Tag: Frightful 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.

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!