Tag: Captain America

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.

Who Were Agents 1–12?

We’ve reached day sev­en, the first full week of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, today’s prompt is Sharon Carter, also known as Agent 13!

Those famil­iar with the char­ac­ter only via the MCU may be a lit­tle con­fused. Orig­i­nal­ly in comics, she first appeared in Tales of Sus­pense #75. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, in his civil­ian ID as Steve Rogers, spots her on the street and at first thinks she might be his lost love from WWII (remem­ber that when these sto­ries orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the ’60s, it was only twen­ty years after the War).

He soon dis­cov­ers that she is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Which of course com­pli­cates their bud­ding romance, as both work with the inter­na­tion­al spy agency. Jack and Stan got some pret­ty good sto­ry mileage out of all that.

Her look here comes from a sto­ry in Cap­tain Amer­i­ca #103 (after Mar­vel’s dis­tri­b­u­tion deal final­ly allowed them to split strips off from their anthol­o­gy titles into their own sep­a­rate titles). I thought it was a strik­ing look. And I liked the idea of her infil­trat­ing an A.I.M. base.

So that’s my take on Sharon Carter! Hope you enjoyed it. Tune in again tomor­row to see who shows up next, if you like.

Peggy Carter and the Resistance

It’s Day Six of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Peg­gy Carter, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca’s WWII love.

Most peo­ple are prob­a­bly more aware of the MCU ver­sion of the char­ac­ter, played by Hay­ley Atwell. The char­ac­ter was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in the comics. We first see her in a flash­back in Tales of Sus­pense #77, where Cap­tain Amer­i­ca meets her as she works with a group of French resis­tance fight­ers going up against Ger­mans flee­ing Nor­mandy via the Falaise Gap.

This issue was drawn dur­ing a peri­od when Mar­vel kept Jack very busy. Not only was he pen­cil­ing (and like­ly dri­ving the plots of) Fan­tas­tic Four and Thor, he was also gen­er­at­ing page lay­outs for sev­er­al oth­er titles, which were giv­en to oth­er pen­cil­ers to work from. So they could devel­op a feel for “the Mar­vel style.” This par­tic­u­lar sto­ry fea­tured John Romi­ta’s pen­cils over Jack­’s lay­outs, so it’s fair to say that Romi­ta had a hand in shap­ing Peg­gy Carter’s look too. You can def­i­nite­ly see it in the comic.

For what it’s worth, rather than just fak­ing her rifle, I did a lit­tle weapons research. Based on that, I gave her an M1 Garand. It’s con­sid­ered an icon­ic U.S. Army or Marine Corps WWII-era ser­vice rifle.

Any­way, this is my take on Peg­gy Carter. Feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s next.

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!