#goom

scopOphilic_micromessaging_1605 - scopOphilic1997 presents a new micro-messaging series: small, subtle, and often unintentional messages we send and receive verbally and non-verbally. (2026)

Tales of Suspense #17, May 1961. Stan Lee (?) cover script, Jack Kirby pencils, Dick Ayers inks, Stan Goldberg colors, Artie Simek letters.

Marvel Monsters

Merry Kirbymas! - Day 1 - Monsters!

Not feeling that any live action adaptation has ever properly captured the Jack Kirby cosmic aesthetic properly, I decided to fix that, with a LORA. Of course, that means I had to create a LOT of images in that style.

Today we're starting off with Kirby Kaiju.

Jack may well be one of the most prolific designers of giant monsters the United States has ever produced. While Goom, Xemu the Titan and Fin Fang Foom are the big names, he churned out Godzilla-or-at-least-Gamera quality foes on an oftentimes literally weekly basis.

And they're so delightfully American (dare I say, UltraMerican) in concept: Big-headed, lumpy, rocky, rubbery bug-eyed monsters issuing threats and terrorizing tiny humans, one part King Kong and one part Martian Invader. Always weird, always fun, and ultimately thwarted by hubris or the actions of plucky, clever humans.

Since LORAs are all about broad trends rather than specifics, I kept accuracy on the translations a lower priority than style (thus Fin-Fang-Foom being orange instead of his usual green, and my not bothering to reduce the number of toes on Goom, etc).

To do this, I used a combination of Sora, Midjourney and Photoshop. Sora is good at making the initial style-to-style translations, wherein they can be brought into Midjourney's editor to fix flaws and shore up details, with photoshop for fine point corrections and color-adjusting (which you HAVE to do).