Jack Kirby Collector #14

Fully Authorized

By The Kirby Estate

$4.95 In The US

CELEBRATING THE LIFE & CAREER OF THE KING!

A 52-p age Theme ISSUE featuring The MightyTho r!!

Issue #14, Feb. 1997

An unpublished

Kirby Interview An Interview with Classic Kirby Inker

Chic Stone Journey Into Mystery #101 Befo re Inking The Evolution of

Thor & The Stone Men Walt Simonson on Manhunter, Tho r & Kirby Examining The

Real Norse Gods Pros & Cons of

Vince Colletta Linking Tho r To

The New Gods including Jack’s Tho r Pencils Befo re They Were Inked, And Much Mo re!!

1996 Eisner Awards Nominee For Best Comics-Related Publication

Thor © Marvel Entertainment, Inc.

Unpublished Art

KIRBY

COLLECTOR

BULLETINS

•

KIRBY

COLLECTOR

BULLETINS

•

KIRBY

COLLECTOR

BULLETINS

AN ASSEMBLAGE OF ANECDOTES ABOUT ASGARD’S ARTIST! ITEM! Internet addicts: The TJKC Site on the World Wide Web (maintained by Rascally RANDY HOPPE) has moved! The new URL is http://www.fantasty.com/kirby (the new location gives us more room to add graphics, sounds, and other cool Kirby stuff—but our TJKC e-mail address is still twomorrow@aol.com). And don’t forget about alt.comics.jack-kirby (the new Kirby Newsgroup), set up by Bodacious BOB HEER, which serves as a public forum for fans around the world to post questions and comments about Jack. Then there’s the JACK KIRBY MAILING LIST, which you can join by sending an e-mail request to Magnanimous MATT GORE at kirby-lrequest@matthew.cumberland.org (but be prepared to be inundated with e-mail—currently 30-40 messages daily—about Jack from Kirby fans around the world). Or try Charismatic CHRIS HARPER’s Jack Kirby Home Page, located at http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~ampcon/.

ITEM! Resilient R.C. HARVEY has just finished his new book THE ART OF THE COMIC BOOK. In it, he examines Jack’s work on the creation of the Marvel Universe and analyzes “Mother Delilah” from Boys’ Ranch, among others. It’s available for $25 from R.C. at 2701 Maplewood Drive, Champaign, IL 61821.

Pure Imagination’s The Complete Kirby Vol. 1 (a series reprinting all of Jack’s work from the beginning of his career) should be ready in April, but 50 more people must commit to buying a copy before it can be published. Volume 1 includes Jack’s early work from Blue Bolt, Red Raven, Crash Comics, Jumbo Comics, plus other early comic book and strip work (some never published in the US), and an updated version of the text feature from The Jack Kirby Treasury Vol. 1 is included. It will be a 164-page softcover in black-&-white with color cover for $25. If you can commit to buying a copy when it’s published, write to Greg Theakston, Box 669902, Marietta, GA 30066 or e-mail him at his NEW email address: 105420,1527@compuserve.com (apologies to folks who couldn’t reach him through his old address; we promise this one is working!). Be sure to include your mailing address. DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY NOW! You’ll be notified by mail when it’s published.

Greg also needs copies of Jack’s Blue Beetle daily strips and other strip work; contact him if you have any for sale or trade.

ITEM! COMICS REVUE is still reprinting Jack’s SKY MASTERS daily strips. #124 was the first issue to run them, and they’re up to #128. Look for the ad on page 51.

ITEM! TJKC subscriber RICHARD KOLKMAN continues work on a preliminary version of the updated Kirby Checklist, which will be ready soon! When it’s done, we’ll post it on the Internet for free downloading, and send printed copies out at-cost to anyone who’d like to check it for final errors. Then we’ll compile all the final changes, make decisions on any “iffy” entries, and release the completed version on the ’Net and as an at-cost publication. Stay tuned for more details!

ITEM! Keep sending letters to: Mr. Terry Stewart, Marvel Comics, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016 asking that Marvel put “Created by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby” on books they co-created. (This is in conjunction with MARK MILLER’s ongoing letter-writing campaign. So write already!)

JOHN’S JUKEBOX I’ll admit it; I never liked Jack’s Thor. I tried—really I did.

I even collected all the Kirby issues, but I couldn’t stand reading them because of Vince Colletta’s inking. I was used to Mike Royer’s sleek, true-to-Kirby inks, so I hated Colletta’s scratchy style! (I don’t think there’s ever been an inker in comics who provoked as much controversy as Colletta, which is why we’re presenting a “Point/Counterpoint” discussion of his work this issue.) I ended up taking my (mostly unread) Thor collection to a dealer in the late 1980s and selling it. Little did I know I’d end up publishing a Kirby ’zine one day, and would need them back! But after repurchasing all those issues at conventions last Summer, I sat down and read them straight through. I was amazed at the concepts I’d missed out on by my Colletta prejudice.

And y’know what? After a few issues, ol’ Vinnie’s style sorta starting growing on me. Now don’t get me wrong; I still think Thor should’ve been inked by somebody else. But I’ve learned that no inker can really destroy Jack’s work, no matter how inappropriate I think their style is. His penciling is just too powerful to totally subdue. And thanks to Jack saving photocopies of his pencils—like ones in this issue—we can enjoy Jack’s Thor pencils in their original, uninked state.

Long Live The King!

John Morrow, Editor • 502 Saint Mary’s St. • Raleigh, NC 27605 • (919) 833-8092 • FAX (919) 833-8023 e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com P.S. Back issues of TJKC #8 and #9 are almost sold out. Order now; they won’t last long!

ITEM! Oops! In last issue’s DICK AYERS interview, we listed the price for subscriptions to Dick’s new comic DR. WONDER ($15.95 for 6 issues, $19.95 outside the US), but we left out the address to order which is: Old Town Publishing, 33 Harrison Avenue, Franklin Square, NY 11010-3614. Our apologies to Dick and his fans.

We highly recommend this book!

ITEM! THE CARTOON ART MUSEUM in San Francisco is planning a retrospective on Jack’s career for the summer of 1998, focusing on at least four areas of his career: Golden Age, pre-Marvel non-superhero, Marvel Silver Age, and Jack’s DC creations. Since their permanent collection includes only a few Kirby pieces, they need to borrow the majority of the art for the show.

The museum is fully insured and has a security system installed on the premises. So if you have Kirby art you’d be willing to loan them for the show, contact Steven M. Morger at (510)834-6600 or write him at Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean, 1111 Broadway, 24th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607. His e-mail address is Smorger@Wendel.com.

ITEM! On a personal note, a new favorite fanzine of ours is SECRET IDENTITY, published by TJKC subscriber and all-around nice guy, Jarring JEFF SMITH (no relation to that “Bone” guy!). The first two issues are currently available at $3.00 each ($5.00 for both), and feature a two-part interview with Swamp Thing and Tyrant artist, Snazzy STEVE BISSETTE, along with lots of other great articles. Write to Jeff at 4909 Courtside Dr #131, Irving, TX 75038. Try it; Odin would!

ITEM! Do your good deed for the day—send a donation to the educational fund that was set up in Jack’s name, to benefit children in his community through his synagogue.

The address is: The Jack Kirby Educational Fund, Temple Etz Chaim, 1080 Janss Rd., Thousand Oaks, CA 91360.

2

KIRBY COLLECTOR CHECKLIST These Issues Of TJKC Are Available – See Page 50 TJKC #1: This 16-page INTRODUCTORY ISSUE! Rare Kirby posters, articles on a 1978 Kirby traveling display and the MARVELMANIA PORTFOLIO, Jack’s original OMAC concept sketch, an unused THOR page, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada, $3.70 elsewhere) TJKC #2: A 16-page GENERAL INTEREST issue! Rare 1970s SANDMAN pages, a fan’s phone conversations with Jack, MARVELMANIA PORTFOLIO plates, unpublished FANTASTIC FOUR panels, a page of the Jack Ruby ESQUIRE story, other rare art, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada, $3.70 elsewhere) TJKC #3: A 16-page CAPTAIN AMERICA theme issue!

JOE SIMON interview, more MARVELMANIA plates, convention sketches, 1960s & 70s CAPTAIN AMERICA pages before they were inked, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada, $3.70 elsewhere) TJKC #4: A 16-page GENERAL INTEREST issue! MIKE ROYER interview, more MARVELMANIA plates, THOR pencil pages before being inked, unused ATLAS #1 cover pencils, Euro-Kirby fandom, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada, $3.70 elsewhere) TJKC #5: A 16-page GENERAL INTEREST issue!

Transcripts of Jack’s 1972 speech at VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, unpublished FANTASTIC FOUR pencils, how Kirby used real people in his comics, essential Kirby collectibles, unpublished KOBRA pencils, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada, $3.70 elsewhere) TJKC #6: A 36-page FOURTH WORLD theme issue!

Interviews with MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN and MIKE ROYER, story behind HUNGER DOGS and Jack’s original ending to NEW GODS, NEW GODS portfolio, unpublished art, and FOURTH WORLD pencils before inking! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #7: A 36-page KID GANG theme issue!

Unpublished interview with Kirby, overview of S&K KID GANGS, unpublished art from BOYS’ RANCH, BOY EXPLORERS, JIMMY OLSEN, DINGBATS, X-MEN, & more! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #8: 36-page CONVENTION issue! ALMOST SOLD OUT! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #9: 44-page FANTASTIC FOUR theme issue!

ALMOST SOLD OUT! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #10: A 44-page HUMOR theme issue! ROZ KIRBY interview, STEVE GERBER on DESTROYER DUCK, GOODY RICKELS, FIGHTING AMERICAN, plus JIMMY OLSEN and THOR pages before inking, unpublished art, and more! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #11: A 44-page HOLLYWOOD theme issue!

STUNTMAN, unused movie ideas, BLACK HOLE, LORD OF LIGHT, THE PRISONER adaptation, Jack’s career in ANIMATION, NEW GODS vs. STAR WARS, unpublished art, and more! New Kirby/Steranko and Kirby/Ordway covers. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #12: A 44-page INTERNATIONAL theme issue! Two KIRBY interviews, JOHN BYRNE interview, Kirby around the world, SAN DIEGO CON ’96 Kirby Panel (with EVANIER, WOLFMAN & STERN), CAPT. AMERICA pencils before inking, and more! New Kirby/Windsor-Smith cover. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #13: A 52-page SUPERNATURAL theme issue! An interview with Jack and Walter Gibson (creator of The Shadow), unpublished 7-page mystery story, DICK AYERS interview, features on THE DEMON, BLACK MAGIC, SPIRIT WORLD, ATLAS MONSTERS, published pages before they were inked, and more! New Kirby/Ayers and Kirby/Bissette covers. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC Poster: See pg. 50. $7 ($8 Canada, $10 elsewhere)

Issue #14 Contents: The Journey Cosmic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (an overview of Jack’s Thor) “Real” Tales of Asgard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 (a look at the ancient Norse legends) Evolution of Thor & the Stone Men . . . 10 (they didn’t start in 1962) Chic Stone Speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 (the classic Marvel inker interviewed) A Provenance of JIM Art . . . . . . . . . 16 (which pages still exist?)

A Lesson In Kirby Magic . . . . . . . . . 17 (Jack and the NYPD) Jack Kirby: Prisoner of Gravity . . . . 18 (a ’92 Kirby TV interview transcribed) Some Observations on Thor . . . . . . 20 (Marvel’s answer to Superman?)

Journey Into Mystery #101 Pencils . . . 22 (a key issue, before inks!)

Ominous Prophesies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 (how Thor connects to New Gods) Pros & Cons of Vince Colletta . . . . . 28 (fans’ views of a much-maligned inker) Kirby As Artistic Craftsman . . . . . . 30 (a study of Kirby’s Thor energy) The Gods & Jack Kirby . . . . . . . . . . . 33 (a Christian’s religious view of Thor) Walt Simonson Interviewed . . . . . . 34 New Gods For Old . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 (Jack learned from Thor’s mistakes) End Of An Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 (the original version of Thor #169) Now You’ve Done It, Kirby! . . . . . . . 47 (how JIM #117 affected a fan’s life) Collector Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

(upper left) What Thor’s hammer should’ve said(!), from Journey Into Mystery #83. (center) Artwork that Jack created to accompany his collage for the page 2-3 spread in Thor #161.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 4, No. 14, Feb. 1997. Published bi-monthly by and © TwoMorrows Advertising, 502 Saint Mary’s St., Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Assistant Editor. Single issues: $4.95 US, $5.40 Canada, $7.40 outside North America. Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $44.00 outside North America. First printing. All characters are © their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. PRINTED IN CANADA.

3

The Journey Cosmic An overview of the Kirby run on Thor, by David Peñalosa

(#114-115), who turned into a rather ultimate supervillain who could absorb the elements of the Earth and Thor’s superpowers. Loki and Balder figured prominently in the story. When Loki brought Jane Foster to Asgard against her will, Odin became angered, not knowing whether to blame Thor or Loki. (One had to wonder, if Odin was so “all-knowing”, why didn’t he catch on that Thor was telling the truth and Loki was lying in these incidents? Oh well.) Odin called for a trial.

“Trial of the Gods” (#116) had an awesome cover with Thor and Loki standing before Odin sitting on his throne. Inside, Jack drew fantastic scenes of the mythological lands of Asgard and beyond. The trial consisted of a challenging journey through terrifying terrain filled with all kinds of menaces, such as Yagg the Slayer. While Thor had his hands full, Loki convinced the Executioner and Enchantress to travel to Earth and kidnap Jane Foster. Balder had to rescue Jane in Thor’s stead. Loki, as mischievous as ever, used enchanted Norn Stones (on loan from the Norn Queen) to cheat during the trial, resulting in victory over Thor.

Just as Loki beat Thor back to Asgard, he sent the enchanted stones

fter the Fantastic Four, the longest consistent run Jack Kirby ever did was Thor. To this day, Jack’s work on Thor remains one of the most inspired creations in the realm of comic books.

Jack’s Thor premiered in Journey Into Mystery #83 (Aug. 1962), inked by Joe Sinnott. Early on we were introduced to the supporting cast of characters: Thor’s alter-ego, the lame Dr. Don Blake; his nurse Jane Foster; and some rather unusual folks: Thor’s step-brother, the evil Loki; his father Odin, the ruler of the Norse Gods; and a growing cast of other immortal Asgardians.

Thor was a ground-breaking work. However, the title didn’t start out as much more than a typical Marvel superhero book, unique only in the above-mentioned supporting cast. Written in the classic Stan Lee soap-operatic style, many stories played off the fact that Don Blake and Jane Foster loved one another, but were afraid to tell each other. This tension served the storylines well until Thor’s adventures started taking on more magnificent dimensions.

The early Kirby/Ayers artwork was certainly well done, but other artists like Don Heck and Joe Sinnott started doing the penciling chores, and Stan Lee gave the writing over to his brother Larry Leiber. The book floundered for awhile with weak stories and less-than-stunning art until the Kirby/Lee team permanently returned with #101 (Feb. 1964).

The first clue to the coming greatness that would be associated with the magazine actually occurred with the introduction of Tales of Asgard in issue #97 (Oct. 1963). These five-page episodes in the back of the book began by retelling Norse myths, and gradually evolved to where Jack was spinning his own myths, with some stories spanning many issues. None of the stories took place on Earth. Sif, the goddess and future lover of Thor, first appeared in Tales of Asgard (JIM #102), Balder the Brave in issue #106, and The Warriors Three—Hogun the Grim, Fandral the Dashing and Volstagg the Voluminous—in issue #119. All these supporting characters soon began appearing in the modern-day Thor stories with greater frequency.

Vince Colletta began inking Jack’s pencils with the Tales of Asgard back-up in Thor #106 and graduated to the lead feature with #116, staying for almost the entirety of Jack’s run. (I am one of those perhaps-rare people who enjoyed Colletta’s inks on Jack’s pencils, but don’t hold that against me.)

Jack Kirby had been the workhorse of the new upstart company Marvel, drawing a record amount of stories, covers and layouts. The Kirby look was the Marvel look. In the mid-sixties when his monthly workload lightened to just the two full titles of Thor and Fantastic Four and the half-book length Captain America feature in Tales of Suspense, Jack’s creativity took a quantum leap. After spending over twenty years steadily working in the field, Jack reached an unprecedented level of creativity in which he plotted and drew stories that were seemingly never-ending, magnificent epics.

The great Kirby explosion of creativity in Thor occurred roughly within a fifty-six issue run: #114 (March 1965) to #169 (October 1969). The first story (or sub-plot of the epic) featured the Absorbing Man A sign of great things to come: Early Tales of Asgard pencils from Journey Into Mystery #112.

4

A

help of Loki, the Absorbing Man came back on the scene (#120-123). Thor (the butterfingers) dropped a Norn Stone in Southeast Asia (#120). Meanwhile, Dr. Blake’s medical practice showed signs of unraveling because of Thor’s long absence from New York City.

Also in issue #120, the “new” Avengers made a cameo appearance when Thor looked them up for help. Thor got disgusted with the “youngsters” who made up this new line-up and quickly split.

In #122, Absorbing Man was brought to Asgard by Loki, and Thor brought a reporter to the fabled realm. If things weren’t wild enough, a local “witch doctor” found the Norn Stone which Thor dropped back in #120 and took on North Vietnamese regular troops, whose officer Jack drew like a Japanese soldier from WWII. This superpowered witch doctor had a cool mask and became “The Demon” (#123-125). With the help of his tribe, the Demon started to conquer the surrounding tribes in his region.

Odin, of course, overcame the Absorbing Man and Loki, sending them both off into the vastness of space. Whew!

Hercules, Thor’s counterpart from Mount Olympus, first appeared in Journey Into Mystery Annual #1 (Summer 1965). He reappeared in issue JIM #124 (Jan. 1966), just as Thor was defeating the Demon, and stayed until #131. Things got off to a bad start between the two immortals as they fought over the attentions of Jane Foster.

Thor’s dad had a habit of taking Thor’s powers away at inconvenient times. He did it again during his son’s fight with Hercules, causing goldilocks to be defeated. Thor was shamed by his defeat to the point where he didn’t want to be in the presence of Miss Foster. The name of the magazine changed from Journey Into Mystery to Thor with #126.

Pluto, Greek god of the underworld, tricked Hercules (#127-130) into trading places with him. The only way out of Herc’s predicament was to get another to battle Pluto in his stead. Guess who he picked for this task?

Thor had been breaking new ground for well over a year by now. Next, Jack moved off Earth, into outer space where his cosmic concepts could be done justice. In #131 Thor and Hercules concluded their long adventure, and a sub-plot involving the mysterious Tana Nile, which started brewing in a previous issue, began unfolding. Tana Nile was a Colonizer, a race from Rigel, a planet from the far reaches of the Universe. Their pursuit was to (what else?) colonize other planets throughout space. The Recorder was an interesting character who appeared at this time; a being manufactured by the Colonizers for the purpose of documenting. He and Thor traveled to Ego the Living Planet, having a very entertaining adventure. The Recorder said things like: “Observation! Here within the planet’s core, we are new foreign bodies as germs would be in the bloodstream of a human.” Here you had three different beings—Thor, Recorder and Ego—interacting together, and not one was an Earthling.

While trekking through space (#134), the Colonizers, Recorder and Thor came into close proximity of Galactus the world eater. There was

Unused Thor page still in pencil, circa 1967. through a dimensional window to earth, so as to dispose of any evidence of his misdeeds.

The next issue’s “Into the Blaze of Battle” (#117) saw things getting a bit more complicated as Jack’s plotting started to involve multiple storylines. Immortals in this issue’s cast included Loki, Odin, the Norn Queen, Balder, the Executioner, and the Enchantress. While searching for the Norn Stones in Southeast Asia, Thor managed to have a fight with the North Vietnamese Army. At the end of the story, the Vietnamese officer killed himself and fellow commies by blowing up the underground bunker headquarters. He “died like a man” in the end, a finale reminiscent of the Gargoyle’s demise in Hulk #1.

The next menace to confront Thor while in Asia was the Destroyer (#118-119). The Destroyer was one of those classic Kirby creations, looking incredibly powerful. After the defeat of the Destroyer, with the 5

also a cameo appearance by the new Avenger members Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Issues #134-135 introduced “The People Breeders”; Jack’s interest in genetic manipulation made for a thrilling story. Thor had to save “Jane dear” again, a dynamic that was starting to get old.

However, issue #136 saw Jane Foster travel to Asgard to become an immortal, in a clever story that was able to effectively move the nurse out of the magazine. The pages of Thor had gotten so cosmic in scope that the whole secret identity thing just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

The tension between the lame Dr. Blake and his nurse Jane Foster no longer served the plotting. Jack was grappling with larger concepts. It

was no coincidence that in the same issue that Jane Foster started a new job with no memory of her previous adventures (#136), Thor hooked up with fellow immortal Sif. It was a match made in Asgard.

Next, trolls started making trouble (#137-139). Ulik, King of the Trolls was a formidable foe. From there the magazine had a string of one-shot villains: The Growing Man, a creation of Kang the Conqueror (#140), Replicus (#141), and the Super-Skrull (#142). The Enchanters followed (#143-145) in a three-issue story that was notable for the consistent presence of Thor’s Asgardian pals Sif and Balder.

Tales of Asgard ended in #145 (Oct. 1967). A seven-issue (#146-152) Inhumans feature, drawn by Jack and inked by Joe Sinnott, appeared in the back of the magazine until Thor’s current adventures finally filled the entire book with #153.

While the Enchanters story was wrapping up (#145), we learned of Balder’s innermost thoughts through a little balloon above his head. He had “feelings” for Sif, but did not want Thor to ever know his secret. (No doubt that would have been an awkward situation for the three friends.) The script had that typical Stan Lee superhero soap opera element in it. However, only a mere pinch of this spice was added to what was fundamentally a fast-moving, action-packed story.

Thor and his two pals were sitting around talking, and Thor mentioned that he wanted to stay on Earth. When Sif brought up the fact that his dad, The All-Wise, would want him to return to Asgard, Thor let out, “Am I less a God than He??” Oops! It turned out that Pops was listening in, so Odin let Thor remain on Earth, but took the powers away from the “rebellious one”. As fate would have it, the Ringmaster and his Circus of Evil needed a new strong man, so Thor—now just a buff, long-haired guy—got hired for the job. The Ringmaster used his power to hypnotize Thor, resulting in Thor helping in the Ringmaster’s crime-breaking scams.

By #147 (“The Wrath of Odin!”), Thor’s illegal activities with the Circus of Evil had landed him in jail. But not to worry; some helpful good citizen bailed the Thunder God out of the joint. Only this guy was Loki in Earth clothing! The cover of #147 was a masterpiece with Loki kicking Thor’s butt, while Odin looked down from the sky visibly upset by the spectacle he was witnessing. Thor was losing so badly that Sif and Balder felt that they had to return to Earth to bail him out. Seeing these two return to Earth got Odin quite angry. Now the AllFather was really pissed off! All four Asgardians— Thor, Loki, Balder and Sif—got stranded on Earth by Odin with no powers. Loki would have none of this, so he sent a message out to the Norn Queen to give him some power. Through a misunderstanding, the Norn Queen gave powers not to Loki, but to a crook called the Wrecker.

The Wrecker beat Thor within an inch of his life. In fact, Hela the Goddess of Death showed up to take Thor to Valhalla. The cover of #150 is one of my favorites. It shows Hela reaching out to the astral body of Thor which is rising out of his nearly dead physical body. Loki watched in the distance, as if from another dimension, obviously enjoying what he saw. As it turned out, there was a glimmer of life left in Thor, so Hela ended up Thor battles Ulik in these pencils (before inks) from Thor #152, page 10. not taking him to the other side. Meanwhile, Sif 6

the outskirts of Asgard and Loki sitting on the throne. The Recorder came by to observe the dire situation. (I wonder if Jack would have preferred to kill off Asgard at this point and start anew with his New Gods? The very first splash page of the New Gods series certainly looked like Ragnarok.)

Of course Ragnarok did not occur in the pages of Thor. Instead, Odin simply awoke from his Odinsleep in the nick of time to easily defeat Mangog, making for a rather anti-climactic ending.

Issues #158 and #159 finally answered the question of how Dr. Don Blake figured into the picture. It turned out that for his arrogance, Thor was punished by Odin by being sent to Earth to live as a lame doctor, in order that he may learn humility. I thought the story wrapped up the loose ends from Thor’s origin rather well.

In the beginning of 1969 (#160), the magazine devoted six issues to Galactus. This involved several different stories such as a battle between Ego the Living Planet and Galactus (#161) as well as the “long-awaited origin of Galactus” (#169).

The origin was, in my opinion, one of the lamest ideas of the era. The origin story told us how Galactus was originally a space traveler who was transformed by bombardment from cosmic radiation. The radiation angle had already been done to excess by Marvel in the early 1960s. After a suspenseful, ominous buildup to the confrontation between Thor and Galactus, the origin of Galactus made the tale just fall flat on its face. This chapter contrasted greatly from the grand and cosmic tone of Thor which had been established over the past few years.

In-between the Galactus issues, there were two other stories that took place. Pluto made a return (#163-164), and “Him” (#165-166), a creation of advanced science (see Fantastic Four #6667), got a crush on Sif. That flipped out Thor, causing the Thunder God to have the forbidden “warrior madness”.

During this period, Marvel’s coloring improved greatly. The nuances in color enhanced Jack’s grand scenes of Asgard and other cosmic realms. However, the magazine’s stories became more mundane, like the more typical single issue superhero stories, or recycled ideas that didn’t Rejected cover to Thor #167, inked by Colletta. The published version was drawn by John Romita Sr. have the same impact the second time around.

The single-story issues featured the Thermal Man got tricked by the Norn Queen into using her life force to reactivate the (#170), the Wrecker (#171), the Mind Slave (#172), Ulik and the Destroyer. It seems Sif was gullible enough to think that the Destroyer Ringmaster (#173), and the Crypto-Man (#174). There was, however, could save Thor from the Wrecker and not threaten Thor. It turned a running sub-plot involving the Norn Queen lusting after Balder. out to be a trick played on her by Loki and the Norn Queen. The The Warriors Three, Sif and the ever-mischievous Loki were also feaDestroyer did demolish the Wrecker (#151), but soon Sif ’s own will tured prominently in these tales. disappeared and the Destroyer’s violent mission took over. (Duh!) The cover of issue #167 was drawn by John Romita, the first If things weren’t bad enough, Ulik the troll showed up at about cover since Thor began not drawn by Jack. [Editor’s Note: Jack drew a this time. Ulik was very strong, but maybe not all that smart, because cover for #167 that was rejected, and since he was living in California by he freed the Mangog from his imprisonment, causing the coming of that time, Marvel probably found it quicker to have someone in the New Ragnarok, the end of the world. (Nice going, Ulik!) While the Mangog York office redraw it.] Comics legend Bill Everett inked Jack’s pencils for was walking toward Asgard, bent on its destruction, Odin happened six issues during this phase. to be taking his Odinsleep. Loki sat on his dad’s throne, taking care of A Ragnarok-like story occurred in #175-177, with Loki sitting on the things while the All-Father was unavailable. It was easy to see this was throne of Odin again, but this time it was Surtur, not Mangog, threata bad situation. ening Asgard. John Buscema and Jack switched duties one month when The Mangog-Ragnarok story went from issue #154-157. Sif, Balder, Jack drew Silver Surfer #18 and John Buscema drew Thor #178. Then The Warriors Three, and (of course) Loki all figured prominently in the Jack Kirby’s run of Thor ended with issue #179. It wasn’t Ragnarok— tale. Things were looking pretty grim with the Mangog approaching the end of the world—but it was definitely the end of an era.

7

and Muninn. He also resides in Valhalla, where slain warriors are taken.

Odin has only one eye, which shines like the sun; his other eye he traded for a drink from the Well of Wisdom, and gained immense knowledge.

“Real”Tales Of Asgard I or “Gimme That Old Norse Religion”, by Jon B. Cooke

THOR: The son of Odin and Jord, he’s one of the most powerful gods, the Norse god of thunder. He is married to Sif, a fertility goddess, and is usually portrayed as a large, powerful man with a red beard and eyes of lightning. Despite his ferocious appearance, he was very popular as the protector of both gods and humans against the forces of evil. Thursday is named after him. The Norse believed that during a thunderstorm, Thor rode through the heavens on his chariot pulled by goats. Thor wears the belt Megingjard which doubles his already considerable strength. His greatest enemy is Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, and his greatest weapon, Mjollnir, the hammer (“that smashes”) made for him by dwarfs.

Every time Thor threw Mjollnir, lightning flashed, after which the

t took some time for Kirby & Lee to fully exploit the mythological aspects of Thor in the pages of Journey Into Mystery. Initially, the god of thunder’s chief concern seemed to be magicians and Communists, but it was the repeated appearance of his greatest adversary, Loki, that signaled the team’s increasing interest in exploring the Viking myths.

Let’s examine a few of the Norse myths that Jack and Stan “Marvelized”; the “true” Tales of Asgard, found in ancients tomes called the Eddas, dating back to the first millennium. [Most of the following quotes are from “Gods of the North” by Brian Branston (1956, Vanguard Press) including his translations of the Prose and Poetic Eddas, and from Nicole Cherry’s great Norse mythology web page.]

In the beginning there was the Ginnungagap, the Yawning Gulf. In the Gulf was a land of fire, Muspellheim, and a land of ice, Niflheim. From the icy waves rose the first living creature, Ymir the Frost Giant, who “was no god but a creature of evil.” Auoumla, the cow, sustained the Giant, and licked the rocks of ice to create Buri, a god who “begat a son called Bur who took to wife Bestla… and they had three sons called Odin, Villi and Vé.” The boys killed Ymir, and threw his carcass into the Yawning Gulf and made the earth out of it. From his blood they created the lakes and seas; the earth was made from his flesh and the mountain crags from his bones. Towards the center of the earth they built a fortress encircling the region against their giant enemies; they made it from the brows of Ymir, and called it Midgard. (The brothers also created humanity from two logs of driftwood, but that’s another story.) So were created the nine worlds of Norse mythology, three of which concern us: the outer world Jotunheim (Land of the Giants), Midgard (the human world), and Asgard, Home of the Gods, connected to Man by Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge.

Contrary to the interests of comics fans, much of Norse religion lacks a cohesive continuity. As stated above, there was a void at the beginning of time and suddenly a giant, divine bovine appeared with no explanation.

These tales didn’t appeal to logic; apparently it was also a religion in constant flux. Tyr, the Norse God of War who demanded sacrifices from his followers, was wildly popular until Thor—who apparently desired no such bloody compensation—usurped his position over the years and surpassed even Odin in popularity. What is recounted about the immortals—at least what would interest a fan of the Kirby & Lee Thor—is briefly summarized below.

ODIN: The chief god of the Norse pantheon, Odin is called Alfadir (All-father), for he is indeed father of the gods Balder, Hermod, Hod, Thor, and Vidar. Odin is a god of war and death, but also the god of poetry and wisdom. From his throne he observes all that happens in the nine worlds; tidings are brought to him by his two ravens, Huginn 8

BALDER: The god of light and joy (and son of Odin and Frigg), he was loved by both gods and man, and was considered to be the best of the gods. He had a good character, and was friendly, wise and eloquent, although he had little power. He dreamed about his death, so Frigg extracted an oath from every creature, object and force in nature that they would never harm him. Thinking him invincible, the gods used Balder as a target for knife-throwing and archery. Jealous Loki changed his own appearance and asked Frigg if there was anything that could harm Balder. Suspecting nothing, she answered that there was just one thing: a small tree called the mistletoe—she thought it was too small to ask for an oath. Loki tricked Balder’s blind twin brother, Hod, into shooting a mistletoe fig (guided by Loki’s aim), and Balder fell dead, pierced through the heart.

RAGNAROK: Ragnarok is the Twilight of the Gods, the end of the cosmos, also called Gotterdammerung.

Ragnarok will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters. Conflicts and feuds will break out, and all morals will disappear; this is the beginning of the end.

The wolf Skoll will devour the sun, and his brother Hati will eat the moon, plunging the earth into darkness. Earthquakes will shudder the earth, freeing the terrible wolf Fenrir. The sea will rear up because Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, is twisting and writhing in fury, making his way toward the land.

With every breath, Jormungand will stain the soil and the sky with his poison. The waves caused by the serpent’s emerging will set free the ship Naglfar, and with the giant Hymir as their commander, the giants sail toward the battlefield. From the realm of the dead a second ship will set sail, carrying the inhabitants of hell, with Loki as their helmsman. The fire giants, led by the giant Surt, will leave Muspell in the south to join against the gods. Surt, carrying a sword that blazes like the sun itself, will scorch the earth.

Meanwhile, Heimdall will sound his horn, calling Odin’s sons and heroes to the battlefield. From all the corners of the world, gods, giants, dwarves, demons and elves will ride towards the huge plain of Vigrid (“battle shaker”), where the last battle will be fought. Odin will head straight for Fenrir, and Thor will attack Jormungand. Thor will be victorious, but shortly after he will die from the serpent’s poison.

Surt will seek out Freyr, who will succumb to the giant. The one-handed Tyr will fight the monstrous hound Garm and they will kill each other. Loki and (left & above) Splash page pencils from Thor #157 and #177; two uses of Ragnarok in Jack’s Thor. Heimdall, age-old enemies, will meet for a final time, and neither will survive their encounter. The fight hammer returned to his right hand, on which he wore an iron glove. between Odin and Fenrir will rage for a long time, but finally Fenrir Mjollnir was greatly feared by the Frost Giants—the enemies of the will seize Odin, and swallow him. Vidar will at once leap towards the gods—for Thor had killed a large number of them. wolf, and kill him with his own hands. Then Surt will fling fire in every direction. The nine worlds will burn, and friends and foes alike will LOKI: A son of giants (not a stepson of Odin, as modified by Kirby & perish. The earth will sink into the sea.

Lee), Loki is connected with fire and magic, and can assume different After the destruction, a new idyllic world will arise from the sea shapes (horse, falcon, fly, etc.). Handsome and with a friendly appearand this new earth will be filled with abundant life. Some of the gods ance, the God of Mischief has an evil nature, crafty and malicious. He’s will survive, others will be reborn. Wickedness and misery will no directly responsible for the death of Balder. His wife is Sigyn, who longer exist, and gods and men will live happily ever after. stayed loyal to him, even when the gods punished him for Balder’s From these awesome spectacles, Stan and Jack contrived a modmurder. He was chained to three large boulders; one under his shoulern mythology we still marvel at today. Whatever modifications the ders, one under his loins, and one under his knees. A poisonous snake team made, the essence seemed to remain; essentially fatalistic, yet was placed above his head. The snake’s dripping venom was caught by not without hope. Jack would twist the ending to Ragnarok and create Sigyn in a bowl, but whenever the bowl is filled to the brim, she has his not-so-happy epilogue, the Fourth World, his magnum opus. Such to leave to empty it. Then the poison that falls on Loki’s face makes him twist in pain, causing earthquakes. is the stuff of legends.

9

The Evolution Of Thor & The Stone Men

by Richard Kolkman (with thanks to John Modica and Mark Evanier) o Marvelites, the origin and first appearance of Thor in Journey Into Mystery #83 (August 1962) is as familiar as the FF’s cosmic rocket hop. Feeble Don Blake discovers Thor’s hammer in the guise of an old stick. Upon striking the stick, he becomes Thor, god of thunder. With his hammer, Thor shatters a tree, commands the elements, and routs a rowdy band of Saturnian Stone Men from Earth. “Thor the Mighty! And the Stone Men from Saturn!” begins the saga of Thor and Asgard, which under Kirby’s pencil developed into a stunning cosmic masterpiece. Of course, the original concept for Thor can be found in many mythological texts; but Jack’s re-invention of Thor as a heroic figure in our popular culture can be traced back to DC’s Adventure Comics #75 (May 1942; reprinted in Forever People #6).

The “first” Thor faces off against the Sandman and Sandy in Simon & Kirby’s “Villain from Valhalla” and follows basic precepts from the Norse legends. Thor has command of both his hammer (Mjolnir) and the elements. The appearance of this red-haired ruffian includes a winged helmet

T Journey Into Mystery #83; definitely NOT Thor’s first appearance.

Commandos In Valhalla

by Rich Morrissey n “The Shadow of Valhalla”, the third and last story in Boy Commandos #7 (Summer 1944), the Commandos are assigned to search the old Asgard Castle in Norway for Nazi equipment. They find not only the war material but the Nazis themselves, and in the ensuing battle Brooklyn is knocked out. He awakens to find an immense figure in Viking garb standing over him. It’s Thor, depicted in his traditional manner with red hair and a long beard, and he brings the combatants before the throne of his father Odin (who

I

looks much as he later would at Marvel, with a long white beard and two functioning eyes). The Nazis claim that the gods should be on the side of their sometime-worshipper Hitler, although Thor comments that “Valhalla is the Norse heaven... not German!” Still, Odin agrees to have the men from the future settle the matter by one-on-one combat.

The Commandos naturally choose their adult leader Rip Carter as their champion, and Rip wins despite the Nazis’ attempt to cheat. Odin grants the Commandos “fair passage back to the world of life”, and banishes the Nazis “to the world of darkness”, to which Thor dispatches them with his hammer. Odin has a feast brought for Rip and the boys, and Thor sends them through a wall he says will provide a passage to a ship and food... upon which Brooklyn wakes up to find himself surrounded by his comrades, and the Nazis dead. They conclude it was all Brooklyn’s dream, and besides, they have more serious things to think about; the explosion sealed the exits to the castle, and their ship is departing without them. In desperation, Brooklyn gets them to push on the wall Thor had shown him... and it opens, leading to an ancient Viking ship stocked with nonperishable provisions! Rip insists it was all coincidence, but Brooklyn still isn’t sure: “Well, ya at least gotta admit dat even when I sleep, I’m lookin’ out for de interests of da Commandos!”

A classic sequence providing another early example of Kirby’s work on Thor?

Sadly, no. Close scrutiny proves it to be the work of writer Don Cameron and 10

artist Louis Cazeneuve, both of whom worked regularly on the series after Kirby had joined the war effort. Even so, the story is signed by Simon & Kirby (not all BC stories were), perhaps indicating that their studio had at least something to do with it... very possibly it was indeed Jack Kirby—whose interest in Thor is well documented—who provided the plot.

In any case, the story makes an observation sorely needed in World War II or in any day—that heroic gods like Thor and Odin would ultimately be on the side of justice and fair play, and against a society built on hatred and the strong bullying the weak, as was Nazi Germany. Later in The Invaders, Roy Thomas had Thor confront the battle between American ideals and his German worshippers, once again coming to the same conclusion. It was an understandable and fitting extrapolation on Thomas’ part of the Marvel god as developed by Jack Kirby... but as with so much in comics, the King himself had already— personally or by proxy—come to the identical conclusion.

and strapped boots. Thor’s invincible hammer smashes open a bank vault and destroys a police car.

Thor turns out to be “Fairy Tales” Fenton, a metallurgy professor/robber whose invisible bullet-proof suit and electronically charged hammer are ultimately no match for the Sandman and Sandy.

Adventure Comics #75 wasn’t the first time Simon and Kirby attempted to fuse mythology into comics; Blue Bolt and Red Raven had mythological ties. Mercury made his one and only appearance in Red Raven #1 and Hurricane (a backup in the first two issues of Captain America) was mentioned to be Thor’s son. But it isn’t until more than 15 years later that Kirby (sans Simon) revisits the Thor concept in DC’s Tales of the Unexpected #16 (August 1957, reprinted in DC Special #4, Sept. 1969). “The Magic Hammer”was likely written by Jack, and features a horn-helmeted Thor, the genuine god of thunder.

Even though mere mortals can lift Thor’s hammer, it is still a conduit for great power when impacted. The hammer shatters a tree in an impressive show of force, and seems capable of bursting open yet another Panel from The Unexpected #16 bank vault. The hammer is virtually identical to the familiar Marvel version. A diminutive proto-Loki appears here as a sneaky hammer thief. Thor, bearded and caped, has strapped leggings, a large sword and circular designs on his chest.

Splash page from Adventure Comics #75, Jack’s earliest use of the Thor concept.

Origins Of The Stone Men Thor wasn’t the only concept that got reused in JIM #83. The Stone Men from Saturn evolved as well, appearing in no less than four stories before their run-in with the god of thunder.

While still working for DC, Jack introduced the Stone Men in House of Mystery #85 (April 1959, reprinted in DC Special #11). “The Stone Sentinels of Giant Island” features a band of South Pacific explorers who discover animated Stone Sentinels (buried up to their necks) from another planet. The explorers mention Easter Island twice, and decipher alien hieroglyphics to defeat the Sentinels. An April 1959 comic would probably have had a production date from around October or November of the The Stone Men from JIM #83. previous year. An intriguing bit of fact from September 1958 is the publication of the best-selling book “Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island” by Thor Heyerdahl. (A quick history lesson: Easter Island was discovered on Easter day in 1722 in the South Pacific by Dutch seaman Jakob Roggeven. It is famous for its

Marvel’s first Stone Men from Tales to Astonish #5. Was Kirby getting back at DC editor Jack Schiff by reusing the Stone Men idea?

Panel from Tales Of Suspense #28.

These Stone Men got around! (left) Jack’s first take on the Stone Men idea, from DC’s House Of Mystery #85.

11

Cover from Tales To Astonish #16.

hieroglyphics and formidable statues carved in stone standing up to 40 ft. tall. Only the heads of the statues are visible, but there are whole bodies under the heads; the reason they’re buried is due to soil pileup over the years. Whoever built the statues left others in different stages of completion. They are laying all around the cliffs, some barely hewn out.)

Is it reasonable to believe that not only was Jack inspired by this book, but that he also later paid homage to its author named “Thor” by combining such diverse concepts as the Easter Island statues with the Norse god of thunder?

According to Joe Simon’s book The Comic Book Makers, DC editor Jack Schiff put together the deal that landed Kirby his syndicated comic strip Sky Masters in 1958. For his efforts, Schiff expected a cut of the proceeds, and when Jack (for whatever reason) refused to pay, Schiff sued him. The dispute with Schiff caused him to leave DC, and soon after Kirby’s return to Marvel, “I Was Trapped by the Things on Easter Island” appeared in Tales to Astonish #5 (Sept. 1959, reprinted in Where Monsters Dwell #24). Alien stone giants from Lithodia Rex pursue a hapless wrecked pilot who has overheard their conquest aspirations.

He escapes the island, and the alien things actually traverse the ocean to peek into the man’s bedroom. Satisfied that they are safe from discovery, they wade back to Easter Island to their buried positions to await their summons. It’s only conjecture, but did Jack reuse the DC Stone Men concept at Marvel to get Schiff ’s goat?

Two years later, “Here Comes Thorr the Unbelievable” grafts the Thor(r) name onto the Stone Men concept in Marvel’s Tales to Astonish #16 (February 1961, reprinted in Where Creatures Roam #3 as “Thorg the Unbelievable”). This time, an archaeologist discovers South Pacific Stone Men (buried up to their necks) who are alien mechanical monstrosities awaiting the signal to dominate the world. This spelling of Thorr is also reflected in the last panel of the JIM #83 debut on the side of Thor’s hammer.

An appropriately titled story reuses the Stone Men concept yet again. In Tales of Suspense #28 (April 1962, reprinted in Tomb of Darkness #16), “Back from the Dead” features alien Stone Men abducting a criminal who has fled to Easter Island. The Stone Men are again buried up to their necks in anticipation of their upcoming conquest of Earth.

By the spring of 1962, The FF, Hulk, and other Marvel superheroes were rapidly eclipsing the existing comic books in Marvel’s lineup. In his book Origin of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee described how he was suddenly inspired to adapt Norse mythology into Marvel’s burgeoning superhero roster. Lee named the new character “Thor” because, as Stan explained, “I liked the sound of his name.

It was short, simple, easy to remember, and if you lisped nobody would know.” With great inspiration comes great responsibility.

Jack must have been receptive to Stan’s idea, because he penciled Thor until issue #179, after which he returned to DC. Upon Kirby’s return to Marvel in 1975, one of his many covers was for Thor #255. The Stone Men’s gravity ray has Thor at a disadvantage in this, their final Kirby Konfrontation.

As a Stone Men postscript, DC’s Super Powers #3 (November 1985) features Jack’s cover and story pencils on “Time Upon Time Upon Time.” The buried (up to their neck, remember?) Stone Men of Easter Island terrorize Dr. Fate, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. They are, of course, the advance guard for an ambitious alien planet. After an aimless battle, Dr. Fate sends the Stone Men to their final destiny.

Verily, thus concludes Jack Kirby’s fascination with the mixture of Easter Island’s iconography and the Norse legend of Thor, the god of thunder. (left) Cover pencils from Super Powers #3.

12

Chic Stone Speaks Interviewed by James Cassara There are very few comics artists who are able to boast of the credentials that belong to Chic Stone. From his apprenticeship in the late 1930s at the legendary Eisner/Iger studios—where he had the opportunity to learn from the very finest of the first-generation creators—to his work at Timely Comics and beyond, Stone has set consistent standards for excellence and dependability. In the 1960s, having already worked in the industry for nearly two decades, Stone gained prominence as an early architect of The Marvel House Of Ideas.

Working primarily with Jack Kirby, for whose work he still retains an obvious mixture of respect and reverence, Stone inked many of the most famous issues of titles such as Fantastic Four, X-Men, Thor, and perhaps more covers than any other artist of the time. While these credentials are impressive unto themselves, it is evident from speaking with Chic Stone that boasting simply is not within him. One is unlikely to encounter a more humble and gracious individual, the type of gentlemen that often seems the product of a bygone era, but thankfully still exists. He is also, as this interview will attest, a man of conviction and strong opinion.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How about some background info?

You were pretty much there for the early years of the Golden Age. CHIC STONE: I was born on January 4th, 1923 in New York City, on East 23rd Street and Third Avenue. I studied at the famous School Of Industrial Arts, as well as the Works Projects Administration School.

At WPA I studied under the cartoonist Chuck Thorndyke. This was, of course, during the Depression years.

TJKC: Did you always have an eye towards art? How is it you first got into comics?

CHIC: I was an ardent fan of Rube Goldberg, the great artist responsible for all those zany contraptions. At ten years of age, I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist. Like a lot of kids I loved the Sunday pages: Milton Caniff, Brandt, Gus Edson, Raymond Dirks; all were my heroes. I broke into comics in 1939 with the Eisner/lger studios, a great place to learn. I was only sixteen at the time, [and] did the typical menial tasks: Pasting, whiting out, stuff like that.

I helped get the artwork ready for printing.

had you inked his work before?

CHIC: No, prior to 1964 I had not worked on Jack’s pencils. At Timely Comics I had the wonderful opportunity to embellish the pencils of many great artists, such as Mike Sekowsky, Gene Colan, and Carl Burgos.

Little did I know I’d soon be given the chance to work with the “supreme master of comic art” Jack Kirby! Just before 1964 I was pounding the pavement, going from one publisher to another, picking up jobs at random. At the time I was penciling Batman, and inking Superman covers for Mort Weisinger at DC. I happened to walk into the Marvel offices at the time Stan Lee was editing a Kirby pencil job.

TJKC: Wasn’t Jack Kirby there at the time?

CHIC: No, he came a bit later, in 1940 or 41. I must have just missed him.

TJKC: How familiar were you with his work? Did you see much of the Simon & Kirby stuff?

CHIC: Of course, I knew of it. But to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t that impressed with his earlier works. Later, he sure developed his technique and approach to comics. Nobody could possibly ignore the results.

TJKC: After the Golden Age faded, many artists found it difficult to find work. Some dropped out of the field. Did you continue working in comics during this time ?

CHIC: During the fifties, I did leave the comic field and became the art director of such magazines as True Experience, The American Salesman. I even published a magazine, Boy Illustrated, which folded after two issues! I also worked for the Gray Advertising Agency, as well as Filmack Studios. At Filmack I did storyboards for television commercials. I later became the art director of Modern Teen and Dig Magazine. At this time I was living in Hollywood, California.

TJKC: Jumping ahead a bit, let’s talk about your earliest work with Jack. Before joining Marvel,

(top) Chic Stone at the 1996 Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC. (above) A job Chic did for the New York Herald Tribune in the 1960s.

13

work a polished feel. Was there ever a temptation to correct anything, to make any changes?

CHIC: Well, absolutely Jack’s pencils were dynamic. Every page exudes sheer, raw power, exploding with a new dimension that comics had never seen before.

When the comic book field was fading, Kirby gave it a shot of adrenaline, and an industry was reborn.

It was rare that I had to make changes; sometimes for reasons of continuity, I would correct costume designs which might occasionally change from panel to panel.

I do take umbrage with the idea that I “polished” Jack’s pencils. I have the greatest admiration for Joe Sinnott’s talent, which is hard to match in our field.

However, his inking over Jack’s pencils were slick, accented, polished lines. Each page was a rubber stamp of the page before. The one inker who totally destroyed Jack’s penciling was Vince Colletta. He used a very thin, sketchy penand-brush technique; fine for romance comics, but not for Jack’s art. Dick Ayers’ inking was passable, but he too neutralized much of the “power” that made a Jack Kirby story.

Frank Giacoia, in my opinion one of the most talented artists in the comic business, would take a Jack Kirby pencil job and turn it into a ‘Giacoia’ masterpiece; you would have to be quite perceptive to know that Jack was the penciler. In my opinion, Frank failed. It is the inker’s job to maintain the integrity of the creators. The fans plunk down their money for a particular artist. No inker has the right to embellish or stylize a penciler’s work. I feel no one inker could improve on Jack’s penciling. For my money the two best for Jack were Mike Royer and Steve Rude. Both truly maintained the integrity of Jack’s pencils.

It is too bad that Stan Lee’s idea to print from very tight penciling failed. If it Another 1960s piece, for Esquire Magazine. Chic found no shortage of work after leaving Marvel. were successful, we would have some of the greatest comic art—Jack’s—that the Looking over his shoulder I was totally awestruck by the magnificent world had ever seen. And just think of it... all of us inkers would just penciling. Stan looked at me and asked, “Chic, would you like to ink fade away. this?” My knees turned to jello; all I could murmur was, “You’re kidding?” Leaving his office, for the first time in my life I doubted my TJKC: Let’s talk about technique? Was there a certain approach, in ability to do justice to this man’s magnificent art. terms of keeping the work fresh and spontaneous?

CHIC: When I inked a Kirby story I felt totally at ease, completely immersed in the work. Technique-wise, I’d use a #290 pen point for intricate details and facial features. Much of the figure work was rendered with a #3 Windsor-Newton sable brush. I used a three-dimensional inking style which gave the illusion of depth to the illustration.

This was a lesson I learned from none other than Milt Caniff, explained to me when I was a mere wide-eyed sixteen year old!

TJKC: At this time you were still freelancing for other publishers, but doing a tremendous amount of work for Marvel. Do you remember what a typical day was like?

CHIC: Stan was exceedingly pleased with my rendition of Jack’s work, and from that time on I would finish one job to have another waiting.

There were times I’d be working on three stories at once; working twelve to sixteen hours a day was not unusual. The page rate for inking was not that great, but being able to work on Jack’s pencils was a substantial bonus.

TJKC: Was it difficult to maintain such a demanding pace? You would receive entire stories from Jack, rather than a few pages at a time.

CHIC: Having complete stories to work on presented no problems; it actually had its advantages. I was able to view the whole story at once,

TJKC: There was a real dynamic quality to Jack’s pencils, a quality you allowed to come through. At the same time you might have given his 14

allowing me to cross-check for various details. The hours were long, but I loved the work!

been said about the art of Jack Kirby and at the risk of being redundant I’ll say this... he was and will continue to be the greatest of all time!

TJKC: You inked a good many covers, in addition to interiors. Was there a desire on Stan Lee’s part to give the covers a certain consistency, a look unique unto themselves?

CHIC: Definitely. Sales were very good at this time, and became even better when Stan conceived the idea of having powerful “poster-like” covers. Of course no one could do that better than Jack Kirby. For a time, Kirby/Stone covers dominated the newsstand.

(Chic graciously agreed to ink the front cover to this issue of TJKC, returning to Jack’s version of Thor once again. The pencil drawing below first saw print in the 1970s Masterworks portfolio.

Chic’s inked art to this issue’s cover is for sale for $500, and you may contact him directly if you’re interested in purchasing it. His address is: Chic Stone 386 Thornfield Dr. Apt. F1 Millbrook, AL 36054-1672

TJKC: Was there ever a sense that as a company Marvel was doing something special? Did it surprise you when suddenly they became so popular, with Stan being asked to speak at colleges and so forth?

CHIC: There is no doubt in my mind that the team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made Marvel Comics. It was a great feeling to be part of such a wonderful team. I think all of us knew, or at least sensed, that we were a special group putting a new creative slant to comics.

Chic enjoys fan mail—both good or bad—so don’t hesitate to write him!)

TJKC: Jack has said that his prolific output at that time was largely born of a need to support his family. Was it tough to make a decent living? This was long before the days of royalty payments and such.

CHIC: Well, although page rates weren’t great, artists in demand could certainly make a better-than-average living. But you needed to be able to keep up with a very demanding schedule.

TJKC: You left Marvel around 1967. Who else did you work with there?

CHIC: Boy, just about everyone! There were so many great pros and legendary artists of our time working for Marvel.

A truly great line-up. I inked them all: Don Heck, Larry Lieber, John Buscema; the list goes on and on!

TJKC: You also inked Jack on “The Inhumans” for Astonishing Tales. I believe you did this just before leaving Marvel again [in 1970].

CHIC: I was working on and off for them at the time, doing “special project” work for Sol Brodsky and John Romita. I did much work for the Jim Shooter clique until my heart attack, which sent me into semi-retirement.

TJKC: Following Jack’s departure you did the Kamandi book for DC. Did you feel the least bit awkward taking over a title from him? Did you try to preserve the feel of the book as he had created it?

CHIC: When I was offered Kamandi I accepted with great humility. Who in the world could follow in the footsteps of Jack Kirby? “Awkward” is exactly the way I felt, and I took the book with much trepidation. I wasn’t brazen enough to think I could compete with Jack! What the reader got from me was a Chic Stone approach, with a great deal of Kirby-esque influence. Much has 15

A Provenance of Kirby’s Art for JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY 10/21/96

by Orlando Adiao he chart that follows is an informal provenance — an attempt at locating and cataloging Jack Kirby’s original artwork from Marvel’s Journey Into Mystery. (The list for The Mighty Thor is in the works; I’m beginning with Thor because that’s all I collect, but I have a large file with information on other Kirby pieces.) My main sources of information have been Comics Buyer’s Guide ads, Sotheby’s auction and Christie’s auction catalogs, sightings at conventions, dealer’s offerings and catalogs, and occasionally other collectors. In the interests of protecting these pieces from the potential of theft, no collectors or dealers are named.

This list also reflects the prices at which most of the pieces were advertised for. Aside from verifying the existence of a particular page, tracing the prices is the most interesting thing the chart reflects. I was first exposed to the original art market about 1989, when a small-format page by Kirby going for $150 seemed high. Since Jack passed away, prices shot way up, reflecting the now finite supply versus theoretically unlimited demand. There has been a slight downturn in prices recently, which I believe they refer to in the stock market as a “correction”. The most interesting illustration of these trends is page 8 of JIM #112, the classic Thor/Hulk face-off. Many fans consider this a very desirable issue not only because of the presence of two popular superheroes engaged in page after page of fight scenes, but also because of Chic Stone’s rich, luscious inks. Page 8 from this issue has cropped up a few times in various places, offered for sale by different people. I first noticed it in an ad in 1994 selling for $1250, then within the space of one year, it jumped to a high of $2100, then slowly “corrected” down to $1850, then $1800. It would’ve been interesting to know what dollar value was attached to this page before Jack passed on.

I hope that lovers of Kirby’s art will share their knowledge of the existence of other pieces and possibly the prices they were sold or acquired for.

Perhaps someday, along with a catalogue of all of Jack’s work, there will also be a true provenance worthy of the King’s artwork. If you have information on any JIM pages, please contact me at: Orlando Adiao, 220 West 98th St. #7B, New York, NY 10025 or email me at: Olanoid1@aol.com All names will be kept strictly confidential.

T

issue # page

inker

location

date

price

comments

83

cover cover a

Sinnott Ayers

Sotheby’s auction Christie’s auction

6/94 11/95

$9200 $1840

7 10 cover a 8 1-13 cover a 1 4 1 2 3 " " 2 t.o.a. 1 1 7 t.o.a. 3 t.o.a. 4 " 10 15 t.o.a. 5 " 11 16 15 1 3 6 " 7 8 " " " 12 1-16 2 4 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 6 1 " 7 9 11 13 15 t.o.a. 2 t.o.a. 3 1 5 " 7 16 " 5 11

Sinnott Sinnott Ayers Ayers Ayers Ayers Ayers Ayers Heck Bell Bell

?

Toy Scouts auction Christie’s auction private collection Sotheby’s auction Sotheby’s auction collection dealer’s ad Sotheby’s auction dealer Christie’s auction dealer’s ad same dealer’s ad ad collection Sotheby’s auction dealer’s ad private collection dealer’s ad Sotheby’s auction dealer’s catalog dealer’s ad dealer’s ad another dealer ? private collection dealer’s ad Christie’s auction Sotheby’s auction Christie’s auction dealer’s auction ad Christie’s auction dealer’s ad another dealer’s catalog yet another dealer’s ad same dealer’s ad Christie’s auction private collection private collection dealer’s ad ad ad ad ad ad ad Christie’s auction dealer’s ad dealer’s ad Sotheby’s auction dealer’s ad dealer’s ad collection ad Christie’s auction private collection dealer’s ad dealer’s ad Christie’s auction ad dealer’s ad ad same dealer’s ad Christie’s auction Christie’s auction

’92 9/95 11/95 12/90 6/95 6/94 7/95 3/93 12/91 7/94 10/94 5/95 9/95 7/95 6/94 9/92 ’89?

12/90 ’89?

9/92 5/96 7&11/95 ’89?

7/95 ’92 2/95 ’89?

10/94 6/95 10/94 6/95 11/95 9/94 2/95 5/95 8/95 11/95 2/95 6/94 9/94 2 & 5/95 2 & 5/95 2 & 5/95 5/95 5/95 5/95 10/94 ’89? ’89?

9/92 5/96 ’89?

7/95 2/95 10/94 ’91? ’89?

2/96 10/94 11/95 10/94 7/95 2/96 10/94 11/95

mistakenly listed & sold as Ayers inks cover recreation by Ayers, colored by Stan Goldberg (see note below) reprinted in Original Comic Art mistakenly listed & sold as Ayers inks recreation by Ayers, colored by SG chapter splash complete story; passed at $12,000 recreation by Ayers

13 t.o.a. 2 1-16 t.o.a. 4 3 " 4 11 " 1-16 " 5 9 14 t.o.a. 4

Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta

Christie’s auction collection private collection dealer’s ad collector’s ad dealer’s ad Sotheby’s auction collection Christie’s auction dealer’s ad Sotheby’s auction dealer’s ad private collection collection dealer’s ad

10/93 7/95 6/94 4/93 2/95 2/96 6/96 7/95 11/95 ’89?

9/92 10/94 2/95 7/95 ’89?

85 86 87 93 97 101

102 103

105 106 107 109 112

114 116

117 119

120

121

122 123

124 125

Stone Reinman Stone Stone Stone Stone Stone Stone Colletta Stone Stone Stone Stone Stone Stone Stone Stone

Stone Stone Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta

Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta Colletta

$12,100 $1093 no sale $1500 $300 $1650 $978 $1200 $800 $1200 $3400 $1650* trade $225 trade $1650* $650 $1200 trade

t.o.a.=Tales of Asgard back-up *sold as a lot with t.o.a p.4

*sold as a lot with JIM 103 p.1

reprinted in Original Comic Art $1100 trade $2530 $2070 $1955 $1870* $2300 $1250 $2100 $1850 $1800 $2990

*reserve=$1900

complete story $750 $975 $825 $775 $975 $1200 $675 518 $$125 trade $1540 $900 $150 trade $805 $150 $125 $3500 $518 $650 $850 $700 $650 $460 no sale

half-page splash

reduced from $750

offered as a lot with Thor #127, p 7; #141, pp 14 & 15; and Gunsmoke #67, pp 10 & 12

$920 $8500 $375 $1100 $875 $747 $863 trade $4950 $700 $900 $150

(Series is renamed The Mighty Thor starting with #126.)

Art denoted “cover a” are recreations based on Kirby covers, but not executed by him.

16

signed

complete story half-page splash

complete story

half-page splash

A Lesson In Kirby Magic

by Ted Krasniewski

It all still has an oddly vivid cast, as though I were a surviving witness to impossible things that somehow nevertheless really happened, events and visitors the world itself seems to have forgotten it was host to. I’ve only turned a corner, gone a measurable distance over a measured duration since, from that spot—that actual spot—where the earth shook with the unforgettable din of a cosmic onslaught.

Nothing that followed after has been quite the same standard. I think I can be forgiven that bias. It comes out of something not a few of us share; we saw a Silver Age and we saw it with the eyes of a child.

hirty years ago, when my sister and I were kids, the TV news every day showed us a New York huge and distant, weary, beset by shootings and strikes and bureaucracy—a black-&-white noise on our TV screen.

But right across the Hudson River from where we lived in Jersey City, there was a different New York; the one we walked around in when our mom and dad took us to Manhattan on special occasions.

We boarded the deafening subway in summer to visit the great halls of the Museum of Natural History and the celestial wonders of the Hayden Planetarium.

Christmas-time, we browsed all the toys in the big stores: Macy’s, Gimbel’s. It was wonderful; another place entirely.

But there was still a third New York.

It was one I didn’t have to cross the river to reach, one that never appeared on TV. It was the one where Asgardians were always stopping traffic.

How many times did a New York City cop, waist-deep in bumper-tobumper gridlock, patiently explain to somebody in one of “those get-ups” that they “just can’t do that”, that there was “a law against that kid of thing”?

He might’ve been addressing any one of a number of conspicuously attired individuals, most of them (though not, by any means, all) Earth-born, however outrageously garbed, who seemed to be drawn to New York like a magnet during that era. But there was always a good chance he was talking to someone who could boast (did not modesty forbid) of a childhood in the Realm Eternal, and more than a passing acquaintance with the customs of Fabled Asgard. They were always dropping in, and it was usually for reasons that tended to clear the streets as soon as they got down to business.

I loved those mid-town Manhattan landings: Kirby babes in pillbox hats, guys in fedoras, an Asgardian or two in big colors and chrome, newly arrived to the asphalt, and always a New York cop to interpret the right of way, in dark heavy blue like some doorman to the gods.

Thor himself had to catch an elevator once to the roof of a local office high-rise in order to hurl himself aloft—seems it was illegal to do it from the street. That’s what a cop told him; I think he was just giving Odin’s son a hard time that day.

It’s like recalling the days of the moon landings, a time of extraterrestrial traffic that has since been discontinued; all one can do is remember, and browse a few artifacts. Earth and Asgard had a commerce in those days—the mid-sixOne of New York’s finest questions Loki in this page of pencils from Thor #177. ties—that they haven’t had since.

17

T

Jack Kirby: Prisoner Of Gravity Interview transcribed by John Morrow In 1992, Jack gave an interview for a Canadian television program called represented power, the power of the individual. I’ve always worshipped Prisoners Of Gravity. Here are some excerpts from that interview: the individual because I felt that each individual has value, and by giving value to other individuals, I give value to myself. And of course, QUESTION: Jack, why did you become a cartoonist? that’s self-satisfaction. I’ve lived my life that way, and I’ve been happiest JACK KIRBY: I decided to become a cartoonist because I... well, I disthat way. covered comics all by myself. I was born on the Lower East Side of New York in a very restricted area, really. I just began to draw at a Q: When you originally created Captain America, what were you very young age, but it looked like I was marking up the tenement floor. I took to that sort of thing, and kept on with it until I drew more complicated forms. Gradually I found my way to Atlas Comics, which later became Marvel.

Q: Why were you so drawn to the superhero form?

JACK: Well, the superhero form, I think, is a feeling more than a drawing. I like people naturally, and I see people larger-than-life. That’s the only way I can draw them, and superheroes came very naturally to me because that particular form of drawing seemed to represent my ideal of what I liked about men and women in general.

Q: Back in the early 1940s when you were getting started, one of the things you helped establish was the concept of the superhero’s alter ego. Why did you decide your characters should have two sides to their personalities?

JACK: Because we all do. We all dream. Yes, we act realistically, but we dream beyond that reality, and our dreams make us larger. We all want to be larger, and we all want to see what’s beyond all horizons. I believe it’s part of the human make-up, and I reflect that in my drawings.

Q: Why were masks so important to that? Why did you want to have your heroes’ faces covered?

JACK: Because we wear them. We find ourselves in situations in which we have to mask our true feelings. We have to look happy, or we have to look sad, but we may not feel like that on the inside. So I’ve instilled that in my characters too. And I believe that makes them more human, as well as the rest of their characteristics.

Q: What for you is the most important element in telling a story in comics?

JACK: The most important thing about telling a story is telling the story. In other words, to be understood; to let the other person know what the story is all about, what the story represents, whether it has a moral or not. The other person, if he understands my story, he’ll understand all those various facets of it. So, I try to tell a story fullyrounded, and I believe that I’ve succeeded in that. If you read my comics you’ll find that between the beginning and the end, there are all sorts of happenings, a variety of happenings, and that’s how life is.

Q: But how do you lay that out on the page, in order to give it maximum impact?

JACK: Well, I gave it maximum impact. I gave it all the power I had in my own self. My heroes didn’t merely walk, they ran. They had long strides. They

Uninked pencils to Thor #147, page 7.

18

going for? What were you hoping to do with that character?

JACK: Well, I was a very patriotic sort, as was Joe Simon, my partner. Together, we created Captain America, because that was a climate of the times.

Hitler was seizing everything in sight in Europe, and they were very, very troubled times. You could feel it here in America. We had a natural villain, and natural heroes. Our heroes were American, and we had that American feeling. And from these feelings came the hero that we felt would solve our problems.

Q: In the early 1960s, you created hundreds of heroes to populate the Marvel Universe. What did the Fantastic Four represent to you?

JACK: The Fantastic Four were the team, they were the young people. I love young people, I love teenagers. You’ll find that the Fantastic Four represent that group in many ways. They’re very vital and very active. The teens certainly are in that category. So the Fantastic Four was my admiration for young people.

The Thing was really myself. If you’ll notice the way the Thing talks and acts, you’ll find that the Thing is really Jack Kirby. He has my manners, he has my manner of speech, and he thinks the way I do. He’s excitable, and you’ll find that he’s very, very active among people, and he can muscle his way through a crowd. I find that I’m that sort of person.

Q: What prompted you to reinvent Thor for the comics in 1962?

JACK: Well, I knew the Thor legends very well, but I wanted to modernize them. I felt that might be a new thing for comics, taking the old legends and modernizing them. I believe I accomplished that.

Q: What is it about ancient heroes like Thor that make them so enduring and relevant today?

JACK: Well, the heroes represent the wholesome part of society. Society has a wholesome side and it has a down side. We know where those facets lie.

They’re common to all of us, and if we want to be our wholesome selves, we’ll stick with legends like Thor and Odin.

Q: Why are you so fascinated by gods?

JACK: We all have a kind of feeling that I think we’ve had for thousands of years, that there are higher beings somewhere. I think all our spiritual feelings stem from that. The truth is that the Greeks had Hercules, even as the Norsemen had Thor, and through the ages we’ve had heroes similar to them.

In ages past, we had Samson, who’s no more than a superhero. And today we have our superheroes. We believe in them because we believe in ourselves.

Thor vs. Loki in uninked pencils to Thor #147, page 11. cartoonists today are their own persons. They’re individuals, and whatever comes into their minds is valid. They should take that validity and work it out to their own satisfaction, and they’ll find themselves becoming true individuals. In doing that, they’ll value themselves, and valuing yourself is very, very important to your own growth.

Q: What do you think has been your greatest contribution to comics?

JACK: I think the greatest contribution I made to comics is the fact that I helped to build up readership. I think people have accepted me, they accepted my stories, because I think they recognize their own values in those stories. I don’t think the average reader believes in fairy tales, and I’ve never given anybody fairy tales. Yes, I’ve given fictionalized drama, but this drama is enacted by real people.

Q: What kind of influence have your wife and four kids been to you?

JACK: They’ve been a tremendous influence. They show me that I know true love, and knowing true love, I think, is one of the greatest feelings in the world. It’s something that will absorb my entire being, and absorbing all of [that] love, I find that I live a wonderful life. You can’t have a wonderful life without love. And in loving my own family, my life is even more wonderful. I love my children, I love my relatives, I love my audience, and these are true feelings. I’ll never deny them. I suppose I love everybody.

Q: What advice would you offer to the young cartoonist who’s just starting out?

JACK: They should do what they like to do. I feel that all the young 19

Some Observations On Kirby’s Thor

by Patrick Hilger separation of identities between Billy Batson and Captain Marvel was uring the early 1960s, DC was the established industry leader for far more drastic than the regular masked hero. Don Blake and Billy superhero comic books. Besides introducing the genre, they were Batson seem more like separate beings from Thor and Captain the only company to continuously publish superhero comics Marvel than alter egos. Jack even borrowed an element from Captain from their introduction in the Golden Age. They also were the main Marvel Jr. by having Don Blake being lame, just like Freddy Freeman. force in reestablishing the genre during the late ’50s and early ’60s.

To a minor degree, Odin bears similarity to the wizard Shazam.

Marvel, on the other hand, was a small company that published In pointing out these similarities, I’m not impugning Jack’s crecomics on a wide variety of subjects, and they looked to the competiativity or calling him a thief. I suspect that Jack and Stan were directtion for clues on what was selling. When it came to superheroes, some ed by Martin Goodman to come up with a Superman-styled strip and of their strips were “answers” to established DC strips. For example, this is what they came up with. The similarities between Thor and Fantastic Four was Marvel’s “answer” to DC’s Justice League of America.

Superman were slight enough not to arouse DC’s legal department, In the creation of a superhero team book, Marvel hoped to capture the same audience that would buy JLA. Similarly, Ant-Man was their “answer” to DC’s Atom. It’s my belief that Thor was Marvel’s answer to Superman.

Superman was a being so powerful that, in essence, he was a god among mortals. Thor was a character that could achieve the same effect. By using a mythological being, Kirby could have a character similar in scope, but without overtly copying Superman’s extraterrestrial origin.

At the time he was introduced, Thor’s character and costume design bore some similarities, as well as some distinct differences, to Superman’s. Thor was the only Marvel character to wear a cape (and a red one at that). Both characters’ initials were an integral design element; Superman wore the letter ‘S’ on his chest, while Thor had the letter ‘T’ on his belt buckle. (It is also notable that Mjolnir is shaped like a large letter ‘T’.) Both Superman and Thor enjoy a similar type of athletic build; more traditional images of Thor show him with a bulkier physique, closer to the Hulk’s. The major differences were Thor’s long blond hair and winged helmet; perhaps they were deliberate, to avoid a lawsuit from DC. In 1962, Thor was the only Marvel character, besides the Human Torch, to have the power of flight. When you think of the classic image of Superman flying, it’s with one arm extended and the other pulled back. When Thor uses his Uru Hammer for flight he is easily positioned to poses of a similar nature.

The early Thor tales make use of the same romantic triangle used in Superman. Don Blake loves Jane Foster, who in turn loves Thor, unaware that they are the same person. One story shows Jane daydreaming of a domestic life with Thor, in typical Lois Lane style. Thor was the only Marvel character to use this story device.

Early Tales of Asgard strips featured a tag that read “The Boyhood of Thor.” Superboy used to feature a tag that read “Stories of Superman When He Was A Boy.” To my recollection, these were the only two superhero characters that had strips devoted to their adventures both as adults and adolescents.

Other elements of Thor were taken from the Man of Steel’s closest rival, Captain Marvel. Both Thor’s and Captain Marvel’s powers are based on mythology. The transformation of both characters from their mortal to “super” identities was accomSplash page pencils from the Tales of Asgard story in Journey Into Mystery #112. TOA stories like plished with the use of thunder and lightning. The this one delved into Thor’s mythological roots.

D

20

Germanic tribes of Europe, and I imagine made it to Austria. These Norse legends may have been told to Jack by his mother, making him very familiar with this mythology.

Jack’s design for Thor was pretty unorthodox.

Besides just his build, Kirby’s Thor was quite different from traditional depictions. Most images of Thor have him with red hair and a full beard. The long red cape and winged helmet are also missing from standard renderings. Jack’s use of shoulder-length hair was also unusual for the 1960s. In US society at that time, long hair was considered a feminine trait and would have seemed very out of place on such a masculine character. (Heck, the next year the Beatles’ hair was controversial!) When Jack used Thor as a villain for a 1940s Sandman tale, he stayed more in tune with the traditional image. Jack could easily have used a design closer to the one he did for Hercules, perhaps with short red hair and a beard. Despite the long hair, I see the final Thor design as evidence that Goodman was demanding a Supermanesque hero.

(I’ve always wondered if there was any controversy in the “Bible Belt” over Thor. In recent times comics have been attacked for their use of magic. How was Marvel able to get away with a character that was supposed to be a god? When John Lennon made his comment about the Beatles being more popular than God, it caused considerable reaction, and this was heavily reported by the media. I can’t recall hearing of any adverse reaction to Thor. Of course, the Beatles were more newsworthy than “funny books” and there could indeed have been protests. Do TJKC readers know of any?)

In ’62 and ’63, Thor was written in typical Marvel style with the antagonists being either aliens, communists or super-villains. The stories were complete in one issue and did not require the reader to have knowledge of earlier stories to understand them. This type of writing is in tune with most of Jack’s work from this period. However, even in these early years Jack was developing a more complex type of storytelling in the FF, with stories longer than a single issue and with references to events from prior issues.

Thor was also a laboratory for these new storytelling techniques. This came in the form of an increased use of characters from Norse mythology and multiissue story arcs. A good example would be Thor #131-135. #131-133 tells the story of the Colonizers and Ego, the Living Planet. Interspersed in these issues are brief episodes involving Jane Foster and a man called Mr. Porgia. #133 climaxes the Colonizer storyline and on the final page we see Thor returning to Earth. #134 begins the High Evolutionary story, the threads of which were sown in the Mr. Porgia sequences of the earlier issues. #134 also ties up some loose ends concerning the Colonizers. The technique evokes the pacing of a novel, where different plots and subplots interweave. It was a style of writing new to comics and was pioneered by Kirby.

It’s widely known that Jack was becoming unhappy with the way he was credited simply as “artist” and that this evolved into the “Lee/Kirby Production” credit. I’ll bet you thought that this credit first appeared in an issue of FF. If you did, you’re wrong; the earliest credit of this type (to my knowledge) is in Thor (#133). It appears not on the Thor strip, but on the Tales of Asgard back-up. Both the Thor and FF credits for this month contain the standard writer/artist tag.

I love just about everything I’ve ever seen by Jack, but I’d have to rank his version of Thor as one of his finest works.

Uninked pencils from Thor #157. but may have been close enough to attract Superman readers. As for elements that were lifted from Captain Marvel, that character had not been published for close to 10 years and would seem to me to be fair game. Thor’s intended audience would have no awareness of Captain Marvel. The borrowed elements were not overt, but added interesting details to Thor. Now if Jack had made Don Blake a newspaper reporter or boy newscaster, we might be in the area of plagiarism.

One question comes to mind: Why was Norse mythology used?

As a whole, US culture was more familiar with the Greco/Roman myths. During the early ’60s, there was a rash of action movies based on Hercules and other Mediterranean heroes. On TV there was a syndicated series called The Sons of Hercules as well as a Hercules cartoon show. Since America was familiar with these types of characters, why wasn’t the new hero Atlas or Ulysses? I believe the answer lies in Jack’s Austrian heritage. The Norse legends were spread among the 21

Journey Into Mystery #101: The Pencils!

by John Morrow, with thanks to Danny Serafin and Dick Ayers ourney Into Mystery #101 is a landmark issue: It signaled the return of the Lee/Kirby team to the book after a string of less-than-breathtaking issues. But few examples of Jack’s Marvel pencils exist from that period. So imagine my surprise when I received a package in the mail, and found pristine stats of Jack’s entire 13-page story pencils from that issue!

Subscriber Danny Serafin had gotten the stats from Dick Ayers, who had discovered them in his files. Dick isn’t sure why he had stats from this particular issue, since George (Roussos) Bell inked JIM #101. But we thank both these gentlemen for sharing this historic find with us.

Despite the throwaway nature of the Tomorrow Man villain, this issue has a lot going for it. The Avengers make a cameo appearance, and we get early appearances

by Loki, Heimdall, and Odin. Starting with the next issue (#102), Chic Stone took over inking for an extended run, so these pages also give us the chance to see the quality of pencils Chic was working on at this early stage in Marvel’s history, when he inked so many key issues.

The handwriting on the splash page is Stan Lee’s, but unfortunately, the few margin notes were cropped to the point of being illegible (they don’t appear to be in Jack’s handwriting, but it’s hard to be sure with so little showing). But the pencils are pure Kirby, so sit back and enjoy this rare glimpse of early pencils by the man who helped put Marvel on the map.

J

Here’s the first of nine pages of pencils from Jack’s 13-page story in Journey Into Mystery #101.

We’ll try to run the remaining pages in a future issue.

22

23

24

25

26

Ominous Prophecies

by John Modica ales of Asgard began appearing with Thor in Journey Into Mystery #97. Each installment served as a background into Thor and Norse mythology, as interpreted by Marvel’s Kirby and Lee. Early stories were selfcontained and were written and illustrated within the economics of five pages. Soon the stories stretched over issues and became more complex, more epic-like. Tales of Asgard was an excellent supplement and provided background information to the growing Kirbyverse.

A little more than five years before Kirby went over to DC in 1970, Tales of Asgard stories had some ominous prophecies. “The Meaning of Ragnarok” (#127) and “Aftermath” (#128) are the single most important stories in the Tales of Asgard canon. They prove to be very important and provide an understanding of the recurring themes found in Kirby’s work and the Kirbyverse.

In “The Meaning of Ragnarok” (#127), Volla, a prophetess, warns Odin and all of Asgard the day of Ragnarok is drawing near. She speaks of the signs, the battle, and the chaos found in the end time. On page 3, panel 2 the reader is given a glimpse of the destruction of the rainbow bridge. This action symbolizes the severed relation between man and the gods, as illustrated and told by Kirby and Lee. It is a chilling account of what is yet to come.

Even more dreadful are the prophecies in “Aftermath” (#128). Page 2, panel 3 shows the total destruction Asgard. Page 3 is even more apocalyptic in text and visuals; Volla reveals the source of the destruction. Yet, in all the terrible things foretold by Volla, there is a slight glimmer of hope. On page 3, panel 3, the mass that is illustrated looks strangely familiar, as though it was an embryonic view of New Genesis. Furthermore, page 4 is (without using any of the text) Jack Kirby’s vision of New Genesis later used in New Gods #7. By stories’ end a sullen Odin realizes the gravity of Volla’s words. He takes the necessary action to avoid his and Asgard’s fate. But like all of us, gods cannot escape their destiny.

Five years after the events chronicled in Thor #127 and 128, Jack Kirby was at Marvel’s chief rival, DC. Once again the mind and the concepts of Jack Kirby flourished. Four new titles appeared and each were interlinked to one another by plot threads and recurring characters. New Gods #1, page 1 and 2 are strikingly similar to the layout and images found in the Tales of Asgard stories in Thor #127 and 128.

Even the text tells of the passing and the demise of Two panels from Thor #128, showing the effects of Ragnarok, and the birth of the new race of gods. the “old gods”.

Another link is found in Forever People #5. In an obscure backup entitled “Lonar”, we meet a wanderer who chooses to shun the satellite city of New Genesis, and trek among the ruins of a once proud realm—a place where the elder gods walked and ruled. The short four-page story is remarkable in concept and scope. On page 2, panel 2, Lonar makes a most revealing discovery. He lifts into the air what looks like a sword of an ancient Asgardian warrior. But even more striking is what Lonar holds in his other hand. There is no doubt in this author’s mind the item held is none other than a winged battle helmet, once proudly worn by the Mighty Thor.

This short story found in Forever People #5 is the ideal connection with the “Aftermath” story chronicled in Thor #128. It offers an explanation and could be the cornerstone and theme to all of Kirby’s work— war and destruction are inevitable, but one should make every attempt to live in peace.

T

(top) Lonar finds Thor’s helmet in Forever People #5.

27

The Pros & Cons Of Vince Colletta home of the Greek gods. He encounters Hercules on a narrow bridge and, as neither will give way, they join in glorious battle, each testing the mettle of the other. They beat on each other for a long time. Thor and Hercules are equally matched and neither will concede in the ourney Into Mystery #108 contains “Trapped By The Trolls”, one in futile struggle. Finally, Zeus appears and separates the headstrong a series of Tales of Asgard that supplemented the regular Thor godlings, blessing each for his courage and nobility and encouraging strip for several years during the Marvel Age of Comics. I read them to be comrades. Zeus then transports Thor back to Asgard where “Trapped By The Trolls” for the first time in the early ’80s and I was the Thunder God meets up with Loki and they ride off into the sunset. very impressed; it’s still one of my favorites from the Tales of Asgard Vince Colletta’s inks look great over Kirby’s pencils. Colletta’s series. There was no mistaking those great Kirby pencils, but I didn’t sketchy, airy style is perfect for Tales of Asgard and the dream-like recognize the inker. I was familiar with Dick Ayers, Chic Stone, George story in the first Journey Into Mystery Annual. The thick lines of a Dick (Roussos) Bell and others, but not with the delicate, airy lines of Ayers or a Chic Stone are perfect for the comparative reality of a con“Trapped By The temporary Thor Trolls.” I flipped tale, but for the tales back to the credits set in the distant and found the name past of myth and of the inker to be... legend, Colletta’s Vince Colletta. soft, delicate inks Vince Colletta? evoke the vapors of I was familiar ancient times. with the work of Scenes of mythic Vince Colletta, and places like Asgard hadn’t been and Olympus impressed with appear as through some of his work in Mimir’s magical the past. I specifiscrying pool. The cally remembered reader is looking Dazzler, a series my into an ancient era brother collected. I that is not quite in read it as I read all focus, a world of the comic books faerie, a land of that passed through dream-clouds. the house, but I Colletta did never liked the illhis best work on conceived, badlyKirby’s Thor, feathdone series. ering the King’s Colletta’s uninspired powerful, god-like inking was not figures. The delicate entirely responsible lines of Colletta are for Dazzler’s failure just as effective on or its lack of charm, Asgardian crags as but it certainly on the sylvan glades didn’t help. of Olympus. The But I like Kirby/Colletta Thor Colletta’s work on is a mighty blond Kirby’s Thor. deity with a hint of Journey Into Norse faerie-dust.

Mystery Annual #1 Hercules is a roughappeared a few ly-hewn sculpture, months after almost incomplete, “Trapped By The like one of the Trolls.” There are unfinished prisoners several classic Thor of Michelangelo. reprints in it and a Zeus himself map of Asgard, but Inspired inking by Colletta; these are the original, unaltered inks to Journey Into Mystery #123’s cover. appears out of the the major attracfog, forming from the mist of the Godhead to restrain the young tion is a 15-page story, “When Titans Clash! Thor Vs. Hercules!” The deities. mists of time part to reveal a tale that was never celebrated by ancient One panel in particular deserves special attention. At the bottom scribes, never sung by roving bards. Thor and Loki, seeking adventure of page 4, Thor looks on some celebrating Olympians. A dancing satyr in The Heroic Age of the Tales of Asgard series, are separated during a plays the pipes; a red-haired nymph strums a lyre; a centaur claps; two battle with Storm Giants. Somehow (the text is unclear), Thor makes others look on, smiling. It seems doubtful that any of these characters his way to a magical realm that he instinctively knows is Olympus,

Why I Likeby Tony Colletta’s Inks Seybert

J

28

ever appeared again, yet the care given to each is evident.

All have personalities: The exuberant satyr; the joyous, possibly inebriated, bald god who may be Dionysus; the alluring nymph.

Why was Colletta’s Thor work so strong? I can only guess. The strength of Kirby’s original pencils was certainly a factor. Colletta may have been inspired by the excellence of the Kirby pages before him as he set to work. I have heard that Colletta had a reputation as one of the fastest inkers in the industry and that, consequently, he was offered a lot of ‘rush’ work when a series was running late. Some of this ‘rush’ work may look substandard when compared to more polished inking.

This may help to explain why Colletta has accumulated such a bad reputation.

I admit that I find Colletta’s work on Fantastic Four #40-43 to be very unsatisfying. It may have been done in haste to meet a deadline, but the heart of the problem lies in style; Colletta’s style was just not right for the science fiction and technology aspects of Fantastic Four. However, I think his style was suitable for Thor, especially Tales of Asgard, and Kirby fans who appreciate Colletta’s work can stand proud and admit it without embarrassment, despite Colletta’s detractors.

Why I Hate Colletta’s Inks

by John Morrow ’m not one of those comics fans who follows the crowd when it comes to who the “bad” artists are. I never got too excited by Don Heck’s work, but I avoided the temptation in the 1970s to go along with my friends who said he was a lousy artist, and instead pointed out to them specific instances of his work that I liked. (And there were many, not the least of which was his inspired inking on Jack’s GODS Portfolio plates.)

The same went for Frank Robbins, whose work seemed to be universally disliked in the circles I traveled. While I never could warm up to his work on Batman, I actually enjoyed his Invaders stories, perhaps because it seemed to fit the WWII era of the book.

But when it came to Vince Colletta’s inking style on Kirby, something came over me. I just couldn’t stand it! I think it was due to how much of Jack’s artistic intensity was watered-down; their styles just clashed. And as I stated in this issue’s editorial, I sold all my Thors, because I couldn’t stand Colletta’s inks.

Since then, I’ve gotten over my childhood dislike of his inking style, and managed to restore my Thor colJack’s pencils vs. Colletta’s inks on Thor #154, page 11. Notice the missing person in each panel. lection. And a recent rereading of it wasn’t nearly as painful as I thought it’d be; in fact, I really enjoyed it. me this is just “working smarter”, and I have no qualms with the idea.

But I now have a new reason to dislike Colletta’s inks on Jack’s Thor.

But to me, a true professional wouldn’t compromise a penciler’s Nowadays, it’s not what he inked that bothers me so much; it’s intent, and take shortcuts on quality. There are too many instances of what he didn’t ink. omissions to be explained away. Jack was on tight deadlines constantWith the luxury of being able to compare Jack’s pencil photoly, and he still managed to fill every panel with detail; details which he copies to the published inked art, I can now see the numerous wouldn’t have included if he didn’t think they contributed to the story. instances of Vince leaving things out. Shown above is just one of What about Captain America #112, which he allegedly did over a many instances of Colletta omitting details that Jack put into his penweekend? Somehow he got it out on time, and George Tuska mancils—details that were part of Jack’s storytelling technique. aged to do a nice job inking it, all on deadline. So did Ayers, Stone, I’ve heard all the excuses for Vince’s less-than-stellar inking: He Roussos, Verpoorten, Sinnott, Royer, and all the other inkers who had was on tight deadlines, he was following orders, he was poorly paid to keep pace with Jack’s prolific output. and thereby didn’t spend a lot of time on his work, etc. And true, ediIn time, I’ve learned to accept Colletta’s inking style on Thor, tors knew what they were getting when they assigned a job to Colletta; Jimmy Olsen, and even New Gods. But time has also shown me that as Mark Evanier has said, you can’t blame Vince for inking like Vince.

Colletta robbed me of some of Jack’s graphic wonderment, and that’s I’ve even heard about how he employed assistants to help him ink; to something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept.

I

29

Kirby As Artistic Craftsman

by Pierre Comtois and Gregorio Montejo lthough Jack Kirby’s art style had undergone numerous changes in form over his long career, it was not until the mid-to-late-Sixties that it reached the climax of its development. Throughout his career at Marvel, Kirby’s style evolved from rushed, to dynamic, to a final dramatic form that accentuated the grand scope of many of his comics from that time. While his Fantastic Four work celebrated the cosmic sweep of the universe from the microscopic to the macroscopic, it was with Thor that Kirby’s art style reached its pinnacle of grandeur.

For a number of years in the Sixties, Kirby and Lee had directed the

Thor strip in a standard superhero mold, but as Marvel’s story focus began to shift to ever more grandiose themes, so did the Thor feature move away from ordinary superheroics and into a post-Elizabethan/ mythological fantasy world. Now Thor spoke in a pseudo-Shakespearean dialect and concerned himself with Ragnarok and the Enchanters rather than the Grey Gargoyle and the Absorbing Man. For it, Kirby began to develop a new, gargantuan style of art (a form he first explored in the Tales of Asgard back-up in earlier issues of Journey Into Mystery).

Dispensing with smaller panels, the stories were laid out in nothing more than a six-panel grid, but more frequently, four panels was the norm with full page illustrations used to punctuate moments of particular impact within the story. The figures within the panels assumed massive proportions, reflecting the scale of the stories.

But the key to Kirby’s art was its “energy”. Every page he ever drew—but particularly in the period under discussion—seems to crackle with it. Energy of course comes in two forms: Potential and kinetic. Potential energy is at rest, but is not dormant. While it can be contained or harnessed, it can escape, sometimes violently, and often without warning. Kinetic energy is the material consequence of this unharnessing; it is vast reserves of energy being instantly tapped, with occasionally explosive results. It is an energy expressed in cataclysmic metamorphic change and blinding bursts of speed, but above all it is an energy of motion. Kirby is the supreme master, within the comic book medium, at portraying these two states of energy. His heroes, while in repose, are pure embodiments of potential energy: massive colossi, the anthropomorphic representation of vast cosmic energies, elemental forces held in check.

But Kirby was even better at portraying kinetic energy. Kinetics is the study of motion, of collisions and

A

(above) Potential energy from Thor #157. (right) Kinetic energy from Thor #141, page 10.

30

Thor #133, page 6; an energetic use of head shots. momentum. Drawing is essentially static, but comics are the most dynamic of drawings because they are sequential, they can show the causes and effects of motion. A typical example of Kirby’s mastery of representational kinetics is page 10 of Thor #141. In panel 1, a section of masonry is hurled with great force at the thunder god. Here, Kirby uses force lines and an upward tilted angle to give the feeling of a massive object hurled with violent force toward the top of the panel; even the lettering (by Artie Simek) is placed on the horizontal axis in order to emphasize the inexorable upward thrust of the composition.

In panel 2, Thor crashes into Replicus. The angle shifts and the observer now looks down at the scene where the point of impact is highlighted by a dynamic aureole of force. The downward thrust and impact of solid bodies is highlighted. Panel 3 once again shifts focus and places the observer nearly to eye level as Thor, bent with the exertion of a mighty blow, throws the body of Replicus towards the center of the page. Any object presented firmly with the vertical or horizontal axis conveys a sense of rest, while objects set at oblique Thor #162, page 20. Jack was a master at adding energy to relatively static pages. angles are perceived to be out of control or in motion.

All this begs the question: Can this contrapuntal rhythm be used We might call this Kirby’s First Law of Comic Dynamics. This Law is in the area of potential energy where opposing dynamisms are supposeven more pronounced in the final panel where the observer sees Thor edly held in check? As an example, check out Thor #133, page 6 where hurling his hammer towards the upper left-hand corner, again, Kirby does the impossible by turning a page of quiet conversation into inwards toward the center of the page. (Notice how Kirby places the a showcase of rhythmic counterpoint. In surprisingly subtle and comflying hammer just outside the panel borders, heightening the page’s plex ways, Kirby manages to harness that potential energy, the wellsense of motion.) Finally, the combined action of the page points to spring of physical action, in order to better illustrate a conflict of its center where all the elements of the composition seem drawn into “psychic” or emotional energies. Here, Kirby uses panel 1 as more than collision. just a standard establishing shot, not only bringing the observer into In looking at each panel individually, it should be kept in mind a restaurant and introducing the characters of Porgia and Jane Foster, that comics, being a sequential medium, should be looked at in larger but defining Jane’s “psychic space” to be explored in the succeeding movements or aggregates of panels. Taking page 10 in its totality allows five panels. In each, Jane will occupy the lower right position until the the observer to perceive a rhythmic use of kinematics which presents sequence climaxes in the crucial sixth panel; the waiter, occupying the narratives largely as maximal counterpoints of movements, a contraleft side, subliminally establishes the position and direction of the puntal dynamic of narrative motion. Not all of Kirby’s action sequences opposing “psychic” energy which contends for Jane’s attention. are as simple to break down as that of #141, but they are instructive Panel 2 is a typical example of Kirby’s use of rapid shifts of focus of his instinctive narrative mode which is essentially one of rhythmic to enliven a sequence with a variety of points of view, but, more dynamism, a counterpoint of opposing energies.

31

importantly, to graphically portray contentious energies. Panel 2 sets up the arrival of a third character, Tagar, who is announced and arrives with a psychic and graphic jolt, in panel 3. Here, the focus shifts back to the point of view in panel 1, but Kirby emphasizes Tagar’s menacing potential energy by using the character’s physical bulk to denote immense force held tentatively in check and by allowing him to tower over and dwarf the other characters. Here Tagar occupies the spot in the panel formerly occupied by the waiter, visually and physically forcing the figure of Jane to retreat farther down in the frame. In the most overt physical movement of the sequence, Jane and Porgia get to their feet with Tagar still dominating the scene and brushing aside Porgia with a single powerful sweep of his arm.

Meanwhile, the figure of Jane is pushed by Tagar’s psychic energies to the outer reaches of the panel, the boundary of her own psychic space.

Jane’s hand seems to be testing the limits of her diminishing space signalling the imminent vanquishment of her potential energy. Panel 5 simply emphasizes this situation with almost diagrammatical clarity. Tagar’s looming head dominates most of the shot while Jane’s head seems to recede submissively into the remaining space. In this sequence, Kirby overtly displays the underlying counterpoint of energies which has fueled and directed the entire scene. Panel 6 is its culmination: The room, Porgia and even Jane have disappeared even as Tagar’s visage has grown so huge that it cannot be contained within the borders of the panel and has symbolically annihilated and consumed all other sources of potential energy.

On the Thor strip Kirby was at the height of his creative powers and had such instinctual understanding of the uses of potential and kinetic energies that he could employ them in his work with almost effortless ease. As an overall example of this, consider pages 6, 7, 8 and 9 of Thor #149 where Kirby, in a virtuoso of technique, displays not only his mastery of basic panel-to-panel progression, but also his understanding of the broad sweep of any story, the larger flow and counterflow of movement from page to page. Notice the general rhythm of contraction on page 6 as the figure of the Wrecker is continuously hemmed in and forced backward, until it is almost visually obliterated in panel 6. But suddenly, in the first panel of page 7, there is an explosive reversal of kinesthetic momentum, a dynamic counterthrust, a propulsive stream of destructive energy which flows almost unimpeded through the next three pages. Every method and technique discussed above—and many more we have not had the space to bring up— is brought into play. Here we see a master craftsman in complete command of his material.

Before we leave off our analysis of the technique of Kirby’s art, a few words must be said about the help he received

from his inkers while at Marvel. Artists in their own right, they were of crucial importance in any Kirby-drawn story. Few can contest the supreme appropriateness of Joe Sinnott to Kirby’s Fantastic Four, and for the same reasons Vince Colletta must be extolled for his work on Thor during this period. Although Colletta has been much maligned for not being faithful to Kirby’s pencils, inkers of Colletta’s calibre were creators in their own right and brought their own talent to combine with Kirby’s to create works of beauty and power. Who can deny the mythological, other-worldly feel Colletta’s inks give to this period in Kirby’s style? A glance at page 10 of Thor #144 alone is all that is necessary to see what is meant. Using a fine-tipped pen instead of a brush, Colletta manages to ink Kirby’s heavy lines in such a way as to best preserve the artist’s pencil shadings.

Thor #149, pages 6-9.

32

The Gods & Jack Kirby

by Bill W. Miller that while DC tried to humanize Superman, Thor became more mythhey say comics reflect the culical. DC preferred relevance to Marvel’s escapism to the point that tures and times of when they’re Kirby was not allowed to draw Superman’s face! Ironically, when Kirby created. So, in The Golden Age left DC to return to Marvel, he never returned to Thor, which was of American comic books, advenbecoming stale with its own continuity baggage. (Years later, Walt ture heroes became embodiments Simonson would energize the title by injecting humor into it; along with of those social philosophies which tragedy, comedy—light or heavy—is a basic component of drama). were rapidly mutating into world Kirby’s method of first finding an archetype and then creating powers (Superman was our freetheir stories appeals to me. Thus, even an otherwise mundane sequence enterprise capitalist flip-side to in a malt shop becomes a basis for wonderment (Thor #143, 1967). the musings of Nietzsche and the Kirby’s love for humanity is shown in Thor sipping a soda and compliravings of Hitler, while Captain menting its server. Thor remains to indulge the company of on-lookers, America pushed individual mettle over foes relying on Fascist, Socialist, the way that Kirby himself no doubt played host to fans. Thor and empirical, and Communist solutions).

Kirby both proceed to illustrate visions of glorious Asgard. Then, like On the home front, the hypocrisy of prohibition and social injusfickle comic fans, the crowd makes impossible demands on Thor and tice ushered in the first round of vigilante heroes, among them The turn on him for not jumping through their petty hoops.

Shadow, Batman, and The Green Hornet. But relevance alone runs Thor leaves, as a righteous god would after being betrayed or counter to the essence of a comic (as publishers would again learn ignored. But he goes back to the form of Donald Blake, a great physinear the end of their Silver Age and later in the early 1990s), which is cian who does unto his patients as escapism. Timeless character archeThis panel was he would have done unto him. types are needed as much as symintended for the origin Kirby’s simplicity is magnificent, bolic costumes, many of which reprint in Thor #158, and would’ve and the moral that is in the story become dated in a fashion sense. replaced the top left panel of the page shown above. does not overshadow the character When it came to being enterbut adds to his depth that timeless taining and thought-provoking, Jack quality spoken of previously. delivered both at once, regardless of As a Christian, I tend to read genre. He worked on the original more into things than what is Captain Marvel, a character that was probably there, but this is from my a whimsical composite of mythovantage point. The Bible, believed logical gods. This concept of brave by many to be the “living word”, men gaining strength from divine transcends time like works of art. I beings strikes a chord with those in do not worship Jack Kirby, but a Judeo-Christian world, and Kirby rather “The Source” of his talent. utilized these passions not to water By his own admission, he loved the books down to pablum, but to God (TJKC #10, pg. 17). There’s no transcend his art so that all generadoubt that the Silver Age heroes tions could recognize the concepts were based on science and the anxfrom their vantage points.

Thor is a classic example. While iety over emerging technology. We not as complex as his New Gods know the details of their origins, but characters nor as original as his consider these: messianic Silver Surfer, Kirby and • Does the Fantastic Four’s failure co-creator Stan Lee nevertheless to reach the moon before man’s merged myth and commercialism appointed time in space remind successfully. Within a rousing, on• anyone of the Tower of Babel, where men were scattered for trying going epic, they presented physician Donald Blake as a lame figure of to reach heaven by their own means (and national gain)? humility, and his alter-ego Thor as the god-being within us all.

Again, a righteous hero granted divine empowerment was identi• Is the (original) Incredible Hulk an allegory of what the gray areas of fiable to religious-oriented collectors (unfortunately, some would mismorality might turn us into if we do not heed our God-given intellect take the archetype for blasphemy). Yet their version of the thunder god and stay away from forbidden fruit (gamma bombs)? was released in the era of the young losing faith with the old (Thor vs.

God is always in the middle of technology. The Apostles used Odin), and of traditionalists sowing seeds to secular humanism (it was “modern” roads and sea routes to spread the gospel; Gutenberg is good that Don Blake realized his potential despite a handicap, but as said to have printed The Bible on the first printing press; and Jack later revealed, Odin had turned the divine Thor into the inferior Kirby just happened to come of age when comic books were still in human to humble him; compare this to Dr. Stephen Strange, proud their infancy! Call it coincidence, but I believe Kirby would credit a of his own accomplishments until his driving accident). hand of destiny. Everything cannot be explained by relevance. Life During this time, Thor was probably Marvel’s answer to DC’s without faith is a moral without a story; it’s just words, until someone Superman. Whereas Supes was an alien orphan pretending to be human, can elevate it off the page and into the soul. In this, Kirby himself was Thor was a fallen god in a humanoid purgatory (a tragic allegory of an archetype who depicted more than his environment. He illustrated the more innocent Captain Marvel Jr., where lame Freddy Freeman is the core of humanity, and drew infinity. rewarded for his faith by calling on the Captain’s name). It’s interesting

T

33

Walt Simonson Interviewed Interviewed by Jon B. Cooke, transcribed by John Morrow Somewhere after that I ran across Thor #118, the first issue of the Destroyer. I read it, and at the end of that issue Thor is half-buried in this diamond-hard floor, and this bolt of pure energy is blasting at him from the Destroyer. He’s imminently doomed. And of course I couldn’t find the next issue. As it so happened, JIM #120 and #121 happened to be on sale at the same time; they hadn’t taken #120 off the stand. I must’ve biked back there two or three times to read them. It was a ten-mile round trip! (laughter) That was where I began reading Marvel comics; with Thor, and with Stan and Jack’s work on the book.

Walt Simonson’s career has included a number of projects with connections to Jack Kirby. His first big break in comics was on the Manhunter strip in Detective Comics #437-443, written by Archie Goodwin. He solidified his position as a fan favorite on Thor in the 1980s, and his current work includes covers for DC’s Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. This interview was conducted by telephone on December 16, 1996.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Did you read Kirby as a kid?

WALTER SIMONSON: My grandmother lived in a small Iowa town above a drug store. In the store, I can remember finding one of the Atlas horror comics; it had “The Glob”, a wonderful story about a giant stone statue, and some poor guy who gets suckered into painting it with all this muddy, giant thick Jack Kirby paint that resembled Paste-Pot Pete’s paste. (laughter) He was instructed to paint the statue and leave before midnight. Of course he painted the statue and got stuck in an earthquake or something equally ridiculous, (laughter) and at midnight the statue came alive. He was the advance forward of an alien race; weren’t they all? (laughter) I think the guy managed to douse it in turpentine, and the paint thinned, and the creature’s powers went away just in time. I didn’t buy it, but I remember reading it in the store a number of times, and I’ve since obtained a copy. I remember being struck by it, partly because it was so “rough and ready” compared to the comics I was used to seeing, and partly because the coloring was so rough. That was the first Kirby job I saw that made enough of an impression that I remember it.

TJKC: Did you finally start buying them? (laughter) WALTER: I did eventually. After three or four trips back to the store, I said, “This is really stupid! (laughter) Spend the twelve cents and buy

TJKC: How’d you get interested in comics?

WALTER: It was kind of a gradual process. In college I found a Marvel comic lying around. It was a Mighty Thor, the issue where the Grey Gargoyle returns (#113), inked by Chic Stone. It’s the one where he’s turning back into Thor, revealing his identity to Jane Foster, except Odin is so P.O.’ed, he robs him of his powers. He can’t turn into Thor, and Jane thinks she’s got this lunatic for a boyfriend. “Thor shall live again for thirty seconds! Make each one count!” Words that are burned into my brain! (laughter) I can’t remember the stuff I wrote last week; I can remember the stuff Stan and Jack did thirty years ago. (laughter) But I’d never seen a comic like that before. There was one where the opening splash was Thor and a bunch of the vikings and his dad on a flying viking ship, and they went off to fight some giants. There’s a couple of pages of just a big battle. The caption said, “We promised Jack Kirby we’d do a couple of battle scenes to start with, so here they are, no extra charge”, or something like that. I remember it because it’s the first time I came across the mention of Jack’s name. I remember wondering if Jack Kirby were some fan, some kid who’d written in and said, “Gee, I love to see a couple of pages of a fight scene.” (laughter) (left) Walter generously inked this pencil drawing for our back cover. Jack originally drew this piece and traded it to fan-artist Carl Taylor for one of his drawings, to encourage Carl to produce large pieces for art galleries.

Simonson breakdowns from Thor #380 (later finished by Sal Buscema).

35

eventually we did make him the same Manhunter, the same character in our continuity. But I don’t think Archie had that in mind to begin with, and I certainly didn’t know enough about the original Manhunter to have had much of an opinion to start with.

Simonson fan drawing of the Enchantress, done in 1978.

TJKC: In Manhunter, was the idea of a beginning, middle, and ending—a finite story—part of the original concept?

WALTER: No. By the time we were doing the fifth chapter, Archie had accepted a job at Warren, and was leaving DC Comics. Julie Schwartz was taking over as editor of Detective Comics, and Julie had no real interest in doing the Manhunter strip. And Archie, working for a different company, wouldn’t be able to write the strip. From somewhere around the fifth chapter, we decided that we’d try to wrap it all up. We hadn’t gotten around to doing a Manhunter/Batman crossover, although we’d thought about that as a possibility once Manhunter was established. It seemed like a fortuitous coincidence that we could do this crossover, get a twenty-page story out of the deal, and really wrap everything up in some fashion.

I was really into the Manhunter character. I really enjoyed doing it, and also I really enjoyed working with Archie. We really seemed to work together very well. the damn things”, which I did. I never looked back. (laughter)

TJKC: Manhunter appeared for you in 1973 and 1974. In 1975, Kirby came out with a First Issue Special with Manhunter. Is there any connection?

WALTER: Nothing I know of. We’d kind of tied ours to Jack’s earlier work partly because we thought it gave the character a little extra resonance. In Manhunter, where we were doing just eight pages or so every month, tying Manhunter’s continuity back to some of the Simon and Kirby work really was the way of giving him a little extra elbow room of background that we felt kind of enlarged the character, hopefully without actually degrading the earlier work that had been done. But I don’t remember anything in the late Kirby Manhunter that was tied to what we had done, or had come out of it.

TJKC: How’d you break into comics?

WALTER: I went to New York in August of 1972. Gerry Boudreau, my friend from The University of Rhode Island, had gotten a job for DC writing backup stories. He arranged for me to have an appointment with Archie (Goodwin). Archie at the time was not interested in using the stuff I had; I had the Star Slammers as a sample. Science fiction wasn’t mainstream comics for DC. I went to DC because, by the early 1970s when I was looking for work, DC was doing what I thought were the best comics in the business, including of course the Kirby Fourth World stuff, which I thought was fabulous. That was and remains some of my all time favorite comic books. At the time Chaykin was there, Kaluta was working on the Burroughs stuff and later The Shadow, Wrightson was doing Swamp Thing. There was a lot of young talent doing a lot of wonderful books.

After I walked out of Archie’s office, I went down to DC’s coffee room. Wrightson, Kaluta, Chaykin and Alan Weiss were all sitting around the table shooting the breeze. I showed them my stuff, and they liked the work. Kaluta showed it to Jack Adler, who was the second in command of production (after Sol Harrison). He showed it to Carmine Infantino, and I ended up talking to Carmine for about ten minutes, and he really liked the work I had. Essentially, Carmine called in three of his editors and made them all give me a job. (laughter) They were all short backup stories, so I walked out of his office with three jobs! (laughter) I did a story called “Cyrano’s Army”, (Weird War Tales #10) which was the first story I did professionally. Joe Orlando gave it to me and said, “It’s due yesterday.”

TJKC: You inked the cover to Devil Dinosaur #8. Was it a rush to ink Jack?

WALTER: Inking Jack was a gas. It was a thrill. I did ink a Fighting American cover for a portfolio (Masterworks) of Jack’s stuff. That might’ve been 1979. I remember they sent me the pencils, and I inked them on vellum. The Devil Dinosaur was probably inked on the original.

Part of the problem with Jack’s stuff is, it’s so powerful in pencil, it’s really hard to ink it and really retain the full flavor of the pencils. I think a lot of really good inkers have not been able to do that, and I’m not sure I did either. But it was really a challenge to try and ink it in a way that really captures as much of the flavor of the pencils as possible.

TJKC: Do you have a favorite Kirby inker?

WALTER: It probably depends on the job. My feeling is that when you read comics in the beginning, you get kind of imprinted by the stuff that you see. I really love Jack’s Fantastic Four from around #45, 46, the Galactus stuff. Maybe because I read them and enjoy them, I really like what Joe Sinnott did in those books. And in probably one of the most heretical moves a man can make in comic books, I kinda like Vinnie Colletta’s inking on Thor. Vinnie is the universally panned inker of Jack’s work, and I appreciate that. But I have to say that I thought on that particular book, there was something about the quality of this pagan god, and the fur and the wood textures, all that kind of stuff, that I thought Vinnie’s stuff worked for. I didn’t care much for his inking on the Fantastic Four, which I saw later on. It seemed too lightweight, it didn’t seem to have any volume to it. And I liked Vinnie’s work on Thor, even allowing for the fact that Vinnie used to erase entire armies or whatever he would do, all the things that were said about him as an inker.

TJKC: Manhunter was a breakthrough for you, and fortuitously it’s also something Simon and Kirby did back in the forties. Did you refer at all to those old stories?

WALTER: Archie liked the name a lot, and the whole idea of “He hunts the world’s most dangerous game.” I eventually saw some of the Manhunters because DC reprinted them in those big 25¢ comics, in some of the Fourth World stuff. I remember Archie had a whole list of names we went through to choose this guy’s name, and eventually we just thought there was no reason not to use Paul Kirk, which was the name of the Kirby Manhunter. I don’t think we had the idea in the beginning to tie the continuity of the two strips together. As it developed, by the third chapter we did tie it together, where it turns out the original Paul Kirk, after WWII, had gone into retirement and become a big game hunter and gotten run down by a rogue elephant.

He got picked up by some evil guys and they popped him into a cryogenic chamber and saved him, and he woke up thirty years later. So

TJKC: What’d you think of the Fourth World?

WALTER: I enjoyed them. I liked the first couple of issues that Royer 36

did, but I felt that as it went along... whether it became so true to the pencils as to be not as interesting to me personally, I don’t know. I really felt the first couple he did were really powerful, but after that I didn’t care for him quite as much as it went along. Another heretical opinion! (laughter) I couldn’t wait for the Fourth World stuff when it came out. I was dying to get those comic books. I remember to this day buying the first Jimmy Olsen, and just being completely blown away by it. It was an incredible piece of work. It was as different from any of the previous Jimmy Olsens, and probably any of the previous DC comics, as chalk and cheese. It just had such an incredibly powerful atmosphere about it. I don’t mean just the drawings, but conceptually it was just fabulous. The split between the previous Jimmy Olsens and that first Kirby issue—in a sense that’s what I was trying to emulate when I began doing Thor, when I began inking it and writing it myself. I wanted to try as much as possible to really capture that break with the past. I wanted to stylistically and in terms of the story bring a kind of split between the previous stuff to make it feel like it was really new again, because that’s what Jimmy Olsen did. Jimmy Olsen was like an entirely new comic book when Jack began doing it. That still remains one of my very favorite moments in comics, getting that issue and reading it and being completely blown out of the water. I had one of my roommates read it, and he was not a big comic book fan, and he was blown away by it. (laughter) “The Mountain of Judgment”, “The Hairies”; what is this stuff?! (laughter) I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t care!!

Like it said in one of the later issues: “Kirby says: Don’t ask, just buy it!” (laughter) Truer cover copy was never written! (laughter)

sure it’s exactly fair to compare them. Thor is my sentimental favorite for the Marvel work; I always liked that just a shade better than the Fantastic Fours, although exactly why, I couldn’t tell you. I think my own interest in mythology is a little stronger than my own interest in science fiction. The Thors that ran from around issue #114, 115 up through about #139 and the Troll war, I think that’s a phenomenal run for a book. Those issues are just spectacular; never-ending wonders, climax piled upon climax, fabulous characters thrown at you one after another. If anything, the Fourth World stuff feels like the Marvel work on steroids. (laughter) Stuff came even faster, it was piled on even heavier, it was even more over the top. Maybe it’s that superheated quality I love so much in the Fourth World work. It was just swell.

TJKC: What was your reaction when it was canceled?

WALTER: I was devastated like everyone else, like all the guys I knew who read it. I was very sad. I did feel, and I still feel in retrospect, that really kind of brought about the end of Jack’s greatest moment of creativity. I like the Demon a lot, I like Kamandi okay, and OMAC; they didn’t appeal to me the same way the Fourth World stuff did. I still read it, I still enjoyed it; I enjoyed everything that Jack did. I enjoyed the Eternals, but after the Fourth World, I felt there was a fragmentation of a lot of the concerns in Jack’s stuff, that made it a little less powerful than the work had been before. I’m not sure the Fourth World stuff could’ve been topped. I don’t even know if you could’ve done that stuff for any length of time and really kept up the level at which that stuff was working. I would love to have seen the rest of it done at that time and place as he would have done it, and I presume he would have finished it. I really regret whatever decisions were made that brought that to an abrupt end. Because as we all know, even if Jack had killed them all off, they’d all be back now, because in comic books, everybody gets better sooner or later.

TJKC: So is Jimmy Olsen your favorite Fourth World book?

WALTER: I like them all; probably Jimmy Olsen and the New Gods. There are probTJKC: Except Manhunters. (laughter) ably episodes in all of them that WALTER: Well, I don’t mind that.

Kirby Thor drawing originally published in the I’m a huge fan of. I don’t tend to (laughter) But on the other hand, if I 1975 Street Enterprises Benefit Portfolio. split them up that way. “The Glory turn around tomorrow and there’s a Boat” is probably my favorite single Manhunter comic with that guy, it episode if I had to pick one. But I like wouldn’t surprise me either. But we’ve had a long time for that charthe whole thing with the Forever acter to rest in peace, and I’m grateful for that.

People and the Justifiers and Glorious Godfrey; how pre-figurTJKC: You’re doing the covers for John Byrne’s New Gods and Jack ing of Jack, of much of the terrorist Kirby’s Fourth World. Did you ever want to do a Fourth World story? work that we have today in the world. A little frightening. And WALTER: In fact, I’ve got something lined up for early next year.

Desaad’s amusement park, which is just a fantastic scene, just a wonJohn’s going to be doing some backup features, and he asked if I derful bit of business. There’s a lot of stuff in those books that I really would do one. I’m going to do one about Kanto the Assassin. enjoy. I thought the whole Funky Flashman stuff was hysterically TJKC: Didn’t you do a Superman Special with Jimmy Olsen and the funny. And I have to say my favorite completely off-the-wall storyline Newsboy Legion? was the Don Rickles/Goody Rickels stuff, which is just completely WALTER: Yes, about four or five years ago. I love that stuff. It was a insane. I’m sorry, this man was certifiable! (laughter) Anyone who gas to be able to draw the Whiz Wagon and Jimmy. I’d go back and could do that, he’s lucky the men with the rubber jackets weren’t right do a Jimmy Olsen series right now if I could. there in front of him! (laughter) That was just great stuff.

TJKC: When you started doing Thor, what did you know about Norse TJKC: So you had the same enthusiasm for his work at DC? mythology?

WALTER: Oh, yeah. I have to say that, for whatever reasons, the WALTER: A fair amount. When I was a kid, we had a pair of books Fourth World stuff is probably my favorite Jack Kirby work, even over from about 1893; one was tales of Greek and Roman myths, and one and above Thor and Fantastic Four. The Fourth World stuff in some was of Norse myths. I really liked the Norse myths before I ever disways is so different from the Thors, the Fantastic Fours, that I’m not 37

covered the comic existed. It was a delight to discover a comic, however loosely based on that stuff, actually existed.

Jones in The Hulk, they had Indiana Jones at the time; there were too many Joneses floating around the Marvel Universe.

TJKC: Your first issue of Thor really changed things immediately. (laughter) Were you given carte blanche to do that?

WALTER: Yeah. Mark Gruenwald was the editor. He wanted me to understand that I really could do anything I wanted with the character. I wanted to do something that hadn’t been tried before, and an obvious direction to go was to find somebody to lift Thor’s hammer, because that had never been done.

Actually, Jack and Stan did it when Loki did it back in one of the old issues, when they kind of forgot. (laughter) Loki must’ve had some extra Norn Queen enchantment; I guess that’s stronger than the hammer enchantment. (laughter)

TJKC: Your first and second covers really were homages to Jack’s previous stuff.

WALTER: I have to confess #337 wasn’t a deliberate homage to Jack. I broke the logo in an attempt to draw a line between what I was doing and the past. #338 was a deliberate tip of the hat to Jack; that was taken from that Hercules/Thor issue. In fact, I’ve just done it again for an upcoming New Gods cover.

They asked me to do the DC Thor vs. Big Barda, so I used that same cover again. (laughter)

TJKC: You made Thor your own, but there seemed to be a connection to Kirby that transcended any of the issues that were in-between. You TJKC: Did you create Beta Ray Bill didn’t go the route many artists specifically as a concept for Thor? have gone, which is to emulate WALTER: Yeah. I wanted to start Jack’s style. Why? fresh, and I thought a new character WALTER: I don’t see the point. I’m would be the way to go on that. My never gonna be Jack Kirby. The very thinking was that comics are a short best I’m gonna be is a second or form, and one of the things that’s third or fourth rate Jack Kirby. On mostly true about comics is characthe other hand, I can be a very good ters are what they look like; the good Walt Simonson. In the end, Walt guys are handsome, the bad guys are Simonson may not be as good as ugly. It’s not always that way, but Jack Kirby; that’s certainly true. But basically that’s what it is. We all I’m a much better Walt Simonson know, if you read Thor, that than I am a Jack Kirby. What I “Whosoever holds the hammer, if he would like to do is take from Jack, as be worthy, shall possess the power of I have taken from other artists; take Thor.” That’s on the hammer, those the parts of their work that I like are the rules. So my job as a writer is and try and bring it into my own to create a character that people will stuff and make my own stuff work be worried about. How can this guy better, with a little extra edge in it lift the hammer? The obvious because I’ve tried to understand answer is, “Well, he must be worwhat these guys were doing, and (above) Walt did a Thor story while in college, and he reused many of thy.” But you want them to think, what made their stuff work. My own the layouts when he drew Thor in the 1980s, as shown below.

“Oh my God, something’s gone terriwork is kind of an eclectic mix of a bly wrong.” Maybe Simonson can’t write, lot of influences, some American and (laughter) or Odin’s dead, or who knows? I some from other countries. Jack may be a designed Bill deliberately as a monster, single powerful influence, but I have to because I knew that people would look at say I think George Price and Jim it and go, “Oh my God, it’s this evil guy.” I Holdaway probably are equally powerful deliberately wrote them so you weren’t in their own ways in the work I do. sure in the beginning if he was a good guy TJKC: When did you first meet Jack? or a bad guy. His face was designed WALTER: I only met Jack maybe three around a horse’s skull, partly because times, never for very long. I think I met horses are quite beautiful. I thought it’d be Jack at a convention the first time somekinda cool to have the structure of a beauwhere in the midwest. I just remember he tiful animal underneath the monster to was signing some comics, being a real give this dichotomy between the monsweet guy. Might’ve been Detroit, strous and the beautiful in the same face. might’ve been Chicago, probably someI chose the name for its alliterative where in the late 1970s. I essentially went qualities. Originally I was going to call over, shook his hand and said, “Wow, I him ‘Beta Ray Jones’ because I really wantlove your stuff.” The same stuff we say to ed a common name. My feeling was Bill all the guys whose stuff we love. (laughter) was Everyman for this alien race.

I remember the last time I met him, Whatever his real name was, it didn’t matwhich was a few years ago, I guess the last ter. It was as close as the universal translating machine could come to time he was in New York. He seemed to know who I was. Jack met a his real name, which was unpronounceable by human lips. I deleted billion people, and I’ve met enough people now that I understand I ‘Jones’ because Louise Jones was working at Marvel, they had a Rick 38

is he might have, but that’s been long enough ago now that I may be inventing that. (laughter) I’d like to think he did, but who knows?

TJKC: You were having a lot of fun in Thor.

“Ragnarok And Roll...” (laughter) WALTER: That was a Howard Chaykin title, but I was willing to cop it. (laughter) We were talking and I think Howie just popped out with that one day, and I went, “Oh, great! I have to use that!”

TJKC: “Tales of Midgard...” (laughter) WALTER: Well, it seemed like a natural, didn’t it? (laughter) Fandral wearing all those mid1980s baggy clothes, back when everybody wore stuff like that.

TJKC: There was a real sense of fun going on in the book. Was it one of the best times you’ve had in comics?

WALTER: In general, that was a great time to be working at Marvel. The first half of the 1980s was fun, there were a lot of really cool books coming out of there. Frank (Miller) was doing Daredevil, Chris (Claremont) was still doing X-Men, John (Byrne) was doing the FF. They had a lot of really good stuff coming out.

It was great to be a part of.

I got to do stuff I wanted to do. The Surtur War was really a story I’d come up with years earlier when I was a fan, back in 1967. I’d actually drawn about 30 pages of the climax of that comic. When I finally did Surtur fighting Thor, I went back and used as many of the original layouts as I possibly could.

TJKC: Any opinion about whether the Fourth World came out of the ashes of Ragnarok?

WALTER: I assume in Jack’s mind there was no question. Since you can kinda see a guy with a hammer there in the beginning, (laughter) and the world that split apart looks suspiciously like Asgard, I have no doubt that’s where it all came from. I’m sure New Genesis and Apokolips are the halves of Asgard.

TJKC: What lessons do you derive from looking at Jack Kirby and his career?

WALTER: Well, besides being depressed because he’s so damn good, (laughter) I just think there’s really an inexhaustible fountain of ideas out there, if only I can tap a teeny bit of it. Jack was able to tap an amazing amount of it, and that’s inspirational. Whenever I get tired or worn down, I think, “Well, it didn’t slow Jack down any.” I sure he had those days where he got out of bed and said, “Gee, I don’t feel like drawing very much today. I think I’ll just knock off thirty pages instead of fifty.” (laughter) Just recently, going over some Mister Miracles, looking at the Kanto The Assassin sequence—just the body language of the characters in different panels, the different angles Jack has chosen to draw them at—I was struck once again by the draftsmanship, let alone the storytelling or the invention and the ideas. Just the actual power of the storytelling that he was able to bring to this stuff, the level of craft. It’s really staggering. I keep hoping I can borrow a small slice of that as I go along.

Splash page pencils to Thor #156. Note the message to inker Vince Colletta.

don’t remember all of them. So I don’t know if Jack really knew who I was or not. We ended up shooting the breeze briefly, and Roz was there. Somebody was taking pictures of Jack, and Jack and I hung out and the guy took our photograph. That was probably the longest conversation we had, but even that was less than five minutes.

TJKC: What’d you talk about?

WALTER: I think about drawing comics, how much fun it was, and what projects we were doing at the time.

TJKC: Did he ever see your rendition of Thor?

WALTER: I don’t know. The impression I got from the last conversation 39

I believe that Kirby was very aware of Thor’s shortcomings as a strip, and he eliminated those shortcomings in his later work on the Fourth World and The Eternals. This article will explore the elements of Thor that Kirby abandoned or modified in later series. These elements can be grouped into three areas: 1. religion, 2. conflict, and 3. technology.

New Gods For Old

by Mark Mayerson hile Jack Kirby had dabbled with using gods as characters, Thor was his most extensive treatment of that theme through the 1960s. The strip was unusual by Marvel standards. While it started out as a typical superhero strip, with Thor fighting space monsters and Communists, more and more Norse mythology crept into the strip over time. It’s clear that Thor’s creators had latched on to something interesting, but since the Asgardian angle hadn’t been thought through clearly, the strip was built on a rickety foundation.

inhabitants of Asgard were actual gods in the sense that they 1.storiesThe were worshipped by some part of humanity. There were related about the Norse gods’ involvement in the creation and

W

destruction of the universe and the origins of humanity. However, the Norse gods were not the objects of worship of the majority of the readership, which weakened the premise of the strip.

Even within the strip, there were competing gods. The Greek gods Zeus, Hercules, Ares and Pluto all made appearances in Thor (Annual #1, Journey Into Mystery #124 and 125, Thor #126131). Mount Olympus was seen as a kind of parallel Asgard. With two competing sets of gods, it was only logical that there should also be Aztec, Sumerian and other gods somewhere out there, yet Odin was still considered the omnipotent, omniscient All-Father. Was Odin the creator of the universe (or at least Earth and humanity) or not?

Furthermore, when Mangog attempted to pull the Odinsword and cause Ragnarok (Thor #154-157), the strip portrayed this as not just a threat to Asgard, but to the whole universe. The Colonizers of Rigel were aware of the threat and sent the Recorder to find out more. However, if Ragnarok was to be the destruction of the whole universe, where were the Olympians?

The fact that the characters in Thor related to actual gods created problems that Kirby chose to avoid in later work. In The New Gods, the gods don’t represent anyone ever worshipped by people.

While there are names like Orion that have associations with characters in antiquity, there are no direct links to any actual religion. Here, the gods are super beings, but not responsible for the creation of the universe or humanity. In addition, there is clearly something more powerful and mysterious than the gods: The Source. The Source is enigmatic enough that it can represent anyone’s idea of a spiritual power in the universe. Kirby avoids stepping on the religious toes of any reader.

In The Eternals, the situation is somewhat different. We’re led to believe that early religions grew up around the Eternals and Deviants, but that these religions were based on humans’ imperfect understanding of who the Eternals were. In this way, while the Eternals were the object of human worship, Kirby avoids ascribing divine power to the characters.

Again, as in The New Gods, there is a power higher than the Eternals: the Celestials. These characters are as enigmatic as The Source, so again Kirby avoids stepping on the readers’ toes.

They can be agents of any divine power the reader wishes them to be.

The conflict in Thor started out with Thor 2.full-blown against various villains. While Loki appeared early in the strip’s history, the rest of the

Thor #156 pencils, with the Warriors Three; great supporting characters in a pieced-together mythology?

40

Asgardians evolved over time. Because Asgard was not planned out in advance, the Norse gods were not involved in a long-term conflict and were not pitted against a perpetual enemy. Who could threaten the gods and create the conflict necessary for exciting stories? Unfortunately, the answer to

145). If the top god is not somebody who can tell the difference between good and evil characters or who takes offense at imagined slights, why should a reader like him? I think the lack of an ongoing conflict caused Odin to be used in the role of villain as well as hero, which certainly undercut his reader appeal and hurt the strip.

Kirby rectified this situation in The New Gods. Odin was split into Highfather and Darkseid. New Genesis was threatened by Apokolips. With a real enemy as an external threat, the New Gods were free to treat each other decently. There was no arbitrariness in their dealings with each other or humanity.

In The Eternals, the Eternals were in longterm battle with the Deviants, and both were at the mercy of the Celestials.

The Asgardians were not members of a technological society. Their powers were 3.mystical or divine. This didn’t hamper Thor too much on Earth when fighting villains. It was not contradiction that Thor’s strength, hammer and control of the weather could defeat Earth technologies. However, Thor also interacted with creatures from space. Their technology was far more advanced than any on Earth. If Thor’s powers could defeat them as well, his powers were basically limitless.

While all comic book science is pseudoscience, it still plays better to have the characters evenly matched. If Thor’s power channeled through his hammer could cause Galactus to retreat (Thor #161), what could possibly threaten Thor? Certainly not Earth technology.

The Fourth World series was built around technology. The inhabitants of New Genesis communed with The Source through the technology of Mother Boxes. The Forever People travelled in the Super Cycle. Scott Free relied on his Mother Box and other technology to effect his escapes. Darkseid had DeSaad to build machines of torture and Mokkari and Simyan to do genetic experiments. Metron built the Mobius Chair. Even the Anti-Life Equation can be seen as a technological formula. In The Eternals, the Celestials arrived in space ships. The Eternals had the ability to manipulate atoms. The Deviants used technology to attack the Celestials and survive in their sunken city.

Pencils from Thor #147. Why couldn’t the “all-seeing” Odin see through Loki’s schemes?

While this technology is all fictional, it still puts the heroes and villains on a more this was the gods themselves. This task usually fell to Loki and his level playing field. Perhaps Kirby also felt that it would be easier for allies, but it was a flawed approach. For all of Loki’s plotting, he his readers to identify with technology, rather than divinity, as a always seemed to regain his status within Asgard so that he could try source of power. The fact that technology surrounded every reader again to overthrow Odin or ruin Thor. was a given, whereas a reader’s feelings about divine power could not The need for Loki’s repeated pardons undercut Odin as a characbe taken for granted. ter. The fact that readers and the Asgardian-on-the-street knew that While Kirby’s tenure on Thor was longer than his time on the Loki was always evil, while Odin kept giving Loki opportunities to Fourth World or The Eternals, I think that Thor can be seen as a trainmake trouble, left Odin looking stupid. ing ground rather than a mature work. Thor was a strip that mixed Other situations left Odin looking arbitrary and capricious. too many disparate elements. This inevitably led to contradictions. By There was never a more devoted son than Thor, and yet Odin was eliminating the contradictions from the Fourth World and The Eternals, often displeased with him and abandoned or punished him. Thor’s Kirby came up with a mixture that blended more smoothly and, for this powers were cut in half or removed completely by Odin (Thor #126, reader, made for superior comics.

41

End Of An Era

by John Morrow t’s common knowledge now that Jack was pretty unhappy at Marvel in the late 1960s, and the next few pages may give us a better idea of what he was going through at the time.

On this page, you’ll see a variety of pencil pages that for one reason or another didn’t make it into Thor. Mark Evanier told me that Jack reached a point in the late 1960s where, if he drew a really spectacular full-page splash, he would sometimes set it aside to keep or sell at conventions; really nice pages could bring as much on the budding original art market as Marvel was paying him per page. (Don’t forget, Jack wasn’t getting his originals back from Marvel in the 1960s.) All these pages ended up being printed in the Marvelmania Portfolio (see TJKC #2-4), but margin notes weren’t included, so it’s difficult to tell what issue Jack may have originally intended them for. But the pages with Galactus on them were obviously meant for some issue(s) of Thor from #160-169, and the Karnilla/Loki page was apparently meant for #167.

On the next few pages are unused pencils that look to have been omitted from Thor #169, which featured Galactus’ origin. Considering Jack co-created Galactus in Fantastic Four, it’s understandable that he’d want some input into his origin. It’s unclear whether or not Jack had an entirely different origin drawn for #169 (or if he avoided an origin story altogether), but there sure are a lot of rejected pages with Galactus on them, leading me to believe that #169 was the victim of major editorial tampering. (Some of the Marvelmania Portfolio plates may also be from #169.)

(In Thor #168, Stan Lee announced in his Soapbox column that Marvel was doing away with continued stories and sub-plots, so some of the Warriors Three pages may have been scrapped for that reason.)

One thing about #169 is clear; Jack was forced to change the ending of it. The original page 20 shows that Jack planned for Galactus to head back to Earth and heroically battle the Thermal Man side-by-side with Thor. Perhaps Stan Lee felt this wasn’t in keeping with Galactus’ persona as he envisioned it, and insisted Jack change the ending. Whatever the case, it appears #169 took the wind out of Jack’s sails, and he gave a pretty half-hearted effort from Thor #170 until he left Marvel a few months later. It truly marked the end of an era for Marvel, Thor, and Kirby.

I

(above) Thor #167 unused page, presented here with margin notes. (below) Other unused Thor pages that made it into the Marvelmania Portfolio.

42

43 (above) Unused Thor #169, page 10, previously unpublished. (right) Unused Thor #169, page 11. This page was shown in TJKC #1, without backgrounds! Jack may have added them after the page was rejected, to increase its sales value.

44

Unused Thor #169, page 13. This was previously printed in the Kirby Unleashed portfolio.

Unused Thor #169, page 14. This previously unpublished page appears to carry through the Loki subplot from the last two Marvelmania Portfolio plates shown on page 42 of this issue of TJKC.

45 (above) Unused Thor #169, page 16, previously published in the Masterworks portfolio. (right) Unused Thor #169, page 17, published in the Marvelmania Portfolio without margin notes.

46 Unused final page from Thor #169, where Galactus decides to help Thor battle the Thermal Man.

Rejected cover for Thor #170, signaling the end of an era on Thor.

Now You’ve Done It, Kirby!

Submit Something-Get Free Issues!

by Carl Horak he Jack Kirby Collector is a not-for-profit publication, put together with submissions from Kirby fans around the world. Since we’re not-for-profit, we can’t pay you for your efforts, but when we print art or articles you submit, we’ll send you a FREE copy of that issue or extend your subscription by one issue.

Here’s a tentative list of upcoming issues, to give you ideas of things to write about. But don’t limit yourself to these ideas—we may run a miscellaneous issue here or there, so anything you write may be published. And as always, send us copies of your Kirby art!

T

y life was going along just fine until Jack Kirby came along.

There I was at the age of twenty-seven in 1965, a respectable high school English teacher introducing students to the dynamic language of Shakespeare, the atmospheric details of Poe and the diverse character creations of Dickens. Although I had a secret vice of collecting some newspaper comic strips, I had relegated comic book reading to the sphere of the illiterates. Sure, I had read the four-color publications when I was a kid, but that was years back.

Then it happened. I was in a used book store, looking for some “good” literature to read, when I happened to glance down at a stack of comic books. The top one caught my eye. It was Journey Into Mystery #117 with an enticing cover depicting a blond-haired flying Viking swinging a hammer while Vietnamese soldiers fired wildly at him.

Casually flipping through the comic, I recognized a familiar art style.

Yup, there on the splash page was the credit which read “Dazzlingly drawn by Jack Kirby.”

The artist’s name brought back a flood of memories from earlier years... Boys’ Ranch, Fighting American, Bullseye, and The Boy Commandos.

I did have a run of the Sky Masters newspaper strip, a collaboration of Kirby and Wally Wood. Just for old times sake, I bought it. After all, what harm could one comic do?

It did harm all right! Jack Kirby sucked me in. After reading how The Mighty Thor showed a Viet Cong commander the errors of his ways, depicted with such splendor by Kirby, I was hooked. But what was this? This story was a part of a larger one and was continued into the next issue.

Heck, I’d only spent a nickel. I wanted to find out how the “Trial of the Gods” story ended and maybe find some earlier issues that had the beginning of the saga. When I came out of the used book store that next evening, I carted away more Kirby-drawn Marvels, including The Fantastic Four, and gloried in the perfect combination of art and story.

Now there was no turning back. I had become a full-fledged comic collector, thanks to Jack Kirby!

Entering wholeheartedly into comic-mania, I not only frequented used book stores but also newsstands, collecting Marvels, DCs, Tower Comics, Gold Keys and offerings from other publishers. In those days, you certainly didn’t announce to the world that you read comic books, especially if you were a responsible adult, so most of my collecting was done in secret agentstyle; spot the prey, glance around to make sure you’re not spotted by anyone you know, pounce on the prey, pay for it, and hot-foot it out of the store.

As my collection grew, so did my admiration for Kirby. I followed his career at Marvel, then at DC, bought reprints of his earlier efforts and managed to acquire some of his Golden Age works. The art of Jack Kirby spanned the Golden Age, the Silver Age and the Modern Age. Scholars of comic art fittingly recognize him as one of the giants of the industry. His presence will be missed.

I think if I hadn’t spotted that Kirby-drawn cover of Journey Into Mystery, a richness would A pivotal panel from JIM #117. be absent from my life.

M

#15 (Apr. 1997): SCI-FI Issue

Solar Legion, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Machine Man, Sky Masters, Race For The Moon, Starman Zero, Eternals, Jack’s work for pulps, & more.

Featuring an interview with—and front cover inks by—Al Williamson!

Also, an interview with Mike Thibodeaux! Back cover inks by Terry Austin! Deadline: 2/1/97. #16 (July 1997): To ugh Gu ys Issue

From Foxhole and Our Fighting Forces, Bullseye to Rawhide Kid, Headline to In The Days Of The Mob, the testosterone will fly as we cover cowboys, gangsters, kid gangs, spies, soldiers, and even a little “tough love” in one issue. Deadline: 4/1/97. #17 (O ct. 1997): DC Issue

Kamandi, Atlas, Kung-Fu Fighter, OMAC, Kobra; we’ll cover Jack’s 1970s DC books (plus more on the Fourth World), and go back further into the Golden & Silver Age to cover Challengers Of The Unknown, Green Arrow, Manhunter, Sandman, and more. Cover inks by Mike Royer and Steve Rude! Deadline: 7/1/97. #18 (Dec. 1997): Marvel Issue

We’ll cover Jack’s return to Marvel in the 1970s as we spotlight Captain America, Black Panther, The Silver Surfer Graphic Novel, and more. Then we’ll delve back into the 1960s, with interviews from some surprise Bullpenners! Deadline: 9/1/97. #19 (Feb. 1997): We Need An Idea!!

If you’ve got an idea for another theme issue, let us know!

Miscellaneo us IssueS

You never know when we’ll spring one on you, so don’t limit yourself to the topics above. And just because we covered a topic once, don’t think we won’t print more about it. So get creative, and get writing!

Submission Guidelines: When we print something you submit, we’ll send you a FREE copy of that issue or extend your subscription by one issue. We’re looking for: • Rare and unpublished Kirby art • Original articles and essays on Jack’s life and career • Kirby interviews and correspondence • Kirby convention and fanzine art and articles • Photos and personal recollections of Jack • Published and unpublished reviews of Jack’s work, etc.

Artwork should be submitted in one of the following forms: 1) Good quality photocopies (color or black-&-white).

2) Scanned images - 300ppi TIFF, JPEG, or GIF file for IBM or Mac. 3) Original materials (carefully packed and insured).

Text should be sent in one of the following forms: 1) Typed or laser printed pages with no “fancy” fonts.

2) E-mail via the Internet to: twomorrow@aol.com 3) An ASCII computer file, IBM or Mac format.

4) For previously printed articles, photocopies are OK. We’ll pay return postage and insurance for originals - please write or call first. Please include background info whenever possible.

Keep TJKC Going—Send Something!

47

Collector Comments Send letters to: The Jack Kirby Collector c/o TwoMorrows • 502 Saint Mary’s St. Raleigh, NC 27605 or E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com December has come and gone and I haven’t received issue #13 yet.Yesterday, however, I spotted an issue of TJKC in my local comic shop! What’s with you guys? The world’s greatest fanzine with the not-so-great bookkeeping practices! Will I have to chase down every issue until my subscription ends?

Geoffrey Mahfuz, Melrose, MA (I occasionally get letters like this when subscribers see TJKC in stores before they get theirs in the mail. There are pros and cons to both subscribing and picking up TJKC at stores. Sometimes subscribers get their copies after stores do, and sometimes stores don’t order enough copies, or distributors don’t send what they ordered. But for the benefit of subscribers, let me explain our schedule.

Generally, it takes two weeks for each issue to be printed. I ship art to the printer in Canada around the first of the month shown on the cover, and the printed issues leave their plant around the 15th of the month. It takes about 4 days for them to get to me, but they still must be stuffed into envelopes, labeled and sorted, and taken to the post office. So far, I’ve gotten every issue stuffed and sorted the SAME DAY they arrived here, and in the mail the following morning. But since Diamond Distribution picks up their copies directly from the printer around the 15th, sometimes stores get theirs before subscribers.

We ship via Bulk Mail to keep US subscribers’ costs down—a benefit not available to our international subscribers. But although Bulk Mail averages one week to arrive, it CAN take up to three weeks, depending on the number of copies going to a given area. If ten or more subscribers are in your area, you’ll get yours faster due to the way Bulk Mail is sorted.

I work incredibly hard to make TJKC as good as it can possibly be, and I work equally hard to assure the copies get out in the most timely manner possible. You don’t need to call or write me about a missing issue until the 15th of the month FOLLOWING the cover date; it’s probably due to the US Postal Service running slow. Thanks for your patience, and if the wait for Bulk Mail is too long, you can always pay the full $4.95 cover price—an extra 95¢ per issue—and I’ll ship your copies by First Class Mail, just like I do back issues.)

RE: “The Kirby Files” – I think Chris is stretching his theory to the breaking point when he claims that Spirit World was the flowering of Jack’s interest in the paranormal. A close study of the Kirby lexicon shows that Jack has always sustained an interest in strange phenomena and that interest has always been reflected in his work.

Maybe Spirit World was the most overt, but you gotta admit that Black Magic wasn’t a title that attempted to mask its contents and editorial slant. I think Chris does Jack a disservice by trying to deny a serious component of Jack’s work for the sake of making his point.

RE: “Classic Monsters From Tales of Suspense” – I think Tony does Jack a similar disservice by appending his personal “criteria” to his article as if he were the ultimate judge of which Kirby stories were “classic”. I don’t

think Jack’s work needs Tony’s official approval to be called classic. Why not just title the article “My favorite monster stories from Tales of Suspense”? It’s more honest and doesn’t carry the baggage of some official-seeming status which its appearance in TJKC implies. (I can just see the next Overstreet listing Tales Of Suspense #9 as containing a “Classic” Kirby monster and therefore worth double the previous issue.)

RE: “Were They Prototypes?” – Kudos to Mike for a great and much-needed reminder that the emperor has no clothes, and thanks to TJKC for publishing it.

Richard Kolkman’s overview of The Demon was also very well done with the perfect blend of insight and information. High praises due.

RE: “Young Werewolves in Love” – Boy, do I take exception with Vitone’s rewriting of history: 1. “DC had testily dispensed with his services early in 1949” Huh? Outside of a few dubious credits in a few issues of Boy Commandos in 1947-49 (7 issues, 2 with covers at most and 2 more with “unverified” Kirby art), Jack hadn’t drawn for DC since mid-1946. And where does “testily” come from?

2. Vitone makes it sound like S&K rebounded and formed this “revolving” (not hardly!) team in the space of six months, when the core of the shop (Vic Donahue, Bruno Premiani, Bill Draut, and John Severin as much as Meskin, Prentice, and Roussos) was actually assembled in 1947 with the advent of the Romance titles for Prize.

3. To consider Black Magic a reaction to the success of EC’s horror comics is hogwash. Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror both came out in Apr/May 1950, and to suppose that sales results had been gathered and made generally known and that Jack and Joe had time to create their own version and get it out by Oct. 1950 simply stretches credulity to the breaking point. Better to look towards ACG and Adventures Into The Unknown which began in Fall of 1948 and was enjoying monthly success in a period of sinking sales, or better still, look to Kirby’s fascination with the occult and the natural progression to a comic about it.

4. And to bring in the list of EC artists, NONE of whom had worked for EC by mid-1950 (only Severin had crossed paths with Kirby), is nonsensical. None of those artists could remotely be credited with a Kirby influence and certainly none owed Kirby a “huge measure of credit for influencing” his career. Where does this insight originate? All those artists are shamelessly in the Alex Raymond/Hal Foster school and if there is any comic book influence, it’s from Lou Fine, not Jack Kirby.

5. Some nits: Visions of Nostradamus is the 4th story in Vol. 2 #7 and Al Eadeh deserves mention as the artist on the story. The 52-page format only lasted five issues. It dropped to 44 by issue six. The post-S&K issues were generally filled with work by Marvin Stein, Ted Galindo and the occasional Joe Orlando, as well as George Klein, George Tuska, and post-1960 work by Ayers, Powell, and even Ditko. I know of no post-S&K work by Starr, Baily, or any of the others Vitone mentions with the exception of one late Meskin story.

RE: “Dress for Success” – Popa rewrites history here and you publish it as if it were fact. I really expect more from you as an editor, John. The notion of Marvel fearing the wrath of DC is a total fabrication by Popa. He’s extrapolated it from a partial understanding of a totally bizarre historical event.

Jack at the 1976 San Diego Comic Convention.

His whole third paragraph is totally concocted and historically inept. DC’s relationship with Marvel happened in late 1957, and superheroes were not the bread and butter commodity Gene supposes. Captain America had been canceled (due to lack of interest, not DC edict) in Sept. of 1954. And Kirby’s decision not to put the FF in costumes had more to do with their presentation as real people with powers than with any imagined DC edict. For an article on costumes, this really delves far too much into speculation and total fabrication presented as fact and lent a greater weight than it’s due because of it being published in TJKC. History is not that hard to confirm and I think you have a responsibility to your readership not to present fiction as fact. A few labels such as “it is rumored” or “I’ve heard” or “my opinion is” are needed in many of your articles. I hope you can find the time to insert them.

You’re doing an important job, but Jack’s legacy is not in need of padding by your writers. Get them to stick to the facts and label their opinions as such and you’ll have a mag worthy of the Jack Kirby name.

Jim Vadeboncoeur, Palo Alto, CA (I’ve been hoping Jim—who’s much more knowledgeable about comics history than I’ll ever be—would contribute something to TJKC. I’m sorry it had to happen due to errors in an issue, but the important thing is getting the facts straight.

RE: “The Kirby Files”: Obviously Black Magic was a much more sustained use of the themes longevity-wise, but I personally agree with Chris Knowles that Spirit World was a kind of “pinnacle” of Jack’s exposure to this stuff. It just seems less “throwaway” than Black Magic to me; more into the supernatural esoterica, ESP, etc. and less into things like werewolves and other typical horror ideas. And I don’t think Chris meant to discount his work on Black Magic in any way, but Jim’s point is well taken.

RE: “Classic Monsters From Tales of Suspense”: I felt the article was written in such a light tone that no one would take the judging criteria too seriously, and he did clearly state that these were *his* idea of classics. But if Overstreet ever ups their prices based on anything pub-

KNOW YE THESE, THE HALLOWED RANKS OF KIRBYDOM: J.K.C. C.K.P. S.O.S. L.C.D.

(Jack Kirby Collector)—A fan dedicated to the never-ending pursuit of Jack’s work.

(Crazed Kirby Phile)—One who has first printings of every issue of TJKC, and saves the mailing envelopes they came in.

(Submittor Of Stuff)—One who has submitted something for publication in TJKC. (Letter of Credit Deliverer)—One who has sent at least one letter to Marvel Comics, requesting they credit Jack for his creations.

48

F.B.I. D.D.T. G.N.P.

(Frantic Buyer of Issues)—Subscriber who calls when his issue of TJKC is one day late.

R.O.Z.

(Receiver Of Zealots)—A wonderful woman who selflessly puts up with her husband’s fans’ lunacy.

The highest honor in Kirbydom.

(Devil Dinosaur Touter)—A Kirby fan so devoted, he thinks Moonboy hung the moon.

(Generous Nonselfish Professional)—Any comics pro who volunteers their services to TJKC due to their love of all things Kirby.

CORRECTIONS FROM PREVIOUS ISSUES: #13: On page 11, the correct issue for the story “The Creature from Planet X” is Strange Worlds #3, not #4.

Also, the Black Magic and Strange World Of Your Dreams art (pages 30-33) was originally discovered by Greg Theakston, and published in The Jack Kirby Treasury Vol. 2. Greg also deserves credit for his initial detective work and theories on the existence of the “Monster Of Moraggia” artwork (pages 25-28); his assistance in our search was invaluable. #12: René Hausman, who drew the illustration of the Thing on page 37, is Belgian, not French. Likewise, “Jack Kirby: Hommages”, the tribute book it was printed in, was published in Belgium, not France. lished in TJKC, I’ll feel lousy!!

RE: “Young Werewolves in Love”: 1. I believe R.J. meant “1947”, which was when S&K work stopped appearing semi-regularly in Boy Commandos.

And the “testily” came about from extrapolation on R.J.’s part about Jack Liebowitz’ anger over S&K forming a partnership with Al Harvey after WWII, instead of sticking with DC/National. But I accept the blame as editor for not catching the wrong date.

2. R.J. probably meant that different teams worked on different books, but Jim’s right; “revolving” wasn’t a good choice of words here. And if I’d caught the 1947 date error, this would’ve made more sense.

3. Jim’s absolutely correct on this.

4. R.J.’s article stated “many” of the artists “either had worked with Kirby at some time, or would, or owed him a huge measure of credit for inspiring their careers.” Severin had worked with him; Orlando, Crandall and Williamson would later; and although they all are from the Raymond/Foster school, I can only speak for Al Williamson (who I just interviewed for next issue), who stated that he loved Jack’s work as a kid, and was strongly affected by S&K’s Captain America and Stuntman.

RE: “Dress for Success”: Gene’s piece didn’t stray from what I’d come to understand of the situation. I hope readers understand that it’s inevitable that we’re going to publish some things that may have started as rumor, and been handed down enough times that people think it’s fact. I genuinely want to keep from doing it, but that requires the help of more learned folks like Jim Vadeboncouer, and I can’t thank him enough for setting us straight on this stuff. I hope he’ll continue to. Jim also sent me his version of a story uncovered by Brad Elliott, who was originally hired to produce the Marvel 50th anniversary book that was eventually done as Five Fabulous Decades by Les Daniels. Brad had full access to all Marvel records for well over a year and learned a lot about Marvel and DC and the late 50’s. Jim’s article will appear in our upcoming Marvel Theme Issue.) #13 is another amazing issue. An interesting bit of useless trivia: The person who asked [Walter] Gibson if he was happy with DC’s treatment of the Shadow (page 37, second column) was me! It was the first convention I ever attended, and the first time I met Jack. This was right before his big move back to Marvel, and I remember him sitting in a small room, originals on all the walls around him, fans crowded in close, him sketching and answering questions. I asked if he was going to use the Falcon in Captain America, and he said he had some “very interesting plans” for the character. (Deep, insightful questions… I know!) There were a lot of Losers originals for sale—unused penciled pages that Jack had drawn, then decided didn’t work for one reason or other! I was astounded he put that much work into something, then decided to start over!

Karl Kesel

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I just read the article in the new Jack Kirby Collector about all of the pre-hero stories that people pass off as “prototypes”. The article was right on the money about how stupid it is to try and make a connection between alien monsters that had the same names or powers as later heroes and villains in the Marvel universe. It has done nothing but drive up the prices on pre-hero comics that should not be any more expensive than other issues in the run.

One correction, however: In Strange Tales #97, the characters don’t so much look like Aunt May and Uncle Ben, as they are NAMED May and Ben. I think all the talk of these being prototypes is more from the names they have in common than their actual appearance.

On a related note, I know of one original art collector/dealer who thinks virtually everything he owns has some special significance, and is therefore worth more money: “Oh, this is the first time Spider-Man clung to a wall at the Daily Bugle building.” “This page features the first time the Hulk broke down a brick building. He broke down many stucco ones, but this is the first time he destroyed a brick one.” Anyway, I was glad to see Mike Gartland debunk all this nonsense in the latest issue.

David Schwartz, Agoura Hills, CA #13 arrived just after Christmas. Another excellent job.

The articles, rather than merely blandly reciting the obvious, now seem well-researched with events that enlighten and inform, as though the writers had personal access to Kirby’s brain itself.

The drawings, unpublished and photocopied, were almost all new to me, which means more Kirby to draw and learn from (which I will attend to momentarily!). Your magazine does a service to all comic book fans, now and decades from now, who revere the work of Jack Kirby.

Steve Rude A comment on the origin of the Fourth World: During a hike to cliff dwellings in Navajo National Monument, a bell went off in my head when the park ranger started talking about the Fourth World in the culture of the ancient Anasazi people. It seems that Pueblo Indians believed that they had arrived on the earth’s surface from Four Worlds below. Of course, I could not say if Kirby was aware of this, but it seems possible given his interest in gods and mythology. He even set the Wyatt Wingfoot story in Fantastic Four #80 in a generalized locale of a Southwestern reservation.

Vic Bracht, Billings, MT TJKC #12 would have been a pleasant read had Mark Cartwright’s article on Kirby in England not left a rather unpleasant taste in my mouth. Cartwright’s first major error lies in assuming that the British comics industry began and ended with the weekly comics. Thus he is able to state that “superheroes were virtually nonexistent” prior to the weekly reprints—in fact, monthly superhero mags had been successfully and regularly produced in England since 1940, the best remembered of them, Marvelman and Young Marvelman, comfortably clocking up 740 issues between 1954 and 1963. His cavalier dismissal of the early ‘60s Marvel imports as too expensive to have much impact is also misguided—they were accessible enough to reach, and influence, Barry Smith, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland.

Moving on to the Odhams comics, the Kirby FF reprints appeared in Smash!, not in Wham!. Apart from brief trials (reprints of Incredible Hulk #2-6 and Avengers #4-6), these remained the only American strips in Smash! until August 1967, when FF was replaced by Daredevil.

The comic then remained a Kirby-free zone until November 1968, when Thor was introduced. Contrary to Cartwright’s assertions, the Marvel material did not drive English strips out of any of the Odhams titles, nor did they supplant Batman, which remained in Smash! until February 1969, only five weeks before all American reprints were suspended and replaced by English strips!

Cartwright is correct in stating that several other comics featured Marvel reprints in 1967—he’s just mistaken in assuming that this indicated an expanding audi-

49

ence. Pow!, Fantastic and Terrific all debuted in the Spring of 1967, collectively featuring Spider-Man, Nick Fury, Thor, X-Men, Avengers, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, and Doctor Strange (not exactly the predominance of Kirby’s work that Cartwright suggests). Rather than being a response to audience demand, these comics were examples of the British practice of “circulation boosting”, whereby new titles were launched which were intended for eventual merger with older titles, thus adding the new readership to that of the older book. That these three newcomers contained Marvel reprints supports Cartwright’s argument that the FF reprints were popular, or at least that the Odhams staff believed them to be so. Taking them as an example of the circulation boosting process, they commenced in Smash! in August 1966, were switched to Wham! in August 1967 (being the only Marvel strip to appear in that comic) then appeared in Pow! following a merger with Wham! in January 1968 but did not survive Pow! and Wham!’s final merger with Smash! in September 1968. However, that all three new titles had merged into Smash! by the end of 1968 indicates that the market could not ultimately support more than a single comic of Marvel reprints.

Collectors in search of cheap Kirby reprints might like to know that The Daredevils, listed by Cartwright, contained no Kirby material, but three titles omitted from his list are of interest: Captain Britain (1976-77) contained some of Kirby’s S.H.I.E.L.D. strips (and was where the Kirby drawing used to illustrate Cartwright’s article first appeared); The Complete Fantastic Four (1977-78) ran the first twenty or so issues of FF; and Valour (1980) reprinted Devil Dinosaur.

Cartwright’s bright, attractive picture of a juvenile industry shaken up and transformed into an adult market

by Jack Kirby’s artistry rests on a crucial misconception: That “Jack Kirby” was synonymous with “Marvel Comics”.

Sure, Kirby’s work made an impression on the readers of the Odhams comics, but so did that of Ditko, Romita, Heck, Colan, Everett, Ayers etc., not to mention that of Leo Baxendale, Eric Reynolds, Don Lawrence, Jordi Bernet, Luis Bermejo and others who were regularly featured in the Odhams titles. The truth is that Marvel, rather than Kirby, impacted on the British industry and that it did not transform it to anything like the extent that Cartwright would have us believe.

Ultimately, my objection to Cartwright’s piece is that it praises Kirby for something that, in all honesty, he did not personally do. I love Kirby’s work and I am constantly astounded by the amount that he managed to achieve, but I was distressed to find him being praised where that praise is in fact not due. From all I’ve read of the man, I suspect that he wouldn’t have been too pleased either. I hope this letter helps to correct the record without being in any way disrespectful to his memory.

Mike Kidson, Liverpool, England

NEXT ISSUE: #15 is a special SCIENCE-FICTION Theme Issue! It features a new interview with 1950s Kirby inker (and EC Comics legend) AL WILLIAMSON, highlighted by Al’s new inks on this issue’s front cover! We’ll also feature a new interview with Captain Victory inker (and Kirby friend) MIKE THIBODEAUX, and our back cover sports new inks by fan favorite TERRY AUSTIN. Then we’ll examine Jack’s work in the Sci-Fi genre, including a look at 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, MACHINE MAN, the SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, RACE FOR THE MOON, SOLAR LEGION, and more! Also, we’ll delve into Jack’s sci-fi comic strip work with features on SKY MASTERS and his unused STARMAN ZERO concept. Plus we’ll reveal secrets behind Jack’s CAPTAIN VICTORY series, and devote a special section to THE ETERNALS. And throughout, we’ll show the usual assortment of unpublished art including unpublished pages, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and more! We’ll see ya in mid-April!

Classifieds (10¢ per word, $1 minimum) ______________________________ WANTED: The Marvelmania Portfolio. I am willing to pay the highest prices possible. Contact - Brian Postman, #2A, 238 East 24th Street, New York, NY 10010 or call: (212)213-6242. ______________________________ GREEN HORNET STRIKES. Jim Steranko signed/limited print. Only $29 plus S/H. Ray Spivey, 512-3384971 evenings, CST. ______________________________ WANTED: Good condition issues of Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprinting Fantastic Four #51-100. Will pay reasonable prices. Contact Craig Bogart at (614)251-1861. Leave message. ______________________________ TJKC wants to publish a Kirby Portfolio, and we need to locate copies of Jack’s second GALAXY GREEN tryout page (a California fan named MIKE PRICE bought it in the 1970s; we’ve already located the splash page), and

Jack’s CAPTAIN NICE poster art. If you have any information, please help! ______________________________ KIRBY & LEE’s creation of the Marvel Universe is examined and “Mother Delilah” from Boys’ Ranch is analyzed in Art of the Comic Book, available autographed for $25 from the author, R.C. Harvey, 2701 Maplewood Drive, Champaign, IL 61821. ______________________________

If you’re viewing a digital version of this publication, PLEASE read this plea from the publisher!

WANTED: Low-grade (cheap!) Simon & Kirby comics for TJKC research.

Send lists to John Morrow, TwoMorrows Advertising, 502 Saint Mary’s St., Raleigh, NC 27605 or call 919-833-8092. ______________________________

his is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE T DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you’re a print subscriber, or you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks—your support allows us to keep producing publications like this one.

If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT, and it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. If that’s the case, here’s what you should do:

WANTED: Especially interested in Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko pre-hero Marvel and early Marvel superhero covers, splashes, and pages. Buy-Sell-Trade!

Other artists too. Conrad Eschenberg, Rt. 1, Box 204-A, Cold Spring, NY 10516, (914)265-2649. ______________________________

1) Go ahead and READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, and see what you think.

2) If you enjoy it enough to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and purchase a legal download of it from our website, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop. We’d love to have you as a regular paid reader.

3) Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. 4) Finally, DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. We offer one complete issue of all our magazines for free downloading at our website, which should be sufficient for you to decide if you want to purchase others. If you enjoy our publications enough to keep downloading them, support our company by paying for the material we produce.

KIRBY MARVEL COMICS for sale. Free lists. Write Hamersky, PO Box 1334, San Diego, CA 92112-1334.

We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard-working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this work. We love what we do, but our editors, authors, and your local comic shop owner, rely on income from this publication to stay in business. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so will ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download.

England’s JACK KIRBY QUARTERLY is published about four times a year. Each issue is 24 or more pages with plenty of unseen Kirby art, interviews, insightful articles, reviews, commentary, all featuring the King’s work. Prices for a 4 issue subscription: £4.50 in the UK, £8.00 in the US, £7.00 in Europe, £9.00 in the rest of the world.

Send UK funds only, payable to: Chris Harper, 25 Napier Drive, The Parklands, Tipton, West Midlands, DY4 7NW, UK.

TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

www.twomorrows.com

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #14 A TWOMORROWS ADVERTISING PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE KIRBY ESTATE EDITED BY JOHN MORROW

Celebrating the life and career of the King!

BIMO NTHLY!

O N SALE HERE!

Posters For Sale!

DESIGN & LAYOUT BY JOHN & PAMELA MORROW PROOFREADING BY RICHARD HOWELL COVER COLOR BY TOM ZIUKO CONTRIBUTORS: ORLANDO ADIAO

JIM AMASH DICK AYERS JAMES CASSARA PIERRE COMTOIS JON B. COOKE CONRAD ESCHENBERG MARK EVANIER MIKE GARTLAND DAVID HAMILTON CHRIS HARPER PATRICK HILGER CARL HORAK ALEX JAY JAMES HENRY KLEIN RICHARD KOLKMAN TED KRASNIEWSKI MARTY LASICK HAROLD MAY MARK MAYERSON MARK MILLER BILL W. MILLER JOHN MODICA GREGORIO MONTEJO RICH MORRISSEY MARK PACELLA DAVID PEÑALOSA PHILLIPPE QUEVEAU DAN REED DANNY SERAFIN TONY SEYBERT SCOTT SHAW! WALT SIMONSON CHIC STONE CARL TAYLOR DANIEL TESMOINGT GREG THEAKSTON TOM ZIUKO SPECIAL THANKS TO: JIM AMASH JON B. COOKE MARK EVANIER D. HAMBONE RICHARD HOWELL MARTY LASICK DAVID PEÑALOSA WALT SIMONSON CHIC STONE GREG THEAKSTON TOM ZIUKO & OF COURSE ROZ KIRBY MAILING CREW GLEN MUSIAL ED STELLI PATRICK VARKER AND THE OTHER KIRBY FANS IN RALEIGH, NC

We have extra copies of the FULL-COLOR 17" x 23" promotional poster we give to comics shops that carry TJKC. Help us pay for our press run, and get a beautiful Kirby collectible in the process!

Price includes shipping in a sturdy mailing tube. ($7 US, $8 Canada, $10 outside N. America.)

Fully Authorized by the Kirby Estate

Retailers Get 5&40 Discounts and Free Shipping! Call 919-833-8092 To Carry TJKC In Your Store!

Thor, Recorder, Odin, Ulik, Loki, Don Blake, Balder, Mangog, Stone Men From Saturn, Thorr, Sif, Laufey, Karnilla, Henry Pym, Giant-Man, Wasp, Iron Man, Jane Foster, Heimdall, Zarko The Tomorrow Man, Absorbing Man, Hogan, Fandral, Volstagg, Replicus, Mr. Porgia, Tagar, Wrecker, Silver Surfer, Enchantress, Surtur, Haag, Galactus, Thermal Man, Ikaris, Thing, Capt. America © Marvel Entertainment, Inc. • Sandman, Sandy, Brooklyn, DC Thor, Stone Sentinels of Giant Island, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Dr. Fate, Lonar, Demon, Orion, Mr. Miracle © DC Comics, Inc.

50

Tarzan

Russ Manning

Buz Sawyer

Roy Crane

SKY MASTERS

Jack Kirby and Wally Wood

Comics Revue every month brings you the best of the comic strips, old and new, featuring: Sky Masters by Jack Kirby and Wally Wood, Buz Sawyer by Roy Crane, Steve Canyon by Milton Caniff, Tarzan of the Apes by Russ Manning, The Phantom by Lee Falk, Krazy Kat by George Herriman, Flash Gordon by Dan Barry, Alley Oop by V.T. Hamlin, Gasoline Alley by Dick Moores, Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell, and more.

Enclosed is: ❏ $45 for 12 issues (outside USA, $60 in US funds) ❏ $90 for 25 issues (outside USA, $120 in US funds) Your name: Address: City, State, Zip:

P.O. Box 336 Mountain Home, TN 37684 (423) 926-7495 51

Thor and Silver Surfer © Marvel Entertainment, Inc.