Renowned Comic Painter Alex Ross Challenges Himself With A New Style in Abrams ComicArts’ Marvel Arts, ‘Fantastic Four: Full Circle’

If you were to ask renowned comic art painter Alex Ross who his biggest inspirations were, one of the main names he would mention is the legendary Jack “King” Kirby. Which isn’t surprising. Just about any comic fan or artist with a few years under their belt would no doubt mention Kirby and his art as something they aspired to.

With that in mind, when Abrams Comic Arts launched their new imprint Marvel Arts, and asked Ross if he would like to tackle the Fantastic Four, he jumped at that chance. However, for this project, he decided to challenge himself by straying a bit from his normal realistic painting style. Instead, Ross embraced some of Kirby’s perchance during the 60’s of mixing collage into his work. This was known at the time as the Marvel’s Pop Art phase. A style also embraced by Marvel artist Jim Steranko with great effect. Ross admitted there was a risk in this in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

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…There’s definitely a risk involved in varying what I do,” admits Ross regarding the art on the new book and how readers may react to it. But my greatest goal here was to impress myself.

That would seem to be a huge undertaking for the talented artist who came to prominence with his 1990’s comics miniseries Kingdom Come and Marvels for DC and Marvel respectively. However, it did give Ross an opportunity to tackle a project he had wanted to for a long while trying to honor Kirby’s work on the series.

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. 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.

Fantastic Four: Full Circle comes to stores Sept. 6. It will be presented in an oversized format similar to the graphic novels Marvel published in the 1980s. All the better to showcase the art and this Ross homage to Kirby. It will retail for $24.99.