The good folks at Nickelodeon Magazine invited me to contribute to their special Spongebob 10th Anniversary Celebration issue which comes out next month. (August cover date I believe). For this special issue, several folks were asked to do various takes and interpretations of Spongebob and his crew! In my case, I was asked specifically to reinterpret the gang as a "Jack Kirby inspired super-team". I had a blast previously doing a comic book cover for them of Alfred donning the famous cowl as the "Bat-Butler", so I was thrilled to take on this Kirby inspired assignment!
For those interested, here are a few of the process steps taken towards the finished Spongebob Superteam piece;
I started off sketching ideas for how the classic SB crew might look through the "Kirby lens".. I knew from the start that I wanted Patrick to be the team's "Thing" type character:
With Squidward I was thinking of an "Inhumans" type;
And with Spongebob, I wanted to have enough cues to his already signature silhouette... initially to retain that large square face, I thought of a Modok/Arnim Zola type... but it was just too creepy for me! So I started thinking that perhaps a large yellow "tech" helmet might do the trick, giving him the recognizable shape, but still keeping a more heroic overall feel;
To sew up the JK homage, I borrowed heavily from one of my favorite Kirby covers= Fantastic Four #49 and did a version with the new SB characters (w/ Sandy as the Silver Surfer and Plankton as a Galactus/Dr. Doom amalgam);
and before the final colors (all in close range to the official SB colors), the inks:
On a sad note, if you haven't heard yet, Nick magazine has unfortunately been canceled. I was very sorry to hear this news, as I not only was proud to be associated with them, and truly enjoyed working for Gordon Whiteside there, but I also thought it was an AWESOME kid's magazine.. I can only hope that someone somewhere takes up this mantle as they were a great patron of independent comics art and offered a wonderful alternative to the very few comic offerings for kids today.
I hope you enjoy the piece I did and if you get a chance, pick up the August issue (which may be their last I'm not sure) and check out all the other takes on this great cartoon.
