Tag: Alicia Masters

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.

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 Feel You!

It’s Day Sev­en of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly this time to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, as of the last cou­ple days, we’re in the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Ali­cia Masters.

Ali­cia was intro­duced as the daugh­ter of the vil­lain the Pup­pet Mas­ter, in Fan­tas­tic Four #8. In the course of that sto­ry, Ali­cia meets the FF, and real­izes she has feel­ings for Ben Grimm, the Thing. Ben has feel­ings for her too, and their rela­tion­ship helps to soft­en and ground him after the tragedy of his muta­tion. We learn that Ali­cia is blind, and also a very tal­ent­ed sculp­tor. She becomes a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, play­ing piv­otal roles in sev­er­al sto­ries. Most notably in the Galac­tus Tril­o­gy, Fan­tas­tic Four #48–50.

Some­thing I real­ized in look­ing back on her appear­ances in the first 100+ issues is that there was a real effort to try to keep her fash­ions and hair­styles cur­rent. I notice that with a num­ber of the female characters.

That’s it for Ali­cia! Tune in tomor­row to see who’s next.