Fantasmic Four


This was done for the most recent redesign challenge at Whitechapel.

The Instructions –

You are an artist/designer. You have to put together the cover for a comic called THE FANTASTIC FOUR. It is issue 1 of this book.

You have been told that the comic is about four people who steal a spaceship, fly into space, get heavily irradiated by cosmic rays, and return to earth weirdly altered by their experience.

And that’s it. The bastards haven’t told you one more damn thing than that. Not a clue. They might all be women. It might be about the Indian space programme twenty years from now. For all you know this is a JG Ballard story, for christ’s sake…

It’s up to you what kind of company you’re at. What kind of comics you make. How you translate that description of The Fantastic Four. What era you’re in. Who you are, even. Go nuts with it.

So I decided I was a stoner artist doing underground comics in 1971 who very liberally reinterpreted the description of the contents of the comic. I did the basic artwork while I was waiting for Nizzibet at the dentist. And because my brain tends to keep working on an idea for days (or weeks or years) once the seed has been planted I’m finding myself coming up with stories I could do with these weirdos. Sigh. If I had all the time I needed to execute all my ideas (stupid or not) I’d live forever. Ideas are easy. Having the time to execute them is the real challenge.

Anyway, there are a lot of cool reinterpretations of the FF at the other side of that link above.

4 thoughts on “Fantasmic Four

  1. So. Check this. We were in orbit, buzzin’ around in outer space, you know. Kickin’ it. Losin’ it. Then we brought out the cosmic rays, man. Cosmic rays’ll take you strait to MARS, man. I mean, wow. I mean. Mean. Ben tried to warn us, man, but we was so far out in space we couldn’t hear nothin’. Nothin’ but the raaaaaaaays.

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