Tag: Fantastic Four

“A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating…”

So as you know if you were check­ing in all last month, I made it all the way through the 3rd annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. For awhile, I was­n’t sure I was going to get them all done in time, but I did! And just like in past years, I’ve com­bined all the pieces into one big image.

It’s inter­est­ing to see the char­ac­ters all togeth­er now in this con­text. It def­i­nite­ly ham­mers home the point that Fan­tas­tic Four in Jack and Stan’s hands gen­er­at­ed a huge cast of inter­est­ing char­ac­ters. The list of 30 prompts hit many of the high points, but the fact is that there were many more char­ac­ters that could also have been on the list. I know that the cov­er copy, “The World’s Great­est Com­ic Mag­a­zine!”, was Stan Lee using his usu­al gift of hyper­bole in pro­mot­ing the com­ic, but I think you can gen­uine­ly make a case that those first 100+ issues were, at the very least, in the run­ning for that award!

Along the way, I also came to real­ize (first­hand) that the list includ­ed some of the most detailed and visu­al­ly com­plex char­ac­ters Kir­by ever came up with! I tried to do them all justice.

That’s about all I have to say. Hope you’ve enjoyed my trib­ute to (and cel­e­bra­tion of) the King this past month.

“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.

“That’s Just Impossible!”

30 days now of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and this year focused exclu­sive­ly on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is sup­posed to be the Hate-Mon­ger, but I felt like going off-menu just this once and doing the Impos­si­ble Man! How could I resist?

The Impos­si­ble Man is anoth­er ear­ly char­ac­ter, appear­ing in FF #11. We find out that he comes from the plan­et Pop­pup, where the Pop­pu­pi­ans have a born abil­i­ty to instant­ly change into what­ev­er form they want in order to pro­tect them­selves from all the dan­gers on their plan­et. When Sue asks him his name, he replies, “Name? We Pop­pu­pi­ans have no names! We know who we are!”

I.M. explains that he got bored on Pop­pup, and decid­ed it would be fun to come to Earth for a vaca­tion. And not real­ly under­stand­ing how things work on our plan­et, in amus­ing him­self, he man­ages to cre­ate all kinds of hav­oc. Some of it actu­al­ly quite dan­ger­ous! But there’s no mali­cious intent behind any of it, as he’s kind of child­like and more just mischievous.

“Impy” only shows up this one time dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. Issue #11 was kind of atyp­i­cal­ly struc­tured, in that instead of one long sto­ry, it con­tained two 11-pagers: this one, and the also-mem­o­rable “A Vis­it with the Fan­tas­tic Four.”

While typ­ing this up, a visu­al asso­ci­a­tion occurred to me. Back in the ’50s, there was a low­er bud­get sci fi movie enti­tled The Man from Plan­et X. Some­one put a lit­tle effort into design­ing the title char­ac­ter, as he man­ages to present a strik­ing visu­al even on a more lim­it­ed bud­get. I took a crack at draw­ing the char­ac­ter myself awhile back. Visu­al­ly, he’s a got a sim­i­lar­ly long head which comes to a point on top. I can’t help but won­der whether the Man from Plan­et x might not have been in the back of Kir­by’s mind (maybe sub­con­scious­ly) when design­ing the Impos­si­ble Man.

One more day left of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month this year. What will I do? You’ll have to swing by tomor­row to find out!

“You’re Dragon, Man!”

On Day 29 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is Drag­on Man!

D‑Man starts off as an inan­i­mate fig­ure cre­at­ed by State Uni­ver­si­ty Prof. Gilbert. But Dia­blo (in his sec­ond appear­ance in FF) man­ages to bring life to Drag­on Man! Pre­dictably, chaos ensues.

Drag­on Man isn’t real­ly bad; more just sim­ple-mind­ed and eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed. He’s very strong, very tough, flies, and…oh yeah; he can breathe fire! In his first appear­ance, Sue’s pres­ence seems to be a calm­ing influence.

The char­ac­ter makes five appear­ances dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run, and ends up being part of the batch of issues that intro­duce the Inhu­mans too. He also seems to be a favorite “toy” for lat­er cre­ators to play with, as he’s shown up in a bunch of oth­er titles.

I feel like Jack must have had at least a slight fas­ci­na­tion with the idea of “Drag­on Men,” as this was­n’t the first time he was involved with a con­cept like that. Way back in the Gold­en Age, he and part­ner Joe Simon did the first issue of what would soon become Faw­cett’s Cap­tain Mar­vel Adven­tures. One of those sto­ries fea­tured a race of Drag­on Men who had enslaved humans on Sat­urn. More about it here.

The penul­ti­mate post is com­ing up tomor­row! What will it be? Come by and find out!

The Devil, You Say!

As of today, we’ve reached 28 days (AKA  four full weeks) worth of draw­ings for this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. The theme has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, and today’s prompt is Diablo.

Dia­blo, the evil alchemist, first shows up in FF #30. While the FF are tak­ing a vaca­tion in Tran­syl­va­nia(!), they go explor­ing and find an old cas­tle buried in a for­est. One night, the Thing hears a voice in his mind, call­ing out to him from a crypt with­in the cas­tle. The Thing frees Dia­blo from his impris­on­ment, and in return, Dia­blo gives Ben a more human appear­ance. But then we even­tu­al­ly find out…

Oops! Nope! Not going to spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t read it. Let’s just say that with Dia­blo, not every­thing is as it seems, and the Tran­syl­va­ni­ans had rea­son to fear him and his abilities.

Strange­ly, Stan Lee appar­ent­ly would often say that Dia­blo was “the worst char­ac­ter we ever did.” Some have won­dered if maybe he was think­ing of an ear­li­er mon­ster char­ac­ter they did that used the same name. But when John Byrne lat­er got his shot to write and draw FF (sec­ond best run only to Jack and Stan’s, in my opin­ion), with a “back to basics” approach, he chose to kick every­thing off with Dia­blo as their oppo­nent in his first issue. Appar­ent­ly he saw poten­tial in the char­ac­ter that Stan didn’t.

This is off the top­ic of Dia­blo, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that today is also Jack Kir­by’s birth­day! Born August 28, 1917, if my math is cor­rect, that would make this his 108th. So with much love and respect, long live the King through the great body of work he gift­ed us!

We’re mov­ing into the last few days of the Trib­ute! Feel free to come back again tomor­row to see who comes next.

Just an Old-Time Puppet Show! Nothing Wrong Here!

On the 27th day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Pup­pet Mas­ter, Philip Masters!

The Pup­pet Mas­ter is a very ear­ly antag­o­nist, intro­duced in Jack and Stan’s FF run way back in issue #8. At the same time, we also meet his daugh­ter Ali­cia for the first time, who ends up being a very impor­tant sup­port­ing character.

Apart from look­ing kind of creepy and ven­tril­o­quist doll-like, the Pup­pet Mas­ter does­n’t real­ly cut all that impres­sive of an appear­ance. He’s not on any list you might find of “best or most inter­est­ing­ly cos­tumed Kir­by char­ac­ters.” But he does have quite the pow­er! Using a spe­cial radioac­tive clay, he can make fig­ures of just about any­one, and force them to do his bid­ding. In his first appear­ance, he man­ages to take con­trol of the Thing, send­ing him against his team­mates! So heroes under­es­ti­mate him at their risk.

That’s all I have to say about the Pup­pet Mas­ter. Hope you enjoyed my depic­tion. Who’s next? Tune in tomor­row to see!

The Klaw!

We’re mov­ing into our last sev­en days of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Klaw, “the Mur­der­ous Mas­ter of Sound.”

Klaw’s ori­gin is very much entan­gled with the Wakan­dans and Black Pan­ther. We learn via flash­back in FF #53 that Klaw was a sci­en­tist who, in a ruth­less pur­suit of his research into the field of sound, decid­ed he had to have access to the Vibra­ni­um owned by the Wakan­dans. When T’Chal­la’s father King T’Cha­ka denies Klaw access, Klaw uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly shoots him dead on the spot! Lat­er, Klaw thinks he’ll shoot the young T’Chal­la, but he under­es­ti­mates the boy, los­ing his right hand as a result.

In FF #53’s present day, Klaw is cre­at­ing mon­sters of “sol­id sound,” using a con­ver­tor of his own inven­tion. Los­ing once again to T’Chal­la and the Wakan­dans, Klaw’s hid­den lab most­ly destroyed, he makes one last des­per­ate gam­ble, jump­ing into his con­ver­tor him­self. We don’t see the result of this exper­i­ment until #56, when he’s revealed to have been trans­formed into a being made of sol­id sound.

There’s a neat thing they do in these issues with the sound crea­tures, where all of them are col­ored bright red to visu­al­ly call them out. And when Klaw trans­forms, he too comes out red. His visu­al for the most part is a lot sim­pler than many oth­er Kir­by designs at the time, though the face is unique.

If you wan­na see who’s next, feel free to come back by again tomorrow!

Let Me Think About This for a Moment…

24 days in to this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme all this month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is the Mad Thinker!

The Mad Thinker first shows up in FF #15. He has an amaz­ing abil­i­ty (assist­ed by com­put­ers) to pre­dict vir­tu­al­ly every angle, all the odds, and to work them in his favor when putting togeth­er his plans. In his first appear­ance, he had the FF basi­cal­ly beat­en, but for one small detail he could not have fore­seen (…and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is, if you haven’t read that story!).

The Thinker shows up six times dur­ing Jack and Stan’s reg­u­lar run of the FF, plus in three Annuals.

Over the course of his appear­ances in the book, like oth­er Kir­by char­ac­ters, he under­went some changes. He start­ed off with his hair only slight­ly longish for the day in his first appear­ance (1963), but it got longer, wilder and bushi­er by the time of his last appear­ance dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run.

In some ways, the Thinker’s look kind of plays against the stan­dard visu­al you’d expect when you think of a “mad sci­en­tist” type of char­ac­ter. Instead of some skin­ny, long-faced bald­ing type, the Thinker is more burly and hir­sute, prone to wear­ing cov­er­alls blue col­lar work­er style. How­ev­er, there was a thing you heard some­times back then about aca­d­e­mics being called “long­hairs.”

I kind of won­der what Kir­by had in mind, whether there was some thought of the Thinker tying in some­how as orig­i­nal­ly being from behind the Iron Cur­tain? His visu­al fits in pret­ty well with oth­er Mar­vel char­ac­ters of the time who they con­nect­ed more direct­ly to that as part of their back sto­ry. Like the Red Ghost.

And as a bonus, I also threw in the Thinker’s Awe­some Android. Though it’s real­ly kind of a sim­ple design, the visu­al has always grabbed me, from the moment I first came across it back when I was a kid. Some­thing about that face­less strange­ly-shaped head, and his malleability/adaptability.

That’s it for these guys. Come by and see who shows up next tomorrow!

You Psycho!

We’re at Day 23 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focus­ing this time all month long on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Psycho-Man!

Psy­cho-Man debuted in Fan­tas­tic Four Annu­al #5. With access to all kinds of advanced tech, he’s a mas­ter of manip­u­lat­ing peo­ple’s emo­tions, and what they see. In fact, even when see­ing him, a hero can’t be total­ly sure of what they’re see­ing. I don’t want to say any more, for fear of spoil­ing things for any­one who might not have read the sto­ry yet. He also appeared in issues #76 and #77 of the reg­u­lar run of the book.

The char­ac­ter’s visu­al is one of those real­ly strik­ing designs that Kir­by came up with over and over again so eas­i­ly over the course of his career. It was almost more of an impressionistic/expressionistic thing with some of these designs, as they did­n’t real­ly seem to be fixed in a rigid way when you study them close­ly (like you have to do when try­ing to draw them). The things that are con­sis­tent are that face (col­ored gold­en-yel­low) with the open eyes, and the white and green of his outfit.

Psy­cho-Man’s hel­met and bare, high fore­head might be seen as some­thing of a design motif that would lat­er also pop up in Kir­by’s Dark­seid for DC.

That’s about all I have to say about Psy­cho-Man, except that he was fun to try to draw! Tune in tomor­row to see which char­ac­ter comes up next!

Just Frightful!

Day 22 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, and the theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt: the Fright­ful Four!

It’s some­thing of a stan­dard device in hero­ic fic­tion to try to cre­ate an oppo­site for your hero (or heroes). So it stands to rea­son that Kir­by and Lee at some point were like­ly to come up with a Fright­ful Four to oppose the Fan­tas­tic Four (which they did in issue #36). You might expect that they would’ve come up with a whole group of new char­ac­ters (Kir­by was obvi­ous­ly cre­ative enough to do so), but for some rea­son, that was­n’t the path they took.

Instead, they took a Spi­der-Man vil­lain (Sand­man), and put him with two vil­lains (the Wiz­ard and Paste-Pot Pete, lat­er known as the Trap­ster) who had each pre­vi­ous­ly gone up against the Human Torch in his solo strip over in Strange Tales. To come up with the req­ui­site four, they cre­at­ed a new char­ac­ter, Medusa, who would lat­er go on to be revealed as a mem­ber of the Inhumans.

Jack and Stan must have liked work­ing with the Fright­ful Four, because they rat­ed no less than six appear­ances dur­ing their FF run, plus they also showed up in a cou­ple oth­er titles around that time too.

You might be a lit­tle sur­prised by Medusa’s out­fit here. Since I had already drawn her some days back, I thought it would be fun to show her here in the out­fit Jack gave her in her first appear­ance, as a mem­ber of the Fright­ful Four. With her very next appear­ance, she was redesigned into what could be con­sid­ered her clas­sic uni­form, with her hair ful­ly exposed.

As some­times hap­pened with Kir­by, the look of char­ac­ters would some­times change a bit over time. The Wiz­ard’s hel­met start­ed off as one height, but end­ed up quite a bit taller by the group’s last appear­ance dur­ing Jack and Stan’s run in issue #94. Ini­tial­ly, Jack had also giv­en him these sort of “face guards” that got stream­lined away lat­er on. I kind of liked those, so I brought them back here (at least sub­tly). It’s kind of a mix of the lat­er hel­met sil­hou­ette with that ele­ment from the ear­li­er helmet.

Fig­ur­ing out col­or was also a bit of a chal­lenge, as it changed a bit over those appearances.

Hope you enjoyed my take, and feel free to come back tomor­row to see who’s next!

J’Accuse!

Today com­pletes three weeks of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son). The theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, and today’s prompt is Ronan the Accuser.

As if the FF did­n’t have enough to deal with between Namor and the Skrulls, appar­ent­ly the Kree Empire also took issue with them! Because of the FF defeat­ing and destroy­ing the Kree Sen­try in FF #64, the Supreme Intel­li­gence of the Kree declares them guilty, and sends Ronan the Accuser to enact their sen­tence in issue #65.

Ronan is a for­mi­da­ble ene­my for the FF! He comes very close to suc­cess­ful­ly enact­ing the “extreme penal­ty.” (Per­haps because of the Comics Code, they weren’t quite able to just come out and say “Death.”). He presents a very strik­ing pres­ence, being about 8′ tall and wear­ing a unique uniform.

Ronan only made one appear­ance in the Fan­tas­tic Four com­ic, but he reap­peared lat­er in Avengers, Cap­tain Mar­vel and Ms. Mar­vel (books in which the Kree Empire was a presence).

It was fun to take a crack at draw­ing Ronan. Swing by tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s next on our hit parade!

“Mole!”

Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, Day 20, and the theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is the Mole Man! The Mole Man was there at the very begin­ning, both of the Fan­tas­tic Four (issue #1), and the Mar­vel Comics universe.

As men­tioned yes­ter­day, those ear­ly issues of FF were kind of tran­si­tion­al. They still read and felt a lot like the mon­ster sto­ries Atlas/Marvel had been doing pre­vi­ous­ly. FF #1 gave us a char­ac­ter in Mole Man who had con­trol of a whole army of mon­sters, hid­ing in his under­ground realm. Today, we would prob­a­bly call him a “kai­ju mas­ter,” as some of these mon­sters were quite sizable.

Mole Man’s debut seemed to be root­ed not only in Mar­vel’s pre­vi­ous mon­ster comics, but also in kai­ju films like Godzil­la, and a tra­di­tion of “under­ground world” sto­ries (such as Jules Verne’s Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth, or the Bur­roughs Pel­lu­ci­dar stories).

For extra inter­est here, I added one of the mon­sters from that first sto­ry which caught my eye. It appeared to be made out of some kind of dark, liv­ing rock! It was­n’t giv­en a name in that sto­ry; no idea whether lat­er cre­ators might have giv­en it a name or not.

I also did the Mole Man for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. You can find it here.

The Empire Strikes Back

It’s now Day 19 of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme all month con­tin­ues to be the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is: the Super-Skrull!

We first meet the Skrulls very ear­ly on in the found­ing of the Mar­vel Uni­verse, in FF #2, where after fail­ing in their attempt to take over the Earth, as part of their defeat, the Skrulls agree to trans­form into cat­tle and let them­selves be hyp­no­tized into for­get­ting they were ever any­thing else(!). At this point, the FF did­n’t even have uni­forms. Much like the first issue, in a lot of ways, this sto­ry feels like it’s still a tran­si­tion­al one between the ear­li­er mon­ster books and the super­hero books they would soon become known for.

In issue #18, we learn that appar­ent­ly the Skrull Empire did not take kind­ly to the defeat of their inva­sion. And they were aware that the Fan­tas­tic Four were respon­si­ble. So they sent their most pow­er­ful war­rior, the Super-Skrull, to defeat the Fan­tas­tic Four and con­quer the Earth.

The Super-Skrull is a lot big­ger than the Skrulls we saw pre­vi­ous­ly. They were kind of puny, while he appears to be about the size of a pro wrestler. Not only that (and his nor­mal Skrull abil­i­ty to change appear­ance), but he’s equipped with all the pow­ers of the Fan­tas­tic Four (minus the Invis­i­ble Wom­an’s force fields; they had­n’t giv­en her that pow­er yet). Plus an addi­tion­al pow­er he reveals lat­er in the story.

He real­ly gives the FF a run for their mon­ey in his first appear­ance, but ulti­mate­ly they fig­ure out his weak­ness and defeat him. This time.

Hope you liked my take, and feel free to stop by tomor­row to see who’s next.

The Hand of Doom!

Day 16 of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. We’ve moved from allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters into the rogues’ gallery. And the first prompt is none oth­er than Dr. Doom!

He’s arguably the FF’s arch­neme­sis. Vic­tor Von Doom has a per­son­al his­to­ry with Reed Richards, going back to when they met in col­lege when Doom was there as an exchange stu­dent. His mind rivals Reed’s (though in his arro­gance, Doom would be insult­ed if it was sug­gest­ed in his pres­ence that any­one even came close to being his equal!). He is a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac and per­fec­tion­ist, who can­not tol­er­ate the slight­est flaw. This is part of why he stays masked almost all the time.

The FF had a num­ber of adven­tures dur­ing Jack and Stan’s run where they went up against Doom. And over time, Kir­by gave him­self more artis­tic license to get expres­sive with Doom’s iron mask in show­ing his emo­tions. At times, the imagery could get quite chilling!

I drew Dr. Doom for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month too, and if you like, you can check that out here.

That’s our first vil­lain! Tune in tomor­row to see who comes next!

Wiggle, Wiggle!

It’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, and the theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. You might have real­ized that we’re in the midst of a group­ing of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. And today’s prompt is the Bax­ter Build­ing’s mail­man, Willie Lumpkin.

Willie first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #11, in the short slice-of-life sto­ry “A Vis­it with the Fan­tas­tic Four.” We first meet the poor lit­tle guy try­ing to lug in a ginor­mous mail­bag of fan let­ters for the FF. Inter­act­ing with them in the lob­by, he gets to show them his own spe­cial ability…

The lov­able Mr. Lump­kin only showed up a cou­ple of times dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run, both of those fair­ly ear­ly on. But lat­er cre­ators liked the char­ac­ter, and so he would show up again from time to time.

For some rea­son in that first appear­ance, the col­orist made the strange choice to col­or his uni­form green. I don’t recall ever see­ing a U.S. mail­man with a green uni­form. So I did some Googling to see if I could find out what mail­men were wear­ing in the ear­ly ’60s, and used that instead. I also took my col­or cues from that uni­form ref­er­ence, get­ting as close as I could with­in the lim­it­ed palette.

Willie was fun to draw! Hope you liked him. Check back tomor­row to see who our last ally/supporting cast mem­ber is.

Stay up Late

On the 13th Day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), the theme (as you know by now) is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue.

Franklin was a late cast addi­tion dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. Just mak­ing sure Sue could safe­ly give birth to Franklin result­ed in the rest of the team hav­ing to risk their lives by leap­ing into the Neg­a­tive Zone in FF Annu­al #6 (more on that in a future post).

I ini­tial­ly thought about try­ing to do some­thing fanci­er with my depic­tion, show Franklin using some of the pow­ers lat­er cre­ators gave him. But with all of these Kir­by Trib­ute FF images, I’ve made a rule for myself to stay with­in the lim­its of what Jack and Stan did dur­ing their run. And dur­ing that time, Franklin was pret­ty much just a nor­mal, healthy baby.

It might throw some of you to see him with brown hair, but that was how Franklin was depict­ed for a long time, even after Kir­by left the book. I’m not sure at what point he was shift­ed over to being depict­ed as blond, but that was how Franklin was being shown by the time John Byrne did his FF run. And doing some Googling, it seems there are now images of him also hav­ing black hair. No idea what that’s about.

That’s it for Franklin. If you like, come by tomor­row to see who’s up next.

“I Always Feel Like, Somebody’s Watching Me…”

We’re at Day Eight of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. In the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Watcher.

The mys­te­ri­ous Watch­er first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #13, “The Red Ghost and His Inde­scrib­able Super-Apes!” The FF and the Red Ghost race to be first to land on the moon, and to every­one’s sur­prise, near ancient ruins in the Blue Area of the Moon, they first encounter the Watch­er. He explains that he comes from a very advanced world where his peo­ple roam the uni­verse, wit­ness­ing events on all sorts of plan­ets. The Watch­er breaks a cen­turies-long vow of silence and steps into their conflict.

He’s some­times referred to by the name Uatu, but he did­n’t gain that name until Cap­tain Mar­vel #39 in 1975. At this point and for the rest of Jack and Stan’s FF run, he was sim­ply “the Watcher.”

The Watcher’s appear­ance changes a great deal dur­ing the course of Jack and Stan’s run. In his first appear­ance, he was col­ored a pale yel­low, with a pur­ple cape and tunic. Lat­er in the run when he appeared, his pro­por­tions had changed, and his head got small­er. I elect­ed to go with his ear­ly look (because I pre­fer the more “oth­er-word­ly” look with the big­ger head and eyes with­out pupils), but his lat­er, more rec­og­niz­able col­or palette.

Why did his appear­ance change so much? I recall read­ing a con­jec­ture about that which seemed pret­ty rea­son­able (though I don’t remem­ber exact­ly where I read it). It was point­ed out that in inter­ven­ing peri­ods, the Watch­er had showed up in oth­er comics drawn by oth­er artists, and his appear­ance had been kind of altered. The the­o­ry was that Jack was try­ing to be con­sis­tent to what had become the Watcher’s cur­rent look, and that’s why he changed so much.

The Watch­er appar­ent­ly took an inter­est in the FF and their activ­i­ties, step­ping in from time to time (most notably in “The Galac­tus Tril­o­gy” in Fan­tas­tic Four #48–50).

Enjoy, and feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s next!

Flame On!

We’re at Day Four of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), this time all Fan­tas­tic Four-themed. And com­plet­ing our Four is John­ny Storm, the Human Torch!

The pow­ers John­ny gained in their flight through the cos­mic rays were arguably the flashiest of the group, and actu­al­ly fit­ting his char­ac­ter (espe­cial­ly as the youngest mem­ber). He flew high and burned hot, much like his emo­tions some­times did in those ear­ly adven­tures. In those ear­ly days, some­times he would go beyond his lim­its and lose his pow­ers until he could rest and recov­er them.

Over the course of Jack and Stan’s orig­i­nal Fan­tas­tic Four run, John­ny grew and went through a lot. Some of which we’ll even­tu­al­ly get to in a lat­er post.

Well, that’s our Four! Who comes next, now that we’ve done them? Tune in tomor­row to see!

“What a Revoltin’ Development!”

It’s now Day Three of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters. And today’s prompt is none oth­er than the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing himself!

It’s been said that every super­hero group needs a super-strong char­ac­ter. And Ben Grimm def­i­nite­ly fills that bill. But he’s more than that. His pow­ers came with an obvi­ous cost, and there’s a sad­ness and regret that peri­od­i­cal­ly come out (some­thing that some lat­er writ­ers have tend­ed to for­get or neglect over the years). He’s got a rough exte­ri­or (lit­er­al­ly!), but a big heart. Strong as he is, some­times the Thing would be in sit­u­a­tions where he was beyond his lim­its. But he nev­er would stop try­ing. And in a tough sit­u­a­tion, he’s def­i­nite­ly the sort of per­son you would want back­ing you up.

One more mem­ber of the group to go tomorrow!

It’s the Ones You Don’t See That You Gotta Look out For!

Day Two of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the whole month is ded­i­cat­ed to Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Sue Storm Richards, the Invis­i­ble Woman!

Sue has a unique role in the Fan­tas­tic Four. She kind of acts as the emo­tion­al cen­ter or heart of the group. When Reed Richards would get too car­ried away in his head with his own thoughts, she could bring him back to earth and ground him. And he always trust­ed her to do that. When Ben Grimm would some­times get angry or depressed, she knew what to say to bring him back again. And when her younger broth­er John­ny would get hot-head­ed or too out-of-con­trol, she knew how to rein him in also. It’s kind of a sub­tle role, but an impor­tant one.

Ini­tial­ly after their flight through the cos­mic rays, Sue only had the pow­er of invis­i­bil­i­ty. But I think Jack and Stan soon real­ized that was­n’t enough for their nar­ra­tive needs, and gave her the sec­ondary pow­er to gen­er­ate force fields. Often those pow­ers have been used in large­ly a defen­sive way, but dur­ing John Byrne’s run on Fan­tas­tic Four, he came up with some inno­v­a­tive uses for her pow­ers that showed once and for all that she could hold her own with any­one else.

Feel free to come by tomor­row to see who’s next!

“That’s Just Too Fantastic!”

It’s August, which means it’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month again! Cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son, this year’s prompts are all Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed. And things are kick­ing off with none oth­er than Mr. Fan­tas­tic himself!

Trans­formed like the oth­er mem­bers of the quar­tet by an encounter with cos­mic rays on a rock­et trip into orbit, Reed Richards is the leader of the Fan­tas­tic Four, and one of the most bril­liant minds in the Mar­vel Comics Uni­verse. He took the stretch­ing pow­ers he gained and found inno­v­a­tive ways to use them, not just in deal­ing with men­aces encoun­tered by the Fan­tas­tic Four, but even in his every­day work in his lab. Not hav­ing his unique abil­i­ties, most sci­en­tists would prob­a­bly find it phys­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult to work on some of the equip­ment he designed.

Tune in again tomor­row to see who’s next!

…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.

Stretching the Point

We’re at Day Eight of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the King in his birth month. A new ele­ment this year is each week hav­ing a theme, this week’s being the Fan­tas­tic Four. If you’ve been fol­low­ing along the pre­vi­ous days, you might be able to guess today’s prompt: Mr. Fantastic.

Reed Richards as Mr. Fan­tas­tic is the bril­liant scientist/inventor and leader of the FF. A fun aspect of the orig­i­nal Jack and Stan run on Fan­tas­tic Four were those scenes where Reed was inten­sive­ly work­ing in his lab over some wild Kir­by-designed piece of equip­ment. I kind of had that in mind when doing this drawing.

If you’ve seen the orig­i­nal run by Jack and Stan, you might rec­og­nize that the way Jack drew Reed kind of mor­phed over the time he was doing the book. Mr. Fan­tas­tic start­ed off a bit thin­ner in the face ini­tial­ly, but got a lit­tle more “robust” lat­er on. I ref­er­enced how Reed looked dur­ing the mid­dle issues of the run here, which many con­sid­er to be the prime peri­od for the book.

The week’s theme is not over! Hav­ing cov­ered the FF them­selves, tune in tomor­row to see who’s up next.

Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed

We’ve reached the sev­enth day of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son. A cool new aspect he’s intro­duced is themed weeks, where each day’s prompts fit with­in that theme.

If you’ve been fol­low­ing along, this week’s theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four. Today’s prompt is the Thing.

Ben Grimm as the Thing is a char­ac­ter who might appear fair­ly sim­ple and straight­for­ward on the sur­face, but if you’ve read the orig­i­nal run by Jack and Stan, you real­ize there’s more to him than meets the eye. He can be fun­ny, but there’s also under­ly­ing pain and regret, being stuck in this mon­strous form. Lat­er cre­ators have some­times lost that aspect, focus­ing more on the comedic elements.

The Thing is not an easy char­ac­ter to draw! I had a bit of a strug­gle here before I felt like I had it rea­son­ably correct.

Hope you approve. Tune in tomor­row to see who’s next!

He Thinks He’s Hot Stuff!

It’s Day Six of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, we’re in the midst of Fan­tas­tic Four week, and today’s prompt is the Human Torch.

In his ini­tial appear­ances, he was per­haps a bit too form­less. Jack quick­ly fig­ured this out, and cod­i­fied what we now think of as his clas­sic look. From time to time, some sub­se­quent artists have tried to get cre­ative and find oth­er ways to draw him, but some­how he does­n’t look like him­self when you get too far removed from the tem­plate Jack set.

As men­tioned ear­li­er, I’m try­ing to get some sense of nar­ra­tive into these shots. Where exact­ly is he? Some­place unusu­al, no doubt. Feels like a sto­ry there.

Hope you like what I’ve done here. Tune in tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s up next!

Now You See Her,…

By now you know I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to mark the month of Jack­’s birth (he would turn 107 lat­er this month if he were still with us).

The new thing Howard’s intro­duced this year is weeks that have an over­all theme to each day’s prompts, and this week’s theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four. I did a group shot yes­ter­day, and today’s prompt (the first of the indi­vid­ual shots) is the Invis­i­ble Woman.

At first, her only pow­er was to turn invis­i­ble. But I think Jack and Stan real­ized pret­ty quick­ly that this did­n’t quite give her enough to ful­ly hold her own with the rest of the group. So they had her devel­op an addi­tion­al pow­er: the abil­i­ty to cre­ate force fields. That did the trick.

Sue Storm was orig­i­nal­ly known as the Invis­i­ble Girl, and it was­n’t until John Byrne’s run on Fan­tas­tic Four in the ’80s (sec­ond best in my opin­ion only to Jack and Stan’s orig­i­nal run!) that she was re-chris­tened the Invis­i­ble Woman. Byrne came up with some of the most cre­ative uses for her pow­ers that had ever been seen, and man­aged to show once and for all that she was a force to be reck­oned with!

Hope you like, and feel free to come back tomor­row to see who’s up next!

Fantastic!

Here’s Day Four of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and begin­ning the first full week of August means we also have a new theme this week: the Fan­tas­tic Four. And the first prompt is…the Fan­tas­tic Four?!

Since we also have sep­a­rate prompts for each indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter com­ing up, I thought I might do a “before and after” thing, today being the “before” part of the equa­tion. This was a moment with a lot of dra­ma in their ori­gin sto­ry, so I went with it. I always thought it was cool how Jack chose to ren­der the cos­mic rays as these sort of “lozenge” shapes. Kind of not all that threat­en­ing in them­selves indi­v­d­u­al­ly, but fear­ful because they’re an unknown, and there are so many of them!

I ful­ly admit to appro­pri­at­ing the col­or scheme used in the orig­i­nal ver­sion, because why not? I thought it looked great, and it also kind of reminds me of the almost “pop art” col­or­ing approach used in Alex Ross’ Fan­tas­tic Four: Full Cir­cle (which in my opin­ion is the best ver­sion of these char­ac­ters that I’ve seen in years!).

A note about the FF: while pret­ty much any Mar­vel book Jack had a hand in is worth a look, there are two absolute­ly essen­tial titles he did at Mar­vel that I feel are the tent­posts of his work there, which have to be tak­en into account when apprais­ing that body of work. In them, you see not just an artist and sto­ry­teller work­ing at the height of his craft, but you also get to see some­thing of the man him­self and his inter­ests. Fan­tas­tic Four is one of those books. In it, you get to see Jack­’s fas­ci­na­tion with sci fi, the unknown, and with what might be out there. It’s a theme that runs through much of his work, and we got to see a bit of it pre­vi­ous­ly in Chal­lengers of the Unknown at DC.

I did say two titles, so I’m not going to hold you in sus­pense wait­ing days to hear the sec­ond one. It’s Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. That’s where you see Jack­’s ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion with myths and leg­ends, which runs through­out his career.

So who’s first up when we move to the indi­vid­ual mem­bers tomor­row? I’m not going to spoil that. You’ll just have to check in and see!