Phil Hester’s Ten Favorite Sketches From His ’98 Kirbys’ Project

One of the best things about the online celebrations of Jack Kirby's birthday is Phil Hester's marathon sketch project. Each year, in honor of the King, he draws a sketch for every year since Kirby's birth in exchange for donations to the Hero Initiative. That means that, this year, he's knocked out a solid 98 pieces of art over the course of two days --- an especially ambitious project since last year's attempt to do 97 in a single day was obviously a pretty draining experience.

Today, he posted his favorites from this year's project on Twitter, and as you might expect if you're familiar with Kirby and Hester, they're pretty amazing, including characters from Kirby's tenure at Marvel and DC, from Galactus to Granny Goodness. Check them out below!

For the record, my favorite of these is definitely Hester's portrait of Kirby himself, but they're all great.

If you'd like to get in on the action yourself, well, you'll probably have to wait until next August, but in the meantime, the Hero Initiative is always taking donations to support their mission to help creators in times of financial need. Hester's convention schedule can be found by following him on Twitter, which is probably the best way to figure out whether you can get a commission of your own.

If you'd like to see more of this year's sketches, check out the #98Kirbys hashtag on Twitter. Some of the recipients of the 88 remaining sketches have been kind enough to post them online for all of us to enjoy.

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