Tag: Female Furies

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.

“No Shish Kabob for Me, Please!”

It’s now Day 22 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Bernadeth of the Female Furies!

I drew her for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here. Among the Furies, she projects a more con­trolled and sto­ic pres­ence on the sur­face, but with an under­ly­ing inten­si­ty. Her weapon of choice is the extend­able Fahrenknife, which can pen­e­trate a per­son and bar­be­cue them…from the inside, no less!

Bernadeth also has the dis­tinc­tion of being the sis­ter of Desaad, Dark­sei­d’s lead torturer.

So that’s Bernadeth. If you’d like to see who’s up next, feel free to swing by again tomor­row to find out!

She Really Put Her Foot in It This Time!

Day 21 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, and today’s prompt is Stom­pa of the Female Furies!

Stom­pa first appeared in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6 (like the rest of the Female Furies). I took a shot at draw­ing her on a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here. Her spe­cial­ty is kick­ing and stomp­ing. That may not sound like much, but her skills make that quite the effec­tive threat!

I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly about col­ors shift­ing on Mad Har­ri­et, and it hap­pened with Stom­pa dur­ing her appear­ances too. Some­times she had two dif­fer­ent shades of orange. Some­times her hel­met was yel­low, and oth­er times orange. In one issue, it was gray! So like I said with Har­ri­et, when you try to draw her, you have to make some deci­sions about color.

Hope you like my take here on Stom­pa. If you’re curi­ous who’s next, feel free to swing by tomor­row to find out!

Don’t Let Her Sink Her Claws in You!

Here on Day 20 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, today’s prompt is Mad Har­ri­et of the Female Furies. Like all the Furies (except Big Bar­da), she first appeared in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6. I drew her for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

A thing I’ve real­ized over the course of doing these Jack Kir­by Trib­utes is that Jack would some­times take what could be termed an “impres­sion­is­tic” approach to his cos­tume designs. While they would look con­sis­tent to read­ers, often the details could shift from issue to issue, and some­times even pan­el to pan­el! The aver­age read­er would­n’t notice this or be both­ered by it, but you only start to see it when you have to ana­lyze these designs to draw them for yourself.

Mad Har­ri­et is par­tic­u­lar­ly tricky. Once you get beyond her face and hair, things fluc­tu­ate and change quite a bit. Adding to this is the fact that the col­orist (or col­orists, for all I know) would change things around too! So you have to make a num­ber of deci­sions when draw­ing her.

Any­way, that’s Har­ri­et! Hope you enjoyed this take. Who’s next? swing by tomor­row to see!

This Is Gonna Sting!

I’ve made it now to day 19 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Lashina, of the Female Furies. She first appeared in Mis­ter Mir­a­cle #6.

I pre­vi­ous­ly drew her for Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2024 here. Only Kir­by could come up with a char­ac­ter skilled with flat-shaped whips that are stored all over the sur­face of her uniform!

I dis­cov­ered the first time I drew her that there’s a trick to it. You kind of have to start with the fig­ure first, then apply the whips and rings after the fact. That’s the only way you can make it work. I made the mis­take the first time I drew her in 2024 of pay­ing too much atten­tion to the whip and ring design to start with, and end­ed up hav­ing to cut my first draw­ing out and cut in a new re-worked one. I did­n’t make that error this time.

But then, it’s true that a lot of Jack­’s designs can be tricky when you try to trans­late them into your own style!

Any­way, that’s Lashina. Hope you liked my take. If you’re inter­est­ed in who comes up next, feel free to stop by again tomor­row to see!

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!

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.