When I was young, my favorite comic book heroes were The Incredible Hulk and Conan The Barbarian.  I guess you could add Godzilla to that list, but he was more a monster than a hero per se.

I used to collect comic books, keeping them in plastic bags, in mint condition.  I never had the cash to score myself The Incredible Hulk #1, which is going for around 30 000 USD these days, but I did get a chance to acquaint myself with the early Hulk material via pocket book re-releases.  It was then that I stumbled on the vintage art of Jack Kirby, the “king of the comics”, as he was dubbed.

The first page from The Incredible Hulk #1, art by Jack Kirby

Kirby was the man behind most of the early Marvel Comics stuff, drawing and inking up fantastic worlds of fantasy heroes and characters that titillated the burgeoning masculine mind of strapping young lads everywhere.  Kirby was a master of his age, and in so saying, even now his work seems ageless decades later.

When I was on tour with my southern blues rock band Crossfyre in Europe this past Summer 2010, I picked up a copy of the new collected works of Kirby in Amsterdam, a serendipitous find at that.  I got bit by the art bug to draw up some stuff in the spirit of Kirby, and now as the new year is upon us, I think I’ll undertake that task and apply it to something downright Cro-magnon.

Keep your peepers peeled, I should be adding some new Kirbyish art to my Artworks link in the coming weeks, and if all things go according to plan, I will have a much wider platform for said artwork in the future with a certain musical project.