The Fantastic Four

This has been sitting on the drawing board for a few weeks. I inked this in about three and a half hours at the Art Jam at Krypton Comics. When I sat down to draw this, I looked at a lot of various artist's interpretations of the FF. In my opinion, the best versions were from Byrne, Buscema, but there's just no beating the King, Jack Kirby. And so, like most artists, I wanted to put my little spin on what the greats have done.
The Thing is difficult to construct as he is completely anatomically incorrect. If his head gets too small, he looks rediculous and if his head gets too large, he winds up looking like a giant (but rocky) child. I grabbed Buscema's "brow" and styled a wild 70s era Marvel action-pose from him, too. The general construction is all Kirby, as are the plates and tendency to spot a few of them black.
I gave the Invisible Woman the classic 60s hairdo as that seemed the most representative to me, even if I extended the length a bit. Byrne's short do from the 80s was a close second choice for me, but Byrne always had a habit of chopping a heroine's hair. Of all the characters, Sue Storm was a breeze to draw. Mr. Fantastic is a bitharder to draw than you might think. Despite his stretchy ability, laws of anatomy and proportion still apply. I opted for a Byrne/Kirby hybrid in the face, and kept him fairly simple. I also spotted blacks on his uniform to A) pop him out in front of the Thing and B) because he was directly under the Human Torch -- the dominant light source. I spotted no blacks on Sue because, we, she's probably just going to turn invisible anyway! The Human Torch (R.I.P., until someone brings him back from the dead) is just plain odd. I mean, the guys on fire and has all these little stripes all over his body. Most artists throughout the years have followed suit with that design, or the throw up their hands and leave it up to the colorist to create the in flames illusion. Since I work in mostly black and white -- bring on the stripes!
This was tons of fun to do, and I'd really like to do at least one more of these, probably with either a classic Avengers line up, or many the Defenders. Who knows. In the mean time, Make Mine Marvel! LOL