Tag: Beautiful Dreamer

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.

“…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!