I love a great Frank Cho specialty piece. Rock-solid draftsmanship paired with a genuinely good sense of humor. (Which is rarer than you’d think—superheroes can swing from humorless to campy at light speed.)
Clean lines. No clutter. A powerful—and beautiful—Wonder Woman.
And a simple joke, told exactly right. From a very talented cartoonist and creator.
It doesn’t hurt that the piece is about 18 × 24 in size. Yowza.
Cho mentioned on social media that this was one of the first drawings he finished during the pandemic lockdown.
Now that was time well spent.
If you were in the right place at the tight time, you could get your print re-marqued. Mine (left) is not, but I own the original, so zero regrets.
Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics Magazine#2, March 2001
Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics Magazine isn’t like a sequel to Lee and Kirby’s original run—it is one. Same premise, same mission: pick up the world’s greatest comic right after issue #100 and keep the engine humming.
This mini-series exists because a generation of creators grew up fluent in Kirby’s visual language and wanted to continue it, not reinterpret it. No grim updating. No clever winks. Just more Fantastic Four.
This page nails that idea perfectly. Erik Larsen provides the layouts, setting up classic, confident storytelling. Paul Ryan delivers clean, readable draftsmanship. Al Milgrom locks it all together with classic Marvel authority. You get the full team, Crystal, and Namor battling the Sentry—all in one terrific page of original art.
Across the series, the creative roster reads like a roll call of die-hard Kirby believers. Other contributors included Bruce Timm, Ron Frenz, Keith Giffen, and Rick Veitch—artists who didn’t just admire Kirby, they revered him and understood what made the Fantastic Four tick.
What makes World’s Greatest Comics Magazine special is its confidence. It doesn’t explain itself. It assumes the Fantastic Four never stopped being the future. In that sense, it isn’t nostalgia—it’s continuity of imagination. And that’s about as Fantastic Four as it gets.
John Byrne’s Fantastic Four earned its legendary status the right way. He took the keys to one of Marvel’s great books, respected the Kirby engine that powered it, and pushed it forward with smart, late-’70s storytelling.
This Negative Zone page feels like classic FF: clear storytelling, dangerous tech, and characters who sound like smart people under pressure. Reed is cool and precise. Sue keeps things grounded.
Drawn oversized, the page has room to breathe — big machines, strange worlds, and that unmistakable sense of scale. Nothing feels decorative. It feels built.
The kind of Fantastic Four that made opening a new issue every month feel like an event.
If Jack Kirby built the Marvel Universe by flooring the gas pedal, John Buscema is the artist who proved it could keep moving at speed without flying off the road. This page from The Fantastic Four #109 doesn’t feel like a reset after Kirby—it feels like a smooth handoff. (Especially with the amazing Joe Sinnott continuing on as co-pilot.)
Nearly everything that defines the FF is here: impossible tech, last-second switches, and reality bending under pressure. Kirby detonates ideas; Buscema directs them. The action is clean, the staging is crystal clear, and even as the team tumbles through the “Distortion Zone,” you always know where everyone is—and what’s about to go wrong.
That’s why Buscema was the perfect artist to follow Kirby. He didn’t try to out-Kirby Kirby; he translated the chaos into confident, cinematic storytelling.
Fantastic Four #109 lands squarely in my prime spinner-rack era—back when the future arrived every month for 15 cents a pop. Owning this page feels like closing a long loop—from Wurman’s candy store (Long Beach, NY) back to the original art board, without losing any of the wonder.
In fact, it gains even more.
The early Buscema stories (plus some late Kirby and the fill-in Romita stories) can be found in the FF omnibus #4, with either the Kirby #100 cover — or the astonishing homage by Arthur Adams.
Sixty-five years on, The Fantastic Four still feels like Marvel figuring itself out in real time—and getting it spectacularly right. These weren’t heroes born in alleys or back rooms; they were a product of the early ’60s, when the Space Race filled the headlines and the future felt thrilling, reckless, and inevitable. Rockets were launching, limits were being tested, and the question wasn’t should we go farther—it was how fast can we get there. Marvel’s cosmic imagination starts right here, with four people charging into the unknown.
And speaking of charging ahead—just look at this page by Jack Kirby, beautifully locked down by Joe Sinnott. This isn’t just a shrinking sequence; it’s Kirby inventing scale. Machines loom like alien vistas, panels crackle with motion, and your eye doesn’t just read the page—it gets pulled inside it. Sinnott’s inks keep all that chaos crisp, clear, and impossibly confident.
I continue to believe the first 100 issues (and especially the marvelous three-year stretch from about issues #39–76) of The Fantastic Four rank among the most important runs in comic-book history—one long creative hot streak where the ideas redefined pretty much everything that came before.
I’m never going to referee who did what between Kirby and Stan Lee, but one thing is pretty obvious: Lee contributed much of the personality, friction, and soap-opera snap that made the cosmic feel personal. The Fantastic Four bicker, joke, and melt down while rewriting reality—and that mix of big ideas and human irritation became Marvel’s calling card.
Happy 65th to the Fantastic Four: Marvel’s original first family, and a wondrous revolution in comic books.
The Silver Surfer splash from this issue is so striking and iconic that it was later selected as one of Marvel’s classic licensed blacklight posters.
Here’s a fun title page from the great Erik Larsen, inked by the always-amazing Sal Buscema. If you like the Defenders, how can you not love this?
Larsen packs the composition as if he’s cramming an entire issue into a single image—a glorious jumble of big personalities and startled reactions, with a barely contained Hulk dominating the page and everyone else looking like they’ve wandered into the wrong cosmic crisis.
Loud, funny, and bursting with life, this Defenders run—written by Larsen with Kurt Busiek nearly 25 years ago—is pure, entertaining chaos. These heroes are powerful and iconic, sure, but also an endearingly oddball bunch who often seem annoyed to be sharing the same space.
Come for the heroics. Stay for the dysfunctional group dynamics.
Thanks for stopping by in 2025 — see you next year!
The Best of DC #22, March 1982 (Intended for Sandman #7, —Unpublished — 1975)
When Jack Kirby wanted to make an entrance, he didn’t tiptoe — he detonated. This Sandman title page kicks down the door, grabs you by the collar, and announces, “Strap in — things are about to get very weird.”
Only he could take a story called The Seal Men’s War on Santa Claus and treat it like Ragnarök at the North Pole. The floating spheres, extra moons, and cosmic backdrop all calmly insist, “Relax — this is exactly how dreams are supposed to look.”
Down on the ground, Sandman is carving a path through a crowd of angry Seal Men, cape swirling, fists flying, looking every bit like someone who rescues Santa on an annual basis. Jed is right beside him, doing his best with a staff that’s taller than he is, while poor Santa watches from the background, wrapped up like he’s on the world’s least festive gift list.
Mike Royer’s inks give the whole scene its crisp, confident snap — bold lines, clear action, and just enough shadow to keep the mayhem grounded.
It’s light, it’s wild, and it is unmistakably DC Kirby — a dream-world dust-up where everyone seems to believe in the moment.
Even Santa.
Has any comic story ever been cancelled twice? Jack Kirby holds a lot of comic-book records, but this one might be the strangest.
Sandman #7 was fully finished when DC pulled the plug on the series after issue #6 in 1975. The completed story went into limbo — filed away, forgotten, probably wondering what it did wrong. A few years later, DC tried again, planning to incorporate it narratively (don’t ask) in Kamandi #61… and then the infamous “DC Implosion” hit. Kamandi was cancelled too.
It finally escaped publishing purgatory in Best of DC #22, a digest-sized Christmas special from late 1981 — because if you’re going to rescue a lost Kirby comic, why not do it as a bite-sized stocking stuffer?
Sigh.
It arrived late, sure — but fortunately, Kirby pages age better than most publishing plans.
(And now, fortunately, you can find a full-size version collected in The Kirby DC Bronze Age Omnibus. The perfect Christmas present to give yourself.)
John Buscema was the Avengers artist of the late ’60s and early ’70s—despite famously claiming he didn’t much care for superheroes.
Every panel feels like it could’ve been pulled from a widescreen adventure film, even when the scene is nothing more than a nightmare and a jolting wake-up. That was his magic: Buscema could make anything feel epic.
This page shows exactly how he defined the Avengers in that era. Grace, power, and cinematic clarity are baked into every beat, transforming a bad dream into something memorable—and unmistakably Avengers.
Behind the scenes, Marvel was running hot. Kirby had just left for DC, schedules were tightening, pages were due, and assignments were shifting fast. You can feel a stronger Tom Palmer inking presence here than in some earlier issues, suggesting John may have supplied looser pencils as deadline pressure mounted and the machine kept moving.
Marvel may have been in motion, but Buscema’s vision was locked in.
If you ever wonder whether the Rocketeer can fly without Dave Stevens, Bruce Timm answers by lighting the fuse and grinning. His illustrations in IDW’s Rocketeer Adventures #3 “pulp” tale from Joe Lansdale aren’t a tribute—they’re a full-throttle spin.
Timm tears across this two-page spread with a crisp, mid-century snap that makes me think a Rocketeer animated series would be pure rocket-fueled dynamite.
Stevens built a world roomy enough for great artists to play in. He gave us pulp heroics, Hollywood glamour, and Cliff Secord—our beloved jet-propelled knucklehead who means well, screws up spectacularly, and somehow still wins the day—and Betty, too.
Stevens created a timeless hero. Timm shows why he stays timeless. He’s not preserving the legacy—he’s joyriding it.
(And yes, I would love to own that gorgeous faux pulp cover below.)
This page from Captain America #118 is Gene Colan doing exactly what Gene Colan did best. From the first panel, Cap isn’t just moving—he’s practically sliding across the page like someone leaned on the fast-forward button. Colan drew superheroes like actors caught mid-scene, all shifting weight and fluid motion.
And that crowd! That outstretched arm is peak Colan—bold, intrusive, unapologetically cinematic. It shoves you right into the scene. It feels like a real city having a very weird day.
Then come those deep, moody shadows he loved so much. He could drop a black shape over half a figure and somehow make it more expressive, not less.
Colan never cared about matching the “house style,” and he certainly didn’t draw superheroes who looked like they’d just ironed their costumes. Shadows, posture, movement—those were his tools. You either vibed with it or you didn’t. I loved it. Some of my friends… not so much. (Especially when some of his other inkers couldn’t quite figure out what Gene was doing… or why.)
But even the skeptics had to admit — nobody, before or since, has drawn comics quite like Gene Colan.
Why is Cap running from the crowded thinking vindictive thoughts? I’m glad you asked. Because, thanks to the cosmic cube, the Red Skull has taken control of Cap, and things are about to take a turn…
