Tag: Bronze Age

“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.

It’s Transducin’ Time!

I just did a piece of pin­up art of Frank Squil­lace’s Trans­duc­er Man! ‘Nuff said!…

…No? Guess not. Okay; here’s more. Years ago, on my first day in ani­ma­tion (work­ing on X‑Men: The Ani­mat­ed Series) , the very first per­son I met was Frank Squil­lace. My friend Frank has always been one of those artists whom you could describe as an “idea engine.” For exam­ple, Jack Kir­by was clear­ly that kind of artist. Frank has always been com­ing up with ideas for dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and sto­ries, as if it were the eas­i­est thing in the world. He’s got so many of them! I must con­fess to being a bit jeal­ous of Frank’s abil­i­ty to do that, because I’ve nev­er been wired quite that way.

Frank’s had his Trans­duc­er Man char­ac­ter for a good, long while, prob­a­bly since well before we ever met. The char­ac­ter’s gone through sev­er­al iter­a­tions over the years, as he peri­od­i­cal­ly played with the con­cept, hon­ing and shap­ing it. Back when we were work­ing togeth­er on X‑Men, I even did a few draw­ings of his char­ac­ter (as he was at that point) myself. I’ve includ­ed one here, below.

Frank and I have been talk­ing recent­ly, and he’s been real­ly fired up to do some­thing with Trans­duc­er Man again. Specif­i­cal­ly as a com­ic. As often hap­pens with Frank, the con­cept has been expand­ed and altered again. Cur­rent­ly, Trans­duc­er Man’s more in the vein of a clas­sic Gold­en Age com­ic char­ac­ter (while not entire­ly aban­don­ing his orig­i­nal more pulp-based roots). Hear­ing what Frank intends on doing with his com­ic, I could­n’t help but get the itch to take a crack at draw­ing the cur­rent iter­a­tion myself!

Mean­while, Frank is cur­rent­ly furi­ous­ly work­ing on his Trans­duc­er Man book, hop­ing to get it out. Stay tuned; I’ll let you know when it hap­pens! It will include my pinup…along with oth­er guest pieces of art!

Trans­duc­er Man is ™ & © Frank Squillace.

…And an Encore!

Well, we just com­plet­ed anoth­er Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed and cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son). I guess you could call this the bonus round. Like last year, I decid­ed to try to assem­ble all of these into one, big image. With the excep­tion of yes­ter­day’s “wild card” round, which was not a Jack Kir­by cre­ation, so it does­n’t belong here. Plus 30 images just group togeth­er a lot eas­i­er than 31!

See­ing all of these togeth­er, I’m struck by how busy the end result is! There’s a lot going on. I guess that’s a result of my try­ing to give each pan­el a sense of nar­ra­tive, as if they were each ran­dom­ly plucked from the midst of larg­er stories.

A lot­ta work there! See­ing them all togeth­er makes me real­ize that. But it’s cool see­ing them all in this context.

Will I do this again next year? We’ll see. I may tweak my process a lit­tle bit. I did this year, by adding the nar­ra­tive aspect.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip with me, found it fun and inspirational.

Knights That Do Justice‑y Type Things

Well, we’ve made it to the 31st here, the final day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (the brain­child of Howard Simp­son). And the prompt for the final day of the month, like last year, is a bit of a wild card. As Howard put it last year, “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.”

I dug pret­ty deep for this one. Pre­sent­ing a super­hero group I co-cre­at­ed with my broth­er Andy when we were kids: the Knights of Jus­tice! From left to right you have Mol­e­cule Man, Sledge­ham­mer, Boomerang King, the Wiz­ard (descend­ing from above), and final­ly… er, sor­ry; I don’t remem­ber the pur­ple guy’s name any­more! I could only come up with a vague rec­ol­lec­tion that he was the speed­ster of the group. My broth­er does­n’t remem­ber either.

I drew the orig­i­nal draw­ing when I was around 15, I fig­ure. And I admit to cring­ing a lit­tle bit at the draw­ing (those lol­lipop calves!) and some of those cos­tume designs. All I can say in my defense is it was the ’70s, and I guess I was influ­enced a bit too much by some of the trendi­er super­hero cos­tumes of the time. And why so many full face masks? Though I do think the Wiz­ard design is actu­al­ly kind of cool still, even all these years lat­er. Kind of brave to just go full black and white like that.

And that’s an offi­cial wrap for Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month this year, but I have one more thing I want to post tomor­row. Oh, and for what it’s worth, the Knight of Jus­tice are ™ & © Andy and Mark Lewis.

It’s “Harriet,” not “Hatter”

We’ve made it to day 30 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month! I was­n’t sure I would make it this far, but here we go. It’s still Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who grew up in that insti­tu­tion on Apokolips. And today’s prompt is Mad Har­ri­et of the Female Furies!

Like all the Furies, her first appear­ance was in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6 (the infa­mous “Funky Flash­man” sto­ry). And she shows evi­dence there of liv­ing up to her name!

She’s a chal­lenge to draw, because while visu­al­ly mem­o­rable, once you get beyond her face and hair, her metal­lic clawed gaunt­let and pow­er spikes, it was like the remain­der of her out­fit did­n’t seem to be quite ful­ly nailed down. Fig­ur­ing out what the rest of her looks like was a chal­lenge, so I took what cues I could from var­i­ous pan­els scat­tered across sev­er­al stories.

I was also unsure what col­or to make her lips, as the col­orist back then kind of did­n’t both­er to give them a col­or. But going with kind of a blue-black for the high­lights seemed fit­ting to me.

One more day left in this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month! What’s up next? You’ll have to come back tomor­row to see!

Lashing Out

We’re in the final days of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and this week’s theme has been char­ac­ters who grew up in Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age, that won­der­ful insti­tu­tion on Dark­sei­d’s Apokolips. Today’s prompt is Lashina, mem­ber of the Female Furies.

Her com­bat spe­cial­ty is the use of the var­i­ous whips or lash­es that are part of her uni­form, which she’s very quick to unfurl and use. Her design is sim­ple, but visu­al­ly strik­ing (pun unavoid­able; sor­ry)! With such a sim­ple design, you’d think she’d be easy to draw, but I found that not to be the case. I end­ed up doing it twice here. After I got my first draw­ing done and inked, I real­ized it did­n’t look right, so I redrew her body a sec­ond time, mor­tis­ing out the orig­i­nal and replac­ing it with my sec­ond (improved) drawing.

Hope you enjoyed my take on Lashina. And feel free to tune in again tomor­row to see our next vis­i­tor from Granny Good­ness’ Orphanage!

The Song of Bernadeth

As you might know, we’re in this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son. A new, cool thing Howard intro­duced this year has been weeks with over­all themes to them. This week’s theme is Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age, with char­ac­ters who grew up there on Apokolips. Today’s prompt is Bernadeth of the Female Furies.

I’ve nev­er attempt­ed to draw her before. Jack gave her a very dis­tinc­tive look. She tend­ed to be a back­ground play­er when the Furies would show up, and did­n’t usu­al­ly get much dia­logue. Prob­a­bly the most screen­time and dia­logue she got was in her first appear­ance, in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6 (the infa­mous “Funky Flash­man” sto­ry, where all the Furies first appeared). We learn that she’s the sis­ter of Desaad, Dark­sei­d’s mas­ter tor­tur­er. A cool and dis­pas­sion­ate per­son, her weapon of choice is the Fahrenknife, which can “pen­e­trate dimensionally–and bar­be­cue [you] from the inside!!” Chill­ing idea!

Hope you like my take on her. For who’s next, feel free to come back by here again tomorrow!

No, Not Barbara!

Still doing Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, we’re in the midst of Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age Week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who grew up in that insti­tu­tion on Apokolips. Today’s prompt is the one and only Big Bar­da, erst­while com­man­der of the Female Furies!

There’s some­thing real­ly neat about her bat­tle armor that makes it a fun chal­lenge to wrap your head around and try to draw it. I took a shot at it last year too.

Appar­ent­ly at one point, Jack had want­ed to star Bar­da and the oth­er Furies in their own book, but I gath­er by that point, DC felt sales on the Fourth World books weren’t enough to jus­ti­fy doing it, sadly.

Hope you like my take on Bar­da here, and please feel free to come back by here tomor­row to see who’s next from the Orphanage!

A Walking, Talking Miracle!

It’s day 26 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and the theme we’re work­ing with this week is char­ac­ters raised in Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age on Apokolips. Today’s prompt is Mis­ter Miracle!

I’ve drawn him before, not just for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, but also a few times when I was younger. Some­thing about the char­ac­ter caught my eye. I’ve got a soft spot for him. Maybe it was the fact he was the clos­est thing in Kir­by’s Fourth World titles to look­ing like a reg­u­lar super­hero, or the bright col­or scheme. Per­haps it was also the super-sci­en­tif­ic escape act, that had him get­ting out of sit­u­a­tions that looked impos­si­ble. Maybe I was­n’t alone in being fas­ci­nat­ed, because appar­ent­ly sales fig­ures prompt­ed DC to keep Mis­ter Mir­a­cle going longer than any of the oth­er Fourth World titles.

It looks bad for our hero, but I’m sure he’ll get out of this at the last pos­si­ble moment! Tomor­row will be anoth­er for­mer res­i­dent of Granny Good­ness’ Orphanage.

Do the Stomp!

We’re still in Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and a new week means a new theme! This is Granny Good­ness’ Orphan­age Week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who grew up in that august insti­tu­tion on Dark­sei­d’s Apokolips.

Today’s prompt to kick off the theme is the Female Furies, but I’ve decid­ed to go slight­ly off-menu and give you only one Fury today: Stompa.

Stom­pa (and the oth­er Furies) were first intro­duced in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6. You can prob­a­bly guess her spe­cial­ty by her name. Sounds sim­ple, but she made very effec­tive use of her abil­i­ty. Stom­pa and the oth­er core Furies appar­ent­ly decid­ed to defect to Earth from Apokolips, and became semi-reg­u­lars in the book for the rest of its run.

I had a bit of a time try­ing to nail down her col­or scheme, as it seemed to sort of shift around a lit­tle bit. I end­ed up with this as a good com­pro­mise for consistency.

Stom­pa was kind of fun to draw! I hope you enjoyed my take, and tune back in tomor­row to see who’s next.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

Why So Angry?

We’re at Day 14 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online cel­e­bra­tion of the work of Jack Kir­by! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work peo­ple are post­ing by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt: “Draw a mon­ster or an alien cre­at­ed by Jack Kir­by.” There are many pos­si­bil­i­ties out there! As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly with Groot, Kir­by did a whole bunch of mon­sters dur­ing the Atlas era. But instead of one of those, I opt­ed for the one you see here: Angry Char­lie. His visu­al called out to me.

Angry Char­lie was a Kir­by Kreation dur­ing his run on the Jim­my Olsen com­ic for DC, which he’d made part of the titles where he was unfold­ing his “Fourth World” sto­ries, along with For­ev­er Peo­ple, New Gods and Mis­ter Mir­a­cle. Angry Char­lie was a cre­ation of the Evil Fac­to­ry, which was ulti­mate­ly destroyed at the end of that sto­ry. Char­lie was­n’t real­ly bad, and the gang had a soft spot for him, so they took him home with them.

Hope you liked Char­lie, and tune in again tomorrow!

Come Sail Away!

I’m sure many of you out there have heard of Sailor Moon. The inter­est­ing thing is that this char­ac­ter has been around for longer than most peo­ple real­ize. Back in the mid-/late-’70s, Mar­vel Comics licensed the rights to the char­ac­ter, and Jack Kir­by did a com­ic. Col­lec­tors who know about it often have a hard time turn­ing up copies of this book. This is a scan of a pan­el from that rare comic…

…Not buy­ing it? Okay, I con­fess; I just told you a big, fat, stinky lie. Jack Kir­by nev­er drew Sailor Moon (at least, not to my knowl­edge!). This is me. There’s appar­ent­ly this inter­net meme that all the cool kids are doing, where you take this one par­tic­u­lar image of Sailor Moon and draw it in your style. It occurred to me that it might be fun to put a spin on it and do it Jack Kir­by style.

One oth­er con­fes­sion: Sailor Moon is a bit after my time. Grow­ing up, the Japan­ese ani­ma­tion that I got to see on TV were things like Speed Rac­er, Kim­ba the White Lion and (my favorite of these) Tobor the 8th Man (I often get a lot of blank looks when I men­tion that one). Even though I’m prob­a­bly late to this par­ty, I thought it might be fun to get in on this meme.

When Titans Clash!

Long­time vis­i­tors to this site may remem­ber that I got my start in ani­ma­tion work­ing on X‑Men: the Ani­mat­ed Series. That meant my first boss was Lar­ry Hous­ton, who I came to con­sid­er both my men­tor in the busi­ness, and a friend. Lar­ry’s now get­ting to enjoy much-deserved recog­ni­tion for his con­tri­bu­tions to X‑Men, as well as a num­ber of oth­er car­toons peo­ple think of fond­ly from their youth.

But before he got into ani­ma­tion, Lar­ry aspired to do comics. And he did! In his 20’s, he self-pub­lished three issues of his own com­ic, The Enforcers, with a lit­tle help from his friends.

Those comics have been out of print for years. But not long ago, Lar­ry decid­ed to re-pub­lish them all togeth­er in one big col­lec­tion. You can pur­chase it off of Lar­ry’s site, using the link above, in either dig­i­tal or phys­i­cal form. Orig­i­nal­ly his comics were in black and white (as was typ­i­cal for inde­pen­dent comics in those days), but this time it’s in full color!

I ordered myself a copy, and I found it a real blast. You can feel the excite­ment on the page, that “we’re doing our own comics!” Of course there are some rough edges, but you can see Lar­ry and friends learn­ing their craft and improv­ing vis­i­bly with each issue. It’s cer­tain­ly bet­ter than what I was doing in my 20’s! The art has a real ener­gy to it, and so does the dia­logue. There’s this ’70s Mar­vel/qua­si-Roy Thomas feel to it. I real­ly enjoyed the com­ic quite a bit!

So this is a bit of fan art on my part, recre­at­ing the cov­er of the col­lec­tion (which was also the cov­er to the orig­i­nal issue #3). But of course, it’s not just a straight re-cre­ation. I always have to have some kind of spin on it, or re-inter­pre­ta­tion. In this case, the idea was to tweak it slight­ly in some aspects to make it look even more like a main­stream com­ic from that late ’70s peri­od. Except for one or two pan­els, these sto­ries feel like they could have seen print in a Comics Code-approved book of that era.

So Lar­ry: thanks, and much respect always! Hav­ing read these sto­ries, I’d real­ly like to see you do some new comics with your char­ac­ters, using all the sto­ry­telling craft you’ve picked up in the inter­ven­ing years.

Lar­ry Hous­ton’s The Enforcers are ™ & ©1975, 1978, 1979 and 2018 Lar­ry F. Houston.

Kirby 100, Part 4

This is the fourth and final install­ment in my cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by’s 100th birth­day this month. Which hap­pens to be today!

Like most of the oth­ers I’ve post­ed, today’s draw­ing came my way years back as a pho­to­copy of Kir­by’s pen­cils, from a sketch­book orig­i­nal­ly done for his wife Roz. It was lat­er repro­duced and pub­lished in book form as Jack Kir­by’s Heroes and Vil­lains. Like the oth­ers I’ve post­ed, this was a draw­ing that looked to me like it might be fun to take a crack at ink­ing it. So I did. And recent­ly col­ored it up for post­ing here.

This char­ac­ter (Ser­si) comes from a com­ic called The Eter­nals, which was one of a hand­ful of titles Kir­by pro­duced dur­ing his last stint at Mar­vel in the mid- to late-’70s. The seeds of this com­ic seem to have come from a very pop­u­lar book around this time by Erich von Däniken, enti­tled Char­i­ots of the Gods?. The book con­jec­tured that alien astro­nauts had vis­it­ed our world in the dis­tant past, and were mis­tak­en­ly thought by us to be gods. It’s easy to see how an idea like this could be fuel for Kir­by’s vivid imag­i­na­tion. Add to it Kir­by’s fas­ci­na­tion with myths and leg­ends, and he cooked up a very enter­tain­ing sce­nario from these ingredients.

Cer­tain sto­ries from Eter­nals still stand out in my mind. The saga of Karkas and the Reject, for exam­ple, which sub­vert­ed the usu­al assump­tions read­ers made about new char­ac­ters based on first impres­sions. Or “The Rus­sians are Com­ing!” in #11, or “The Astro­nauts!” in #13. Even in this lat­er stage of his career, Kir­by still had the goods.

If you caught onto the fact that each of my “Kir­by 100” posts has been in chrono­log­i­cal order of when the char­ac­ter first appeared, give your­self a gold star!

I men­tioned ear­li­er on that Kir­by’s work is very impor­tant to me. He was one of the ear­li­est com­ic book artists whose name and style impact­ed on me, and I was com­pelled to seek out his work. He may not nec­es­sar­i­ly have invent­ed all the “visu­al gram­mar” of draw­ing super­hero comics, but he cer­tain­ly per­fect­ed it! If an artist want­ed to do super­hero comics that had impact, it would have been a mis­take not to learn from Kir­by’s work.

Super­hero comics were not the only kind of mate­r­i­al he did, though. Kir­by worked in almost every genre of Amer­i­can comics, and brought the same inven­tive­ness and dynam­ic ener­gy to what­ev­er he did. He man­aged to cre­ate vital work in every decade, span­ning from the Gold­en Age of comics all the way up into the ’80s.

If for some rea­son you’re not famil­iar with Kir­by, do your­self a favor, and start delv­ing into the work of this tru­ly unique and impor­tant cre­ator! You are in for a treat!

Hap­py 100th, Mr. Kir­by! And a very heart­felt “thank you” for cre­at­ing so many great char­ac­ters and sto­ries that still live and inspire today. You were tru­ly one of a kind!

It’s the “S!”

FCA Elliot S! Maggin CoverSor­ry it’s been so long since I post­ed any­thing new here! It’s time to do some­thing about that.

Here’s a pre­view of the cov­er I did for an upcom­ing issue of FCA, appear­ing in the pages of Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego. This issue fea­tures an inter­view with comics writer Elliot S! Mag­gin (he was includ­ing an excla­ma­tion mark after his mid­dle ini­tial in those days). Mr. Mag­gin was one of the writ­ers who were called upon to write DC’s revival of the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel and the Mar­vel Fam­i­ly, in the ear­ly ’70s.

Those with an astute eye will real­ize that this illus­tra­tion forms some­thing of a book­end with the Den­ny O’Neil cov­er I post­ed some months back. Keep­ing that visu­al asso­ci­a­tion was at the FCA edi­tor’s request, since both O’Neil and Mag­gin were the main writ­ers for the Cap­tain Mar­vel revival.

The back­ground art I’m using here comes from sto­ries Mr. Mag­gin wrote (just as the art I used on Mr. O’Neil’s por­trait cov­er came from Cap­tain Mar­vel sto­ries he’d written).

Though the cov­er date says May, this issue should hit the stands some­time in April. I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing the arti­cle myself!

Denny O, AKA Sergius O

FCA Denny O'Neil CoverHere’s a pre­view of anoth­er cov­er I did for FCA, appear­ing in the pages of Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego mag­a­zine. Though the cov­er date is Sep­tem­ber of this year, I believe the mag­a­zine will actu­al­ly be avail­able in August.

For those who don’t know, DC Comics brought back the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel in the ear­ly ’70s. The Big Red Cheese had been miss­ing from the spin­ner racks for sev­er­al years by that point, so his reap­pear­ance was great­ly looked for­ward to by a num­ber of fans. Includ­ing some younger fans like myself, who had seen very lit­tle of the char­ac­ter pre­vi­ous­ly, but knew that they real­ly liked what they saw.

Den­ny O’Neil was one of the writ­ers tapped by Edi­tor Julius Schwartz to write this revival. In fact, Mr. O’Neil wrote the sto­ry in Shaz­am! #1 which brought the Mar­vel Fam­i­ly and com­pa­ny back into the mod­ern age. FCA #187 fea­tures an inter­view with O’Neil about his work on the title.

Using what ref­er­ence I could find online, at Edi­tor P.C. Hamer­linck­’s request, this was an attempt at a por­trait of Mr. O’Neil as he might have looked around the time he was writ­ing the com­ic. The back­ground art (I has­ten to add) is not mine! It’s scans of actu­al pan­els from some of the Cap­tain Mar­vel sto­ries Mr. O’Neil wrote, drawn by C.C. Beck him­self. Scanned straight from my own per­son­al copies of those comics, of course. 🙂

“…Suddenly a White Rabbit…”

Marvel Team-Up #131 ReworkedYou’re see­ing a rein­ter­pre­ta­tion here of the cov­er to Mar­vel Team-Up #131. I must con­fess that I know absolute­ly noth­ing about the White Rab­bit, or how much of a con­nec­tion she has to the char­ac­ter that appeared in the Lewis Car­roll book Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. I don’t have a clue about Frog-Man either. I’ve nev­er read this comic.

So why did I do this cov­er? Sim­ple: when I saw the orig­i­nal, I thought there was some­thing fun here that could be rein­ter­pret­ed. If you look around my site, you’ll see that I do things like this on occa­sion. I even got to do it once for the late, lament­ed Cov­ered Blog before they called it a day. Though they’re no longer doing cov­er rein­ter­pre­ta­tions there, I think the idea is still worth pur­su­ing from time to time here.

While more or less straight recre­ations can be fun too, tak­ing an orig­i­nal cov­er and try­ing to find a fresh angle or spin to put on it can be even more fun. In this case, I thought ren­der­ing it in a dif­fer­ent style to make the humor­ous intent of the sto­ry more obvi­ous would be a fun thing to do. And it seemed appro­pri­ate to use the Mar­vel Pop Art Pro­duc­tions cor­ner box with it.

For once, that’s pret­ty much all there is to say for this one!

With One Magic Word…

Final­ly I get to show off the last of those two items I teased back in Decem­ber. I gave a fur­ther peek at it here. It’s anoth­er cov­er done for FCA, which appears in the back of Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego mag­a­zine. This one was obvi­ous­ly done up to look like one of those issues of Secret Ori­gins that DC Comics pub­lished in the ear­ly ’70s. I loved those as a kid, because back then they were one of the rare venues where you had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see any of that gold­en age com­ic material.

I’ve talked in pre­vi­ous posts about how much I liked the gold­en age Super­man and Bat­man. But with­out a doubt, my favorite gold­en age char­ac­ter would have to be Cap­tain Mar­vel. When DC brought him back from pub­lish­ing lim­bo in the ear­ly ’70s, I was already primed for it. I’d read about the “Big Red Cheese” in our local library’s copy of All in Col­or for a Dime, as well as in The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics. Some­thing about the visu­al and the idea of the char­ac­ter hooked me, even with­out ever hav­ing seen a sin­gle Cap­tain Mar­vel sto­ry yet.

Not to dis­miss the sto­ries, but a huge part of the appeal of those gold­en age Cap­tain Mar­vel comics for me is the art. As the char­ac­ter’s design­er and main artist, C.C. Beck set the tone there. Most gold­en age com­ic book artists doing super­heroes looked to the news­pa­per adven­ture strips for their inspi­ra­tion. They most­ly tend­ed to fall into one of two schools: it was either the illus­tra­tive real­ism of Fos­ter and Ray­mond, or the more impres­sion­is­tic approach of Sick­les and Can­iff. Instead, Beck looked to the “fun­ny” por­tion of the fun­ny pages for his inspi­ra­tion (like Jack Cole did with Plas­tic Man). The result was a strip that had a look and feel like no oth­er. And of course, the writ­ing played a role in mak­ing that pos­si­ble too.

While the high­er-ups at Faw­cett may have want­ed Bill Park­er and C.C. Beck to just give them a knock­off of Super­man, that was not what they got. They got some­thing bet­ter. Many read­ers back then must have thought so too; at the peak of the char­ac­ter’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, they were pub­lish­ing Cap­tain Mar­vel Adven­tures bi-week­ly and sell­ing 1.3 mil­lion copies of each issue!

I know some­times mod­ern fans have trou­ble with Mr. Tawky Tawny and some of the more whim­si­cal aspects of the strip, but for me, the clas­sic Cap­tain Mar­vel mate­r­i­al is inspi­ra­tional stuff. I wish I could tell you of a rel­a­tive­ly cheap and easy way to lay hands on that work if you haven’t seen it, but it seems hard­er to come by these days.