Tag: Pacific Comics

“Thunderbolt and Lightning, Very Very Frightening!”

It’s now Day 27 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. The prompt for today is Goldie Gold (from the car­toon Goldie Gold and Action Jack). But (as always seems to hap­pen at least once dur­ing these Kir­by Trib­ute Months), I’ve elect­ed to go off the reser­va­tion today. Instead, I’ve drawn the Light­ning Lady, from Jack Kir­by’s Cap­tain Vic­to­ry, pub­lished through Pacif­ic Comics. I thought she’d be a good fit along­side the oth­ers on this list of Kir­by women, and I did­n’t want to miss this opportunity!

Cap­tain Vic­to­ry was a big deal when it was announced. Jack Kir­by was doing a new com­ic, and he was­n’t doing it for Mar­vel or DC! He was doing it for a brand new pub­lish­er called Pacif­ic Comics. Not only that, but he would own all the rights to this new com­ic and all the char­ac­ters! And hav­ing Jack on-board meant that oth­er top comics cre­ators were also inter­est­ed in doing things through Pacific.

I’m hav­ing a hard time find­ing this now, but I recall read­ing some­where that Cap­tain Vic­to­ry was inspired by Jack­’s reac­tion to see­ing films like E.T. and Close Encoun­ters, which he thought were far too opti­mistic about first con­tact. Instead, he thought our first alien encoun­ters might be more like what has often hap­pened his­tor­i­cal­ly when an advanced civ­i­liza­tion meets a more prim­i­tive one. Spoil­er: it often does­n’t go well for the less-advanced civ­i­liza­tion, even when it’s unin­ten­tion­al. That was the idea Jack was work­ing with.

The first six issues of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry dealt with Capt. Vic­to­ry and the Ranger crew of the Galac­tic Dread­nought Tiger chas­ing down the Insec­ton horde. Unfor­tu­nate­ly in the course of the chase, the horde finds a new world to invade and infest: Earth. Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and crew track them there.

The leader and queen of the Insec­tons is the Light­ning Lady, com­mand­ing their inva­sion. Per her name, one of her more vis­i­bly impres­sive pow­ers is gen­er­at­ing pow­er­ful bolts of elec­tric­i­ty. She’s one of Kir­by’s more strik­ing late peri­od char­ac­ter designs, and I could­n’t pass up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include her among this list of Kir­by women!

I hope you enjoyed my take on the Light­ning Lady! Please feel free to come back again tomor­row to see who’s next, as I return to the prompt list.

Driving You to Ruin

It’s now Day Three of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Nor­ma Rich­mond from Jack­’s Sil­ver Star comic.

In the ear­ly ’80s when it was announced that Jack Kir­by was going to do new comics, and they were not going to be for Mar­vel or DC, but for a new com­pa­ny named Pacif­ic Comics, this was a big deal! Not only that, but he was going to own what­ev­er he cre­at­ed for them. Because Pacif­ic was offer­ing cre­ators own­er­ship of their cre­ations, they had a num­ber of big name cre­ators who were hap­py to step up and also take a shot at doing work for them.

Jack­’s two books for Pacif­ic were Cap­tain Vic­to­ry (whom I drew for a pre­vi­ous Kir­by Trib­ute Month), and Sil­ver Star (same). Unlike most comics in those days, Sil­ver Star was envi­sioned as hav­ing a def­i­nite end­ing. My under­stand­ing is that the sto­ry start­ed life as a screen­play, which Jack retooled to turn it into a com­ic. It may not have been the very first lim­it­ed series, but it was among the ear­li­est ones.

The sto­ry revolved around the tit­u­lar lead, whose civil­ian name is Mor­gan Miller. Sil­ver Star has strange pow­ers because of genet­ic muta­tion. Not only that, he dis­cov­ers he’s not the only mem­ber of this new breed of man, Homo-Geneti­cus.

As he trav­els around try­ing to find and pro­tect the oth­er mem­bers of Homo-Geneti­cus, he meets Nor­ma Rich­mond, who is also part of this group. Nor­ma uses her gifts to make a liv­ing in movies doing death-defy­ing stunts. The first time she and Sil­ver Star meet, she per­forms a car crash stunt that she could­n’t pos­si­bly have walked away from, but she does.

As the sto­ry pro­gress­es and they have to deal with some close calls togeth­er, Mor­gan and Nor­ma devel­op feel­ings for each other.

Any­way, here’s Nor­ma! Feel free to come by again tomor­row to see who’s next.

One More for the Road!

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!

On to Victory!

We’re get­ting close to the end! Day 30 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute. Suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son, you can find the work online on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I’m going off-menu again today. The prompt sug­gests doing a “Kir­by Col­lage,” of the type Jack was known for doing in his spare time, some­times even find­ing ways to use them in his comics. But I could­n’t think of a way to do that and have it fit in the­mat­i­cal­ly with the rest of what I’m doing. So instead, I chose to draw Cap­tain Victory.

This was the title that launched a brand new com­ic com­pa­ny in the ear­ly ’80s, Pacif­ic Comics. As men­tioned yes­ter­day, the fact that Jack Kir­by was doing a com­ic for a new start­up pub­lish­er and not for Mar­vel or DC again, was a Big Deal. It was thought that the “Big Two” were real­ly the only game in town, so it can’t be over­stat­ed that this was big news.

One of the rea­sons Kir­by was will­ing to do this was con­tained right there in the indi­cia in the front of the book: “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was­n’t some­thing he was ever like­ly to get from Mar­vel or DC, and I’m sure the var­i­ous frus­tra­tions he’d had with both pub­lish­ers at dif­fer­ent points over the years were also part of his inter­est in going inde­pen­dent again (like he and Joe Simon had tried once before with Mainline).

The sto­ry of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and his Galac­tic Rangers was inspired at least in part by Jack watch­ing E.T. and think­ing that “first con­tact” was not like­ly to be so benign. In fact, con­sid­er­ing some of the things that hap­pened when explor­ers came from Europe to the “New World,” Jack thought more like­ly it could go hor­ri­bly wrong..for us! And that was the seed of the story.

Front and cen­ter you’ve got Cap­tain Vic­to­ry. Behind him to the left is Major Klavus, and to the right is Tarin.

Hope you like it. One more to go!

Silver Star

This is Day 29 of our month-long Jack Kir­by Trib­ute online. The brain­child of Howard Simp­son, you’ll be able to find the work of par­tic­i­pants on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I actu­al­ly post­ed today’s prompt (a Jack Kir­by por­trait) yes­ter­day, in hon­or of Jack­’s birth­day. So today is catch­ing up with yes­ter­day’s prompt: Sil­ver Star.

There are sev­er­al unique things about this char­ac­ter. One is (if I’m not mis­tak­en) the sto­ry start­ed off as a screen­play, and Jack turned it into this lim­it­ed series (The cov­ers have a bul­let read­ing “A Visu­al Nov­el.”). I believe Jack orig­i­nal­ly thought in terms of his Fourth World series at DC as an epic sto­ry that would come to a def­i­nite con­clu­sion, but he was­n’t allowed to do that then. Lim­it­ed series, or minis­eries, just weren’t some­thing comics pub­lish­ers did yet in those days. If a book was a suc­cess, they want­ed it to just keep going and going as long as possible.

The oth­er thing about Sil­ver Star was the fact it was not pub­lished by Mar­vel or DC! Pacif­ic Comics was a start­up pub­lish­er look­ing to estab­lish them­selves as a sol­id alter­na­tive in the mar­ket­place. Though Jack had done work for oth­er pub­lish­ers over the years, at this point in time the “Big Two” were thought to be the only real game in town. So the news that no less a per­son­age than Jack Kir­by him­self was going to cre­ate new comics for a new pub­lish­er was a Big Deal. It can’t be over­stat­ed how big that news was at the time. Pacif­ic kicked things off with Cap­tain Vic­to­ry (stay tuned), but Sil­ver Star was Jack­’s next offer­ing through them.

And this part is impor­tant: the indi­cias for both books read “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was some­thing he was­n’t going to get at either Mar­vel or DC, so I’m sure it mat­tered a great deal to him. Jack­’s inspi­ra­tion for the name appears to have come from the Sil­ver Star Medal award­ed by the US mil­i­tary for val­or in com­bat. In fact, in the sto­ry, Jack has Mor­gan Miller gain­ing the nick­name from his squad after he’s been award­ed the Sil­ver Star.

In the back­ground of this image is the antag­o­nist of the sto­ry, Dar­ius Drumm. I’ve nev­er tried to draw these char­ac­ters before, so that was a bit of a chal­lenge. I’m still not quite sure just how Sil­ver Star’s hel­met works…

Hope you enjoy, and please tune in again tomorrow!