Tag: Marvel Comics

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.

A Study of the Scarlet Witch

This is the penul­ti­mate day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Offi­cial­ly, only one more day to go! And the prompt for today is the Scar­let Witch!

The Scar­let Witch (Wan­da Max­i­moff) first appeared way back in X‑Men #4, where (along­side her broth­er, Quick­sil­ver), she’s part of Mag­ne­to’s Broth­er­hood of Evil Mutants. Yet unlike the oth­er mem­bers, she’d real­ly rather not be there. Her heart isn’t in it. She’s only there under a sense of oblig­a­tion to Mag­ne­to, while her broth­er is there large­ly just to pro­tect her.

Lat­er, they part ways with the Broth­er­hood and become part of the Avengers. The Scar­let Witch’s mutant pow­er was the abil­i­ty to alter the laws of prob­a­bil­i­ty, so that the improb­a­ble would hap­pen. She’s known for her beau­ty, but has more of a shy and retir­ing personality.

Study­ing her ear­li­est appear­ance, I was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that her head­piece actu­al­ly wrapped all the way around her head, in the style of a wim­ple. Lat­er on, it became more just a frame around her face.

If you read up on her and all the things that hap­pened to her char­ac­ter post-Kir­by, it’s a lot. Some good, and some…not so much. I often just ignore those things, as I find they can make my head hurt. The best pol­i­cy gen­er­al­ly is to stick with Jack and Stan. They got it right the first time.

I hope you liked my take on the ear­ly Scar­let Witch. If you’ve fol­lowed Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month in pre­vi­ous years, you know that the 31st is always sort of a wild card day. “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.” So by all means, you’re wel­come to swing by and see what I end up doing! As I type this, I haven’t even drawn it yet.

“…The Perfection of Thena–!”

This is now Day 29 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Not too many more to go! Today’s prompt is Thena of the Eternals.

I talked about The Eter­nals yes­ter­day in more detail. It was one of the new titles Jack came up with when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. While on the sur­face it might have looked slight­ly sim­i­lar to some of what Jack had done with the New Gods in his Fourth World saga at DC, the inspi­ra­tion for this one came from a dif­fer­ent place.

Thena first shows up in The Eter­nals #5. She’s the daugh­ter of the Prime Eter­nal, Zuras. Thena is no shrink­ing vio­let. She has a strong per­son­al­i­ty, and a direct approach to prob­lems. When she finds out in her first appear­ance that the Deviants have resur­faced and are mak­ing trou­ble among the humans, her imme­di­ate response is, “…The Deviants must be taught to respect Eter­nals! You know that I intend to do the teach­ing!!” With that, she grabs the mes­sen­ger, Makar­ri, by the arm and strides quick­ly out of Zuras’ pres­ence to go take care of business.

But Thena also has a soft­er side. Includ­ed in my image here is Kro, the Deviant gen­er­al, with whom she once had a rela­tion­ship. Jack was appar­ent­ly ref­er­enc­ing the sto­ry of Perse­phone, daugh­ter of Zeus, who went down into the under­world. In The Eter­nals, Kro hopes to rekin­dle their old rela­tion­ship, yet there’s a lot between them that’s seem­ing­ly insurmountable.

As I said yes­ter­day, if you’ve only seen the MCU ver­sion, you don’t know the Eter­nals. You should read the com­ic, if you get the chance. Jack told some real­ly great sto­ries dur­ing his run.

That’s Thena. If you’re inter­est­ed, feel free to check in tomor­row to see who’s next.

“Spelled S‑E-R-S‑I, Thank You!”

This is now Day 28 of this year’s Jack Kir­by trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Ser­si, of The Eter­nals.

The Eter­nals was one of the new titles Jack came up with when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. The inspi­ra­tion for this one seemed root­ed in the ear­li­er best-sell­ing book, Char­i­ots of the Gods?, by Erich Von Däniken. The book the­o­rized all kinds of direct influ­ence on our ancient human cul­tures from alien vis­i­tors to our plan­et cen­turies ago. It was def­i­nite­ly ripe mate­r­i­al to inspire the imag­i­na­tion of a sto­ry­teller like Jack Kirby.

The Eter­nals in the com­ic were actu­al­ly just a more devel­oped and longer-lived race than humans, and had often been mis­tak­en for gods by ancient man because of their advanced sci­ences and amaz­ing abilities.

We first meet Ser­si in The Eter­nals #3. In #4, she tells about being vis­it­ed by Ulysses and his crew, being offend­ed by their lack of man­ners and turn­ing them into pigs. Mean­ing she was the Circe of legend.

Ser­si is a fun char­ac­ter. She’s strong (like a lot of Kir­by’s women), has a sense of humor, but does­n’t take any non­sense off of any­one. I inked a draw­ing of Ser­si by Kir­by awhile back, which you can see here.

If your only aware­ness of The Eter­nals is via the MCU film of that name, you are seri­ous­ly miss­ing out. Any resem­blance between the com­ic and that film is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal. That’s all I’ll say about that, because I pre­fer to try to keep things as pos­i­tive as I can here. I high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing Jack­’s Eter­nals, if you get the chance. There are some sto­ries he did there that I believe are just as good as any­thing else Jack ever did!

Hope you like my Ser­si. Tune in again tomor­row to see who’s up next, if you like.

Make Way for the Princess!

Here’s Day 26 now of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Today’s prompt is Princess Zan­da, from Jack­’s Black Pan­ther run.

I snuck her in as part of a pre­vi­ous piece for Jack Kir­by Month here. When Jack returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s, the land­scape there had changed quite a bit while he was away. And Jack now pre­ferred to have his own lit­tle cor­ner sort of away from every­one else, where he wrote and drew his own books, not hav­ing to track the con­ti­nu­ity of what was going on with the rest of the Mar­vel universe.

Fan recep­tion to these books at the time was kind of mixed. When it was announced that Jack was going to do a new run of Black Pan­ther sto­ries, many fans expect­ed that he would tie in to what had been done by oth­er cre­ators pre­vi­ous­ly. But they did­n’t get that. Jack had his own take on Black Pan­ther, seem­ing­ly more informed by the sort of sto­ries writ­ten by H. Rid­er Hag­gard (like King Solomon’s Mines and She). Dis­ap­point­ing maybe to those who had pri­or expec­ta­tions, but inter­est­ing to those who were will­ing to accept Jack­’s new take on its own terms.

Princess Zan­da was one of the new cast of char­ac­ters Jack came up with for this book. She was part of a group called the Col­lec­tors, who sought out rare, arcane arche­o­log­i­cal items. Often these items would grant rare pow­ers and abil­i­ties. And some­times Black Pan­ther end­ed up in the way of some of the Col­lec­tors in their search­es. When he would get in Zan­da’s way, she could be dangerous.

Here, she’s seen hold­ing King Solomon’s Frog, an item she and the rest of the Col­lec­tors were hunt­ing for right off in the first issue of Jack­’s Black Pan­ther run.

I don’t know whether you’ve seen the list of prompts, but if you have, you may be in for a sur­prise tomor­row. By all means, feel free to come by and see who’s next!

Love and Death

We’ve reached Day 17 now of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Today’s prompt is the Enchantress, from Kir­by’s Jour­ney into Mys­tery/Thor run.

I’ve drawn the Enchantress before for a pre­vi­ous Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and you can see her here. As men­tioned there, her first appear­ance was in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #103, where she was paired up with the Exe­cu­tion­er. I thought it would be fun to put them togeth­er here. They typ­i­cal­ly did seem to end up work­ing togeth­er, a sort of “Beau­ty and the Beast” team.

Jack and Stan seemed to be hav­ing fun with the Enchantress right off the bat in her first appear­ance. She had a way of wrap­ping men around her lit­tle fin­ger, and that was usu­al­ly how she got the Exe­cu­tion­er to do what she want­ed too.

Any­way, I hope you like this. Who’s next up? Feel free to come back tomor­row to find out!

“What’s a Norn?”

Wel­come to Day 16 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. The prompt for today is Karnil­la, the Norn Queen.

While I’ve drawn oth­er char­ac­ters from Jack­’s Jour­ney into Mys­tery/Thor run for pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Months, this is the first time I had a prompt to draw Karnil­la. She plays an inter­est­ing role in Jack and Stan’s JiM/Thor run. She’s a witch-queen, basi­cal­ly, and in the vil­lain camp (she often would help Loki with his plots). But at the same time, she loved the noble Balder the Brave, Thor’s best friend, who would nev­er betray Thor or the gods of Asgard.

Ini­tial­ly, Jack kept Karnil­la’s design pret­ty sim­ple. Lots of dark blues. But lat­er in his Thor run, he began to mix things up and give her dif­fer­ent looks. Not quite as wide-rang­ing as the out­fits Odin showed up in, but still inter­est­ing. So I com­bined a few ideas togeth­er for Karnil­la’s look here. Plus I thought the lit­tle pet drag­on would be a fun thing to include.

I hope you enjoyed my take on Karnil­la. As always, feel free to swing by again tomor­row to see who comes up next.

“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.

The Lady

On Day 14 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, the prompt is Sif, from Kir­by’s run on Jour­ney into Mys­tery/Thor.

I drew her for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here, as well as giv­ing the sto­ry of how she was intro­duced into the book. One thing I did not men­tion is that her actu­al first appear­ance was in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #102, in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up. Her appear­ance there was very dif­fer­ent from what we’re famil­iar with in that tale, as she was a blonde!

When Jack and Stan retired the run­ning Jane Fos­ter roman­tic sub­plots and want­ed a new love inter­est for Thor, they need­ed some­one who would work bet­ter with­in the increas­ing­ly more epic sto­ry­lines they were doing. And Sif fit the bill. She was brave, and will­ing to stand up against any trolls or oth­er antag­o­nists who might show up.

As I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, when first intro­duced as a reg­u­lar, her look was a bit more detailed than what it lat­er became. For this illus­tra­tion, I thought it would be fun to use that ini­tial look she had on the splash page of Thor #137.

So there’s Sif for you! Who’s up next? You’ll have to come back tomor­row to find out.

Formerly Frightful, Now Inhuman…

We’ve now reached Day 13 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Medusa, of the Inhumans!

I’ve drawn Medusa a cou­ple of times for a pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (here and here). She was first intro­duced in Fan­tas­tic Four as a mem­ber of the Fright­ful Four, dis­cov­ered by the Wiz­ard and brought onto the team. But a bit lat­er, it was decid­ed that she would fit in even bet­ter as part of a new con­cept, the Inhu­mans. It’s no secret that most comics in those days were done spon­ta­neous­ly, on the fly, and some­times it took them a bit to fig­ure out the best ways to employ new char­ac­ters. When done well (in instances like Medusa), it made for good sto­ry material.

Try­ing to think of a new way to depict Medusa from what I’d done pre­vi­ous­ly, I thought it might be kind of fun to have her get­ting the upper hand on the Wiz­ard. Clear­ly he’s not hap­py about the situation!

Hope you like my take on Medusa. Feel free to come back and see who’s next tomor­row, if you like.

“Elemental, My Dear Johnny!”

(Apolo­gies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for my post title)

This is now Day 12 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Crys­tal from the Inhu­mans, who were intro­duced in the Fan­tas­tic Four com­ic. I also drew her for last year’s FF-cen­tric Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

As I men­tioned then, Crys­tal and her strange fam­i­ly of Inhu­mans make for lots of great sto­ry mate­r­i­al after they’re intro­duced in the FF com­ic. She becomes a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing cast mem­ber after awhile, as John­ny Stor­m’s love inter­est, and even joins the FF for a time.

At one point in the ’90s post-X‑Men, my friend and men­tor in ani­ma­tion Lar­ry Hous­ton had moved over to Mar­vel to do an FF car­toon. I got to do a lit­tle bit of free­lance for him (My day job on the X‑Men car­toon was still keep­ing me pret­ty busy).

On one of the episodes, they were intro­duc­ing Crys­tal and the oth­er Inhu­mans. I end­ed up get­ting to do the char­ac­ter design for Crys­tal. Lar­ry want­ed it based on her very first appear­ance in the com­ic, where she’s in a white dress and looks kind of ethe­re­al at first when John­ny Storm sees her. He’s not quite sure if she’s real­ly there, or he’s just imag­in­ing things.

I also thought that in that first appear­ance, her face looked a lit­tle like Kathy Ire­land, so I tried to hang onto that in my design. When they picked the voice actors for that episode, they actu­al­ly did cast Kathy Ire­land in the part (some­thing I had no idea was even under consideration)!

For this one, I thought it would be fun to have Crys­tal with her pet dog, Lock­jaw. Of course, being an Inhu­man, Lock­jaw isn’t just a nor­mal-look­ing dog.

That’s my take on Crys­tal this time. Who’s up next? You’ll have to come back again tomor­row to find out!

“What’s This Buzzing around Me?”

This is now day 11 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Janet van Dyne, AKA the Wasp!

She first showed up Tales to Aston­ish #44, as part of the Ant-Man strip. Hen­ry Pym sets her up with the same shrink­ing pow­ers and the like that he had been using as Ant-Man. Pym’s first appear­ance in Tales to Aston­ish #27 was more like a holdover from the ear­li­er mon­ster sto­ries Marvel/Atlas had been doing in the ’50s. But in issue #35, they brought him back, appar­ent­ly think­ing it was time to turn him into a superhero.

A lit­tle while after Janet van Dyne part­ners up with him as the Wasp, Pym dis­cov­ers he can use his tech not just to shrink, but to also go the oth­er direc­tion and become large. He renames him­self Giant Man in Tales to Aston­ish #49.

Since the Wasp and Giant Man were around from very ear­ly days, when the time came for Mar­vel to team up their char­ac­ters as The Avengers (more or less Mar­vel’s equiv­a­lent of the Jus­tice League), they were in on that team from the start. In fact, the Wasp is the one who comes up with the new team’s name!

Janet van Dyne as a char­ac­ter was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from most of the Mar­vel women of that peri­od. She had a bit of a play­ful­ness and a sense of fun to her that most of them did­n’t usu­al­ly dis­play. Which prob­a­bly also served to light­en up Hank Pym a lit­tle bit.

You get a twofer here. I want­ed to show a reduced-size Wasp in flight, and thought it might also be fun to show a bit of Giant Man in the back­ground, since they’re a team.

It should be said that while this is her orig­i­nal out­fit, she became known over the years for chang­ing her cos­tume often, out of a sense of style and fash­ion. Though if I’m not mis­tak­en, this was the only uni­form Kir­by ever drew her in.

That’s my take on the Wasp! I hope you enjoyed it, and that you’re inter­est­ed enough to swing by tomor­row to see who’s next!

Seen and Unseen

It’s now day 10 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and the prompt for today is Ali­cia Mas­ters. I drew her pre­vi­ous­ly for last year’s FF-cen­tric Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

As men­tioned in that ear­li­er post, Ali­cia was first intro­duced in Fan­tas­tic Four #8 as the daugh­ter of the vil­lain Pup­pet Mas­ter. She went on to become a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, and the love inter­est of Ben Grimm, the Thing. As with Bet­ty Ross and Bruce Ban­ner, Ali­cia pro­vid­ed a bit of bright­ness in Ben Grim­m’s life, despite his being stuck as the Thing.

Ali­cia was an accom­plished sculp­tor, and often she’d be depict­ed in her stu­dio work­ing on some­thing, sur­round­ed by oth­er sculp­tures she’d made. I thought that was a good way to go here too.

I hope you enjoyed my take on Ali­cia this time. Feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s up next!

“I Can’t See What’s So Great about Her!”

On day nine of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), today’s prompt is Susan Richards, the Invis­i­ble Woman from the Fan­tas­tic Four!

I’ve drawn her for pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Months here and here. And this counts too. Fan­tas­tic Four was the foun­da­tion­al book from which Mar­vel Comics real­ly sprout­ed. The FF is Mar­vel’s “first fam­i­ly,” mak­ing Sue by default the first lady of the Mar­vel universe.

I’ve point­ed out the impor­tance of her role in the group in my pre­vi­ous Invis­i­ble Woman posts for Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, so I’m not going to repeat myself. But one more inter­est­ing thing of note: Fan­tas­tic Four #1 debuted on news­stands in August of 1961 (also the month Jack Kir­by was born). If you do the math, that means that this year (and this month) are the 65th anniver­sary of the Fan­tas­tic Four!

Last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month was ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to the Fan­tas­tic Four, so we’re not repeat­ing that this time. Is Mar­vel doing any­thing to cel­e­brate this anniver­sary? If so, I haven’t heard any­thing about it, which is surprising.

So, this was my lat­est take on the Invis­i­ble Woman! Hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to come back and see who’s next tomorrow!

Thunderbolt’s Daughter

This is day eight of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Today’s prompt is Bet­ty Ross, daugh­ter of Gen. Thun­der­bolt Ross, and long-run­ning love inter­est of Dr. Bruce Banner!

Bet­ty Ross was a nor­mal, non-pow­ered human (at least back when Jack and Stan were writ­ing her) in The Incred­i­ble Hulk. But she was one of the char­ac­ters in the ear­ly days of the strip who served to cre­ate the dynam­ics of it. Her love for Bruce Ban­ner, despite her dom­i­neer­ing father’s dis­like of the rela­tion­ship, was an aspect of those sto­ry­lines that helped to pro­pel them for quite awhile. With­out her as a bright spot, Bruce Ban­ner’s life would’ve been quite dark. It’s exact­ly the sort of plot ele­ment Stan and Jack played with very well in those days.

Try­ing to think of how best to por­tray Bet­ty, I hit on the tri­an­gle of show­ing her with Bruce Ban­ner, and the Hulk loom­ing over them.

Hope this works for you. And feel free to return tomor­row, to see who appears next!

 

 

Who Were Agents 1–12?

We’ve reached day sev­en, the first full week of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Curat­ed by Howard Simp­son, today’s prompt is Sharon Carter, also known as Agent 13!

Those famil­iar with the char­ac­ter only via the MCU may be a lit­tle con­fused. Orig­i­nal­ly in comics, she first appeared in Tales of Sus­pense #75. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, in his civil­ian ID as Steve Rogers, spots her on the street and at first thinks she might be his lost love from WWII (remem­ber that when these sto­ries orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the ’60s, it was only twen­ty years after the War).

He soon dis­cov­ers that she is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Which of course com­pli­cates their bud­ding romance, as both work with the inter­na­tion­al spy agency. Jack and Stan got some pret­ty good sto­ry mileage out of all that.

Her look here comes from a sto­ry in Cap­tain Amer­i­ca #103 (after Mar­vel’s dis­tri­b­u­tion deal final­ly allowed them to split strips off from their anthol­o­gy titles into their own sep­a­rate titles). I thought it was a strik­ing look. And I liked the idea of her infil­trat­ing an A.I.M. base.

So that’s my take on Sharon Carter! Hope you enjoyed it. Tune in again tomor­row to see who shows up next, if you like.

Peggy Carter and the Resistance

It’s Day Six of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Peg­gy Carter, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca’s WWII love.

Most peo­ple are prob­a­bly more aware of the MCU ver­sion of the char­ac­ter, played by Hay­ley Atwell. The char­ac­ter was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in the comics. We first see her in a flash­back in Tales of Sus­pense #77, where Cap­tain Amer­i­ca meets her as she works with a group of French resis­tance fight­ers going up against Ger­mans flee­ing Nor­mandy via the Falaise Gap.

This issue was drawn dur­ing a peri­od when Mar­vel kept Jack very busy. Not only was he pen­cil­ing (and like­ly dri­ving the plots of) Fan­tas­tic Four and Thor, he was also gen­er­at­ing page lay­outs for sev­er­al oth­er titles, which were giv­en to oth­er pen­cil­ers to work from. So they could devel­op a feel for “the Mar­vel style.” This par­tic­u­lar sto­ry fea­tured John Romi­ta’s pen­cils over Jack­’s lay­outs, so it’s fair to say that Romi­ta had a hand in shap­ing Peg­gy Carter’s look too. You can def­i­nite­ly see it in the comic.

For what it’s worth, rather than just fak­ing her rifle, I did a lit­tle weapons research. Based on that, I gave her an M1 Garand. It’s con­sid­ered an icon­ic U.S. Army or Marine Corps WWII-era ser­vice rifle.

Any­way, this is my take on Peg­gy Carter. Feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s next.

“Oh, Nurse?”

On Day Five of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, the prompt is Jane Foster.

I’ve drawn oth­er char­ac­ters from Jour­ney into Mystery/Thor for pre­vi­ous Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Months, but this is the first time I had a prompt to draw Jane Fos­ter. She was a key char­ac­ter from the ear­li­est days of the strip in Jour­ney into Mys­tery, work­ing as Dr. Don Blake’s nurse. Oh, and Thor fell in love with her.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this did not make Odin a hap­py pap­py. It cre­at­ed lots of sto­ry fod­der for a long while, Odin get­ting angry with Thor and pun­ish­ing him in var­i­ous ways over time because he refused to stop lov­ing Jane. It’s kind of a soap opera device, but it played well for a long time. It was just the kind of sto­ry device Stan Lee loved to work with.

Even­tu­al­ly though, I think they real­ized that they had played that ele­ment out for as long as they pos­si­bly could, and it was time to move on. That’s when Thor #136 came about. Odin final­ly gives in, brings Jane Fos­ter to Asgard and gives her god­like pow­ers, so she and Thor can be togeth­er. But things don’t work out the way Thor would’ve hoped.

In pick­ing a moment to illus­trate Jane Fos­ter, I decid­ed I want­ed to show her in the cos­tume she was giv­en for this sto­ry. Plus it’s just a real­ly good, piv­otal sto­ry, where they resolve that long-run­ning plot thread.

Though a ver­sion of Sif had pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in a “Tales of Asgard” back­up in Jour­ney into Mys­tery #102, Thor #136 was Sif’s first appear­ance in the main tales. Her visu­al had been reworked into some­thing clos­er to what most read­ers rec­og­nize as Mar­vel’s Sif.

Any­way, this was Jane Fos­ter, at a piv­otal moment in her sto­ry­line. Who’s up tomor­row? Tune in and see!

Yes, Miss Harkness!

It’s now Day Four of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. The prompt for today is Agatha Hark­ness, whom I drew once before for a pre­vi­ous Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

Those who’ve only heard of her via the MCU might be a lit­tle con­fused, but this is how she looked when she was first intro­duced in Fan­tas­tic Four #94, when the FF were look­ing to hire a gov­erness to look after young Franklin when they need­ed to go out on cases.

My pre­vi­ous ver­sion sort of hint­ed that there was more than meets the eye to Miss Hark­ness. This time, I thought it would be fun to show what hap­pens when some­one misbehaves!

That’s it for Miss Hark­ness today. You’re wel­come to return tomor­row to see who’s next.

Seeing Red

…Yeah. Pret­ty silly.

The ori­gins of this one go back a lit­tle over a year now, to this post. I’d also post­ed that Red Tor­na­do cov­er on LinkedIn, where peo­ple start­ed bring­ing up oth­er humor­ous super­heroes who’d also based their cos­tumes around red long underwear.

Over time, that grad­u­al­ly sparked an idea: why not put all those char­ac­ters togeth­er on one team? I had to make a list first, to be sure not to for­get any of them that were men­tioned to me. While that was per­co­lat­ing, I remem­bered the cov­er of Jus­tice League #1 from 1987, by Kevin Maguire and Ter­ry Austin. Seemed like a great basis for assem­bling this team of longjohn-suit­ed heroes for a cov­er shot.

For those who might not rec­og­nize all these char­ac­ters, I’ll clue you in. The front row (L to R) fea­tures For­bush Man and Her­bie, the Fat Fury. In the mid­dle row is Super Goof, the Red Tor­na­do and Cap­tain Klutz. And the big guy there in the very back is Supersnipe.

If this were a real com­ic, it would def­i­nite­ly qual­i­fy as quite odd! Includ­ing Go-Go checks also made sense to me, for some rea­son. Hope you enjoy!

Art Vs. Artist Again

It’s appar­ent­ly that time of year, when artists look back and post a sam­pling of the work they’ve done the pre­vi­ous year in this for­mat on social media. I’ve been see­ing some of these pop­ping up on LinkedIn the last few weeks or so, with the #ArtVsArtist hash­tag. Look­ing back, it’s been awhile since I did one (2020!), so I thought maybe I’d do it again, join in on the fun.

Any reg­u­lar vis­i­tors here will prob­a­bly rec­og­nize sev­er­al of these from posts I’ve made this year. I debat­ed using a more cur­rent image of myself in the cen­ter, but ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to stick with the same one I used last time. It’s a 12-year-old me, and if you saw the whole pho­to, you’d see I was attempt­ing to do a paint­ing (in oils, no less!) of the USS Enter­prise from Star Trek (the Orig­i­nal series, of course). We all have to start some­where (though the truth is I had been draw­ing for years even before this).

Any­way, thanks for stop­ping by, and a Hap­py New Year to you!

“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.

“That’s Just Impossible!”

30 days now of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and this year focused exclu­sive­ly on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is sup­posed to be the Hate-Mon­ger, but I felt like going off-menu just this once and doing the Impos­si­ble Man! How could I resist?

The Impos­si­ble Man is anoth­er ear­ly char­ac­ter, appear­ing in FF #11. We find out that he comes from the plan­et Pop­pup, where the Pop­pu­pi­ans have a born abil­i­ty to instant­ly change into what­ev­er form they want in order to pro­tect them­selves from all the dan­gers on their plan­et. When Sue asks him his name, he replies, “Name? We Pop­pu­pi­ans have no names! We know who we are!”

I.M. explains that he got bored on Pop­pup, and decid­ed it would be fun to come to Earth for a vaca­tion. And not real­ly under­stand­ing how things work on our plan­et, in amus­ing him­self, he man­ages to cre­ate all kinds of hav­oc. Some of it actu­al­ly quite dan­ger­ous! But there’s no mali­cious intent behind any of it, as he’s kind of child­like and more just mischievous.

“Impy” only shows up this one time dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. Issue #11 was kind of atyp­i­cal­ly struc­tured, in that instead of one long sto­ry, it con­tained two 11-pagers: this one, and the also-mem­o­rable “A Vis­it with the Fan­tas­tic Four.”

While typ­ing this up, a visu­al asso­ci­a­tion occurred to me. Back in the ’50s, there was a low­er bud­get sci fi movie enti­tled The Man from Plan­et X. Some­one put a lit­tle effort into design­ing the title char­ac­ter, as he man­ages to present a strik­ing visu­al even on a more lim­it­ed bud­get. I took a crack at draw­ing the char­ac­ter myself awhile back. Visu­al­ly, he’s a got a sim­i­lar­ly long head which comes to a point on top. I can’t help but won­der whether the Man from Plan­et x might not have been in the back of Kir­by’s mind (maybe sub­con­scious­ly) when design­ing the Impos­si­ble Man.

One more day left of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month this year. What will I do? You’ll have to swing by tomor­row to find out!

“You’re Dragon, Man!”

On Day 29 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is Drag­on Man!

D‑Man starts off as an inan­i­mate fig­ure cre­at­ed by State Uni­ver­si­ty Prof. Gilbert. But Dia­blo (in his sec­ond appear­ance in FF) man­ages to bring life to Drag­on Man! Pre­dictably, chaos ensues.

Drag­on Man isn’t real­ly bad; more just sim­ple-mind­ed and eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed. He’s very strong, very tough, flies, and…oh yeah; he can breathe fire! In his first appear­ance, Sue’s pres­ence seems to be a calm­ing influence.

The char­ac­ter makes five appear­ances dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run, and ends up being part of the batch of issues that intro­duce the Inhu­mans too. He also seems to be a favorite “toy” for lat­er cre­ators to play with, as he’s shown up in a bunch of oth­er titles.

I feel like Jack must have had at least a slight fas­ci­na­tion with the idea of “Drag­on Men,” as this was­n’t the first time he was involved with a con­cept like that. Way back in the Gold­en Age, he and part­ner Joe Simon did the first issue of what would soon become Faw­cett’s Cap­tain Mar­vel Adven­tures. One of those sto­ries fea­tured a race of Drag­on Men who had enslaved humans on Sat­urn. More about it here.

The penul­ti­mate post is com­ing up tomor­row! What will it be? Come by and find out!

The Devil, You Say!

As of today, we’ve reached 28 days (AKA  four full weeks) worth of draw­ings for this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. The theme has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, and today’s prompt is Diablo.

Dia­blo, the evil alchemist, first shows up in FF #30. While the FF are tak­ing a vaca­tion in Tran­syl­va­nia(!), they go explor­ing and find an old cas­tle buried in a for­est. One night, the Thing hears a voice in his mind, call­ing out to him from a crypt with­in the cas­tle. The Thing frees Dia­blo from his impris­on­ment, and in return, Dia­blo gives Ben a more human appear­ance. But then we even­tu­al­ly find out…

Oops! Nope! Not going to spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t read it. Let’s just say that with Dia­blo, not every­thing is as it seems, and the Tran­syl­va­ni­ans had rea­son to fear him and his abilities.

Strange­ly, Stan Lee appar­ent­ly would often say that Dia­blo was “the worst char­ac­ter we ever did.” Some have won­dered if maybe he was think­ing of an ear­li­er mon­ster char­ac­ter they did that used the same name. But when John Byrne lat­er got his shot to write and draw FF (sec­ond best run only to Jack and Stan’s, in my opin­ion), with a “back to basics” approach, he chose to kick every­thing off with Dia­blo as their oppo­nent in his first issue. Appar­ent­ly he saw poten­tial in the char­ac­ter that Stan didn’t.

This is off the top­ic of Dia­blo, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that today is also Jack Kir­by’s birth­day! Born August 28, 1917, if my math is cor­rect, that would make this his 108th. So with much love and respect, long live the King through the great body of work he gift­ed us!

We’re mov­ing into the last few days of the Trib­ute! Feel free to come back again tomor­row to see who comes next.

Just an Old-Time Puppet Show! Nothing Wrong Here!

On the 27th day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Pup­pet Mas­ter, Philip Masters!

The Pup­pet Mas­ter is a very ear­ly antag­o­nist, intro­duced in Jack and Stan’s FF run way back in issue #8. At the same time, we also meet his daugh­ter Ali­cia for the first time, who ends up being a very impor­tant sup­port­ing character.

Apart from look­ing kind of creepy and ven­tril­o­quist doll-like, the Pup­pet Mas­ter does­n’t real­ly cut all that impres­sive of an appear­ance. He’s not on any list you might find of “best or most inter­est­ing­ly cos­tumed Kir­by char­ac­ters.” But he does have quite the pow­er! Using a spe­cial radioac­tive clay, he can make fig­ures of just about any­one, and force them to do his bid­ding. In his first appear­ance, he man­ages to take con­trol of the Thing, send­ing him against his team­mates! So heroes under­es­ti­mate him at their risk.

That’s all I have to say about the Pup­pet Mas­ter. Hope you enjoyed my depic­tion. Who’s next? Tune in tomor­row to see!

We’re Having a Blast!

Day 26 now of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and all month, we’ve been focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Blas­taar, “the Liv­ing Bomb-Burst.”

Like Anni­hilus, Blas­taar also comes from the Neg­a­tive Zone. He’s the deposed despot of his home plan­et, sen­tenced by his peo­ple to be put into a con­tain­ment suit and strapped to an aster­oid, float­ing in the void of space when we first see him in FF #62. In an acci­dent, Reed Richards gets sucked through the por­tal in his lab into the Neg­a­tive Zone (all the FF vis­its to the Neg­a­tive Zone seemed to end up being very dan­ger­ous), and he ends up at one point cling­ing to one side of Blas­taar’s aster­oid. Dur­ing the res­cue of Reed, Blas­taar man­ages to break out of his suit and fol­low, escap­ing to Earth and team­ing up with the Sand­man.  Let’s just say: may­hem ensues.

Blas­taar can fire pow­er­ful blasts of con­cus­sive force from his hands, mak­ing him a dan­ger­ous adver­sary. He’s a very intense and anger-prone per­son­al­i­ty, which caus­es Sand­man to won­der whether he’s mak­ing a mis­take in team­ing up with such a wild card.

That’s all for Blas­taar. Tune in tomor­row to see who comes next!

The Klaw!

We’re mov­ing into our last sev­en days of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Klaw, “the Mur­der­ous Mas­ter of Sound.”

Klaw’s ori­gin is very much entan­gled with the Wakan­dans and Black Pan­ther. We learn via flash­back in FF #53 that Klaw was a sci­en­tist who, in a ruth­less pur­suit of his research into the field of sound, decid­ed he had to have access to the Vibra­ni­um owned by the Wakan­dans. When T’Chal­la’s father King T’Cha­ka denies Klaw access, Klaw uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly shoots him dead on the spot! Lat­er, Klaw thinks he’ll shoot the young T’Chal­la, but he under­es­ti­mates the boy, los­ing his right hand as a result.

In FF #53’s present day, Klaw is cre­at­ing mon­sters of “sol­id sound,” using a con­ver­tor of his own inven­tion. Los­ing once again to T’Chal­la and the Wakan­dans, Klaw’s hid­den lab most­ly destroyed, he makes one last des­per­ate gam­ble, jump­ing into his con­ver­tor him­self. We don’t see the result of this exper­i­ment until #56, when he’s revealed to have been trans­formed into a being made of sol­id sound.

There’s a neat thing they do in these issues with the sound crea­tures, where all of them are col­ored bright red to visu­al­ly call them out. And when Klaw trans­forms, he too comes out red. His visu­al for the most part is a lot sim­pler than many oth­er Kir­by designs at the time, though the face is unique.

If you wan­na see who’s next, feel free to come back by again tomorrow!

Let Me Think About This for a Moment…

24 days in to this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme all this month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is the Mad Thinker!

The Mad Thinker first shows up in FF #15. He has an amaz­ing abil­i­ty (assist­ed by com­put­ers) to pre­dict vir­tu­al­ly every angle, all the odds, and to work them in his favor when putting togeth­er his plans. In his first appear­ance, he had the FF basi­cal­ly beat­en, but for one small detail he could not have fore­seen (…and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is, if you haven’t read that story!).

The Thinker shows up six times dur­ing Jack and Stan’s reg­u­lar run of the FF, plus in three Annuals.

Over the course of his appear­ances in the book, like oth­er Kir­by char­ac­ters, he under­went some changes. He start­ed off with his hair only slight­ly longish for the day in his first appear­ance (1963), but it got longer, wilder and bushi­er by the time of his last appear­ance dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run.

In some ways, the Thinker’s look kind of plays against the stan­dard visu­al you’d expect when you think of a “mad sci­en­tist” type of char­ac­ter. Instead of some skin­ny, long-faced bald­ing type, the Thinker is more burly and hir­sute, prone to wear­ing cov­er­alls blue col­lar work­er style. How­ev­er, there was a thing you heard some­times back then about aca­d­e­mics being called “long­hairs.”

I kind of won­der what Kir­by had in mind, whether there was some thought of the Thinker tying in some­how as orig­i­nal­ly being from behind the Iron Cur­tain? His visu­al fits in pret­ty well with oth­er Mar­vel char­ac­ters of the time who they con­nect­ed more direct­ly to that as part of their back sto­ry. Like the Red Ghost.

And as a bonus, I also threw in the Thinker’s Awe­some Android. Though it’s real­ly kind of a sim­ple design, the visu­al has always grabbed me, from the moment I first came across it back when I was a kid. Some­thing about that face­less strange­ly-shaped head, and his malleability/adaptability.

That’s it for these guys. Come by and see who shows up next tomorrow!

You Psycho!

We’re at Day 23 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focus­ing this time all month long on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Psycho-Man!

Psy­cho-Man debuted in Fan­tas­tic Four Annu­al #5. With access to all kinds of advanced tech, he’s a mas­ter of manip­u­lat­ing peo­ple’s emo­tions, and what they see. In fact, even when see­ing him, a hero can’t be total­ly sure of what they’re see­ing. I don’t want to say any more, for fear of spoil­ing things for any­one who might not have read the sto­ry yet. He also appeared in issues #76 and #77 of the reg­u­lar run of the book.

The char­ac­ter’s visu­al is one of those real­ly strik­ing designs that Kir­by came up with over and over again so eas­i­ly over the course of his career. It was almost more of an impressionistic/expressionistic thing with some of these designs, as they did­n’t real­ly seem to be fixed in a rigid way when you study them close­ly (like you have to do when try­ing to draw them). The things that are con­sis­tent are that face (col­ored gold­en-yel­low) with the open eyes, and the white and green of his outfit.

Psy­cho-Man’s hel­met and bare, high fore­head might be seen as some­thing of a design motif that would lat­er also pop up in Kir­by’s Dark­seid for DC.

That’s about all I have to say about Psy­cho-Man, except that he was fun to try to draw! Tune in tomor­row to see which char­ac­ter comes up next!

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!

J’Accuse!

Today com­pletes three weeks of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son). The theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, and today’s prompt is Ronan the Accuser.

As if the FF did­n’t have enough to deal with between Namor and the Skrulls, appar­ent­ly the Kree Empire also took issue with them! Because of the FF defeat­ing and destroy­ing the Kree Sen­try in FF #64, the Supreme Intel­li­gence of the Kree declares them guilty, and sends Ronan the Accuser to enact their sen­tence in issue #65.

Ronan is a for­mi­da­ble ene­my for the FF! He comes very close to suc­cess­ful­ly enact­ing the “extreme penal­ty.” (Per­haps because of the Comics Code, they weren’t quite able to just come out and say “Death.”). He presents a very strik­ing pres­ence, being about 8′ tall and wear­ing a unique uniform.

Ronan only made one appear­ance in the Fan­tas­tic Four com­ic, but he reap­peared lat­er in Avengers, Cap­tain Mar­vel and Ms. Mar­vel (books in which the Kree Empire was a presence).

It was fun to take a crack at draw­ing Ronan. Swing by tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s next on our hit parade!

“Mole!”

Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, Day 20, and the theme all month has been the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is the Mole Man! The Mole Man was there at the very begin­ning, both of the Fan­tas­tic Four (issue #1), and the Mar­vel Comics universe.

As men­tioned yes­ter­day, those ear­ly issues of FF were kind of tran­si­tion­al. They still read and felt a lot like the mon­ster sto­ries Atlas/Marvel had been doing pre­vi­ous­ly. FF #1 gave us a char­ac­ter in Mole Man who had con­trol of a whole army of mon­sters, hid­ing in his under­ground realm. Today, we would prob­a­bly call him a “kai­ju mas­ter,” as some of these mon­sters were quite sizable.

Mole Man’s debut seemed to be root­ed not only in Mar­vel’s pre­vi­ous mon­ster comics, but also in kai­ju films like Godzil­la, and a tra­di­tion of “under­ground world” sto­ries (such as Jules Verne’s Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth, or the Bur­roughs Pel­lu­ci­dar stories).

For extra inter­est here, I added one of the mon­sters from that first sto­ry which caught my eye. It appeared to be made out of some kind of dark, liv­ing rock! It was­n’t giv­en a name in that sto­ry; no idea whether lat­er cre­ators might have giv­en it a name or not.

I also did the Mole Man for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. You can find it here.

The Empire Strikes Back

It’s now Day 19 of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme all month con­tin­ues to be the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is: the Super-Skrull!

We first meet the Skrulls very ear­ly on in the found­ing of the Mar­vel Uni­verse, in FF #2, where after fail­ing in their attempt to take over the Earth, as part of their defeat, the Skrulls agree to trans­form into cat­tle and let them­selves be hyp­no­tized into for­get­ting they were ever any­thing else(!). At this point, the FF did­n’t even have uni­forms. Much like the first issue, in a lot of ways, this sto­ry feels like it’s still a tran­si­tion­al one between the ear­li­er mon­ster books and the super­hero books they would soon become known for.

In issue #18, we learn that appar­ent­ly the Skrull Empire did not take kind­ly to the defeat of their inva­sion. And they were aware that the Fan­tas­tic Four were respon­si­ble. So they sent their most pow­er­ful war­rior, the Super-Skrull, to defeat the Fan­tas­tic Four and con­quer the Earth.

The Super-Skrull is a lot big­ger than the Skrulls we saw pre­vi­ous­ly. They were kind of puny, while he appears to be about the size of a pro wrestler. Not only that (and his nor­mal Skrull abil­i­ty to change appear­ance), but he’s equipped with all the pow­ers of the Fan­tas­tic Four (minus the Invis­i­ble Wom­an’s force fields; they had­n’t giv­en her that pow­er yet). Plus an addi­tion­al pow­er he reveals lat­er in the story.

He real­ly gives the FF a run for their mon­ey in his first appear­ance, but ulti­mate­ly they fig­ure out his weak­ness and defeat him. This time.

Hope you liked my take, and feel free to stop by tomor­row to see who’s next.

“Don’t Be So Negative All the Time!”

Here on Day 18 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is Annihilus.

We meet Anni­hilus as the ruler and tyrant of the Neg­a­tive Zone in FF Annu­al #6. Sue is about to give birth, and Reed deter­mines that she and their baby are in dan­ger. Sav­ing them requires he risk his life leap­ing into the Neg­a­tive Zone again, and of course, nei­ther John­ny nor Ben are going to let him go alone. And their quest forces them to cross paths with Annihilus…but I think I’m not going to spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t yet had the chance to read it.

Anni­hilus presents a strik­ing visu­al, as sort of a metal­lic insec­toid humanoid. He imme­di­ate­ly comes off as scary and hos­tile from the first glance. Kir­by seems to have had a bit of a fas­ci­na­tion with the idea of insec­toid humanoids, going on to explore it again both in New Gods for DC, and in his lat­er cre­ator-owned Cap­tain Vic­to­ry for Pacif­ic Comics.

I’d nev­er tried to draw Anni­hilus before, and it was kind of fun! The col­or scheme was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly what you’d expect based on the b/w draw­ing, but it def­i­nite­ly catch­es your eye.

That’s all for Anni­hilus. Who’s next? You’ll have to come back by tomor­row to see!

“Where’d You Get That Cool Helmet From?”

As you know, it’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), and the theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. We’ve moved into the rogues’ gallery, and today is the biggest of them all (lit­er­al­ly): Galactus!

Galac­tus as a char­ac­ter was like noth­ing no one had ever seen before in a super­hero com­ic when he showed up in Fan­tas­tic Four #48 (part one of what would come to be known as the clas­sic “Galac­tus Trilogy”).

He comes to Earth to con­sume our world and the ener­gy it con­tains, with no thought to any of the liv­ing beings on our plan­et. When the FF try to stop him, they quick­ly real­ize that they might as well be insects! Seem­ing­ly there is noth­ing they can do. In fact, if not for the Watch­er step­ping in to give them some assis­tance, the Earth would have met its end!

You might look at my depic­tion of Galac­tus here and feel like some­thing is a lit­tle odd com­pared to what you’re used to. That’s because (as I men­tioned in an ear­li­er post) I’ve set myself a rule to stick to how these char­ac­ters were depict­ed dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. And in this case, I felt like stick­ing with Galac­tus’ por­tray­al in his first appear­ance, “The Galac­tus Trilogy.”

They were still fig­ur­ing out the Big G’s col­or scheme dur­ing the Tril­o­gy. Each issue, it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. In fact, in the first issue (#48), he was red and dark green! It was­n’t until #50 when they got some­thing fair­ly close to what would become his stan­dard col­or scheme (though they weren’t yet using the blue-vio­let). For com­par­i­son, you can see my depic­tion of Galac­tus done for the first Kir­by Trib­ute Month here.

Hope you enjoyed this, and feel free to tune in again tomor­row to see which vil­lain comes up next!

The Hand of Doom!

Day 16 of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. We’ve moved from allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters into the rogues’ gallery. And the first prompt is none oth­er than Dr. Doom!

He’s arguably the FF’s arch­neme­sis. Vic­tor Von Doom has a per­son­al his­to­ry with Reed Richards, going back to when they met in col­lege when Doom was there as an exchange stu­dent. His mind rivals Reed’s (though in his arro­gance, Doom would be insult­ed if it was sug­gest­ed in his pres­ence that any­one even came close to being his equal!). He is a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac and per­fec­tion­ist, who can­not tol­er­ate the slight­est flaw. This is part of why he stays masked almost all the time.

The FF had a num­ber of adven­tures dur­ing Jack and Stan’s run where they went up against Doom. And over time, Kir­by gave him­self more artis­tic license to get expres­sive with Doom’s iron mask in show­ing his emo­tions. At times, the imagery could get quite chilling!

I drew Dr. Doom for last year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month too, and if you like, you can check that out here.

That’s our first vil­lain! Tune in tomor­row to see who comes next!

“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!

Wiggle, Wiggle!

It’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025, and the theme is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. You might have real­ized that we’re in the midst of a group­ing of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. And today’s prompt is the Bax­ter Build­ing’s mail­man, Willie Lumpkin.

Willie first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #11, in the short slice-of-life sto­ry “A Vis­it with the Fan­tas­tic Four.” We first meet the poor lit­tle guy try­ing to lug in a ginor­mous mail­bag of fan let­ters for the FF. Inter­act­ing with them in the lob­by, he gets to show them his own spe­cial ability…

The lov­able Mr. Lump­kin only showed up a cou­ple of times dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run, both of those fair­ly ear­ly on. But lat­er cre­ators liked the char­ac­ter, and so he would show up again from time to time.

For some rea­son in that first appear­ance, the col­orist made the strange choice to col­or his uni­form green. I don’t recall ever see­ing a U.S. mail­man with a green uni­form. So I did some Googling to see if I could find out what mail­men were wear­ing in the ear­ly ’60s, and used that instead. I also took my col­or cues from that uni­form ref­er­ence, get­ting as close as I could with­in the lim­it­ed palette.

Willie was fun to draw! Hope you liked him. Check back tomor­row to see who our last ally/supporting cast mem­ber is.

Stay up Late

On the 13th Day of Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month 2025 (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), the theme (as you know by now) is the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue.

Franklin was a late cast addi­tion dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF run. Just mak­ing sure Sue could safe­ly give birth to Franklin result­ed in the rest of the team hav­ing to risk their lives by leap­ing into the Neg­a­tive Zone in FF Annu­al #6 (more on that in a future post).

I ini­tial­ly thought about try­ing to do some­thing fanci­er with my depic­tion, show Franklin using some of the pow­ers lat­er cre­ators gave him. But with all of these Kir­by Trib­ute FF images, I’ve made a rule for myself to stay with­in the lim­its of what Jack and Stan did dur­ing their run. And dur­ing that time, Franklin was pret­ty much just a nor­mal, healthy baby.

It might throw some of you to see him with brown hair, but that was how Franklin was depict­ed for a long time, even after Kir­by left the book. I’m not sure at what point he was shift­ed over to being depict­ed as blond, but that was how Franklin was being shown by the time John Byrne did his FF run. And doing some Googling, it seems there are now images of him also hav­ing black hair. No idea what that’s about.

That’s it for Franklin. If you like, come by tomor­row to see who’s up next.

Don’t Mess with the Governess!

We’ve reached Day 12 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. This time out, it’s all about Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters from Jack Kir­by’s and Stan Lee’s 100+ issues of “The World’s Great­est Com­ic Mag­a­zine.” We’ve been doing allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters for the moment, and today’s prompt is Agatha Harkness.

She shows up very late in Jack and Stan’s run, in issue #94. Reed and Sue are look­ing for a child-rear­ing spe­cial­ist who can pro­tect new­born Franklin when they need to go off on mis­sions, and have decid­ed to hire Agatha Hark­ness. In that intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry, “The Return of the Fright­ful Four!,” Miss Hark­ness proves her­self to be more than capa­ble of han­dling that job!

I would guess that Agatha Hark­ness was prob­a­bly inspired by some of the oth­er monster/horror mate­r­i­al that was around in pop cul­ture at the time. On TV, you had shows like The Addams Fam­i­ly, The Mun­sters, and new­com­er Dark Shad­ows. Ben Grimm even ref­er­ences Barn­abas from Dark Shad­ows, Drac­u­la, and late show hor­ror movies in his dia­logue. I’d sug­gest the sto­ry is one of the bet­ter ones from the lat­ter part of the Kirby/Lee FF run. It gives Kir­by a chance to stretch some of the hor­ror mus­cles he’d lat­er go on to use in The Demon for DC.

Hope you enjoy my take. Come back tomor­row if you’re curi­ous to see who shows up next!

The “W’s” Have It

On the 11th Day of this year’s Jack Kir­by Month, focused on Fan­tas­tic Four-relat­ed char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is John­ny Stor­m’s col­lege room­mate and good friend, Wyatt Wingfoot.

We first meet Wyatt in Fan­tas­tic Four #50 (as if there was­n’t already enough going on with­in the “The Galac­tus Tril­o­gy!”). It seems as though per­haps Wyatt might have been inspired by Native Amer­i­can Olympian Jim Thor­pe (one indi­ca­tor might be that Lee actu­al­ly gave the col­lege’s Foot­ball coach the name “Thor­pe”), though at first Wyatt showed no inter­est in athletics.

Wyatt had no super­pow­ers, but his nat­ur­al ath­let­ics, quick mind and brav­ery equipped him to accom­pa­ny the FF on sev­er­al adven­tures. A good friend, he accom­pa­nied John­ny Storm in his exten­sive search for Crys­tal and the Inhu­mans, at great risk.

I believe his last appear­ance dur­ing the Kirby/Lee FF run was in issue #80, where he enlist­ed the FF’s help to find out what was going on on the reser­va­tion with report­ed appear­ances of Toma­zooma, the Liv­ing Totem. In that last appear­ance, Wyatt was dri­ving around a sort of ATV called the Gyro­cruis­er, gift­ed to him by the Black Pan­ther. I thought it would be fun to include it here, add a lit­tle extra interest.

That’s all for the allit­er­a­tive Wyatt Wing­foot. (Stan sure did like those allit­er­a­tive char­ac­ter names!) Come back tomor­row if you’d like to see who shows up next!

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!

“I Always Feel Like, Somebody’s Watching Me…”

We’re at Day Eight of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, ded­i­cat­ed to the Fan­tas­tic Four and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. In the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Watcher.

The mys­te­ri­ous Watch­er first shows up in Fan­tas­tic Four #13, “The Red Ghost and His Inde­scrib­able Super-Apes!” The FF and the Red Ghost race to be first to land on the moon, and to every­one’s sur­prise, near ancient ruins in the Blue Area of the Moon, they first encounter the Watch­er. He explains that he comes from a very advanced world where his peo­ple roam the uni­verse, wit­ness­ing events on all sorts of plan­ets. The Watch­er breaks a cen­turies-long vow of silence and steps into their conflict.

He’s some­times referred to by the name Uatu, but he did­n’t gain that name until Cap­tain Mar­vel #39 in 1975. At this point and for the rest of Jack and Stan’s FF run, he was sim­ply “the Watcher.”

The Watcher’s appear­ance changes a great deal dur­ing the course of Jack and Stan’s run. In his first appear­ance, he was col­ored a pale yel­low, with a pur­ple cape and tunic. Lat­er in the run when he appeared, his pro­por­tions had changed, and his head got small­er. I elect­ed to go with his ear­ly look (because I pre­fer the more “oth­er-word­ly” look with the big­ger head and eyes with­out pupils), but his lat­er, more rec­og­niz­able col­or palette.

Why did his appear­ance change so much? I recall read­ing a con­jec­ture about that which seemed pret­ty rea­son­able (though I don’t remem­ber exact­ly where I read it). It was point­ed out that in inter­ven­ing peri­ods, the Watch­er had showed up in oth­er comics drawn by oth­er artists, and his appear­ance had been kind of altered. The the­o­ry was that Jack was try­ing to be con­sis­tent to what had become the Watcher’s cur­rent look, and that’s why he changed so much.

The Watch­er appar­ent­ly took an inter­est in the FF and their activ­i­ties, step­ping in from time to time (most notably in “The Galac­tus Tril­o­gy” in Fan­tas­tic Four #48–50).

Enjoy, and feel free to return tomor­row to see who’s next!

I Feel You!

It’s Day Sev­en of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly this time to the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters, as of the last cou­ple days, we’re in the midst of a group of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. Today’s prompt is Ali­cia Masters.

Ali­cia was intro­duced as the daugh­ter of the vil­lain the Pup­pet Mas­ter, in Fan­tas­tic Four #8. In the course of that sto­ry, Ali­cia meets the FF, and real­izes she has feel­ings for Ben Grimm, the Thing. Ben has feel­ings for her too, and their rela­tion­ship helps to soft­en and ground him after the tragedy of his muta­tion. We learn that Ali­cia is blind, and also a very tal­ent­ed sculp­tor. She becomes a reg­u­lar sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, play­ing piv­otal roles in sev­er­al sto­ries. Most notably in the Galac­tus Tril­o­gy, Fan­tas­tic Four #48–50.

Some­thing I real­ized in look­ing back on her appear­ances in the first 100+ issues is that there was a real effort to try to keep her fash­ions and hair­styles cur­rent. I notice that with a num­ber of the female characters.

That’s it for Ali­cia! Tune in tomor­row to see who’s next.

On the Prowl

We’re now at Day Six of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. This time, cura­tor Howard Simp­son has focused on char­ac­ters from Jack and Stan’s Fan­tas­tic Four run. And today’s prompt is the Black Panther!

Though Black Pan­ther was not the first black super­hero (most agree that dis­tinc­tion should go to the Gold­en Age char­ac­ter Lion Man), he was still ground­break­ing. Thank­ful­ly, they did­n’t go with the name “Coal Tiger” that they were appar­ent­ly con­sid­er­ing at one point (based on notes on an ear­ly sketch).

Since this Trib­ute Month is FF-themed, I opt­ed to base how I drew Black Pan­ther on how he first appeared dur­ing Jack and Stan’s FF-run. Kir­by and Joe Sin­nott (in the inks) real­ly pushed the black-spot­ting on his cos­tume, plus there was the short cape held on by a strap across his chest.

Instead of the stan­dard blues typ­i­cal­ly used in comics for black cos­tumes like this, ini­tial­ly they went with a col­or for­mu­lat­ed out of all three of the usu­al print­ers’ inks (cyan, magen­ta and yel­low) that mim­ic­ked gray. An actu­al gray was not pos­si­ble inside a com­ic in those days, with the lim­it­ed palette of 64 col­ors. It was a unique look. Lat­er, they changed the Pan­ther’s col­or to a more stan­dard blue. Most like­ly because they could guar­an­tee it would print more con­sis­tent­ly than the fake gray.

I almost drew the Pan­ther in the “tech­no-jun­gle” where he con­front­ed the FF in his first appear­ance. Such a wild con­cept (and very Kir­by), I don’t think they ever used that idea again after his first appear­ance. So I fig­ured going with a more reg­u­lar type of jun­gle foliage would prob­a­bly be best.

A bit of triv­ia: some years back in my day job in ani­ma­tion, I end­ed up (so far as we know) cre­at­ing the char­ac­ter mod­el for Black Pan­ther’s very first appear­ance in ani­ma­tion! It was in X‑Men: The Ani­mat­ed Series. You can read about it here.

That’s it for this one. Come by tomor­row if you’d like to see who’s up next!

Let’s Go Surfin’ Now,…

On Day Five of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, the prompt is Nor­rin Radd, AKA the Sil­ver Surfer.

It’s been doc­u­ment­ed (in Stan Lee’s own words) that the Surfer was ini­tial­ly Jack­’s cre­ation. There was no men­tion of a char­ac­ter like him in any of their plot dis­cus­sions, but Jack felt that a char­ac­ter as big (both phys­i­cal­ly and meta­phys­i­cal­ly) as Galac­tus need­ed some kind of a her­ald. Jack­’s ini­tial idea was that the Surfer had no pre­vi­ous exis­tence, and was a cre­ation out of noth­ing by Galac­tus. That gives more weight to his learn­ing about human­i­ty and turn­ing on Galac­tus in Fan­tas­tic Four issues #48–50, which have come to be known col­lec­tive­ly as “The Galac­tus Trilogy.”

Stan Lee lat­er adopt­ed the char­ac­ter as his own, and kind of devel­oped his own ideas about what he want­ed to do with him. He enact­ed them in the solo Sil­ver Surfer title: giv­ing him a pre­vi­ous exis­tence as Nor­rin Radd, who offers him­self up to Galac­tus as her­ald in order to save his home plan­et and the life of his beloved, Shal­la Bal. Inter­est­ing ideas in their own right, but kind of under­cut­ting what Kir­by had in mind initially.

An inter­est­ing “What If” is the last issue of that run of the Sil­ver Surfer title (issue #18), where they let Jack not just draw it, but also write it. For much of the run, the Surfer had often been depict­ed as depressed, bemoan­ing his impris­on­ment on Earth and the way human­i­ty act­ed. In this last issue (done just before the King left Mar­vel to go to DC), Kir­by had the Surfer final­ly get fed up with all the vio­lence he was con­tin­u­al­ly encoun­ter­ing on Earth. In a full page close-up on the final page, he angri­ly shouts, “Let Mankind beware! From this time forth–the Surfer will be the dead­liest one of all!” The next issue ban­ner at the bot­tom pro­claims “Next: the sav­age­ly sen­sa­tion­al new Sil­ver Surfer!” It would have been inter­est­ing to see where that would have gone!

I’ve drawn the Surfer a few times myself. There’s some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about how sim­ple his design is, yet also strik­ing. He’s a fun chal­lenge to execute!

That’s it for today! Check back tomor­row for who’s up next.

Flame On!

We’re at Day Four of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed by Howard Simp­son), this time all Fan­tas­tic Four-themed. And com­plet­ing our Four is John­ny Storm, the Human Torch!

The pow­ers John­ny gained in their flight through the cos­mic rays were arguably the flashiest of the group, and actu­al­ly fit­ting his char­ac­ter (espe­cial­ly as the youngest mem­ber). He flew high and burned hot, much like his emo­tions some­times did in those ear­ly adven­tures. In those ear­ly days, some­times he would go beyond his lim­its and lose his pow­ers until he could rest and recov­er them.

Over the course of Jack and Stan’s orig­i­nal Fan­tas­tic Four run, John­ny grew and went through a lot. Some of which we’ll even­tu­al­ly get to in a lat­er post.

Well, that’s our Four! Who comes next, now that we’ve done them? Tune in tomor­row to see!