Ultimate Fantastic Four original art by Tyler Kirkham

The Ultimate Fantastic Four series was fairly unremarkable during its 60-issue run, failing to distinguish itself in any real way from the "proper" Marvel Universe version of the FF. Showing up on the publishing schedule years after other Ultimate line of books made their impact, the series is probably best remembered for introducing the Marvel Zombies concept in issue 21.

After the series had ended and most of the Ultimate books were coming to a close, the Ultimate FF characters, in a string of miniseries, started to deviate a bit more from their regular universe counterparts: Reed for some reason became a villain, "The Maker"; the Thing shed his rocky exterior to become a purple energy being (though they soon gave him back his classic look); Sue and Ben got engaged.

In all, the Ultimate Fantastic Four weren't very memorable as characters or as a series, but still, 60 issues is a pretty good run for a title, and it stands as the third-longest running FF series after the core title and Marvel Two-in-One. The title had a very brief relaunch as "Ultimate FF" a few years later, but that series was cancelled after only six issues.

I recently came across a page of original art from the first series, and I managed to get it for a pretty good price. Here it is, with art by Tyler Kirkham:

This particular page comes from issue 54 of the series, part of the "Salem's Seven" storyline that ran for four issues. Kirkham was the series artist for 10 issues, from #50 until the series was cancelled with issue 60 (skipping #56, which was pencilled by Eric Basaldua).

Top Cow, an imprint of Image, provided the art for these final issues, with Kirkham's pencilled art skipping the inking stage and going straight to colors. Kirkham's pencils are very tight, I suppose, but the art always came off feeling a bit unfinished to me.

So why did I grab this page? The answer is simple, as it has a rather nice, prominent shot of the Thing:

Kirkham really drew the Thing with a tiny head, without any noticeable joints, and here he's almost as wide as he is tall, but I love stocky Thing in his weird jumpsuit carrying a prop that is apparently from the 2001: A Space Odyssey movie.

Set 'er down anywhere, Thing.

Also in this issue, they literally devote several panels to showing Ultimate Johnny Storm trying to boil an egg. It's true! He's got fire powers, if the previous 50 years hadn't driven that idea home.

This page comes signed by penciller Tyler Kirkham at the very bottom.

And here's a shot of the very top of the page, in which we can see the title and artist, but not the issue number.

This is the first page of original art from the Ultimate Fantastic Four title I own, and I'm glad to have it, even if it is from a rather forgettable series.

I'm glad I'm not the only one...

Robert Kirkman is launching a number of projects through Top Cow's "Pilot Season" Image imprint.  They're releasing five self contained "one shot" issues featuring different characters - after the fifth issue ships, fans can vote on which title they'd like to see continue.  The second of these is Demonic, about which Kirkman has this to say:

Like Murderer before it, this one started with just a title.  That's not always the case with my various projects over the years; sometimes the title is the absolute last thing I come up with.  Every now and then, though, I do come across a cool word that I think makes a great title and that gets my mind racing on all kinds of interesting possibilities.  As a matter of fact, other than Stealth [another one-shot issue], I think all of these Pilot Season concepts started in my head as titles.  Maybe I do that more than I realize.

I've mentioned this before, but the concept for Teddy and the Yeti came about the exact same way.  The name popped into my head and the characters and concepts came later.  I'm happy to read that others do the same thing, because it always struck me as kind of strange to develop an entire universe from a rhyming title.  I guess if it works...

As for the Demonic issue in general...it was pretty terrible.  My apologies to Mr. Kirkman and the rest of the talented people who worked on the book for saying so, but the issue basically contains the main character gruesomely murdering lots of people and then saying "WHYYYYYY?!"  I'm generally a fan of Kirkman and his style of writing, but this issue was pretty much a slight tweak on what he's doing monthly in Haunt...which I am, honestly, not that crazy about, either.  But Invincible, Walking Dead, Irredeemable Ant-Man, and Brit?  Hey-ooooooo!