Back Issue #131 by TwoMorrows Publishing

COMICS’ BRONZE AGE & BEYOND

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NO. 131

OCT. 2021

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T HE

DC T A Y C A G E L KIRBY

N! O M E D C! A M O DI! E! N R A O M M A K & N A M ns • Gibbo SAND

e t t e s s i B er featuring • Veitch • Wagn Rude IT! I B T S K–JU

DON’T AS

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Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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SUPERHEROES VS. MONSTERS! Monsters in Metropolis, Batman and the Horror Genre, DOUG MOENCH and KELLEY JONES’ Batman: Vampire, Marvel Scream-Up, Dracula and Godzilla vs. Marvel, DC/Dark Horse Hero/Monster crossovers, and a Baron Blood villain history. With CLAREMONT, CONWAY, DIXON, GIBBONS, GRELL, GULACY, JURGENS, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, and a cover by MICHAEL GOLDEN.

SUPERHERO STAND-INS! John Stewart as Green Lantern, James Rhodes as Iron Man, Beta Ray Bill as Thor, Captain America substitute U.S. Agent, new Batman Azrael, and Superman’s Hollywood proxy Gregory Reed! Featuring NEAL ADAMS, CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, RON MARZ, DAVID MICHELINIE, DENNIS O’NEIL, WALTER SIMONSON, ROY THOMAS, and more, under a cover by SIMONSON.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ISSUE! A galaxy of comics stars discuss Marvel’s whitehot space team in the Guardians Interviews, including TOM DeFALCO, KEITH GIFFEN, ROB LIEFELD, AL MILGROM, MARY SKRENES, ROGER STERN, JIM VALENTINO, and more. Plus: Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon before the Guardians, with CHRIS CLAREMONT and MIKE MIGNOLA. Cover by JIM VALENTINO with inks by CHRIS IVY.

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CONAN AND THE BARBARIANS! Celebrating the 50th anniversary of ROY THOMAS and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH’s Conan #1! The Bronze Age Barbarian Boom, Top 50 Marvel Conan stories, Marvel’s Not-Quite Conans (from Kull to Skull), Arak–Son of Thunder, Warlord action figures, GRAY MORROW’s Edge of Chaos, and Conan the Barbarian at Dark Horse Comics. With an unused WINDSOR-SMITH Conan #9 cover.

Celebrates the 40TH ANNIVERSARY of MARV WOLFMAN and GEORGE PÉREZ’s New Teen Titans, featuring a guest editorial by WOLFMAN and a PÉREZ tribute and art gallery! Plus: The New Teen Titans’ 40 GREATEST MOMENTS, the Titans in the media, hero histories of RAVEN, STARFIRE, and the PROTECTOR, and more! With a NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED PÉREZ TITANS COVER from 1981!

SUPERHERO ROMANCE ISSUE! Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark’s many loves, Star Sapphire history, Bronze Age weddings, DeFALCO/ STERN Johnny Storm/Alicia Pro2Pro interview, Elongated Man and Wife, May-December romances, Supergirl’s Secret Marriage, and… Aunt May and Doc Ock?? Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB LAYTON, DENNY O’NEIL, and many more! Cover by DAVE GIBBONS.

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HORRIFIC HEROES! With Bronze Age CREATOR-OWNED COMICS! Featuring histories of Man-Thing, the Demon, and in-depth histories of MATT WAGNER’s the Creeper, Atlas/Seaboard’s horrifying Mage and Grendel. Plus other indie heroes, and Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) sensations of the Bronze Age, including rides again! Featuring the work of CHRIS COLLEEN DORAN’s A Distant Soil, STAN CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, ERNIE SAKAI’s Usagi Yojimbo, STEVE PURCELL’s COLON, MICHAEL GOLDEN, JACK KIRBY, Sam & Max, JAMES DEAN SMITH’s Boris MIKE PLOOG, JAVIER SALTARES, MARK the Bear, and LARRY WELZ’s Cherry TEXIERA, and more. Man-Thing cover by Poptart! With a fabulous Grendel cover by RUDY NEBRES. MATT WAGNER.

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SOLDIERS ISSUE! Sgt. Rock revivals, General Thunderbolt Ross, Beetle Bailey in comics, DC’s Blitzkrieg, War is Hell’s John Kowalski, Atlas’ savage soldiers, The ’Nam, Nth the Ultimate Ninja, and CONWAY and GARCIA-LOPEZ’s Cinder and Ashe. Featuring CLAREMONT, DAVID, DIXON, GOLDEN, HAMA, KUBERT, LOEB, DON LOMAX, DOUG MURRAY, TUCCI, and more. BRIAN BOLLAND cover!

BRONZE AGE TV TIE-INS! TV-to-comic adaptations of the ’70s to ’90s, including Bionic Woman, Dark Shadows, Emergency, H. R. Pufnstuf, Hee Haw, Lost in Space (with BILL MUMY), Primus (with ROBERT BROWN), Sledge Hammer, Superboy, V, and others! Featuring BALD, BATES, CAMPITI, EVANIER, JOHN FRANCIS MOORE, SALICRUP, SAVIUK, SPARLING, STATON, WOLFMAN, and more!

TV TOON TIE-INS! Bronze Age HannaBarbera Comics, Underdog, Mighty Mouse, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Pink Panther, Battle of the Planets, and Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl. Bonus: SCOTT SHAW! digs up Captain Carrot’s roots! Featuring the work of BYRNE, COLON, ENGEL, EVANIER, FIELDS, MICHAEL GALLAGHER, WIN MORTIMER, NORRIS, SEVERIN, SKEATES, STATON, TALLARICO, TOTH, and more!

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Volume 1, Number 131 October 2021 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTISTS Jack Kirby and Mike Royer (originally from The Demon #2, Oct. 1974) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg

SPECIAL THANKS Lee Allred Ed Lute Michael Allred Harry Mendryk Richard Arndt Dan Mishkin Robert Beerbohm John Morrow Stephen R. Bissette Clem Robins Buddy Blank Mike Royer Gary Cohn Bob Rozakis Robert V. Conte Josef Rubinstein Gerry Conway Steve Rude DC Comics Steve Sherman Steve Englehart Ryan Sook Mark Evanier Bryan D. Stroud Dave Gibbons Roy Thomas Grand Comics Rick Veitch Database Tom Veitch Michael Gustovich Matt Wagner Jack C. Harris Mark Waid Karl Heitmueller, Jr. John Wells Heritage Comics Auctions David Anthony Kraft James Heath Lantz Dave Lemieux Paul Levitz

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BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 PRO2PRO ROUNDTABLE: Ye Demon of Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Etrigan rises from Kirby’s imagination and returns in other creators’ hands ROUGH STUFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Demon and Kamandi pencil artwork BEYOND CAPES: Kamandi, the King, and Those Who Followed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Venture to the far-flung future of the Last Boy on Earth BACK IN PRINT: Boy Commandos and Black Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The Simon & Kirby reunion that really wasn’t PRINCE STREET NEWS: Cartoon by Karl Heitmueller, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 A seasonal break from Kirbydom: more superheroes wearing their own Halloween costumes FLASHBACK: The Bronze Age Sandman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 The last hurrah for the Simon & Kirby team FLASHBACK: OMAC: You and What One Man Army Corps? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 This mohawked muscleman and Kirby’s uncanny eye for the future WHAT THE--?!: Kirby’s Odds and Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 The King’s most unconventional comics at DC—were they winners or losers? BACK TALK: Reader Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $90 Economy US, $137 International, $36 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer. The Demon © DC Comics. Other characters © their respective companies. All Rights Reserved. All editorial matter © 2021 TwoMorrows and Michael Eury, except for Prince Street News © 2021 Karl Heitmueller, Jr.. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 1

The Demon by Jack Kirby and Matt Wagner, previously seen as the cover of 2010’s The Jack Kirby Collector #44. The Demon TM & © DC Comics.

PROOFREADER Rob Smentek

by M

ichael Eury

“Why devote an issue to Kirby?” asked a friend, “when your publisher’s Creeper’s stories also demanded more pages. So I pulled the Demon from #124 and rescheduled that article to the current edition, to time flagship title is The Jack Kirby Collector?” its publication with the haunting holiday of Halloween. Fair question. My original idea was for the Demon to anchor a spooky-themed While there may be a few diehards who read all of TwoMorrows’ award-winning periodicals, the magazines’ audiences aren’t edition… but we just did that late last year with “Horrific Heroes.” And we’ve had other mystery-themed, Halloween-published issues in the necessarily the same. past. It was too soon for another. Each of our magazines has its For our cover image I was own voice, its own purview, and its considering Demon illos by other own readership, from Roy Thomas’ artists, all fan-favorites, when I salutes to Golden and Silver Age found in the archives of Heritage comics and creators in Alter Ego Comics Auctions the original art to Jon B. Cooke’s up-close-andby Kirby and Mike Royer to page personal oral histories in Comic 6 of DC’s The Demon #2 (Oct. Book Creator to the celebration 1972), which I realized would of the prodigious talent of the (with minor alterations) make a King of Comics in John Morrow’s dynamite cover. I ran it by publisher aforementioned Kirby Collector. John Morrow to ensure it didn’t BACK ISSUE respects the men and conflict with something in the Kirby women who crafted the comics of Collector, past or present, and got our focus era of the Bronze Age, but his blessings to proceed here in it’s the comic books themselves that BI. (Special thanks go out to cover are the lifeblood of this magazine. colorist Glenn Whitmore for making Each issue we unabashedly flip minor revisions to the original art through the yellowed pages of and for his amazing colors, and to our beloved ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s cover designer Michael Kronenberg spin-rack selections with the same for Demon-izing the BI logo.) wide-eyed gusto we had as kids Then came to mind the when we bought those books “Kirby Legacy at DC” theme, an for 20 cents, or 50 cents, or examination of the second wave of a buck a copy. But we temper material created by Jack during his that enthusiasm with intellectual 1970–1975 DC stint, as a follow-up curiosity, mining the stories behind to our well-received “Fourth World the stories that so captivated us. After Kirby” edition (BI #104). This And since Jack Kirby produced theme really jazzes me as editor, numerous Bronze Age comics—for as it offers BI a chance to explore DC, Marvel, and independents— Bronze Age series like The Demon it’s unfair to both his body of and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth work and to BI’s readers—many (both of which had been touched of whom have never read a Kirby on previously but not covered at Collector (or vice versa)—to steer length), but also as a reader, since clear of Kirby’s comics just because Demon and Kamandi really grabbed of TwoMorrows’ flagship series. me back in the day. Kirby’s multiSo here we are… with, interestingly layered Fourth World epic was enough, BACK ISSUE’s first-ever beyond my ken at the time of its Kirby-drawn cover. It took us 18 publication, but a couple years years and 130 published issues Page 6 of The Demon #2, from which our cover art was repurposed. later, when Jack released the onebefore featuring the King of The Demon TM & © DC Comics. two punch of Demon and Kamandi, Comics as our cover artist! It didn’t start out that way, though. This cover was instead rooted I finally “got” Kirby—and came to appreciate not only his work but those characters, a monster-hero and post-apocalyptic survivor that in real estate. That’s page count real estate. The Demon, our cover star, was have been used time and again by other writers and artists. You’ll originally slated to be one of the “Horrific Heroes” in BI #124, find them here, along with Sandman, OMAC, Kobra, and a few other alongside Man-Thing, the Creeper, Ghost Rider, the Grim Ghost, and goodies, comic books that helped make the Bronze Age sparkle. And so, instead of asking, “Why devote an issue to Kirby?,” a few other gruesome go-getters. But writer Robert V. Conte’s Demon history began to take on a life of its own while Man-Thing’s and I instead ask, “What took us so long?” 2 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

by R o b e r t

V. C o n t e

Rise, the Demon… Etrigan! (inset) Jack Kirby and Mike Royer’s cover to The Demon #1 (Aug.–Sept. 1972). (above) An incredible Royer recreation of the iconic cover, from 2019. Courtesy of the artist. The Demon TM & © DC Comics.

When most comic-book readers hear or see the name “Jack Kirby,” their minds are usually flooded with an array of fantastical images of characters ranging from Marvel’s Black Panther, Captain America, and Devil Dinosaur; to DC Comics’ Kamandi, Mister Miracle, and New Gods; and sometimes various independent works including Captain Victory (Pacific Comics), Destroyer Duck (Eclipse Comics), and—toward the end of his life—a line of “Kirbyverse” titles (Topps Comics). With Kirby’s almost six decades of conceiving, illustrating, and writing comic books for myriad publishers, there is one unique title that, to me, stands out as one of his best—The Demon! Sometime during the summer of 1979, I first came across the Demon Etrigan and his human host, demonologist Jason Blood, inside the pages of The Demon #8, at a local bargain bookstore in Huntington Station, New York, that sold old comics “25-cents each/ 5-for-a-buck!” In those days, hundreds of titles considered valuable today were available cheap by the stacks. It was fun to visit this store weekly and peruse titles that would be unceremoniously dumped inside makeshift, pressboard bins. Before long, I acquired the entire 16issue run of DC’s The Demon—all for the mere price of under $4.00! Readers were first teased about The Demon on the last story page of another Kirby classic from his Fourth World saga—the last issue of DC’s The Forever People #10 (Aug.–Sept. 1972). A headshot of Etrigan—a red-eyed, yellow-skinned grimace with short horns and a cape, in the foreground of smoldering flame—gave a taste of things to come. The entire series, written and drawn by Kirby with inks and letters by Michael Royer from 1972–1974, combined medieval times, the supernatural, and an antihero all into one complete story. Comics readers wishing to enjoy tales outside the traditional superhero genre were enticed to try The Demon, and it certainly did not disappoint. Guided by the wizard Merlin to seek and protect the Eternity Book from the malevolent forces of Morgaine Le Fey and her minions, Etrigan—suppressed inside the human form of Jason Blood—teams with colleagues Harry Matthews, Glenda Mark, and paranormal Randu Singh, forming a metaphysical “fantastic four” whom would face a supernatural rogues’ gallery including a Creature from the Beyond, a Howler, a Witchboy, a Phantom of the Sewers, a Baron von Evilstein, and an Ugly Meg. Blood and company were based in Gotham City, surroundings familiar to comics readers as home to the Darknight Detective, the Batman.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

THE ORIGINAL DEMON RUN

The Men Behind The Demon (top) Forever People #10 teaser of Kirby and Royer’s The Demon. (middle) Mike Royer and Jack Kirby in the 1970s. (lower) Royer at the drawing board, inking a Demon page. Both photos courtesy of Mike Royer. (bottom) Jack Kirby’s appreciation of Hal Foster’s masterpiece Prince Valiant not only provided inspiration for The Demon’s use of Camelot lore, but this sequence from the Dec. 25, 1937 strip inspired Etrigan’s horrific facial features. The Demon TM & © DC Comics. Prince Valiant TM & © King Features Syndicate.

One astounding thing about the 16-issue The Demon series is that its creative team stayed consistent throughout its production. Although Jack Kirby left our mortal realm in February 1994, his longtime colleague, inker, and letterer on the series, Michael Royer, briefly reminisces with BACK ISSUE about their tenure on the character: ROBERT V. CONTE: Any specific memories of your role working on the Demon’s first series? What was your dynamic with Jack Kirby? MIKE ROYER: Nothing specific comes to mind, as it was so many years ago. I do remember that I liked the [Demon] book and character because it was not the usual superhero stuff. It was a nice change of pace. Of course, it was Jack’s usual mastery of dynamics and great visual storytelling and it worked for me. That never changed, no matter what his subject matter happened to be. Our working relationship was no different [on The Demon] than on other titles. On every book I would drive to Jack’s home and we would go over things… quickly, as I remember. Then it was homemade chocolate cake and a glass of milk with Jack and [his wife] Roz at their kitchen dining table, sitting on knocker chairs while we talked about kids and old movies, mostly Warner Bros. There were other books I sent to Jack via the old Post Office Special Delivery service. CONTE: Do you have a particular favorite issue of The Demon that stands out? ROYER: Gawrsh… that’s a good question. I guess each book was my favorite as I lettered and inked them. [I had] to letter, border, and circle balloons on 22 pages in just two days and then ink three pages a day to keep up with Jack. I just reveled in his great work and enjoyed them… and then went on to the next Kirby title. CONTE: Both the Demon Omnibus hardcover and Jack Kirby: The Demon trade paperback are beautifully designed collections of this work for today’s comics readers to enjoy both of your incredible storytelling and exquisite artwork. Pages and panels originally excised from the original comics were added, too. Why do you feel the original Demon series has stood the test of time, remaining in print and online? ROYER: Truthfully, I haven’t given it much thought. There are two camps regarding this color thing but, honestly, I look at all the reprints and just wonder how did I keep up that production pace! [sighs] Of course, I am very proud of my work with Jack. I did not just trace his pencils. I completed his pencils in ink, the way I felt he would have. Steve Sherman, who edited the “Demonology” letters column in the original 16-issue series, comments on Royer’s work on The Demon: “Mike is one of the finest inkers around and a terrific cartoonist in his own right.” Veteran comics historian and retailer Robert Beerbohm (beerbohmrl@gmail.com) has specific memories of Jack Kirby’s excitement about his new character, which he shares with BACK ISSUE: “Back in 1972, during the first El Cortez [Hotel] San Diego Comic-Con, I talked a bit with Jack Kirby about his then-brand-new title, The Demon,” Beerbohm says. “Being a huge Hal Foster fan of both his 1930s Tarzan Sundays run as well as Prince Valiant, I was immediately struck by it as it seemed to pay homage to Foster’s character— dressed up to look almost identical. I asked Jack

4 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

Global Gruesomeness (top left) Kirby’s character’s exploits weren’t limited to his titular US periodical. This issue reprinted (top right) DC’s Demon #5 (Jan. 1973). Cover art by Kirby and Royer. (bottom) Artist Jim Aparo and writer Bob Haney were the first creators outside of Kirby and Royer to tell a Demon tale, teaming Etrigan with Batman in the moody, exquisitely illustrated The Brave and the Bold #109 (Oct.–Nov. 1973). The Demon TM & © DC Comics.

about this. He replied to the affirmative, saying he was a bit over 20 years old when he read Valiant’s adventures in the Sunday newspapers. “Jack talked a bit about how he had done horror ‘black magic’ comics with [former] partner Joe Simon some 20 years earlier, and how that early mid-’50s period in comic-book history had resulted in the collapse of major segments of the industry. And he had reservations about going back into that rabbit hole. “Horror was making a bit of a come back of sorts. Jack was pressured to come up with something inside that genre. Not really wanting to, he was inspired by Prince Valiant being a ‘demon’ but actually ostensibly being a good guy. Or, at least ending up on the side of the forces of good over evil. “This is what I remember from talking with Jack Kirby in summer of 1972 as I dealt with selling out of the 600 copies I had pre-ordered [of The Demon #1] from Omaha News after I had taken some of my copies out to San Diego.” The last issue of The Demon was published with a January 1974 cover date. Although the series did not strand readers with what is known as a “cancellation cliffhanger,” there was still disappointment. Why did Kirby base Jason Blood and Etrigan in Gotham City instead of Metropolis, Coast City, or an all-new location in DC Country? Was a cameo or crossover planned with Batman but unrealized? Batman appeared in Len Wein and Berni[e] Wrightson’s Swamp Thing #7 (Nov.–Dec. 1973), so the Batman/ Demon idea was not far-fetched. Reportedly, Kirby intended to create such a story if The Demon series had continued, but it was not to be. However, the Caped Crusader did team up with Etrigan for the first time inside the pages of The Brave and the Bold (B&B) #109 (Oct.–Nov. 1973). The story, “Gotham Bay, Be My Grave!,” was written by Teen Titans co-creator Bob Haney with art and cover by longtime B&B series illustrator Jim Aparo. The only non-Kirby/Royer story featuring Etrigan published during the original series, this Haney/Aparo tale introduced the Demon to DC’s mainstream readership who did not follow Kirby’s work. This story does confirm the Darknight Detective’s awareness of the occult and of metaphysical exploits within his stomping grounds—at least in the story continuity that, at the time, was considered to be on Earth-One, although as previously explored in this magazine, Haney’s continuity-blindness often relegated his B&B tales to the so-called “Earth-B.” The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

RISE, RISE… FROM LIMBO

For a while, it would seem Etrigan and his magic machinations were at an end. However, it was only a matter of time before the Demon would cross paths once again with the Batman! A few years after The Demon #16, DC would reinvigorate Etrigan and company, sans its creator Jack Kirby, by publishing another Batman/Demon team-up in Brave and the Bold #137 (Oct. 1977). With Bob Haney scripting again on “Hour of the Serpent,” art chores were assigned to penciler John Calnan and inker Bob McLeod, with a cover by penciler Rich Buckler and inker Jim Aparo. (Calnan would later pencil Batman

Crazy Crossovers (top) Batman and the Demon joined forces again in B&B #137 (Oct. 1977). Cover by Rich Buckler and Aparo. (bottom) Artist Keith Giffen (inked by John Celardo) dropped Etrigan (and a few other DC heroes, including Kirby’s Lightray) into this panel in Challengers of the Unknown #87 (June–July 1978). TM & © DC Comics.

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#291–294, now known as part of the Strange Deaths of Batman story arc.) Set in the Chinatown district of Gotham, Batman’s chance encounter with Jason Blood and now-fiancée Glenda Mark results in a confrontation with evil warlock, Shahn-Zi, a villain created by Haney for the Batman/Spectre team-up in B&B #75. Seeing further potential with Etrigan and his cohorts of the occult, DC Comics published “There’s a Demon Born Every Minute,” an all-new adventure, via the anthology series Batman Family #17 (Apr.–May 1978). Featuring key characters from the Caped Crusader’s ensemble including matured versions of Robin, Batgirl, and the Huntress (daughter of the Golden Age Batman and Catwoman from Earth-Two), this 68-page Dollar Comic extended its roster to all Gothamites by teaming Etrigan with none other than Kirk Langstrom— better known as Man-Bat! The story was written by DC’s legendary Answer Man, Bob Rozakis, and illustrated by Michael Golden, who would become popular with other series including Mister Miracle and the groundbreaking The Micronauts for Marvel. Rozakis recalls to BACK ISSUE, “I used [the Demon] only once, but it did result in one of my favorite bits. After meeting up with Man-Bat and Etrigan, a police officer remarks, ‘What ever happened to heroes that look like heroes? Those two are the ugliest suckers I’ve ever seen!’” “There’s a Demon Born Every Minute” is considered by many comics bob rozakis readers to be among the best of the non- © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. Kirby Demon stories. Why didn’t Rozakis continue writing the character? “There were plans to have a Demon series in [Batman Family], so the story was a prequel,” he says. “I don’t recall what happened. I was not hired to write it, so it had no effect on my schedule.” Perhaps adding Etrigan as a member of the Batman “family” may be viewed as a stretch, but he (or rather his human host, Jason Blood) did reside in Gotham City, after all. And so, when Batman Family was cancelled after issue #20, the Demon would rise again inside the pages of DC’s flagship title, Detective Comics. But first, in June–July 1978’s issue of Challengers of the Unknown, #87, Etrigan—in a bizarre one-panel cameo— joins Swamp Thing, Deadman, Rip Hunter, and a slew of other DC superheroes who have travelled to the future and saved the day during the final issue’s climax. When asked why the Demon would be used in such an unusual tale, co-writer and multi-comic scribe Gerry Conway replied: “Wish I could help but I’ve literally nothing to say about the Demon. I don’t remember the character being involved with [that story] at all.” Conway’s comment is understandable, as Etrigan’s appearance may have been a liberty taken by illustrator Keith Giffen, of later Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes fame. Whatever the case may be, this comic is noteworthy in that it marks the first time Swamp Thing and Etrigan appear together. Of course, they will interact again for some of the best stories ever told throughout the 1980s. More on that later! In 1978, as the infamous DC Implosion quaked through the publisher’s line, DC absorbed the cancelled Batman Family and its 68-page, Dollar Comic format into the pages of Detective Comics, starting with #481.

michael golden

Golden Years (top) Artist Michael Golden’s interpretation of Etrigan, in writer Rozakis’ Man-Bat/Demon team-up from Batman Family #17 (Apr.–May 1978). (bottom) Golden, this time with writer Len Wein, gets another shot at the Demon in Detective Comics #482 (Jan.–Feb. 1979). TM & © DC Comics.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 7

A False Start (top) Jim Starlin cover art to Batman Family #21, which was to include the Demon. But the title was cancelled with #20 and absorbed into (bottom) Detective Comics beginning with issue #481— but as the published cover shows, the Demon initially didn’t make the cut. Batman Family #21 cover scan courtesy of John Wells. TM & © DC Comics.

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It worked for 15 consecutive issues and, during that period, Etrigan returned starting with #482 (Feb.–Mar. 1979) in the story “The Eternity Book!,” where Morgaine Le Fey continues to prove herself a worthy adversary in her conquest to defeat Merlin and his entrusted servant. The story was written by Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein. Michael Golden, who returned only as penciler this time, was inked by the legendary Dick Giordano. The next three issues of Detective, ending with #485, featured some of the most interesting Demon stories since the end of Jack Kirby’s original series. The incomparable Steve Ditko, who co-created and illustrated a multitude of iconic comics characters including Dr. Strange, Charlton’s Silver Age Blue Beetle, and the Amazing Spider-Man, brought his own moody, mystical take on Etrigan and his supporting cast. “Return to Castle Baranek,” “Time Has No Secrets,” and “The Fatal Finale!” clearly bring the classic and distinct look of Ditko’s storytelling to life again and mark the return of Baron Tyme, a character that he introduced in 1975’s Man-Bat #1. Paul Levitz, then-editor of Detective Comics and these last Demon tales of the 1970s and later DC Comics president, recalls of the creative team: “[Len] was a good friend, and almost always a pleasure to work with—as long as deadlines didn’t trap him. [Getting Ditko] might have been Len’s idea. [Ditko] wasn’t a recluse, just a private person. A thorough professional and unmatched in his ability to create unreal realities.”

It’s About Tyme! (top left) The Demon as interpreted by Steve Ditko, from the Weinscribed tale in ’Tec #483 (Apr.–May 1979). (bottom left) Writer Gerry Conway brings Etrigan into the pages of Wonder Woman beginning in issue #280 (June 1981). Cover by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano. (top right) From Heritage’s archives, original art to that tale’s final page. Penciled by Jose Delbo and inked by Dave Hunt. TM & © DC Comics.

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THE DEMON RISES IN THE ’80s

Metropolis Marvel Meets Merlin’s Minion Joe Kubert’s extraordinary artwork enlivened Len Wein’s frightening tale of Blackbriar Thorn in the Superman/ Demon team-up in DC Comics Presents #66 (Feb. 1984). TM & © DC Comics.

DC Comics began the 1980s by leveraging the company’s publishing program in new ways, thanks to the emergence of the comic-book store and the expansion of non-returnable, direct-market distribution. Comics including The New Teen Titans, direct-market-only titles like Vigilante, limited mini-and maxiseries like Camelot 3000, and graphic novels adapting Atari’s Star Raiders and Warlords would grow readership and collectors nationwide. The company’s vast roster of companyowned characters was tapped to be used as often as possible. This, of course, included the Demon and all of the supernatural heroes of the DC Universe. Shortly after Etrigan’s six-page origin, “Unleash the One who Waits,” (from Kirby and Royer’s The Demon #1) was reprinted in DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5 (Dec. 1980), plans were made for new Demon stories. Len Wein, who was now editing the monthly Wonder Woman which also featured backup stories featuring the Huntress, and regular Wonder Woman scribe Gerry Conway, guest starred Etrigan alongside the Amazon Princess a three-issue story

arc: “In the Claws of Demons!” (in Wonder Woman #280, June 1981), “The Castle Outside Time!” (#281), and “Return and Redemption” (#282). [Editor’s note: Not long before, Conway had featured another Kirby creation, Kobra, in a three-issue arc in Wonder Woman #276– 278.] Joined by the artistic talents of longtime series penciler José Delbo with inker Dave Hunt, the Wonder Woman/Demon issues mark the return of Klarion the Witchboy, who last appeared in #16 of the original Kirby/Royer series, and Jason Blood’s colleagues, Glenda Mark (apparently no longer engaged!) and Randu. A few years later, Wein was apparently “demon driven” and teamed Etrigan with Superman in DC Comics Presents #66 (Feb. 1984). The team-up’s cover and interiors were illustrated by longtime Hawkman and Sgt. Rock artist Joe Kubert. While a superb take on Kirby’s character and an intriguing tale of sorcery, the next appearances of the Demon, with significant contributions by some of Kubert’s former art students, would elevate the character to a new level of “vertigo”…

SAGA OF A SWAMP THING— AND ANOTHER DAWN OF THE DEMON!

Etrigan would next appear inside the pages of Saga of the Swamp Thing #25’s “The Sleep of Reason…,” #26’s “…A Time of Running…,” #27’s “…By Demons Driven!,” and Swamp Thing Annual #2, all published in 1984, during a transformational era for DC’s Swamp Thing and other offbeat titles from editor Karen Berger as they evolved into what would become the Vertigo imprint. The name Stephen R. Bissette (srbissette.com/myrant/) brings to mind a wealth of work and accomplishments that span over four decades. When I was a teen who

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devoured my copy of Swamp Thing Annual #2, written by a pre-Watchmen/V for Vendetta/The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Alan Moore and illustrated by Bissette and John Totleben, I became an immediate, lifelong fan. Whenever I would see Bissette’s name in print on comics such as 1987’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters or his own published anthology Taboo, I had to have it. Not too long after Bissette published his “dream comic,” S. R. Bissette’s Tyrant®, he gave up freelancing and recently retired from 15 years of teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies that, he says, “is by far the most rewarding and important work I’ve ever had the good fortune to be part of.” I am extremely fortunate (and still a giddy fanboy) to have had the opportunity to interview Mr. Bissette about his take on the Demon. CONTE: Do you have any fond memories of your role illustrating Etrigan the Demon in Saga of the Swamp Thing? STEPHEN R. BISSETTE: My role was instigator, I’m proud to say. When John Totleben and I were first preparing our “audition” drawings to give to [outgoing Swamp Thing artist] Tom Yeates [see BACK ISSUE #92—ed.] to submit to Saga of the Swamp Thing editor Len Wein, I was the one really pushing to include an Etrigan portrait in the full-page pencil portraits John and I cooked up. Among the characters we included in those first rounds of illustrations were Black Jubal (from Len and Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing #10), the Alien (from “The Stalker from Beyond,” Swamp Thing #9), and Etrigan, which John and I jammed on. We gave Etrigan a more feral, feline characteristic, which seemed appropriate. We also pitched an Etrigan story suggestion in our initial batch of concepts to writer Marty Pasko, which John and I fleshed out more and resubmitted once Alan Moore was brought on board, and Alan ran with it. So, fond memories? Yes, indeed! I had bought and really loved The Demon as it was initially published in the early 1970s, and it always seemed to me a natural fit with the Swamp Thing corner of the DC Universe, such as it was back then. Some of the memories are quite personal, since the narrative “pitch” Alan accepted and expanded upon was essentially set in the school for autistic children where my first wife Marlene (then named Nancy) O’Connor worked at that time; she in fact took Alan on a tour of the place the one time he came to visit us in Vermont. With the permission of our friends who also worked there, I drew some of them as characters working with Abby [Arcane] at “Elysium Lawn” (the name based upon the real residential school, Green Meadows School), and stephen bissette one of them (the late Michael Anderson) drew a number of the “kids”/Kamara/Monkey King Facebook. sketches incorporated into the artwork. Rick Veitch’s firstborn son, Ezra Veitch, also drew some of that art and, in both cases, I paid Ezra and Michael for their part of those pages. CONTE: How did it come to be that Etrigan would appear with Swamp Thing and other supernatural characters in the DC Universe? BISSETTE: Well, I could say it was “our” idea, meaning John and myself and Alan, but I think it was a given before we were even on board. My own push to incorporate Etrigan into the Swamp Thing series for our tenure was pretty intense—it was my notion from the get-go to have Jack Kirby’s Kamara be the catalyst, that the little “fear monster” from The Demon #4 running loose and Etrigan having to be folded into the story to deal with the creature—but it seemed to me Len was always into DC continuity, and it seemed a natural fit to expand upon that further. Remember that Alan’s first narrative arc for SOTST involved the Floronic Man, a.k.a. [Silver Age Atom foe] Jason Woodrue, so the seeds were already planted (pun intended). That said, we did go through a dance early on involving the Justice League’s guest appearance: I was against bringing the superheroes into what I saw as the only horror comic book on

Rhymin’ Simon (top) A horrific Etrigan speaks in verse, courtesy of Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, and John Totleben, from Saga of the Swamp Thing #26 (Aug. 1984). (bottom) The Demon crashes the cover of the next issue. TM & © DC Comics.

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The Fabric of Time Original Bissette/ Totleben artwork to page 37 of Saga of the Swamp Thing Annual #2 (1985), guest-starring the Demon. Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

the newsstands still standing (Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s Night Force was about to fold, as I recall), and expressed my disdain. This led to a charade wherein it was pretended that Len had insisted Alan bring the JLA into the narrative, which was, of course, nonsense. Alan was aching to work with the DC superheroes. So, anyway, it was all part of the baggage, really. Once we got into it, with the Phantom Stranger, Deadman, the Spectre, and so on, that was that. I recall John and I having quite a laugh about how none of the DC supernatural characters had eyeballs, like Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, and many (Etrigan, Deadman, the Spectre) wore pointy-toed soft “booties,” and there were other aesthetic concerns. How do you make a character like Etrigan, who is the color of a Stop sign and a Yield road sign, genuinely frightening? We gave it our all. CONTE: What was it like to take a character created by fellow iconic comics creator Jack Kirby and interpret it into your own version? BISSETTE: In hindsight, it was awfully ballsy of us, especially given how badly DC had treated Jack Kirby.

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It was one thing to be doing Swamp Thing—after all, its co-creator, Len Wein, was our editor, our boss, right? But as a devoted fan of the Fourth World and all of Jack’s DC creations, I knew he’d been ill-treated, and there were some intense back-and-forths and misgivings over the wish to do our own take on the Demon, which we ultimately just poured everything we had into. I remember expressing some misgivings and Len telling me Jack was coming back to DC, which really materialized a year later (1984–1985), and we knew Len had scripted that Demon story Joe Kubert had done the art for, the one that introduced Etrigan speaking exclusively in verse. It’s more than a little ironic, given Alan’s upset over DC’s treatment of his creations since, how cavalier some of the back-and-forth we had at the time concerning the ethics of drawing Jack’s creations really was. Len was absolutely straightforward about how all the DC characters were DC’s property, and how we had to accept that anything we did would likewise be DC’s property, so we made our peace with work-for-hire as best we could individually. I still have reservations, but from the get-go, once John and I were hired by Len to take on the art duties on the book, we just rolled up our sleeves and gave it everything we had to give, creatively. So, what was it like? Once we began that first page Jason Blood appeared in, it was pretty intoxicating. I think the love and energy is still on the pages for all to see and respond to. I have to say, after finishing that third and final issue of the three-issue arc, I was wishing we were just doing a Demon comic. I mean, at that time, all three of us were pretty psyched by what we felt we’d managed to accomplish, and were burning to do more with Jack’s Demon characters and concepts. When the s*** hit the fan over losing the Comics Code seal of approval with SOTST #29 [over “objectionable” material—RVC] and Karen Berger was calling me that very week to “tone down” the pencils for “Down Amongst the Dead Men” (Swamp Thing Annual #2), John, Alan, and I conferred via the telephone and let Karen know we’d prefer to keep working as a team on something else, leave Swamp Thing if the Code was going to be a make-orbreak concern, and we pitched the idea of our working together on a miniseries of the Demon instead. I recently found in the back of one of my sketchbooks my notes about that phone conversation: it was June 10, 1984, and I’ve [shared] a photo of it for you (see inset).

That all got shot down pretty quickly. No, they screenplay for Night of the Hunter (1955; which, it didn’t want us leaving the book (sales were picking turns out, was more of an Agee/Charles Laughton up); no, we couldn’t do anything with the Demon, screenplay, in collaboration with the source novelist someone else had “dibs” (Matt Wagner, it turned out); Davis Grubb), suggesting it might fit into what we were doing, and Alan embraced that and ran with no, we didn’t have to worry about the Code any it, completely. The previous story arc, the longer. Fact is, they didn’t want us to do anything Floronic Man, was pretty much Alan’s except get back to work. Like, immediately. baby, but the three-part Demon arc But that’s how much we loved working was our baby, and Alan really made with Jack’s Etrigan. John and I part of the process in a CONTE: What is one key recollection far more inviting, organic synthesis of working with Alan Moore relative to of our total involvement than any the Demon? mainstream comics experience I’d BISSETTE: How completely Alan acever had before, and rarely came cepted our story proposal for the Demon/ close to again, and it all started really Kamara/school for autistic children with the Etrigan/Kamara story. narrative, and how completely he both CONTE: What is one key recollecfulfilled and exceeded our wildest tion of working with John Totleben? hopes and dreams and schemes about BISSETTE: Oh, God, too many what it could become. He was just rick veitch to condense, really, Robert! John incredible to work with, full stop. and I got to know each other Having worked with many other Facebook. writers before our working with Alan, it had been rare at the Kubert School back in the fall of 1977, and to enjoy that kind of creative chemistry with anyone. became fast friends. While I’d bonded and worked Rick Veitch and I had it when we worked togeth- with Rick Veitch earlier—Rick and I met in the fall of er—our “Creative Burnouts” comics creations— 1976, at Kubert School, and began working together and I had something like it when I worked with (the pretty steadily from about 1977 until I left Swamp late) Stephen Perry on our comics collaborations, but Thing about a decade after that—John and I really Alan took it to an entirely different level. He always had something going with the whole me penciling/ did. And he’d constantly respond to, incorporate, John inking thing on Swamp Thing. It was our work, and shape even the most ephemeral of notions: I and our roles were defined and somewhat regulated sent Alan that James Agee quote from the published (by our editors, Len and Karen Berger), but we kept

“…By Demons Driven!” Kids and creatures alike are startled on this doublepage spread from Saga of the Swamp Thing #27. TM & © DC Comics.

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Rooftop Ruminations The Demon and the Phantom Stranger, strange bedfellows. Page 1 of Swamp Thing #76 (Sept. 1988), written and penciled by Rick Veitch, with inks by Alfredo Alcala. TM & © DC Comics.

it primal and pure for most of our run on the title, despite the nonstop deadlines woes and headaches and clusterf***s and everything life and DC threw at us individually. We had a real thing going there, creatively. We’d talk on the phone about the pages, and I always did the pencils knowing what or where John wanted to do with ’em, and John always got ’em knowing he had my complete confidence and faith in his running with ’em in whatever direction he wanted to take ’em. It was pretty amazing, really, so no, no “one key recollection”… I could mention how amazing it was to see John ink the precious few times we got together to work on pages, and yes, that was a real high, but it was all such an intense and heady run. I guess my strongest single recollection, sadly, is what John said on the phone the very day we both felt it was going astray, when it had stopped being pleasurable for us, and we both knew our days were numbered on the book. John said, and I quote (pretty accurately), “We put the f***ing car on the road and now DC wants us in the backseat. F*** that.” It’s indicative

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of how closely we felt and fueled the creative relationship that we both had arrived at the same point, the same day, and how succinctly and clearly John summed up the same thing I was feeling. CONTE: What can you tell me about working with Karen Berger? BISSETTE: Karen was one of the four best editors I’ve ever had the privilege to work for/with. They are, in order of working relations, Joe Kubert (my mentor), Archie Goodwin, Karen Berger, and most recently, Chris Duffy. That stated, I wasn’t surprised that Karen never chose to work with me ever again, because I drove her nuts. My loss, I know. You’ll note I never did anything for Vertigo, with the sole exception of that one “Jack-in-the-Green” ten-pager Neil Gaiman asked John and I specifically to do (I won’t get into that experience here). I’ve gone into all this in some detail elsewhere, but I was a constant headache for Karen. I have a tough time with deadlines in the best of times, and here we were: our newborn daughter born at home in April 1983, our son born at home in December 1985, their mom working fulltime weekdays at a school for autistic children, me trying to pencil a monthly comic book for Karen. Anyone who has ever had kids can imagine what this was like, and I’m not the “Hey, I’ll be in my studio for eight hours a day and good luck” kind of husband or father. I was taking care of our kids alone at home weekdays, working on the pencils every free minute, nap times, and especially late nights/early mornings that whole time. Furthermore, all that allowed me to afford working for DC at the low page rates we were paid on Swamp Thing (the lowest DC paid at the time) was the money I earned every other week or so at conventions or comic shop appearances John and I were invited to. So, it took me five weeks to pencil the monthly issues: you do the math. But when it came down to it, Karen always got my best work out of me, without fail. And that work has lasted, so there it is. Once Karen really did my family a great thing, a great thing—something that had to have put her job on the line. When I called to express my profound gratitude, Karen reminded me, “Steve, I’m sort of like your paid friend, like I’m paid to be your friend.” I knew what she meant, and that professional distance was very real, but Karen was tops in my book. Look, after Joe Kubert’s funeral—Joe was like a second father to Rick Veitch and I—Karen made a point of making sure Paul Levitz, Rick and his wife Cindy, and I went off to a local New Jersey diner and broke bread together. Nobody else on Earth could have done that. Karen did. Nobody paid her to do that. That’s my fondest recollection of what little time I’ve had in this world with Karen. CONTE: What project(s) are you most proud of during your comics career? BISSETTE: In comics, I’m proudest of the collaborative work we all did together on Saga of the Swamp Thing up through the werewolf issue [#40, Sept. 1985], and by “all” I mean myself, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, Marty Pasko, Alan Moore, our editors Len Wein and Karen Berger, letterer John Constanza, colorist Tatjana Wood (whose work is sadly now removed from the canon with the Absolute editions), and the other artists we got to work with, including Alfredo Alcala, Ron Randall, Stan Woch, Shawn McManus, Tom Mandrake, and, of course, Tom Yeates. (After that, I’d emotionally checked out, sorry to say.)

Another respected creator whose unique approach to Swamp Thing’s canon is Rick Veitch (www.rickveitch.com). His written and illustrative talents include Marvel’s Epic Illustrated, the cult classic Two-Fisted Zombies, and the fan-favorite The Maximortal. Veitch started as a guest-penciler on Swamp Thing #31 and 37 (the latter introduced another famed DC supernatural character, Hellblazer John Constantine, making it the most valuable issue of the entire series to collectors), and by #65 (Oct. 1987) was the primary creator on the title until his departure after #87 (July 1989). He recalls the Demon’s appearances throughout his tenure on the series: CONTE: How did it come to be that Etrigan would appear with Swamp Thing and other supernatural characters in the DC Universe? RICK VEITCH: It was Alan, Steve, and John’s run of Swamp Thing. They were keen on giving Etrigan a real horror edge. I think it was Alan who made him a rhyming demon, which I thought was cool because it gave him a distinctive dialogue style. I think Steve had a good handle on penciling his Demon issues, so I wasn’t involved. I might have done a background or two. I do remember how juiced he was to do Etrigan. CONTE: Why did you decide to return Etrigan to the Swamp Thing storyline during your tenure as writer on the series? [Swamp Thing #76, Sept. 1986.] VEITCH: I brought him into my Time Travel storyline. Swampy was falling backwards through time and kept running into the Demon along the way. I wasn’t as gung-ho on the Demon as Alan, Steve, and John were. To me, he was another DC character who had a long fictional history that I could play through many different ages.

CONTE: What was it like to take a character created by iconic creator Jack Kirby and interpret it into your own version? VEITCH: While I always liked The Demon, it wasn’t one of my favorites. I had been a huge fan of Jack’s Fourth World. So when that was cancelled, his new titles, while still interesting and visually incredible, seemed like he was toning down the depth, complexity, and intensity of his storytelling. CONTE: How was working with series editor Karen Berger? VEITCH: She was a breath of fresh air up at DC— the antithesis of the old-school, hidebound thinking that had been going on up there for so long. She not only made the trains run on time but engaged in the creative process in a very open and intelligent way, allowing all of us to do our very best work. CONTE: Is there anything you wish you could have contributed to the Demon’s canon that did not happen? VEITCH: Well, it would have been nice if they’d published Swamp Thing #88, in which we revealed how the Demon was born on Earth… [Author’s note: Veitch is referring to his abrupt departure from the series after his story intended for Swamp Thing #88 (Sept. 1989) was pulled at the last minute, reportedly by then-DC Comics publisher Jenette Kahn, because of Swamp Thing’s meeting and interactions with Jesus Christ. Although Veitch vowed to never work for DC Comics again, he eventually did freelance for the company. However, the original story for Swamp Thing #88 remains unpublished, leading one to only wonder how Etrigan the Demon’s birth would have paralleled with that of Christianity’s Son of God.]

The Infamous Issue (left) Rick Veitch’s intended cover for Swamp Thing #88 (Sept. 1989), which would have involved both Etrigan and Jesus Christ. DC pulled the plug on this controversial story and art and the creator took his talents elsewhere. (right) A 1989 convention sketch of the Demon by Veitch. Courtesy of Heritage. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

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Two Takes (top) Jason Blood and the Demon, illo’ed in a Kirby-esque style by Alan Kupperberg (with Gary Martin inks), in Blue Devil #12 (May 1985). (bottom) Artist Paris Cullins (inked by Martin) had a more playful interpretation of Etrigan when the Demon popped into 1985’s Blue Devil Annual #1. TM & © DC Comics.

A (BLUE) DEVIL OF A TIME

In between the Alan Moore and Rick Veitch storylines in Saga of the Swamp Thing (which was retitled Swamp Thing with issue #39), Etrigan would appear in three issues of a somewhat unlikely, humorous superhero series named Blue Devil, co-written by Gary Cohn and Dan Mishkin and initially drawn by Paris Cullins. [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #21 and 77 for more about Blue Devil, as well as our last issue for a look at Blue Devil’s 16-page preview comic.] The writing duo return to BACK ISSUE to discuss why the Demon was brought into the Blue Devil for issues #12, 13, and Blue Devil Summer Fun Annual #1, all published in 1985: CONTE: Understanding how Moore, Bissette, and Totleben made Etrigan a brooding, suspenseful character in Saga of the Swamp Thing, why on Earth (or elsewhere) did the idea come from to bring him into the satirical pages of Blue Devil? GARY COHN: Just because [Etrigan] was great fun to write. We played around with the rhymes for silliness, and we found the silliness in the character. Silliness was a big part of Blue Devil’s appeal… as long as it was balanced with real, exciting action and characterization. DAN MISHKIN: I remember having a lot of fun with the rhymes—especially when we did the Summer Fun Annual—and being pretty persnickety about making sure all of Etrigan’s lines scanned properly. I’d seen all too many writers giving him poetic lines but not maintaining meter, and found it annoying. Switching around to different meters, like giving him a limerick in the Annual—which I’m sure was Gary’s work—was also entertaining. As was giving him a couple of very serious-sounding narration captions that ended with his saying “Hi” in a word balloon to Blue Devil and the other heroes. It’s always fun to upset readers’ expectations. CONTE: Please tell the story of Etrigan’s involvement in those three issues where he appeared. COHN: He was a natural for Blue Devil #12– 13, because BD’s trident was possessed by a dan mishkin demonic entity. Etrigan is drawn to such things… and when BD and Etrigan came to © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. blows, that established for us a sense that they just didn’t like each other in the way that the Thing and the Hulk don’t like each other. When we knew we were going to do the Annual and Paris Cullins was drawing it, and that we were going to make light of a bunch of the serious “supernatural” characters, of course Etrigan needed to be part of that mix. MISHKIN: We were running through as much of the DC Universe as we could, wanting to firmly plant BD there and play with as many of the available toys as we could. And because of Blue Devil’s origin, it made sense to put him up against magical characters now and then. CONTE: While writing Etrigan into these stories, did either of you think if Jack Kirby would have approved of this version of his character? COHN: Dan and I had done that before. Our first regular assignment was doing an OMAC backup series in Warlord [covered elsewhere in this issue—ed.]. In our youthful hubris, we thought we were improving OMAC by making it “make sense.” Of course, “making sense” was never something that particularly interested Kirby, but we couldn’t do what he could do. With Etrigan, we saw some potential for humor in his grimness, and that’s what we ran with. MISHKIN: I don’t think I’d call it our own version. It was just a borrowing to suit our storytelling purposes and meant to be something future writers could feel free to ignore. OMAC, when he appeared as a backup in Warlord, probably wasn’t our own version either, as we tried to be faithful to the original. 16 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

For the most part, when I’m given the task of writing an iconic character (or a licensed property), my goal is to let the property speak through me to the current moment rather than to impose anything like, “Here’s how I would have done this character if it was totally up to me.” So, for example, my run on Wonder Woman [see BI #90—ed.] was different from others in that it incorporated ideas of men’s and women’s equality that were gaining currency then. CONTE: What do you recall of collaborating with artists Paris Cullins and/or the late Alan Kupperberg, relative to the Demon? COHN: Alan Kupperberg always did a workmanlike job, and he had a nice touch for humor. But Paris’ great talent was his ability to combine exuberant action with charmingly funny characterizations. What stands out for me about his Etrigan in the Annual are the Demon’s facial expressions. With Alan K., there was very little actual collaboration after he and I had lunch together when he took the assignment. We delivered the plot to the editor, who gave it to Alan K., who handed back his finished pencils. In contrast, Paris and I have always been partners and collaborators in whatever we’ve done together, talking it over, laughing, and coming up with funny stuff. MISHKIN: I think the Demon issues were the first ones Alan K. did, and my sense is that they were some of his best work on the book. (I don’t mean to knock his later work; I think our stories became uneven for a while.) Working with Paris again when we did the Annual was great! He had a wonderful ability to make Etrigan both scary and a figure of fun. CONTE: Speaking of Alans, how was working with the Blue Devil series editor, Alan Gold? COHN: Alan Gold was always a great guy to work for. He was very professional, he had some good ideas and input, he asked the kinds of questions that made us think harder about out stories. MISHKIN: Alan was terrific, and is still a friend. He always had our backs… including on the poetry stuff I mentioned before, making sure that we were meeting those standards. CONTE: Is there anything you wish you could have contributed to the Demon’s canon that did not happen in Blue Devil? COHN: Nope. MISHKIN: Absolutely not. We were just borrowing the character for our purposes and not trying to stamp him with our particular take. Shortly after Etrigan’s guest appearances in Blue Devil, DC Comics acknowledged the Demon in Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #6 (Aug. 1985), where, for the first time since 1974’s The Demon #16, creator Jack Kirby returned to pencil this full-page entry, inked by Terry Austin. From 1985–1986, DC Comics published Crisis on Infinite Earths, a 12-issue maxiseries that not only celebrated the 50th anniversary of the company but also created the platform by which all previous versions of its characters across the Multiverse were reinvented into one, all-new continuity. Written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Pérez, the same creative team that brought The New Teen Titans to new heights in storytelling and sales, Etrigan appeared in the last two issues (with various other supernatural characters including Amethyst, Dr. Fate, and the Spectre), signaling a rebirth for the Demon in the near future…

Creepy Crawlies (top) The Demon joined other supernatural guest stars for 1985’s Blue Devil Annual. Original Cullins/Martin cover art courtesy of Heritage. (inset) The published version. (bottom) Blue Devil artist Paris Cullins and co-creator/ co-writer Gary Cohn, in the 1980s and recently. TM & © DC Comics.

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WHAT HAS MATT WAGNER DONE TO THE DEMON?

From Mage to Etrigan An interior splash and the cover from Matt Wagner’s Demon #1 (Jan. 1987), with inks by Art Nichols. TM & © DC Comics.

CONTE: What were the circumstances that provided you the opportunity to jump from independent publishing Following a brief appearance in History of the DC to creating your own Demon miniseries? Universe #1, by the Crisis team of Wolfman and George MATT WAGNER: Ha! I was a guest of a con in Atlanta Pérez, Etrigan’s first post-Crisis story was The Demon— back in 1983 or 1984 (might’ve been the Atlanta Fantasy a four-issue miniseries written and penciled by one of Fair… can’t quite remember), but these were in the the most prolific creators to come from the independent days when the con took all the guests (because there comics publishing circle—Matt Wagner. Known for his were so few of us) out to dinner. I ended up getting ever-popular creations Grendel and Mage [explored seated next to at-the-time DC Comics editor-in-chief at length in BACK ISSUE #125—ed.] and later for his Dick Giordano. Dick had a sharp awareness of what was being done on the indie comics scene and masterful takes on Batman that have since been he liked my Mage series. We bonded over collected in a Legends of the Dark Knight dinner… and got a bit buzzed together… hardcover volume, his miniseries was and he invited me up to New York City to promoted in a late-1986 DC house ad give him a pitch for some sort of project featuring the artist/writer’s take on for DC. I originally brought him an idea the character, bolstered by a graphic for a new Bat-Girl (not a series… a new reading, “What Has Matt Wagner character as Bat-Girl, which was daring Done to the Demon?” at the time), but it turned out DC had Wagner kindly returns to BI’s just given Alan Moore clearance to pages to offer anecdotes on his tenure cripple Barbara Gordon in the pages of with Etrigan: Batman: The Killing Joke. Dick asked me if there was any other DC character I’d like to take a shot at… and I said, “Yeah… THE DEMON!” matt wagner CONTE: At that point had you read Facebook. Kirby and Royer’s original 16-issue Demon run and/or the character’s later appearances in various comics pre-Crisis as inspiration for your series? WAGNER: I’d been a big fan of the original series. I was just the right age so that my first exposure to Kirby’s work was mainly through his crucial years at DC in the ’70s, specifically The Demon, OMAC, and the various Fourth World series. The Fourth World stuff confused the hell out of me because I was a bit too young and it was all interconnected and I didn’t have regular access to comics at that point. As a result, the more singularissue nature of the Demon stories appealed to me.

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An Artist Possessed (top four) The Demon is a popular subject for Wagner’s commissions and sketches. Images courtesy of Matt Wagner. (bottom) Several years after his Demon miniseries, Matt Wagner returned to the character to write and illustrate issue #22 (Apr. 1992) of DC’s rebooted Demon title. TM & © DC Comics.

I even did an acrylic painting recreation of the cover to issue #1 when I was in either 7th or 8th grade. CONTE: When you were assigned to write and draw the Demon miniseries, what was your process in adapting the character into your own version? Were any specific constraints placed upon you by editorial, or did you have the freedom to explore the character as you saw fit? WAGNER: In addition to the original Kirby material, I was also inspired by two other incarnations of the character. Michael Golden had drawn two very atmospheric short stories featuring Etrigan… His interpretation had a smoother, more elegant approach than Kirby’s more bombastic version. And then, of course, Alan Moore’s memorable turn with the character in the pages of Swamp Thing provided the critical element of having Etrigan speaking in rhyme. So far as I remember, there were no restraints on what I was allowed to do with the character at the time. DC was looking to open its characters and stories to new voices and new visions and I was lucky enough to be there at just the right time. CONTE: As I recall, there were a few editors on this series including Len Wein, Denny O’Neil, and Barbara Randall [Kesel]. Why did editorial duties change, and how was it to work with their individual styles? WAGNER: Jeez… I don’t even remember it going through both Denny and Barb Randall. Len was the original editor and the series had just gotten assigned to him, which is how things tended to roll in those days. Len was old-school and made it clear to me from the very beginning that he didn’t really like the changes to the character that I was enacting but the series had been green-lit and there really wasn’t much he could do about it. I was a young indie creator and totally inexperienced with the corporate way of doing things so I made a lot of mistakes early on. Len and I just weren’t a good fit, which is why the project moved on to other editors. Additionally, the entire production was messy from the start; the first issue was completely re-inked three times. I’d originally pitched the series with Rich Rankin—who inked me on the original Grendel storyline, Devil by the Deed— as the series inker. For whatever reason I can’t quite remember now, Giordano didn’t like Rich’s inks so, unbeknownst to me, he had Alfredo Alcala re-ink the entire issue. Again, I was a young creator and pretty put off by how heavy-handed Alfredo’s style was over top of mine (although, in retrospect… I now think it looked pretty good). In the end, we had to move ahead and ended up with Art Nichols as the series inker… a timely compromise. There were a few things I wish I’d done differently, had I known better but, like I said, I was a greenhorn. CONTE: As I recall, the series ended with the door clearly open for more stories from you. WAGNER: Yeah… the series was left open for a sequel, but I never really got around to it. Like I said, there was a lot of missteps from on both my and DC’s parts on this project. They didn’t know how to handle me and I didn’t know how to operate within their company protocols. That didn’t lead either of us to exactly leap into further projects together. Still… I must say I was disappointed when the big change I effected in this series—separating Etrigan from his possession/symbiosis with Jason Blood—was pretty much immediately undone in the next appearance of the character, 1988’s Cosmic Odyssey. CONTE: Would you ever return to write and illustrate new Etrigan stories if asked? The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 19

Disenchanted Writer/artist John Byrne (inked by Giordano) pitted Etrigan against Superman in Action Comics #587 (Apr. 1987). In 2005, Byrne would return to Kirby’s character with DC’s Blood of the Demon series, which ran 17 issues. TM & © DC Comics.

WAGNER: In fact, I did return to write and draw a single issue of the ongoing series—The Demon [vol. 3] #22 (Apr. 1992). The issue was offered to me by editor Dan Raspler, and I took the opportunity as a way of purging myself of the bad experiences I’d had on the original miniseries. As a result, I went 180º in the other direction, narratively. Whereas my miniseries was dark and had an oppressive, ominous tone throughout, this issue was more of a supernatural romp. It was a fun single-issue tale and I thought it pretty much wrapped up any interest I had in doing anything more with the character. Which didn’t, in fact, turn out to be the case as I included both the Demon’s origins and a gruesome tie-in between Jason Blood and Jack the Ripper in the ongoing Madame Xanadu series I later wrote for Vertigo [in the 2000s]. [Editor’s note: For a further exploration of Wagner’s Demon miniseries, see BACK ISSUE #15.]

THE POST-CRISIS DEMON

The post-Crisis Demon was fully integrated into the mainstream DC Universe when he (and his counterpart from another time), appeared in the tale “Cityscape” in Action Comics #587 (Apr. 1987), written and drawn by recent Marvel expatriate and then-current Superman re-launcher John Byrne, with inks by Dick Giordano. With the new, single-universe continuity, neither Superman nor Etrigan had any memory of meeting before as they first did in DC Comics Presents #66. Readers noted that Jason Blood was inexplicably stockier than he had been in previous stories. Perhaps this was Byrne’s intention to differentiate a “new” Blood from his former incarnation. Next came the prestige-format miniseries Cosmic Odyssey [see BI #9], written by The Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel creator Jim Starlin

Permission Granted In 1989, writer Alan Grant became the Demon scribe with the Demon serial that began (bottom left) in Action Comics Weekly #636 (Jan. 24, 1989). Art by Mark Pacella and Bill Wray. (bottom right) Etrigan gets a kick out his Bat-encounter in the Grant-scripted Detective Comics #603 (Aug. 1989). Art by Norm Breyfogle and Steve Mitchell. TM & © DC Comics.

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and illustrated by future Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, The Demon. I figured I would drop The Demon, which with inks by Carlos Garzon. Captured by Darkseid, has always been a hard comic to write…” Referring to the now-popular expectation that Etrigan Etrigan did indeed re-bond to demonologist Jason Blood—a necessary element in the story to prevent the would almost always speak in rhyme, Grant continued, “I find it a challenge, and I only wish my ability Anti-life Equation from destroying the universe. Amid some scattershot appearances in the late ’80s with verse was better because I do look back to (The Spectre #23, Sandman #4, more Swamp Thing some of the verse by Alan Moore and Matt Wagner, and I think that mine is light in comparison. pop-ins), Etrigan would return to Action Comics Mind you, at the same time I read one of [then a weekly comic; see BI #98] starting theirs and by the time I’ve read four with #636 (Jan. 24, 1989), “The Book pages of really fat word balloons, I’m of Pandemonium/And Etrigan Waits,” glad to get back to my three lines with written by Alan Grant, penciled by a quick laugh on the punchline.” Mark Pacella, and inked by Bill Wray, for a serial of six seven-page stories. Throughout the 1990s to date, the The Action Comics Weekly Demon Demon has benefitted from his everserial realized new adventures for increasing popularity as a mainstream Jason Blood, Glenda, Mark, and Randu, character in the DC Universe not only in and ignited the talent of Grant who, comics, but in various animation in the 1990s, would write 42 Etrigan and video games. Perhaps a liveadventures—more than any other action film or series may be in scribe since the character’s inception! alan grant Etrigan’s future. For now, only Merlin Readers would be in for a treat Facebook. can accurately predict if that shall when the King of Comics himself, Jack Kirby, graced the cover of Action Comics Weekly come to pass. For a character perceived as insignificant after the #638 with the Demon, again inked by Terry Austin. This, sadly, would be the last time Kirby’s rendition of cancellation of his first series in the 1970s, the Demon is Etrigan would be published before his passing in 1994. now permanently cemented in the stone of pop-culture Action Comics Weekly #641 would be the last issue to history. Oh, if only Jack Kirby would have lived to see include the Demon, but Etrigan would not rest for long— his creation climb all of those Philosopher Stones… LONG LIVE THE DEMON ETRIGAN! The Demon vol.1 #1 would debut in 1990, written by Alan Grant with art by Val Semeikis and Denis Rodier, and would last 58 issues. With few exceptions, Grant consis- Special thanks to editor Michael Eury for his incomparable patience tently wrote 34 stories (one co-written with Keith Giffen) while I recently dealt with my own “demon,” Nancy MacDonald for and was later replaced by Garth Ennis. Other writers her faith, and these late, great masters of the macabre whose work I adore and had the fortune to meet before they left us way too soon: during the run included Dwayne McDuffie and Kevin Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson, Gene Colan, Dick Giordano, Herb Trimpe, Altieri. Grant, then-scribe of Detective Comics, also brought Norm Breyfogle, Dwayne McDuffie, and, of course, Jack Kirby! Etrigan into another Batman encounter in ’Tec #603 (Aug. 1989), illustrated by Norm Breyfogle and Steve Mitchell. ROBERT V. CONTE (www.studiochikara.com) is a pop-culture Churning out an incredible amount of high-quality historian and consultant who was first introduced to horror work did have a price. As Grant recalled, in part, in a July comics via Charlton Comics’ Monster Hunters #2 in 1977. 1992 Amazing Heroes interview: “My doctor said that I From there, his comic-book collection grew exponentially with the likes of Ghosts, Tales of the Unexpected, House of had to cut down my workload by 50%. I was writing Mystery, Swamp Thing, Archie’s Madhouse, Man-Thing, four monthly titles, and probably the easiest two to write Tomb of Dracula, and dozens more macabre titles. Robert were L.E.G.I.O.N. and Lobo, and the hardest Batman and plans to write his first horror screenplay in the near future!

Rise, Rise, a Kirby Cover (left) Jack Kirby (inked by Terry Austin) penciled the Demon cover for Action Comics Weekly #638. (middle) Kirby at home in 1988, with his cover pencils for the issue. Photo by and courtesy of Glenn B. Fleming, via Robert V. Conte. (right) The Demon #1 (July 1990). Cover by interior artists Val Semeiks and Denis Rodier. Action Comics and The Demon TM & © DC Comics.

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MY ENCOUNTER WITH A COMICS MASTER—JACK KIRBY!

by Robert V. Conte

It’s hard to believe that Jack Kirby, the man who helped place hundreds of superheroes and villains into our collective consciousness, left us almost 30 years ago. His creations, co-creations, and collaborative works on an abundance of comics characters, for more than five decades, have endured and will continue to survive ad infinitum. Imagine meeting and engaging with such a person as Jack? Well, it happened to me, and not in the usual places like a comic-book convention, a book signing, or some other gathering where fans meet their favorite, famed celebrities. For me, it happened in the most unlikely of places—a post office! During part of 1993–1994, I was editor of Rock-it Comix, a short-lived, magazine-sized comics series based on music artists who authorized their adventures. This imprint was published by Malibu Comics Entertainment, located then in Westlake Village, California. I had moved there from Manhattan, New York City, having never lived that far from home before. One Saturday morning in late November 1993, I rode my bicycle from the apartment complex I lived in on Hampshire Road to the Thousand Oaks post office. Inside my shoulder bag was a bundle of greeting cards for family and friends on the East Coast that I would miss over the holiday season. While standing in line, I happened to glance at a couple standing behind me—it was none other than Jack Kirby and his wife, Roz! This was one of those moments where I had to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. I turned my head again and indeed it was Jack and Roz, the former holding a lone, manila envelope. Then I heard the words, “Sir, you’re next!” from a postal clerk. I politely asked Jack, “May I mail that letter for you, Sir?” Surprised, he replied, “Oh, really? And why would you want to do that?” “I have been a fan of yours forever,” I replied. “Especially the Merry Marvel cartoons when they aired in the 1970s.” A little suspicious, Jack lifted his arm to hand me his single letter. “Okay, but how did you recognize me?” “Oh, a few months ago I saw you on that new Bob Newhart show, but I’ve seen your picture over the years, too.” [Editor’s note: Kirby, Bob Kane, and other comics creators appeared on an early 1993 episode of Bob, Newhart’s third sitcom, where he portrayed a comic-book creator of a faux character, Mad Dog.] “Nice. Okay, kid, you may mail my letter!” Kirby chuckled as Roz slightly jabbed him with her elbow. “At least offer to pay for your own stamp, Mr. Big Shot,” Roz mused with a smile. As my greeting cards were checked to ensure I added enough postage on them, the three of us officially introduced ourselves and chit-chatted about moving from New York to live in “Sunny California.” While paying for Jack’s letter, Roz offered to cover the cost. I refused. As we walked out of the post office together, Jack asked me what were my favorite Marvel characters: “Captain America, Hulk, and Iron Man,” I answered. “My birthday is July 4, so Cap was always special to me. I saw the serial on 8mm and still can’t believe he used a gun instead of a shield!” I laughed. Jack turned to Roz and smiled, then asked me what my afternoon was like. I replied that I usually relax on Saturdays but had a date that evening.

“Well, that’s good for you!” Jack said. “Are you hungry? Know where Coco’s Bakery is in the shopping center?” “Um, yes…?” “Come join us for some chow. We’ll there in 30 minutes.” I was in disbelief—did Jack and Roz Kirby invite me to lunch?! With a feeling of excitement rarely felt since childhood, I rushed back home, showered, changed from a KISS T-shirt and shorts into more suitable clothes, and then rode to Coco’s. (Fortunately, the restaurant was closely located to Tower Records, where I was going to meet my date later!) When I arrived, Jack and Roz were already in the lobby. So, we sat at our table, ordered lunch, and engaged in an incredible conversation… Jack asked me if I had any favorite DC Comics of his work. I eagerly replied, The Demon. He asked why and I revealed my intrigue by the complexity of Merlin’s Camelot-derived servant being transported to modern-day Gotham City, combined with dynamics of his art and how those characters always seemed to leap out of his covers and splash pages. I told Jack I wished DC had made those awesome blacklight posters like Marvel did with his art. I would have bought The Demon #1 and The Sandman #1 covers on blacklight in a second! Jack then remarked, “I noticed you were wearing a KISS T-shirt this morning. You know the ‘bat-demon’ fella from the band, Gene Simmons? As a kid, he used to write me at Marvel all the time. He went by Gene Klein back then. Anyway, my Demon came before his did. And that tongue trick he does? That came out of The Exorcist. Linda Blair did it first. Warner Bros. made that movie and KISS came out a bit later on Warner [Casablanca] Records. You figure it out.” [Editor’s note: The Exorcist was released in December 1973. The first KISS album debuted in February 1974 and was released on Casablanca Records, distributed by Warner Bros. Records.] My mouth agape, Jack Kirby’s casual revelations to me were, as a KISS fan, simply bomb-dropping. Those comments led into the majority of our time together that afternoon— not discussing comics but horror films, specifically the silent era through the 1950s. I remarked his homages to Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera, Lon Chaney, Jr.’s The Wolf Man, and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster in The Demon were great and appreciated by fans like me. I mentioned to him that my father, who worked as an usher inside a movie theater, in the 1920s had seen the lost Chaney vampire film, London After Midnight. Jack gasped in delight and stated he also saw the film as a pre-teen, and expressed interest in speaking to Pop over the phone to discuss the old days of movies, radio programs, and the like. After our meal was topped off by my first-ever, heaping slice of key lime pie (recommended to me by the Kirbys), I took the check and proudly paid for our long, late lunch. I didn’t care how much it cost; that time together was worth a million dollars to me. “Look, kid, we invited you. That’s not the way it works. You can’t pay for stamping my letter and for lunch in the same day. What can we do for you?” I first asked Jack if he would illustrate a cover or pinup for Rock-it. He politely declined, citing an exclusive with Topps Comics while suggesting I should try his Satan Six series

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Jack Kirby illustrated the band KISS for a reported animated show to be produced by Hanna-Barbera, circa 1970s. The project never materialized and this is the only known image of this “Demon” drawn by Kirby to date. Courtesy of KISSonline.com via Robert V. Conte. © KISS.

published by the company. He mentioned to me how the company’s editor-in-chief, Jim Salicrup, has treated him so well, unlike most of the previous companies he worked for. “Jimmy [Salicrup] is great,” Jack proudly promoted. “You should contact him at Topps Comics. They’re publishing my Satan’s Six. You’d like it!” After a moment’s thought, I then asked Jack if he would recreate his Sandman #1 cover from the 1970s with a few alterations: The Sandman would be changed to Gene Simmons in his Demon KISS makeup and the person sleeping in the bed would become my childhood self. Amazingly, Jack took the pen that our server left on the table with the check and, with a Coco’s napkin, doodled a basic composition of what I proposed! “Is this what you want?” Jack asked. I nodded my head excitedly with a smile that must have gone from ear to ear. “Got it. You need to give me some time but it’s the least I could do for such a pleasant afternoon with a bright, young man.” I walked the Kirbys to their car as Roz handed me another Coco’s napkin with their mailing address and phone number. “When you have time, send a photo of yourself as a kid,” Jack said. “I don’t need it, of course, but I want to see how you looked then.” “Will do, Captain!” I replied. We shook hands and quickly embraced, then they left the shopping center. I looked at my watch and had less than ten minutes to meet my date. Perfect timing all around! Not long after the holidays, I wrote a letter to the Kirbys thanking them for that wonderful experience at Coco’s with an enclosed a picture of me at six years old, VHS tapes of The Golem and Return of the Golem (two early silent horror classics that we discussed), and my Malibu business card with my home phone number added on the back. Roz called my office and left a message with the receptionist that they received

my package stating that “Jack will call you once he has a chance to.” Weeks went by. I didn’t think much of it, as esteemed artists like Jack Kirby are extremely busy. Having artists illustrate private commissions for me in the past, I was fully prepared to wait months to hear from Jack. Sadly, that time would never come… One morning in February 1994, I arrived to work and learned that Jack Kirby passed away. My heart sank; although we were only acquainted for the better part of an afternoon, I felt a deep loss for Roz and the Kirby family, for the comics and entertainment industries, and for myself. Most of my work colleagues went to Jack’s memorial services out of “respect.” I thought that action somewhat hypocritical as the majority of them had never met Jack— it came off to me as a publicity stunt that I wanted no part of. I stayed behind to mourn Jack in my own way; to honor him internally. I sent Roz a condolence card and received a voice mail on my office phone several weeks later. She said that Jack really enjoyed our afternoon and apologized he couldn’t draw the art I asked for in time. So kind for her to do that but it was unnecessary; meeting the man was much more important than an art commission. I saved that message until I left Malibu Comics, tearing up almost every time I heard it. For most of my life, I believed things happen for a reason. In this case, I was meant to meet Jack and Roz Kirby. We were meant to have some time together before Jack’s untimely passing, followed by Roz’s in 1998. Jack’s encouragement to contact Jim Salicrup led me to write a comic book for Topps Comics less than six months after his passing. I only hope that the authentic joy they both gave me over those few hours was shared by them, too. Thank you, Jack and Roz, and I hope you’ve met Pop in Heaven to reminisce about the glory days of silent film and radio!

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 23

THE DEMON

by MIKE GUSTOVICH

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The Demon TM & © DC Comics. Art © Michael Gustovich.

(above) Look what wormed its way out of Heritage’s archives—an alternate, unused cover for Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #18 (June 1974)! Notice how the revised, published version (right) shifts the action and the eye to the right, creating more of a feeling of motion. Kamandi TM & © DC Comics.

KAMANDI #18 COVER by JACK KIRBY

(opposite page) A truly magical commissioned illustration of Etrigan, Merlin, Morgaine Le Fey, and scads of hellspawn, produced in 2020 by Mike Gustovich, the creator of Justice Machine. From the collection of Brian Martin.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 25

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by B

ryan D. Stroud

It was a major coup for DC Comics. Jack “King” Kirby Jack’s tenure with The Demon and Kamandi. I had seen the movie Planet of the Apes and thought it was coming back to the fold under exclusive was great. We could see that New Gods and contract, and was being given autonomy Forever People weren’t doing as well as nearly unheard of to work his magic. we’d hoped, and we needed something “Kirby’s coming!” was the clarion call new for Jack. Inspired by Planet of the through the books, announcing the Apes, I suggested we do a comic book return of the King. Following the with a boy in a post-cataclysmic famed Fourth World books, the world run by animals. Jack liked the second wave began and soon the idea and revived the name Kamandi readers would experience the postfrom an idea he had in the ‘50s for apocalyptic world of Kamandi, the a newspaper strip about a prehistoric Last Boy on Earth. caveman. Kamandi did well and According to then-DC publisher continued even after Jack went on Carmine Infantino in his autoto other things. If we’re keeping biography, The Amazing World score, you could consider Jack and of Carmine Infantino (Vanguard, carmine infantino me co-creators on Kamandi.” 2001), the concept of Kamandi the 1970 Comic Art Convention booklet, Carmine might have sung a was the result of a mixture of ideas: From courtesy of Scott Edelman. different tune had he looked back at “So, we moved into Stage Two of

Big Bang Weary Pity poor Kamandi, all alone (or so he thinks) on Earth A.D. (After Disaster). Remastered pages 2–3 of Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #1 (Oct.–Nov. 1972), by Jack Kirby, with inks and letters by Mike Royer. TM & © DC Comics.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 27

a story written and illustrated by Jack Kirby for Harvey Comics in Alarming Tales #1 (Sept. 1957) titled “The Last Enemy!” The synopsis provided in the Grand Comics Database (comics.org) offers a familiar backdrop: “Drake travels to 2514 A.D. He finds dead tigers in a field. A rat tells him that all humans were killed in an atomic war and that animals inherited the Earth.” Regardless of inspirations, Kamandi hit the outlets in the latter part of 1972 with issue #1 (Oct.–Nov. 1972), sporting bold Gaspar Saladino-supplied cover lettering declaring this a “1st DC issue” and “A new sensational DC Jack Kirby Blockbuster!” That Kirby-illustrated cover featuring the Statue of Liberty at an alarming angle and half submerged was seemingly a nod to the final scene in Planet of the Apes, though Gerry Conway, who would come onto the series later, suggests a different explanation: “It was kind of an interesting concept. It was kind of that Planet of the Apes derivative idea. If you look at the first issue, the cover was a direct ripoff of a cover for an Andre Norton novel from the early ’60s called Daybreak – 2250 A.D. It was almost exactly that cover. As a result, I always felt that Kamandi was more of a pastiche than an original Kirby creation.” Following this introductory story, Jack Kirby provided an important reference map titled “Kamandi’s Continent,” which allows the readers to see what has become of the Earth A. D. (After Disaster). What was once North America, for example, is now divided into such mysterious regions as the Dominion of the Devils, Monster Lake, the Lion Tribes, Gorilla Communes, and the Expanding Tiger Empire. Offshore are such hazards as the Intelligent Killer Whale Raiders, Leopard Sea Pirates, and the Bay of Bones. The former Central and South America now contain a jungle area and the “Tracking Site” or city of the nuclear people, respectively. Thus, we can see some foreshadowing of storylines to come as well as getting a feel for the world of Kamandi. Over the next three years, the creative dynamo that was Jack Kirby cranked out monthly stories that he not only wrote, but illustrated, both covers and interiors, and even edited, while simultaneously handling other titles. [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #14 for more details, as well as past editions of The Jack Kirby Collector.] Changes were on the horizon, however, beginning in the latter part of 1975.

“You maniacs! You blew it up!” Material such as (top left) the 1958 Kirby-produced “The Last Enemy!” in Harvey’s Alarming Tales #1, (top right) Andre Norton’s sci-fi novel Daybreak – 2250 A.D. (cover painting by H. R. van Dongen), and (center left) the Rod Serling-scribed shocking ending to Hollywood’s Planet of the Apes predated (bottom) the King’s Kamandi #1 (Kirby-signed copy courtesy of Heritage). (center right) Courtesy of Bryan D. Stroud, Kamandi cast member Prince Tuftan, as illo’ed by Kirby embellisher Mike Royer. Daybreak © Andre Norton estate. Planet of the Apes © 20th Century Studios. Kamandi TM & © DC Comics.

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Land of the Giants (left) Batman and Kamandi first joined forces in The Brave and the Bold #120 (July 1975). This was the third appearance of a Bronze Age Kirby character in B&B, following Batman/ the Demon in #109 and Batman/ Mister Miracle in #112. (right) Kirby would soon be leaving Earth A.D. when Kamandi #32 (Aug. 1975) was published. TM & © DC Comics.

KAMANDI IN CONWAY’S CORNER

it heralds the beginning of a new chapter in KAMANDI’s history, Just prior to that, Kamandi ventured over to the Brave and the Bold with many more changes coming in the news few months. You see, title to team up with the Batman in issue #120 (July 1975). As with Jack has decided to leave DC and move on to other projects. nearly every B&B tale that Bob Haney scripted, it had little bearing That shouldn’t surprise you, since Jack (like most creative spirits) on current continuity and of course, one might ask, how the heck doesn’t stay in any one place for very long—there’s always some does Batman manage to meet up with the Last Boy on Earth? In new territory to explore, or old lands to reconquer. In fact, it’s the same motivation that brought KAMANDI’s new editor back essence, the Caped Crusader was summoned through magic to DC from a competing company…we wish Jack the and has what amounts to an out-of-body experience best of luck wherever his wandering ways take him!” with one remaining in the present in a coma and the That new editor, Gerry Conway, recalls for BACK other traveling to Earth A.D. to aid Kamandi and an ISSUE the genesis of his introduction to Kamandi: intelligent tribe of humans as they attempt to escape “Within the previous few months I’d been hired by the clutches of the gorilla squads near Mount Carmine Infantino at DC as the latest Marvel import Rushmore. The inspiration for summoning Batman and as these things went, as the new guy on the by the shaman was via his discovery of a copy of The team, I would be handed assignments and also create Brave and the Bold #118 (Apr. 1975). Fortunately for projects for myself, and I think Kamandi was at the tail the hardy band, the World’s Greatest Detective helps end of Jack’s contract with DC. He’d made it very clear to deliver them from their enemies, giving mankind that he wasn’t renewing the contract and I think hope for the future, before his reawakening from his Carmine just sort of wanted to take as much away “coma” in Gotham City Hospital. from Jack as he could at that point. He’d soured Returning to the main Kamandi series, with issue gerry conway on Jack pretty early on in the relationship when #32 (Aug. 1975) readers were offered a giant 64the New Gods books didn’t become the runaway page edition, featuring a reprint of issue #1, a Steve Sherman-conducted interview with accompanying photos of Jack hits that Carmine thought they should be, or the kind of books that Kirby, and a revised two-page map of Earth A.D. with such intriguing Carmine could mentally wrap his head around. So, he cancelled those additions as the Vortex, the Kanga-Rat Murder Society on the former and, in the process, he alienated Jack and then proceeded to hand Australian continent, and the island of the “God-Watchers.” Throw in Jack ideas that were mostly riffs on things he had seen or things that he thought would make good visuals. He’d hand them off to Jack and a brand-new tale, and your two quarters went a long way. A mere two editions later, with #34 (Oct. 1975), Gerry Conway Jack would make of them what he would. “Carmine hired Jack simply on the basis that Jack was Marvel’s top took the reins as Kamandi editor, with Paul Levitz as assistant editor. Furthermore, Joe Kubert became the cover artist, but Jack Kirby artist,” continues Conway. “It was a competitive move. Jack produced was still scripting and penciling the stories. The letters column in these books that were like nothing that DC was doing and Carmine this issue, “The Time Capsule,” sought to explain the shake-up: had no idea what that was and just expected that somehow it would “It’s rather ironic that we should be writing this particular letter be these knock-’em-out-of-the-park books. And they did okay, but page for the issue of KAMANDI which marks the magazine’s third there was just no way for DC to market these books. It didn’t fit the anniversary. No doubt you already noticed the new name in the DC Universe and after a couple of years, Carmine pulled the plug and credits and are wondering what ‘Gerry Conway, Editor’ is doing on completely alienated Jack, but still had a five-year contract with him.” Kamandi assistant editor Paul Levitz has some fond recollections a mag that Jack Kirby created and has been writing and penciling for some thirty-three issues. The explanation is very simple, and of working with the King: “There was a brief period there where The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 29

for maybe three to six months I was responsible for keeping Jack busy. Making sure the next thing was already on his desk to draw as the company was committed to him. That was probably the only time I ‘worked’ with Jack. There were a couple of occasions during that time when the writer/ editors who were handling the books were tied up on other projects or just under pressure and they gave me scanned verbal outlines of what they wanted to do in the next issue and I had the assignment to break down the story so Jack could draw it, which was the closest I ever got having Jack draw anything I wrote.” Paul also shares his impression of Jack’s departure from DC: “I think he was done, emotionally. Some part of his heart never healed after the DC deal with the cancellation of the Fourth World stuff and he still did wonderful work on Kamandi and The Demon and some of the other stuff. Given Jack’s personality, I don’t think it was ‘phoned-in’ in the sense that he was deliberately turning anything off, but you can’t fake passion, and some of the stuff just wasn’t passion projects at that point. The real risk-taking stuff either got cancelled or never got off the ground. Things like Spirit World, or In the Days of the Mob. Things that were unique. I think Jack always enjoyed paul levitz pushing the limits and doing the unusual. His standard for doing his work was always © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. incredibly high and incredibly efficient. But his heart was somewhere else already.” Steve Sherman, who served as Jack’s assistant editor beginning with issue #5, has concurring recollections: “Once Jack’s contract was up, he said he’d had enough of DC, so he went back to Marvel. He didn’t want to continue because it just wasn’t any fun any more over there. I’m sure he had ideas for continuing on it, but that was Jack. Once he was done, that was that. He went on to the next project. Sometimes he could use ideas that he had with another character, but for the most part, when he moved on, he moved on. He didn’t really agonize over it. He’d been in the business long enough to know that you put it out there, and it sells or it doesn’t sell. If it doesn’t sell, you move on to the next thing and hope that one sells. He was really very aware of sales. That was just something he understood. He knew the comic business inside and out. He knew everything about it.”

The Other J.K. (top left and bottom left) Kamandi covers by the amazing Joe Kubert, for issues #34 (Oct. 1975) and 39 (Mar. 1976). (below right) Steve Sherman, Jack Kirby, Rosalind “Roz” Kirby, and (in back) Mark Evanier. Photo courtesy of Bryan D. Stroud. Kamandi TM & © DC Comics.

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Future Shocks The Man of Steel witnesses tumultuous tomorrows in Superman #295 (Jan. 1976), by Elliot S! Maggin, Curt Swan, and Bob Oksner. (inset below) The iconic cover to Kamandi #29 (May 1975), which examined Superman’s legacy in Kamandi’s imperiled world. TM & © DC Comics.

EARTH A.K. (AFTER KIRBY)

Right around this time, an interesting thing was happening in the Superman title. Issue #295 (Jan. 1976) featured a story by Elliot S! Maggin and Curt Swan titled “Costume, Costume—Who’s Got the Costume?” The gist of the storyline is that a character that appears to be Father Time has stolen the uniform of Superman, and the Man of Steel follows it to the year 2975, where he discovers a strange and unfamiliar future: Earth After Disaster. The Man of Tomorrow takes on Jaxon, a powerful being who is wearing Superman’s costume, and the battle leads the combatants back to 1975. In the end, it is revealed that Father Time was, in reality, a 30th Century Green Lantern who was reversing a plot by the Time Trapper to eliminate all other possible futures but that of the Great Disaster, and the only way to accomplish that was to tap into the energy expended during the fight between Superman and Jaxon. At one point, an editorial reference is made to Kamandi #29 (May 1975), which contained a story titled “The Legend,” where the splash page tells us it was from an idea suggested by Steve Sherman. Steve elaborates: “On the weekends, on Sundays, Jack and I used to take a long walk on the hill behind where he lived and it was like a cul-de-sac, but it was very barren up there, so we’d just take a walk and talk about everything and we somehow got on the idea of when Kamandi took place. And then it was, ‘Well, what happened to Superman? If this, this, and this happened, where did Superman go?’ Then Jack said that it might be a good thing to put in the magazine, because they’d like that at DC, to have their main character in there. It did seem like a good tie-in and it was a pretty clever idea, too. We even laughed about it. It was like, ‘Where’s his underwear? What happened to him?’ Jack actually built around that. ‘Well, maybe they just find the suit.’ So, that’s how he built from it. The gorillas have it and Kamandi has heard about the legend and all that stuff. He left it open in the end, so you never know if Superman might show up.” The “Time Capsule” letters column in issue #37 (Jan. 1976) offered some tantalizing tidbits about the world of Kamandi: “We’ll eventually reveal all of the details of the Great Disaster, and meanwhile, all we’ll say is that KAMANDI is linked to OMAC, the entire Kirby Fourth World Epic (NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, MISTER MIRACLE and JIMMY OLSEN), and the new DC series HERCULES UNBOUND, which tells the story of World War Three.” With issue #38 (Feb. 1976) there was another transition, as Mike Royer returned to inking and lettering assignments, taking over for D. Bruce Berry… but what had led Mike to move on in the

first place? An important clue can be gleaned from the credits on the splash page of issue #16 (Apr. 1974) where it says, “Edited, written and drawn by sedentary Jack Kirby. Inked by mountain-climbing Mike Royer with a helping hand from D. Bruce Berry.” Mike Royer explains: “At one point, I really wanted to get away with my family, so to gain just about a week’s time I had Palle Jensen letter a book for me and asked William Stout to do some background details in a Demon story and asked D. Bruce Berry to do some backgrounds on Kamandi. I was then actually able to take several days with the wife and kids to do a Mount Whitney backpacking trip. Towards the climax of this time away, on the way to the top of Whitney, standing at the top of the world, so to speak, I asked myself why I was working so damn hard and furiously. So, upon returning to civilization, I asked Jack if I could only ink half or two thirds of his output. His response was basically he wanted me to do all of it or none. He was not being a tough guy by saying that. I knew he wanted all the work to be from one inker/letterer’s hand. The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 31

World War III! (left) Hercules Unbound #5’s (June–July 1976) story featured a Kamandi reference. Cover by José Luis García-López, who also drew the cover for (right) Kamandi #42 (June 1976), which was on the stands at the same time. TM & © DC Comics.

I understood completely. Russ Manning said he would appreciate of the animal kingdom came straight from the mouth of a gorilla with my help again and there were penciling assignments elsewhere a cockney accent encountered by the son of Zeus. He calls himself and some inking as well. During this time away from Jack I did Durak Malloy and recounts how he had once been a test subject in a some Tarzan comic-book stories and wrote and drew and inked a laboratory. “These research blokes were testing some chemical called Cortexin, which they’d been tipped to by an American doc named 44-page Jane album for Robert E. Howard’s syndication arm.” Mike also describes for BACK ISSUE how he approached his duties Michael Grant.” Note that Dr. Michael Grant and his Cortexin were on the series: “For whatever reason, it was never hard for me to first introduced back in Kamandi #16 (Apr. 1974). The ape then recalls ink Jack. If a challenge existed, it was my own personal resolve to that London was being bombed and the new World War had begun, finish Jack’s pencil statements in ink and to not dilute his carbon with an explosion rocking the laboratory and the scientists being statements. Contrary to some views, I did not just trace Jack’s dissolved, leaving only empty clothing behind. In the next surreal moments, a mist that had resulted from broken pencils. I completed them in ink. The only hard part of inking Jack was maintaining the quality and doing three pages a day. Some days beakers filled with chemicals engulfed the laboratory and beyond. were longer than others. If anything could be called challenging, “It must’ve been the Cortexin—and it was spreadin’ everywhere, mixin’ with the air, reaching out across all London. Reaching it would be the lettering. I had to do a 22-page book in all the animals—but first of all reaching me.” Malloy under two days. That’s all the words, balloons circled described it as an awakening and that suddenly he and panels bordered (or not), and usually two to three could reason and speak. splash pages with display lettering.” Mike Royer was back in the fold, but the end was near for Jack Kirby, and his final work on the ‘TALES OF THE GREAT DISASTER’ series was published in issue #40 (June 1976), Back to Kamandi, where the changes to the book creating a need for a new penciler. Gerry Conway continued as another Jack, namely Jack C. Harris, explains his selection: “I started going forward to came aboard as an assistant editor with issue #42 make it as much like Jack as possible by getting (June 1976) and in the very next issue, a backup somebody like Chic Stone in to do the pencils. feature titled “Tales of the Great Disaster” began a And to keep Mike Royer on for inks, just so it short stint. This brief set of stories featured an ape felt like it was kind of the same book.” This named Urgall, who had returned to his home near issue’s letters column also addressed a reader’s what was once New York City. Reuniting with his david anthony kraft suggestion to move Kamandi out of the Americas tribe, he shares his visit to “Washingtown” and his and explore Europe, Asia, and Africa: “…we’d encounters with the apes there, who had enslaved rather avoid Europe for the time being because HERCULES is the humans. It is apparent that Urgall is a progressive ape and objects using that as the background for his adventures, and to have both to slavery, which puts him at odds even with his own tribe, so he characters operate in that area might reveal the links between leaves, later allying himself with a strong she-ape named Myra and World War 3 and the Great Disaster too quickly.” a human-sized rat named Otis, but their adventures would be shortSpeaking of those European developments, Hercules Unbound #5 lived, only extending through issue #46. (June–July 1976) offered readers a first-hand account of the events “Tales of the Great Disaster” was initially written by Gerry Conway, surrounding World War III as emblazoned on the cover. Per previous and then writing duties were assumed by David Anthony Kraft. issues of the series, this catastrophic conflict was instigated by Ares, Both writers recall a bit of a brush with another backup series. “It may the god of war. The key information about mankind’s fall and the rise have been an attempt to do something similar to what I’d seen Stan 32 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

The two final installments also included the [Lee] and Jack do with Thor and the ‘Tales of Asgard,’” Conway tells BI. Kraft wrote the final three installments debut of a pair of new artists fresh from their time at of the backup series before moving back to Marvel, Continuity Associates, penciler Mike (Nasser) Netzer with the first being penciled by Pablo Marcos, and and inker Joe Rubinstein. Joe reveals the pathway recalls, “Now, when Gerry went back to Marvel, as to this brief assignment: “I went to the High School editor-in-chief, he wanted me back at Marvel, which of Art and Design, which was a vocational art high was where I belonged anyway. So, that’s why I jumped school, and I don’t think I had money, but I know I didn’t want to continue studying. I just wanted back to Marvel and promptly did a two-part to work. There was a new guy there named ‘Tales of Asgard’ for Thor, with Pablo Marcos. Mike Nasser, who eventually became Mike So, we just jumped from one ship back to Netzer, and I asked if I could work on his the other. I think that was the only ‘Tales samples and I did and he liked what he of Asgard’ published after Stan and saw and had just gotten his first job, Jack stopped doing them.” Kraft, or appropriately titled ‘Tales of the Great “DAK,” as he prefers, also remembers Disaster’ in the back of Kamandi, and the reaction he had to Kamandi while he brought my samples up and Gerry working on these backup tales: “I was Conway hired me.” one of those who had always loved Issue #47 (Nov. 1976) saw the Jack’s stuff, of course, and when he departure of Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, went to DC, it didn’t seem the same to and the “Tales of the Great Disaster” me. Kamandi just seemed disjointed backup feature, along with the and weird. But that summer I sat elevation of Jack C. Harris to story down and I think there were, like, joe rubinstein editor. With the very next issue, 45 issues out or something and I the publishing interval went from read them all sequentially, just one Gage Skidmore. after another, and it completely changed my opinion. monthly to a bimonthly schedule. Then with issue #52, When I read them that way, it was this great kind of Harris transitioned to scripting while Denny O’Neil master story that was episodic. But the camera had moved into the editor’s chair for a few issues. “Tales of the Great Disaster” did, however, have one been dialed in so close that when I read them one by one, it was, ‘What the heck?,’ but when I read them last appearance, strangely enough tucked into a couple all together, it was more like, ‘This is pretty cool stuff.’ of editions of Weird War Tales, issues #51 (Mar. 1977) and 52 (Apr. 1977). Jack C. Harris remembers that So, it was kind of a treat to be able to add to that.”

The ‘New Look’ Kamandi (left) Under writereditor Gerry Conway, the Chic Stone/Mike Royer team maintained a Kirby flavor with their art for Kamandi #42. (right) Introducing “Tales of the Great Disaster.” From Kamandi #43 (July 1976). TM & © DC Comics.

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Dogs of War (top) Page from the “Tales from the Great Disaster” backup in Kamandi #45 (Sept. 1976), from the Kraft/Nasser/Rubinstein team. (bottom) This “Great Disaster” backup, the first pairing of future Detective Comics Bat-artists Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin, found a home in—of all places!—Weird War Tales #51 (May 1977). TM & © DC Comics.

they were significant because of a new artistic team that would go on to do some great things: “That was the very first teaming of Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin. Later, of course, they went on to do those great Batman stories, but that was their first teaming up with that backup feature. I thought that was kind of historic. I was thrilled when I saw that particular team, because they just clicked. They did a lot of stuff together after that because they worked so well together. They just seemed to mesh perfectly, but that was the first. I wrote the first one they did.” Jack also recalls that initially, the editorial team enjoyed a long lead team left behind by Jack Kirby: “Gerry had just come on staff and Kirby had left and when he did, he had seven- or eight-months’ worth of books completed. The interiors. So Gerry, who was editing quite a number of titles right from the start, needed some assistance. Paul and I jumped in and we were basically packaging what Kirby had already finished. We didn’t do a whole lot of creative work, except Gerry commissioned covers from Joe Kubert. We just made sure the pages were in order and coloring was done and any corrections were made and packaged the stuff together.” Jack shares his enjoyment of working on Kirby’s creation: “That was a blast. The first thing I did during the first two weeks I was working on it was that I had to read the first 33 issues of Kamandi. I’d go to the files at DC and I’d take two or three of them home with me, and I’d spend the evening reading it and I’d take notes along the way. In an early issue, Kirby did this wonderful two-page spread of the Earth After Disaster. A very detailed map of things and I’d picked up a lot of ideas. He mentioned things and never actually did anything with them. One of them was in Australia called the Kanga-rat Murder Society. I took from that and did an issue about them. Kirby was inspirational. He could just come up with an idea and run with it. That’s what I did with a lot of the Kamandi material.” As for the title going to a bimonthly schedule, Harris remembers, “It was always a sales issue and we needed more time to work out stories, and I was almost grateful for the additional time.”

‘HOLMES’ IS WHERE THE HEART IS

Jack C. Harris wasted little time beginning to put his own imprint on the series, beginning with the introduction of his Sherlock Holmes-inspired bloodhound detective, Mylock Bloodstalker. “I just thought it would be great to have a character like that and so I created Bloodstalker, which I thought was a great name, and his partner Doile, which I thought was funny, too. Mylock, of course, is Sherlock Holmes’ and his brother Mycroft’s names meshed together.” Once Harris began scripting the series, he had a fruitful partnership with penciler Dick Ayers, who had come aboard with issue #48. “Often when I was writing a story, I would envision the pages and invariably the artist would come back with exactly what I had in mind, which was astonishing, or something even better,” Harris says. “Dick Ayers would do that all the time. He would always blow me away with what he would come in with. And fast. So fast. It was confounding. “We worked very well together. Now, he was jack c. harris not the best artist in the world, but he knew how to tell a story better than anybody. If you Facebook. told him you wanted seven characters in a panel, he could do it. Luckily, he had some really good inkers that made his stuff even better. I didn’t really hesitate to write something outrageous in a panel. He would take care of it, no problem.” 34 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

When Kamandis Collide! Original Rich Buckler/Jack Abel cover art, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), to Kamandi #51 (June–July 1977). Signed by Buckler. TM & © DC Comics.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 35

The Hound of the Baskervilles Writer Jack C. Harris’ Sherlock Holmes pastiche, Mylock Bloodstalker, as seen on the Dick Ayers/ Danny Bulanadidrawn splash to Kamandi #56 (Apr.–May 1978). TM & © DC Comics.

Jack describes to BACK ISSUE his favorite issue with Dick and the unusual circumstances that brought it forth: “In issue #56 (Apr.–May 1978), I did a story called ‘The Sign of Three.’ I stole the title from Sherlock Holmes. (The space alien) Pyra ran around in this craft called the transformer, and Kirby never told you why it was called the transformer, so, I decided it was actually a living being transformed into metal. I just described it as a living creature and Dick put a face on it. I didn’t even imagine it with a face and he put this bizarre, creepy-looking face on it, and I thought it was wonderful. “We actually plotted that story at one of the Creation Cons,” Harris reveals. “Denny and Dick and I were there up on the stage at an event and we threw ideas out to the audience and they would throw ideas back at us and we plotted the story at the convention. We were doing a public plotting session. I even gave them credit on the opening page of that story. “It was standing room only and while we were up on stage plotting the vortex monster story, Dick was doing a sketch on his pad of what the monster would like. We had the basic plot, but we just needed to embellish it. We used most of what they gave us. It was a lot of fun. It’s one of my favorite books I’ve ever done, across the board.”

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A TONAL SHIFT AND OFFBEAT TEAM-UPS

During Harris’ scripting efforts, the storylines seemed to be taking a turn toward fantasy, with a series of titles about a quest to Evermore. Jack Harris admits he wasn’t sure of the storyline’s final destination: “When I started that, I had no idea where I was going with it. I had no idea what Evermore was, but by the time I got there, I’d figure it out. “The thing about Kamandi, which I liked, is that it fell into no category. It wasn’t a superhero, it wasn’t sword and sorcery, it wasn’t science fiction. It wasn’t fantasy. It was a little bit of everything. There were no limits to what you could do with it. It was just crazed.” To illustrate his point, Jack recalls a story he wrote titled “The Catnip Connection” (Kamandi #53) that seemed to have slipped past the Comics Code and actually featured Harris’ house cats, albeit in very different form: “The drug dealer in the story, Maynard, was named after my own one-eyed cat that I had. In fact, the other two cats are Buckie and my sister had a cat named Poof, so they’re all three there. I put them all in the story. Maynard loved catnip, so I figured, why not make him the drug dealer.” Further imaginative reaches included the unlikely crossover Kamandi had with Karate Kid in the Legion of Super-Heroes’ expatriate’s own magazine (Karate Kid #11, July–Aug. 1978) that corresponded with issue #58: “I remember Bob Rozakis and I wanted to team up and do a Karate Kid crossover with Kamandi. So we did the two-parter. Bob and I worked on both issues and crossed them over, which I think was editor Al Milgrom’s idea. That was a lot of fun, too. Of all the characters to throw into Kamandi… Karate Kid? From another future? It just made no sense at all, but why not? It worked and I thought it was great.” While Kamandi had successfully dealt with endless deadly encounters, from land, sea, air, and even outer space, the one challenge he couldn’t overcome was the infamous DC Implosion, and his title was cancelled after #59 (Sept.–Oct. 1978). While only a select few with access to Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2 (Fall 1978) got to see the stories that would have been published as issues #60 and 61, the tales finally were printed in The Kamandi Challenge Special #1 (Mar. 2017) in all their black-and-white glory and featured a story within a story when Kamandi meets up with another Kirby co-creation, the Sandman. Jack C. Harris elaborates: “Kamandi was the cutoff title. The issues that were cancelled were Kamandi and all the ones with sales below it. It was the highest-selling of the cancelled comics. Just a little more percentage points and it would have been rescued. “The thing about those two [final] issues is one of them is an old Sandman issue that Kirby did that was in inventory. [Editor’s note: This was “The Seal Men’s War on Santa Claus,” written by Michael Fleisher, with Kirby and Royer art. It was produced for the unpublished seventh issue of The Sandman but eventually published in a DC digest, as explored in this issue’s Sandman article.] Al Milgrom found it in inventory. What we did was that I just wrote a bridge. I wrote an intro and an exit from that story and then we printed the Sandman issue.” The original Kamandi series may have come to an end, but he wasn’t finished yet, as evidenced by another team-up with Batman in the pages of The

Brave and the Bold, issue #157 (Dec. 1979). This time, however, rather than the Batman going forward to Kamandi’s world, the Last Boy on Earth found himself in the present day, but with his memory wiped clean. Extortion, Inc., an underworld organization that the Batman is trying to crush, has recruited the freakishly strong boy to be their enforcer, picking up valuable goods that they parlay into cash. Batman recognizes Kamandi, and finds that while he is a powerful fighter, he seems to have a literal Achilles Heel. The World’s Greatest Detective learns that Extortion, Inc. had surgically placed a device into Kamandi’s heel loaded with cobra venom as an insurance policy. Batman finally manages to get Kamandi to his laboratory, and with the help of hypno-serum discovers that through a series of fantastic events in his own time, Kamandi was ultimately drawn into the Vortex on the Australian continent and ended up in the present with a damaged memory. With the help of the Batman, who has removed the venom, Kamandi is transported to Australia and the future location of the Wondrous Wall, where Aborigines aid him with magic powders of the desert and then a wait atop the summit of a sacred rock, which ultimately transports him back to his world. Perhaps it was destiny when Kamandi crossed paths with “The Mighty One,” a.k.a. Superman, in

the pages of DC Comics Presents #64 (Dec. 1983). The story, written by Jack Kirby protégé Mark Evanier, focuses on Victor Epoch, a man who is obsessed with the future. So obsessed is he, that he creates a massive gyroscope to duplicate Superman’s time-travel abilities and provide a means to see that future that he finds so tantalizing. What happens instead is that Epoch inadvertently opens a portal between the present and Earth A.D., with the Daily Planet building as the nexus point. Great Caesar and his tiger-men are seen in 1983 pursuing Kamandi and after they capture the Last Boy on Earth, the Man of Steel investigates. While our hero is dealing with the tigers, Kamandi recognizes the familiar red-and-blue garb of the Mighty One and begs his help in saving Kamandi’s world. Once the Man of Tomorrow is able at last to discover the cause of the disruption in time, he and Kamandi join forces to stop the gyroscope before it can do further damage. Things are then restored to their proper place and time, and perhaps Victor Epoch has learned about the dangers of too much curiosity.

Kamandi A.I. (After Implosion) Kamandi was cancelled with issue #59, relegating this Buckler/Abel cover for the unpublished Kamandi #60 to the little-seen Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2 (Fall 1978), and much later, Kamandi Challenge Special #1. TM & © DC Comics.

Everybody Really Was Kung-Fu Fightin’! Even the Last Boy on Earth! James Sherman/Bob McLeod cover to Kamandi #58 (Aug.–Sept. 1978), guest-starring Karate Kid. TM & © DC Comics.

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AN ELSEWORLDS REVIVAL

Kamandi lay fallow for a time, but was picked up again in the early ’90s for a new six-issue Elseworlds miniseries, Kamandi: At Earth’s End (June–Nov. 1993). Tom Veitch was tapped to write the series and shares its beginnings: “I was working with DC [Superman group] editor Mike Carlin at the time,” Veitch reveals. “He told me he had found an artist named Frank Gomez who needed a writer and Mike thought Frank and I would make a good team. Frank was a Los Angeles graffiti artist, one of those lads who go around at night decorating walls and buildings with cans of spray paint, but there was no fortune in it, so Frank put together a portfolio of drawings and showed it around a comics convention. Next thing you know, we were a team. “Part of my ‘method’ when working with an artist is to help him feel free to put his heart and soul and guts into the work. In Frank’s case, that meant tom veitch lots of exaggeration, lots of big guns, and lots of explosions. I tried to balance that stuff with quieter passages that carried the plot forward, and Frank gave me those, too.” Tom Veitch loved working with editor Mike Carlin and was given pretty free rein on the project. “Mike asked me what DC characters I would like to work with. I said any of the Jack Kirby characters would be fun to do. But at the time they were all reserved by other writers, except for Kamandi. Now, this was both fortunate and unfortunate. It was unfortunate because Kamandi, in my opinion, was the weakest of Jack’s DC creations. For one thing, it was an obvious derivative of Planet of the Apes, which was a hot series of films at the time. And although I dutifully bought and read every issue of Kamandi when it came out, I never looked forward to reading them the way I did Forever People and New Gods. “The ‘fortunate’ part was I felt very free to take the basic characters and post-apocalyptic story structure and let my imagination run amok,” Veitch explains. “Mike Carlin said, ‘Go for it. Maybe with Frank’s stylistic wildness and your ‘underground’ background, something great will happen.’” The tone is set quickly in the first story when Ben Boxer and company appear. Gone are the friendly, human-like characters seen in the past. Boxer describes he and his cohorts as biological machines with free will, created by the master scientist’s guild. “Our mission is to find the cause of the second apocalypse. Our mission is to cleanse the Earth of subhuman scum.”

He’s Mad, Max! Writer Tom Veitch took the Last Boy on Earth down Thunder Road in the six-issue Elseworlds series Kamandi: At Earth’s End. (top left) Cover to issue #1 (June 1993), by Frank Gomez. (top right) Issue #3’s Gomez cover, with allies Sleeper Zom and Saphira Cohen. (bottom) Splash from the miniseries’ one-shot Elseworlds follow-up, Superman: At Earth’s End. By Veitch and Gomez, with inks by Mike Barreiro. TM & © DC Comics.

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Kamandi himself is vastly different as well, living in a subterranean world with the electronic presence of “Mother” and indulging in virtual-reality fantasies. At least he’s given a full set of clothing. Mother soon gives him marching orders to the outside world on a mission to seek out the man who she claims caused the second apocalypse. Threats in this bleak world include horrific, mutated creatures called Grabbers, while the similarly eerie creatures above ground are known as Scroungers, though the latter are at least able to speak. When Kamandi ventures outside the bunker complex he encounters the Scroungers, but also an ally in Sleeper Zom, a heavily armed and bulked-up black man astride a motorcycle. As the series continues, the duo meets up with Saphira Cohen, a woman who can take care of herself, but the dangers continue as Ben Boxer and his fellow biological machines are on their trail. They continue to follow a dangerous route at Mother’s direction to find “the man.” Along the way are hazards aplenty, to include marauders in massive souped-up vehicles that would have made Mad Max envious, and before it’s all over they find Superman himself in the Arizona desert. The possibilities are truly limitless in an Elseworlds story. When queried about potential movie influences in the series, to include such classic post-apocalyptic epics as The Omega Man, Mad Max, and The Terminator, Veitch acknowledges their place: “I was obsessed with Mad Max. In fact, the whole ‘thunder road’ concept was inspired by those films, and at the time, I was working up a creator-owned series to be titled Thunder Road about a huge, lawless highway from coast-tocoast across America. I just plugged that into Kamandi’s world. Other influences were there as well, but mostly unconscious, including Terminator.” Veitch’s series skipped anthropomorphic animals altogether. “I avoided them in Kamandi because I didn’t like them—too unreal and unbelievable,” Tom contents. “Planet of the Apes had done them better. But we did use them in [the 1995 Elseworlds one-shot] Superman: At Earth’s End—more mutated and demonic than Jack’s.” Kamandi: At Earth’s End’s storyline portrayed Mother as a malevolent artificial intelligence. When asked if this device was somewhat prescient, Veitch agrees: “For sure. Another unspoken influence at the time was William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, charting the future of cyberspace. That book is already coming to life before our eyes.” A KAMANDI SERIAL—EACH WEDNESDAY As far as spending time in Jack Kirby’s sandbox for The next Kamandi resurrection occurred in the pages of a time, Veitch observes, “I have to apologize to Mr. the weekly series Wednesday Comics, a 2009 miniseries Kirby for running amok with his sandbox! I would have published in a newspaper format and featuring a preferred to work with Mister Miracle or Forever variety of DC characters whose adventures People, characters I loved and would have comprised a single page, serialized each slavishly magnified.” issue. In Wednesday Comics, Kamandi Kamandi: At Earth’s End proved to be was expertly handled by writer Dave the launching platform for Tom Veitch’s Gibbons and artist Ryan Sook. follow-up, Superman: At Earth’s End, Dave Gibbons’ involvement came again with Frank Gomez, but that was about courtesy of Mark Chiarello, not the original idea: “Believe it or not, editor for the series. “He phoned me we were plotting a second Kamandi up about this Wednesday Comics, which series. In the end, however, we took I thought was a great idea,” Gibbons that material and compressed it into discloses. “I’ve got childhood memories the Superman one-shot. Let me add, of reading those big, tabloid in my original version of Superman: American comics and he asked me if At Earth’s End, Superman goes off to I would like to do Kamandi. I sort of dave gibbons the high Himalayas to rest and heal liked Kamandi. I’d always been a big in pure sunlight, but Carlin wanted fan of Jack Kirby. I thought Kamandi old Supes to die, so we had him walk into the flames was rather a bold thing to do. You could see its roots in with the corpse of Bruce Wayne… and that closed the Planet of the Apes, but also in stuff that Kirby had done chapter on ‘old age Superman.’” in the ’50s. Harvey Comics, like Alarming Tales, where,

Valiant Endeavor The utterly beautiful first Kamandi one-pager, from Wednesday Comics #1 (July 8, 2009). Script by Dave Gibbons, art by Ryan Sook. TM & © DC Comics.

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ryan sook

Fearsome Future Original Ryan Sook artwork, sans text, courtesy of Heritage, to the Kamandi installment from Wednesday Comics #8 (Aug. 16, 2009). You’re allowed to linger on this page as long as you’d like… TM & © DC Comics.

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A Challenge for Kamandi Commemorating the King’s 100th birthday, DC published the ambitious, round-robin 12-issue Kamandi Challenge series in 2017. Shown are covers to issue #1 (by Bruce Timm), 8 (by Jim Lee and Scott Williams), and 12 (by Frank Miller). TM & © DC Comics.

in fact, there was a story that featured anthropomorphic animals. Kirby was always really good at synthesizing influences and making something totally novel from them.” Ryan Sook was also on Mark Chiarello’s rolodex, and relays his recruitment to the project: “He called one afternoon and asked specifically if I’d be interested in drawing the Kamandi story, with [writer] Dave Gibbons. I was thrilled at the offer and immediately accepted! I think I started working on Kamandi sketches that day!” Gibbons’ story kept classic elements of Kamandi intact, with the boy wandering in solitude through his badly damaged world. He meets up with a swashbuckler-styled Tuftan the Tiger and fights off a group of evolved rats with his friend’s help. They also manage to reunite with Doctor Canus, who pilots a massive blimp. Further hearkening back to the original series, Kamandi rescues a girl named Ororo from the ape forces, a character very much in the mold of Kirby’s Kamandi character Flower and her sister Spirit. The 12 installments, at a page each, move swiftly while still packing a storytelling punch. Apes, tigers, and lions meet for a titanic fight on the very spot where the battle of Gettysburg took place. In the end, though, Kamandi still finds himself very much alone as the Last Boy on Earth, but with a glimmer of hope that perhaps there are others where Orora came from. The format of Wednesday Comics presented interesting challenges to the creative team. Dave Gibbons remembers, “It had to be 12 episodes and it had to be done in a page, albeit a large page, but actually having worked in British comics, which have a similar page size and a similar episodic structure, that was something that seemed fairly natural to me.” It wasn’t quite as simple a fit for Ryan Sook: “The size and layout of the project presented interesting challenges. The size of the paper I drew them on was actually taller than the drafting board I used at the time, and so I had to bring in a piece of plywood to set on top of my table just to have enough room to draw it. Also, by part four of the series, I think, I had used up just about any lead time for deadlines. So laying out, drawing, inking, coloring, and lettering the full page in a week was a real challenge for me.” The creative team worked well together on the project. When asked about his own artistic background and expectations, Gibbons offers that Sook was easily up to the task: “I was absolutely thrilled with what Ryan did. He’s a wonderful illustrator, great storyteller, and he gave it exactly the feeling that I wanted, which was to look like a 1930s or 1940s Prince Valiant or Flash Gordon page. He very much gave it that vibe and he colored it as well and it had all the grandeur and mythic quality that I’d hoped for.” Sook was also happy with the partnership: “Dave is an amazing artist and writer. I imagine that as an artist, he is very adept at writing a script that allows an artist to really compose the pages in the best way. As I recall, his scripts were concise, clear, and allowed me to visualize the material with a lot of artistic liberty while still bringing across the story as clearly as possible. His scripts were a breeze to work from.”

Initially, another artist was being considered for the series: “Originally, Steve Rude was slated to draw Kamandi,” Gibbons reveals to BACK ISSUE. “As you know, he’s a huge Jack Kirby fan, but for whatever reason it didn’t come about, but we did have a few early discussions and it was actually Steve who emphasized the essential loneliness of Kamandi, that he was the Last Boy on Earth. So, I suppose that pathos started to underline it for me and that’s why the payoff is that once again, after meeting another human, he was now back to being the Last Boy on Earth again, which I thought was a good note leave it on, so thanks to Steve for that.” Steve Rude confirms his brief involvement with the series: “Dave Gibbons is indeed correct. I was vying for a New Gods strip in Wednesday Comics, but [DC executive] Dan DiDio couldn’t seem to make up his mind about things. Instead, I was offered a Kamandi strip as a replacement, but turned it down. The artist who ended up replacing me did a superlative job with it.” One unique treatment of Kamandi’s Wednesday Comics series was the exclusive use of captions. “That was a conscious decision,” Gibbons offers, “because that’s how the classics like Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon were done and it adds a different tone to it. It makes it more of a sense of having the story told to you rather than you witnessing the story. It gives it a certain classic feel, I think.” From an artistic standpoint, Sook appreciated the captioning treatment: “It was a distinctly different approach to storytelling in comics, having no need for a lot of word balloons all over the page. Doing the lettering myself also allowed me to incorporate the captions directly onto the art and the composition of the pages, which is also a real benefit.” Gibbons’ opportunity to work with Jack Kirby’s creation is something he appreciates: “It was great and I think for a great many of us because he was so prolific and so creative. The number of ideas that the guy generated in his lifetime is absolutely astonishing. It’s that as much as his technical abilities to draw and tell stories that I think makes him truly the King.” Sook is in full agreement: “Kirby’s characters and stories are still, decades later, so full of potential that most every artist that enjoys mainstream comics at all have a field day getting to dive into that world and draw out any of the numerous treasures still waiting to be unearthed. Myself included!” It should also be noted that Kamandi made his animated debut near the end of 2009 in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series, teaming up with Batman in “Last Bat on Earth.” The device for their meeting this time was a good oldfashioned time machine and fittingly, Gorilla Grodd had gone to Earth A.D. to take charge of the gorilla forces. TM & © DC Comics.

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KAMANDI’S GREATEST CHALLENGE

Last Boy Standing Steve Rude original art to a 2017 variant cover for Kamandi Challenge #8. Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

after two years of planning and prepping, with the first issue of the biggest comics event of the New Year: THE KAMANDI CHALLENGE. This series is a labor of love for everyone involved (myself included) as we get to celebrate the work of one of the industry’s greatest creators, Jack Kirby, while playing with one of his greatest characters, Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. “Unlike more traditional letters pages, this one is written by the previous issue’s writer solely to explain how he or she would escape the trap they left for the next writer. That way, you, the reader, can see what the original writer intended for the story after reading the escape the subsequent writer worked out.” Therefore, as the series progressed, we heard from such talented writers as Keith Giffen, Steve Orlando, and Bill Willingham, to name just a few. The one constant in the series beyond the editorial staff was letterer Clem Robins, who recalls the series fondly: “I was given the opportunity to do a book that was a prestige project. That is fun. That is exciting. And the people who penciled and inked it were the best of the best. To be associated with a project like that is just a lot of fun to begin with.” Despite the inherent editorial challenges with a series containing so steve rude many moving parts and a rotating cast of creators, Clem feels they were more than up to the task: “There are a gazillion approaches to editing, as there are to writing or drawing, but a good editor builds a safe space in which the creative team can operate. Brittany Holtzherr is very good at this. She’s organized, she’s encouraging, and she does very good placement guides for the letterer, which are rough lettering layouts. Placements tell the letterer who is speaking and where to put balloons, sound effects, and captions. I loved The Kamandi Challenge. It was an honor to be a part of it.”

Leaping ahead to 2017, DC Comics rolled out an ambitious project titled The Kamandi Challenge as a tribute to the 100th birthday of Jack Kirby. Not unlike The DC Challenge, a 12-issue maxiseries published in 1985–1986 (see BI #98), the premise of this 12-issue series was to involve a new creative team with each successive issue to pick up the storyline, making it as challenging as possible for the next writer to save Kamandi from a death trap. Classic cliffhangers ensued and the creators picking up the storyline in each case were faced with such dilemmas to be solved as an armed nuclear warhead about to detonate, Kamandi falling from a cliff, being offered as a human sacrifice to a massive leopard, having his heart removed as part of a grisly medical experiment, being attacked by a giant sea monster, and more. In the first issue, publisher Dan DiDio gave an introduction and further explained the unique purpose of the lettercols in the series, beginning with this: “So, here we are,

The story of Kamandi is truly an epic saga, filled with conflict, loss, triumph, and nearly limitless possibilities. Conceived by the tremendous vision and equally limitless imagination of Jack Kirby, a genuine hero’s journey unfolded on a large, worldwide scale and riveted readers for years. It is telling that of all his creations during this time period, Kamandi had the most enduring publication run. In the purest sense of the word, Kamandi is a survivor. Perhaps Mike Royer, Jack Kirby’s stalwart letterer and inker through much of that journey, captures the appeal of Kamandi the best when he states, “I see many times people writing about how as kids they enjoyed Jack’s books but now as adults, they realize how really deep his writing was. Maybe he was able to submerge his ‘deep’ better in Kamandi. Or, maybe his audience identified with a protagonist who was ‘closer’ to themselves and not a super-being. You got me. Maybe it was just a hell of a lot fun, mostly.” Whatever it was, Kamandi has endured and proven conclusively that after all he had accomplished in a lifetime of creativity, Jack Kirby could still unleash his formidable imagination and talents and continue to stun and surprise the readers while further cementing a lasting legacy. BRYAN STROUD is a longtime fan of DC Comics, particularly the Silver and Bronze Ages.

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by R i c h a r d

J. Arndt

That Old S&K Magic… …is advertised but not delivered on these covers! That’s Carmine Infantino and Joe Orlando illo’ing the cover to Boy Commandos #2 (Nov.–Dec. 1973) and a Jerry Grandenetti/Creig Flessel cover on Black Magic #2 (Dec. 1973– Jan. 1974). TM & © DC Comics.

The famed Simon & Kirby partnership, which revolutionized the comics field, had lasted from 1940 until 1955, when changing times in the comics industry and changing goals of the partners caused the sundering of their partnership. By 1973 Jack Kirby was in the third year of his exclusive contract with DC Comics. Joe Simon had just been rehired by DC to edit and write a number of titles, including his new creations Prez and Champion Sports, as well as editing the old stomping grounds of the Simon/Kirby team on the one-time Crestwood/Prize and now DC titles Young Romance and Young Love. The two did have an actual reteaming of Simon & Kirby on what was intended to be a one-shot effort with The Sandman. In addition, Simon launched a reprinting of the old S&K Crestwood/Prize Black Magic stories. The Sandman one-shot, which actually led to a series, is discussed elsewhere in this issue, but the reprint Black Magic and a simultaneous reprinting of Boy Commandos have not and are our topic today. Clearly, DC Comics was not averse to a reteaming or revival of the Simon & Kirby partnership.

BOY COMMANDOS

Boy Commandos had actually already seen some reprinting at DC back in 1971–1972, when DC’s titles were published at 48 pages for 25 cents. Five Boy Commandos classics had appeared as backup stories, running in Mister Miracle #4 (Sept.–Oct. 1971)–8 (May–June, 1972). Those five stories came from Detective Comics #64 (June 1942), 76 (June 1943), 82 (Dec. 1943), and Boy Commandos #1 (Winter 1942–1943) and 3 (Summer 1943). Both of the two issues of the 1973 Boy Commandos reprint series were part of a large number of reprint titles that DC launched in 1973, likely in an attempt to counter Marvel’s flood of reprint titles they had launched over the previous year. Marvel had released so many titles, most of them horror, that they threatened to dwarf the number of DC titles appearing on the newsstands of the day. However, Boy Commandos’ editorial chores were not handled by Joe Simon, but by E. Nelson Bridwell, DC’s “keeper of the DC history.” This isn’t particularly odd, as Boy Commandos was a DC title right

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from its start, while Black Magic had been published by Crestwood/Prize during its entire run. Bridwell was the obvious choice to oversee a homegrown DC reprint title. [Editor’s note: For the full story of DC loremaster Bridwell and DC’s 1970s reprint initiative, see BACK ISSUE #81.] Boy Commandos #1 was cover-dated Sept.–Oct. 1973 and featured two 12page stories—the first, entitled “The Sphinx Speaks,” from Detective Comics #66 (Aug. 1942), and the second, entitled “Heroes Never Die,” from Boy Commandos #1 (Winter 1943). “The Sphinx Speaks” is a charming SF fantasy that starts in the far future of 3045, when a reporter gets the crummy job of “interviewing” an actual mummy. To his shock, the mummy talks back to him, telling the reporter that he comes back to life every thousand years or so to “stretch his legs”! When asked where the mummy learned ancient English slang, he replies that he’s not speaking slang but the “most refined English of the 20th Century… the speech of the Brooklyn Dodgers.” The mummy then tells the reporter how he learned his English from the Boy Commandos during the German invasion of Egypt in 1942. What evolves is a vivid, exciting, and amusing Boy Commandos story pretty much unlike any other. Tale two features the boys in China, battling the Japanese, and is another great tale. Bridwell even provides a text piece on the history of the Boy Commandos. All in all, a pretty good deal for 20 cents! “The Sphinx Speaks” was only the boys’ third adventure and shows how far Simon & Kirby were willing to go to break expectations. There’s also a bit of cover enhancing going on here as well. Most of the cover is a reprint of Boy Commandos #1’s cover, but the near-foreground has German machine guns and soldiers added by Luis Dominguez. Boy Commandos #2 (Nov.–Dec. 1973), sporting a new cover not by Jack Kirby but by penciler Carmine Infantino and inker Joe Orlando, featured reprints from Boy Commandos #2 (Spring 1943) and 6 (Spring 1944). The first, “Nine Lives for Victory,” concerns the boys’ involvement with an Allied cat and a very rat-like Nazi. The second, “News from Belgium,” weaves a tale around the lads dealing with outlawed underground newspapers in occupied Belgium. The issue also included a text history on British commandos by Bridwell. However, that was it for the reprint adventures of the Boy Commandos. The title was cancelled following #2, long before anyone could have known whether it was a sales hit or not. As Alter Ego editor and comics legend Roy Thomas explains, “Sales reports varied. In the old days, determining sales after #3 might be fine for a bimonthly. On the other hand… [one-time DC editorial director] Dick Giordano told me that the companies didn’t really know anything about sales until about the fourth issue.” Often, sales dropped after the first issue but rebounded and began to rise with the fourth issue, at least for those titles sold at the newsstands. Direct sales would have been a completely different matter. It was reported at the time in The Comic Reader that Boy Commandos, along with other reprint titles, was being cancelled to make room in the production line for the added work that would be necessary for the upcoming labor-intensive 100-page Super-Spectaculars issues that were being planned. In addition to oneshot appearances in various DC series, four titles were to be converted to full-time 100-page comics, including Batman, Detective Comics, Young Love, and Young Romance. So much for sales figures determining whether a title deserved to be published!

Dream Team (top) Joe Simon (left) and Jack Kirby, in a 1950 photo from Simon’s archives. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset top) DC Comics’ original Boy Commandos #1 (Winter 1942). Cover pencils by Jack Kirby, cover inks by Joe Simon. (bottom) Courtesy of Heritage, original/production art for the first issue of DC’s 1973 BC reprint series. Foreground art by Luis Dominguez, framing a Photostat of the original Kirby/Simon image. (inset bottom) The 1973 first issue in its published form. TM & © DC Comics.

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S&K Rejected (left) Editor Joe Simon and DC opted for this Jerry Grandenetti/Creig Flessel cover instead of Simon & Kirby for the first issue of Black Magic (Oct.–Nov. 1973). (right) Finally, vintage Kirby/Simon art—an alternate cover originally produced for 1950’s Black Magic #1— found a home on the cover of DC’s Black Magic #4 (June–July 1974). TM & © DC Comics.

BLACK MAGIC

Life!” in that issue. That story was reprinted in DC’s Black Magic Black Magic, on the other hand, was handled directly by Joe Simon #4. Changes here are in the upper left side of the cover, where as editor. One of the reasons for its revival, beyond the quality of an upside-down lion’s image, produced as a negative image and the stories themselves, was that either Kirby or, more likely, Simon then colored red, is used as background. There’s no explanation had noticed that some of the early issues had dropped out of for the lion or why it’s presented upside-down. There no lion in copyright when he and Kirby had forgotten to renew them. To regain that story at all. As an interesting sideline, that BM story was refried in 1971 by some control on those stories, they needed to be reprinted under Kirby, Mark Evanier, and Bill Draut as “After I Die!” in The House the original title. The original Black Magic title had been an S&K production from of Secrets #92 (June–July 1971), the legendary issue that also featured the first appearance of Swamp Thing. #1 (Oct.–Nov. 1950) till 33 (Nov.–Dec. 1954), when the title The second Kirby cover, for #7 (Dec. 1974–Jan. 1975), was temporarily cancelled due to the impending Comics is an actual reprint from Black Magic #17 (Oct. 1952), Code ban on horror comics. When it was revived in but it too is altered. The young woman’s head drawn 1957, it ran another 17 issues until it was finally by Kirby has been changed from a typical Kirby cancelled for good in 1961. In that second version, redhead to a paste-over by an unknown artist into only Joe Simon was involved. Kirby had nothing to a pretty blonde. I suspect that unknown artist may do with the Code-approved version of Black Magic. actually be Grandenetti, channeling Will Eisner, as The 1973 DC revival’s first issue was cover-dated he used to do back in the 1950s. She certainly looks Oct.–Dec. 1973 and featured a Jerry Grandenetti/ like an Eisner blonde. Creig Flessel cover illustrating one of Kirby’s many gigantic-head-but-little-body story characters. All the WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE ‘K’ IN stories in that first issue were S&K stories, but unlike ‘S&K’? editor Bridwell’s largely un-retouched stories Why weren’t Kirby’s old covers, which to my eyes in Boy Commandos, DC’s Black Magic featured look just fine, exclusively used on the reprint jerry grandenetti many changes and several rather odd editorial series? Marvel certainly reused their Kirby covers— decisions by Simon. Self-caricature from Vampirella #16 (Apr. 1972). at times, with numerous changes—on their reFirst, although Jack Kirby had drawn excellent covers for the first 33 issues of the original run, only two Kirby print horror titles. Also, why wasn’t Kirby, who was right there covers were used on DC’s Black Magic. The other seven were done at DC, commissioned to draw new covers? I suspect that Kirby’s by the team of Grandenetti and Flessel, who often were simply old covers were considered “old hat” by DC editorial. They were reinterpreting Kirby’s original covers. As Harry Mendryk of The dark, far darker than most DC covers at the time, and the pre-Code Jack Kirby Museum explains in his excellent online article “Black Kirby/Simon artwork did not resemble either his modern work or the Magic at DC” (Jan. 18, 2009; used by permission), Joe Simon told monster work he’d done for Marvel in the late 1950s–early 1960s. him directly that “he used Flessel to do Grandenetti’s inking but Those pre-Code covers were from another era, not particularly appreciated at the time for what they were. Another reason for [then he] didn’t identify any work in particular.” The two Kirby covers that were used were both altered for commissioning new covers by Grandenetti/Flessel could simply be publication on the DC version. Black Magic #4 (June–July 1974) that the new covers looked more like DC titles than Marvel ones featured an actual unused alternate cover that had originally that did use versions of Kirby’s often-altered original covers. As for new covers, Kirby had already seemed a little reluctant, been intended for Black Magic #1 (Aug. 1950). This partially unfinished cover was to accompany the story “Last Second of for whatever reasons, to renew his partnership—in however limited The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 45

a fashion—with Simon. Knowing that no reprints in 1973–1975 were generating any money for the fellows, Kirby may have simply been uninterested in rehashing old work, regardless of whether he was or was not receiving any compensation through Simon for the interior reprints. Another curiosity in this title was that the heads of women in the actual stories have often been altered as well, apparently in an effort to make them prettier. As Mendryk explains it, there seems to have been an impression that “Kirby did not draw beautiful women. Surprisingly Joe Simon [apparently shared that] same general opinion.” The young blonde in the reprint of “The Greatest Horror of Them All” has been altered to make her conform to the look of a romance comics-style girl of the 1970s. In some panels she is indeed somewhat prettier, but in most of the panels it simply looks like someone has done some bad Photoshopping, at least to a 2020 eye. Redrawing and pasting over the heads was not an improvement. Unlike the standard “pretty girls” of romance comics, Kirby’s women tended to have considerable character (i.e., a suggestion of age and experience) in their faces and that, in itself, is beauty of a kind. Other changes to the art came from Simon’s method of recoloring the old art. Harry Mendryk explains, “The art present in the DC reprints was not made from bleached comic pages. Simon probably knew even then how to remove the color from old comic books. But the bleaching process does not completely remove the color and, more importantly, the copiers need to provide a quality finish to the process [which was] not yet commonly available in the early ’70s. Instead… [Simon] re-inked the art on tracing pages over blown-up copies of the probably bleached original comic book pages.” Sometimes the original Kirby/Simon line strokes were followed, but sometimes they were not, resulting in a panel that went from being the original Kirby/Simon art to becoming a Joe Simon-alone piece of art. In the later issues of the run, Simon himself did not do the retouching. Unknown artists did, and Mendryk is completely correct in stating that they did their work with a very heavy hand. Mendryk notes, “Look at the inking on the bottom panel, page six of ‘The Girl Who Walked on Water’ from DC’s #6 and compare it to the original. It looks more like a wood cut than the work of a brush. Another comparison between the ‘wood cut’ inking and the masterly studio-style inking of the original can be seen in the story ‘The Cloak,’ page six, second panel, from Black Magic #2 (Dec. 1950) and then comparing it to the DC version in Black Magic #7 (Dec. 1974–Jan. 1975). It’s like watching a train wreck.” I should mention here that my own first experience with the Black Magic stories of S&K was with the first DC issue. I loved it and suspect I’m not alone in thinking that the Black Magic work of the two is among the best work they ever did together. My own personal favorite of all their stories was “Maniac!,” which was reprinted in that first DC issue. The story concerns a young farm boy who is deathly afraid that his large, burly, but mentally challenged brother, who reacts angrily when picked on, is going to be sent to a mental hospital—which was often the case with such people in the 1940s and 1950s. There’s some brutal violence, some sickening family dynamics, and an O. Henrystyled ending that added up to a totally satisfying story. However, for years, until the issuing of The Simon and Kirby Library: Horror! published by Titan Books in 2014, I was totally unaware that an entire page had been cut from that reprinting in DC’s Black Magic #1. Page 5 was likely cut for some rough violence that the Comics Code objected to in 1973. Luckily for readers, this was the only story in the DC title that was altered for story content. During the years since reading that story for the first time in 1973, I discovered that the author of “Maniac!” was Jack Oleck, who then revisited the story at least twice after its original appearance in Black Magic #32

S&K Redone (top) DC’s Black Magic #7 (Dec. 1974–Jan. 1975) reprinted the S&K cover to (bottom) Prize’s Black Magic #17 (Oct. 1952), albeit with a redrawing of the young woman’s face and hair and significant color changes. TM & © DC Comics.

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(Sept.–Oct. 1954). The first time was as a semi-prose story in EC Comics’ Picto-Fiction title Shock Illustrated #2 (Feb. 1956), this time using the title “My Brother’s Keeper,” which was illustrated by George Evans, and then again as “The Lunatic” from DC’s own House of Mystery #200 (Mar. 1972), this time illustrated by Ralph Reese. All three versions suit me just fine. The reprint title had also been reprinting nonS&K stories from Black Magic, starting in #2, but by the end of the run those non-S&K stories had begun to take over the title. Why is yet another mystery, since the Kirby artwork was supposedly the main selling point for most readers. As the run neared its end, Simon did an even stranger thing. Although there were at least 38 stories completed by the S&K team in the original Black Magic, Simon quit running them after #7. The final two issues of the title featured S&K stories taken from The Strange World of Your Dreams, a four-issue title from 1952–1953, which focused, naturally enough, on people’s strange dreams. There’s nothing wrong with these stories. They do have an appropriate eeriness to them, but they suffer from the same problem that Kirby’s 1970s Marvel color comic 2001: A Space Odyssey (but not his terrific tabloid adaptation of the actual movie) had. Being retold dreams, they either had no story resolution or the resolution was so obviously tacked on that it mars the overall dream being related. I have no idea why, having at least 22 S&K stories left to reprint, that Joe Simon could have cherry-picked for those last two issues, he chose to use stories from another title that just are not as satisfying as the stories he had available to him. DC’s Black Magic was cancelled with #9 (Apr.–May 1975), and for the next two or three decades you’d have had to do some digging for any of those remaining but as-yet-not-reprinted Black Magic tales. Or, for that matter, affordable reprints of Boy Commandos. Luckily today we live in a world where great old comics are being revived and reprinted on a nearly daily basis. Boy Commandos has had two handsome hardcover archive volumes published by DC, while all of the S&K stories produced for Black Magic have been reprinted in the aforementioned Titan volume. Still, if you’re looking for relatively cheap ways to dip your toe into the S&K library for those titles, the DC reprint comics this article has focused on are fairly easy to find on eBay or from comic shops at a decent price. I hope you take up the opportunity. You’ll be happy you did. Was DC fully supportive of the Simon/Kirby retro reunion with these two reprint titles? Clearly not. Boy Commandos was cancelled long before any sales results or even supporting letters from readers could have informed DC of its success or failure. Simon’s last listed editorial duties at DC were Young Love #118 (Oct.–Dec. 1975), only a few months after the cancellation of Black Magic. With the exception of the one-shot Simon/Kirby effort on The Sandman, none of his own editorial or creative efforts in his two-year stint at DC had been particularly successful. Most of them either appeared to be efforts in genres that were either dead or rapidly dying, while his new material was dumped in the scrapheap that DC seemed to use for 1st Issue Special. Simon’s efforts to recapture the title and contents of the original Black Magic appear to have been achieved. Add the workload of doing 100 pages issues of largely reprinted Young Love and Young Romance titles, for a genre that was literally on its last legs, to presume this

probably wasn’t what Simon had signed on for when he returned to DC two years earlier. With Jack Kirby moving into position to return to Marvel, DC likely had no interest in continuing their version of Black Magic, particularly since reprinting Kirby—a money market for Marvel—had never resulted in sustained success between 1970–1975. With both Simon and Kirby either leaving or already gone, DC appeared to be completely uninterested in keeping the title going. RICHARD ARNDT is a comics historian/librarian from Elko, Nevada. He is the author of The Star*Reach Companion, as well as the reference guide Horror Comics in Black and White: 1964–2004. The Star*Reach Companion has 53 pages of vintage comics reprinted inside!

The Spell is Broken Original Grandenetti/ Flessel art, signed by editor Joe Simon, for a planned tenth issue of DC’s Black Magic, which did not see print. Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 47

48 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 49

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

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d Lute

The creative partnership of Joe Simon and Jack “King” Kirby spanned over 40 years and left a lasting impact on the comic-book industry from superheroes to the romance genre and just about everything in between. Their last collaboration was a Sandman revival for DC Comics in late 1973. But how did these two iconic creators reunite for a new comic book almost 20 years after they stopped regularly working together? BACK ISSUE takes a look at Simon & Kirby’s time working on the original Golden Age Sandman, how they partnered up one final time for their Bronze Age revival of the Sandman, and the character’s life after Simon & Kirby.

GOLDEN AGE DREAM TEAM

Although the Bronze Age Sandman title was the last one that the Simon & Kirby team worked on together, it wasn’t the first time that these two creative geniuses co-produced a Sandman comic book for DC Comics. Joe and Jack had also worked on the original Sandman back in the Golden Age of Comics. Let’s look beyond BACK ISSUE’s usual Bronze Age timeframe to journey back into the Golden Age of Comics to understand the creators’ history with the character. Within the pages of the DC Comics’ anthology series Adventure Comics #40 (July 1939), readers were introduced to Wesley Dodds, the Sandman. Dodds’ original costumed guise consisted of a gas mask, a fedora, and a green business suit. He didn’t have any superpowers, so he used a sleeping-gas gun to subdue criminals. The character was created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Bert Christman. After Christman left the feature to join the US Navy, several different artists such as Creig Flessel and Ogden Whitney illustrated the stories. However, the Sandman never achieved the popularity that some of his contemporaries did, and the character was revamped.

From Mystery Man to Costumed Crusader (bottom left) The Sandman as he originally looked, on Creig Flessel’s cover for the hero’s first appearance in Adventure Comics #40 (July 1939). (bottom right) The revamped Sandman, with Sandy, as reimagined by Kirby and Simon, on the cover of Adventure #74 (May 1942). TM & © DC Comics.

Famous First (and Last) No one could nod off while eyeing this dynamic Jack Kirby cover for The Sandman #1 (Winter 1974), which signaled the return of the legendary Simon & Kirby team. This would be their final collaboration. TM & © DC Comics.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 51

Issue #1 featured what appeared to be a cover variant with a purple background instead of the more commonly found blue background. However, the variation wasn’t intentional. According to then-DC Comics assistant editor Paul Levitz, “Sorry to disappoint you, but that wasn’t a ‘variant’ cover.

When Visions Merge (left) Signed by Joe Simon and formerly hailing from Mr. Simon’s personal archives, the original Simon/Jerry Grandenetti cover for Simon’s original concept for DC’s Sandman #1. (right) Compare the published version’s production art, which includes a stat of Jack Kirby’s artwork, to see how the original was Kirby-ized. Both, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

On the long print runs of the day, occasionally the color feed would vary slightly for a while, and at the speed the press ran, a large number of copies would come out slightly differently. I vaguely recall it being the case on Swamp Thing #1 (Nov. 1972). Not intentional, and not truly a variant.”

TM & © DC Comics.

A SANDMAN #1 VARIANT? DREAM ON!

Adventure Comics #69 (Dec. 1941) featured a new Sandman story written by Mort Weisinger, penciled by Paul Norris, and inked by Chad Grothkopf. In an attempt to attract readers of costumed crimefighters, this time Sandman was adorned in a brightly colored superhero costume and not the pulp-like outfit he had previously worn. This issue also introduced his kid sidekick, Sandy, the Golden Boy. Kid sidekicks had become all the rage in comics since Robin, the Boy Wonder debuted as Batman’s sidekick in Detective Comics #38 (Apr. 1940), and it seemed that every superhero now needed one. Weisinger, Norris, and Grothkopf left the feature a few issues later. Enter Simon & Kirby. Their first Sandman story appeared in Adventure Comics #72 (Mar. 1942). In Simon’s 2011 autobiography Joe Simon: My Life in Comics, he told of his work with Kirby on the Golden Age Sandman: “The first series we did [at DC Comics] was The Sandman. Creig Flessel had been the artist on the original series. His stuff was beautifully illustrated, but it wasn’t selling. The character looked ridiculous to me, a guy in a gas mask, with a gun that sprayed sleeping gas to knock out the bad guys. So, we just did it in the trademark Simon and Kirby style, with the skin-tight superhero costume and a sidekick named Sandy.

52 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

Sweet Dreams (top) The new Sandman’s premise is laid out for readers on this page 2–3 spread from Simon & Kirby’s The Sandman #1. (inset bottom) A few months after the Simon & Kirby Sandman one-shot, The Sandman returned with issue #2 (Apr.–May 1975), with this Kirby cover grabbing readers. (bottom) Inside, artist Ernie Chua (Chan), and frequent Kirby embellisher Mike Royer did their best to emulate the King’s energetic art style. TM & © DC Comics.

“Our stories appeared in Adventure Comics and a couple of issues of World’s Finest Comics. There were even a few that were used in All-Star Comics, where he was a member of the Justice Society of America. Each issue of that title was a collection of stories starring the different JSA characters. Somehow, they managed to tie our stories in with the rest. Within a few short months there were blurbs appearing on the comics, proclaiming, ‘New SANDMAN Hit by Simon & Kirby!’” The revamped Sandman by Simon & Kirby had become a popular feature. Adventure #74 (May 1942) featured a beautiful Simon & Kirby Sandman cover. This was their first Sandman cover for the title, but not their last. Their cover for Adventure #84 (Mar. 1943), with the Sandman talking directly to the reader, remains iconic. The Sandman would dominate the covers of Adventure Comics until issue #102 (Feb. 1946), which was his final appearance in the title. Simon & Kirby had already vacated the feature by that time, their last issue being #90 (Feb. 1944), although a Simon-less Kirby would pencil the Sandman’s final appearance in the book. In 1956, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s partnership ended amicably, and they went on their own creative journeys, in and out of the world of comic books. Beginning in 1970, Kirby’s trajectory had circled back to DC Comics, where he created what many consider his magnum opus, the Fourth World (see BACK ISSUE #104). It was during Kirby’s 1970–1975 time at DC that Simon also made his way back to the publisher, as an editor and writer. The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 53

Gorilla My Dreams Original art, signed by Kirby and Royer, for the cover of The Sandman #3. Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

54 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

The King Returns! (left) Jack Kirby resumed pencil duties on The Sandman #4 (Aug.–Sept. 1975)… (right) and in Sandman #6, the series’ final issue published, Wally Wood was the guest inker. TM & © DC Comics.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Joe Simon’s go-to artist during his DC editorial stint was not Jack Kirby, but instead Jerry Grandenetti, with Prez and Champion Sports among their collaborations. During this time Simon conceived a new version of Sandman, and had in mind Grandenetti as its artist. According to Jack Kirby biographer Mark Evanier in Kirby: King of Comics, “[Simon] proposed an innovative twist on the good name of Sandman and someone mused, ‘Hey, maybe if Simon and Kirby get back together, the old magic will reignite.’ It was worth a try, so Jack drew Joe’s Sandman script and maybe there was a tiny spark there.” In his autobiography, Simon recounted, “Jerry and I laid out the whole [Sandman #1] book, including a double-page spread in the tradition of ‘The Wide-Angle Scream.’ Grandenetti’s layouts were very tight, and they sent them out to Kirby in California. Jack had his own team out there, with an inker named Mike Royer, who also did the lettering. They produced the finished pages, and it turned out really well.” The result was The Sandman #1 (Winter 1974, which went on sale at the end of December 1973), whose cover declared, “A Simon and Kirby Special!” The issue was produced by the “special trio” of Joe Simon, writer; Jack Kirby, artist and editor; and Mike Royer, letterer and inker. The splash page introduced the concept: “Somewhere between Heaven and Earth, there is a place where dreams are monitored. This is the domain of a legendary figure, eternal and immortal, who shares with man and beast all the secrets of the ages. He is… The Sandman.” Simon & Kirby could have just brought back Wesley Dodds from the Golden Age, but this wasn’t the case. Instead of a fedora-wearing masked man with a sleeping-gas gun or the superheroic version whose adventures they chronicled, Simon & Kirby’s new Sandman, despite his yellow-and-red superhero costume, was the Sandman of legend that visited people in their dreams. Unlike Dodds, this Sandman didn’t have an alter ego (at least not yet, anyway), but used the Universal Dream Monitor located in the Dream Dimension to watch over people’s dreams. Dodds had his sidekick Sandy, the straight-shooting Golden Boy, while the new Sandman had Brute, a gray-skinned hulking creature, and the diminutive Glob, a blob with arms and legs. These were creatures of the Dream Dimension that would remain trapped in glass domes until the Sandman had need of them and released them. Also introduced this issue was Jed, a young boy who was another regular character in the series, and his grandfather. The first issue saw the Sandman face off against the villainous General Electric, a former Japanese Kamikaze pilot who survived

World War II. Due to injuries he sustained, he had electronic circuitry added into his skull. The General wanted to take over the world by using the Werblinks, electronic reptilian dolls of his own creation. The Dream Stream, also introduced in the premiere issue, was an eerie twilight part of the Dream Dimension that was home to the nightmares that invaded people’s dreams. Unlike his namesake predecessor, this Sandman didn’t use a sleeping-gas gun but instead used a “hypnosonic whistle” to defeat evildoers or to send the nightmares back into the Dream Stream. In this first issue, the Sandman used the whistle to destroy General Electric, thus ending his reign of terror. In Kirby: King of Comics, Evanier wrote of Sandman #1, “They put it out in 1974 as a one-shot, but it sold well enough to prompt a few more.” “It was the biggest seller of the DC line at the time,” wrote Simon in his autobiography. “It sold well enough that they put out five more issues, some drawn by Kirby, a couple of them inked by Wally Wood.” [Editor’s note: Wood only inked one issue, The Sandman #6.] Former DC Comics president Paul Levitz, early in his career at DC at the time of Sandman #1’s release, recalls, “The first issue had a phenomenally high sell-through (I’m vaguely recalling 60% in an era when 40% was unusual for DC), presumably due to the early comic shops and dealers stocking up on large quantities.” While The Sandman was given a chance at more than being a one-shot adventure, the Simon & Kirby partnership didn’t transfer to the revived book. “I didn’t stick with the series,” Simon wrote in his autobiography. “I had other things I was working on.” So, Sandman #1 was the last time that these two icons of the comic industry worked together. Simon recalled, “The Sandman #1 was the last Simon and Kirby production.” [Editor’s note: As chronicled elsewhere in this issue, DC made two additional (half-hearted) efforts to capitalize on the Simon & Kirby name, the reprint titles Boy Commandos and Black Magic.]

THE NIGHTMARES CONTINUE

Not only did Simon leave Sandman, but Kirby also left the book, except for providing cover artwork. Under the editorship of Joe Orlando, with Paul Levitz as assistant editor, The Sandman returned as a bimonthly title. Writer Michael Fleshier and artist Ernie Chan joined inker Mike Royer as the new Sandman creative team starting with issue #2 (Apr.–May 1975). In an effort to recapture the magic that had launched the book a few months earlier, Kirby’s cover featured the artist’s enlarged signature in an eye-attracting, bull’s-eye-like circle.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 55

On the splash page of issue #2, the Sandman warned readers that The King Departs! “Nightmare monsters have broken out of the Dream Stream and are (inset) As Jack Kirby’s 1970s DC tenure was coming to an overrunning the Earth!” Jed was kidnapped by two cloaked strangers and brought to the lair of the mysterious Dr. Spider. The villain created a end, some of the King’s interior stories were packaged machine that could turn a person’s dreams and nightmares into reality. with other artists’ covers. There is speculation that Bill Dr. Spider wanted to use Jed’s nightmares to help him conquer the world. Another Kirby cover graced The Sandman #3 (June–July 1975). Draut illustrated at least part of this cover for Sandman Its story found the Sandman face off against a nameless evil count who, #6 (Dec. 1975–Jan. 1976). The book’s assistant editor, after dying, returned as a talking brain with talking gorillas as servants. Paul Levitz, shares details in this article. (left) You had to The Sandman became involved when the talking brain invaded the dreams of a young girl whose dreams he had been monitoring. The look at George Pérez/Dick Giordano’s back cover for the Sandman used his hypnosonic whistle to blow up the talking brain. digest Best of DC #22 (Mar. 1982) to find mention of the Issue #4 (Aug.–Sept. 1975) brought returned one half of the Simon & Kirby team to the book’s interiors. Emblazoned upon that issue’s Sandman’s appearance inside. (right) This Christmas tale cover was the blurb, “Now Featuring the Power-Packed Art of Jack was produced for the unpublished Sandman #7. Kirby!” King Kirby returned as the title’s penciler, as Fleisher continued to provide the script and Royer still supplied the inks. TM & © DC Comics. The issue featured an alien race that planned to invade Earth by capturing the Nightmare Wizard, the leader of the Dream Stream, so they could take over the Dream Stream itself and then use it to enter people’s While some readers and comic historians credit the cover artwork dreams and conquer the Earth while everyone was asleep. However, they of issue #6 to Kirby and Wood, others suggest that it could have didn’t account for the power of Zed, who used his fancy yo-yo skills been penciled by artist Bill Draut, with inks by Wood. Paul Levitz, to not only rescue the captured Sandman and Nightmare Sandman’s assistant editor at the time, tells BACK ISSUE, Wizard but also to help them defeat the aliens. “I don’t recall whether Jack or Bill did the cover pencils In The Sandman #5 (Oct.–Nov. 1975) by Fleisher, for #6 (online data is contradictory), but it was just as Kirby, and Royer, Jed’s grandfather was killed by a Jack was leaving DC, and so I’d assume if it was Bill it sea creature. Jed went to live with his Aunt Clarice, was because Jack had finished up and was gone. The Uncle Barnaby, and cousins Susan and Bruce, who design would definitely be Carmine’s [Infantino].” all treated him cruelly, à la Cinderella. After falling The series was cancelled with the sixth issue, but asleep doing chores, Jed met up with the Sandman a final story written by Fleisher, penciled by Kirby, in a dream, and together they defeated frogmen and inked by Royer, “The Seal Men’s War on Santa who had captured a princess. Claus,” had been produced. Therein, Jed needed Joining the creative team of Fleisher and Kirby on the Sandman’s help to prove that Santa Claus was issue #6 (Dec. 1975–Jan. 1976) was, as noted earlier real so that the miserly Titus Gotrox would give in Simon’s quote, legendary artist Wally Wood on a $1,000,000 donation to the Christmas Fund. inks. The issue also saw the return of Dr. Spider, who However, the Sandman and Jed found that Santa michael fleisher captured the Sandman and had a plan to destroy had been kidnapped by the Seal Men in order to Washington, D.C., if President Gerald Ford didn’t ComicVine. stop Christmas, because Santa had inadvertently give in to his demands to turn the office of the US president over to brought them gifts that they didn’t want or need such as scuba him. The Sandman saved the day by using his hypnosonic whistle. equipment or gloves for hands with five fingers. The Sandman and 56 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

Jed saved the day, Gotrox made the million-dollar donation, and our hero even got to drive Santa’s sled to help deliver Christmas presents. This holiday tale was supposed to see print in The Sandman #7 before being moved to Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #61 as a backup feature, but both series were cancelled during the infamous DC Implosion. The Sandman story saw limited distribution in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2 (Sept. 1978), the second of two Xeroxed comics “published” to preserve trademarks for cancelled material. It was finally published in the digest The Best of DC #22 (Mar. 1981), a Christmas-themed issue. Regarding the Sandman series as a whole, Paul Levitz relates to BI, “I wasn’t a great fan of the run as it seemed a bit self-consciously kiddie in its original concepts, but it was great to work with Jack a little and to get to know him and [wife] Roz.” With “The Seal Men’s War on Santa Claus,” Fleisher, Kirby, and Royer ended their time working on the Bronze Age Sandman character… but that didn’t mean that readers had seen the last of the Master of Nightmares.

I’LL SEE YOU IN YOUR DREAMS

Simon, Kirby, and the other creators never provided this Sandman with an origin story or even revealed his real name. That all changed with Wonder Woman #300 (Feb. 1983), as writers Roy and Dann Thomas and a host of artists including Gene Colan, Ross Andru, Keith Giffen, Jan Duursema, Dick Giordano, Rich Buckler, Keith Pollard, Frank McLaughlin, Larry Mahlstedt, and Tom Mandrake not only provided readers with an excellent Wonder Woman adventure but also the origin and alter ego of the Bronze Age Sandman. Roy Thomas tells BI, “Yes, I liked the ‘Bronze Age Sandman’ character, though more for the general concept and Kirby’s art and costume than for the stories, which were excessively juvenile and need not have been. I had never cared for either look of the Golden Age Sandman.” Recalling his work on Wonder Woman #300, Thomas says, “I had quit writing Wonder Woman out of protest to the Huntress backup series being shoehorned in, so that I wasn’t writing a full comic anymore, which is what I had ‘signed up’ for. When DC didn’t listen to my request that it not be squeezed in, I left the book. For some reason, they asked me to do #300, and I agreed for various reasons. I thought it would be both a good idea and fun to have Dann work with me, and to become the first woman to have a credit roy thomas as a WW writer, even though I was aware © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. of Joy Hummel Murchison’s work thereon. That issue was also important because it featured the first credited work of a woman on WW (Jan Duursema) and the creation of Hippolyta (Lyta) Trevor, who would soon become Fury in Infinity, Inc.” In this anniversary issue, Wonder Woman was haunted in her dreams by a shadow creature. She was rescued from the creature by the Sandman, who told her that he protected people from the creatures that invaded their dreams. Wonder Woman faced off against the shadow creature several more times during the anniversary-sized issue. After one of those confrontations in which she was again assisted by the Sandman, he revealed to her that he was in reality UCLA psychology professor Dr. Garrett Sanford. He had been working on studying dreams at the university when he was forced to enter the Dream Dimension by the US government in order to save the life of a person who had valuable government secrets and was trapped in that otherworldly dimension. Sanford saved the person’s life and freed him from the Dream Dimension, but Sanford became trapped there himself and could only leave for one hour per day. It was while Sanford was trapped there that he decided to become the Sandman and help those in need from the nightmares. Regarding the Bronze Age Sandman’s origin story, Thomas reveals, “I don’t really recall much about it, except that Dann wasn’t really involved in that part. It was equal parts Fantastic Voyage and other hero origins, I suppose.” It was revealed that after watching Wonder Woman’s dreams on the Universal Dream Monitor, Sanford realized that he was in love with her. When Wonder Woman’s fears and self-loathing manifested as the shadow creature, Sanford took the opportunity to try to make her love him by saving her from the creature. Eventually, Wonder Woman captured the shadow creature herself and conquered her fears. Ultimately Sanford saw the error of his ways, apologized to Wonder Woman, and the two parted ways amicably.

A Kirby Crossover (top) As mentioned in this issue’s Kamandi article, the unpublished Kamandi #61 would have featured this meeting between the Last Boy on Earth and the Master of Nightmares. Scan from The Kamandi Challenge Special #1 (Mar. 2017). (bottom left) Superman and the Sandman join forces in Justice League of America Annual #1 (1983). Story by Paul Levitz and Len Wein, art by Rick Hoberg and Dick Giordano. (bottom right) Writers Roy and Dann Thomas, with artists Gene Colan and Frank McLaughlin, define the Sandman’s backstory in Wonder Woman #300 (Feb. 1983). TM & © DC Comics.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 57

KIRBY’S MARVELOUS SANDMAN

Golden Slumber (top) Hector Hall, the erstwhile Silver Scarab, as Sandman, from Infinity, Inc. #50 (May 1988) by Thomas, Vince Argondezzi, and Tony DeZuniga. (bottom) Neil Gaiman incorporated the Hall-Sandman into the pages of his critically acclaimed Sandman title. From issue #12, Part 3 of Gaiman’s “The Doll’s House” arc. Illustrated by Chris Bachalo and Malcolm Jones III. TM & © DC Comics.

THE BRONZE AGE SANDMAN’S LAST STAND

Justice League of America Annual #1 (Aug. 1983) found the superhero team facing off against its longtime foe Dr. Destiny, who had captured the Sandman and taken over the Dream Dimension. When the heroes made their way to the Dream Dimension, they were captured, but not before the Elongated Man freed the Sandman and sent him to Earth to locate Superman. The Sandman located Clark Kent (who he knew was the Man of Steel due to monitoring his dreams), and after explanations were made, the two made their way to the Dream Dimension where they, along with the freed JLA, defeated Dr. Destiny. The Sandman was offered membership on the team but declined because he could only leave the Dream Dimension for one hour every day and felt he wouldn’t be useful to the superhero team. In Infinity, Inc. #50 (May 1988), writers Roy and Dann Thomas, along with penciler Vince Argondezzi and inker Tony DeZuniga, brought the story of Garrett Sanford to a close. In the book, it was revealed that although the Sandman had been seen in previous issues of Infinity, Inc., it wasn’t Sanford wearing the Sandman costume but instead Infinitor Hector “Silver Scarab” Hall, son of the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkwoman. A deep depression had taken over Sanford because he had been stuck in the Dream Dimension for so long. Sanford died, and so Brute and Glob took it upon themselves to find his replacement. Hector Hall died while fighting as the Silver Scarab, so Brute and Glob found Hall’s consciousness floating in the Dream Dimension, took him in, and made him the new Sandman. Hall’s time as the Sandman continued with an appearance in Sandman #12 (Jan. 1990) from writer Neil Gaiman and artists Chris Bachalo and Malcolm Jones III. Hall’s son Daniel would play a huge role in this Sandman series… but that’s a story for another article. Until that time comes, sleep tight! TM & © Marvel.

Jack Kirby worked on two versions of the Sandman for DC Comics, but these weren’t the only times he was associated with a character named the Sandman. By the end of the 1950s, Kirby was once again at Marvel Comics (then referred to as Atlas Comics), and in 1961, along with writer/editor Stan Lee, created the Fantastic Four. The book was a hit and the duo continued to create more new and creative titles in what became known as the Marvel Age of Comics. It was during this time that Lee also teamed up with artist Steve Ditko on The Amazing Spider-Man. In Amazing Spider-Man #4 (Sept. 1963), the title’s hero faced off against a new villain who called himself the Sandman. This Sandman was named Flint Marko (his real name later revealed to be William Baker), who could change his body into actual sand after he was accidentally bonded with radioactive sand. Ditko’s characters were often portrayed as more down-to-Earth and idiosyncratic than the Kirby-drawn characters that appeared in most of Marvel’s other comic books, a perfect example being Ditko’s Sandman, whose outfit was a simple green-striped shirt, with slacks. Kirby redesigned the Sandman’s costume in the pages of Fantastic Four, making it fantastical, because nothing was ever just ordinary with Kirby. Kirby kept the Sandman’s green color scheme but gave the character an armored suit. Lee and Kirby produced a logical (at least Marvelstyle logic, that is) reason for the Sandman’s costume change. The storyline began in Fantastic Four #57 (Dec. 1966), where Marko stole some of Reed Richard’s technology from his lab in the Baxter Building. When readers next saw Marko on the dynamic cover to FF #61 (Apr. 1967), he had his new armored suit. Frequent FF foe the Wizard had created the suit from the parts that Marko had stolen. Marko continued to use the Kirbydesigned suit for many years until ultimately returning to his Ditko-designed attire.

Thanks go out to Paul Levitz and Roy Thomas for their invaluable assistance with this article. Mild-mannered Elementary School Teacher ED LUTE enjoys the work of Jack Kirby and was excited to be able to revisit this Sandman series for BACK ISSUE. He has also contributed to TwoMorrows’ The Jack Kirby Collector.

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“A startling look into… the World That’s Coming.” Anyone familiar with the original OMAC series or the work of Jack Kirby knows that those words are proudly emblazoned on the cover of the first issue. As well, Kirby was known for advancing ideas of the future in a lot of his work. As a matter of fact, in his introduction to the DC Comics collection Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps (2008), former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier stated, “[Jack] thought in the future, often forgetting that the real world hadn’t quite caught up with him and never would. I am still astounded at the number of accurate predictions Jack made about how things would be in ten, twenty, thirty years.” Most of the character’s Bronze Age appearances took place in the future, so it’s not surprising that subsequent creators dealt with predictions as well. But, in light of that blurb, we’re going to examine who predicted what, and how well they did. In addition, some of the storylines dealt with the concept of time travel, so we’ll look back at that aspect of those stories. Or is it forward? Or sideways? (Time travel always messes with your perspective.)

CRYSTAL BALL

by B r i a n

Martin

I Go to Pieces Detail from Jack Kirby’s clairvoyant and crazy OMAC: One Man Army Corps #1 (Sept.–Oct. 1974). Inks by Mike Royer. TM & © DC Comics.

OMAC begins in an unspecified future. DC would later explain the relationships between many of their future-set comics in an article in Amazing World of DC Comics #12 (that series was examined in BACK ISSUE #100). In that essay, OMAC was linked to another Kirby kreation Kamandi, and sets the series not long before the Great Disaster, a DCU event that reduces the world almost to rubble. Things are still rather civilized at the point we come in, as we meet Buddy Blank, a nondescript, slightly downtrodden individual, as he works for “Pseudo-People Inc.” in a fairly standard office. It is here that we encounter the first Kirby prediction we want to examine. At PPI, if you feel bad, they have a Crying Room, or a Destruct Room, or a few other specialty rooms. In these you can do pretty much what the name says, all in the name of keeping employees happy. These days, of course, many workplaces have gyms, daycare, and even crisis counseling. Kirby did a pretty good job predicting the generality, if not the specifics, though I am sure there are many reading this who would love to have the type of room PPI does where you could kick a Pseudo Person down a rail and into a wall! Buddy is chosen by members of the Global Peace Agency as the best candidate for their current project. This agency, a grouping of literally faceless individuals, does not represent any one country, as they frequently make clear. Their name pretty much sums up their raison d’être. A nice idea, but one we are still far from achieving. Kirby also predicts something with regard to their origin that has not borne out as time goes by. The Peace Agency grew out of NASA, but given the cuts to that agency’s funding in recent times, that genesis does not seem likely. The agents subject Buddy to “electronic surgery,” which turns him into the One Man Army Corps with that name again giving us pretty much all the information we need regarding the character. The surgery is performed by a bolt of energy linking Buddy to a satellite that is self-aware and even has a name: Brother Eye. This is done at PPI as that company is involved in some shady dealings, to say the least. Pseudo-People creates exactly what their name implies, artificial beings. The state in which they are delivered to their customers forms the basis for the cover of OMAC #1 (Sept.–Oct. 1974) that some readers found, and may continue to find, just a wee bit disturbing. Just before being transformed, Buddy discovers that some of these Pseudos are being used as remote control bombs! This is another instance of Kirby predicting the future, since in the real world suicide bombers did not enter the public consciousness until the 1980s. In this instance, I’m sure Kirby would have been much happier to be wrong. OMAC proceeds to destroy the plant but during his rampage, Kirby has him wonder aloud, “Where does humanity stop and technology begin?” The next time you see a group of people each on their cell phone, think of that. At issue’s end, mission completed, OMAC sets out to find the mastermind behind it all, Mr. Big. The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 59

WE BUILT THIS CITY

As the second installment begins, OMAC tracks Mr. Big to Electric City. The twist is, Mr. Big has rented the entire city. Ostensibly it is for a party, but as things progress, we find his real purpose is to destroy the OMAC project since the designer of Brother Eye, Myron Forest, lives in Electric City. Tragically Forest is killed in the story, but the GPA does manage to capture their quarry due to OMAC’s actions. When it comes to predicting the future, you may think there is nothing to examine in this story. I mean, c’mon, rent a city? It’s not quite that far-fetched. In the story, it is done because it means the citizens will not have to pay taxes for the rest of the year, an attractive proposition to be sure. As for the real world, in 2010 entertainer Snoop Dog tried to rent the tiny country of Lichtenstein (62 square miles). It did not happen, but according to recent online adds, anyone could rent the country for a paltry $70,000 a night. There is a two-night minimum, of course. In the development of the story, we learn brother eye how closely OMAC and Brother Eye are He’s watching you. TM & © DC Comics. related as our star is told by Myron Forest that the ocular orbiter will provide him with extra power when he needs it and it later protects him from bullets and helps him simulate death so he will be taken to Mr. Big.

YET ANOTHER MOVIE

Issue #3 begins with OMAC relaxing watching a movie. Of interest to us is, according to the caption, that this movie is “translated electronically and fed into the human brain.” We are not quite there yet with virtual reality, but I’d say we’re getting close. OMAC’s mission in this issue and the next is to capture a small-time dictator named Kafka. You can draw your own conclusions where that choice of name is concerned. As OMAC approaches the country in question, his vehicle is attacked by “smart bombs” that are “guided by television.” Anyone who watched coverage of the Gulf War in 1990–1991 will remember the world being introduced to this sort of technology. Guess what? Kirby had already thought of it. Brother Eye provides that extra power mentioned earlier when OMAC is attempting to overturn Kafka’s giant armored-and-wheeled bunker. Almost crushed beneath it, OMAC receives the power boost necessary to conquer his foe. Kirby did miss a chance when Kafka is processed after capture. The dictator is fingerprinted and voice printed to confirm his identity, but there is no mention of any sort of precognition with regard to DNA testing or the like.

SHOOTING STAR

The quest for immortality has been a human concern for almost as long as there have been humans. Jack Kirby posits in OMAC #5 (May–June 1975) that in the World That’s Coming, certain criminals will make it a reality by providing those that can afford it with a young new body into which they will merely transplant your brain! This idea had, of course, existed for quite some time in science fiction in one form or another, and Kirby merely followed it to one

OMAC: Alpha and Omega (top) Buddy Blank becomes OMAC in issue #1. (inset) Joe Kubert’s cover for the original series’ final issue, #8 (Nov.–Dec. 1975). (left) #8’s inglorious conclusion, and (right) Royer’s original lettered final panel, giving a glimpse of what Kirby had in mind for #9. TM & © DC Comics. 60 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

From (Last) Boy (on Earth) to (One) Man (Army Corps) (left) Two Kirby concepts are linked in Kamandi #50 (Apr.–May 1977). Cover by Rich Buckler and Alfredo Alcala. (right) Jim Starlin not only illo’ed the cover to Kamandi #59, he also received cover-billing for his OMAC backup that launched in this ill-fated, quickly cancelled final issue. TM & © DC Comics.

logical conclusion by transforming it into a criminal enterprise. If the process, or anything even remotely like it, is even possible, we do not seem to be close to it at the moment. Putting aside the ethical dilemmas involved, in this case it was probably just the reuse of a common trope to provide an antagonist for the story. As OMAC follows leads to find the captives who will be sacrificed in this horrid process, he finds his main informant at a shooting gallery. The kick is, on this firing line the shooters are not firing at revolving ducks, but holograms of various imaginary and vicious creatures. This to me is a direct precursor to just about every first-person shooter game that has been produced for any video game platform since they began. OMAC and his contact begin their mission in a “Magna-remote,” a computer-driven car. Remote-control vehicles were probably not a Kirby invention, but as we get closer and closer to them in our world, it is another point in his favor that he perpetuated the concept. During their trip to the “terminal” where the prisoners are held, they manage to rescue a young woman slated to be a victim. We mention it here since OMAC’s guide says the perpetrators were summoning a transport by “pocket phone,” Too bad those things never came about… they sound like they could have been useful! When we arrive at the facility at the heart of the quest, we discover that the instructions for the brain-swap operation are contained on a circuit board that is inserted into a computer, and the electronic brain carries out the process of exchanging the corporeal ones! Granted, the board Kirby depicts is quite a bit larger than anything in use now, but computer-assisted surgery is a reality in our lives today. Is it far in the future where all human involvement will be completely removed from many procedures?

And no, I do not consider this a prediction of the current practice of drinking bottled water. Living as I do on the shores of one of the Great Lakes, it has become very apparent in recent years that in maybe the very near future, access to abundant fresh water may be one of the most important resources a country can possess. During the story, Dr. Skuba manages to revert OMAC back to Buddy Blank and prevent Brother Eye from reversing the process. In an attempt to coerce the villain into surrendering, the satellite sends him a message threatening him with action by the Peace Agency. Skeptical, Skuba runs the utterance through a “voice print” and determines he is talking to a machine. This is a slightly sophisticated version of the Turing Test. Named after British computer scientist Alan Turing (1912– 1954), this test is used during a conversation to determine if an artificial intelligence can be distinguished from a true human being. Kirby left the characters in not the greatest situation. Buddy is presumably trapped on an island that has just exploded, while Dr. Skuba has managed to turn Brother Eye into a giant magnet that soon leaves it encased in rock. Certainly a cliffhanger. No wonder it took a while for someone else to utilize the characters. One final word before we leave the King. At the start we mentioned that Kirby frequently extrapolated as to what the future might hold. With OMAC he certainly did it with more frequency, throwing out predictions pretty much every issue. It obviously wasn’t accidental, though. He used the phrase “in the world that’s coming” as a preface to introducing pretty much every situation and every concept throughout all eight issues.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE...

OMAC #8 had a cover date of Nov.–Dec. 1975. After that, the character sat dormant until the beginning of what was to be the DC Explosion. This moment in history has been much discussed, with a great overall view being presented in Keith Dallas and John Wells’ 2018 TwoMorrows book, Comic Book Implosion. In the case of OMAC, one story appeared before the collapse. Kamandi #59 (Sept.–Oct. 1978) featured the One Man Army Corps as a backup feature. In this case, not only did the backup not continue, but it was the final issue of Kamandi as well.

Kirby’s OMAC run was abruptly cancelled with the eighth issue, precipitating an extremely forced wrapping-up of the plot in the final panel of a six-panel page! The plot that was so unceremoniously concluded concerned another prognostication that is now a reality. Dr. Sandor Skuba (not much subtlety there, admittedly) has developed a process to shrink the entire liquid contents of a large lake down into a container about the size of a standard brick. He then plans to ransom them back to the nations of the world.

THE DC SPARK

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 61

OMAC Lives! …in the hands of writer/artist Jim Starlin. Jaw-dropping splash from Kamandi #59, inked by Joe Rubinstein. Original art courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

name] felt their characters should be. I turned him into a future mercenary helping the telephone company conquer the world.” It was a little more complex than that, but not much. Starlin began his tale immediately after the end of Kirby’s last issue, obviously wanting to give some closure to the chronicle. Brother Eye had, at the last second, been able to transform Buddy into OMAC, according to Starlin. In the first two Starlin installments, published two years apart, changes are made to OMAC’s origin, making the Global Peace Agency now representatives of an alien race who are “dedicated to preserving civilization throughout the stars, preferably by indirect scientific means.” The faceless members of the GPA did not factor into his tales, though, as Starlin revealed in his very first story that the organization had been wiped out down to the very last man by the forces of that “telephone company” he mentioned. That last JIM STARLIN GPA agent does play a major role before he expires, as he passes on vital © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. information that turns OMAC into the mercenary Starlin mentioned. That information is related to OMAC via a video tape (Another bit of a miss there. How many reading this still own a VCR?), containing a message from a member of that alien race. It begins by revealing that one of his colleagues developed a system by which he could predict the future of a planet, as well as that of individual beings, with stunning accuracy. This type of mathematical future gazing was made famous in the 1950s in the “Foundation Trilogy” by Issac Asimov. The developer of this “psycho-history,” Professor Z by name, predicts that seven corporations will become the major powers in the world and will wage war with each other, precipitating the Great Disaster. The only possible way to prevent this, OMAC is told, is if he allies himself with one of these powers and helps them take over the world, thereby avoiding a long, drawn-out conflict. He does so, meeting the head of one of the corporations, Wiley Quixote by name (the roadrunner never makes an appearance…). The battle for one city is detailed over the next two stories in the back of Warlord. Unfortunately, by the time his final contribution appeared in issue #39 (Nov. 1980), Starlin had moved on. He obviously had plans for future plots, as before the tale concludes, a member of the alien race had revealed himself to be a partner of OMAC’s Earthly ally with plans of his own, while Brother Eye was still encased in stone. In the course of four backup stories, Starlin did do a little predicting himself. The rise in the power of corporations over governments has been explored in other fiction, but the fact that both of the Big Two comic-book companies have now been absorbed into much larger corporations certainly makes it seem prescient. That “phone company” Starlin referred to in the interview is named International Communication and Commerce in the story, and when OMAC discovers they are attacking the supposedly secret Global Peace agency, Brother Eye tells him, “Who can keep a secret from the phone company?” Insert your ISP in there and you may be able to say that today. It is worth noting that Starlin did make a major break from Kirby tradition, replacing OMAC’s outfit with one of his own design. However, every creator who utilized the Buddy Blank version subsequent to this series of appearances reverted back to Kirby’s original costume.

Following this, OMAC was on the shelf for another extended period until the balance of the story was finally published, beginning in the back of Warlord #37 (Sept. 1980). This time he would enjoy life on the printed page for another stint lasting about as long as his original series. Seems Brother Eye could save OMAC from just about everything except comic-book limbo! Given the task of returning OMAC to print was comic superstar Jim Starlin, acting as writer and penciler. DC has so much faith in Starlin that he penciled the Kamandi #59 cover, which lists him by name as the architect of the backup during this era of rare comic-cover credits. Starlin himself did not have quite as much confidence, it seems. In an interview in the contemporaneous fanzine Whizzard, he opined, “I doubt [those stories] will ever be used because they didn’t go along with what I think National [Periodical Publications, DC’s former

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LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S…

of their current target (coyly named Verner Brothers, Left to continue on a few months later, in Warlord by Starlin, playing off of Warner Bros., DC’s parent #42 (Feb. 1981), are writers Dan Mishkin and Gary company), only to be confronted by their champion, a Cohn, teamed with penciler Greg LaRocque. “Dan and superpowered Pseudo-Person called Verner’s Vanquisher. Gary Cohn tells BACK ISSUE, “Vanquisher was a character I were the new kids on the block,” we already had that we hadn’t had a chance to use Gary Cohn tells BI.“OMAC was before, so we threw him in. At the time we had no [editor] Jack Harris’ test for inkling of [Mishkin and Cohn’s forthcoming character] us. It was the first established Blue Devil. When we made BD a Hollywood guy, character/series that we we recalled our take on that in OMAC, so we just were allowed to work on. took our Verner’s from the future and said it was When we (and I’m going the same Verner’s as BD worked for, and then to guess, any other writers) decided to throw Vanquisher in.” “Vanquisher was were assigned to work on a indeed a character we’d come up with and gone Kirby property, the task was nowhere with before we ever got the to suss out a thread of some OMAC gig,” reiterates Dan Mishkin. sort that could then be Where the writing duo begins unraveled and followed. their examination of the future Find a strand of coherence dan mishkin is in the expected battle and focus on that. Here’s between the two champions. the thing, though. Kirby’s Willyboy. It’s televised for the general work didn’t make any sort of rational ‘sense,’ but populace. Behind the scenes, it made intuitive sense. Trying to figure out what though, Verner technicians a Kirby comic ‘meant’ was fruitless. Its meanreveal that they did ing was subliminal, subconscious. We lesser “pre-production sketches.” creators, not having quite the same direct line to This certainly ventures into the collective unconscious, had to try to impose the realm of professional a more rational, and ultimately less wonderful, wrestling, and possibly sensibility on our own version of the work.” reality TV. “It’s a truism gary cohn The duo valiantly continued the storyline, that all science fiction is however. OMAC decides battling armies is too Facebook. social satire,” says Cohn. costly where lives are concerned and subscribes to the old adage, “Cut off the head and the body dies.” “It takes things that are going on ‘now’ and says, Heading to New York, OMAC assaults the headquarters ‘What if THIS goes on…’ and runs with that. Kirby

A Backup and a Team-Up (left) The One Man Army Corps takes on Mishkin and Cohn’s Verner Bros.’ corporate crusader, the Vanquisher, as the camera rolls in the OMAC backup in Warlord #43 (Mar. 1981). Art by Greg LaRocque and Vince Colletta. (right) Len Wein and George Pérez (with interior inks by Pablo Marcos) combined Superman and OMAC in DC Comics Presents #61 (Sept. 1983). TM & © DC Comics.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 63

took many of the popular science-fiction tropes about the future of corporations, consumerism, popular media, and technology, and threw them into his mental blender and blurted it all out onto the page with his trademark fantastic, mind-blowing art. “That’s what we were trying to do. It was a crude pastiche, nothing subtle about it, but it had some humor and energy and fun, and that’s really all a comic-book series like that needed to do.” I don’t think it’s any kind of a spoiler to say OMAC wins the fight with the Vanquisher. From there, the writers send OMAC off on a few side adventures while the heads of the two corporations work out their new arrangement. Visiting a carnival, our hero meets a barker offering diversions for those to whom the ‘”twelve to three job” isn’t enough. Ah, if only that prediction had come true! The series ends with Warlord #47 (July 1981). In the last we see of OMAC, he has become involved with black-market weapons runners. Discovering that the exchange of these weapons is what keeps the conflicts going, he hopes that by disrupting this flow he can bring about peace, and they have just completed a mission. The final page of the story is of interest though as it reveals Wiley Quixote’s alien contact to be the futurist Professor Z. It seems he has recalculated, and to achieve his goals he will need to bring about the Great Disaster so he can utilize a descendant of OMAC’s. This brings the story in line with the world of Kamandi, just as that AWODCC article had said. Previously, in Kamandi #50 (Apr.–May 1977), it had been revealed that OMAC was in fact Kamandi’s grandfather. Kamandi even spends some time in that story looking like his ancestor, mohawk and all! Things might have not ended this neatly, however. Mishkin recalls, “As for our backup series being replaced by different backup series even though we were building to more stories, I remember two things: 1) that the idea of our continuing OMAC somewhere else was never considered; and 2) Len Wein stepped in when he learned our story was going to end on a cliffhanger. He got the powers-that-be to give us one more issue to get something closer to a conclusion before we were replaced, for which I’ll always be grateful.”

I’LL BE BACK

OMAC was next rescued from comic-book limbo by the capable hands of the same Len Wein, with artists George Pérez and Pablo Marcos, in a team-up with Superman in DC Comics Presents #61 (Sept. 1983). [Editor’s note: BACK ISSUE #66 has a full examination of that series, as well as other team-up titles.] With a plot that again took its

Who’s Your Buddy? (top) John Byrne was the next creator to visit Kirby’s World That’s Coming in his four-issue OMAC miniseries of 1991, published in black and white. (bottom) Original John Byrne art, signed by the artist, for page 7 of OMAC #3 (Jan. 1992). Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

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Last Issue Special Fans Dek Baker and David Morris so pined for a satisfying conclusion to Kirby’s quickly cancelled OMAC #8 that they did one themselves! Their cover to OMAC #9, courtesy of the writer and artist. OMAC TM & © DC Comics.

idea from a familiar science-fiction trope, a variation of which was soon to be used in the film The Terminator, enemies of OMAC send a robot back in time to kill Buddy Blank’s ancestor, thus preventing the Army Corps’ creation. Since this was a team-up book, our protagonist manages to jump into the machine that is sending the horrible hardware on its journey and so arrives back in what was DC’s present day. OMAC joins forces with Superman and they defeat the “Murdermek.” It’s a pretty straightforward plot, but one deftly handled by gifted creators. Though the story does not really deal with any predictions for the future, where it becomes interesting for our purposes is that it has the first instance of our other theme, the quirks involved in time travel. The metal maniac has come back to kill Norman Blank, Buddy’s ancestor. He is equipped with a sensor that will identify his quarry. The creators then proceed to put their own little twist on the concept. Murdermek tracks down Mr. Blank in a crowded train station. Problem is, a gentleman walks right in front of Norman Blank just as the robot gets a positive reading. So he tries to kill the wrong man! A very inspired take on an old idea. Unfortunately, that was pretty much it for OMAC in the Bronze Age. Other than appearing in a couple of DCU crowd scenes, he would disappear until another heavy-hitter creator would take his shot.

THE FUTURE IS NEVER BLACK AND WHITE

“When I convinced DC to do OMAC in black and white, one of their ‘conditions’ was that there would also be a subsequent trade paperback release in color. This necessitated modifying what I had originally intended to be my approach with the DuoShade [artboard]. I was compelled to do more or less conventional line work… sending in the pages to be Photostatted before being returned to me for adding the gray tones.” John Byrne gave that summation on his Byrnerobotics site referencing his 1991 bookshelf-format, four-issue OMAC series. here.” When he arrived in the past, he did just that and recovered So why did we never see the colorized version? According to Byrne his memory. OMAC was not so lucky. Also, due to one of those timeon his site, “Then the Photostats were ‘lost’! Years later, I am told, travel anomalies, Brother Eye arrives ten years later than his charge. the Photostats were found—‘behind a filing cabinet’—but DC has Thus OMAC reverts to Buddy Blank (whose name Byrne gives a logical genesis to), who, while a cipher, makes quite a good life for himself expressed no interest since in completing our original deal.” For his part, Byrne had little interest in predicting the future. in Depression-era America. He gets married and even fathers a child. Much more so than the DCCP story, Byrne explored the various Unfortunately, when he finally runs across Mr. Big, Buddy is recognized and trouble begins. Fortunately, just as this trouble reaches its repercussions of time travel. From Byrnerobotics: “I found climax, Brother Eye arrives and restores OMAC. myself confronted with a small challenge: How could I The remainder of the series examines OMAC frustrating remain faithful to Kirby, but not play OMAC as essentially Mr. Big’s plan, then choosing to live out his life as a period piece? Mister Time Travel here, of course. Buddy Blank. It is only after his wife passes away and Always my favorite motif.” he is an old man that he realizes that he was wrong to Byrne uses the series to examine time travel alter history. In doing so he created an endless loop and alternate universes, both common sciencetrapping both him and his adversary. That is why fiction devices. In the first issue, OMAC finally Mr. Big wanted OMAC to kill him in the first issue, catches up with the elusive Mr. Big, now an to finally free him, and why Buddy chooses to die as old man who merely wishes for OMAC to kill the story nears the end. Before that he has Brother him. Our hero obliges, but is then immediately Eye copy all of the information in his head, allowing pulled from reality by a pair of Global Peace Agency the satellite to later create a new OMAC that will operatives. In Byrne’s words, “I wanted to be faithful live the life Kirby chronicled. If this all seems a little to Kirby, I knew something had to go, and so I john byrne confusing, I agree, this sort of summation does stepped over the Starlin stuff.” The GPA agents not do the complex plot justice. Reading the series reveal that the timeline they have just pulled OMAC © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. makes much more sense, this just gives you a taste from is an alternate one created by Mr. Big using a time machine. OMAC and Brother Eye are sent back to stop him. Or is that of how Byrne approached the idea of multiple timelines in his quest stop him again? More mangling of the language thanks to time travel. to tell his story but not invalidate the original series. As is fitting for a time-travel story of this nature, Byrne commentByrne does use quite an interesting take on temporal displacement, though. When characters travel back in time, they lose their memory, ed, “I considered this story to be a closed loop.” And how! That’s not to say that Buddy, Brother Eye, and OMAC disappeared the reasoning being that memories are made as we travel forward in time. Mr. Big got around this by recording all of his memories on a from the DCU, even though no one has used the concepts explicitly device he strapped to his arm and attaching a note to it saying, “press to predict the future. The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 65

DON’T FORGET ME (WHEN I’M GONE)

One thing Kirby did not, and could not, predict was his influence on future fans and creators. By all accounts Jack wasn’t the type to think about himself that way. History has cemented his legacy, as that is the theme of this issue of BI, and I’ve even heard there is a company out there that publishes a magazine dedicated to him! The King and the characters he created have had an endearing legacy throughout the comic world and its associated mediums, with OMAC being no exception. Many creators have reverted back to Kirby’s version, or else have arranged their corner of the DCU so that Jack’s original version is still possible.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE… CONTINUED, THAT IS

Even more amazing is how many have tried to make up for the truncated ending of OMAC #8. After John Byrne’s time-twisting tale, please forgive me as we take a few leaps forward and/or sideways and examine the descendants of just that one story. Jim Starlin, of course, began his story directly after OMAC #8 ended, but that was not enough for some people. In 2002, two fans by the names of Dek Baker and David Morris decided the only way they were ever going to see OMAC #9 was to create it themselves. So, with Baker penciling, and Morris handling the rest, they did just that. Not being professionals they self-published OMAC #9 with a cover plea of, “Don’t sue us, just ask,” a riff on the classic cover blurb, “Kirby says: Don’t ask! Just buy it!” from Jimmy Olsen #141 (Sept. 1971), the second issue of that comic to guest star comedian Don Rickles. If you’ve never seen it, don’t ask, just track it down. One has to wonder if there are other fans out there who, over the years, have created their own endings to comics that were denied them. Most probably didn’t take it to the extreme of these two gentlemen, but I think we fans get quite frustrated when a story is not given a proper ending. Kirby, OMAC, and that final issue had a lasting effect on a lot of comic professionals as well. In Bug! The Adventures of Forager #5 (Jan. 2018), noted creators Mike, Lee, and Laura Allred took their shot at finishing off the storyline. When asked about his introduction to OMAC, writer Lee Allred tells BI, “I remember as a kid spotting the first issue on the drugstore spinner racks and thinking OMAC was the farthest out far-out Kirby I’d ever seen… too bizarre to spend allowance money on. That tagline, THE WORLD THAT’S COMING, stuck with me, though, and eventually I did pick up issue #8—just in time for the cancellation cliffhanger. Shucks and other comments.”

Ambushed by Bug! The Allred family—writer Lee, artist Michael, and colorist Laura—continued OMAC’s saga in Bug! The Adventures of Forager #5 (Jan. 2018). TM & © DC Comics.

The six-issue Bug! series as a whole is a surreal journey through time and space, and besides starring the titular character it also checks in on a lot of other Kirby progeny. The fifth issue dumps Forager and his traveling companions right where OMAC #8 left off. The creators then proceed to wrap up that storyline and leave OMAC and Brother Eye healthy and happy and ready to continue on in Kirby’s footsteps should anyone choose to use them. What gave them the idea to finish off that old cliffhanger? “Instead of the 12-issue romp around the DC Kirbyverse we originally pitched, DC cut Bug! down to six,” Lee Allred says. “They also took Kirby’s main characters off the table due to other Kirby centennial events happening at the time. “This left us with Kirby’s minor DC characters, mostly the 1st Issue Special one-shots and the shorter-lived titles like Sandman and OMAC, titles Kirby never got to resolve. My secondary purpose with Bug! became bringing some closure to these Kirby storylines, especially that infamous OMAC cliffhanger. I was going to get my 25 cents’ worth for that lousy last-panel pasted-up Kaboom! even if it took 40 years! “Seriously, though,” Lee concludes, “my favorite part about Bug! was not just getting to play in Kirby’s sandbox but getting to write the endings he never got a chance to. The Atlas and Manhunter 1st Issue cliffhangers, the Forever People Deadman-in-a-robot body storyline, and OMAC’s battle against Skuba. I’d like to think our OMAC ending in particular is one Kirby would like.” A few other creators have made reference to the characters and situations that Kirby left unfinished. In Adventures of Superman #17 (Nov. 2014), industry titans Jerry Ordway and Steve Rude have the mohawked one come to Superman’s rescue when he falls prey to a device sent back in time by Dr. Skuba. As with John Byrne’s series, Skuba is attempting to alter the past and make himself ruler in the future. When OMAC returns to his own time, he confronts the villain in the same hideout that he occupied at the end of Kirby’s story, so maybe these two were subtly wrapping up that tale as well. Finally, in the Darkseid Special #1 (Oct. 2017) that was part of DC’s batch of Jack Kirby 100th birthday specials, Paul

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The Dude Does It Again! Original Steve Rude painting for the Superman/OMAC matchup scribed by Jerry Ordway, courtesy of Heritage. Originally produced for the digital-first Adventures of Superman #51, it appeared in print as the cover of the final issue of that online series’ print incarnation, Adventures of Superman #17 (Nov. 2014). TM & © DC Comics.

Levitz, Phil Hester, and Ande Parks fashioned a six-page OMAC short that references a resolution to OMAC #8 that our hero is none too happy about. It seems with the defeat of Dr. Skuba, all of the captured water was released at once with disastrous consequences in the form of multiple tsunamis. OMAC takes out his frustrations on the Global Peace Authority headquarters and walks away happily with his new friend Lila, who happens to be the Pseudo-Person who instigated Buddy Blank’s involvement way back in the original first issue. She is also the PP pictured on that very first cover. (Some assembly required.) Similarly but different, rather than extrapolate on Kirby’s last OMAC story, in Solo #3 (Apr. 2005) Paul Pope retold the story from Kirby’s OMAC #1 in his own style.

EYE IN THE SKY

All of those stories that attempted to tie up or tie into the Kirby run happened in specials, distinct imprints, or series that take place in non-specific times. However, the concepts, if not exactly the same characters, continued to have life in the official DC Universe, though they did have to be reintroduced and slowly developed. In JLA #43–46 (July–Oct. 2000), we are shown a Batman who has become increasingly paranoid regarding Earth’s metahumans and begins to gather data on them. That story’s scribe Mark Waid tells BI, “It was actually a holdover from an X-Men idea during my short tenure on the book, so short I was never able to explore it. Professor X almost certainly has filed away an effective strategy against every mutant on Earth, including his friends. That’s what led to the Tower of Babel story that set Batman up as a terrible team player.” Later in his run, Waid paralleled this behavior to something Martian Manhunter had done and considered the matter closed. “This aspect of Batman’s personality quickly took on a life of its own and seems to have been the default for Bruce Wayne ever since,” remarks Waid. Batman is then further traumatized in the Identity Crisis miniseries (Aug. 2004–Feb. 2005) when he discovers his fellow heroes erased his memory of Dr. Light’s assault on Sue Dibney (see BI #123 for that

full story). So it is not too much of a surprise that in Countdown to Infinite Crisis (May 2005) and The OMAC Project #1 (June 2005), the latter being the premier issue of one of a quartet of miniseries that lead up to 2006’s Infinite Crisis, it is revealed that in the new continuity the Darknight Detective has created a satellite christened Brother MK 1 to perform his data retrieval. Unfortunately, as the series begins, Batman is no longer in control. Maxwell Lord, a DC high-powered executive who at this point was running Checkmate, the super-spy organization, first has command, but the satellite rechristens itself Brother Eye when Lord is killed and the orbiting OMAC daddy subsequently gains sentience (thanks to Alexander Luthor, the son of Lex Luthor on the pre-Crisis Earth-Three), as detailed in Infinite Crisis #4 (Mar. 2006). After these developments, Brother Eye decides its mission is to eliminate all metahumans by using the “O.M.A.C. Protocol,” a program that, due to nanotechnology secretly introduced into over one million people worldwide through standard vaccinations, can turn

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The World That Keeps on Coming From a paranoid Batman’s Big Brother-ing of his fellow JLAers to reimaginings and reboots, Jack Kirby’s OMAC concepts continue to inspire DC creators. TM & © DC Comics.

them into remote-control cyborgs, or Observational Metahuman Activity Constructs. So in this age of paranoia regarding COVID-19 vaccination, maybe OMAC Project writer Greg Rucka was predicting the future too. These cyborg entities have continued to have life in the DCU in various forms, a complete discussion of which is a little out of BI’s time frame and the scope of this article. Suffice to say, they have been major pains in the butt. Finally defeated and sent crashing to Earth, Brother Eye seems to be completely destroyed in Infinite Crisis #6 and The OMAC Project Special #1 (both May 2006), and that seemed to be it for Brother Eye and OMAC. Yeah, I don’t believe that either. In fact, as a spinoff from Infinite Crisis, OMAC received his own eight-issue series by writer Bruce Jones and artist Renato Guedes. The length of the series was probably not a coincidence. This OMAC was a man named Mike Costner seemingly the last remnant of the O.M.A.C. Protocol. Once again a one-man army, the character adheres a little closer to the Kirby template.

COUNTDOWN TO EXTINCTION

Events in the post-Crisis DCU tended toward a future that prevented Kirby’s stories from happening. In what can be seen as an attempt to rectify that negation, in DC’s weekly series Countdown (to Final Crisis) (May 9, 2007–Apr. 23, 2008), a resurrection occurs. Buddy Blank appears in issue #31 when he is tracked down by Karate Kid and Una (one body of the revived character Triplicate Girl), two time-displaced members of the future-dwelling Legion of Super-Heroes. These Legionnaires are seeking a cure for a deadly virus infecting Kid that turns out to be a future strain of the OMAC plague. Blank also has access to the remnants of Brother Eye, which was created from his initial AI design. A bit of foreshadowing occurs when it is revealed that Buddy works for the contemporary version of Pseudo-People, Inc.—now a Waynetech division, just to cross another tee. By the end of the series, Buddy Blank and his grandson are on an alternate Earth. All life on that Earth is brought to an end by Brother Eye. All except for Blank and his grandson, that is. After Buddy refers to his grandson as “the Last Boy on Earth,” Brother Eye frees them from the Command D bunker they are trapped in by transforming Buddy into… OMAC. This only happens long enough for him to free them, but Buddy wonders when the AI may need him again. While not exactly recreating a venue for the Kirby stories, it does re-establish the connection between Blank and Brother Eye and sets up the world for Kamandi. The series that Countdown led into, Final Crisis, continued to set up things for Kirby’s version to appear somewhere in the DC Multiverse, to the point of having the then-current version of the Question be offered a role in creating a Global Police Agency. The Question is, of course, a character with no face.

FLASHPOINT

When the “Flashpoint” event restarted DC continuity in 2011 with the New 52, OMAC, this time linked to a man named Kevin Kho, returned in his own title with #1 (Nov. 2011). His series lasted eight issues. Is anyone else sensing a pattern here? Like so many other Kirby inventions, Brother Eye and various concepts for the acronym O.M.A.C. continue to be used in the DCU even to the point that as this article was being written, the mohawk-coiffed original version made an appearance in the Generations Shattered special. That just goes to show that no matter what spin some creators put on the concept, Jack Kirby’s primal version will still have a place and be treasured by many a comic creator. Though slightly misleading in name, Kirby’s OMAC was an instrument for peace in a chaotic world. Hopefully one lasting effect of this particular idea is that you don’t have to be a One Man (or Woman) Army Corps to make a positive impact in the World That’s Coming. The author would like to thank Lee Allred, Mike Allred, Gary Cohn, Michael Eury, Dave Lemieux, Dan Mishkin, Mark Waid, and John Wells for their invaluable assistance in composing this article. BRIAN MARTIN is an office manager who lives in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Though his primary love is comics of the past, he does look forward to the ones in his future, as well as continuing to write articles about the past ones. Which the future ones will soon become. Darn it, even just writing about time travel and alternate realities messes with your head!

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First issue specials, heroes, and losers… these were among Jack Kirby’s odd jobs at DC. Was the King of Comics right for these books? Were the Losers actually winners? Did Atlas have to carry more than the world on his shoulders? Did Kirby’s unique style do justice to Justice, Inc.? What made some concepts work and others fail? BACK ISSUE will shine its spotlight on the freelance work King Jack put out for DC Comics. Watch out for the Kirby Krackle, dear readers.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

by J a m e s

Heath Lantz

While The Demon and Kamandi (covered elsewhere in this issue) and his opus Fourth World Saga (see BI #104) are his best-known works for DC Comics, Jack Kirby proved that he could transcend genres with his art and storytelling as much as Miles Davis and Prince did with their music. Among the titles the King of Comics used to experiment with his drawing pencils was 1st Issue Special. Kirby wrote, drew, and edited issues #1, 5, and 6 of that tryout series which was the focus of an article in BACK ISSUE #71. In that article, then-DC Comics writer/editor Gerry Conway stated that DC’s publisher, Carmine Infantino, wanted to give Jack something to do. This resulted in Kirby producing what BI writer Jack Abramowitz described as his most bizarre creations. 1st Issue Special #1 (Apr. 1975) introduced readers to Atlas. As with Marvel’s Fantastic Four and Thor and DC’s Fourth World, Kirby conceived characters, settings, and other elements that were, are, and will always be larger than life, while opening the doors of his imagination to show what he was capable of putting on the comicbook page. The man-god Atlas, along with his mentor Chagra, are on a quest for vengeance against the being who killed his family, Hyssa the Lizard King. Chagra agrees to aid Atlas if the powerful mortal helps him find the Crystal Mountain. Chagra believes Atlas to be of a people from there, and the gemstone around the title hero’s neck may prove this. After this single outing, Atlas would not return to the pages of DC Comics until Superman #677–680’s “The Coming of Atlas” in 2008. Superman writer James Robinson, according an interview with Comic Book Resources, stated that he believed that Atlas was a character similar to Marvel’s Prince Namor, the SubMariner, an anti-hero who walks the fine line between hero and villain. This shows when Atlas fights the Metropolis Science Police, Superman, Supergirl, and superdog Krypto in an effort to become the city’s protector. It’s later revealed that Atlas was part of the government’s Project 7734, an organization trying to kill Superman. FIS #5 (Aug. 1975) had Kirby combine mysticism with superhero adventure with Manhunter, a concept that, like Simon & Kirby’s Sandman, traded on an old

Shouldering the Burden The cover of Atlas’ original—and, for decades, only—appearance, in 1st Issue Special #1 (Apr. 1975). Art by Jack Kirby and D. Bruce Berry. TM & © DC Comics.

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DC name for a new direction. When an elder of the group called Manhunters finds he is too old to carry out their mission of bringing justice to the world, public defense lawyer Mark Shaw becomes his successor. His first mission is to take on Al “The Hog” Beefer’s gang after one of his clients is murdered. Mark Shaw never got to fight the Hog after 1st Issue Special #5. However, the Manhunter can be seen in writer Steve Englehart’s late-’70s run of Justice League of America, while Mark Shaw shows up in the pages of volume one of Suicide Squad before appearing in 1988–1990’s Manhunter series. [Editor’s note: Shaw temporarily adopted the codename the Privateer. See BACK ISSUE #28 for his story.] Shaw’s Manhunter costume from FIS would become the model for the Manhunter androids created by the Guardians of the Universe before the formation of the Green Lantern Corps, as shown in Justice League of America #140 and the post-Crisis “Millennium” crossover.

1st Issue Special #6 (Sept. 1975) allowed Kirby to provide readers with a group of dead-end kids called the Dingbats of Danger Street, comprised of youngsters named Good Looks, Krunch, Non-Fat, and Bananas. They accidentally aid police Lieutenant Terry Mullins in defeating the Gasser and Jumpin’ Jack (cue Rolling Stones music). These rebels without a clue do so to save one of their own, Non-Fat, from the villains. The Dingbats didn’t get their own series from DC. According to Mark Evanier in Kirby: King of Comics, Jack Kirby wrote and drew three issues, but DC only chose to print one, in FIS #6. The Dingbats’ previously unpublished adventures by Jack Kirby, and inkers Mike Royer and D. Bruce Berry, were presented in the TwoMorrows book Dingbat Love, edited by John Morrow. In the DC Universe, Good Looks and the gang caused mayhem in cameos during writer Karl Kesel’s run on The Adventures of Superman, with a full guest-starring role in issue #549 (Aug. 1997). They, according to Kesel in BI #71, served as a counterpoint to another Kirby creation, the Newsboy Legion, and Joe Simon’s Green Team. Another Kirby concept that saw life after he left DC Comics was Kobra, Kirby’s take on the Corsican Brothers, the main difference being that each twin was on opposite sides of the law. One could not injure or even kill the other without feeling the pain himself. Ordinary man Jason Burr discovered his sibling Jeffrey is the villainous King Kobra, head of the Kobra Organization. Jason thereby agrees to help authorities in their pursuit of the snakethemed bad guy. Kobra kills Jason after later finding a means to sever their psychic link. Kirby developed the character (originally titled King Kobra) with Steve Sherman before returning to Marvel. It was then assigned to scribe Martin Pasko, who was initially unimpressed with the concept. Changes were made for Kobra #1 (Feb.–Mar. 1976) that deviated from Kirby’s original premise for the series. According to Rob Kelly’s Kobra article in BI #35, Pasko kept the Corsican Brothers thread while adding his own elements from research he did about India. This is because Pasko felt Kirby’s overall original version was not the King’s best work.

Man of Steel (left) Who better than Kirby to launch DC’s new 1st Issue Special title? Splash to issue #1. (inset) Kirby’s Atlas was resurrected by writer James Robinson and tangled with the Metropolis Marvel on this Alex Ross-painted cover to Superman #678 (Sept. 2008). TM & © DC Comics.

New Spin on An Old Name (bottom left) Cover to Kirby’s Manhunter premiere, in FIS #5, with Berry inks. (bottom center) Writer Steve Englehart’s Justice League of America #140 (Mar. 1977) repurposes the Kirby Manhunter visual. Cover by Rich Buckler and Frank McLaughlin. (bottom right) Mark Shaw’s story continues, in Manhunter #1 (July 1988). Cover by Doug Rice and Sam Kieth. TM & © DC Comics.

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Not long before Jack Kirby premiered Mark Shaw, Manhunter in 1st Issue Special #5, another DC Manhunter with Kirby connections made a splash in the industry: Paul Kirk, Manhunter, in an award-winning, oft-reprinted backup series written by Archie Goodwin in Detective Comics #437–443 in 1973–1974, which made a fan-favorite of its young artist, Walter Simonson. (See BI #64 for the full story.) “Paul Kirk, Manhunter” was originally a P.I. feature written and illustrated by Ed Moore that appeared in the early 1940s in DC’s Adventure Comics #58–72. As they did with the Sandman, as chronicled elsewhere in this issue, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were tapped to revitalize the Golden Age Manhunter feature, and did so for a short stint beginning in Adventure #73 (Apr. 1942) by turning him into a costumed superhero. Simon & Kirby named their new Manhunter Rick Nelson in their first outing, but he promptly reverted to the Kirk guise. – editor

Gang War (top left) Meet the Dingbats! (bottom left) Superman Blue sees red when the dudes from Danger Street mix it up with the Newsboy Legion on this spread from Adventures of Superman #549 (Aug. 1997). By Karl Kesel, Stuart Immonen, and Jose Marzan, Jr. TM & © DC Comics.

Stifle, You Dingbats! (right) Original Kirby/Royer art, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), from the second Dingbats tale—which went unpublished until TwoMorrows’ fearless leader John Morrow presented Dingbats #2 and #3 (plus other unseen Kirby stories) in Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love, available now at www.twomorrows.com! TM & © DC Comics. The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 71

KIRBY’S OTHER MANHUNTER

Brotherly Hate (below left) The Kirby-hatched, troubled-twins concept launched with this Ernie Chua (Chan) cover for Kobra #1 (Feb.–Mar. 1976). (below right) Writer Martin Pasko helped shape Kirby’s character into the “Deadliest Man Alive,” and Michael Nasser art electrified the book as it came to an end with issue #7 (Mar.–Apr. 1977). (right) Kirby’s slithery supervillain first encountered Batman in a gripping adventure by Martin Pasko, Mike Nasser, and Joe Rubinstein in 1977’s 5-Star Super-Hero Spectacular, a.k.a. DC Special Series #1. The Burr brothers’ story is recapped on this page. (inset) The crimelord occasionally rears his evil head in the DC Universe, as he did here in Faces of Evil: Kobra #1 (Mar. 2009). Cover by Andrew Robinson. TM & © DC Comics.

Kobra ended after seven self-titled issues and DC Special Series #1 (1977), a.k.a. 5-Star Super-Hero Spectacular, which featured a Batman/ Kobra encounter. Yet, the character of Jeffrey Burr later appeared in Batman and the Outsiders alongside his team Strikeforce Kobra. Jason Burr was later resurrected to replace his brother as King Kobra in 2009’s Faces of Evil: Kobra one-shot, and he took part in the company-wide 2015 DC Comics event “Convergence” to battle the Red Hood and Arsenal. Some might see the Dingbats of Danger Street, Kobra, Manhunter, and Atlas as some of Kirby’s strangest creations. TwoMorrows Publishing’s own John Morrow, however, looks at them through a different lens. “I think they all had great potential,” Morrow tells BACK ISSUE, “especially Atlas. Obviously, someone at DC—perhaps even Steve Englehart himself—felt the Manhunter strip was worth mining for potential, since he brought that concept into Justice League, and it’s been used since. Kobra likewise has seen a life beyond his shortlived series. While it veered away from Jack’s initial premise, I mostly enjoyed the Kobra issues, and seeing him as a recurring villain in Batman and the Outsiders and elsewhere was nice. Kirby created great villains, and he and Steve Sherman at least got the ball rolling on him.” Steve Englehart confirms to BACK ISSUE that it was indeed his idea to use the Manhunter concepts for his Justice League of America, stating he had no problems using Jack Kirby’s creations at DC Comics because he had also done so at Marvel on books such as Avengers. Regarding the return of Kirby’s teen street gang in TwoMorrows’ Eisner Award-nominated Dingbat Love, John Morrow says, “As for the Dingbats of Danger Street, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for them; so much so, that I long ago made it my goal to see the two unpublished Dingbats stories get into print. I would put the second

issue focusing on Good Look’s origin near the top of Kirby’s postFourth World stories at DC, with solid storytelling throughout and some of Mike Royer’s best inking of the period.” Why didn’t these Kirby one-hit wonders like Atlas, et al., reach the potential of the King’s other tales? Mark Evanier stated in Kirby: The King of Comics that when Jack left Marvel in 1970 to come to DC, he wanted to get away from doing comics of conventional size and subject matter. What followed over the next decade were Kirby’s nonconventional projects like the black-and-white magazines In the Days of the Mob and Spirit World, the tabloid-sized Marvel Treasury Edition 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the graphic novel Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience [which we’ll spotlight along with the Silver Surfer’s other Bronze Age adventures in BI #135—ed.]. Kirby might have felt too restricted by the traditional format of Bronze Age comic books, and perhaps he held back a little on material like his 1st Issue Special issues in spite of his professionalism and need to put his best foot forward. Some could argue that the King of Comics was repeating himself with these single-issue contributions. After all, Atlas could be seen as containing elements of The New Gods and his work on Thor for Marvel. Manhunter evokes the adventurous spirit of Challengers of the Unknown or Fantastic Four. The Dingbats of Danger Street are a youth gang like the Newsboy Legion derived from Kirby’s experiences growing up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Kobra’s title character might be criticized as a copy of previous Kirby villains like Doctor Doom or the Supreme Hydra. But as the years marched on, other writers and artists saw these characters’ potential in a way that perhaps only Kirby himself saw. Steve Englehart states to BACK ISSUE that Kirby’s DC work is “a genre within itself.”

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WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS

Captain William Storm, Lieutenant Johnny Cloud, and Sergeant “Sarge” Clay and ally Gunner Mackey were protagonists in their own tales featured in various DC war comic books of the Silver Age. Viking Prince co-creator Robert Kanigher brought this ragtag foursome together when they fought alongside the Haunted Tank crew in G.I. Combat #138 (Oct.–Nov. 1969). The Losers, as they were named, would get their own series written by Kanigher and drawn by various artists beginning with Our Fighting Forces (OFF) #123 (Feb. 1970). The group continued fighting the Axis powers in that title until its cancellation in 1978. Kanigher wrote the Losers’ often thought-provoking adventures in OFF #123–150, telling of the horrors of World War II. (For more on Captain Storm and the Losers, be sure to check out BACK ISSUE #93’s All-Captains issue, if you haven’t already, Bronze Age fans.) Enter: Jack Kirby. The King of Comics edited, wrote, and penciled the Losers’ adventures in Our Fighting Forces #151 (Oct.–Nov. 1974)–162 (Dec. 1975). Jack Kirby’s bombastic style heralds a change in the Losers’ direction. From a visual and writing standpoint, these are fantastic war tales in their own right, but Kirby’s OFF is such a departure from what was previously done by Bob Kanigher that the change of storytelling style could be jarring for regular readers. War is still hell for the Losers, but under Kirby their comics focus more on action and supporting characters than the development and evolution of Captain Storm and company. “I think Jack was a perfect choice for the Losers due to his own war experiences,” John Morrow tells BACK ISSUE. “He hated the concept of

Kirby Kombat Komic (top left) While Joe Kubert’s cover for Our Fighting Forces #151 (Oct.–Nov. 1974) featured the artist’s cinematic staging, it concealed the fact that (bottom left) a bombastic battle tale by Jack Kirby awaited the reader inside. (top right) Kirby’s unbridled imagination made his “Losers” adventure in OFF #153 (Feb.–Mar. 1975) a fan-favorite story that is fondly remembered today. (below) Kirby did illustrate some of the covers during his “Losers” run, including this shocker from Our Fighting Forces #158 (Aug. 1975). Original art, signed by the King, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

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anyone serving in this country’s military being considered THE KING AND THE DEN OF JUSTICE a ‘loser,’ and he didn’t get along with Robert Kanigher, who After working with Stan Lee at Marvel, Jack Kirby refused to collaborate conceived the strip. Yet, when he took it over, he injected his with another writer via the “Marvel Method,” where the artist paces own personal WWII experiences, and made it a great strip—and and plots the issue with their images while another person puts in fact, it’s the first war comic I’ve ever enjoyed myself. But again, words in balloons and captions afterwards. According to Kirby, I’m sure he was assigned the job, and didn’t specifically ask for it; one only got writing credit if he did dialogue and narration. Thus, but he made the best of the situation.” the King of Comics made one condition upon beginning with DC: OFF provides readers with Jack’s take on WWII. Yet, so did He’d either write the entire story as well as draw it, or he’d do visuals his run on Marvel’s Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos with from someone else’s full script. Stan Lee. Characters are introduced that could have easily fit While he mostly did the former, Kirby would also do the latter into Sgt. Fury or even an issue of Captain America set during in order the fill his contract’s page quota. Sandman (more on that World War II, and perhaps they were originally meant for elsewhere in this issue) by Joe Simon and later Michael Fleischer those comics. However, they were Kirby creations, and could be considered an example of Kirby’s rendering other he made them fit in into his Losers. Great examples people’s scripts. Yet, perhaps Kirby’s most underestimated include Lil, a.k.a. Panama Fattie (Our Fighting Forces work is his collaborations with legendary writer Dennis #157–158), a bar owner and hijacker who could O’Neil. Kirby drew Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter give Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Quark lessons in #3 (Aug.–Sept. 1975) and Justice, Inc. #2 (July– shady dealings; and African-American Olympic Aug. 1975)–4 (Nov.–Dec. 1975) from O’Neil’s scripts. track-and-field-star-turned-soldier Henry “MileRichard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter was a comicA-Minute” Jones, who could be Kirby’s tribute book series that adapted the novel Kung-Fu Master, to gold-medal winner Jesse Owens. Richard Dragon: Dragon’s Fists that Denny O’Neil “Devastator vs. Big Max” in Our Fighting Forces co-wrote with Jim Berry under the pseudonym Jim #153 (Feb.–Mar. 1975) is perhaps one issue that Dennis. The title character is first seen as a thief in stands out alongside Panama Fattie and MileJapan until O-Sensei and his student Ben Turner A-Minute Jones’ respective appearances. Much (who would evolve into the DC character Bronze like Marvel’s 2001: A Space Odyssey #5, which dennis o’neil Tiger) train him in various martial arts. Ben and was published two years later, OFF #153 feels Richard become friends and use their fighting like Kirby is thanking his fans. Private First Class © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. prowess to battle the forces of evil. [Editor’s note: Rodney Rumpkin, like Johnny Cloud, is a science-fiction fan that The series was explored in BACK ISSUE #49.] avidly reads pulp magazines. While his fellow soldiers tease Richard Dragon, which ran 18 issues and was reprinted in a him, his books give the Losers the idea of using the Devastator, 2021 collected edition, was not your typical DC Comics title, a machine from one of Rumpkin’s stories, as a ruse to make being in the vein of the martial-arts films that had become popular the Nazis believe that it can take on their weapon of mass at the time. The series did not have a consistent look to it early destruction, Big Max. Rumpkin drives the Devastator to distract in its run until Ric Estrada took over with issue #4. O’Neil himself the Germans. This allows the Losers to become winners as their admitted in an interview published in The Jack Kirby Collector #23 airstrike destroys Big Max. Our Fighting Forces #153 is the favorite Jack Kirby comic of Sandman scribe Neil Gaiman, Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, and DC: The New Frontier’s writer/artist, the late Darwyn Cooke, as recounted by Scott Tipton in his article “Jack Kirby Didn’t Believe in Losers,” published online at the Blastoff Comics website at www.blastoffcomics.com/2020/04/jack-kirby-didnt-believe-in-losers-2/. Cooke, Gaiman, and Larsen revealed this fact during Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, showing how much Jack Kirby’s comic books had an impact on paving the way for future creators of comic books.

Kung-Fu Grip (left) Even in Speedos and slippers, star Richard Dragon is a formidable force on Dick Giordano’s cover for Kung-Fu Fighter #3 (Aug.–Sept. 1975). (right) Jack Kirby, with D. Bruce Berry, illustrated Denny O’Neil’s martial-arts epic in that issue. TM & © DC Comics.

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(Feb. 1995) that he didn’t really have a handle on the Richard Dragon visuals. With Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter #3, Kirby does put his best foot forward, as usual. However, the artist best known for giving life to cosmic characters who move, shape, and even destroy worlds seems a bit ill-suited for O’Neil’s gritty “Claws of the Dragon,” where the Kung-Fu Fighter engaged in martial-arts combat with the Weapons Masters. Justice, Inc. was based on the Street & Smith pulp adventure character Richard Henry Benson, better known as the Avenger, created by Paul Ernst under the publisher’s house name Kenneth Robeson, often credited for creating Lester Dent’s Doc Savage. Dent, Ernst, other writers used the Robeson moniker on Street & Smith tales starring Doc Savage and the Avenger. DC’s Justice, Inc. was named after the title of the Avenger’s first pulp novel, from 1939. The comic’s first two issues adapted the aforementioned pulp novel while #3 and 4 were original stories by O’Neil and Kirby. [Editor’s note: BACK ISSUE #47 goes into greater detail on DC’s four-issue run of Justice, Inc.] While it can be considered two or three steps backward artistically for fans and perhaps even Jack Kirby himself, the King’s work on Justice, Inc. suits the series well. The larger-than-life stories of the pulp magazines that predated comic books most likely influenced Kirby’s equally larger-than-life art style. Justice, Inc. was high adventure on a grand scale, and only an artist of Kirby’s caliber could have rendered such sagas as those of Richard Henry Benson and his JI comrades Smitty, Josh, Rosabel, and Fergus MacMurdie. Their battles against the Skywalker (a.k.a. Sky Walker—no relation to the fabled family in Star Wars), The Shadow’s foe Colonel Sodom, and villains who attack commercial airlines are captured stupendously in Kirby’s threeissue run on this short-lived comic book. “I feel Jack Kirby a good choice of artist for Justice, Inc., due to the 1930s setting of that strip, which he’d

lived through personally,” John Morrow tells BACK ISSUE. “[But] I’d rather have seen him used to his fullest potential, in creating a new strip of his own, using his own concepts, rather than having to work with someone else’s characters.” Kirby left DC Comics and returned to Marvel in the mid-1970s. To call his body of work in comics and animation legendary would be a grave understatement. His imagination rivaled the likes of Rod Serling and Ray Harryhausen. His vast published and unpublished pages of images showed fans and casual observers alike that the possibilities were unlimited in sequential storytelling. Every space adventure, every war story, every horror story, every romance, and every battle between good and evil influenced fans and creators alike. Even the odd jobs mentioned here, in spite of their initial mixed reactions, had an impact on readers that rivaled a multiverse full of Kirby Krackles. Dedicated to my beautiful and incredible wife Laura, whose heart and love rule my multiverse; Jadis, Pupino, Odino, and our four-legged feline and canine Justice, Inc., who could want their own Sky Walker; my nephew Kento, who could take on Atlas and the Manhunters without breaking a sweat; and Jack and Roz Kirby and all those who dreamed of countless worlds because of them. May Chagra always watch over you. JAMES HEATH LANTZ is a freelance writer whose stories, essays, and reviews can be found online and in print at Sequart.org, Superman Homepage, his blog, and such publications as his selfpublished Trilogy of Tales and PS Artbooks’ Roy Thomas Presents Sheena Volume Three. James currently lives in Italy with his wife Laura and their family of cats, dogs, and humans from Italy, Japan, and the United States.

In the Days of the Mob (inset top) Justice, Inc. #2 (July–Aug. 1975) touted the King on its cover. (left) The issue’s dynamic splash page clearly earmarks this as a Kirby comic, albeit a rarity at DC— a collaboration with a writer (Denny O’Neil) other than Kirby himself. (inset bottom) A Joe Kubert cover ended the short run of DC’s Justice, Inc. (center) Kirby’s interpretation of the Avenger’s disguise mastery, from issue #4. The Avenger/Justice, Inc. © Condé Nast.

The Kirby Legacy at DC issue • BACK ISSUE • 75

Send your comments to: Email: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE 112 Fairmount Way * New Bern, NC 28562

Find BACK ISSUE on

Always nice to hear from the author of TwoMorrows’ popular Marvel Comics in the 1960s and 1970s books! It’s unfortunate that Keith Giffen hasn’t been available recently to answer questions for BI, but The Heckler was published in 1992, years after Giffen’s Creeper 1980s maxi went south, so it couldn’t have been an immediate “distraction.” But your theory about The Heckler picking up where The Creeper left off isn’t far off the mark. We have indeed covered The Heckler, back in BI #91 (Sept. 2016), the “All-Jerks Issue.” Therein, Giffen himself alluded to the Creeper, and remarked, “I had a jones for a specific character DC was publishing, but knew the way I’d have handled said character would have been… let’s say, off-putting to DC.” So Keith instead came up with the Heckler, which he called “a superhero Bugs Bunny.”

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

THE HECKLER = GIFFEN’S CREEPER?

Was just reading the Creeper article in BACK ISSUE #124 and enjoyed the rundown of the character’s career. Being a Keith Giffen fan, I was eager to get to that part of the article that reminded me of something I’d forgotten, which was the announcement that Giffen would be doing a Creeper maxiseries… that never happened. But author John Wells’ conclusion that Giffen was distracted due to the rise in popularity of Ambush Bug threw me for a brief loop. Thought for sure Wells was going to attribute the distraction to Giffen’s run on The Heckler, which he produced for a short eight-issue run before it was cancelled. At the time, I suspected the Heckler was Giffen’s take on Spider-Man through a cracked mirror, but lately I’ve been thinking it was his take on the Creeper… perhaps a retooled version of the maxiseries he’d planned to do? It would have been an interesting question to pose to Giffen for the article but since it wasn’t, don’t you think the Heckler strip would make a fine subject for a future article? Have no idea what theme it would fall under, but I for one would love to see BACK ISSUE cover it! (If it hasn’t already… my memory isn’t what it used to be.) Also, in reading the article, I was disappointed to see that as the years passed, writers treated the Creeper as being insane instead of merely acting insane. This struck me as a trend in ’80s comics that treated conservative characters in general as not quite having all their marbles, characters like Kid Flash, Guy Gardner, USAgent, etc. That is, if writers assumed because the Creeper was created by Steve Ditko, he had to be conservative. Come to think of it, this trend continued with Ditko’s other character, the Question, judging by his depiction in Warner Bros. Justice League cartoon and his other incarnation as Rorshach of the Watchmen. – Pierre Comtois

Nice article on Stan Sakai (BI #125). Couple of slight errors, though. Stan Sakai did the lettering for 25 years for the Spider-Man Sunday newspaper strip, not the weekly. There was a Usagi Yojimbo Summer Special, and there were three UY Color Specials, not a UY Summer Color Special. It will be fun watching new Usagi collectors frantically searching for the mythical Usagi Yojimbo Summer Color Special… – Usadi Goya

A LIFETIME GRENDEL FAN

The time: Summer of 1993. The place: A loooooong bus ride home from work. I was 30 at the time, and was an avid comic-book reader (still am), but had limited my reading to Marvel and DC books, as they were all I had really known until then. One day, my local comic shop suggested that I try a book from Dark Horse called Grendel: Devil by the Deed. I had the book in my briefcase (yes, we had briefcases back then, not backpacks that carry our laptops), along with a few other comics, and decided that it would be the first book I read on the bus on my way home from work one day. The bus ride was about 45 minutes to an hour long, depending on the traffic. On that day, I couldn’t tell you if there was any traffic or not as I was completely engrossed in Matt Wagner’s story. The art was exceptional, of course, but the writing, the pacing, the way the story was told (the bad guy was a good guy??) was unlike anything DC and Marvel were publishing at the time. So, Wagner accomplished two things with this book: he brought to me an appreciation TM & © DC Comics. of independent comics, and he made a lifetime Grendel fan out of me. Although Hunter Rose remains my favorite incarnation, I have read, repeatedly, every Grendel story that has been published. I’ve read some articles and reviews over the years, but nothing can compare to what you have done with issue #125 of BACK ISSUE. – Stephen Roy

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What a wonderful Grendel testimonial! Stephen also shared this photo…

WHAT’S UP WITH WHO’S WHO?

I really enjoy the publications TwoMorrows puts out, most notably, Alter Ego and BACK ISSUE. I know you edit BACK ISSUE and was wondering if there was any thought given to covering DC’s Who’s Who. That was a gargantuan project, and I was really curious about how the final list of entries was arrived at, how Crisis happening in the middle of it may or may not have changed the intent, if certain artists asked to draw specific characters, and so on. I know you were involved with one of the later incarnations so it would be great to get your insight on that as well. The other thing I’d love to see covered is Amazing Heroes. For a kid that lived in the suburbs of Toronto, Amazing Heroes was pretty much the only way I was going to get advance news, and be exposed to non-mainstream comics and creators. I still remember a strange article about two fanboys imagining they were on tour with Whitney Houston and Sadé and what comics they might be interested in. It was absurd but hilarious to me at the time. Unfortunately I cannot remember what issue it was in. Anyway… I’d be interested in an in-depth look behind the scenes of that publication as well, which I know you had some involvement with as well. – Sandy Zita Thanks for the kind words about BI (and on behalf of Roy Thomas, about AE). BI covered Who’s Who back in issue #32, in 2009. One of the original Who’s Who’s editors, Bob Greenberger, conducted a Pro2Pro roundtable interview that included the project’s other originators, Marv Wolfman and Len Wein… an oral history that’s now even more cherished since Len’s passing a few years ago. That interview was followed by an editorial I wrote about the looseleaf Who’s Who in the DC Universe, which, as you noted, I edited. Incidentally, in April of this year DC reprinted the original Who’s Who in its hefty Omnibus hardcover format, gathering the original series’ 26-issue run plus Who’s Who material from the Updates and Annuals that immediately followed.

I just finished reading issue #125, and boy, did you bring back a lot of great memories for me! I especially enjoyed the articles on Mage and Grendel. Matt Wagner was my gateway to realizing that there was more to the great, big comic world than just the “Big Two.” Matt opened my eyes to how stories could be told differently (both in the writing and the art) from what I was used to. I struck out from there and discovered Cerebus, Nexus, Love and Rockets, American Flagg, Mr. Monster, Megaton Man (where’s that Don Simpson interview?), and the dearest to me, Usagi Yojimbo. I truly hope Stan Sakai knows how much joy his art and storytelling have meant to so many over the years. I was overjoyed to read about IDW agreeing to reprint this series. I want (read: need) to have these timeless stories in quality editions to enjoy over and over again and to, hopefully, pull in new readers. I also want to give a shout-out (that is what the kids say these days, right?) to Colleen Doran. It was heart-wrenching reading about her struggles over the years, but also uplifting to see her persevere as well. She is an amazing woman. My subscription to BACK ISSUE is money well spent and always a joy to read. Congratulations on getting to 125 issues and I look forward to the next 125 and beyond. – Jeff Mitchell Jeff, your list of beloved titles reminds us that there are still a lot of indies out there like Megaton Man and Love and Rockets waiting for the BI spotlight. Give us time, we’ll get there. Thanks for your ongoing support!

BI #125, A WAGNERIAN OPUS

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HOW ABOUT A DINOSAUR ISSUE?

It’s really exciting to read issue #125. I often have several of the titles discussed in most issues, but this time, I’ve got ’em all, and what a pleasure to read the usually in-depth and discerning articles this time about so many of my favorites. Yeah, I bought the Comico Grendels, and the Albedo Usagis, the Nicotat Boris the Bear, Fishwrap’s Sam & Max, A Distant Soil, Mage, and Cherry (my copy HAS the Vampironica story!!)… I was just lucky to be around as they all debuted, and ready for something beyond Fantastic Four or Legion of Super-Heroes. It’s actually Fishwrap’s Sam & Max, though, that’s prompting this letter to TwoMorrows: Suddenly I became aware of missing persons—well, titles, particularly Fishwrap’s Fish Police—which prompted a whole slew of other titles I’d very much enjoy seeing given the BACK ISSUE treatment. (I seem to remember Fish Police actually getting some BI coverage, at least in passing; am I remembering reality?) Sooo… I’d like to suggest an issue full of articles about: Fish Police, Maxwell Mouse, Mad Raccoons, Apathy Cat, Dog Boy, Cutie Bunny, Neil the Horse (although I, again, seem to remember BI covering ol’ Neil), Thunder Bunny… a pattern here? Ehh, could be. This, unfortunately, led to another grouping I’d like to see covered, and how can you resist? Dino comics! Devil Dinosaur, of course, and Godzilla (if not already overdone), but also Dino Island, (different from) Dinosaur Island, Dinosaurs Attack, Age of Reptiles, and Xenozoic Tales, Tyrant, of course, Dinosaur Rex, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Dino Wars, Paleo (Paleo Tales?), Rip in Time, Dinosaurs for Hire, Jurassic Park, even Volcanosaurus (if it’s not too recent). And, damn it, I can’t remember the title (a Rick Veitch book?) where a T-Rex in a smoking jacket rules the world…? Maybe even sort-of dino comics, like Browser and Sequoia, or Turok–Son of Stone, and Cave Woman and Alley Oop. Perhaps needing a separate issue for lost worlds, like The Lost World, The Territory, The World Below, Terra Obscura, The Lost Books of Eve… Ah, so much out there…! Some of it pretty far way-out there, I guess. – Matt Levin

Great suggestions, Matt! Unless I’m forgetting something—and after nearly 20 years of BIs, that’s possible—Fish Police and Neil the Horse haven’t been fully explored in our pages (although the animated Fish Police got a mention back in #129). I’m inclined to have indie books like those and the others you listed dropped into to broader themes than a Funny Animals Issue (although I love me some funny animals!). But a Dino issue…? What a great idea! Years ago, I had planned to follow up my TwoMorrows book Comics Gone Ape with similar volumes on dinosaur and robot comics, but time limitations and shifting interests have had other ideas. So consider a dinosaurthemed issue officially in the works (although it will probably be without Devil Dinosaur and Godzilla, since both have appeared in BI).

ACTUALLY, IT’S A STAFF OF ONE

I am a writer/producer of TV commercials and programs and other advertising materials, so I appreciate good writing and also the vast amount of thought and time and effort that goes into making an excellent project by faceless and practically nameless laborers like you and I. So I make an effort to always be one of the small percentage of consumers who make the effort to give feedback, which I know is always appreciated. In your case, I have enjoyed the issues of BACK ISSUE I’ve picked up randomly at my comic shop… and now also enjoy the several issues of RetroFan I’ve found. I have two different offices scattered in different states and used to travel a lot and often buy issues of magazines to read on a plane… eventually. With the pandemic and lack of travel, and work, I have been catching up and happened to reach RetroFan #5 and BACK ISSUE #118 in my pile and have decided to drop you a few appreciative comments. Kill two magazine birds with one stone while fresh in mind. BACK ISSUE first: My favorite time in comics was the ’70s through early ’90s, and BACK ISSUE certainly scratches that itch, though I must admit it TM & © Marvel. isn’t a bit better (or worse) than Roy’s Alter Ego, and I consider that high praise. Very nice interview with Alex Ross… it shows him as more than a comic artist. It shows him as a comics lover. Lots of great info packed economically and easy to read between fantastic art and illustrations. A very nice way to start off an issue, and you ask

78 • BACK ISSUE • The Kirby Legacy at DC Issue

You’re right: Fantagraphics’ Amazing Heroes magazine was an important fanzine that informed so many of us in those pre-internet days of upcoming comics while also educating us about comics history. And yes, Amazing Heroes is dear to my heart, since I was a regular contributor to the mag at the beginning of my comics career. Andy Mangels (another AH alum) was going to write a history of Amazing Heroes for BACK ISSUE #100, our Bronze Age Fanzines issue, but it was squeezed out of that centennial edition. We’re committed to exploring Amazing Heroes here in BI when schedules and circumstances allow.

good questions, too. Unlike the recently departed Larry King, in my opinion a lazy interviewer, you do your research. “Greatest Stories Never Told” is a great theme concept, and you had me by the cover. The stories were all interesting, particularly the one shedding light on the late, lamented Impact comics line. I have most of those issues and quite enjoyed them all. Easy to follow, with some good art and surprise plot twists. Yet they are all but ignored in comic history. But not, fortunately, by BACK ISSUE. Getting a piece by the excellent writer Brian Augustyn was a stroke of good fortune. I didn’t much care about his subject, The Target, but he made it interesting with his firsthand knowledge. I am really impressed with the amount of art you cram into every issue, but always in a dynamic, tasteful manner. It’s an easy-to-read book with carefully chosen illustrations to help tell the story. I have about four issues of RetroFan. They’re all worth a read, but it’s clear it takes anyone a few issues of a new publication to get things rolling as well as you have on BACK ISSUE. What a charming piece of Snuffy Smith you wrote. Of course, I read many of the strips when I was a kid and then forgot about it. But you explained why you included this unlikely but well-researched piece in the book and really made the piece come to life. Incidentally, Uncle Fred Lasswell did his how-to-draw videos in the mid-1980s at TV station WFLA, Tampa, Florida, and I worked on them. Fred was really like one of his more friendly and happy cartoon characters come to life… a joy to work with. Happy memories for me. The Mark Hamill interview was again more than just a fan gushing. Some great questions asked and very good answers given. Hamill seems to be an unusually smart and thoughtful actor. Not all I’ve met are. And again the illustrations really pushed the piece over the top. Kudos to Glenn Greenberg for crisp writing, good questions… you can’t do all the interviews yourself. He’s a good substitute. TV dinners? Haven’t given them a thought for decades, but I enjoyed having my memory jogged…. clever subject matter. When evaluating or editing material I always like to put in a little criticism to prove I read and digested everything. I really bought the mag in the first place (not knowing you were the editor whose work I admire in BACK ISSUE) for the Greatest American Hero piece. One of my all-time favorite shows. It was certainly the best (and only) piece I’ve ever read on this fantastic show. I still watch it on Saturday mornings! A really great concept of a show with [Robert] Culp really chewing up the scenery. It wasn’t as complete as I would have liked. I enjoyed the Jason of Star Command article, even though I never watched the show and it seemed to be more in depth. I met [Stephen J.] Cannell once at a TV dinner event. Recognized him immediately as one of my favorite writers, so I went over to him and introduced myself as “another great, talented TV writer with a beard.” As he laughed out loud and smiled, I added, “and there are so few of us.” He laughed even louder and said, “Oh, so very, very true!” Maybe given the vast amount of his work we all consumed, a Wolverine TM & © Marvel. BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

piece on him might be in order not to mention all those CW shows now being shot up in Canada in his old studios. Biggest disappointment: “My Visit to the Museum of Pop Culture.” I have been in Seattle twice, saw the museum’s intriguing building, knew I love the subject of its contents, but have never been able to pay a visit, so I was really looking forward to the piece by Scott Saavedra. But, boy, was I disappointed. Instead of a clear and straightforward presentation, I got a piece full of stories about his family. But, hey, enjoying 95% of both magazines is a really good average. And I don’t think you have a huge staff helping you put it together. Again, the illustrations really go hand-in-hand with the text. I’ve read other [RetroFan] issues, with the Svengoolie one [#6] standing out in my mind, but I give the read issues away to friends in the hopes they will be hooked on your fine work. You know, so many fanboys these days criticize Stan Lee for usurping Jack Kirby’s fame and credit. But even if he never wrote a word of those old famous Marvel Masterworks and Jack and Steve [Ditko] did 90% of the work, it still ignores the fact that Stan was THE EDITOR who hired Jack and Steve, nurtured them and okayed lots of titles, hired lots of brilliant young talent, and was comics’ alltime best publisher/spokesman. Writing was the least of his accomplishments. You editors don’t get enough credit for your hard work. You do seem to work very hard and imaginatively. Keep it up, Mr. Eury, keep it up. – Kim T. Bené That’s very kind of you to say, Kim. While I’m both BACK ISSUE’s and RetroFan’s sole editor, both magazines are team efforts, thanks to the contributions from our writers, designers, cover colorist, and proofreader. None of us, however, work under the same roof, nor in the same city or even state in most cases, and all of us, ye editor included, are freelancers. I’m blessed to have such a dedicated legion of contributors, and a fine boss like publisher John Morrow who lets us all do our thing! Actually, your appreciation of 95% of each mag’s contents is a pretty good average. With traditional periodicals, it’s rare that anyone reads their content cover to cover, but with both BACK ISSUE and RetroFan, readers like you tell me they read each and every article. Of course, that means that a certain writer’s style might not mesh with your tastes, but there’s always another article on its heels that might! Next issue: 1980s Marvel Limited Series, headlined by Wolverine’s first solo outing by CHRIS CLAREMONT, FRANK MILLER, and JOE RUBINSTEIN! Plus: Black Panther, The Falcon, The Punisher, Machine Man, Iceman, Magik, Fantastic Four vs. X-Men, Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., Wolfpack, and more! Featuring JON BOGDANOVE, BOB BUDIANSKY, DENYS COWAN, TOM DeFALCO, J. M. DeMATTEIS, STEVEN GRANT, LARRY HAMA, AL MILGROM, PAUL NEARY, ANN NOCENTI, ROGER STERN, RON WILSON, and more. Wolverine #1 cover recreation by Joe Rubinstein (after Frank Miller). Don’t ask— just BI it! See you in sixty! Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury, editor-in-chief

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RetroFan:

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MAD’s maddest artist, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, is profiled! Plus: TV’s Route 66 and an interview with star GEORGE MAHARIS, MOE HOWARD’s final years, catching up with singer B.J. THOMAS, LONE RANGER cartoons, G.I. JOE, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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JOHN SEVERIN: TWO-FISTED COMIC BOOK ARTIST A spirited biography of the EC COMICS mainstay (working with HARVEY KURTZMAN on MAD and TWO-FISTED TALES) and co-creator of Western strip AMERICAN EAGLE. Covers his 40+ year association with CRACKED magazine, his pivotal Marvel Comics work inking HERB TRIMPE on THE HULK and teaming with sister MARIE SEVERIN on KING KULL, and more! With commentary by NEAL ADAMS, RICHARD CORBEN, JOHN BYRNE, RUSS HEATH, WALTER SIMONSON, and many others. By GREG BIGA and JON B. COOKE. SHIPS FALL 2021! (160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-106-6

OLD GODS & NEW SOFTCOVER

AND LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #80 is a double-size

book titled “Old Gods & New”, documenting the genesis of Kirby’s FOURTH WORLD series, his use of gods in THOR and other strips prior to the Fourth World, how those influenced his DC epic, and affected later series like THE ETERNALS and CAPTAIN VICTORY. To commemorate this landmark publication, TwoMorrows is offering both a SOFTCOVER EDITION, and a LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION (just 400 copies), only available directly from the publisher! By JOHN MORROW, with contributions by JON B. COOKE. (160-page full-color LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION) $35.95 • (Std. trade paperback) $26.95 (Digital Edition) $12.99 • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-60549-098-4 • NOW SHIPPING!

CBA BULLPEN: The Magic Is Back! COLLECTING THE UNKNOWN ISSUES OF COMIC BOOK ARTIST! COMIC BOOK ARTIST BULLPEN collects all seven issues of the little-seen labor of love fanzine published in the early 2000s by JON B. COOKE (editor of today’s COMIC BOOK CREATOR magazine), just after the original CBA ended its TwoMorrows run. Featured are in-depth interviews with some of comics’ major league players, including GEORGE TUSKA, FRED HEMBECK, TERRY BEATTY, and FRANK BOLLE—and an amazing all-star tribute to Silver Age great JACK ABEL by the Marvel Comics Bullpen and others. That previously unpublished all-comics Abel appreciation (assembled by RICK PARKER) includes strips by JOE KUBERT, WALTER SIMONSON, KYLE BAKER, MARIE SEVERIN, GRAY MORROW, ALAN WEISS, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, MORT TODD, DICK AYERS, and many more! Includes the never-released CBA BULLPEN #7, a new bonus feature on JACK KIRBY’s unknown 1960 baseball card art, and a 16-page full-color section, all behind a KIRBY COVER! (176-page TRADE PAPERBACK with COLOR) $24.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-105-9 • NOW SHIPPING!

New Comics Magazines!

ALTER EGO #173

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #26

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #27

BLACK HEROES IN U.S. COMICS! Awesome overview by BARRY PEARL, from Voodah to Black Panther and beyond! Interview with DR. WILLIAM FOSTER III (author of Looking for a Face Like Mine!), art/artifacts by BAKER, GRAHAM, McDUFFIE, COWAN, GREENE, HERRIMAN, JONES, ORMES, STELFREEZE, BARREAUX, STONER—plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS.

Career-spanning interview with TERRY DODSON, and Terry’s wife (and go-to inker) RACHEL DODSON! Plus 1970s/’80s portfolio producer SAL QUARTUCCIO talks about his achievements with Phase and Hot Stuf’, R. CRUMB and DENIS KITCHEN discuss the history of underground comix character Pro Junior, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his wife, HEMBECK, and more!

Extensive PAUL GULACY retrospective by GREG BIGA that includes Paul himself, VAL MAYERIK, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, TIM TRUMAN, ROY THOMAS, and others. Plus a JOE SINNOTT MEMORIAL; BUD PLANT discusses his career as underground comix retailer, distributor, fledgling publisher of JACK KATZ’s FIRST KINGDOM, and mail-order bookseller; our regular columnists, and the latest from HEMBECK!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Oct. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Dec. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Winter 2022

KIRBY COLLECTOR #81

KIRBY COLLECTOR #82

BACK ISSUE #130

BACK ISSUE #132

BACK ISSUE #133

“THE MANY WORLDS OF JACK KIRBY!” From Sub-Atomica to outer space, visit Kirby’s work from World War II, the Fourth World, and hidden worlds of Subterranea, Wakanda, Olympia, Lemuria, Atlantis, the Microverse, and others! Plus, a 2021 Kirby panel, featuring JONATHAN ROSS, NEIL GAIMAN, & MARK EVANIER, a Kirby pencil art gallery from MACHINE MAN, 2001, DEVIL DINOSAUR, & more!

BRONZE AGE PROMOS, ADS, AND GIMMICKS! The aborted DC Super-Stars Society fan club, Hostess Comic Ads, DC 16-page Preview Comics, rare Marvel custom comics, DC Hotline, Popeye Career Comics, early variant covers, and more. Featuring BARR, HERDLING, LEVITZ, MAGUIRE, MORGAN, PACELLA, PALMIOTTI, SHAW!, TERRY STEWART, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, and more!

1980s MARVEL LIMITED SERIES! CLAREMONT/MILLER’s Wolverine, Black Panther, Falcon, Punisher, Machine Man, Iceman, Magik, Fantastic Four vs. X-Men, Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., Wolfpack, and more! With BOGDANOVE, COWAN, DeFALCO, DeMATTEIS, GRANT, HAMA, MILGROM, NEARY, SMITH, WINDSORSMITH, and more. Cover by JOE RUBINSTEIN. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

STARMEN ISSUE, headlined by JAMES ROBINSON and TONY HARRIS’s Jack Knight Starman! Plus: The StarSpangled Kid, Starjammers, the 1980s Starman, and Starstruck! Featuring DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, ROBERT GREENBERGER, ELAINE LEE, TOM LYLE, MICHAEL Wm. KALUTA, ROGER STERN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Jack Knight Starman cover by TONY HARRIS.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Fall 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Winter 2022

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Nov. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Jan. 2022

2021

“KIRBY: BETA!” Jack’s experimental ideas, characters, and series (Fighting American, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, and others), Kirby interview, inspirations for his many “secret societies” (The Project, Habitat, Wakanda), non-superhero genres he explored, 2019 Heroes Con panel (with MARK EVANIER, MIKE ROYER, JIM AMASH, and RAND HOPPE), a pencil art gallery, UNUSED JIMMY OLSEN #141 COVER, and more!

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Alter Ego (Six issues) Back Issue (Eight issues) BrickJournal (Six issues) Comic Book Creator (Four issues) Jack Kirby Collector (Four issues) RetroFan (Six issues)

ECONOMY US $68 $90 $68 $46 $49 $68

EXPEDITED US $80 $103 $80 $56 $59 $80

PREMIUM US $87 $113 $87 $60 $63 $87

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

INTERNATIONAL $103 $137 $103 $69 $72 $103

DIGITAL ONLY $27 $36 $27 $18 $18 $27

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ALTER EGO #172

ALFREDO ALCALA is celebrated for his dreamscape work on Savage Sword of Conan and other work for Marvel, DC, and Warren, as well as his own barbarian creation Voltar, as RICH ARNDT interviews his sons Alfred and Christian! Also: FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, PETER NORMANTON’s horror history From The Tomb, JOHN BROOME, and more!

PRINTED IN CHINA

ALTER EGO #171

PAUL GUSTAVSON—Golden Age artist of The Angel, Fantom of the Fair, Arrow, Human Bomb, Jester, Plastic Man, Alias the Spider, Quicksilver, Rusty Ryan, Midnight, and others—is remembered by son TERRY GUSTAFSON, who talks in-depth to RICHARD ARNDT. Lots of lush comic art from Centaur, Timely, and (especially) Quality! Plus—FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, and more!