Sponge Worthy

If Jolly Jack Kirby be something ye wish, Then drop to the deck, and flop like a fish!

I had to share this most excellent Spongebob Superteam illustration I found over at Paul Conrad's Super Robot Monster Blog! He did this drawing for an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, apparently one of the titles' last. Check out Paul's blog for more on that, as well as some great concept sketches, including Spongebob as...Arnim Zola?!?

ANY way, nautical nonsense indeed be something I wish, and my eight year old son and I have enjoyed many a morning chortling inanely at the antics of Spongebob, Patrick and the rest of the denizens of Bikini Bottom. Of course, as a grouchy old bald man, I most identify with Squidward. I also dig the legendary comic book art of Jack Kirby, as I've mentioned a few times before, so this mash-up of Spongebob and the cover of Fantastic Four #49 was appreciated by father and son alike!



I really like how Paul went the extra mile of reverse-Kirby-engineering the Spongebob cast, and thinking it through, rather than taking the easy route of simply drawing the cast in Fantastic Four uniforms. Patrick makes an ideal Thing stand-in, given that the Thing is basically star-shaped. Spongebob's hyper-helmeted design incorporates his beloved spatula, and ironically enough, Kirby's style tended towards square pants anyway, so that's a perfect translation. All the designs are great, actually. Heck, now I wanna see a whole comic with the Spongebob Superteam!



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Not Aunt Petunia!

I wasn't very impressed with this Marquis of Death/Master of Doom character when he spent the last few issues merrily slaughtering a host of alternate Fantastic Fours. I yawned when he casually tossed Doctor Doom himself back to the dawn of time, feeding him to prehistoric sharks. I briefly slipped into a coma when he blew up Latveria with a snap of his finger. But now that he's effortlessly skeletonized The Thing's Aunt Petunia, I'm convinced he's a stone-cold badass. Feh. I've been underwhelmed with Millar and Hitch's FF anyway, and now they cap it off by killing poor harmless Aunt Petunia. Well, maybe there will be some sort of cheesy cosmic reset switch at the end and we can forget this ever happened. As usual, there's some reason that Millar and Hitch can't quite finish on time, so the final issue of their "revolutionary" run will be handled by others. In the case of the art, by Stuart Immomen, so that's a step up, at least. Still, they have one issue to wrap all this up and marry off the Thing, assuming they're still going through with that. Again, Feh.