Upon recently hearing about the ApeLad’s Re-Inking Thor Flickr group (via Big Time Attic [via Stwalley], I picked up my brush and started working.
The Re-inking Thor group has been all based around taking the original pencil art of the legendary Jack Kirby, encouraging individual artists to try their hand at inking it. The specific page used is from a issue of The Mighty Thor.
I’m not a fan of Kirby (FYWOI?!), but I imagined the challenge would be a lot of fun, especially since I’ve really been focusing on my brush art lately. As I started though, I was surprised to find just how tight Kirby’s pencilling was, which didn’t leave me with much room to breathe artistically.

I think I did a good job, up until the point that I drew the word balloons. God I hate drawing word balloons. I think I’m some sort of color blind that effects the way I perceive simple shapes rather than colors… Shape blind? Immediately after I posted my picture to the group, I found somebody who had created a useful template of an inked word balloon, text, and borders for this page.
I brought those templates to the San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy and had those artists try inking it as a group project. Each panel was inked by a different cartoonist.


I should also mention that I skipped doing lettering and used my own “Doc Pop Brush” font for the panels. I also naively believed I would be the first person to come up with some silly text for the page. I guess after spending a day tracing such tight pencils, we all just wanted to goof off during the lettering.
Hey, check out Kevin and Zander Cannon’s re-inked Thor page here.
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