A Kirby Christmas

christmascard-2009-lores

Michael Cho

FantasticClaus

Evan “Doc” Shaner

Many thanks to Michael and Evan for these fantastic Kirby inspired Christmas cards. Be sure to take a look at both of their blogs for more great work. You can see the original cover to Fantastic Four #46 by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott, here.

A very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all you Kirby fans out there, Happy Holidays!

(Late on Christmas Eve, Kirby-Vision received this Kirby inspired piece from Chris Haley, taken from the Christmas strip of his webcomic, Let’s Be Friends Again, which we’d like to belatedly add to this festive post).

merryxmasfromLBFA_sm

Commander X

cmas26

Joe Zierman pays tribute to Jack Kirby and Joe Simon’s cover for Adventure Comics #79, with this pin-up taken from last years’ free online comic Commander X Adventures. With thanks to Jay Piscopo.

Adventure comics 79

Fantastic Four

ffprint

Al Bigley presents the Fantastic Four and a gallery of frightful foes in this piece taken from original Jack Kirby pencils.

ff kirby pencils

Captain America #199

capcoverprint

Captain America #199 re-imagined by Al Bigley. Original cover by Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia here.

Captain America

kirbcaprint

Al Bigley provides this study of Captian America from original Jack Kirby pencils. Al’s diverse career has included comics for Marvel, D.C., Archie, Image and Disney, character design for the classic Batman: Animated series, a host of merchandising and licensed products and more recently the iPhone/iPod comic Geminar. He is the author of Draw Comics Like a Pro. Check out his website for more fabulous artwork.

cap kirby pencils marvel

The King & The Worst

Spanish director, David Galán Galindo has released the first three minutes of his short film, The King & The Worst, the trailer of which was featured at here last month.

This clip serves as an introduction to the meeting of our two heroes, Jack Kirby (Luis Yague) and Ed Wood (José Antonio Benedicto), before the film switches to colour and a mysterious stranger enlists the bewildered soldiers to do battle against supernatural forces, bent on world domination. Luis Yague portrays Kirby as a courageous and dedicated solider and is particularly touching in a scene where he longs to be reunited with his wife, Rosalind. Benedicto provides the comic relief as Wood, who quickly swaps his battle fatigues for his trademark pink angora sweater and blond wig. Production values are impressive for such a low budget film, especially the costume design, and the film zips along with some spirited direction. The horror/fantasy theme means that there is some gore and bad language, which strikes as odd for a tribute to a man whose creations inspired children the world over. A minor quibble because ultimately, The King & The Worst, is notable for it’s admiration for it’s protagonists careers and an enthusiasm for the horror genre it owes it’s inspiration too.

Many thanks to David for providing Kirby-Vision with a copy of the full twenty minute film for review. As of yet there are no plans for a DVD or Internet release of the film. It has been shown as a number of European film festivals and David is currently in the process of securing some more screenings, for further details please see David’s blog here.

PromoJACKenglish

Kang the Conqueror

kang-3

More from Jay Piscopo with this portrait of Kang the Conqueror, who made his debut in September 1964 in The Avengers #8.