Tag: Thor

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.

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.

“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!

…And an Encore!

Well, we just com­plet­ed anoth­er Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month (curat­ed and cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son). I guess you could call this the bonus round. Like last year, I decid­ed to try to assem­ble all of these into one, big image. With the excep­tion of yes­ter­day’s “wild card” round, which was not a Jack Kir­by cre­ation, so it does­n’t belong here. Plus 30 images just group togeth­er a lot eas­i­er than 31!

See­ing all of these togeth­er, I’m struck by how busy the end result is! There’s a lot going on. I guess that’s a result of my try­ing to give each pan­el a sense of nar­ra­tive, as if they were each ran­dom­ly plucked from the midst of larg­er stories.

A lot­ta work there! See­ing them all togeth­er makes me real­ize that. But it’s cool see­ing them all in this context.

Will I do this again next year? We’ll see. I may tweak my process a lit­tle bit. I did this year, by adding the nar­ra­tive aspect.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip with me, found it fun and inspirational.

Some Enchantress Evening

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

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

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

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

“Cross the Rainbow Bridge of Asgaaaard,…”

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

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

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

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

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

Three Is a Magic Number

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

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

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

Kirby 100, Part 3

Wel­come back to anoth­er install­ment, cel­e­brat­ing Jack Kir­by’s 100th birth­day this month!

This time out is Thor. Again, the pen­cil draw­ing came my way years back in the form of a pho­to­copy, and I believe the orig­i­nal source was a sketch­book Jack did for his wife Roz, which ulti­mate­ly saw print as a book enti­tled Jack Kir­by’s Heroes and Vil­lains. It was yet anoth­er Kir­by draw­ing that caught my eye, and looked like it would be fun to try ink­ing. Fresh­ly col­ored for show­ing here.

When I first got to a point where I had suf­fi­cient funds to begin attempt­ing to col­lect more back issues of Kir­by’s Mar­vel work, I tend­ed to not seek out Jour­ney into Mys­tery (where Thor first appeared) or Thor issues. I just did­n’t like the inks as much as I did the inks over Kir­by on his oth­er strips. How­ev­er, as I read more about Kir­by’s work (and espe­cial­ly his Thor work), I real­ized that I was miss­ing out.

Kir­by’s Thor work is sig­nif­i­cant, because in it you see not only a bril­liant comics artist and sto­ry­teller doing a great job. You also see some­thing of Kir­by the man, and his inter­ests. Just as in Fan­tas­tic Four you can see Kir­by’s fas­ci­na­tion with the unknown, what’s out there, in Thor you see Kir­by’s fas­ci­na­tion with myth and leg­end (a touch­stone through­out his career). I feel that while all of Kir­by’s Mar­vel work is great, both Fan­tas­tic Four and Thor are the two main tent posts of his work dur­ing that peri­od which can’t be disregarded.

I tried in col­or­ing this to evoke the kind of col­or palette you see in those old Thor comics. It was fun!

Hap­py Kir­by 100! One more to go, if I can man­age it.

The Mighty…Motor Scooter??

Thor on Pink ScooterNot long ago, I received an email from my friend and men­tor, Lar­ry Hous­ton. He’d stum­bled across the exis­tence of this toy motor scoot­er from the ’60s that had a fig­ure of Thor rid­ing it. Marx Toys had appar­ent­ly licensed the rights from Mar­vel Comics to man­u­fac­ture and sell these.

Oh, and I should­n’t for­get to men­tion that they made the motor scoot­er pink. Why Thor would even need to be tool­ing around on a motor scoot­er in the first place is one ques­tion. But why some­one at the toy com­pa­ny made the con­scious deci­sion that Thor’s scoot­er ought to be pink is one of those big ques­tions in life that I just don’t think we’ll ever have an answer to.

I had been aware of the exis­tence of this toy pre­vi­ous­ly, but had kind of for­got­ten about it until Lar­ry’s email remind­ed me. In response, I was able to show him evi­dence that not only had they done this with Thor, they’d sold toys of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Spi­der-Man on motor scoot­ers too. Spi­der-Man’s was also pink, but for some rea­son they allowed Cap to have a yel­low scoot­er. You can see all three toys here, if you’re curious.

Any­way, the men­tal image of Mar­vel’s god of thun­der on a pink motor scoot­er stuck with me. Some­times these things just have to come out, so there you go! Per­haps this could even start an inter­net meme, of peo­ple draw­ing Mar­vel super­heroes on pink motor scoot­ers! I mean, why not?