Tag: Inhumans

“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.

“Who’s a Good Boy?!”

It’s day 15 (about the halfway point) of 2025’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. On this last day of a group­ing of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Inhu­mans’ giant dog, Lockjaw.

Lock­jaw first shows up in FF #45, along with Crys­tal of the Inhu­mans. He’s large­ly Crys­tal’s pet (“large” being the oper­a­tive word), and is a strik­ing sight. All the Inhu­mans have spe­cial pow­ers, and Lock­jaw is no excep­tion. He’s able to tele­port him­self and oth­ers wher­ev­er he wants to go. In fact, there’s a peri­od where John­ny Storm and Wyatt Wing­foot accom­pa­ny Lock­jaw as he tele­ports around, hop­ing he will bring them to wher­ev­er Crys­tal and the oth­er Inhu­mans are trapped. It ends up being quite a jour­ney before they final­ly reach their desired destination.

I’ve been won­der­ing a bit about what inspired Jack and Stan to cre­ate Lock­jaw. This isn’t some­thing I’ve par­tic­u­lar­ly researched, but the thought of old paint­ed por­traits of nobil­i­ty or roy­al­ty came to mind, where they were some­times depict­ed with their pets. So why not a giant bull­dog befit­ting a roy­al fam­i­ly as unusu­al as the Inhu­mans? It’s only a guess, but maybe that was where Lock­jaw came from.

Tomor­row we move from allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters to the FF’s rogues gallery. Who’s going to be first? Check in tomor­row to see!

Clear As…

Day 10 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, and this year is focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. At the moment, we’re in the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Crys­tal of the Inhumans.

Crys­tal first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #45, where most of the Inhu­mans were also first intro­duced. John­ny Storm encoun­ters her, is fas­ci­nat­ed by her, but she runs away, fear­ful of being seen by nor­mal humans. When John­ny flames on as the Human Torch, she is no longer fear­ful, think­ing he must be an Inhu­man also.

John­ny and Crys­tal quick­ly get very close (most would say she was John­ny’s first love), but they’re trag­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed when the Inhu­mans’ Hid­den Land is trapped under an impen­e­tra­ble dome. John­ny spends a lot of time try­ing to get to her. Lat­er (in issue #81), she actu­al­ly joins the FF when Sue steps away for a time. Often referred to as an “Ele­men­tal,” Crys­tal has the pow­er to manip­u­late earth, air, fire and water.

In her first appear­ance, she just wore a white dress, which helped to give her a sort of inno­cent and ethe­re­al appear­ance (I’m pret­ty sure this had to be deliberate).

Some­thing about the way Jack drew her face in that first appear­ance made me think of Kathy Ire­land. Years lat­er, in the mid-’90s, when Producer/Director Lar­ry Hous­ton was doing a Fan­tas­tic Four car­toon, I got the chance to draw the char­ac­ter mod­el for Crys­tal. Anoth­er artist had drawn her in the yel­low cos­tume that kind of became her stan­dard out­fit lat­er (which I drew her in here). But Lar­ry had want­ed her in the white dress, since they were adapt­ing her intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry­line from issue #45 where she met Johnny.

I chose to also try to keep her ini­tial like­ness to Kathy Ire­land from that first appear­ance. No one told me to do that; it just felt right to do it, since it was a dis­tinc­tive face. But as it turned out, they actu­al­ly got Kathy Ire­land to play the char­ac­ter for that episode! Kind of neat it worked out that way.

I tried to achieve that same face here again, though this time with the yel­low out­fit. No idea how that hair­band and those “end­pieces” in her hair work, but they sure look cool!

Hope you like my take on Crys­tal. Feel free to come back tomor­row to see who shows up next!

A Hairy Situation

It’s now Day Nine of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. This time out, it’s focused sole­ly on the Fan­tas­tic Four and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters from Jack and Stan’s 100+ issue run. Today’s prompt is Medusa, of the Inhumans.

In her first appear­ance, Medusa is actu­al­ly not an ally. She shows up teamed with the Wiz­ard, Sand­man and Pastepot Pete as the Fright­ful Four, in Fan­tas­tic Four #36. She makes a for­mi­da­ble ene­my, with psy­choki­net­ic con­trol over her lengthy, pre­hen­sile hair. It isn’t until FF #45 that we find out about the Inhu­mans, and that she’s part of the group.

Although the FF’s first meet­ings with the Inhu­mans don’t go well, over time, they become allies. After Jack and Stan’s run, Medusa even spends some time as a mem­ber of the Fan­tas­tic Four.

Medusa’s out­fit changes quite a bit over the years. It’s safe to say that what I’ve drawn here is more or less her clas­sic look. Though in her first appear­ance, her out­fit is quite dif­fer­ent! (Stay tuned!)

More often than not in comics, red hair has typ­i­cal­ly been depict­ed as a stan­dard com­ic book orange (50% magen­ta with 100% yel­low). But when they real­ly want the col­or to punch (like with Medusa), some­times they’d go full-on com­ic book red (100% magen­ta with 100% yellow).

Look­ing at it now, I feel like maybe a lit­tle bit of Wal­ly Wood crept into my depic­tion here, sub­con­scious­ly. But I can’t find him ever hav­ing drawn her. How­ev­er, I do remem­ber Dave Simons once doing a draw­ing of her in Wood’s style, so maybe that was in the back of my mind.

Hope you like, and (a hint) tune in tomor­row for anoth­er Inhuman!