in hood­ed robes who would some­times throw axes. Strange­ly, I’ve rarely heard any­one else call­ing atten­tion to that influence.

That’s why all those things are present here. I even came up with names for the two main bad guys that I jot­ted down on the out­side bor­der of my cov­er: Dr. Von Mungler and his hench­man Oggar.

Enjoy! And with the tim­ing of this post­ing, I wish you a Hap­py Inde­pen­dence Day!

Oblivious

Fake comic cover for Big Bang Comics' Venus #198, with the character Olivia featured on the cover.As has no doubt become clear, I did a lot of fake cov­ers for “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues. This one end­ed up being espe­cial­ly fun, for rea­sons you’ll under­stand when I explain who did what.

This cov­er is for the most part my work. I pen­ciled it, let­tered it, and now col­ored it. The inks? By none oth­er than (drum­roll please) Mr. Mike Roy­er him­self! He was Kir­by’s best inker in the ’70s, no ques­tion in my mind. I still kind of can’t believe this hap­pened. More about that in a minute.

Oblivia came about because I was think­ing of those odd char­ac­ters like the Black Rac­er who would sud­den­ly pop up ran­dom­ly out of nowhere in the midst of Jack­’s Fourth World saga at DC. I start­ed think­ing about what Joe Kingler (Big Bang Comics’ equiv­a­lent for Jack) might have done in the con­text of work­ing on Venus, and the name “Oblivia” popped into my head. It seemed to me very much the sort of “play on words” name that Jack often used. So a Venus cov­er fea­tur­ing her did­n’t at all seem out of line.

When I pen­ciled this cov­er, I had no clue who might end up ink­ing it. I prob­a­bly would­n’t have gone ahead and let­tered it if I had known. So when Big Bang’s Gary Carl­son raised a few pos­si­bil­i­ties for inkers, Mike Roy­er being one of them, it was the no-brain­er of all no-brain­ers to say, “Yes!”

I actu­al­ly had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pick up the fin­ished cov­er in per­son, and was thrilled with the end result. I got to spend a very fun Sun­day after­noon hang­ing out at Mr. Roy­er’s home, con­vers­ing and hear­ing a lot of great sto­ries about his time in comics, work­ing for Dis­ney doing licens­ing art, plus oth­er top­ics. Again, thanks so much, Mr. Royer!

In col­or­ing this, I heav­i­ly ref­er­enced the way all those Fourth World cov­ers at DC were col­ored. That guid­ed me to go in some direc­tions I prob­a­bly would­n’t have gone if I were just col­or­ing this nor­mal­ly on my own (like knock­ing the gang­sters out all in green), but it helped to real­ly get across the right peri­od look.

Thanks for looking!

Venus Vs. Cupid

Fake comics cover for Big Bang Comics' Venus #169, with Ares looming in the backgroundI’m adding anoth­er to the group of fake cov­ers I had a hand in cre­at­ing some­time back for “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues of Big Bang Comics. Cred­its on this one take a lit­tle expla­na­tion. Pen­cils were by Frank Squil­lace, inks and let­ter­ing by me. Frank did a col­or comp on a pho­to­copy with mark­ers, which I marked up with col­or for­mu­la call­outs to cre­ate a col­orist guide.

This cov­er end­ed up being repur­posed as an actu­al Big Bang cov­er for issue #34, with dif­fer­ent trade dress. For that instance, I believe some­one at Image actu­al­ly gen­er­at­ed the col­or file used to print it, based on the col­or guide we’d pro­vid­ed. I don’t think I actu­al­ly did that one myself in Pho­to­shop, because after much search­ing, I don’t seem to have a file for it. Which means the ver­sion you see here has been total­ly recol­ored by me from scratch in Pho­to­shop, ref­er­enc­ing the col­or guide. I tweaked the ren­der­ing in a few spots to plus what was in the print­ed ver­sion a lit­tle bit, so a sharp eye might spot some of those differences.

I sus­pect most vis­i­tors will imme­di­ate­ly real­ize that Frank and I were shoot­ing for a Jack Kir­by style here. I always thought of Big Bang as sort of “comics his­to­ry through a fun­house mir­ror.” It’s known that when Jack Kir­by jumped from Mar­vel to DC, they offered him any book he want­ed. Jack was­n’t com­fort­able with putting any­one out of work, so he said, “give me your least-sell­ing book.” That’s how Jim­my Olsen end­ed up as part of Jack­’s Fourth World Saga at DC. Any­one who’s stud­ied Jack­’s work knows he had a life­long fas­ci­na­tion with myths and leg­ends. So I thought, what if instead of Jim­my Olsen, Jack had tak­en on Won­der Woman? In Big Bang terms, that would’ve trans­lat­ed to Joe Kingler (Big Bang’s Kir­by equiv­a­lent) tak­ing on the char­ac­ter Venus.

This is the first time this has appeared in col­or with the orig­i­nal Venus mast­head. Hope you enjoy it!

Getting Animated

Fake comic cover for Adventures of the Knight Watchman #23, with Big Bang Comics' the Knight Watchman and Pink Flamingo facing off.Here’s anoth­er fake com­ic cov­er I gen­er­at­ed for one of “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues, this one fea­tur­ing ani­mat­ed-style ver­sions of the Knight Watch­man and his neme­sis, the Pink Flamin­go. With my pen­cils, inks and let­ter­ing, it appeared orig­i­nal­ly in black and white in Big Bang Comics #24. And now for the first time, it’s in col­or here!

I’m sure I don’t have to explain what style I’m going for here. At the time I orig­i­nal­ly did this, I believe I was like­ly still work­ing on X‑Men: the Ani­mat­ed Series. It would be awhile yet before I final­ly got the chance to work on an ani­mat­ed Bat­man project for Warn­ers, on the direct-to-video Bat­man: Mys­tery of the Bat­woman. Thanks to Curt Geda for giv­ing me the call!

Like with some of the oth­er fake cov­ers I did for Big Bang that I’ve post­ed here recent­ly, I tried to take my col­or cues from the source mate­r­i­al I was imi­tat­ing when draw­ing it. Those books were done around the time that Pho­to­shop was start­ing to be used on some comics, and though I don’t think Pho­to­shop was ever used on those Bat­man Adven­tures comics, it did appear to be hav­ing an influ­ence, in that they were clear­ly using a great­ly expand­ed col­or palette from the usu­al Gold­en, Sil­ver or Bronze age style comics cov­ers I usu­al­ly imi­tate. So it was a fun chal­lenge to try to put my head in a lit­tle dif­fer­ent place and work that out.

A unique thing about all those DC comics based on the WB car­toons was that hard-edged shad­ow col­or they used on the art. I’ve seen orig­i­nal b/w art from those comics, and they’d usu­al­ly indi­cate the shad­ow edges direct­ly on there with a fine point red felt pen (I assume drawn in by the inker). Those red lines would be dropped from the final print­ed art, but the col­orists would use them as their guides for exact place­ment of the shad­ow areas. The shad­ow col­or I’m using here is most like­ly not the same one they used back then, but it’s one I’ve used in the past that’s always worked well for me. I felt like it worked well here, too.

Hope you like it!

Bonk, Bonk on the Head!

Fake comic cover for Thunder Girl Adventures #23, featuring Big Bang Comics' Thunder Girl meeting Konga, queen of the Troglodytes.I’ve recent­ly been post­ing a num­ber of fake com­ic cov­ers I did some­time back for Big Bang Comics’ “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues. Here’s anoth­er one, new­ly col­ored! Thun­der Girl Adven­tures #23, fea­tur­ing Thun­der Girl meet­ing Kon­ga, Queen of the Troglodytes.

Post­ing this gives me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about artist Bill Fugate. Bill end­ed up being the artist who devel­oped Thun­der Girl’s visu­al design. While I had a lot of respect for my fel­low Big Bang artists, I was an out­right fan of Bil­l’s work. Most of us were try­ing to do dif­fer­ent styles, draw­ing like spe­cif­ic oth­er artists. Bill just drew the way he drew, and he seemed nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed with the kind of car­toon­ing charm to his work that C. C. Beck had. Any time Bill did a Thun­der Girl sto­ry (or Erik Larsen’s Mighty Man), it was a real treat. I wrote a bit more about Bill here. Wish I’d had the oppor­tu­ni­ty at some point to tell him just how much I loved his work!

Back to this cov­er: for the Big Bang Comics His­to­ry issues (mod­eled after The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics vol­umes), a lot of cov­ers need­ed to be gen­er­at­ed to fill all those pages. While some ideas were dis­cussed, in a num­ber of cas­es, Big Bang hon­cho Gary Carl­son just kind of let us wing it and come up with what­ev­er seemed right for the par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter or time peri­od. This cov­er was one of those.

Thun­der Girl was kind of Big Bang’s mash-up/e­quiv­a­lent of both the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel and Mary Mar­vel. One of Capt. Mar­vel’s ene­mies was King Kull, the Beast­man. Kind of a pre­his­toric cave­man char­ac­ter. Remem­ber­ing Kull got me won­der­ing what an equiv­a­lent kind of char­ac­ter for Thun­der Girl might be like, hence Kon­ga. In my mind, though, Kon­ga was less vil­lain­ous than comedic, com­ing to the sur­face world look­ing for a mate, and not under­stand­ing how things work up here.

This cov­er was inked by Jef­frey Mey­er (if my mem­o­ry’s cor­rect), with pen­cils, let­ter­ing, and now col­or by me.

There’s a fun­ny sto­ry I prob­a­bly should­n’t get into here about an inter­est­ing fan reac­tion we got to this cov­er when it ini­tial­ly appeared in tiny black and white form. If you ever see me out in the real world, ask me and I’ll tell you about it.

Hope you enjoy this!

Behind the Badge Again

Fake Comic Cover for Red Hot Comics #17, with Big Bang Comics' the Badge and His RookiesI explained last time how, when Big Bang Comics did a cou­ple issues focused on the fic­ti­tious his­to­ry of the com­pa­ny (mim­ic­k­ing Ster­anko’s His­to­ry of Comics vol­umes), they need­ed a whole bunch of fake cov­ers to pull it off and make it all feel believ­able. Here’s anoth­er one from the bunch I generated.

I drew this back then, inked (I believe) by Jeff Mey­er. And now for the first time, appear­ing in col­or! It’s fun to final­ly see this real­ized in this form, after hav­ing it exist only in black and white for all these years.

I’m not exact­ly sure where the idea for this cov­er came from. Per­haps I was think­ing about Simon & Kir­by’s kick-off run of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, which seemed to draw a lot of inspi­ra­tion from the “weird men­ace” genre of pulps (an ingre­di­ent I’m sur­prised that most peo­ple don’t seem to pick up on). I kin­da wish I could read “The Vam­pire of Var­ney Street!”

I had fun doing this. Hope you enjoy it!

Behind the Badge

Fake Comic Cover Red Hot Comics #14, with Big Bang Comics' the Badge and His RookiesLong­time vis­i­tors to my site might know that back in the ’90s, I was a con­trib­u­tor to Gary Carl­son and Chris Eck­er’s Big Bang Comics. The first issue had­n’t quite come out through Cal­iber yet when I came onboard, I  think, but some mate­r­i­al was already done.

When I met him, Gary was look­ing for some­one to draw a Simon & Kir­by type Gold­en Age char­ac­ter he had in mind called the Badge, and he’d been point­ed my way. I got to have a pret­ty good hand in devel­op­ing the char­ac­ter, his look and that of side­kicks Troop­er and Bob­bie, even mak­ing some sug­ges­tions about the char­ac­ters’ back sto­ries. So I have to admit to feel­ing a bit of pro­pri­etary inter­est in the Badge.

We even­tu­al­ly did a cou­ple issues of Big Bang sub­ti­tled “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics,” in imi­ta­tion of the Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics vol­umes (not real­ly par­o­dy except in the most lov­ing and respect­ful way, because we all had a lot of affec­tion for those books, as they were a gate­way into a life­long inter­est in comics his­to­ry for many of us).

The His­to­ry issues end­ed up being Big Bang Comics #24 and #27. If you’ve seen the Ster­anko books, imi­tat­ing those meant we need­ed a whole bunch of fake cov­ers! So I and a num­ber of oth­er artists set about to gen­er­ate them. I recent­ly made a list, and was shocked to see just how many I did, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hold­ing down my day job in animation!

Any­way, to what you’re see­ing here: this was one of the ear­li­est fake cov­ers I gen­er­at­ed for Big Bang. If my mem­o­ry’s right, I think it might even have appeared as far back as the Cal­iber minis­eries. I recall it appear­ing in col­or, but small, like part of a back cov­er ad. Recent­ly, I thought it would be fun to go back and revis­it a num­ber of those old fake cov­ers I did, and give them the full col­or treat­ment they always called out for. Most have nev­er been seen in col­or at all!

The char­ac­ters along the left side were ones I just made up on the spot, but most of them end­ed up appear­ing in Big Bang sto­ries at one point or anoth­er. I sort of thought of Big Bang as “comics his­to­ry through a fun­house mir­ror,” and to that end when I was draw­ing up this cov­er, I just made up char­ac­ters that felt like they were play­ing with some of those famil­iar old Gold­en Age arche­types, but hope­ful­ly also feel­ing like you had­n’t entire­ly seen them before.

Pen­cils, let­ter­ing (and now col­or­ing) are mine; inks were by Jeff Mey­er (I believe), who inked sev­er­al of my fake cov­ers for the His­to­ry issues, and did a nice job of giv­ing them the cor­rect fin­ished look and feel. You can check out anoth­er of our fake cov­er col­lab­o­ra­tions here.

I still have oth­er cov­ers in the pipeline that I might post too, but I had­n’t put any­thing up here in awhile, and thought this might be fun. Hope you enjoy!

And thanks always, Gary, for let­ting me have a lot of fun on the Big Bang play­ground! Those inter­est­ed can check out more recent Big Bang issues over on Indy Plan­et.

Member of the Inker Tribe

Years ago, I thought my life’s career was going to be in comics. My way in appeared to be through ink­ing. To that end, I did what all aspir­ing inkers look­ing to get into comics did at the time: I got my hands on pho­to­copies of pen­ciled pages, then inked them either on vel­lum, or by light-box­ing them onto bris­tol board. While recent­ly dig­ging through some old work, I redis­cov­ered this ink­ing sam­ple that I had total­ly for­got­ten about!

I had gen­er­at­ed a num­ber of ink­ing sam­ples work­ing over sev­er­al dif­fer­ent artists in those days. But for some rea­son, I don’t believe I ever includ­ed this when I sent out copies look­ing for work. Reap­prais­ing it all these years lat­er, it’s bet­ter than some of the oth­er sam­ples I did back then, so I’m not sure why I did­n’t use it. You might rec­og­nize the pho­to­copied lay­out as the work of Jim Star­lin, done for Mar­vel Comics’ War­lock #11 (pg. 14 of the sto­ry). It’s a good, clear lay­out. Pret­ty much all the info you would need as an inker to car­ry it to a fin­ish is there. There are even some sug­ges­tions about lighting.

When I did my inks, I did­n’t have a copy of the fin­ished com­ic to look at. And real­ly, that would’ve defeat­ed the pur­pose, see­ing how the art­work had actu­al­ly been fin­ished. Edi­tors and art direc­tors were look­ing to see how you approach ink­ing, not your pro­cess­ing of some­one else’s inks. And keep in mind, in those days, there was no inter­net where you could go to grab reference.

For post­ing here, I thought it might be fun to also sort of “re-mas­ter” the page, add the speech bal­loons and col­or it, based on how the page appeared in the com­ic. I guess that makes it both some­thing old and some­thing new.

Hope you enjoy!

The Adventures of Santa Claus

Here’s one that’s been in my head since last Christ­mas, but there was too much going on then for me to get to it in time. So it feels good to final­ly get this real­ized this year!

I’ve always had a soft spot for those DC 80 Pg. Giants and 100 Pg. Super-Spec­tac­u­lars, and the idea of a some­what super­hero-style San­ta Claus 80 Pg. Giant com­ic sound­ed like a fun idea that need­ed to exist. And it’s a giv­en that Go-Go Checks auto­mat­i­cal­ly make any com­ic cov­er better!

Of course, there were a lot of pos­si­ble vil­lains to pick from, but ulti­mate­ly I grav­i­tat­ed towards these. For those who don’t know, Pitch comes from the 1959 Mex­i­can movie San­ta Claus. Voldar and Torg appear in the 1964 “clas­sic” San­ta Claus Con­quers the Mar­tians. The Heat Miser and the Snow Miser show up in the TV spe­cial, The Year With­out a San­ta Claus. And final­ly, Oogie Boo­gie comes from the Dis­ney clas­sic The Night­mare Before Christ­mas. Just real­ized: they’re all in chrono­log­i­cal order. I had­n’t real­ly planned it that way (I was think­ing more about even­ly dis­trib­ut­ing the reds and greens), but so be it!

That’s about all I can think of to say for this image, except: I’d like to wish all my site vis­i­tors a Mer­ry Christ­mas and a Hap­py New Year!

A Whole Buncha Stars Here,…You Bet!

I’ve men­tioned before how some­times ideas for art kind of come at me from ran­dom direc­tions, and cer­tain ideas will stick in my head until I do some­thing about them. This is one of those.

Most fans of comics and comics his­to­ry will rec­og­nize the sig­nif­i­cance of All Star Comics. Espe­cial­ly issue #3: it was the first appear­ance of the Jus­tice Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca! The cov­er for #3 is well-known, as it’s been re-cre­at­ed and repur­posed by a num­ber of oth­er artists over the years. I even did it myself once some years back for an FCA cov­er (Faw­cett Col­lec­tors of Amer­i­ca), replac­ing the DC heroes with Fawcett’s.

Less famil­iar are the issues pri­or to #3. I guess once DC had pub­lished Archive Edi­tions con­tain­ing every issue from All Star #3 for­ward, it was decid­ed that they prob­a­bly should com­plete the set and put out an Archive col­lect­ing the first two issues, before the title became about the Jus­tice Soci­ety. Hence vol­ume #0.

On a recent reread of that vol­ume, I was struck by the cov­er of All Star #1. The pub­lished cov­er seemed an after­thought: using exist­ing art pho­to­stat­ted from pre­vi­ous sto­ries and past­ed up, the char­ac­ters look­ing tiny and con­strict­ed in the lay­out. Maybe the issue was run­ning close to the dead­line when they real­ized they still need­ed a cov­er. I start­ed to think, “What might it have looked like if they’d had more time to put it together?”

And as men­tioned up top, the idea stuck, and the only way to get it out of my head was to actu­al­ly do it! So here’s my take on it.

Hope you enjoy it!

Oh, Venus…!

I dis­cov­ered just before the start of this month that there’s some­thing of a social media thing going on at the moment with Big Bang Comics char­ac­ters. #Big­Bang­To­ber appar­ent­ly. As an ear­ly con­trib­u­tor to Big Bang (ear­ly and often, in a vari­ety of ways), I felt like maybe I should con­tribute to the cause. So over on LinkedIn, I’ve been post­ing a num­ber of my old Big Bang pieces.

The attached is one I always want­ed to col­or, but nev­er had the chance to, until now. It’s a faux Gold­en Age cov­er, done as one of many for one of the “Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues. Mod­eled after The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics books, Gary Carl­son need­ed a lot of cov­ers to fill out the pages. This was one I came up with. Pen­cils, let­ter­ing (and of course, col­or­ing) are mine. Inks were by Jeff Mey­er, who did a great job of help­ing fur­ther the H.G. Peter art look I was going for here. (I came up with the name “P.G.Harris” as kind of Big Bang’s H.G. Peter equivalent).

Thanks for looking!

Monkey Business

Lancelot Link cover based on Steranko's Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.IE.L.D #6 cover.Hm. How best to explain this thing?

Peri­od­i­cal­ly online, you see that age-old ques­tion pop up again: “Where do ideas come from?” Just speak­ing for myself, they can strike at very odd times. This one hit me as I was dri­ving up I‑5 one day to go vis­it a friend. Just, “boom,” there it was in my brain. And as I’ve men­tioned before, some­times an idea will just lodge itself in my brain, and I can’t get it out unless I actu­al­ly do it. So here it is.

Some of you will know that Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp was a live action Sat­ur­day morn­ing show where they put a bunch of chim­panzees in cos­tumes and filmed them. I think I read some­where that they gave them food or some kind of chew­ing gum to get their mouths mov­ing, and then the voice actors would lat­er dub in their parts, try­ing to get some sem­blance of lip sync. I’m pret­ty sure it’s not exact­ly a show you could do today, for a num­ber of reasons.

Many will also real­ize that this is a re-cre­ation/rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the cov­er of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #6, by Jim Ster­anko. Apolo­gies to Mr. Ster­anko, whom I have noth­ing but respect for, but I had to get this out of my brain!

It’s a Gold Key cov­er, and not Mar­vel, because Gold Key was the com­pa­ny who held pret­ty much all the comics licens­es to all the Sat­ur­day morn­ing shows at this point. They actu­al­ly pub­lished Lancelot Link comics back then. Those who’ve seen the show might be won­der­ing, “What’s with the red hair? He did­n’t have that on TV.” The artists drew him that way in the com­ic (I’m guess­ing to make him more visu­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able among all the oth­er chimps in the sto­ries), so I fol­lowed their lead.

This image end­ed up being a lot more com­pli­cat­ed to exe­cute than I had orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned in my mind. Some­times I think I must have some kind of a masochis­tic streak as an artist. Often I’ll get deep in the midst of things like this, find it more com­plex and involved than I expect­ed, and think, “Why do I always do this to myself?” I’m sure I can’t be the only artist who does this.

Hope you enjoy my silli­ness here!

One More for the Road!

Recent vis­i­tors to my site in August will know that I was doing the online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute every day, the brain­child of Howard Simp­son. it was a blast par­tic­i­pat­ing, refresh­ing my appre­ci­a­tion all over again for all the great work Kir­by did over the years.

I stuck to a very spe­cif­ic for­mat with all of these: por­traits in a small square, col­ored with the lim­it­ed palette used in the old comics most of these char­ac­ters orig­i­nal­ly appeared in, even down to the dot pat­terns. And I had in mind that the end goal was to be able to assem­ble them all into one com­pos­ite image. I was­n’t sure how that would work out, but here’s how it did!

This was kind of just a per­son­al challenge/exercise in tak­ing the Trib­ute a step fur­ther. Not sure what hap­pens with it beyond this point.

Hope you enjoyed the ride!

A Jolly Old Time!

We’ve made it! Day 31 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by trib­ute, in hon­or of his birth­day this month (back on the 28th). The brain­child of Howard Simp­son, you can find the work of par­tic­i­pants on your favorite social media plat­forms via the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for this last day reads, “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.” So I present: the Jol­ly Jaunter!

The rea­son I went with him is that he was a char­ac­ter I orig­i­nal­ly came up with back when I was 14 or 15, when I was heav­i­ly into a phase of try­ing to draw like Kir­by. Kind of a sil­ly, satir­i­cal British super­hero. I’m not sure where he came from exact­ly, as at that point, it was­n’t as if I had seen much of jack­’s humor work (like Fight­ing Amer­i­can) yet. Wher­ev­er it came from, the idea struck my fun­ny­bone, and I had to draw it. Buried deep in my files, I still had the drawing!

It was a lit­tle odd, revis­it­ing a draw­ing and a char­ac­ter I had done when I was that young. How often do you do that? Obvi­ous­ly 14/15-year-old me had­n’t both­ered to dig up ref­er­ence for how a Union Jack flag real­ly works, or real­ly thought through how the col­or would work. What can I say? The idea amused me at the time. But there you go!  For what it’s worth, the Jol­ly Jaunter is ™ & © Mark Lewis.

Thanks for look­ing, and for fol­low­ing all my Kir­by Trib­utes this month!

On to Victory!

We’re get­ting close to the end! Day 30 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute. Suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son, you can find the work online on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I’m going off-menu again today. The prompt sug­gests doing a “Kir­by Col­lage,” of the type Jack was known for doing in his spare time, some­times even find­ing ways to use them in his comics. But I could­n’t think of a way to do that and have it fit in the­mat­i­cal­ly with the rest of what I’m doing. So instead, I chose to draw Cap­tain Victory.

This was the title that launched a brand new com­ic com­pa­ny in the ear­ly ’80s, Pacif­ic Comics. As men­tioned yes­ter­day, the fact that Jack Kir­by was doing a com­ic for a new start­up pub­lish­er and not for Mar­vel or DC again, was a Big Deal. It was thought that the “Big Two” were real­ly the only game in town, so it can’t be over­stat­ed that this was big news.

One of the rea­sons Kir­by was will­ing to do this was con­tained right there in the indi­cia in the front of the book: “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was­n’t some­thing he was ever like­ly to get from Mar­vel or DC, and I’m sure the var­i­ous frus­tra­tions he’d had with both pub­lish­ers at dif­fer­ent points over the years were also part of his inter­est in going inde­pen­dent again (like he and Joe Simon had tried once before with Mainline).

The sto­ry of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and his Galac­tic Rangers was inspired at least in part by Jack watch­ing E.T. and think­ing that “first con­tact” was not like­ly to be so benign. In fact, con­sid­er­ing some of the things that hap­pened when explor­ers came from Europe to the “New World,” Jack thought more like­ly it could go hor­ri­bly wrong..for us! And that was the seed of the story.

Front and cen­ter you’ve got Cap­tain Vic­to­ry. Behind him to the left is Major Klavus, and to the right is Tarin.

Hope you like it. One more to go!

Silver Star

This is Day 29 of our month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute online. The brain­child of Howard Simp­son, you’ll be able to find the work of par­tic­i­pants on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I actu­al­ly post­ed today’s prompt (a Jack Kir­by por­trait) yes­ter­day, in hon­or of Jack­’s birth­day. So today is catch­ing up with yes­ter­day’s prompt: Sil­ver Star.

There are sev­er­al unique things about this char­ac­ter. One is (if I’m not mis­tak­en) the sto­ry start­ed off as a screen­play, and Jack turned it into this lim­it­ed series (The cov­ers have a bul­let read­ing “A Visu­al Nov­el.”). I believe Jack orig­i­nal­ly thought in terms of his Fourth World series at DC as an epic sto­ry that would come to a def­i­nite con­clu­sion, but he was­n’t allowed to do that then. Lim­it­ed series, or minis­eries, just weren’t some­thing comics pub­lish­ers did yet in those days. If a book was a suc­cess, they want­ed it to just keep going and going as long as possible.

The oth­er thing about Sil­ver Star was the fact it was not pub­lished by Mar­vel or DC! Pacif­ic Comics was a start­up pub­lish­er look­ing to estab­lish them­selves as a sol­id alter­na­tive in the mar­ket­place. Though Jack had done work for oth­er pub­lish­ers over the years, at this point in time the “Big Two” were thought to be the only real game in town. So the news that no less a per­son­age than Jack Kir­by him­self was going to cre­ate new comics for a new pub­lish­er was a Big Deal. It can’t be over­stat­ed how big that news was at the time. Pacif­ic kicked things off with Cap­tain Vic­to­ry (stay tuned), but Sil­ver Star was Jack­’s next offer­ing through them.

And this part is impor­tant: the indi­cias for both books read “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was some­thing he was­n’t going to get at either Mar­vel or DC, so I’m sure it mat­tered a great deal to him. Jack­’s inspi­ra­tion for the name appears to have come from the Sil­ver Star Medal award­ed by the US mil­i­tary for val­or in com­bat. In fact, in the sto­ry, Jack has Mor­gan Miller gain­ing the nick­name from his squad after he’s been award­ed the Sil­ver Star.

In the back­ground of this image is the antag­o­nist of the sto­ry, Dar­ius Drumm. I’ve nev­er tried to draw these char­ac­ters before, so that was a bit of a chal­lenge. I’m still not quite sure just how Sil­ver Star’s hel­met works…

Hope you enjoy, and please tune in again tomorrow!

The King

It’s the 28th Day of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. You can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is sup­posed to be Jack­’s Sil­ver Star char­ac­ter, but I’m tak­ing the lib­er­ty of shift­ing things around a lit­tle bit. Instead, I’m doing tomor­row’s prompt: “Jack Kir­by por­trait— Draw a por­trait of Jack Kir­by him­self.” My rea­son­ing is because today is actu­al­ly Jack Kir­by’s birth­day! Born in 1917, this would be his 106th birth­day today (if my math is right). So I feel like post­ing the por­trait today is appro­pri­ate. A con­fes­sion: I’m not real­ly a por­trait kind of artist. It took some work to get this to where I felt com­fort­able with it, but I did get there.

The King’s lega­cy lives on in all the great work he left us, and all the cre­ative inspi­ra­tion he’s pro­vid­ed. There are some artists who make you feel like giv­ing up, break­ing your pen­cils and walk­ing away, because you’ll nev­er be as good as they are. But then there are artists like Kir­by who, although you know you can’t do what he did, there’s some­thing in the work that fires you up and inspires you to go and create!

I hope you like my attempt at por­trai­ture here, and tune in again tomor­row to see my shot at Sil­ver Star.

The Fourth Host

This is Day 27 of the month-long online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, suggest/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. If you’d like to see what oth­er cre­ators might be doing, you can use the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for today sim­ply reads “The Celes­tials.” These char­ac­ters come from Jack Kir­by’s The Eter­nals book, one of the new titles he cre­at­ed when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. As men­tioned in oth­er posts, it appears to me that at this point in his career, Jack just want­ed to have his own cor­ner where he could be left alone to do his own thing, and to let oth­ers do their own thing, no one get­ting in any­one’s way.

The Eter­nals seemed to be Jack tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the Erich Von Däniken book, Char­i­ots of the Gods?, which the­o­rized vis­its by alien astro­nauts to our world in ancient times, shap­ing and influ­enc­ing the growth of our cul­ture. It was fuel for Kir­by to tell an epic sto­ry about three groups of human­i­ty: the Eter­nals (whom many myths are built around), nor­mal mankind, and the Deviants. Watch­ing and stand­ing in judg­ment over all are the Celes­tials, and the begin­ning of the book saw their return to Earth as the Fourth Host.

Kir­by’s designs for the Celes­tials were some of the most imag­i­na­tive char­ac­ter visu­als he’d ever come up with. Beings almost beyond com­pre­hen­sion, they did­n’t even have what you would be able to call faces.

It was­n’t pos­si­ble to draw all the Celes­tials here in this space. There are just way too many of them. So I opt­ed to draw the three I found the most visu­al­ly inter­est­ing. Arishem the Judge is front and cen­ter. On the left is Nez­zar the Cal­cu­la­tor, and on the right is Eson the Searcher.

Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

Cap and Bucky

It’s Day 26 of the Kir­by Art Trib­ute, suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. You can find the work of those par­tic­i­pat­ing on your social media plat­form of choice by using the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Bucky. Cre­at­ed by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by for Time­ly (Mar­vel) back in the Gold­en Age, they had a huge hit on their hands. While Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Bucky are most­ly thought of as being patri­ot­ic heroes who fought the Axis, I dis­cov­ered some­thing inter­est­ing on re-read­ing their ear­ly tales: with all the mon­sters etc. they went up against, Cap and Buck­y’s sto­ries seem to be very much inspired by the “weird men­ace” pulp genre. If you think about it, the Red Skull and how they wrote him at that point would’ve fit in very well in a “weird men­ace” pulp sto­ry. Which is why I opt­ed to make this a night scene.

Joe and Jack only did the first ten issues of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Comics, after which they left Time­ly. They believed that pub­lish­er Mar­tin Good­man was not liv­ing up to their prof­it-shar­ing agree­ment, so they jumped over to DC where they cre­at­ed a slew of char­ac­ters like Guardian and the News­boy Legion, the Boy Com­man­dos, and their ver­sions of Man­hunter and Sand­man.

Jack had two oth­er runs with Cap­tain Amer­i­ca. The sec­ond one was in the ’60s, after Time­ly had turned into Mar­vel and “Stanand­Jack” was often treat­ed as if it was one word. That run had some­thing of a James Bond/secret agent feel, hav­ing Cap work­ing close­ly with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. Jack­’s third run was when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s, and that was him work­ing solo that time.

An aside: Cap­tain Amer­i­ca was­n’t Joe and Jack­’s only shot at a patri­ot­ic hero. In the ’50s, they also did Fight­ing Amer­i­can and his side­kick, Speed­boy. An inter­est­ing aspect of that strip is that it start­ed off as a straight anti-com­mu­nist super­hero adven­ture, but then piv­ot­ed fair­ly rapid­ly into a very fun­ny super­hero satire, pre-dat­ing the camp craze of the ’60s.

That’s it for today. Feel free to pop by again tomorrow!

The Black Panther, and His Unexpected Adventures

Amaz­ing­ly, I’ve made it here to Day 25 of the month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute, sponsored/suggested by Howard Simp­son. I was­n’t sure I was going to get through all of these, but here we are! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for today reads: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Black Pan­ther series.” I chose to draw Black Pan­ther him­self, along with Princess Zan­da and Abn­er Lit­tle, two oth­er key char­ac­ters from that run.

When Kir­by left DC to make his return to Mar­vel in the ’70s, and fans heard he was going to do a Black Pan­ther title, many expect­ed he would just pick up the same con­ti­nu­ities and types of sto­ries that pre­vi­ous cre­ators had been doing with the char­ac­ter. But that was­n’t what they got, and some were appar­ent­ly dis­ap­point­ed. At this point in Kir­by’s career, he seemed to want to be allowed to just have a lit­tle cor­ner of his own where he could do his own thing with­out imping­ing on what oth­er cre­ators might be doing, or hav­ing oth­ers impinge on his creativity.

You have to take Jack­’s Black Pan­ther run on its own terms. His view of the char­ac­ter and the sto­ries he want­ed to tell with him seemed to have roots in the types of exot­ic adven­ture sto­ries H. Rid­er Hag­gard used to write, like King Solomon’s Mines, or She. If this com­ic had come out four or five years lat­er, read­ers might have asso­ci­at­ed it with the sorts of arcane arche­ol­o­gy Indi­ana Jones delved into in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Hope you enjoy, and feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

That Old Devil…Dinosaur

And we’ve reached Day 24 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, in hon­or of Jack­’s birth­day this month! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find their posts on your favorite social media plat­forms via the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Dev­il Dinosaur series.” I’ve drawn Dev­il him­self, and his part­ner Moon Boy here.

When Kir­by returned to Mar­vel in the ’70s, many were expect­ing Jack to be work­ing with oth­er writ­ers (like he had with Stan Lee pre­vi­ous­ly). But this time around, Jack pre­ferred to just have his own lit­tle cor­ner where he did his own thing. Dev­il Dinosaur was one of the new titles he came up with.

The book seemed like per­haps it was aimed at a younger audi­ence (It would’ve made a sol­id Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon). Artis­ti­cal­ly, like all Kir­by books, it had its moments (there’s an espe­cial­ly imag­i­na­tive two-page spread that can stand with the best two-page spreads Kir­by ever did). There was also a bit of fun in the fact they’d play around with dif­fer­ent inkers on many of the cov­ers (like they also did on his Machine Man covers).

Nev­er tried to draw Dev­il Dinosaur before! Bill Stout or Ricar­do Del­ga­do I’m not, but I had fun try­ing it. Hope you enjoy! And tune in again tomor­row to see what’s next.

Mr. Sandman…Again

It’s now Day 23 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute. Any cre­atives are free to play along, and you can find their posts on your favorite social media plat­forms with the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Sand­man series. (Gar­rett San­ford).” That last part threw me slight­ly. So far as I knew, the char­ac­ter nev­er had a name. But I dis­cov­ered it was some­thing added by oth­ers lat­er on.

Once I got past my slight con­fu­sion over the oth­er name, I knew which Sand­man was being talked about. Jack and Joe Simon had done their take on Sand­man for DC ear­li­er, in the Gold­en Age (I drew him ear­li­er here). Late in Jack­’s time at DC in the ’70s, the con­cept was revis­it­ed and rein­vent­ed from the ground up. The script for the first issue was by Joe Simon, which (unless I’m mis­tak­en) was the first time Joe and Jack had been teamed togeth­er on a com­ic since they dis­solved their part­ner­ship back in the ’50s.

This book is a bit of an odd one. It had no con­nec­tion to any of the oth­er titles Jack was doing for DC then, and was tonal­ly dif­fer­ent from all of them, seem­ing to skew more towards younger read­ers. Though that first issue man­aged some creepy scenes with the Werblink dolls.

I recall read­ing Carmine Infan­ti­no say­ing that Sand­man sold real­ly well for DC. I guess they were caught off-guard, because there’s a gap of a year between issue #1 and #2! And while Kir­by did all the cov­ers, he was­n’t back doing the inte­ri­ors until issue #4. They only got six issues out total. Issue #6 had Wal­ly Wood inking!

Any­way, in addi­tion to Sand­man him­self, I drew his side­kicks Brute and Glob. I kind of wavered on the silli­ness of hav­ing Glob give him rab­bit ears, but felt ulti­mate­ly like it would be right for that book and these char­ac­ters, tonally.

Hope you like it, and please feel free to tune back in tomorrow!

New Genesis Is Calling

This is Day 22 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, in hon­or of the King’s birth­day this month. It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find their trib­utes on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Jack Kir­by’s New Gods. This was a key book in his Fourth World saga. Those who know their Kir­by know that one of the things that always fas­ci­nat­ed him and found its way into his work were myths and leg­ends (as seen in Thor for Mar­vel). The con­cep­tu­al seed of New Gods seemed to be “The old gods in the myths and leg­ends of the past are some­thing of a larg­er-than-life embod­i­ment of the qual­i­ties those peo­ple prized. What are the con­cepts we val­ue in our mod­ern world, and how would you embody those?”

Obvi­ous­ly this isn’t all of the New Gods char­ac­ters. It would’ve been impos­si­ble to do in this space. So I lim­it­ed this to those who appeared in the New Gods title, who I had­n’t already depict­ed (like Ori­on), and only those from New Gen­e­sis, not from Apokalips (like Dark­seid). That leaves (from left to right) Metron in his Mobius Chair, High­fa­ther, and Ligh­tray. At the bot­tom is young Esak. It was still a chal­lenge to try to fit all these char­ac­ters in!

I hope you like it, and please feel free to come back again tomorrow.

The One Man Army Corps

It’s now Day 21, three full weeks of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute! You can find peo­ple’s Kir­by Trib­utes on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s OMAC series.” I went with Omac him­self, the One Man Army Corps.

Of all the post-Fourth World titles Kir­by cre­at­ed for DC, OMAC unfor­tu­nate­ly was the short­est-lived. It last­ed for only eight issues, and the last issue came to a very abrupt forced end­ing that was jolt­ing and high­ly unsat­is­fy­ing for readers.

The length of the book’s run should not be tak­en as any kind of indi­ca­tion of the book’s qual­i­ty. This title was where Jack put out some of his wildest sci fi con­jec­tures about what The World That’s Com­ing might be like. In the first issue, he had a room where a cor­po­ra­tion encour­aged employ­ees to go in and destroy things, get all their aggres­sions out. This was well before such things came about in real life!

Maybe some of the ideas were just a bit too out there for some read­ers? The rest of us were cap­ti­vat­ed, and wished Jack had been allowed to continue.

Hope you like, and feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

“Gone, Gone, The Form of Man,…”

It is now Day 20 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute. Open to all cre­atives, you can find par­tic­i­pants’ Kir­by Trib­utes on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Etri­g­an the Demon. One of Kir­by’s post-Fourth World titles he cre­at­ed for DC, this was some­thing very dif­fer­ent. Root­ed in the kinds of word-of-mouth sto­ries about the super­nat­ur­al that Kir­by heard grow­ing up, plus clas­sic Uni­ver­sal mon­ster movies and the like, Kir­by also gave it a tie-in to Mer­lin and the Arthuri­an leg­ends. The title char­ac­ter was a demon pressed into ser­vice on the side of the angels, and anoth­er unique angle on it was that Mer­lin had set things up so that he was a demon pos­sessed by a man (as opposed to the oth­er way around).

The Demon’s orig­i­nal run last­ed only 16 issues, but appar­ent­ly the con­cept was such that it caught the eye of a num­ber of sub­se­quent comics cre­ators, and over the years that fol­lowed they all took their shot at doing some­thing with the character.

I’d nev­er tried draw­ing the Demon before. It was fun try­ing to get that expression!

Enjoy, and please feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

From the Bunker Labelled Command D

Here’s Day 19 of the month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, in hon­or of his birth­day this month. Suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son, it’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find peo­ple’s work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt reads, “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Kaman­di series.” I chose to depict Kaman­di him­self, along with his friend Ben Box­er in his armored-up form. They’re going down into some bust­ed-up Sub­way, maybe in search of some­thing or some­one, obvi­ous­ly on their guard. On Earth A.D. (After Dis­as­ter), you can’t be too careful!

I have a lot of affec­tion for the Kaman­di book and the char­ac­ter. And it seems like I’m not alone in that. A num­ber of peo­ple around my age seem to have a sim­i­lar affec­tion for the book. And of all Jack­’s post-Fourth World titles he did for DC, Kaman­di sold the best and last­ed the longest, con­tin­u­ing on in oth­er hands for a good while even after Jack left and went back to Marvel.

I think there must have been some­thing in the air at the time. Not just Plan­et of the Apes, but oth­er films (like Logan’s Run) and sci fi that had a fas­ci­na­tion with dystopias that came about after our cur­rent world col­lapsed for one rea­son or another.

On a per­son­al lev­el, I came across Kaman­di just about the time I was begin­ning to rec­og­nize indi­vid­ual artists and remem­ber their names. I’d seen some of Kir­by’s work ear­li­er, but had not been quite old enough for his name to reg­is­ter with me just yet. This was the right time, and the right book. I became a full-fledged Kir­by nut after this. Not hav­ing any con­nec­tion to wider fan­dom as a kid and an aspir­ing artist, I had this naive thought that, “Kir­by’s get­ting old­er. He’s got­ta be like in his 50’s! Even­tu­al­ly he’s going to retire, and some­one will need to pick up the baton from him! Maybe it should be me!”

Of course, I had no idea just how many oth­er fan artists there were out there who had sim­i­lar ideas of try­ing to be the next Kir­by. I went through a lengthy “Jack Kir­by phase” as a young artist, not real­ly under­stand­ing the under­ly­ing “why” of what he did yet. I just saw the sur­face, loved the ener­gy and the imag­i­na­tion, and thought it was what comics should be. Even­tu­al­ly I grew out of my fix­a­tion on try­ing to draw like him, but I can still see Kir­by as a com­po­nent of my artis­tic DNA, whether any­one else can or not. Kir­by and his work still mat­ter a great deal to me. Which is why I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in this Tribute!

Any­way, hope you like my shot at Kaman­di, and please come back for tomor­row’s image!

You Wouldn’t Like Him When He’s Angry!

We’ve made it now to Day 18 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find their work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt was Ori­on, from the book New Gods. Though he’s most def­i­nite­ly on the side of New Gen­e­sis and fight­ing against Apokolips, he has his demons! His sto­ry is inter­twined with Scott Free/Mister Mir­a­cle’s, and rather than spoil it for you, you can read about it in “The Pact” (New Gods #7).

It was fun to try to cap­ture some of the “angry ener­gy” Ori­on often has in this draw­ing. Hope you enjoy! Please tune in again tomorrow.

Just Don’t Get on Her Bad Side!

It’s now Day 17 of Howard SImp­son’s month-long trib­ute to Jack Kir­by! Can you believe it? If you’d like to see what oth­ers are post­ing in order to par­tic­i­pate, you can find that work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Big Bar­da. Part of Kir­by’s Fourth World saga at DC, she was a key sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle, first appear­ing in issue #4. Raised on Apokolips to be part of a group of war­riors called the Female Furies, she lat­er met Scott Free (Mis­ter Mir­a­cle) and fell in love with him. Even­tu­al­ly, she fol­lowed Scott to Earth.

Bar­da’s bat­tle armor is one of those Kir­by cos­tumes with a lot of detail. It’s con­sis­tent in the broad strokes, but has a ten­den­cy to morph a bit from page to page or pan­el to pan­el as far as the spe­cif­ic details go. I like how it looks, and thought a straight-ahead pre­sen­ta­tion from the front would be the best way to show it.

Hope you like it, and please come back again tomorrow.

It’s a Miracle!

We’ve hit Day 16 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of the work of Jack Kir­by! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work peo­ple are upload­ing to your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for the day is Mis­ter Mir­a­cle. The lead char­ac­ter in the com­ic named for him, he was part of the Fourth World saga Jack Kir­by spun over at DC. Known as Scott Free in his civil­ian iden­ti­ty, Mis­ter Mir­a­cle lived here on Earth and worked as an amaz­ing escape artist. Mis­ter Mir­a­cle’s back sto­ry is actu­al­ly pret­ty pro­found. I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t read it, but it’s cov­ered in the sto­ries “The Pact” (New Gods #7), and “Himon” (Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #9).

I recall tak­ing a crack at draw­ing Mis­ter Mir­a­cle a few times back in high school, as I was a big fan of the Fourth World mate­r­i­al. It’s been a long time!

Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned!

It’s Dark Outside!

We’re almost halfway there! Day 15 of this month-long trib­ute to Kir­by. Howard Simp­son’s brain­child, it’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find what peo­ple are post­ing on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Dark­seid. The pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist of Kir­by’s Fourth World books at DC, Dark­seid was a real gift Kir­by gave to DC: a vil­lain con­cep­tu­al­ly much larg­er than any oth­er DC had ever had up to this point. It could be argued that with the excep­tion of Galac­tus, Dark­seid even topped most of Kir­by’s pre­vi­ous vil­lain cre­ations for Mar­vel. He was in search of some­thing called the Anti-Life Equa­tion, which would enable him to take over the minds and will of every­one in the Universe!

Hope you like my Dark­seid draw­ing, and feel free to come back and see what’s new tomorrow!