The book is dynamic and vibrant, with an unmistakable Kirby influence in the mood and tone. He maintained a disciplined schedule while juggling his monthly painted cover assignments. Ross produced about 10 pages a month, with inking taking a day and half for every page. The 64-page graphic novel is the culmination of months and months of work. “I couldn’t get the main title back then, but I could carve this one-of-a-kind take,” he says. Enter Abrams, which offered him a chance to do a story without the constraints of a month series. Others had beaten him to the punch, however, and he was ready to let his dream go. When he heard the title was coming back, Ross put his hat in the ring to be involved in a relaunch. In the early 2010s, the Fantastic Four comic was quietly put on a hiatus due to Marvel’s disputes with 20 th Century Fox over failed movie and screen rights. Ross came by the book in his own circular fashion.

Realism is my stock and trade, but you can still get that within a more high-contrast representation.” I needed to boil down what I do to a more graphic degree. “To do the pop art aesthetic right, you couldn’t do it with over-rendered, over-illustrated work. “It seemed very suitable for the material,” says Ross. In the new story, the Fantastic Four’s headquarters, the Baxter Building, faces an intruder alert, setting the heroes off on an adventure that takes them into the Negative Zone, an alien dimension composed of anti-matter. The story uses as its jumping-off point the incidents recounted in the now-classic “This Man… This Monster!” story told in 1961’s Fantastic Four no. “I thought there was a way to connect with the Pop Art of the time period if I changed what I did, and presented that style and not my traditional painted style.”

Kirby was cartoony, bold and muscular, at times over-the-top and brimming with mid-century, space-age design combining the bright colors of comic publishing at the time with occasional collage work to produce what was termed in the 1960s as Marvel Pop Art. “His style informed the first 10 years of their existence and it’s the shadow all artists have been working under for these last 60 years.” “I wanted to present a version of the Fantastic Four as close to a Jack Kirby style he envisioned for the series as he created the characters,” Ross tell The Hollywood Reporter.

'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Director Peyton Reed Talks Scratching His 'Fantastic Four' Itch and Paying Tribute to 'Back to the Future Part II'Īnd it’s also the rare occasion where Ross takes a step back from the painted realism style that made him famous.

Full circle alex ross