Tag: Negative Zone

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!

“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!