Kirby Krackle

*Fantastic Four* #72 (March 1968). Cover art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. The pseudo-fractal nature of the red light comes from the negative space created by the Kirby dots.

The Kirby Krackle (also known as Kirby Dots)^[1] is an artistic convention in superhero and science fiction comic books and similar illustrations, in which a field of black is used to represent negative space around unspecified kinds of energy.^[2]^[3] It is typically used in illustrations of explosions, smoke, blasts from ray guns, "cosmic" energy, and outer space phenomena.^[4]^[5]

History

The effect is named after its creator, comic artist Jack Kirby.^[3] While the Kirby Krackle in its mature form first appeared in Kirby's work during 1965–1966 (in Fantastic Four and Thor),^[2] comics historian Harry Mendryk of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center has traced the earliest version of the stylistic device as far back as 1940 to Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's Blue Bolt #5. As Joe Simon was the inker on that comic, he may have been partially responsible for the look of the proto-Kirby Krackle. Examples of a transitional form of the Kirby Krackle appear in two of Kirby's stories from the late 1950s: The Man Who Collected Planets from 1957 (pencils and inks by Kirby) and The Negative Man from 1959 (inks attributed to Marvin Stein).^[3] The effects were used during the transformation sequences in the Ben 10 franchise.

Kirby Krackle is incorporated into the design of the Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! attraction in Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure,^[6] and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.^[7]^[8]

Analysis

Philosophy professor and author Jeffrey J. Kripal wrote:

For Kirby, the human body is a manifestation or crystallization of finally inexplicable energies—a superbody. [...] What Mesmer called animal magnetism, Reichenbach knew as the blue od, and Reich saw as a radiating blue cosmic orgone becomes in Jack Kirby a trademark energetics signaled by "burst lines" and a unique energy field of black, blobby dots that has come to be affectionately known as the "Kirby Krackle" [...]. The final result was a vision of the human being as a body of frozen energy that, like an atomic bomb, could be released with stunning effects, for good or for evil. These metaphysical energies, I want to suggest, constitute the secret Source of Kirby's art.^[9]