Yet another of those "new" Kirby covers for the centennial year, this one for the debut issue of Black Bolt, a new comic featuring the leader of the enigmatic Inhumans.
This one comes from the powerful splash page of Fantastic Four #46 which showcased many of the Royal Family for the very first time. We'd already had glimpses of Medusa and Gorgon, but little did we know then what was hidden in the Great Refuge.
Marvel really seems to be pushing the Inhumans in recent years and certainly it makes sense now that they are about to get their own TV show. I never really grokked how important Kirby imagined Black Bolt to be at the time, but looking back at vintage FF comics it's easy now to see he wanted him to be a major star. Triton went on to grab some attention in the back pages of Thor and later alongside the Sub-Mariner, and Medusa joined the FF for a time, but Black Bolt was supposed to be the headliner and he never really achieved that status. Maybe now.
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Black Bolt will never be a headliner. 1) because he's too powerful. With a whisper he can make Superman look like a 100 pound weakling. Who is going to be a challenge for him?
ReplyDelete2) He is too mysterious. Since he can't talk, we never really get to know him. Why didn't they ever do thought bubbles for him? Without getting to know him he's just a sort of stoic symbol. I mean I love the Inhumans but Lockjaw has more charisma than their king.
The silent center of a raucous royal court, I imagine that was the idea. I still like the tall dark and silent types myself.
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Lockjaw! Now there’s a Kirby original…Was he exposed to the Terrigen Mists or was he a Kree mutation? (Wish I had me a dog like Lockjaw…)
ReplyDeleteIt would be better than my useless dog who only has the twin powers to eat and to poop.
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