Tag: Hela

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.

“Take My Hand…”

This is now Day 15 (about the halfway point!) of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Hela!

I drew Hela once before for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here. You can see for your­self how strik­ing her char­ac­ter design is. Hela appeared dur­ing Jack­’s run on Jour­ney into Mys­tery/Thor exact­ly four times. And every time, she looked different!

Part of this was how Jack drew her, while anoth­er part of it was col­or. Hela was col­ored dif­fer­ent­ly each time. Usu­al­ly in purples!

A thing I’ve real­ized over the course of these Kir­by Trib­ute Months and research­ing these char­ac­ters, is Jack was some­thing of an “impres­sion­ist” when it came to his char­ac­ter designs. Some­times even char­ac­ters you think of as hav­ing a fixed design can shift their appear­ance, from issue to issue, and even pan­el to pan­el. When you look at them casu­al­ly, you think they’re all the same. But when you study the details ana­lyt­i­cal­ly, as an artist, you begin to see how things actu­al­ly shift around.

You’d think that the default look for Hela (seen here, based on how she looked in Thor #150) would’ve been based on the last time Jack drew her. But sur­pris­ing­ly, this is not the case! Jack drew her one more time, in Thor #154, where she was col­ored in pur­ples, pink, and with a dark blue cape. All of the dif­fer­ent depic­tions involved a full body­suit with some kind of sur­face designs, a hood, a cape, and some kind of horned con­fig­u­ra­tion around her head.

I don’t know if Stan Lee and John Romi­ta (Mar­vel’s de fac­to art direc­tor by then) for­got about this final appear­ance drawn by Jack, or just decid­ed they pre­ferred Hela’s look in #150. I was almost tempt­ed to draw her in one of those oth­er looks, but decid­ed it might be a bit too far removed from what’s become the default look for peo­ple to rec­og­nize her right away. Plus, this real­ly is a strik­ing design!

Hope you like Hela. Swing by tomor­row to see who’s next, if you like.

…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.

No, I Am Not Coming with You!

This is now the 22nd day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son), and we’re work­ing our way through Asgard Week. Today’s prompt is Hela, god­dess of Death! Hela presents a strik­ing visual!

Like some oth­er char­ac­ters in the book, it seemed to take a lit­tle bit before she devel­oped a real “fixed” form. It seems she only appeared four times dur­ing Jack­’s run. I don’t have a copy of her ini­tial appear­ance in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #102 (I think in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up),  but when I looked up her sec­ond appear­ance in Thor #133, I was sur­prised. Not only is the draw­ing a bit dif­fer­ent, the col­or scheme does­n’t even include any green in it! It was­n’t until #150 that we got what most peo­ple have come to think of as her clas­sic design.

I’d nev­er tried to draw Hela before, and it was an inter­est­ing chal­lenge to wrap my head around her design, fig­ure out a way to under­stand it so I could draw it. One lib­er­ty I took was the green lips. They did­n’t do that in her appear­ance in #150, but it felt right to me. It’s like it gives her an even more “oth­er­word­ly” feel.

I had fun with this one, so I hope you like it too. Come back tomor­row to see who vis­its us next from Asgard!