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.

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!