Jack Kirby

Some people build the room that everyone else gets to stand in. Jack Kirby drew the Fantastic Four into existence in 1961, and almost every panel of cosmic scale that came after borrows something from his hand. I painted him in gouache in a single blue key, chin resting on his knuckles, mid thought, with the four-pointed stars he loved scattered behind him. A hand-drawn yellow rule frames the portrait and his years sit lettered beneath it, 1917 to 1994. He is one half of a pair. The other half is the man who did the talking.