Tag Archives: Marvel Comics

One More for the Road!

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Recent vis­i­tors to my site in August will know that I was doing the online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute every day, the brain­child of Howard Simp­son. it was a blast par­tic­i­pat­ing, refresh­ing my appre­ci­a­tion all over again for all the great work Kir­by did over the years.

I stuck to a very spe­cif­ic for­mat with all of these: por­traits in a small square, col­ored with the lim­it­ed palette used in the old comics most of these char­ac­ters orig­i­nal­ly appeared in, even down to the dot pat­terns. And I had in mind that the end goal was to be able to assem­ble them all into one com­pos­ite image. I was­n’t sure how that would work out, but here’s how it did!

This was kind of just a per­son­al challenge/exercise in tak­ing the Trib­ute a step fur­ther. Not sure what hap­pens with it beyond this point.

Hope you enjoyed the ride!

The King

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It’s the 28th Day of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. You can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is sup­posed to be Jack­’s Sil­ver Star char­ac­ter, but I’m tak­ing the lib­er­ty of shift­ing things around a lit­tle bit. Instead, I’m doing tomor­row’s prompt: “Jack Kir­by por­trait— Draw a por­trait of Jack Kir­by him­self.” My rea­son­ing is because today is actu­al­ly Jack Kir­by’s birth­day! Born in 1917, this would be his 106th birth­day today (if my math is right). So I feel like post­ing the por­trait today is appro­pri­ate. A con­fes­sion: I’m not real­ly a por­trait kind of artist. It took some work to get this to where I felt com­fort­able with it, but I did get there.

The King’s lega­cy lives on in all the great work he left us, and all the cre­ative inspi­ra­tion he’s pro­vid­ed. There are some artists who make you feel like giv­ing up, break­ing your pen­cils and walk­ing away, because you’ll nev­er be as good as they are. But then there are artists like Kir­by who, although you know you can’t do what he did, there’s some­thing in the work that fires you up and inspires you to go and create!

I hope you like my attempt at por­trai­ture here, and tune in again tomor­row to see my shot at Sil­ver Star.

The Fourth Host

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This is Day 27 of the month-long online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, suggest/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. If you’d like to see what oth­er cre­ators might be doing, you can use the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for today sim­ply reads “The Celes­tials.” These char­ac­ters come from Jack Kir­by’s The Eter­nals book, one of the new titles he cre­at­ed when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. As men­tioned in oth­er posts, it appears to me that at this point in his career, Jack just want­ed to have his own cor­ner where he could be left alone to do his own thing, and to let oth­ers do their own thing, no one get­ting in any­one’s way.

The Eter­nals seemed to be Jack tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the Erich Von Däniken book, Char­i­ots of the Gods?, which the­o­rized vis­its by alien astro­nauts to our world in ancient times, shap­ing and influ­enc­ing the growth of our cul­ture. It was fuel for Kir­by to tell an epic sto­ry about three groups of human­i­ty: the Eter­nals (whom many myths are built around), nor­mal mankind, and the Deviants. Watch­ing and stand­ing in judg­ment over all are the Celes­tials, and the begin­ning of the book saw their return to Earth as the Fourth Host.

Kir­by’s designs for the Celes­tials were some of the most imag­i­na­tive char­ac­ter visu­als he’d ever come up with. Beings almost beyond com­pre­hen­sion, they did­n’t even have what you would be able to call faces.

It was­n’t pos­si­ble to draw all the Celes­tials here in this space. There are just way too many of them. So I opt­ed to draw the three I found the most visu­al­ly inter­est­ing. Arishem the Judge is front and cen­ter. On the left is Nez­zar the Cal­cu­la­tor, and on the right is Eson the Searcher.

Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

The Black Panther, and His Unexpected Adventures

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Amaz­ing­ly, I’ve made it here to Day 25 of the month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute, sponsored/suggested by Howard Simp­son. I was­n’t sure I was going to get through all of these, but here we are! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for today reads: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Black Pan­ther series.” I chose to draw Black Pan­ther him­self, along with Princess Zan­da and Abn­er Lit­tle, two oth­er key char­ac­ters from that run.

When Kir­by left DC to make his return to Mar­vel in the ’70s, and fans heard he was going to do a Black Pan­ther title, many expect­ed he would just pick up the same con­ti­nu­ities and types of sto­ries that pre­vi­ous cre­ators had been doing with the char­ac­ter. But that was­n’t what they got, and some were appar­ent­ly dis­ap­point­ed. At this point in Kir­by’s career, he seemed to want to be allowed to just have a lit­tle cor­ner of his own where he could do his own thing with­out imping­ing on what oth­er cre­ators might be doing, or hav­ing oth­ers impinge on his creativity.

You have to take Jack­’s Black Pan­ther run on its own terms. His view of the char­ac­ter and the sto­ries he want­ed to tell with him seemed to have roots in the types of exot­ic adven­ture sto­ries H. Rid­er Hag­gard used to write, like King Solomon’s Mines, or She. If this com­ic had come out four or five years lat­er, read­ers might have asso­ci­at­ed it with the sorts of arcane arche­ol­o­gy Indi­ana Jones delved into in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Hope you enjoy, and feel free to tune in again tomorrow!

That Old Devil…Dinosaur

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And we’ve reached Day 24 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, in hon­or of Jack­’s birth­day this month! It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can find their posts on your favorite social media plat­forms via the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt: “Draw a char­ac­ter or scene from Jack Kir­by’s Dev­il Dinosaur series.” I’ve drawn Dev­il him­self, and his part­ner Moon Boy here.

When Kir­by returned to Mar­vel in the ’70s, many were expect­ing Jack to be work­ing with oth­er writ­ers (like he had with Stan Lee pre­vi­ous­ly). But this time around, Jack pre­ferred to just have his own lit­tle cor­ner where he did his own thing. Dev­il Dinosaur was one of the new titles he came up with.

The book seemed like per­haps it was aimed at a younger audi­ence (It would’ve made a sol­id Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon). Artis­ti­cal­ly, like all Kir­by books, it had its moments (there’s an espe­cial­ly imag­i­na­tive two-page spread that can stand with the best two-page spreads Kir­by ever did). There was also a bit of fun in the fact they’d play around with dif­fer­ent inkers on many of the cov­ers (like they also did on his Machine Man covers).

Nev­er tried to draw Dev­il Dinosaur before! Bill Stout or Ricar­do Del­ga­do I’m not, but I had fun try­ing it. Hope you enjoy! And tune in again tomor­row to see what’s next.

I Am…

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It’s now Day 11 of Howard Simp­son’s online Kir­by Cel­e­bra­tion this month, in hon­or of Kir­by’s birth­day. It’s open to all cre­atives, and you can track what they post on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Groot. Now, some of you are prob­a­bly say­ing, “Hey, wait; that does­n’t look like Groot!” That’s because it’s the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the char­ac­ter as he first appeared in Tales to Aston­ish #13.

At that point in time, pre-Fan­tas­tic Four, Kir­by was bat­ting out many, many mon­sters sto­ries, one after the oth­er, for Mar­vel. Issue after issue, month after month, they had to always come up with new ones. Kir­by was up to the chal­lenge, always find­ing inter­est­ing visu­als for all these monsters.

Groot was just anoth­er among this vast horde, along with mon­sters like Romm­bu, ZZu­tak, Googam Son of Goom, and Fin Fang Foom. Fun, but just a one-off mon­ster, like they pret­ty much all were. Groot was large­ly for­got­ten after the super­heroes took over the spot­light, until the cre­ators behind the reimag­ined Guardians of the Galaxy com­ic in 2008 decid­ed to res­ur­rect him as part of that team, and reimag­ine him. Thanks to the Guardians movies, it’s safe to say he’s a lot bet­ter known now than he ever was before. How­ev­er, it’s still fun to remem­ber how Groot start­ed off.

Enjoy, and feel free to come back tomorrow!

Larger Than Life

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It’s now Day 10 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by! Open to all cre­atives, you should be able to find the work being gen­er­at­ed on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is Galac­tus. He first appeared in the pages of Fan­tas­tic Four, in prob­a­bly one of the best-loved and remem­bered sto­ries of that book, known by most fans as the Galac­tus trilogy.

The Fan­tas­tic Four car­ried the tag “The World’s Great­est Com­ic Mag­a­zine” on its cov­ers. While it was most­ly Stan Lee play­ful­ly doing pro­mo­tion­al hype, more often than not dur­ing the book’s ini­tial run  by Kir­by and Lee, it was truth in adver­tis­ing. Galac­tus as a char­ac­ter was some­thing very dif­fer­ent. I don’t think any­thing like him had ever been seen before in a super­hero com­ic. Not just a street thug or a reg­u­lar human guy in a super suit, he was more a force of nature, vir­tu­al­ly god­like. He pre­sent­ed a real chal­lenge to the sto­ry­tellers. How can you defeat an antag­o­nist like that?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, I real­ized this is the first time I’ve ever attempt­ed to draw Galac­tus! I’m not gonna lie; it was a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ing to tack­le him. His visu­al, while there are cer­tain con­sis­ten­cies, also fluc­tu­ates a great deal from com­ic to com­ic. Even his col­or­ing seems to change over his appearances!

Any­way, I felt like he came out okay, to my relief. Hope you enjoy it, and hope­ful­ly you might stop in here again tomorrow!

Surfin’ Is the Only Life, the Only Life for me, Now Surf…Surf…

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Here’s Day 9 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long online Kir­by Cel­e­bra­tion, dur­ing Kir­by’s birth month of August. Open to all cre­atives, you should be able to find oth­er peo­ple’s work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is the Sil­ver Surfer, who first appeared in Fan­tas­tic Four dur­ing what may be that book’s best-loved and remem­bered sto­ry­line, the Galac­tus tril­o­gy. He was­n’t any­thing that was in any plot that Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by had dis­cussed, and Stan else­where has acknowl­edged that he was sur­prised when he ini­tial­ly saw the pen­ciled pages to dis­cov­er him. Jack explained that he felt a char­ac­ter as con­cep­tu­al­ly big and god­like as Galac­tus ought to have some kind of her­ald to accom­pa­ny and pre­cede him, hence the Surfer.

Stan was so tak­en with the Surfer, he made him his own, and even­tu­al­ly spun him off into his own title. Not work­ing with Kir­by, but John Busce­ma. It’s a high­ly regard­ed book (and char­ac­ter), but Stan’s con­cep­tion was dif­fer­ent from what Jack orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. Where Stan had the Surfer pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ing as Nor­rin Rad, who sac­ri­ficed him­self and his iden­ti­ty to save his plan­et, Jack thought of the Surfer as a being who was basi­cal­ly cre­at­ed out of noth­ing, and was learn­ing as he trav­eled. That’s def­i­nite­ly how things read in his ini­tial appear­ance as part of the Galac­tus trilogy.

Any­way, I hope you enjoy my shot at the Surfer. Tune in again tomorrow…

Allied against the Axis

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We’re at Day 3 of Howard Simp­son’s month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Kir­by on social media! Open to all cre­atives, you can find the work on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

Today’s prompt is the Young Allies. I must admit that once you get out­side of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, I am less famil­iar with the Time­ly char­ac­ters than I am with DC’s Gold­en Age offer­ings. Cre­at­ed ini­tial­ly by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by, the Allies were a kid gang group that appar­ent­ly first appeared in the pages of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca under the name “the Sen­tinels of Lib­er­ty.” They proved pop­u­lar enough to be spun off into their own title. Simon and Kir­by did­n’t stick around for that long.

The Allies were anoth­er kid group who fought the Axis. Led by Cap­tain Amer­i­ca’s side­kick Bucky and the Human Torch’s side­kick Toro, the rest of the group (from upper left) includ­ed Hen­ry “Tub­by” Tin­kle, (-cringe-) “White­wash” Jones, Jef­fer­son “Jeff” Sandervilt, and Per­ci­val Aloy­sius “Knuck­les” O’Toole.

The Young Allies sto­ries haven’t been reprint­ed very much, and for good rea­son. If you both­er to dig up art­work online (like I had to in order to do this draw­ing), you’ll see why. Poor White­wash is treat­ed in this hor­ri­bly racist way in the strip. Not that the oth­er char­ac­ters appeared to be much more than a col­lec­tion of stereo­types either (the fat kid who’s eat­ing all the time, the tough kid who’s always look­ing for a fight, etc.).

Any­way, I hope you enjoy what I did with them. See you again tomorrow!

I Have a Vision!

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Long­time vis­i­tors to my site will know that I’m a big Jack Kir­by fan! August hap­pens to be the month Jack Kir­by was born, on the 28th. Real­iz­ing this, Howard Simp­son came up with a great idea: a month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Kir­by and his work online, via social media. I believe it’s open to any cre­atives, and the idea is “the more, the mer­ri­er.” If you want to search them all out and see who’s doing what on your favorite plat­forms, they should be hash­tagged #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es. I haven’t usu­al­ly done a lot of social media chal­lenges, but I could­n’t pass this up. Strap in; it’s going to be a busy month!

The first prompt is the Gold­en Age ver­sion of the Vision. If most peo­ple are aware of the Vision at all, it’s prob­a­bly Mar­vel’s Sil­ver Age ver­sion of the char­ac­ter. The Gold­en Age ver­sion was pub­lished by Time­ly (the name Mar­vel was known by dur­ing most of the Gold­en Age), and despite some visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Sil­ver Age ver­sion, he was a dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter. Instead of being an android, this Vision was a super­nat­ur­al being who could trav­el into and out of our world via smoke.

I’ve set cer­tain para­me­ters of my own for my con­tri­bu­tions this month. They’re all going to be for­mat­ted like this, basi­cal­ly por­traits in small squares. I’ve also elect­ed to stick to the lim­it­ed old school col­or palette that com­ic books used on their inte­ri­or pages for many years. There’s a method to my mad­ness that will hope­ful­ly pay off at the end of the month, if I can pull off what I’d like to accomplish.

Hope you enjoy! Stay tuned!