Recently in Fantastic Four Category

Yesterday was Jack Kirby's birthday, which we celebrated here and on Giant-Size Geek.  I've still got a Kirby hangover, but luckily, this is not the kind of hangover that hurts.  There is a Silver Surfer cover by Kirby which is my favorite cover of all time featuring Norrin Radd: Fantastic Four #72 from 1967.

I think it's the greatest pose for the Surfer, gliding along the spaceways and blasting out bolts of cosmic energy.  The Fantastic Four aren't around to distract the viewer, even though it's their name on the masthead!  The Kirby Krackle cosmos in the background is just nifty and the red color just makes the Silver Surfer pop out in the foreground.  The Watcher is there in the background, so you just know that the Surfer is doing something vitally important for the universe.

This cover should have been a poster.  Asgard Press, are you listening?  :-)

The mind-blowing images of the Surfer didn't stop with just the cover--oh no, this interior pages had plenty of them.  Including this aerial view of the Silver Surfer flying above New York City.  It's a dynamic introduction to the Surfer's role in this story.  Notice how Kirby put a lake in the middle of the background, to allow the Surfer's body to be less obscured.

Philippe Queveau owns the original art to this piece.  I really like to Marvel (sorry for the pun) at the details of the cityscape below.  George Perez must have gotten inspired to do detailed backgrounds by pages like this one.  Joe Sinnott was the perfect inker for Kirby and this book, magic that was captured in the 1960s, never to be reproduced again.  Nuff Said!

Link: Fantastic Four Omnibus Volume 2 HC (reprints FF #31-60 in a giant-sized hardcover)

Link:  Philippe Queveau gallery at ComicArtFans.

Today is Jack Kirby's birthday.  Even though he's not around, I still like to celebrate with a big old stogie and some Kirby comics.  Well, maybe not a real cigar, but here is one classic Marvel image you will like.

This is one of the Marvelmania posters that Jack Kirby did in the late 60s, featuring Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Spider-Man, Doctor Doom and Silver Surfer.  The Jack Kirby Collector Magazine #47 had this on the cover, which is where the scan came from.

Here is the original un-colored drawing, from Tod Seisser's gallery at ComicArtFans.

For another tribute to the King, check my Amazing Heroes 100 article on Giant-Size Geek that features a few cartoons from Kevin O'Neill, William Messner-Loebs, and Scott Shaw.  Nuff Said!

Link: Tod Seisser's Gallery at ComicArtFans.

Link: TwoMorrows Publishing.

This week's Thing comes a real Dude, Steve Rude!

The Thing is his ever-lovin' self, with a nice editorial comment added, to boot!  Check out Steve's website where he does all kinds of cool commissions like this one.  Nuff Said!

Link:  Steve Rude's Gallery at ComicArtFans.

Link:  Steve Rude Original Art.

For those of us that loved watch the Thing fight the Hulk, Fantastic Four 112 from 1971, titled "Battle of the Behemoths" was a doozy.  After a quick search on ComicArtFans, I see that my love for this particular issue is shared among many geeks.

The original cover to Fantastic Four #112 by John Buscema was simple and effective, showing the two Marvel monsters about to trade blows.  It looks to me like this cover was both pencilled and inked by Buscema, or at least, it was not inked by Sinnott.  Marvel Wikia also states this as well.

Michael Finn is a great Marvel fan with gallery on ComicArtFans (see links to all sources at the bottom), with tons of commissions.  Michael has a series of them titled "One Minute Later" where he gets an artist to interpret what happened one minute after the original cover.  In this one, Mike McKone gave his vision and the cover is numbered 112.5.  One of the things you can see here about modern Marvel vs classic Marvel: the Hulk is always drawn much bigger than Ben Grimm in the present day, whereas in the past the Hulk was almost the same size as the Thing.

Buscema re-created this cover several times for collectors.  The version above was commissioned by Bill Thomson and it's very faithful to the original.  One thing I have always wondered about these cover re-creations: how do the artists reproduce the title logos and Marvel sidebar?

Gary Sella also commissioned Buscema for this cover, but with a twist: adding Mr. Fantastic into the middle of the fight!

Ending this with a giant-sized piece of art, here is a look at the original art to the splash page of Fantastic Four #112.  I am especially enthralled with the creator credits on the lower right, framed by bullets exploding into the tree the Thing is holding up.  Nuff Said!

Link:  Gary Sella's Gallery on ComicArtFans

Link:  Michael Finn's Gallery on ComicArtFans

Link:  Bill Thomson's Gallery on ComicArtFans

When Jack Kirby returned to Marvel, of course they had him draw some Fantastic Four covers.  Here are two favorites...

Fantastic Four #176 featured one of the best stories executed by Roy Thomas and George Perez.  The Impossible Man ran amok in New York City, tearing up the Marvel Bullpen and demanding to have his own comic.  All the bullpeners of the day make an appearance, including Stan and Jack.  The cover captures this crazy frenetic action of the Impossible Man perfectly.

Marvel Treasury Edition #11 featured a compendium of reprints, with this cover of Doc Doom looming over the FF.  This reminds me of the John Byrne story, Terror in a Tiny Town, but I don't think there's any relationship between the two. 

Fabulous Fantastic Four?  Too many adjectives in that logo.  Nuff Said!

Comic fans usually revere writers and artists and inkers (despite Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy).  The most overlooked creators are often the letterers, especially the ones from the golden/silver/bronze ages.  My favorite letterer whose style I could easily identify as a kid was Artie Simek.

Letters were painstakingly hand-drawn in those days.  I am sure if you asked a non-fan, they thought a machine put the letters in the comics.  Artie Simek spent his entire professional life perfecting this craft at Marvel and DC Comics.

Artie Simek became exclusive to Marvel during their 1960s rebirth.  Many of the early Fantastic Four comics were lettered by Artie.  Why do I like his lettering style so much?  Number one, the letters are big, clear, and extremely easy to read.  There’s a style to his letters that gets specially accented in the captions and credits.  I love the way he drew those bold characters.

On this Defenders splash page, you can see that Artie designed Giant-Sized logos for the title of the story, slanted against the tornado.  There’s a TS Eliot quote that Steve Englehart threw in there, giving Artie an opportunity to do some fancy calligraphy.

Nutty little details, like the “Y” peeking out of the top rim of the panel, just tickle me.  Simek probably lettered all of Marvel’s major titles during the 1960s and 1970s: Fantastic Four, Avengers, Defenders, X-Men, etc.  Don’t get me wrong, I also liked Sam Rosen, John Costanza, Tom Orzechowski, Gaspar Saladino and Todd Klein.

I always looked forward to seeing the name “Artie Simek” in the credits.  Giving letterers a credit was unheard of before Stan Lee started doing it in Marvel Comics.  Way to go Stan—and way to go, Artie!  Nuff Said!

Link:  Artie Simek Wikipedia page.

Here's a charming pinup of the Thing and his nephew Franklin Richards that Mike Deodato drew, somewhere around 2007.  Doesn't it just make you go awwwhhhhh?  Nuff said.

Before trade paperbacks and hardcover collections, we had reprints, but no way of seeing classic tales reprinted on quality paper...until the Marvel Special Editions started in the 1980s.  They had some great wraparound covers and I'll be presenting a few of them here.

Fantastic Four Special Edition from 1984 reprinted the classic Lee-Kirby story from the very first FF Annual.  John Byrne depicted this event in a widescreen drawing that made it seem like the invasion of Normandy!  You have to admire the detail on that Atlantean fleet.  Sheesh, it's enough to make an NYC resident flee to the suburbs!  In addition to the reprint material, Byrne drew some interior pages filling in on Namor's history, as well as some pinups.

This pinup of the Sub-Mariner presents Namor in an apparently more mature phase of his life.  Byrne would later create a Namor series in 1990, which he wrote/drew for 25 issues and stayed on as writer until issue #32.

Byrne obviously had fun drawing this pinup of Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl...before she became a woman!  Sue's hairdo and costume puts her in the early 1960s Kirby era.  Groovy!  Nuff said.