Tag Archives: Marvel Comics

…And an Encore!

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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.

Some Enchantress Evening

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If you’ve been fol­low­ing along, you know I’ve been doing Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. This has been Asgard Week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters from Jack­’s Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor run. And our final vis­i­tor from Asgard this week is the Enchantress!

Her first appear­ance (in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #103) was a fun sto­ry, team­ing her with the Exe­cu­tion­er. Chic Stone’s inks worked well there, espe­cial­ly with a char­ac­ter like the Enchantress. Only a cou­ple years lat­er, it was reprint­ed in the Thor King-Size Spe­cial #1 (AKA Thor Annu­al #2).

The Enchantress’ col­or scheme was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in her first appear­ance. Instead of the over­all green scheme, her cos­tume includ­ed bright magen­ta! Also, they made her a plat­inum blonde. I liked that idea; it was kind of a unique touch that got lost when they lat­er went with a more con­ven­tion­al blonde col­or. So I made her a plat­inum blonde again here.

Tomor­row’s a new week and a new theme! Tune in tomor­row to see.

“Cross the Rainbow Bridge of Asgaaaard,…”

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Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and we’re in the back end of Asgard Week. You knew it was inevitable that at some point, the prompt would have to be Thor!

Many of the char­ac­ters I’ve been draw­ing here, I’ve nev­er attempt­ed before. I can’t say that about Thor, though. I’ve drawn him a few times.

Way back when I was try­ing to break into comics, I remem­ber work­ing up a sam­ple page fea­tur­ing Thor. One of the pan­els fea­tured a close-up of an angry Thor, yelling just pri­or to leap­ing on his foe while swing­ing his ham­mer. I had heard that com­ic artists some­times shot pho­to ref­er­ence, so I shot a Polaroid of myself mak­ing the face I want­ed, try­ing to get it just right. The end result was a Thor face that looked a lit­tle too much like me! The les­son as an artist is that using pho­to ref­er­ence, you have to be real­ly care­ful that it does­n’t take over.

I’ve gath­ered that some Sil­ver Age fans back when Thor was first com­ing out made the con­nec­tion that he was kind of Mar­vel’s equiv­a­lent to Super­man: being able to fly, hav­ing super-strength and vir­tu­al invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. There’s also the aspect of him hav­ing been sent to Earth by his father. A less obvi­ous cor­re­la­tion might be between Thor and the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel, as both char­ac­ters make a big mag­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion to get from their civil­ian iden­ti­ties to their hero­ic ones.

Tomor­row’s the finale of Asgard Week. Who’s it going to be? You’ll have to come back to find out!

No, I Am Not Coming with You!

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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!

Milady

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This makes Day 21 now of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. And we’re work­ing our way through Asgard week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who appeared dur­ing Jack­’s Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor run. Today’s prompt is the Lady Sif!

Ini­tial­ly, the Thor strip in Jour­ney into Mys­tery had a run­ning sub­plot that Thor loved the mor­tal Nurse Jane Fos­ter, who worked for him in his human iden­ti­ty of Dr. Don Blake. Thor’s father Odin had trou­ble with this idea, and Jack and Stan got a lot of “soap opera” style mileage out of this rela­tion­ship for a long time. But some­thing like this could only be car­ried on for so long, with­out it becom­ing tiresome.

So they found a sat­is­fy­ing way to resolve this sto­ry­line in Thor #136, “To Become an Immor­tal!” I don’t want to spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t read it for them­selves yet, but at the end, Sif shows up. And from that point on, she became a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in the book, as the sto­ries became more epic.

An inter­est­ing thing is that Sif’s look kind of fluc­tu­ates a bit more than you’d think. She looks dif­fer­ent­ly on the splash page of issue #137 than she did at the end of #136. Her cos­tume had a lot more detail. She starts off in #137 with a full hel­met sur­round­ing her head (with orna­men­tal wings, no less!), which over time morphs into more of a small hel­met pro­tect­ing just the top of her head, before van­ish­ing entire­ly. Her cos­tume becomes very sim­pli­fied over time too. For my ver­sion, I brought in a lit­tle bit of the orig­i­nal detail, just to make it more interesting.

Tune in tomor­row to see who’s next for Asgard Week!

Big Daddio

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We’ve made it to day 20 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son). The theme has been Asgard this week: char­ac­ters who appeared dur­ing Jack Kir­by’s run on Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. And today’s prompt is none oth­er than Odin!

Fans will know that Odin is the ruler of all Asgard, and Thor’s father. If you’ve read a lot of the Lee/Kirby sto­ries, you’re aware that their rela­tion­ship is com­pli­cat­ed, to say the least.

An inter­est­ing aspect to Odin is that visu­al­ly, apart from hav­ing a sol­id frame and the white hair and beard, he has no fixed look! Pret­ty much every time you see him, his attire is dif­fer­ent. And more often than not, it’s quite ornate! In comics, this is very unusu­al. But appar­ent­ly Jack liked the chal­lenge of com­ing up with some­thing dif­fer­ent for Odin each time you saw him. It was­n’t just from issue to issue; some­times his appar­el would change from scene to scene in the same story!

As a result, what I’ve drawn here is inspired by, but not based off of, any one spe­cif­ic out­fit worn by Odin. I pulled my col­or cues from how he was col­ored too (crazy things some­times like the green shad­ows on the blue gloves!). I don’t know that Jack ever hid a face any­where in his designs, but that felt right to me to do that (as kind of a tip of the hat to Walt Simon­son and his Thor run, sec­ond best only to the orig­i­nal. Simon­son would do things like that).

Hope you like my take on Odin, and tune in tomor­row for our next vis­i­tor from Asgard!

Three Is a Magic Number

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Here on the 19th day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, we’ve moved into Asgard week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters from Jack­’s Thor run. Today’s prompt is the War­riors Three! In front from left, we have Hogun the Grim and Fan­dral the Dash­ing. Behind them is Volstagg.

As seen in Thor Annu­al #2 from 1966, the War­riors were good friends of Thor. They would often end up going into bat­tle togeth­er. Fan­dral had a dev­il-may-care atti­tude, smil­ing and jok­ing as he bat­tled, seem­ing­ly mod­eled after Errol Fly­nn (per­haps with Fly­n­n’s ver­sion of Robin Hood in mind). Hogun came by his appel­la­tion “the Grim” hon­est­ly, as he rarely smiled or said much in bat­tle (he appeared to be some­thing of a mash-up of Charles Bron­son and Genghis Khan, odd­ly enough). Vol­stagg at this ear­ly point in time was often more of a com­ic relief fig­ure, though lat­er he was shown to be as brave and respect­ed as the rest. He appears to have been inspired by Shake­speare’s Falstaff.

I’d nev­er attempt­ed to draw these char­ac­ters, so it was fun to take a crack at them! Hope you enjoy, and tune in again tomor­row if you’re curi­ous to see who in the Thor cast shows up next!

Sneaky!

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We’ve made it to the 18th day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son)! A new week means a new theme: Asgard week, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who appeared in Jack­’s run on Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. And this first day, the prompt is none oth­er than that wily ras­cal, Loki!

Loki made a pret­ty good ongo­ing threat to Thor and Asgard. He was always very crafty in how he went about his schemes, and even man­aged to gain con­trol of Asgard at one point! A lot has hap­pened to the char­ac­ter in the years since, but that “trick­ster” ele­ment has remained a part of his character.

I’ve said this pre­vi­ous­ly, but Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor is an impor­tant book to look at when study­ing the body of Jack­’s Mar­vel work. All his Mar­vel work is worth look­ing at, but I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that there are two books that are the pil­lars of his Mar­vel work, that must be tak­en into account. I’m talk­ing about the Fan­tas­tic Four, and Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor. Those are the two books where you not only see a storyteller/artist work­ing at the top of their craft, you also get to see a glimpse of Jack Kir­by as a per­son, the things that inter­est­ed and moti­vat­ed him. Thor shows the inter­est that Jack had in myths and leg­ends which ran through his career.

It was fun to take a shot at draw­ing a clas­sic-style Loki here. If you’re curi­ous as to who might be next, pop by again tomorrow!

I Can Dig It

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It’s now the 10th day of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, devised by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the cre­ative genius of the King. Howard intro­duced a fun new wrin­kle this year, of themed weeks. This week’s theme has been the Fan­tas­tic Four, and on this last day of the week, the final prompt is the Mole Man.

The Mole Man may not be con­sid­ered the FF’s arch­en­e­my, but he has the dis­tinc­tion of being the very first antag­o­nist they faced in their ori­gin sto­ry. Like many of the FF vil­lains, he had more com­plex­i­ty to him than your aver­age com­ic book vil­lain. He com­mand­ed an army of Moloids (which I’ve includ­ed some of here, free of charge) as well as var­i­ous giant under­ground mon­sters. He was bit­ter, yet not entire­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic, hav­ing been shunned and basi­cal­ly dri­ven away by most of the rest of mankind.

While I have (on rare occa­sion) pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed to draw some of the oth­er FF char­ac­ters I’ve drawn this week, this is the first time I’ve ever tried to draw the Mole Man. It was fun!

And that wraps up Fan­tas­tic Four week. Tomor­row’s a new week, and a new theme!

You’re All Doomed!

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Today makes Day Nine of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son to hon­or the cre­ative genius of Jack Kir­by dur­ing his birth month. We’re in the first full week of the month, and the theme for this week is the Fan­tas­tic Four. Today’s prompt is Dr. Doom.

Vic­tor Von Doom views him­self as being above oth­er men. And yet (though he’d deny it), he’s clear­ly threat­ened by Reed Richards’ genius. He’s a bit more com­plex of a char­ac­ter than your aver­age supervil­lain. Kir­by has been quot­ed as say­ing he was inspired in part by The Man in the Iron Mask, and was try­ing to make him “the clas­sic con­cep­tion of Death,” with­out a hint of mer­cy, by mask­ing him in cold, unmer­ci­ful steel. He viewed Doom as being para­noid, and Doom’s per­fec­tion­ism was what ulti­mate­ly tripped him up and bent his mind.

Dr. Doom’s mask is kind of tricky to draw! It sort of morphs a bit between pan­els and appear­ances, so hope­ful­ly I’ve done it jus­tice here.

Tune in tomor­row for the finale of Fan­tas­tic Four week!