The Mark of Gil Kane: Captain Marvel and Black Bolt, together!

I've always loved Gil Kane's renditions of both Captain Marvel and Black Bolt from the Inhumans.  A few weeks ago I noticed the original cover art for Captain Marvel #53 (1977) which featured both of these characters together!

Original cover art by Gil Kane, inks by Frank Giacoia and/or Esposito.  Pretty much two characters in flight, it must have taken Kane less than half a day to execute this one?

With the color it really pops as Black Bolt's all blue outfit stands out next to Marvell's mostly red tights.  Nuff Said.

What do these four 1975 Marvel debut issues have in common?

What do these 4 Marvel titles have in common?  They are seemingly random and unrelated save for one fact: they all debuted with an October 1975 cover date, which have appeared on newsstands in July 1975.

They were all green lighted during a lunch in 1975 with Len Wein, Tony Isabella and others.  Wein was given a mandate to expand the current Marvel line by 4 titles.  The story is told in this week's Nerdist Writers Panel Comics Edition podcast by Wein and Isabella - I highly recommend this particularly podcast to any Marvel fan.  Their memories are a bit shaky; Isabella remembers two of the titles being Black Goliath and Tigra as well.  However, I believe it is the above four as they came out during the same month and Goliath / Tigra appeared in 1976.

The funny thing is that when the green light for the four titles were given, John Verpooten immediately told Isabella he was behind the deadline!  Nuff Said.

Fantastic Four homage cover by Art Adams

I haven't read Fantastic Four regularly since Mark Waid left, so I was a bit startled to come across this 2010 cover that Art Adams produced for the 600th issue.

Featuring both the FF and the Inhumans racing off to fight an unseen foe!  I immediately recognized the source and appreciated the homage.

The original pen and ink version of Art Adams cover features delicate line work as always.

Of course the homage is to Jack Kirby's famous FF #82 cover featuring the Inhumans, back in 1986!  One of my favorites.  Nuff Said!

The Inhumans and Jack King Kirby

Jack Kirby's birthday was last Wednesday, which I missed, but here's a little tribute to him featuring my favorite group of outcasts (second only to the X-Men), the Inhumans!  I found a few of these images while research Marvel's history of splash pages.

In 1970, right before he left to do the Fourth World series at DC Comics, Stan Lee gave Kirby the opportunity to write and draw the Inhumans.  Pretty cool, right?  Only 1 problem: it was in Amazing Adventures #1 (where the above splash page was taken from) and it was a split book, shared with the Black Widow.  Jeph Loeb often comments on how miscast these two features were -- the Widow goes with the Inhumans like Peanut Butter and anchovies.  Imagine if this had been Inhumans #1, what a collectors item this book would have been!  Instead it is a footnote to Kirby's waning days at Marvel.

Fantastic Four #83 (1969) featured this dynamic splash page of the Inhumans racing off to stop Mad Maximus once again.  Now here's one thing about this team that I love.  They are all so individually stylized and so different from one another.  It's hard to get them all in the same frame doing something as a team!  I think Kirby pulled it off well here, but the splash from AA #1 is a bit better.

This splash from FF #99 (also in 1970) features one of those royal court settings with the Inhumans -- something you see over and over when the Inhumans make appearances in modern comics but never executed as well as this splash page.  Triton with his green scaly visage makes a big impression and so does Medusa (va-va-voom) standing protectively on the right in front of her sister Crystal.  This was the issue where Johnny Storm realized he would be apart from his favorite elemental girlfriend.

I've always wondered why the Inhumans were never popular enough to survive in their own series.  Certainly their powers and costumes were even more dynamic than the X-Men.  However, probably what made the X-Men successful was the conflict and the dynamic within the team: the love triangle between Scott/Jean/Warren, the banter between Hank & Bobby, the angst of crippled Professor Xavier.  What's the conflict between the members of the Inhumans?  Except for Maximus, there is none.  Roy Thomas added a good bit to Black Bolt's history when he revealed that using his powers at an early age may have driven his brother insane.  It was interesting to read that Matt Fraction will be writing a new Inhumans comic and there will be a big event tied to that.  Nuff Said!

Marvel Swimsuits: George Perez on She-Hulk, Black Bolt, Medusa

George Perez contributed a couple of neat pinups for the Marvel Swimsuit issues.  Who better than Perez to draw some cute Marvel babes?



She-Hulk and the Wasp in the Savage Land, circa 1991.  Jen must have imported those high heels and jewelry.  A goofy looking dinosaur looks on in amazement.



Black Bolt and Medusa on Monster Island in 1993.  Drawing Medusa in the nude with nothing but that fantastic red hair to cover herself was a stroke of genius.  I couldn’t recognize Black Bolt until I read the caption and saw the bolts on his speedo.  I suppose I just wasn’t looking at him immediately.  Nuff said.

Marvels of Gil Kane: The Inhumans

It took a while for The Inhumans to break out in their own self-titled series, but it finally happened in 1975.  Doug Moench and George Perez were the creative team, and it was solid book, but it lasted only 12 issues.  Gil Kane drew this terrific cover to Inhumans #8 (1976).

Having a group of super-heroes charging at the viewer is a theme you see often, but Kane makes it really dramatic by putting everyone in a dynamic pose.  Black Bolt is flying toward the reader, Gorgon and Triton are at his side, even Lockjaw is galloping behind them, while explosions are set off in the background.  Dan Adkins inked this Kane cover.

The original black and white version is even more impressive than the full color cover.  I found this over on ComicsFun's gallery, where you can find the original art from Kane, Kirby, etc.  Nuff said.

Marvel Double Features: The Inhumans! Black Widow! Huh?

Marvel often tried to put two characters together in a series of ads or anthologies that often left me scratching my head.  So let’s celebrate those double feature specials!

Morbius and Lilith.  Kind of makes sense, both vampires, right?  Wrong.  Morbius is a scientifically created vampire, while Lilith was magically created.  OK, I’m a nit-picker.

Brother Voodoo and the Son of Satan?  Competing religions right there!  The Mark of Satan was the original title for Daimon Hellstrom’s series. 

Hey, we’re launching Man-Thing #1, and just because you love monsters so much, you should also buy Ka-Zar #1!  Well, both series have characters running completely naked in the great outdoors.

How about putting Ka-Zar in Astonishing Tales along with Doc Doom?  Jungle tales combined with evil dictator conquering tales—peanut butter and jelly!  We just weren’t ready for that jelly.  I just noticed that Zabu’s head is the hyphen in Ka-Zar’s logo.  Too bad Zabu’s head was also the same color as the background!

And then there was Amazing Adventures with the Inhumans and the Black Widow.  That didn’t make sense either; you would think the Inhumans and Doctor Doom would be better off sharing a title!

Amazing Adventures #7 is almost a crime, because you have 2/3 of a great cover ruined by the Widow at the bottom.  What’s more dramatic, some dude with a bionic arm threatening to burn down San Francisco or the lithe Black Widow karate kicking a fat guy?  I think I know which one Neal Adams preferred.  Nuff said.

Stjepan Šejic's Secret Invasion: Inhumans Cover

This beautiful cover by Croatian artist Stjepan Šejic (see his site at DeviantArt) to Secret Invasion: Inhuman really conveys a mixture of emotions: loss, loneliness, and the hotness of a red-haired Medusa.  I'm looking forward to this series, which is going to pick up the Inhumans story after the events of David Hine's Silent War and the last issue of the Illuminati.  Was the Black Bolt who got his ass kicked by the Hulk a Skrull?  That's one thing I'm dying to know.  There was an interesting interview with writer Joe Pokaski (from NBC's Heroes) about this series over at Marvel.  Nuff said.