Author Archives: Jason Garrattley

Nicky Tesla

Cover from the forthcoming Nicky Tesla: the last human on Earth? courtesy of Dutch artist Rik van Niedek. Rik writes:

Nicky Tesla is a new comic based partly on Kamandi, Samson, Turok, Andrax and European comics as Jeremiah and Simon of the River. Written by Ramon Schenk and artwork by myself and due to be published in 2013 by Windmill Comics.

Windmill Comics was started a few years ago by myself and 3 friends to try and rejuvenate the now almost dead Dutch comic market. At the moment Windmill consists of 12 artists and writers, with more artists joining each year. We hope to be a starting point for aspiring artists who want to go professional. All of our comics are creator owned and all artists are non-professional. Also we translate and reprint comic stories from the Public Domain. This year we are publishing 12 different comics in the Netherlands to be sold at comic conventions and the Internet.”

The Pit and the Pendulum

A typical day at the office Mister Miracle and co., courtesy of Pete Von Sholly.

Asgard Meets the Fourth World 2

Many thanks to Travis Ellisor for sharing the latest commissioned artwork from his ComicArtsFans gallery, Asgard Meets the Fourth World. Hogun vs. Mantis by Phil Hester  Hela vs. Mister Miracle by Cory Smith

Surtur vs. Orion by Andrew Ross MacLean

Contribute to Jack’s 95th Birthday Portrait Gallery

Tuesday 28th August marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kirby. To celebrate the occasion, Kirby-Vision would like to invite all of our readers to contribute to our annual Birthday Portrait Gallery.

As you can see from our previous galleries – 20112010 and 2009 – everyone who has contributed has excelled themselves with their tributes. There’s a lot of love out there for Jack and we’re looking forward to seeing what you all come up with this year.

You can send your portraits to the usual address, deadline is Sunday 26th August and please mark your emails ‘Kirby Portrait’.

Thank you.

Purple Man

Regular Kirby-Vision contributor Marc Basile is a professor of digital illustration and graphic design at Sussex County Community College and this piece comes from one his students, Tom Carroll. Marc writes: “Tom is a neighbor of mine, whom I’ve known since he was a young, unruly wiseguy. He is a very talented artist though and he is soon going to embark on his college career.” 

Blazin’ Glory

Blazin’ Glory, by Dave Elliott (script & inks) and Paris Cullins‘ (layouts), first appeared in the British anthology title A1 in 1990 and also forms part of the title’s imminent digital relaunch (which can be previewed here). Many thanks to Dave for the wonderful artwork and also this delightful reminiscence:
“I was lucky enough to meet Jack Kirby several times and on one visit to his house I gave him a copy of the comic (A1 book 1) that the story first appeared in.  I think it was 1991.  Jack looked at it and started telling me what was going through his head when he drew it.  Roz laughed and touched his arm, telling him he didn’t do it.  He smiled and asked me to sign it for him.”

A Call for Submissions

The content of Kirby-Vision roughly breaks down to around 40% submitted artwork and 60% artwork sourced, by myself, from creator blogs and artist community websites such as DeviantArt and Flickr. When the latter is the case I have made it a policy to contact artists and request permission to feature their work at the blog. It has been a joy corresponding with all of the talented people featured here over the past 3 years, but unfortunately various commitments have removed the free time needed to curate the blog in this fashion. Therefore, from now on Kirby-Vision will only feature submitted artwork.

As a result of this decision you may find that new posts appear on a less regular basis and so I urge you all to add the blog to your RSS feeds so that you can catch any new posts when they appear.

If you are reading this and would like to submit a Kirby inspired piece to the blog, you can send your scans, photos etc., to this address. The intention 0f Kirby-Vision has always been to promote artists alongside their work so I would like to encourage you, if you would like to contribute, to add a few words about yourself along with any relevant links to blogs, websites etc. with your email. I will endeavor to get back to you as soon as I can as to when your artwork will be featured.

Thank you all for your patience,

Jason Garrattley

Johnny & Jean

The Human Torch and Marvel-Girl courtesy of J.A. Fludd. You can find more from J.A. at his blog and DeviantArt page.

Temple of Doom

A huge thank you to Marc Basile for contacting Kirby-Vision with another in his Jack Kirby Fantasy series. The following story is purely fictional.
“Jack Kirby left Marvel Comics behind in the late 70’s and eventually went to work for Ruby Spears. He did however return periodically to comics. In 1983-84, Marvel contacted him with the proposition of illustrating a Treasury Edition style comic, much like his 2001: A Space Odyssey, of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Intrigued with the idea of working with Lucas and Spielberg, Jack took on the project and went about it the his usual “Kirby flair”, which did not sit well with George Lucas and so the project was scrapped. This inevitably led to his cryptic comment towards Star Wars “… some opus with a fifteen dollar conculsion!!!”