JKFF

Jack Kirby would have been 100 years old next year.

The King of Comics designed and created many of the most seminal, iconic figures and characters in the history of comics – from the New Gods to the Fantastic Four. And it’s the latter who will be the focus of a new artist’s edition from IDW in 2017, which was just announced this week at San Diego Comic-Con. This’ll be a black and white collection of the artist’s work on the original run of Fantastic Four comics released through Marvel decades ago. IDW have previously released an Artist’s Edition of his Thor run.

At the time, Kirby was working along with Stan Lee, whose “Marvel method” meant that Kirby would essentially be creating the stories himself – Lee would skip along later and write in dialogue depending on what story he thought the pages told. For that reason alone, this is going to be a fascinating book once released, if only because we’ll be able to really compare the stories Kirby clearly felt he was telling during the run with the stories Stan Lee decided he was telling.

The Artist’s Edition series has won five Eisner Awards since it began in 2010 – and with this one receiving inking embellishment from Joe Sinott, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them lined up for their sixth on in 2017. We’ll expect to see this book published in January.