Jack Kirby Collector #24 by TwoMorrows Publishing

$5.95 In The US

TWOMORROWS BULLETINS • TWOMORROWS BULLETINS • TWOMORROWS BULLETINS • TWOMORROWS BULLETINS

A SIZZLING SLUGFEST OF SALUTATIONS YOU’RE SURE TO SAVOR! ITeM! This July, look for the 176-page COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOLUME 3 (our third TRADE PAPERBACK collection, reprinting TJKC #13-15 plus over 30 NEW pieces of Jack’s art)! So many of you have complained about not being able to find our sold-out issues that we’re continuing this annual tradition, so everyone can have access to our older issues. VOLUME 3 is only $16.95 ($19.95 Canada, $26.95 elsewhere)—and don’t forget the 160-page COLLECTED TJKC, VOLUME 2 (reprinting TJKC #10-12, plus 30 more new pieces of Kirby art), available for $14.95 postpaid ($16.95 Canada, $24.95 elsewhere). Also back in print is VOLUME 1 (240-pages, reprinting TJKC #1-9 plus 30 more new pieces of Jack’s art), just $21.95 ($24.95 Canada, $34.95 elsewhere). ITeM! The updated JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST is now shipping! It’s the most thorough listing of Kirby’s work ever published, and proceeds go to the Kirby Estate. This fullyupdated, definitive edition took over two years to complete, and lists in exacting detail EVERY PUBLISHED COMIC (we think!) featuring Jack’s work, including story titles, page counts, and inkers. It even cross-references reprints, to help collectors locate less-expensive versions of key Kirby issues, and includes an extensive bibliography listing BOOKS, PERIODICALS, PORTFOLIOS, FANzINES, POSTERS, and other obscure pieces with Kirby’s art, plus a detailed list of Jack’s UNPUBLISHED WORK as well. The updated version is 100 pages, and costs $5 postpaid ($5.50 Canada, $7.50 outside North America). It’s a must for the serious collector of Kirby’s work! ITeM! ALTER EGO GOES SOLO! Fans everywhere are buzzing about how Rascally ROY THOMAS’ classic comics ’zine ALTER EGO is spinning off from the back-up slot in COMIC BOOK ARTIST, into its own solo magazine! Fans and historians worldwide know no publication brings comics history to life like ALTER EGO, so don’t miss it! This June, look for ALTER EGO #1 (sporting a spectacular JERRY ORDWAY cover) at your local comics shop, or subscribe now for $20 for four quarterly issues ($27 Canada, $37 elsewhere). See the ad in this issue for a rundown of #1’s contents. ITeM! Speaking of COMIC BOOK ARTIST, issue #4 is now shipping, spotlighting WARREN PUBLISHING: EMPIRE OF HORROR! We had so much great art from top talents like BERNIE WRIGHTSON, RICHARD CORBEN, FRANK FRAzETTA, JACK DAVIS, AL WILLIAMSON, HARVEY KURTzMAN (plus a definitive interview with that master of the macabre, JIM WARREN), we increased it to 148 pages at no extra cost! CBA #1-4 are still available for $5.95 each, and you can subscribe for four issues for only $20 ($27 Canada, $37 elsewhere)!

If you want to get involved with CBA, submit copies of art from your collection and articles about your favorite comics artists to editor JON B. COOKE, PO Box 204, W. Kingston, RI 02892-0204. ITeM! Speaking of COMIC BOOK ARTIST (again!), we’re pleased as punch to announce that CBA was nominated for Diamond Distribution’s GEM AWARD for MAGAzINE OF THE YEAR! Plus, we just learned that CBA is also nominated for a HARVEY AWARD as “BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL, OR JOURNALISTIC

JOHN’S JUKEBOX When I slipped in my idea for a “Kirby’s Greatest Battles” theme issue in our “Upcoming Issues” box, it was for purely selfish reasons: I absolutely love NEW GODS #6: “The Glory Boat”! Apparently I’m not the only one, because when I went seeking people to do a page-by-page write-up of that classic tale, I had no trouble finding folks who’d jump at the chance! (So many so that I had to present it “tag-team” style; kinda apropos for this issue, don’tcha think?) With all the wonderful battle stories Kirby created, you wouldn’t think it’d be easy to reach a consensus among fans on which was best, but to my surprise, I received multiple submissions on several stories that were favorites. For instance, I got THREE unsolicited articles on TALES OF SUSPENSE #83 (Subby vs. Iron Man), all proclaiming how it was their favorite. Likewise, TWO-GUN KID #62 was a big winner, with two writers sending in articles. It just goes to show you: Everybody loves a good fight (at least once in a while), and nobody could create better ones than Kirby. Whether on the pages of his comics, or fighting over the actual original art pages themselves, there was never a dull moment. So here’s an issue that’ll hopefully let us all relive some of our favorite rough and tumble memories of Jack. Long Live The King!

ITeM! Jack’s grandson JEREMY KIRBY was recently going through some of his grandad’s files and discovered yet another unused idea for a comics series (completely fleshed out by Jack). Jeremy’s an up-and-coming writer, and with some assistance from MARK EVANIER as cowriter, this Kirby concept is in the final stages of development. Negotiations with a major publisher for this new comics series are wrapping up, and we’ll have more details shortly! ITeM! Quick notice: TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING’s new Web Site (maintained by RANDY HOPPE) is at www.twomorrows.com (with sample art and articles from each issue of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, COMIC BOOK ARTIST, and soon, the new, solo ALTER EGO)! And if you love getting tons of e-mail from fellow Kirby fans, join the KIRBY MAILING LIST by sending an e-mail request to Randy Hoppe at kirby-l@fantasty.com ITeM! We’re back from a successful trip to MEGACON in Orlando, FL and gearing up for several more shows this year. Look for the TwoMorrows booth at WONDERCON (April 16-18 in San Francisco, CA), the NEW YORK COMIC SPECTACULAR (May 7-9 at Madison Square Garden), HEROES CON (June 18-20 in Charlotte, NC), WIzARD WORLD (July 16-18 in Chicago, IL), COMICCON INTERNATIONAL (August 12-15 in San Diego, CA), and SPX: The SMALL PRESS EXPO (September 17-19 in Bethesda, MD)!

TWOMORROWS CHECKLIST For full descriptions of each issue, see page 67 John Morrow, Editor TwoMorrows Publishing 1812 Park Dr. • Raleigh, NC 27605 • (919) 833-8092 FAX (919) 833-8023 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

In MeMorIuM: Bruce Lowry We were terribly saddened to hear of the recent passing of Kirby fan BRUCE LOWRY. Bruce was a regular contributor to TJKC, and one of our charter subscribers way back in 1994. His influence was felt throughout fandom, from his dealings as a collector of original art, to his posts on various comics-related lists on the Internet. We’ll miss Bruce, and our heart goes out to his family and friends for their loss. We respectfully dedicate this issue to Bruce’s memory. PRESENTATION”! Since each issue seems to sell out as soon as it hits the stands (and the mag isn’t even a year old yet!), we’re thinking these are pretty good signs that it’ll be around a long, long time! (Let’s just hope ol’ JON B. COOKE doesn’t let all these accolades go to his head!) ITeM! Fourth World fans! DC’s had such success with their NEW GODS and MISTER MIRACLE paperbacks, they’ve scheduled a FOREVER PEOPLE volume for August! It reprints issues #1-11, plus Lonar and Young Gods back-ups, and features a new introduction by Manic MARK EVANIER. You’ve nagged DC for years to reprint this classic Kirby work, and you’ve put your money where your mouth is; let’s keep it going, and maybe we’ll see some JIMMY OLSEN, DEMON, KAMANDI, or DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET volumes one day! (Okay, we’re just kidding about that last one!)

THe coLLecTeD TJKc, VoLuMe one: 240-page trade paperback reprinting TJKC #1-9, plus new art! $21.95 ($24.95 Canada, $34.95 elsewhere) THe coLLecTeD TJKc, VoLuMe Two: 160-page trade paperback, reprinting TJKC #10-12, plus new Kirby art! $14.95 ($16.95 Canada, $24.95 elsewhere) THe coLLecTeD TJKc, VoLuMe THree: (new!) 176-page trade paperback, reprinting TJKC #13-15, plus new Kirby art! $16.95 ($19.95 Canada, $26.95 elsewhere) THe JAcK KIrBy cHecKLIST: (new!) 100 pages! $5.00 ($5.50 Canada, $7.50 elsewhere) BAcK ISSueS: $4.95 ($5.40 canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKc #7: 36-page KID GANGS theme issue! Few left! TJKc #13: 52-page SUPERNATURAL issue! Few left! TJKc #16: 52-page TOUGH GUYS theme issue! BAcK ISSueS: $5.95 ($6.40 canada, $8.40 elsewhere) TJKc #17: 68-page DC theme issue! TJKc #18: 68-page MARVEL theme issue! TJKc #19: 56-page ART theme issue! TJKc #20: 68-page WOMEN theme issue! TJKc #21: 68-page issue on Jack’s WACKIEST WORK! TJKc #22: 68-page issue on Jack’s VILLAINS! TJKc #23: 68-page issue where ANYTHING GOES! coMIc BooK ArTIST #1: (100-pages) DC Comics: 1967-74! ADAMS, INFANTINO, KIRBY, KUBERT, SEKOWSKY, CARDY, new ADAMS cover, and more! (Plus ALTER EGO!) $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere) coMIc BooK ArTIST #2: (100-pages) Marvel Comics: 1970-77! STAN LEE, KANE, STERANKO, WINDSORSMITH, STARLIN, PLOOG, new KANE cover, more! (Plus ALTER EGO!) $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere) coMIc BooK ArTIST #3: (100-pages) NEAL ADAMS: THE MARVEL YEARS! New ADAMS INTERVIEW, thumbnails, unused X-Men Graphic Novel pages, and more! (Plus ALTER EGO!) $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere) And Don’t Forget These new Items: coMIc BooK ArTIST #4: (148-pages) Warren Publishing! ALTer eGo #1: (80-pages) Ships in June! Subscribe now!

VISIT THE NEW TWOMORROWS WEB SITE: www.twomorrows.com 2

Issue #24 Featuring Kirby’s Greatest Battles! Contents: Our Gods At War ...............................4 (how experiences in WWII shaped Jack’s super-hero battles) Kirby On The New Gods ....................6 (Jack discusses the Fourth World) Battle Royal ........................................9 (Marvel’s greatest crossover battles) A Failure To Communicate...............12 (Part Four of our series comparing Jack’s margin notes to Stan’s dialogue, featuring “Him”) And In This Corner... .......................18 (superior slugfests with the King) Wah-Hoo!!........................................20 (a look at Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos) Shellhead, Subby, & Me ...................24 (why Tales To Astonish #82-83 may be Kirby’s finest hour) Two-Fisted Tales ...............................26 (a pair of hard-hitting remembrances of Two-Gun Kid #62) A Tank Knows No Mercy .................27 (a look at Battle #70) Art vs. Commerce.............................28 (Jim Shooter helps us examine Kirby’s art fight with Marvel Comics) Kirby’s Greatest Battle? ....................32 (what does a momento of Jack say about him?) Centerfold: Odyssey Pencils! .............34 Glory Be! ..........................................36 (three readers examine the editor’s favorite Kirby battle story in detail) Classifieds.........................................64 Collector Comments.........................65 Kirby Contest Answers.....................66

ISSUE #24, APR. 1999

FULLY AUTHORIZED BY THE KIRBY ESTATE

Wrap-around cover inks: Mike Mignola Cover color: Tom Ziuko Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils from published comics are reproduced here courtesy of the Kirby Estate, which has our thanks for their continued support. COPYRIGHTS: Circe, Odyssey Art, The Cyclops, Ulyses © Jack Kirby • Destroyer Duck © Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby • Alicia Masters, Android, Angel, Ant-Man, Balder, Baron Von Strucker, Beast, Bucky, Captain America, Cyclops, Dino Manelli, Dr. Doom, Dum-Dum Dugan, Fandral, Fantastic Four, Gabriel Jones, George Stonewell, Giant-Man, Hercules, Him, Hogun, Hulk, Human Torch, Iceman, Ikaris, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Izzy Cohen, Junior Juniper, Karnak, Loki, Mad Thinker, Mangog, Marvel Girl, Medusa, Moose Morgan, Mr. Fantastic, Pamela Hawley, Percival Pinkerton, Professor X, Rawhide Kid, Rebel Ralston, Reed Richards, Sandman, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Trapster, Two-Gun Kid, Volstagg, Wasp, Wizard, X-Men TM & © Marvel Entertainment, Inc. • Bat Lash, Batman, Brainiac, Bruno Borman, Creeper, Darkseid, Deadman, Demon, Enemy Ace, Farley Sheridan, Flash, Gole, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Henry Jones, Jaffar, Joker, Kid Flash, Lex Luthor, Lightray, Lynn Sheridan, Metamorpho, Metron, Mister Miracle, Orion, Parademons, Penguin, Richard Sheridan, Robin, Scott Free, Shaligo, Slig, Supergirl, Superman, The Deep Six, The Glory Boat, The Losers, The New Gods, Trok, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics, Inc.

Karnak pin-up pencils from FF Annual #5. These margin notes suggest this may have been an unused story page. The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 6, No. 24, April 1999. Published bi-monthly by & © TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Jon B. Cooke, Assoc. Editor. Single issues: $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $44.00 outside North America. First printing. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. PRINTED IN CANADA.

S D O G

Our Army At War How the combat tactics Kirby learned in World War II might have shaped his super-hero battles, by Robert L. Bryant Jr id you ever read the Kirby comic in which a tough sergeant and a raw recruit teamed up to destroy a Nazi terror weapon that had gotten loose behind US lines? Sure you did. It was New Gods #6: “The Glory Boat.” Orion as the grizzled noncom and Lightray as the uncertain private? The Deep Six as S.S. officers? A mutated, horned whale as a war machine? Of course—this issue spotlights Kirby’s greatest battles, and surely the greatest of them all was his service in World War II’s European Theater and the 1944 Normandy invasion. Did Kirby’s infantry battles for a world at war influence the super-hero battles he would plot and draw decades later for a world at peace? Kirby was a PFC in Patton’s Army, just a grunt with an American flag patch on one shoulder and an M-l carbine over the other. He wouldn’t have been privy to planning the battles, but Kirby was as much a student of war as of everything else; he knew, the hard way, how men at arms thought and fought; he knew, the hard way, how it felt to be part of the biggest war machine ever formed on Earth. The war stayed in Kirby’s nightmares, according to interviews with his wife, Roz, and we can make a pretty good case that it also stayed in his stories of the Fantastic Four, Thor, and New Gods. Some cases in point:

tanks back to the post, then kaboom!—more or less what Patton’s boys might have done. (Unresolved issue: In the story, Kirby pointedly makes the rescued businessman, Farley Sheridan, not just one of his contemporaries, not just a fellow Army veteran, but specifically a Normandy vet. Nobody walked away from that piece of French coastline without looking death in the eye, but Kirby depicts Sheridan as a fool and a coward; the son, Richard, is painted as the cool, brave one, even though he’s a

New Gods #6,“The Glory Boat” The plot: The Deep Six, finny henchmen of Darkseid, have mutated a whale into a pinkish, horned mountain of death and turned it loose on the seas of Earth. Orion and Lightray, coping with three chatty noncombatants—one of them, like Kirby, a Normandy vet!—find the Deep Six’s “control ship” and start improvising. They rework the ship’s biological “brain” so it’ll lure the big fish back, fight a skirmish with the Six and then blow them all to hell with a mega-bomb reshaped from the control ship itself. The World War II analogy: A Nazi division has set loose a terror weapon behind our lines—or better yet, a division of super-Panzer tanks. Opposing it are only the lightly armed “Sgt. O’Ryan” and his sidekick, the naive “Pvt. Ray.” The sarge knows a frontal assault will fail, especially with three civilians tripping over things. So he seeks out the Nazis’ (empty) forward command post, which holds all the equipment he needs to booby-trap the whole complex. O’Ryan finds a way to signal the

Thor enters the Mangog battle in these pencils from Thor #157, page 10. 4

“conscientious objector.” Kirby’s commentary not on World War II, but on Vietnam? On the old soldiers who wanted their sons to fight that pointless war for the wrong reasons? “You won’t change!” Sheridan tells his draft-age son. “You’ll never fight when duty demands it!” But of course, he does, even as his dad freezes in fear at the sight of Jaffar and seemingly goes insane.)

grasps the enchanted sword, only to again be slapped down by Odin’s wrath. The World War II analogy: None. The Nazis never sent a supercommando squad to assault Washington or anything like that. But the storyline turns on a military question: How do you assault a large, well-defended installation? Mangog knows how—he uses a variation of the US infantry’s standard “flank and fire” maneuver, attacking and dodging, feinting and running, until he’s drawn out all the defenders and he’s standing at the doorsteps of Asgard (but Odin is a power not listed in the military manuals). There are other examples: In New Gods #7 (1972), “The Pact,” Kirby indicts the mentality of organized warfare, in which a technological breakthrough (Metron’s X-Element) opens the door to full-scale war between New Genesis and Apokolips, with one terror weapon being trumped by another in an endless spiral. (Although in World War II, a technological breakthrough—the atomic bomb—ended a full-scale war, it was a different world in the 1970s. The older brothers of the kids reading Kirby comics were being shredded in Southeast Asia, and US technology, like those Bell Huey helicopters, was only getting us in deeper.) But when Kirby takes a more narrow focus—the foxholes, not the Generals’ war plans—his war stories generally sound similar notes. In Kirby’s comics, ingenuity nearly always defeats a superior force— particularly the kind of ingenuity that turns an enemy’s own weapons or equipment against him. That might be a lesson Pvt. Kirby absorbed somewhere in the Normandy hedgerows.★

Fantastic Four #86, “The Victims” The plot: Stripped of their powers by Doctor Doom, the FF are trapped in Doom’s Latveria home court just as the good doctor’s army of homemade robots breaks loose. The FF fall back and try to organize the local villagers against the robots. Finally, forced into a last stand, the heroes find a way to use Doom’s hidden technology against the marauders, and giant underground fans (every European village has some) whoosh the mechanical men into a lake. The World War II analogy: A small American squad, its weapons or ammunition lost, is trapped behind German lines in France. Capt. Reed Richards finds shelter for his people with Resistance villagers as hordes of Nazi troops advance on the town. The Americans try to organize and arm the villagers, retreating until they can jury-rig a last-chance offensive against the enemy. (No giant underground fans in World War II... but the rustic Latverian town in the story is almost a dead ringer for the French villages Kirby would have seen after the 1944 invasion.)

Thor #154-157, Mangog vs. Asgard The plot: The Mangog, distilled essence of a “billion billion beings,” escapes from his Odin-imposed imprisonment and makes a beeline for Asgard, there to unsheathe the Odinsword and end all life in the universe. Thor and his allies battle him all along the way, to no avail, and Mangog

(The writer gratefully acknowledges Stephen Ambrose’s “D-Day” and “Citizen Soldiers “ for their insights into World War II and those who fought it.)

Jack’s 1977 interpretation of characters from The Odyssey (we’re unsure if this was intended for a series).

See this issue’s cover and centerfold for Jack’s use of these characters. 5

Apokolips—an evil name in itself. Orion went in search of his true origins; Orion went to the place he thought he belonged, and he tried to find the people to whom he really meant something. He tried to find Lightray; he tried to find Highfather, the ruler of New Genesis, a planet as good as Darkseid’s planet Apokolips was evil. There on New Genesis were Orion’s roots, and friends, and family. He could sense it, and he went in search of them. Engendered in all this is a social pattern, and social thought, and the ever-present contention between good and evil. Good and evil are forever in contention, and each will forever try to cancel out the other. This lies behind the path we all tread. We live our lives out making the decisions that will clear up the dividing line between good and evil. Of course, an epic tale can’t be based solely on two characters; there’s got to be a variety of characters in order to make clear and evaluate your own social values. So I had my own cast; I had Metron, who was an observer of all these activities that took place. We have such people; we have people that are unemotionally involved with any kind of situation. I had Lightray; Lightray, of course, is a lighthearted character, and enjoyed life; and we see people like that every day. They cause no harm, and they devise and make use of all the

Kirby On The New Gods (This transcription is of a taped recitation by Jack, apparently in answer to some questions he received from a fan—as near as we can tell—sometime in the mid-to-late 1980s. What follows is Jack in the twilight of his career, recounting his thought processes behind the New Gods series.)

y mother and father were immigrants from Austria, and they came to the US during that period of mass migration from Europe. There were people of many origins here, and my parents were among the many who came to New York. My mother, of course, told me many of the old European folk tales, which she brought with her. From these tales I learned to appreciate the art of storytelling, and you’ll find that many of my stories have both mythological and historical elements of truth in their makeup. I’ve noticed that throughout the years, each civilization had its own historical facts, its own historical legends, and its own historical ways of storytelling. I began to ask myself the question of, “What were the ingredients of our own storytelling—of the storytelling we see today all about us, in the various material that we read?” With comics as my vehicle for telling a story, I began to set down the kind of thoughts that were common to the period in which I was raised. You’ll find that the elements are mixed, but they have validity and they have the potency of truth. The main characters of the Fourth World series are comprised of people who occupy the various positions in two different families. My conjecture—which is part of good storytelling, I think—still had to do with good and evil, and therefore I contrived an evil world with an evil family, and a good world with a good family. The key element of my story was Orion, who left his evil world to find his true roots, which were embedded in the planet of Highfather. Orion was essentially traded at birth by the evil Darkseid to Highfather, in exchange for a young child who later became Mister Miracle. Despite the fact he had broken the law of Darkseid, Darkseid still considered him his son. And of course, that became an element in the story which was frustrating to the villain, because the villain considered the fact that no father would try to destroy his own son. Considering Orion his own son, Darkseid could not destroy him. But still he had to find ways of stopping him and punishing him for the deeds that he considered objectionable to the evil planet that he ruled. The evil world Darkseid came from was called Late Kirby pencils from the cover of Super Powers #5 (first series), featuring one of Jack’s last great battle stories.

wonderful diversions that lighten our lives. What they can’t find for amusement, they will create for amusement. They will not live their lives in vain; they will try to enjoy life. And of course, Lightray is such a character. Highfather is our conception of a being who gives us our total goodness, and of course, that being comes with many names, in many languages on our own Earth. In the world that I created, I called him Highfather. Highfather—the opposite of Darkseid—receives Orion, who is his own true son. Of course, that heightens the situation, and makes it ready for more adventure. Big Barda is the female star of the story, and a girl who is both vital and brave, and has everything we might want to find in the perfect female. I tried to create a female vision of this sort, and I think I found it in Big Barda. Mister Miracle, the magician, became his own magic. He was the one Orion was traded for, and he would never be the kind of character Darkseid would ever consider as an ally. Mister Miracle would have to join Orion in his battle to forever rid themselves of Darkseid in some way. The New Gods was my own attempt to create a comic book epic, and this I did. I used four books in which to do it, including an episode in Jimmy Olsen, which was part of the DC line at the time. I filled it with a cast and creations that were highly innovative for the period, and I tried to be as creative as I could. I had a Black man, Vykin the Black, and he was part of the epic. I filled it with the people of the Sixties, and I called them the Forever People, because they seemed like Forever People to me. They were a new step, a new social event in the epic of Darkseid meets an “everyman” comic book artist in Super Powers #5. America, so I called them the reader could identify with the characters. The book itself blossomed Forever People. The Forever People were the young people of their into many others, and became an epic in itself for years. time; beautiful, active, highly intelligent, and wonderful material for Good guys usually triumph over bad guys. Bad guys, no matter stories. I used the young people of the times; the times themselves how clever they are, operate outside our law. Sooner or later, they became the backdrop of my stories. I had a wonderful experience in must make a mistake that will bring them in contention with that creating new characters. law, and then they will fail. Oddly enough, it was Darkseid, the most evil of the characters, I don’t believe I lessened the use of violence, as I did in any of my that brought the others all together. It was Darkseid’s dealings with stories in the past. What I did was broaden the social content of the all of them that became the manner in which I could demonstrate environment in which my characters operated. I began to bring a little how we all deal with evil. I made it as realistic as possible, and the 7

realism into the lives of my characters, and made the environment seem a little more real. In doing that, the reader himself would find the contact with his own times. When I did use violence, I used it in a sense of an historic event. If you take the epic of the French Revolution, you’ll find that violence was very, very common in that particular part of history. The Hunger Dogs— one of the episodes of the New Gods—contained the kind of element you’ll find in the French Revolution, and the kind of violence that stems from an oppressive atmosphere. In that particular story, there was very little food for those who needed it badly, and when you have a situation where you have people deprived of the bare essentials, you’ll witness violence of great proportions. In that particular episode, I felt that I’d recreated an actual event which I believed was not only historically correct, but a great aid to the kind of story that I wanted to tell. In the New Gods, I became aware of the amount of detail that was important in telling the story. By detail, I mean environmental detail, background detail; the crowds, the buildings, the feeling for the times. In doing so, I found my drawings tightening. I found my drawings becoming more illustrative, and better than I’d ever done them before. I have the New Gods to thank for that. I wouldn’t say my drawings were illustrations of any kind, but they were great comic drawings, and they fulfilled the kind of goal I was reaching for in all my years of doing comics. In doing Captain America, I’d concentrate on doing a few figures, and tell the story correctly. The figures were active; they bounced all over the page, but they needed very little background. In telling A Kirby Joker and Penguin from Super Powers #5 (first series). the story of the New Gods, I itself. It was a story that was fully rounded, with people, with background, told an entire story. I gave the entire picture of the events which tranand with the satisfaction of innovation. spired. In that way, I feel I have made a giant step in dealing with my To bring this to a conclusion, I’d like to say that I felt the New Gods own creative ability, my own feelings for people, and my own visions were our gods. They were not the gods of the medieval ages; not the of the future. Greek gods; not the gods that came before them. The New Gods were You must understand that during the Fourth World stories, there the kind of people that made our own millennium. We live in the age were hundreds of characters, probably too numerous to mention, that of the New Gods, and the New Gods are still developing. So I felt they were really outstanding on their own. I consider this another accomrepresented you and I, and the people we know; the people of our time. plishment which came very unexpectedly when I saw the New Gods They represent the 1990s, and they’ll probably go on from there.★ in their entirety. So I consider this a great accomplishment in the field 8

lative work for the Marvel Annuals, and this was no exception, enhanced by Steve Ditko’s best-ever inks on a Kirby book.

Amazing Spider-Man #8: Spider-Man vs. Human Torch Fantastic Four Annual #1: The FF vs. Spider-Man Both feature Spidey and the FF, both are Kirby/Ditko efforts, and at six pages each, both are too brief to really catch fire; great short stories nevertheless.

Avengers #3: Hulk & Sub-Mariner vs. the Avengers This is a prime example of why early Avengers stories were so compelling. The Hulk was a wild card; you never knew if he would pop up as a hero, a villain, or perhaps even rejoin the group entirely. (Actually, after issue #5, he pretty much just disappeared.) In this tale, the Hulk is being pursued by the Avengers, and meets the Sub-Mariner As great as Avengers #4 was, it has no single moment as visually exciting as this one from Strange Tales #114. on an isle in the North Atlantic. After a brief battle, the two form an uneasy alliance and challenge the Avengers to a brawl at Gibraltar. A superb super-hero slugfest ensues, then suddenly the Hulk reverts back to Bruce Banner and runs away to protect his secret identity. Namor, enraged by his partner’s seeming betrayal, escapes back to the sea. Despite less-thaninspired inking by Paul Reinman, this is great early Marvel stuff. Marvel’s Greatest Crossover Battles, by Mark Alexander

Battle Royal!

Fantastic Four #12, 25, & 26: The FF vs. the Hulk

y the 1960s comic book “crossovers” were commonplace. DC, the leader of the pack, featured them regularly and they were pretty much formulated. The heroes would A) team up, B) defeat the bad guy, then C) smile and shake hands, chummy as could be. It was pretty tame stuff. Kirby’s characters, however, were decidedly different; nearly every time the Marvel super-heroes met it was in battle royal. In page after page of brawling, steel-shattering slugfests, they would pummel each other into near oblivion, often tearing up half of New York in the process. Jack’s fight scenes were pure power, and they seemed to burst right off the printed page. Fists pounded like jackhammers, walls fell like avalanches, and Kirbyesque debris flew everywhere. Of all the things Jack could do well, battle is what he did best. Here are some prime examples.

When the Fantastic Four first tackled the Hulk in FF #12, it was, surprisingly, a non-event. They didn’t meet until page 17, and their ensuing battle lasted a mere three pages. FF #25 and 26 made up for it. First, Reed and Johnny are hospitalized due to illness and injury, while Sue finds her invisibility powers far too weak to cope with the Hulk’s titanic strength. This enables the action to focus solely on the

Strange Tales #114: Human Torch vs. Captain America It didn’t matter that the Captain America in this story was bogus. When the star-spangled “Sentinel of Liberty” vaulted forward on page four in that classic Kirby in-your-face splash panel, it was one of the most exciting moments of the entire Silver Age. With the sudden fury of a thunderbolt, Captain America was back, and what followed was an astonishing Kirby/Ayers free-for-all featuring two of Marvel’s greatest Golden Age heroes locked in mortal combat. This epic encounter generated so much reader response that the real C.A. was brought back to take his rightful place among Marvel’s (then fledgling) galaxy of stars.

Strange Tales Annual #2: Human Torch vs. Spider-Man This was the first (and best) of many “Spider-Man vs. the Torch” conflicts. After being framed by a rather lackluster villain called The Fox, Spider-Man encounters the Torch, and a sensational seven-page struggle begins. The Torch finally realizes that Spidey is innocent, and they team up to defeat the real perpetrator. The King always did super-

The Hulk gloats after walloping the Thing in Fantastic Four #25. 9

defeat the Fantastic Four by pitting them against the X-Men. The Puppet Master assumes mental control over Professor X through a radioactive clay puppet, and when the brainwashed leader of the X-Men orders his students to attack the FF, a cataclysmic clash develops. Chic Stone checks in on inks and gives the book its most appealing look since the Ayers run. It’s a good read, but it falls short of FF #25 & 26.

X-Men #9: The X-Men vs. the Avengers Another Kirby/Stone Marvel masterpiece, this story takes place in Europe where Professor X (solo) is fighting a villain called Lucifer. The X-Men sail over to join him, and are confronted by the Avengers who have also detected Lucifer’s evil presence. On the orders of their leader, the mutant-teens challenge the Avengers to a “guest-stars galore” battle, and Kirby proves once again how adept he is at choreographing group fight scenes. One assumes the mighty Avengers would have eventually annihilated these kids, but (of course) it never got that far.

Journey Into Mystery #112: Thor vs. the Hulk Marvel had been swamped with fan mail asking which one of these two was stronger, and this battle was the result. The story actually occurred during Avengers #3, but was not reported at that time. Thor, X-Men #9, where the mutants took on the Avengers. Hulk and the Thing, an incredibly canny move by Stan and Jack. (This wasn’t the case in FF #12, which is precisely why it failed.) As the entire city watches, Marvel’s two misunderstood monsters slug it out on streets, subways, bridges, and skyscrapers, leaving mass destruction strewn in their wake. As mind-boggling as these scenes are, it is the subtleties of the story which make it truly exceptional, such as Reed and Johnny’s unwillingness to succumb to their infirmities (knowing that Ben needs them) and the Thing’s stubborn refusal to surrender to a more powerful foe. In issue #26, the FF regroup, the Avengers step in, and all hell breaks loose as an unstoppable, revenge-crazed Hulk lashes out at his former partner Rick Jones for teaming up with Captain America. A prodigious battle unfolds atop a skyscraper construction site, where all the heroes get a shot at the Hulk. Finally, Giant-Man’s ants drive the Hulk into the Hudson River where he re-emerges as Bruce Banner. Comics don’t get any better than this.

Fantastic Four #28: The FF vs. the X-Men In this issue the Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master team up to (above) Journey Into Mystery #112. (lower left) FF #28. in order to prove that his strength is equal to the Hulk’s, has Odin suspend his hammer’s power for five minutes, while he tackles the Hulk with his fists alone. A great conflict ensues with lots of large-panel drawings which were a rarity before Marvel switched to smaller-sized art boards a couple of years later. Like most Marvel crossovers, this contest had no decisive outcome, and if the fans found this unsatisfying, at least they couldn’t complain about the artwork: With Chic Stone on inks, this book has one of the greatest covers of all time.

Journey Into Mystery Annual #1: Thor vs. Hercules While battling two Storm Giants with Loki in tow, Thor accidentally falls into a time-space continuum which transports him from Asgard to Olympus, the home of the Greek gods. He soon confronts Hercules on a narrow bridge, and when neither will yield to the others’ desire to cross first, a battle begins. (Jack obviously got this idea from the legendary first meeting of Robin Hood and Little John.) Again, there’s no clear-cut victor in this tale: Zeus appears and declares the contest a draw, and sends Thor back home. It’s a great first encounter, but like FF #12, it’s a precursor to a grander, more apocalyptic struggle. 10

(above) Thor #126, featuring Jack’s margin notes for the battle between Thor and Hercules. Jack was creating this epic storyline at the same time he was producing the Galactus Trilogy in Fantastic Four #48-50. (right) Thor and the Thing slug it out in Fantastic Four #73.

Thor #126: Thor vs. Hercules Here we find the son of Odin and the son of Zeus once again pitted in combat, this time over Thor’s love interest, Jane Foster. The story is reminiscent of FF #25, i.e. two super-foes (albeit more handsome ones) obliterating New York city in the throes of battle. However, Jack’s artwork had improved considerably since the Hulk/Thing clash, and here we see some of the most splendidly choreographed battle scenes of all time as the Thunder God and the Prince of Power demolish semi-trucks and destroy entire buildings in graphic, convincing detail. Unlike most Marvel crossovers, this one has a decisive outcome: Thor is thoroughly defeated by Hercules when Odin steps in and strips him of half his power.

Fantastic Four #73: The FF vs. Daredevil, Thor, and Spider-Man In this issue the Fantastic Four, sans the Invisible Girl, wrongly assume that Daredevil is Doctor Doom incognito, and prepare to attack him. Realizing what he’s up against, the Man Without Fear enlists the aid of Spider-Man, who in turn solicits the help of Thor (who for the umpteenth time has been stripped of half his power by Odin). Reed, Ben, and Johnny then pair off with (respectively) DD, Thor, and Spidey for Jack’s last great crossover battle which ends when Sue Richards suddenly appears to sort the whole thing out. Sadly, in the final analysis, this story seemed like (and was) an anachronism; a throwback to Marvel’s early glory days when Jack’s colorful characters slugged it out all over New York City. Those early crossovers were implemented to show that the Marvel super-heroes were all part of a cohesive universe. By 1968 (the time of this story) that had been done, and it was time to move on, just as Jack himself would do two years later when he “crossed over” to National.★ 11

A Failure To Communicate: Part Four by Mike Gartland

The Last Straw? t’s the Summer of 1967, arguably the height of the ’60s. Among some of the things occurring (or “happening” as it was referred to then): Expo ’67 was in full swing, Sgt. Pepper was the album to ingest and discuss, the Arabs & Israelis experienced a bloody six-day war, there were race riots in Detroit that were just as bloody, and Vietnam kept rolling along, with Summer protests and young people dying. Definitely a time of turmoil for many, which brings us to... Marvel Comics?? Well, some will say turmoil is turmoil; and facts are facts; and A is A; and what has this to do with Kirby & Lee? Well... During that Summer of ’67, on the stands was the latest new adventure of Marvel’s then flagship title: The Fantastic Four. In June and July issues #66 and 67 premiered “The Mystery of The Human Beehive.” By this time, readers were so used to seeing new and inventive creations and situations in the pages of FF every month, they were almost becoming jaded. What no one realized at that time was, with this story, readers were taking in what would be the virtual end of an incredibly productive run. As we have seen in previous articles, during this time at Marvel Jack Kirby was becoming more and more disenchanted with his position with the Company and his working relationship with Stan Lee. Over the previous twelve months Jack witnessed Marvel receive a great deal of publicity; articles in newspapers and magazines hailing Lee for his new and innovative style, and how the readership wondered how Lee “came up” with characters like the Hulk, Thor, and Spider-Man, among others. Jack was also having his share of (above) A new Kirby character about to be born in FF #67. (next page) “Him” returns to do battle in Thor #166. business battles with Goodman, be following his margin notations when he dialogued those stories). a man who never understood Kirby’s value to the Company (Lee, to This latest installment in FF #66 and 67 would become yet another his credit, did), concerning his contract and his wanting to earn the dispute that would eventually help contribute to the end of Kirby’s most he could—and Jack was tired of submitting stories with his margin creative generosity. notes for direction, being either changed or ignored by Lee (by this Readers familiar with the storyline will remember that Alicia time Kirby felt in control of the storylines, and felt that Stan should

The return of “Him” in Thor #166 is one of many instances of Jack reusing established characters, rather than creating new ones. While they still made for interesting stories, few ground-breaking concepts emerged from Kirby’s work after FF #67. 14

Masters was abducted in issue #65 (the usual plotteaser so often utilized by Jack to entice readers to “stay tuned” for the next issue) and taken to the mysterious “Citadel of Science” in which “The Human Beehive” exists. Technicians and scientists gathered together in secret to perform the most awesome of experiments: The creation of a perfect human being. The experiment grows more quickly than anticipated, however, and escapes without anyone being able to get a look at “him” due to the energy he radiates. They therefore need Alicia’s talents to sculpt a representation of “him.” The scientists unfortunately (and of course) harbor a secret from Alicia. In the next issue we learn that the scientists are creating this perfect human as the forerunner of an entire supreme race, to be dominated by the scientists in order to fulfill their dreams of world conquest. They will create the ultimate army that will conquer the world for their masters. The scientists refer to each other as “mad,” “greedy,” and “murderous.” Fortunately, the FF arrive in time to rescue Alicia, just as the supreme human is emerging from his “cocoon.” After the FF and Alicia have departed, the being, known throughout the storyline only as “Him” confronts his creators. He explains that Earth is not yet ready for him, and that he knows of his creators’ evil intent; he therefore will leave the planet, at the same time destroying the evil scientists, thereby rendering mankind a great unknown favor. After spouting a few more cliches, “Him” is gone. That’s how the story read; that wasn’t, however, how the story was written. As stated previously, the Sixties was a time of turmoil; there were more

social changes occurring than had been seen in decades. Movements, philosophies, and even religions were being born in this decade, or were at least reaching public awareness. One of these movements would play an interesting role in Silver Age Marvel history. The philosophy of Objectivism was developed by its discoverer, Ayn Rand, in the late Fifties, gaining strength in the early-to-mid-Sixties. Explaining the fundamentals of Objectivism would, unfortunately, take up too much space here and I admit that I am not versed in it well enough to do it justice. So, with apologies to Objectivists and those more learned, please refer to the sidebar for information obtained from AynRand.org. According to Mark Evanier (based on conversations he had with Kirby), Jack originally intended for this storyline to represent his take on the Objectivist philosophy. What Jack had read of Ayn Rand and had explained to him had gotten him to thinking about the philosophy and its pitfalls (some, of course, will dispute that there are pitfalls in it and that is their right), which led him to do a story about it. Jack probably did not consciously think, “Here’s my answer to Ayn Rand”; his primary goal was, as always, to just write a good story. But in Jack’s original story, the scientists are well-intentioned, with no evil plans. They are attempting to create a being totally self-sufficient, intellectually self-reliant; not encumbered by superstition, fear, or doubt; in short, a being based on Rand’s absolutes. Of course such a being would be totally intolerant of those who created him; a truly Objectivistic being would not cope with the flaws in others. In the first part of the story, the scientists attack the being in an attempt to control him. This violates one of the doctrines of Objectivism; also, the scientists are conducting this experiment for the benefit or betterment of mankind—another violation. The being destroys his creators at the end of the story not to help mankind, but because in his eyes they are evil; no matter how well-intentioned, they tried to destroy him. He is allowed to act in his own self-defense; remember, in the eyes of the Objectivist there is no gray area between good and evil. On the other hand, Jack simply may have wanted to show on that last page the vast difference between Altruism and Objectivism; the scientists, thinking of their fellow man, create a totally self-interested being who, of course, uncaringly destroys them because they don’t meet with his criteria. Whatever the case, according In Jack’s original story, the scientists weren’t evil. to Evanier, when Stan received the first part of this storyline, he felt that changes had to be made. Perhaps he found its content too negative to a given philosophy, politically-based, or simply confusing to him. Stan didn’t notice any villain in the story and almost always felt that every story had to have a bad guy, so he had to come up with one. He could only choose between the being or the scientists and it was simplicity to just go the “Mad Scientist/Sympathetic Creature” route; it worked for Frankenstein,

Objectivism Objectivism answers the questions posed in the five main branches of philosophy as Plato defined them which are: 1. Metaphysics: The nature of the Universe which man has to deal with. 2. Epistemology: The means by which he has to deal with it, ie. the means of acquiring knowledge. 3. Ethics: The standards by which he is to choose his goals and values in regards to his own life and character. 4. Politics: The standards by which he is to choose his goals and values in regard to society. 5. Esthetics: The means of concretizing this view. Objectivism answers these branches thusly (again summarized): 1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality. Reality exists as an objective absolute; facts are facts independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. (This is the famous “A is A” axiom.) Thus Objectivism rejects any belief in the supernatural—and any claim that individuals or groups create their own reality. 2. Epistemology: Reason. Reason, the conceptual faculty, is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. Reason is man’s only means of acquiring knowledge. Thus Objectivism rejects mysticism and skepticism. 3. Ethics: Self-interest. Man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake; neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself. Thus Objectivism rejects any form of altruism—the claim that normality consists in living for others or society. 4. Politics: Laissez-faire Capitalism. The only social system that bars physical force from human relationships. No man or group has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. Man has the right to use physical force only in self-defense and ONLY against those who initiate its use. Thus Objectivism rejects any form of collectivism, such as fascism or socialism. Men must deal with one another as traders, giving value for value. 5. Esthetics: Romantic Realism (does not apply to this article) Objectivism also rejects any form of determinism, the belief that man is a victim of forces beyond his control (such as God, fate, upbringing, genes, or economic conditions). Source: AynRand.org 15

part, he wasn’t pleased at all. His storyline had been corrupted; the entire reason for the story had been gutted, replaced with a standard comic book plot; and he was now (due to the fact that this issue was going to print) forced to change the rest of his story to support Lee’s version. Jack may have intended for this story to be longer, but after seeing this, the story would be ended with the next issue. The story that Jack wanted: “Create a superior human and he just might find you inferior enough to get rid of,” became through Lee another “bad guys try to take over world and get their comeuppance” story. Creatively, Jack had reached another impasse with Lee. It was no longer as it was when they worked together just a few years previous, where they would have long plot discussions and the stories were kept simple. As Marvel began to grow in scope, the workload for Lee became more and more involved; what with editing stories and art, Stan also had to help write stories for practically every title, working with many other artists—not to mention business meetings and publicity appearances. As read in the now-famous (or “infamous”) interview of Stan for the magazine Castle of Frankenstein, Stan gave little input to Jack concerning stories during this time, having full confidence in Jack’s ability to continue coming up with new characters and situations. Jack was on his own, communicating plots with Lee briefly, with Stan not knowing what was coming up in the next issue on many occasions. Unfortunately, Stan considered Jack’s input on these stories as “plots,” whereas Jack thought of them as “stories,” meaning that he, Jack, was the writer, not Stan. As Jack was left more and more to his own devices, he found it more and more intolerable to accept the changes that Lee would make to his stories, and throughout the whole thing, take credit as the writer of these stories. They were growing apart, and in more or less different directions. Their collaborations clicked best when they worked on hero vs. villain (or hero vs. hero), single-story, human frailty, Earth-bound plots; but now Jack’s stories were becoming very complicated plots, continuing over several issues, involving ideas and concepts touching on mythology, space, science, religion, philosophy, and politics. The

More from Thor #166. right? During these years Stan would have photostats shot of Jack’s artwork, to be sent back to Jack so that he could remember his plot continuities in these multi-part stories of his. These photostats would have Stan’s dialogue intact to show Jack how Stan was interpreting the stories. When Jack received the photostats to issue #66, the first 16

scope was becoming grander and grander. Stan shined when he wrote about the human condition, but Jack was now reaching for the stars and what was beyond humanity. With the conclusion of this story (and while this was by no means the main reason, it was a biggie—but there were apparently dozens Lee’s dialogue gets Kirby’s noble scientists “mad.” of other reasons), Jack decides that he has given enough new characters, devices, and situations to Marvel. He had seen one after another of his creations and/or stories changed against his wishes or taken away from him. He didn’t really want to stay at Marvel anymore, but at this particular time there weren’t any avenues open to him that would offer him any better working conditions; so he figured he’d have to make the most of it. He just wouldn’t give them anything new anymore, or at least anything that was to him substantial. Lest anyone doubt the creative input from Kirby, from November ’65 to November ’67—two years where Jack was pretty much doing the stories on his own, plus plotting for other books that he wasn’t drawing—from the imagination of this man came: Black Bolt, Gorgon, Crystal, Triton, Karnak, Lockjaw, Galactus, The Silver Surfer, Wyatt Wingfoot, The Black Panther, Klaw, Sub-Space (later dubbed The Negative Zone), Blastaar, The Sentry, The Supreme Intelligence, The Kree, Ronan, Him, Psycho-Man, Hercules, Pluto, Zeus and the Greek Pantheon, Tana Nile and The Space Colonizers, The Black Galaxy, Ego the Bioverse, The High Evolutionary, Wundagore and The New-Men, The ManBeast, Ulik, Orikal, The Growing Man, Replicus, The Enchanters, The Three Sleepers, Batroc, A.I.M., The Cosmic Cube, The Adaptoid (who later becomes The SuperAdaptoid), Modok, Mentallo, The Fixer, The Demon Druid, The Sentinels, and The Mimic. This is not complete as secondary creations such as The Seeker, Prester

John, The Tumbler and others weren’t mentioned; but they all premiered within the two-year period. After November ’67, for the last three years that Jack worked for Marvel, you get the exact opposite; many secondary characters, but very few memorable ones. In FF, the only character of note after November ’67 is Annihilus. In Thor you have Mangog and possibly The Wrecker. In Cap you could consider Dr. Faustus and The Exiles. Jack does some good work with some of the classic characters like Dr. Doom, the Mole Man, and Galactus among others. Even the “Him” character is brought back in Thor #165 and 166 in a pretty standard Kirby slugfest. (It’s interesting to note that throughout the story, Jack refers to the character as “Cocoon Man”; perhaps Jack objected to the “Him” name?) In any event it’s pretty obvious where “The House of Ideas” got their “ideas” from; but now the “house” was being put under creative foreclosure; in fact towards the end, Jack was asking Stan to come up with “ideas” for the stories, which is why you have characters like The Monocle, the Crypto-Man, and a retread of The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the last few Lee/Kirby issues. Many pundits believed that the creative spark was waning, but Jack was merely biding his time until something better came along. New and exciting characters were still being created by Jack, but Marvel wouldn’t get them. The New Gods was a concept nurturing within Kirby’s brain while he was still at Marvel; but because of a failure to communicate, it would always remain a tale of “what might have been.”★ (Our thanks to Mark Evanier for background information for this article.)

The final scene from FF #67; a rather abrupt ending to what might have been Jack’s last great concept at Marvel in the 1960s. 17

warded off with imaginary repulsor rays while rebounding hammers bounced off of gleaming surfboards as a whizzing shield sent everyone (who wasn’t pretending to be the star-spangled Avenger) for cover. We picked up boulders (as Hercules had done) and tossed them at grimfaced playmates calmly adjusting their ‘visors’ (as Cyclops had done) and leaped gracefully away (like DD) when the Cyke-impersonators happily announced that those flying boulders were now no more than flying rocks. Kirby made it happen for us. Later on, fierce Orion opened up New Gods #1 with, “I have heard the word and it is BATTLE!” Some terrific action was on the way. Jack was through with New York for a while. Metropolis would be one of his new battlefields. In my humble opinion, the following fights were his all-time best.

And In This Corner... Superior slugfests by the King, reviewed by Jerry Boyd fter the last, magical Hanna-Barbera cartoon on Super Saturday sadly dissolved from our television screens, my buddies and I generally met in our usual play area in the middle of our sprawling apartment complex. There we gleefully discussed that morning’s TV offerings and lost ourselves in discussion of sports, toys, and comics. All rivers flowed back to Jack Kirby. We felt, like so many others, that the stuff he was producing in those years (1966-1968) was almost beyond words. His fights were power trips for little boys like us. We chose up sides. I’d be the Sub-Mariner. Another friend wanted to be Cap. Our leader, Earl (also the oldest), had “dibs” on the Silver Surfer. Toby proudly yelled, “I’m the guy with the hammer, frail mortals!” and so on. A fun-filled afternoon always followed. Imaginary stun rays were

“The Power” Forever People #8 Mystery, menace, tension, and violence punctuated Kirby’s godwar at masterfully written intervals, but it was never more skillfully done than in this shadowy show of manipulation and counter-manipulation. Jack eschewed his super-scientific devices, building-busting fight scenes, and humor for this one and set it all in an eerily, near-deserted town, replete with a private army, defiant human pawns, and a strange, hooded sect. Like the best of director Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti westerns,” the final gunshot settles the matter only after the antagonists have matched wits, jockeyed for position, attacked, retreated, matched wits, and attacked again. The Forever People were at their intellectual peak here, not quite mastering the more wily Darkseid, but canny enough to keep him from gaining Billion-Dollar Bates’ “power”; the Anti-Life Equation.

“Himon!” Mister Miracle #9

Cover pencils for Mister Miracle #9, featuring the classic “Himon” story. 18

This full-length finale to the “Young Scott Free” saga was symbolic of man’s eternal battle to rise above and escape from a hellish state of existence. The tough New York Lower East Side and the Axis dictators of Jack’s early years found their comic book equivalents in Armaghetto and Darkseid, respectively. Kirby fought and finessed his way out of the violent slums. Could the son of Izaya the Inheritor do any less? The story’s full

tasizes about living the life of his “new hero,” the famous, fast-drawing Rawhide Kid. Sensing the father’s pain (at the prospect of losing his son’s respect), the young gunslinger arrogantly begins throwing his weight around, setting up a brief but intense fight with the rancher. The Kid “loses” the fight, and loudly “whimpering,” is forcibly ejected from the home. The youngster’s no longer enamored of “cowardly, rotten outlaws” and is returned to his father’s bosom (and no-gun lifestyle) as Pa privately praises the Kid for what he did. Stan and Jack must’ve liked this one. They did a slight variation on it only nine issues later (“The Fallen Hero”). In my opinion, it’s even better.

“The Battle of the Baxter Building” Fantastic Four #40 Had Jack and Stan begun this one halfway through with the FF regaining their powers and the Thing’s incredible solo battle with Dr. Doom, it still would’ve been better than any other super-hero battle (outside of Marvel) ever done! Stan said it would rank alongside Dunkirk and Waterloo. In its own way, it did.

Fantastic Four #57-60 Only Kirby can top Kirby. After blowing his chances to mop up with the foursome (in FF #39-40 and Annual #3), Doc puts it together this time by getting the Surfer’s powers. Doc wins. He toys with the entire planet, reveling in his villainy as never before. He and the Thing have another memorable battle (in #60) and Reed comes through with the type of nick-of-time technology which was quickly becoming an FF cliché. But the weaponry, like the plot device, was magnificent. For me, this was the pinnacle. The cosmic powers of the Silver Surfer were still relatively new to Marvel’s readership, and the demonic mind of the Latverian Lord put them to devilish new uses. Doctor Doom was never more dangerous and the FF were never more courageous. The best ever (sorry, John Byrne) of the FF/Doom clashes.★

Doom finally triumphs in Fantastic Four #57. of brilliant moments, but the finest part is the climax, where the young escape artist desperately (and literally) crawls to freedom. Scott’s “battle” to find himself, be himself, and live outside of the oppressive forces surrounding him is one of the finest achievements of Kirby’s career.

“Spy Ambush!” Captain America #10 Private Rogers and camp mascot Barnes drive into a trap set by Nazi saboteurs. After Steve is nearly killed, the pair emerge as their more colorful alter egos and pursue and pound their murderous enemies into submission. This one was an S&K action-fest and Winghead’s speech at the end—“Hitler and his loot-crazed barbarians will find the farmer of Lexington and Concord still very much alive in the spirit of every modern American”—makes you feel like waving the flag.

“The Defeat of the Rawhide Kid!” Rawhide Kid #20 This five-pager could be described as Shane (the film classic) gone haywire. The Kid, suffering from exhaustion, weakly rides onto a small ranch run by a gentle farmer and his impressionable young son. The father’s decent, upstanding image is quickly replaced in the boy’s mind as he fan19

The hero “throws” a fight to teach a young boy a lesson, in Rawhide Kid #20.

squad was not an entirely unique concept; DC’s Sgt. Rock, which originated in 1959, featured a Black soldier named Jackie Johnson.) In any event, Gabe’s inclusion in the Howlers was a bold move, and when Jones appeared colored pink in the first issue, Lee was obliged to send the color separation company a detailed memo to make it clear that Gabe Jones was a Black man. This motley melange of misfits whose ferocious battle cry of “WAH-HOO!!” earned them the title “Howling Commandos” was led by Nicholas Joseph Fury, a cigar-chomping, tough-talking Sergeant whose trademarks were a five-o’clock shadow and a perpetually-ripped shirt. A product of the Great Depression, Fury was raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan known as Hell’s Kitchen by his widowed mother, his father (World War I pilot Jack Fury) having died in combat. Fury was a classic Dead-End Kid. He frequented pool halls, got into scrapes, and worked as infrequently as possible. His life turned around when he joined the parish of Chaplain Lewis Hargrove. Fury became best friends with Hargrove’s younger brother who was subsequently killed at Pearl Harbor. To avenge his friend’s death at the hands of the Axis powers, Fury enlisted in 1941, endured basic training at Fort Dix, and served as a Sergeant in the European Theater of Operations leading the Howlers. The supporting characters in SFAHHC include: Captain “Happy Sam” Sawyer, a bellowing, no-nonsense C.O.; Pam Hawley, Fury’s love interest; Baron Strucker, Nick’s nefarious Nazi-nemesis; and Sgt. “Bull” McGiveney, Fury’s loud-mouthed rival whose squad would tangle with the Howlers (and always lose) at the drop of a hat. In a mere eight issues, Jack and Stan had established a cast potent enough to keep the book rolling for almost two decades. All the bad guys in SFAHHC were (what else?) Nazis; all were named Hans, Fritz, or Otto, and all were ruthless, cold-blooded Teutonic killers. This one-dimensional stereotyping (by Lee) was pointedly at odds with the rich characterization in the rest of the book. Amazingly, Flo Steinberg (Marvel’s Gal Friday) recalls that one reader was so incensed by the magazine’s anti-Nazi slant that he wrote a letter threatening to kill the entire Bullpen. The FBI was called in, but nothing came of the scare. Clearly, Marvel’s progressive attitude didn’t delight everyone. As for the plots, it was mostly Fury leading his men on one

Wah-Hoo!! Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos examined by Mark Alexander

Enter The Howling Commandos “There was reality in the stories because of my own war experiences. Sgt. Fury had the essence of military life in it.”—Jack Kirby he story goes like this: One day in late 1962 Stan Lee was trying to convince his skeptical uncle (publisher Martin Goodman) that Marvel’s new-found success was due to the fact that he and Jack Kirby had developed a new comic-style which Lee claimed would work in any genre. To prove his point, Stan bet that they could make a hit even with an outdated war-theme and a “horrible title.” The result was Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, a Kirbyesque trek through the battlefields of World War II that was dubbed “The War Mag for People Who Hate War Mags.” Jack Kirby was the obvious choice to illustrate the series. Having tackled combat themes before (see Boy Commandos, Foxhole, Warfront, and Battle), he was able to handle the job with ease and enthusiasm. The commandos that Jack created for Sgt. Fury were colorful characters, startling for their brazen acknowledgement of ethnicity, whose diverse backgrounds formed a microcosm of America itself. Among their ranks were: Timothy “Dum-Dum” Dugan, a huge, derby-domed Irish-American; Isadore “Izzy” Cohen, a master-mechanic from Brooklyn and the first-ever Jewish comics hero; Dino Manelli, a handsome Italian-American who was also a Hollywood star back in the states (clearly based on Dean Martin); “Rebel” Ralston, an ex-jockey from Kentucky with a pronounced southern accent; “Junior” Juniper, the Ivy Leaguer and eager beaver of the group; and Gabriel Jones, a trumpet-playing jazzman who was Jack and Stan’s first (pre-Panther) Black hero. At a time when civil rights was a hotly-contested issue, Kirby and Lee (without concern for sales in the South) showed exactly where they stood on segregation by including a Black soldier in Fury’s squad. They were, of course, taking artistic license with this concept; having both served during World War II they knew that the US Army had been segregated at the time. (Fury’s anachronistically-integrated

“Bell”) takes over on inks, and his admittedly rushed delineation looks (in my opinion) just right for this magazine, whereas it generally failed in Kirby’s super-hero books. In this issue, Fury meets Lady Pamela Hawley, a young Red Cross volunteer born to English nobility and their fourteen-issue romance begins. The chemistry between these two was by far the most interesting that Lee had developed to date. Stan’s usual spin on romance (e.g. Blake/Foster, Summers/Grey, and Murdock/Page) had both protagonists secretly longing for each other while neither dared to tell the other. It got to be a drag very quickly. By contrast, Fury and Hawley were up front about their feelings for each other, and the fact that their personalities were totally opposite (he, rough and from the wrong side of the tracks; she, sophisticated and high-born) gave their coupling a unique slant. With Pam’s death (SF #18, May 1965), Fury acquired the same type of scarred psyche that Steve (Captain America) Rogers had, both having lost a dear friend to the war. Another major event takes place at the end of Sgt. Fury #4. “Junior” Juniper, the Howler with the least potential in terms of character development, became the first-ever Marvel Universe hero to be killed. Today that’s no big deal but in 1963, comics heroes simply didn’t die; not permanently, anyway. Suddenly, with the death of “Junior” Juniper, the series acquired some real cachet. It now played like a true-life war drama where people got killed and never came back. You wondered who would be next. (Unfortunately, in 1965 Stan wrote a SFAHHC story set in the Korean War which ended the suspense. Obviously, no more Howlers would die in World War II.) In between Sgt. Fury #4 and 5, a modern-day Nick Fury appeared in the pages of Marvel’s flagship magazine (Fantastic Four #21, Dec. 1963). Fury is now a Colonel in the C.I.A. (he was promoted from Sergeant to (above) The Howlers react to Junior’s death in Sgt. Fury #4. (below) Nazi-bashing! Second Lieutenant in Korea, then after spying for France in Vietnam during the 1950s, he was booted up to Colonel). In this issue he teams up with the FF to defeat a villain called The Hate Monger who (implausibly) turns out to be Adolf Hitler. The story doesn’t amount to much; it was mainly a stepping-stone that the writers used to move Fury into a surprising

Two-page spread from Sgt. Fury #1. impossible raid after another (the title of SF #9, “Mission: Capture Hitler” says it all). Sometimes the book seemed like a Marvel superhero comic, sometimes like a war movie, and sometimes like Kirby’s own up-close and personal war experiences. Whatever the mood, the Kirby-Lee issues, particularly #4-7 and 13, were generally outstanding, even by today’s standards. Quite an accomplishment, considering Jack’s workload at the time.

Eight Two-Fisted War Stories (Sgt. Fury #1-7 & #13) Lee and Kirby sought to infuse their new war comic with the unique characterization (Stan’s) and the sheer kinetic energy (Jack’s) which had worked so well in the Fantastic Four. As a result, the early issues of SFAHHC (inked by Dick Ayers) read like Marvel super-hero stories, a premise which would be abandoned by the fourth issue. Realism went out the window in scenes where a parachuting DumDum blasts a Nazi plane out of the sky with a grenade (SF #1, May 1963) and holds off an entire enemy squad by hurling rocks at them (SF #2, July 1963). Worth noting, though, are the harrowing concentration camp scenes in the second issue. Jack and Stan, both Jewish, weren’t about to shy away from the subject of genocide. In one chilling panel Kirby depicts emaciated P.O.W.s, and in another we see what is clearly a gas chamber. The next issue, “Midnight At Massacre Mountain”(SF #3, Sept. 1963), is notable for a cameo appearance by major Reed Richards of the O.S.S.. From this point on, the writing would take a quantum leap. With “Lord Ha-Ha’s Last Laugh” (SF #4, Nov. 1963) the series really takes off. The first surprise is Fury meets Reed Richards in Sgt. Fury #3. that George Roussos (as 21

astated to learn that he owes his life to a Black man and a Jew. Stories like these are what made the early Marvel comics so timely and so impossibly good. In “The Court Martial of Sgt. Fury” (SF #7, May 1964) we find Fury, who is suffering from amnesia, facing a court martial and possibly a firing squad for reasons he can’t recall. A truly different type of war story emerges here. The only action is in the courtroom, and a lesser artist couldn’t possibly have pulled it off, but years of doing romance comics had taught Kirby how to draw a dramatic, compelling story even when no action was involved. That knowledge served him well in this issue. Hitler’s final solution: Kirby depicts a concentration camp gas chamber in Sgt. Fury #2. To ensure that Fury’s thirteenth new context (more on this later). The next appearance of the modernissue wouldn’t be unlucky, Kirby and Lee reunited for “Fighting Side day Fury would show him with a new look. During World War II, a By Side With Captain America And Bucky” (Dec. 1964). It was to be grenade shattered the bones around his left eye, damaging the optic Jack and Stan’s last hurrah in the pages of Sgt. Fury. Although Dick Ayers nerve. This would cause him to gradually lose most of the vision in had penciled issues #8-12, that eye, requiring Fury to don an eyepatch sometime after this story Lee wasn’t about to let anytook place. one but Cap’s creator handle Every great hero needs an equally great villain, and in “At The the Silver Age debut of Bucky Mercy Of Baron Strucker” (SF #5, Jan. 1964) Fury found his. Baron Barnes. The magnificent Wolfgang Von Strucker, the ultimate Nazi, was to Fury what Doom Kirby/Stone cover immediwas to the FF and what Magneto was to the X-Men; an arch-villain so ately conveys that this issue magnificently evil that reader demand would dictate his return time is fundamentally a Captain and again. A Prussian aristocrat with a monocle, a cigarette holder America thriller with the and a dueling scar, Strucker was Fury’s natural adversary. He regarded Howlers as guest-stars in the American Sergeant as an inferior savage from the lower classes, and their own magazine. Despite in later issues Strucker would lead a six-man “blitzkrieg squad” who this, the sparks really fly and were Nazi counterparts to Fury’s men. (Several years later during his the seeds of a long-term brilliant stint on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Cap/Fury/S.H.I.E.L.D. A racist sees the light in Sgt. Fury #6. Jim Steranko found a way to rekindle this alliance were sown in this decades-old rivalry. It was both a stroke of superb issue (inked by Dick Ayers). genius and obvious on Steranko’s Thus ended Jack and Stan’s tenure on “The War Mag For People part to have the head of Hydra Who Hate War Mags.” Jack pulled out, Ayers took his place, and Lee unmask himself as Baron Strucker.) soon turned the writing chores over to Roy (The Boy) Thomas. Very The next issue, “The Fangs Of The soon SFAHHC became Desert Fox” (SF #6, Mar. 1964), was a more and more like Sgt. morality tale. Dino Manelli, Rock; in other words, just injured in a drill, is replaced by another war mag for racist/bigot George Stonepeople who love war mags. well. When Stonewell joins the Howlers on a raid against Nazi Cap and Bucky join forces Field-Marshall with Fury (and relegate Erwin Rommel, him to co-star status in the dreaded his own book!) in Sgt. “Desert Fox,” he Fury #13. blows the mission because he won’t cooperate with Izzy (a Jew) and is shot by the Germans. The amount of time that Kirby reportedly spent telling (and reRisking his own life, Izzy telling) war stories indicates what an indelible impression World War carries the wounded Stonewell II must have had on him. Did he feel so close to his subject matter in to safety, and when a life-saving this series that he (consciously or not) created the main character in blood transfusion is needed, his own image? Was Nick Fury Jack Kirby? only Gabe has Stonewell’s blood Both men’s names and facial features are strikingly similar, and type. Stonewell awakens, devthey both loved cigars. In SF #1, Lee describes Fury as being six-foot 22

Was Nick Fury Jack Kirby?

became high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, faithfully serving under Fury as they’d always done. Pam died in issue #18, and the loud-mouthed “Bull” McGiveney ended up being shot to death by his own men (okay, so I’m guessing). It seems doubtful that we’ll ever see a revival of Kirby’s Howling Commandos. War comics just aren’t as popular as they once were, and without trying to editorialize, maybe that’s a good sign. Still, as long as modern-day World War II stories like Saving Private Ryan continue to capture the imaginations of millions (and as long as little boys continue to play “Army”), the Howling Commandos will live on. WAH-HOO!!★ (The author would like to thank Les Daniels, Gerald Jones, Will Jacobs, David Penalosa, Ron Goulart, Harry Abrams, Jeff Rovin, and Paul Sassienie, without whom this article wouldn’t have been possible.)

two-inches tall, but if one looks at the drawings, Fury appears to be (like Jack) a stocky man of only average height. On the other hand, it’s important to note that ex-Army Sergeant Stan Lee had also served during World War II. He had the same rank as Fury, and he too loved cigars. Stan was definitely closer to 6'2" than Jack, and some of Lee’s catch-phrases like “Face Front!” and “Hang Loose!” (the types of which Fury bellowed at his men) were admittedly inspired by his own Army service. In the final analysis, both writer and artist undoubtedly tried to infuse some of themselves into Sgt. Fury, and as a result, he came out as a heroic amalgamation of both men.

The Twilight of the Howling Commandos “I was intrigued by the idea of having two magazines featuring Nick Fury, one dealing with his exploits during World War II and the other bringing him up to the present—but doing what?”—Stan Lee The answer that Stan sought came from television, where The Man From U.N.C.L.E. had premiered the previous Fall. And so it came to pass that Sgt. Fury traded in his ripped shirts for an eyepatch and became Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel’s answer to James Bond (Strange Tales #135, Aug. 1965). S.H.I.E.L.D., an international espionage group, was short for Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division. Fury was both its director and powerhouse operative. (For Kirby art, see issues #135 and #141-143.) In June 1968, Nick Fury, AOS got his own book, and for a short time he enjoyed the status of starring in two Marvel publications simultaneously. NFAOS eventually went into reprint, and folded after only 18 issues; in Sept. 1989 however, the series made a comeback. Fury’s career has had its ups and downs; he’s been subjected to an “Infinity Formula” to retard his aging, and in 1995 he was supposedly shot dead by the Punisher. Still, it’s a safe bet that as long as there’s a Marvel Universe, Nick Fury will exist in it somewhere. The World War II-era Howlers, however, are long gone. After an 18-year run, SFAHHC was finally laid to rest (SF #167, Dec. 1981). “Junior” Juniper was replaced by Percy Pinkerton, a British soldier who added even more ethnic diversity to the squad (two other post-Kirby Howlers, Tim Cadwallader and Eric Koenig, came later). Reb, Dino, and Izzy lived at least until the late 1960s; we know this because they served in Vietnam (SF Annual #3, Aug. 1967). Dum-Dum and Gabe both

Kirby drew the cover and this splash page (and oddly enough, also the last page) for Sgt. Fury #18. The only other instances where this rarity occurred were in Avengers #14 and X-Men #17. 23

Shellhead, Subby, & Me! How the flu caused my greatest Kirby battle, by R.J. Vitone o many battles! So many pages of memorable power! How do you boil them all down to a precious few— even a single favorite? For me... easy. Jack’s two-issue fill-in on the Sub-Mariner strip in Tales To Astonish #82-83 stands as my personal top Kirby battle. Let me tell you why: First, it was unexpected. At that particular time, Jack was not the regular artist for the Subby strip. He was thrown the assignment in true last-minute fashion (“Hey! We’re stuck! Shoot Jack the plot, fast!!”). Also, the story was unusual for the time—Iron Man comes over from Tales of Suspense to clash with Subby in his own strip. Believe it or not, it WAS unusual for heroes to “cross-over” from one book to another in those days! That Jack would come on board just as the battle climaxed was an amazing twist of fate—and another bonus was that Dick Ayers, my own favorite Kirby inker, handled the inks. In order for you to fully understand just why this is my favorite battle, try to follow this sequence of events. Remember, back then, there were no comic book stores, no Comic Shop News to say what was coming. There was no truly organized fandom dissecting every book on the Internet. All there was was just me, the corner drug store, and a handful of 12¢ Marvels each week. This is what lead up to it.

Prince Namor.

Tales of Suspense #80: Namor, angered that Iron Man has driven off Krang just as he was about to catch up with the Warlord, attacks the weakened hero. Iron Man tricks the Atlantean into sealing him into a secured lab, where he recharges his transistors. Namor heads for water, to regain his own power. The two prepare to collide in:

Tales To Astonish #82: The Main Event Enter Jack “King” Kirby—the artist Marvel didn’t want to load down with too much work took on more work! The credits to TTA #82 list: “Begun by Gallant Gene (Colan), who caught the flu bug

The Lead-In Tales of Suspense #78: Drawn by Gene Colan, Iron Man defeats the Mandarin and his giant creation Ultimo in China. Upon returning to the US, Tony Stark finds himself in contempt of Congress, and all Stark Industries facilities closed down. Tales of Suspense #79: Stark agonizes over his troubles, his lack of money, his estrangement from Happy and Pepper, and his drained strength due to the Ultimo fight. Suddenly, evil Warlord Krang launches an electric bolt right out of TTA #81’s Subby story (also drawn by Colan). Although he manages to fend off the attack, Iron Man is confronted by the fighting-mad

after drawing the first two pages! Finished by King Kirby (who drew the last 10 pages, then asked who the Sub-Mariner was!)” The story is simple. The water-recharged Namor battles the fullstrength Iron Man in a 12-page epic. (In time-honored comic tradition, there is no “winner,” as the story splits off in different directions.) But the Kirby involvement is much more interesting! Called on apparently at the last moment, Jack produced a professional, top-notch 10-page mini-masterpiece. First, Iron Man opens with full-power repulsor rays, rendered in striking Kirby perspective and power. Namor uses his ankle-wings to fly back to attack. His first blow, a great half-page punch, floors Iron Man, who decides that his best course of action is to keep Namor away from water, to drain his strength. Four panels of furious evasion, then... a shattering half-page collision, followed by a sly judo toss. The effort has drained Iron Man, but he’s conveniently near a handy “energo-grip” that can provide fast, highly-concentrated recharging. A 24

chores on the Subby strip, because Jack Kirby did this one as well—in the same frenzied style that he illustrated the previous issue with to boot! EVERY PAGE features strong, dramatic action. Namor dives to the attack, tearing metal, smashing barriers, and enduring powerful counter-attacks (all emphasized by Artie Simek sound-effects: PSAP! SPLEEEUNNGG! SKRAK! FTOOM!). It takes Krang’s dreaded fleet-destroyer to finally stop the mighty Prince. The story ends with Namor’s memory wiped away, Krang escaping, and Kirby moving on to other things. The two strips are classic examples of Kirby style. Done in wide-open panels, three and four to a page, the battles are presented close-up in a fast-paced ballet of see-sawing action. Both were inked by Dick Ayers, my alltime favorite Kirby inker. I had grown up with Ayers. He took me through just about every Kirby/Marvel phase: Pre-hero “monsters” (Gorgilla, Taboo, Manoo, etc.), westerns (“Trapped by Dead-Eye Dawson!”), war (“Meet the Howling Commandos!”), and virtually each new early Marvel effort as it came (FF, the Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man, Avengers, etc.)! I grew up wondering how Kirby could produce so much great art, and how Dick Ayers could keep up with him! As it was, shortly after Jack had done these fill-ins, Ayers, too, moved off to other assignments, and these stories stand as just about the last work the two men would collaborate on. So there you have it —a tremendous crossover battle between two top Marvel heroes, enough action to fill a giant-sized Annual, drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Dick Ayers: For me, comic book heaven! Even now, I look at these issues with a lot of fondness. If you’ve never seen ’em, search out these two books!

quick energy-fix, and the revived Iron Man furiously pounds the reeling Namor. One punch, two, and then... “Desperately, determinedly, putting every ounce of armored force behind a single power-packed punch, the embattled Iron Man lashes out at his rash antagonist...” A half-page blast causes the stunned Sub-Mariner to marvel, “Never—on land or under the sea—have I been struck a mightier blow!” And up he springs to renew the attack. Meanwhile, gas-masked Stark security cops armed with a distinctive Kirby-designed tear gas launcher arrive, giving the raging Namor new targets. He tosses an “electro-magnetic stabilizer” that weighs tons right through a wall at the cops. Iron Man, realizing that the security men wouldn’t stand a chance against the Prince, grapples with his foe to protect the men. Both begin to weaken, but Namor breaks off the fight when he spots Krang’s warship. (The panel where he charges off is a classic, the pose used many times in ads and on promo items). The battle ends... ... BUT this story made a major impression on me back in 1966. I was a teenager, at the peak of my comic “fanboy” craze. Marvel books obsessed me, even though I hated the concept of the “split titles” (Astonish, Suspense, Strange Tales) that stretched stories out seemingly forever. Still, Kirby was my favorite artist, and this battle was a great capper to the Subby/Iron Man storylines—and my own story didn’t end there either! Tales To Astonish #83 was another part of the prize package. Gene Colan’s flu must have prevented him from picking up his art

The Wrap-Up Gene Colan returned to both the Iron Man and Sub-Mariner strips the next month. In a much quieter style, Iron Man continues to try to solve his Congressional problems, and runs right into a new, revamped Titanium Man—and that story would run for a while. Over in Astonish, Namor, his memory gone, is used by an evil agent of the Hidden Empire to hunt the Hulk. Needless to say, he gets his memory back, and continues his search for Krang. And Jack? He went right on turning out stacks of great pages. FF #55 (0ct. ’66) features another of the greatest Kirby battles of all time: The Silver Surfer vs. the fighting-mad Thing!— —but that’s another story. ’Nuff Said!★ 25

slapping around a smaller boy (for trying to go to school), Matt intervenes. Suddenly, Moose Morgan rides up, and following a few heated words with the attorney, beats him up (with the help of Cal). Matt is tended to by a compassionate Nancy but he quietly bemoans that he couldn’t have become the Kid (and settled Morgan’s hash). Before the fight, Morgan had explained his worldview: “It’s because I don’t want my boy to go to school! I want him to stay on muh spread and help with the chores! And if my boy don’t go to school, then I don’t want for nobody to go! Does that answer your question??!” The law is helpless. He’s committed no actual crimes so the Sheriff can’t arrest him. At a meeting of the town board of education, Moose angrily orders everyone out of the schoolhouse. Morgan belittles the men, calling them bookworms, and adding that he has no education, but can “lick every man there.” He gives orders to keep the school shut as Miss Nancy cries out, “Oh, if only there were one man in town — one man who could stand up to a cowardly bully like you!” The next panel is a magnificent Kirby moment; the schoolmarm menaced by western badman distracted by western hero — the TwoGun Kid!! The Kid takes the hulking Moose out with gun and fist in three beautifully-orchestrated action pages, spanks Cal, and restores law and order. Before he rides off, the Kid promotes the values of knowledge and education to the stunned but grateful crowd. This was a nice Stan Lee touch, the kind of nuance heroes today could use more of, and that, along with Cal Morgan’s new attitude the following day, capped off another Lee/Kirby gem. By trying to close a place of learning, Moose Morgan becomes downright un-American!! By fighting education, he fights enlightenment. By trying to halt enlightenment, he becomes an enemy of civilization. He’s a primitive — a cave-dwelling Neanderthal reeking of primordial ooze! Kirby’s villains of the ’60s and ’70s would be much more polished, power-hungry, and inventive, but his outlaw gunnies of the late-’50s/early-’60s carried a particular type of evil vigor that keeps Jack’s work among the best of the genre.★

MACHO MAYHEM by William Gee ess is more. How many times have you heard that line? Even though Kirby was renowned for his sprawling galactic scenes, his real genius lies in his graphic simplicity. A case in point is the nine panels of mayhem found on page 10 of Two-Gun Kid #62. Handto-hand fight scenes like this are a staple of Kirby comics, but none are more simply and effectively rendered than this doozy! Jack chose to omit all background annoyances (even the colorist laid off the light blue color found in the rest of the story) as Two-Gun dispatches Moose Morgan to the Land of Nod. What ten year old wouldn’t love a comic that shows a bully being beaten by Mr. Nice Guy? For that matter, what forty-year-old wouldn’t? The action is so beautifully drawn you can almost feel each bone-crushing blow! Panel 6 is particularly effective as the Kid lifts Moose a foot off the ground with a two-hander to the chin. OUCH! Stan Lee’s sarcastic repartee is the icing on the Kirby cake. Ironically, the adjacent page sports an ad for the “Magic Art Reproducer.” The ad copy exclaims “Draw anything from real life like an artist. NO LESSONS! NO TALENT!” No kidding! I wonder if Jack...? Naah, it’s an insult to even think it. You can’t buy genius for $1.98.★

Two-Fisted Tales A two-person look at Two-Gun Kid #62, by Jerry Boyd and William Gee

Gunnies and Owlhoots by Jerry Boyd hey loomed large on the western frontier, those husky monoliths of young manhood; those bullying, rotgut-drinking gunhawks. They swaggered their way through the stinking saloons of cattle towns like Abilene and Dodge City. They dominated the silver-mining towns of Tombstone and Deadwood. They robbed banks, held up stagecoaches and trains, and through it all, proved vastly entertaining to a generation weaned on television and movie westerns. Writer/co-plotter Stan Lee gave the villains some great names: “Handles” like Ace, Patch, Blackie, Yancy, Rafe, Spade, Hunk, and Skull came up often. They got even more colorful. There was Apache Joe, Blade Barker, Red-Beard Rankin, Wolf Waco, Rock Rorick, and Crow Mangum—and a personal favorite of mine: Moose Morgan. Moose made his debut in Two-Gun Kid #62 (Mar. ’62), coincidentally, Kirby’s last issue. Moose, as his name implied, was a monster of a man. He was bulky, bearded, and domineering. What separated him from the other baddies was his raison d’être. Moose didn’t rob trains, chase honest people off their ranches, or even fire bullets at the feet of the new town tenderfoot. No, his problem was with... the local school. In the story, schoolmarm Nancy Carter confides to her lawyer friend Matt Hawk that the children have stopped coming to school because of an oversized dissident, Cal Morgan. When they spot Cal

A Tank Knows No Mercy O

hearth, his foot dangles into a head shot of the same weary soldier wrapped in peaceful slumber.) The tank itself is a frightening creation with rumbling treads, black German cross, threatening cannon, and an evil mind in the commander. Battle #70 (June 1960) was the last issue. It contains another Kirby story; set in Korea, it opens with a horde of Communist troops streaming down a snow-covered hill that’s as effective as anything in an EC comic. After Battle was cancelled, Kirby continued to work on monster and western comics as they entered their most fertile period— and though Marvel’s war comics were gone (and would not return until Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #1 in 1963), the westerns and the monster comics would prove popular for several years. It is unfortunate that so many of the pre-hero Marvel comics have been overwhelmed by the super-hero boom of the early 1960s. There were great tales in the war comics as well.★

by Tony Seybert ne of the great things about Kirby fandom is the amazing variety and the volume of his work. Kirby worked in so many genres and sub-genres—inventing a few along the way—that there is something for everyone somewhere in the body of his work, no matter how obscure or peculiar a particular fan’s taste may be. I like war comics and I’m a big fan of Steve Ditko. Ditko inked a number of Kirbypenciled stories during their time together at Atlas/Marvel and one very interesting short tale was a WWII story in Battle #70. For Atlas in the 1950s, Battle was a long-running title. It started in 1951 and survived the many changes Atlas/Marvel went through during that tumultuous decade, including the “Atlas Implosion” of 1957 when only sixteen bi-monthly titles survived. When Kirby returned to Atlas/Marvel in 1958, he worked on everything, including covers and stories for the last few issues of Battle. “A Tank Knows No Mercy!” is a simple five-page story that opens the issue with a dynamic Nazi Panzer bursting out of the splash page, splintering a tree, indifferent to the puny soldier about to be rolled over. Inside, the tank commander gloats; the enemy has scattered and they must now track down any survivors. The tank travels through the fog and the wartorn countryside. A barely-conscious American soldier stumbles to a farmhouse where he is taken in by the peasants. A young woman, her aged father, and her two young children tend his wounds. The relentless tank intrudes, disrupting this peaceful setting. The frightened family hears the clanking in the distance and prepares to flee. The American and the peasants stand in front of the hut as the tank moves forward. The tank commander, as evil as any enemy officer in a 1960 comic book, wants to have a little sport with these unfortunates. A shell explodes in front of them, no matter where they turn. The young woman tells the American of a ravine to the north. If he leads the Germans to this gorge, perhaps they will not see it in the fog. Perhaps they will fall in! The American breaks and runs. The Germans scoff at his cowardice as he leads them to the gorge. The plan works! The tank rumbles blindly over the cliff as the G.I. leaps to safety. He tosses a grenade after them to finish the job with a hearty WHAM! and stumbles back to the peasant hut. As the caption announces, “The victims have won.” Kirby and Ditko produced a tense and suspenseful war story in “A Tank Knows No Mercy!” Kirby’s usual strong pencils provide sturdy soldiers, a fearsome tank, and animated action. Ditko marks it with moody shadows, grim shrouds of fog, and characteristically expressive faces. I enjoy the work of both men and I’m always pleased when I find a story they both worked on. “A Tank Knows No Mercy!” is one of their finest collaborations. Every panel is beautiful in this economical five-page story. (I especially like the first two panels on page 3. Jack drew his most personal (and final) war stories in Our Fighting Forces (shown here is #159). As the peasants tend to the soldier before the 27

them; if what he said in a balloon made sense at all, I left it alone, except for punctuation. If I figured out what he was trying to say, and he wasn’t really saying that, I would suggest that maybe he change it—and he always did. He didn’t have a problem with it. He was a joy.” In 1976, Marvel began a policy of returning original art on current work. Kirby signed the standard artwork release and received his current artwork back like all the other artists (the penciler only got a percentage of the finished pages, with inkers getting some as well). Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress was ratifying a change to Copyright Law that would have far-reaching effects on the comics industry, and Kirby’s future as well.

Art vs. Commerce Kirby’s battles with Marvel Comics over original art and copyrights, by John Morrow (with thanks to Jon B. Cooke and Jim Shooter for their invaluable input) erhaps Kirby’s greatest personal battle in comics was his fight with Marvel Comics over the return of original art pages from the 1960s. While we will probably never be privy to all the behind-thescenes negotiations that went on, this chronological accounting of the major events involved will hopefully help put the controversy into perspective. In addition to working from news accounts, we attempted to get more insight into Marvel’s side of things from former Editor-InChief Jim Shooter, who graciously accepted our request for an interview and provided us with some relevant documents.

1978: A Year Of Change After being second-in-command to a string of Marvel Editors-InChief, Jim Shooter finally ascended to the position himself on January 1, 1978, bringing some long-needed stability to the company. Shooter perceived there was an opportunity there to make sense of the chaos. “It seemed like there was tremendous talent and energy there, and no organization. When Stan and Sol were this little two-man tag team, and the company was eight books, it worked. When it was 45 books, it didn’t work. Nobody’d bothered to install an organization.” The copyright law revision of 1976 also went into effect January 1, granting creators ownership of their creations unless a Work For Hire agreement had been signed. In essence, Work For Hire is where any work done for a company is considered the work of the company, not the individual creator. Shooter explains that for something to be Work For Hire, “the parties had to agree to it in writing. So here we are churning out 45 color comics a month with nary a shred of paper between us and the creators. That’s why the Marvel agreement is a comprehensive agreement. When you sign the Marvel agreement, you say, “The work I have done and am doing for Marvel is Work For Hire, unless otherwise stated,” to cover the gap.” Of Jack’s work during that period, Shooter recalls, “It wasn’t selling. We had single-digit sales figures for Captain America, and at that time the Marvel line average was up near 50%. Newsstand readers had a lot of turnover, and new readers coming in weren’t buying it. However, older readers bought it. It was one of the things that made the direct market click for me. When I became Editor-In-Chief in 1978, Jack was still under contract, and for the first time I saw print orders. At the bottom of the print order was a little line item called “Seagate.” I found out our circulation director was selling comics to [Phil] Seuling on almost a cost-plus basis, and Seuling was distributing them around the country to a lot of flea market operators and guys who had these little comics shops—a new innovation. While Jack’s numbers on the newsstands were the lowest, they were far and away the highest in the comics shops! Shortly into my tenure there, I saw that those numbers were growing rapidly. By the time Jack left there, his books were selling something like 30,000 copies direct, while other Marvel comics were lucky to be selling 7,000 or 8,000. That’s almost enough to sustain a book exclusively! That kind of awakened me to the idea that Marvel should get in on this direct market thing. Of course, then Jack was gone.” Indeed, in May 1978, Kirby’s contract with Marvel was over, and he left for a new career in the animation field, having never signed Marvel’s Work For Hire contract. Also in 1978, Steve Gerber was removed from the Howard the Duck newspaper strip—a move which he felt violated his contract with Marvel. Gerber created Howard in 1975 as—like Kirby—an independent contractor for Marvel. When he then threatened to sue for ownership of the character, Marvel fired him from the comic book as well. Gerber would make good on the threat two years later by filing suit over ownership of the character. Just when Kirby began haggling with Marvel over the return of his artwork from the 1960s is an area of dispute. Kirby would later publicly claim that copyrights were not at issue, and that he never sued Marvel. Shooter has a different recollection: “I guess his contract ended in the Summer. Shortly thereafter, I was called into meetings

Copyrights on Cap The story really begins in 1969, when the copyright on Captain America came up for renewal. Someone at Marvel must’ve been asleep at the wheel, because co-creator Joe Simon was able to step in and file for the copyright on Captain America #1-10 (as reported in Simon’s book The Comic Book Makers). This sent Marvel scrambling for a way to shore up their claim to Cap, and they eventually settled with Simon. Since Kirby was co-creator of Captain America, Magazine Management Co. (Marvel’s parent company) made him an offer: If he would sign a document supporting Marvel’s claim to the character, Jack would receive the same amount Simon got in their settlement with him. Kirby agreed, and signed their document in June 1970. What Jack didn’t know was that Magazine Management Co. arranged to pay most of Simon’s settlement to his attorney—which was then passed on confidentially to Simon—so they would end up paying Jack considerably less than Simon. Around 1972, Simon and Kirby ran into each other. Jack complained to Joe that he still hadn’t gotten his promised Captain America settlement, but the terms of Simon’s agreement kept Simon from revealing how Kirby had been shortchanged in the deal. In 1972, a decision was made to spin Marvel Comics off as a separate entity from Magazine Management Co. To do this, Jack’s signature was needed on a document affirming Marvel’s copyrights on all the characters Kirby had been involved on. Jack was well-entrenched over at DC by now, and still hadn’t received his payment for the Captain America settlement. It appears he used his signature as leverage to get the money owed him; he signed on May 30, 1972, and by the end of June 1972, he’d finally gotten the promised payments from the Captain America settlement (although still much less than what Simon ultimately got). Marvel would later claim that Kirby was paid for signing this 1972 document, which Kirby would deny. The payments he received were already owed him for the earlier Captain America settlement, so Kirby’s claim that he wasn’t paid for signing the 1972 agreement was accurate.

Back At Marvel Kirby’s stay at DC didn’t work out quite as he’d hoped, so on March 24, 1975, Jack signed a three-year contract (for May 1, 1975 – April 30, 1978) with Marvel Comics. This standard Marvel contract called for Jack to “render services” to Marvel, delivering thirteen pages a week, written and penciled. It also contained a section stating that the artist gave Marvel the exclusive right to secure copyrights and other rights on anything he produced for them. No mention was made in the contract of ownership of the original artwork by either party. Jim Shooter was on-staff at the time, and had amicable dealings with Jack during his 1970s contract. “Jack would actually write [the stories] on the boards, and everything would have six exclamation points and all kinds of imaginary punctuation. I would gently edit 28

with upstairs management and lawyers, and told Jack was at least intimating that he might do a number of legal strategies to recapture ownership of characters he’d been creator or co-creator of.” When pressed for the specifics of Jack threatening legal action against Marvel, Shooter replied, “I had so much legal action going on around me at that time, I don’t remember. It was carried on with correspondence; it was discussed. There were rumors; for a while it was being discussed that Jack might try to file for renewal of the copyrights.” “When Jack’s problems with Marvel started to surface, I had a tremendous amount of sympathy for Jack. One of Jack’s issues was he wanted his old artwork back. I had been working on getting the old artwork back from day one, but any time you deal with lawyers, it’s a nightmare. I’d go to these people and they’d say, “This art is an asset of the corporation. This stuff has value. We’re a publicly-traded company. You can’t give away the assets of a corporation; we’ll be sued.” Those assets weren’t very carefully guarded, because in early 1978, the dilapidated warehouse where Marvel stored artwork was broken into and ransacked. While no art appeared to have been taken, Shooter had it all moved to his office because it was the safest place in the building. Then when Marvel moved in 1979, it was all moved to their new warehouse except for one box, which was inexplicably put in the Marvel lunchroom. “When I was made aware of that,” said Shooter, “I went to get Bernie, the office manager, and said, ‘That box goes to the warehouse right now!’ Bernie came in a few minutes later and said he went to get the box and it wasn’t there. Somebody had obviously grabbed the box, went straight out to the freight elevator—which was near there—and gone.”

During his short stay at Marvel in 1969, Jim Shooter’s only contact with Kirby was an attempt to earn extra money by trying his hand at inking. Shown here is Jim’s attempt at inking an unused Fantastic Four #94 cover. Shooter comments: “Sol [Brodsky] had this stack of [rejected] penciled pages, almost all Jack’s. They’d give them away to fans that came to the office; no one thought twice about those things in those days. I badly inked a page and brought it in as a sample, but Sol looked at it and said, “This page was rejected because it was cluttered and hard to read, and it’s STILL cluttered and hard to read.”

Things Heat Up As the Howard the Duck lawsuit garnered headlines in the fan press, Steve Gerber found himself in need of funds to pay for it—so Destroyer Duck #1 (March 1982 cover date) was published to raise money for Gerber’s lawsuit against Marvel. Kirby donated his services to pencil the issue—a move that certainly didn’t endear him to Marvel management or their lawyers. In 1983, Gerber’s three-year lawsuit was finally settled out-of-court shortly before it would’ve gone to trial. Terms were not disclosed, but undoubtedly Kirby was encouraged by how Gerber had withstood the Marvel corporate juggernaut. Meanwhile, Kirby’s attorney made efforts in 1982 to negotiate over artwork return, but got little response from Marvel. When asked about Marvel’s intransigence in dealing with Kirby’s lawyer, Shooter replied, “Lawyers, when they have any kind of sense there’s an attack or the possibility of an attack, they defend—and they defend as aggressively as they can. That was the posture of Marvel’s lawyers, to the point that they wouldn’t let me return Joe Sinnott’s art, because they were so afraid any little thing they did might be somehow twisted against them in court—and they were pretty sure this was headed for court. The fact that they were sort of intransigent has more to do with the fact that that’s how lawyers are in that situation, more than anything else. “Here’s an irony for you. I actually got them to concede to return the old artwork shortly before Jack’s first indications that he might be taking some legal action against Marvel. Because Jack was at least

threatening to take legal action against Marvel, that actually prevented me from returning anyone’s artwork. The lawyers clamped down on that, because it’s possible in court that Kirby’s lawyers will turn that into a tacit admission that they’re right, or that we’re doing that in response to him. In a strange way, his action prevented me from giving Sinnott, Buscema, and all these other guys their artwork back for quite a while, frankly. But I’d actually won that victory; I’d actually gotten the company past all this crap about it being an asset of the corporation. They were okay with that, but unfortunately the legal conflagration caused some delay on this.” The delay ended in 1984, when Marvel began returning art to artists other than Kirby who agreed to sign their one-page retroactive Work For Hire document. Why return any artwork at all? Shooter explains, “From my point of view, it’s because it’s a really good thing to do, a tremendous incentive. Is there any legal obligation to do that? No. The return of artwork was postulated as a gift. “We’re giving you this back as a commemoration of your participation in this process”: That’s how they cover that.” Inkers who had worked on Jack’s books got back Kirby pages, but 29

in August 1984, Jack got something else: A special four-page retroactive Work For Hire agreement, drawn up especially for him. After two years of negotiations, Marvel was offering to return only 88 pages of art from the 1960s. Included in the agreement was verbiage stating that Kirby would agree not to help others contest copyrights against Marvel—apparently in response to Jack’s helping Gerber with Destroyer Duck. Also, the document stated that, in order to sell any of the art, the Kirbys would have to get buyers to sign a similar document. After some sleepless nights, Jack decided he couldn’t sign it. Why was Jack singled-out for the special four-page document? Kirby saw his role as a key creator of the Marvel Universe as the reason, but Shooter saw it differently. “[The four-page document] was about the fact that he was suing. Marvel didn’t initiate that; that was initiated because Jack’s lawyers had set up a situation where the only way Marvel could be defended from their action was to get him to sign basically a quitclaim, as well as the artwork return document. I thought the Marvel lawyers, who were not P.R. people, made a tremendous blunder. They should’ve separated those documents. That was the most idiotic move, but lawyers seldom listen to me.” (It should be noted here that, contrary to Shooter’s comments, nothing in the documents supplied by him gives evidence of the Kirbys filing suit against Marvel.) Negotiations continued. The Kirbys sent a letter requesting a full accounting of Kirby pages in Marvel’s files, to help with their estate planning. Marvel viewed it differently. “It seemed very innocent on the surface,” Shooter said. “It was a trap; it was phrased in a way that if we responded with a list of artwork, it was an admission that it was Jack’s. Every time a letter went back and forth, little herds of lawyers would get together and parse every sentence. It drove me crazy.” In response, Shooter sent back a letter stating that it would be unfair to other artists to devote a disproportionate amount of time to cataloging Jack’s art.

Jim Shooter won’t give Jack Kirby his artwork back.” The fact is, “Evil Jim Shooter” had already gotten the authority to give Jack his art back before Jack started rattling his saber. Jack would’ve had that artwork back if he hadn’t posed legal threats, but that really wasn’t the issue. It had something to do with it, but the main issue had to do with ownership of the copyrights—or I would say, negotiated off that point, perhaps some back royalty stake in the characters. Go for the gusto, then settle for something else.” With a July 1985 cover date, The Comics Journal #100 hit the stands, revealing the art controversy to the public. Jack stated publicly he was willing to sign the one-page document other artists had signed, but that he couldn’t sign the special four-page document. At the San Diego Comic Con on August 3, 1985, a panel was convened featuring Kirby, Comics Journal publisher Gary Groth, Frank

1985-86: The Fight Goes Public The frustrating tug-of-war continued, and on April 15, 1985, Kirby’s lawyer did send a letter containing a reference to possible copyright renewal claims by Kirby for SpiderMan, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four. (Despite Shooter’s claims that copyrights were an issue as early as 1978, this letter is the earliest documented evidence we’ve seen of any such claims, and a key point in the final settlement.) Roz Kirby later admitted that at one point they’d broached the subject of copyrights to “put a fire under” Marvel’s lawyers when they wouldn’t respond. From Shooter’s perspective, this was what the dispute was all about. “What Jack and his supporters were saying was literally true: Of course he wanted his artwork back. The trouble was that his lawyers were making stipulations with regard to the return of the art in such a way that to do so was to admit it was his, in a way that opened the door to contesting the ownership of the character rights. It was a legal trap; it was also a beautiful P.R. trap. To the average comic book person, the soundbite was “Evil

Jack’s pencils from page 10 of Destroyer Duck #1. 30

Miller, Alan Moore, and Marv Wolfman. Jim Shooter was in attendance, but things quickly turned ugly. Shooter remembers, “I’m sitting in the audience listening, and it starts off with Gary Groth doing a scathing indictment of Marvel, and what bastards we are, and how we’re ripping Jack off. Jack gets up, and in the gentlest, sweetest way he says, “Well, yeah, there are some issues in dispute, but we’re working to resolve them. It’s really just between me and Marvel, and it’s really not to be discussed here, and we really appreciate everybody’s support and concern.” Gary wasn’t going to let that lie, and he says, “If he’s not going to tell you, the rest of us will.” They sort of went down the panel, and each one did their contribution to the scathing diatribe against Marvel. “Finally, after this goes on for a while, Frank—who was generally supportive of Kirby, but was also a friend of mine at that point—kind of felt like this was getting out of hand, and said, “Jim Shooter’s in the audience; let’s hear what he has to say.” He was trying to balance it a little; Frank had made what I thought were reasonable comments, generally supporting Jack. So I got up and said, ‘Listen, I heard this thing start with Jack saying he was going to work it out, and I know from my side that I would like nothing better.’ I really tried to get back to what Jack said, which is that this is really not the right forum to debate this. Then Roz got up and just yelled at me. Roz was clearly emotional about this and I don’t blame her. She’s the one who really kind of gave me hell, and I didn’t really want to debate Jack’s wife! The whole thing deteriorated to the people on the podium saying nasty things about Marvel; it became sort of chaos.” The publicity increased as the new year approached. The Comics Journal #105 appeared with a February 1986 cover date, heavily focusing on the controversy. The Journal began circulating a petition among industry professionals, asking that Marvel return Jack’s art immediately. In 1986, the Los Angeles Hour 25 radio program featured Kirby, Miller, Gerber, and Mark Evanier discussing the problem [see TJKC #19 for a partial transcript]. Shooter made his views on their comments known during our interview: “I’m always amazed; there are people there—Gerber or Miller or whoever—talking about what Marvel’s doing, or Marvel’s thinking, or what’s going on at Marvel. How the hell do they know? They weren’t there; I was. It’s just ridiculous for them to assert anything about what Marvel’s position was.” That position appeared to soften on March 13, 1986, when Marvel’s attorney sent copies of the 1969 and 1972 documents Kirby had signed with Magazine Management Co. to Kirby’s lawyer. “Marvel had these documents sitting in a pile for years,” said Shooter, “but had been afraid to “show their hand” because they, Marvel’s lawyers, believed absolutely that Kirby’s lawyers must be aware of these documents, and therefore must have some ace up their sleeve. They apparently had not been aware that Jack had signed a stack of documents that basically said they had no case.” The Marvel lawyer’s letter said he hoped this would eliminate “any lingering doubts” about Marvel’s ownership of the copyrights, and that Marvel was willing to accept the shorter, one-page form from Jack—if it was accompanied by a written acknowledgement that the copyright renewal claims in Kirby’s April 15, 1985 letter were unfounded and would not be repeated. Kirby responded to Marvel with a demand of sole creator credit for many of the classic Lee/Kirby characters. (Adding fuel to the fire may have been a July 1986 segment of the ABC-TV show 20/20 about Marvel Comics, crediting Stan Lee as the creator of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Silver Surfer, Thor, and Dr. Strange. No mention was made of Kirby or Ditko’s contributions, or of Kirby’s fight for his art.) On August 2, 1986, Shooter had a brief, impromptu meeting with the Kirbys at the San Diego Comic Con in an attempt to iron out differences. Shooter recalls: “I said, “Doesn’t Stan deserve some credit?” Jack said, “Yeah, he does.” And I said, “So you’d be okay if we put ‘Stan and Jack’?” He said yes. I said, “In your letter you insist you created Spider-Man, and I know you developed a version of Spider-Man, but it wasn’t the one that was actually used. The one that was actually

used was the one Steve did.” He said, “Yeah, you’re right, that’s his.” Jack was fine with it; he had no problem. So we settled, and he got his artwork back.”

Getting Things Settled On October 16, 1986, the Kirbys saw a light at the end of the tunnel. They received an inventory list of art in Marvel’s files and a one-page artwork release to sign. Marvel also sent a two-page form to be signed, stating Jack had no hold on copyrights, that he disclaimed his copyright renewal claims from his April 15, 1985 letter, and that he reaffirmed signing the 1972 document with Magazine Management Co. and his 1975 Marvel contract. Instead of the original 88 pages of art promised to them, listed were nearly 1900 pages from the 1960s (still roughly only a fifth of the pages he’d drawn). The controversies of the past decade took their toll. On April 15, 1987, Jim Shooter was fired from Marvel. While the Kirby battle wasn’t the main reason for his dismissal, the bad press certainly weakened his position there. “Basically, the whole struggle wasn’t costing anybody at Marvel anything (personal-P.R.-wise) except me,” said Shooter. “To this day, most people, most fans don’t have a clue who Jim Galton was. Very few people know the people behind the scenes who were calling the shots in this thing. To the average fan, Marvel was Jim Shooter, and people wondered why is he doing this? I was in a position where, unless I was willing to get out there and badmouth one of our founding fathers, or badmouth the people who were paying my checks, what could I do? I wasn’t willing to talk bad about Jack certainly, and I felt honor-bound to represent Marvel as best I could, even though I disagreed; not with the legality of their stance, but with the intelligence of it. It was just an idiotic position. I kept hoping I could work something out. “As long as I thought there was a chance I could have a positive influence from the inside—for Jack’s benefit, for everybody’s benefit—I stayed. When that was no longer possible, I got myself fired so I could get the severance.” Finally, the week of May 16, 1987, Kirby signed the necessary papers to get his art returned. After four years of intense negotiations, the battle was over.

The Wrap Up In retrospect, was the battle worth fighting? Through it all, no one came out a winner. Jack and Roz went through years of anguish during what should have been a happy retirement; but had Jack signed the four-page document—and never raised the issue of copyrights—he’d have only been assured of receiving the 88 pages Marvel originally promised, instead of the 1900 he eventually received. Personal and professional relationships were severed over the controversy. Marvel Comics got a black eye that to this day isn’t fully healed, and Jim Shooter took the heat for decisions that were, in many instances, out of his control. Shooter comments, “Marvel was incredibly stupid, because by sticking to their rights—and I grant you, within the law they were right—they were so self-destructive. It would’ve been so much better to be generous; better business-wise. They would’ve made more money if they had just had the wisdom to act in a way that you should act to a founding father.” Would Shooter have done anything differently? “I’m sure this’ll give your readers a laugh, but I mean it sincerely. In the entire time I was at Marvel Comics as Editor-In-Chief, I might’ve made some poor judgments, but at no time did I ever do anything out of malice, greed, or self-service. I tried to do the right thing every time. I was extremely cognizant that I was messing with people’s careers and incomes. “I felt like I was as honorable as I could be. I screwed up some, but I walked away feeling like I had done the right thing. If I were in the same situation, with the same information I had at the time, I probably would’ve made the same mistakes. But I sleep well at night. I didn’t do anything wrong; I just wish I’d been wiser, and better able to get more done for Jack, for the industry, for everybody.”★ 31

introduction to “The Avengers Take Over,” FF #26, is ripped out. The intro to the Sub-Mariner/Daredevil slugfest, which was penciled by Wally Wood, is untouched. In fact, all of the stories that Kirby didn’t pencil feature intact introductions by Stan. The last cut is a threeparagraph appreciation by Stan of Jack’s artistic abilities. Some sample lines that are now missing: “In working with Jack on the many, many super-hero tales we’ve produced over the years, I’ve only had to say to him, ‘How about doing an offbeat fight scene in this part of the story?’ and then stand back and let ’im go. Jack would dream up the action sequences and the many gimmicks that were so much a part of the widely heralded Marvel style...” It’s hard to say what the intent of these cuts was. Of course, it’s tempting to look for evidence that Stan’s language pissed him off; but I’m not so sure that’s what’s at play here. Since he also removed the table of contents and the word “preface,” perhaps he just was looking for collage fodder. In any case, what he left behind is a very enjoyable sketch of many of his prime characters—and look, they’re smiling.★

Kirby’s Greatest Battle? I by Glen Gold

n 1974, Stan Lee wrote Origins of Marvel Comics, a Simon and Schuster hardcover which re-packaged the initial adventures of the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, et. al., backed up with later stories to show how the characters had evolved over the dozen years or so that Marvel had been doing continued stories. He followed up with Son of Origins, The Superhero Women and Bring on the Bad Guys, all of which repeated the same format: Each tale was introduced with Stan Lee’s jazzy, chatty text, indicating where the story ideas had come from and how they’d been received. In Origins, the intros ran five or six pages; by the later books, they were cut down to a page or two. Recently, I purchased Jack Kirby’s own copy of Marvel’s Greatest Superhero Battles, from 1978. By this point in the series, Stan — and the concept — seemed to be getting a little tired. Ostensibly the most memorable clashes of hero against hero, this volume also reprints (for instance) the X-Men versus the Blob and Spider-Man fighting the Kingpin. It features a John Romita painted cover with the Hulk facing off against the Thing, Doctor Strange gesturing at someone off-stage, and Spider-Man and the Silver Surfer in (somewhat) their Silver Surfer #14 poses. Page two is blank except for Simon and Schuster’s logo— and here is where Jack Kirby drew the sketch that accompanies this article. I’m tempted to make some guesses about this sketch, as it seems to follow the order in which the stories appear. The Hulk and Thing, at center, fight in the opening reprint of Fantastic Four #25-26; Captain America also appears there. Next up is the Sub-Mariner versus Daredevil, from Daredevil #7. Kirby frequently drew Subby, but not Daredevil — hence the full-size Namor at the top of the page. The next story reprint is X-Men #3, and the Cyclops figure Kirby drew is very similar to the pose on the cover of X-Men #3 (repeated on page 15, panel 3 and page 23, panel 3 of the story). The next reprint is Silver Surfer #4, an adventure featuring Thor, the final figure Kirby drew here. And who was Thor fighting? Right—the Silver Surfer, whom Kirby did not do a sketch of here (I’d like to add “darn it!” for my sake). I’m not sure why not. Did he go through the book, drawing characters he liked — until he came to the Surfer, which made him stop? Or did he just run out of room or find something else to do that day? I would love to find some evidence of how his creativity worked, but it’s hard to tell. A secondary feature of Kirby’s copy of this book is equally hard to interpret (or, to be honest — it’s hard to try not to interpret this): Large sections of Stan Lee’s text have been excised with scissors or a razor blade. These aren’t dainty cuts, and repeating the whole paragraphs missing requires more space than seems necessary. Generally speaking, any mention by Stan Lee of Kirby or his method of creating got cut. “When Benjamin J. Grimm first made his appearance in the FF... Jack Kirby and I decided to make him one of the strongest, most powerful characters in all of comicdom.” That’s gone, along with all language describing how the FF and the Hulk were created—but the cuts leave intact all mention of what the fans wanted, i.e. “Virtually every letter contained the same demand: “Let the Hulk fight the Thing!”” And Stan’s whole

™

COMING IN JUNE! SUBSCRIBE NOW!

IS GOING

SOLO! HE E’S T -NEW R E H LL IAL, A DWAY C E P S R Y OR JERR R ART FO ! 1 E COV R EGO # ALTE

Yep, you heard us right! In JUNE 1999, the world’s first super-hero comics fanzine will be published regularly again as a SEPARATE MAGAZINE from TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING, edited by co-founder ROY THOMAS!

™

AND HERE’S A SNEAK PEEK AT THE BACK (FLIP) COVER BY GOLDEN AGE GREAT

IRWIN HASEN!

An 80-PAGE GIANT!

PARTIAL CONTENTS: STAN LEE GETS ROASTED in Chicago, 1995, by JULIUS SCHWARTZ, among others! THE UNSEEN WONDER WOMAN by GARDNER FOX, “CHARLES MOULTON,” & H.G. PETER! Interview with ALL-STAR/ GREEN LANTERN artist IRWIN HASEN! THOMAS & ORDWAY on INFINITY, INC.! PLUS: Special features by MICHAEL T. GILBERT GRASS GREEN BILL SCHELLY ADDED BONUS: REGULAR FEATURE--P.C Hamerlinck’s FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA) with rare work by MARC SWAYZE

Jade,

Gree Fury,

te n Lan

tma rn, Ba

& sh TM m, Fla n, Ato

s, Inc. Comic

er S g, Silv • Thin

TM r-Man Spide urfer,

t, Inc. inmen nterta rvel E a M &©

Fans worldwide agree: No publication brings comics history to life like ALTER EGO! SUBSCRIBE NOW: $20 for four big issues!

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $20 for 4-issues in the US ($27 Canada/Mexico, $37 elsewhere) from: TwoMorrows • 1812 Park Drive • Raleigh, NC 27605 USA • Phone: 919-833-8092 • Fax: 919-833-8023 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • web: www.twomorrows.com

Jack’s interpretation of Ulysses (Odysseus) battling the Cyclops, as told in Homer’s classic poem The Odyssey. (Drawing dated 1-3-77) Thanks to Mike Mignola for the superb inks on this issue’s cover.

Glory Be! New Gods #6 tag-team examined by Charles Hatfield, Richard Kyle, and Adam McGovern (Editor’s Note: I vividly remember being eleven years old when my aunt came to visit with a paper grocery sack full of comics her boyfriend was getting rid of. Of the 50 or so books in it, one really stood out: New Gods #6. Something about that cover, with the mummified figure standing dead center, drew me in. I was totally blown away by the nonstop action in it, and even cut out Kirby figures to create my own collages (pages 13 and 18 feature my all-time favorite poses). So for this issue, I self-indulgently selected my favorite Kirby battle story—“The Glory Boat”—and asked three of TJKC’s most literate regular contributors to analyze it, without knowing what the other would write. Here are the results, assembled “tag-team” style, and accompanied by the Jack’s pencils, from photocopies he made before they were inked. Since all three analyses flow throughout this article, I suggest you read each straight through, one at a time, to avoid confusion.) ical, like much of Jack’s later work, and this sequence may be among the first.) The fifth issue begins with another prologue featuring Metron. He has gone beyond the stars, to (as Metron explains) “the Promethean Galaxy, the place of Giants! Alive, chained to the fragments of the devices they used in their attempts to smash the final barrier!” And Jack tells us, speaking of a colossal agonized figure floating in space before us, “There were others with Metron’s boldness and hunger. This one tried to engulf the barrier by enlarging his own atomic structure. What happened is not known. He failed. He drifts endlessly—larger than a star cluster—fused, living! Taking a billion Earth years to feel one heartbeat!” And Metron says of the Giants, “I can feel them invading my thoughts, crying out in eternal humiliation!” Loss of face was a theme of the whole Fourth World narrative. From Orion’s bestial “Apokolips face” in the beginning to Esak’s at the end, it motivated the series. The loss of face—the loss of the social mask, the exposure of the inner self, the humiliation of failure before others— was the entire story’s preoccupation. It may have been Jack’s, as well, for this was the first time in his career that he was wholly on his own, completely exposed, for good or ill. (The loss of face theme begins with Steel Hand, an Intergang boss, in Mister Miracle #1, who says somewhat artificially, “Soon it will be over—and I can forget Mister Miracle [the original, the Great Thaddeus]. Before I lose face, he’ll lose his life!” Then, in New Gods #3, there is the first revelation of Orion’s “Apokolips face”—and when Orion’s normal appearance is restored by the Mother Box, the device causes a gun to blow up in the face of the criminal Sugar-Man, seriously damaging his features. Soon, of course, Sonny Sumo and Funky Flashman—who hid his true face from the world—will come on the scene.) So now in the sixth issue of New Gods, in profoundly deep waters, Jack comes to the biggest test of his creative life. In the next issue he is going to attempt the most ambitious story he has ever written and drawn— that anyone in comic books to that moment has ever attempted—“The Pact.” Jack may have been speaking to himself as well as to us when he wrote and drew “Glory Boat.”

Introduction by Richard Kyle hen Jack began the story of the Fourth World, he began without a plan. The first three issues of Forever People, New Gods, and Mister Miracle show him finding his way—he had an idea of the story he wanted to tell, but not of the actual narrative and characters that would tell it. Those early stories were frequently forced and artificial. Then, as he moved into the fourth issues, the dialogue sharpened, the stock characters and situations began to drop away. Intergang was phased out, “O’Ryan” effectively disappeared, the stereotypical supporting characters vanished, Infinity Man faded away—and Big Barda and Sonny Sumo appeared, Orion found himself in deep waters, and the Fourth World began to take real shape. “The Pact” was just over the horizon. Why didn’t Jack simply start here in the first place? Well, he may have written about that... In Mister Miracle #5, Oberon, the dwarf assistant of Scott Free— Jack’s surrogate and the voice of caution in the strip—says to Scott while they are preparing a new escape test, “You may call this a rehearsal, but I call it ‘constant jeopardy’ when I fire this cannon. Why must you wait until I ignite the charge? Why can’t you start working before that and give yourself more of a chance?!” But Scott Free couldn’t do it any other way—and I suspect neither could Jack’s creative mind. That’s the way it worked at its best: In real time and in front of an audience, letting the story emerge from his unconscious while you and I and Jack sat watching. The storyline that culminates in “Glory Boat” in New Gods #6 has its beginnings in the fourth issue, in one of the most telling sequences in the series. In the prologue, Metron of New Genesis, a manifestation of science and intellect, has taken young Esak in the Mobius Chair to a primitive world of savages. He says to Esak, “One day, when their bellies are full, they will look up and see us. Then they will think and dream!” Esak says, “Tell me, Metron! Are we truly beyond time? Are we beyond death?” And Metron replies, “My sensors indicate there is an answer in New Genesis.” There, Highfather tells them, “The war to keep Apokolips from Earth goes badly. One of us has fallen!” It is Seagrin, an oceanic god, who has died. Orion says of him, “He was a gentle warrior. He loved the deeps and all life in it. It was his element. Within it, he found harmony in living. And this is the end of it. Somewhere in these waters he fought and died!”—slain by the Deep Six. (Curiously, Bill Everett, creator of the Sub-Mariner and identified with water and the sea in so many stories, died unexpectedly at the very time Jack must have been conceiving this story. It would be interesting to know if it was before or after Everett’s death, for Everett was the first among the Immortals of comic books to die and he was someone whose work Jack respected. The New Gods stories are frequently autobiograph-

The Glory Boat “Glory Boat” can be seen as a parable of the Vietnam War. It is also more: The creature may be called Leviathan, but it’s the Great White Whale as well. Jack created many of his strongest stories by dividing a psychological conflict into opposing physical forces, then dramatizing its resolution in those same concrete terms. Although Melville’s Moby Dick has been given countless interpretations, its symbolic structure quite remarkably anticipates Freud’s theories, and much of the Fourth World (which was synthesized from many sources) is based on Jack’s interpretation of these ideas, and—rightly or wrongly—I believe they are especially visible in “Glory Boat.” In it, Jack also carries his method one step further—for what happens to the (see KYLE on page 39) 36

Charles Hatfield

Adam McGovern

Page 1: “The Glory Boat” deals with the artificial manipulation of life forms. The antagonists, the Deep Six, possess “mutative” powers which allow them to adapt other living beings, as well as their own bodies, to suit specific purposes. These “mutations” are immediate and often radical, distorting the creatures beyond recognition. The “Leviathan” which approaches here (page 1) is such a mutation. It is not a whale, but a monstrous parody of one, sporting enormous curved spikes on its back. The creature’s impossible shape contributes to the dramatic composition of this page, which reverses Kirby’s trademark use of what I call the Looming Effect: Rather than coming at us, the monster is moving away, toward a small and vulnerable-looking target. The looming flukes in the foreground, hinting at the monster’s gigantic mass, sweep the reader’s eye forward, through the curving spikes, toward the helpless ship. (In the published version, Royer’s felicitous inks perfectly capture the sinuous sweep of the tail.) Against the Deep Six and their Leviathan, Kirby will pose the regenerative powers of Lightray, who also has the ability to shape life. Tellingly, these contrasting forces are played out against the backdrop of the sea, which both science and myth recognize as the wellspring of all living things. Refinements in the script between penciling and publishing suggest one possible inspiration for this setting: Whereas the penciled version speaks simply of the creature being “spawned” by the Deep Six, the published version calls the monster a “resurrection” of an ancient symbol, alluding to the Leviathan of the Old Testament. (The ending of the previous issue’s story, “Spawn,” also strikes this note, promising to “revive the dreaded myths” of ages past.) The penciled version shown here may be more strictly accurate—the beast has been created, not brought back to life—but lacks the Biblical resonance. The final version, invoking religion and myth, adds symbolic heft to the script and alerts us to ancient mysteries of the sea as the source of life.

For me, Kirby’s Greatest Battle was not confined to the spectacular clash recounted in this story — it was the conflict he perceived between our longing for peace and our tendency toward battle itself. That conflict was central to Kirby’s quest as a modern myth-maker. His childhood on the mean streets of early-20th century ghetto New York and his adolescence in WWII had schooled him only too well in it, and the divided, Cold War America in which he produced his best work gave him a passion to see it resolved. Here’s how he attempted it in this great battle story — at once his most realistic and most fantastic treatment of the theme. Page 1: A marvelously cinematic establishing shot as subtle as it is tense — this starts a four-page (see McGOVERN on page 39)

Pages 2-3: Look at the battering ram smashing through the ship: It seems to be made of stone. Despite the fluid sweep of the creature’s tail on page 1, the Leviathan appears more inorganic than organic. (Check out pages 4 and 24: The beast is like a machine with tusks, replete with (see HATFIELD on page 38) 37

about to be reintroduced to the story with a vengeance. The life preserver anticipates the raft which bears the Sheridans, whose familial in-fighting, no less than the war of the New Gods, will drive the story to come. The caption fits the image, telling us that our tale will center on a few survivors left in the beast’s wake. Even without that caption (the Squint Test, remember?) the progression is telling, from the remote, spectacular carnage in the first three panels, to a single piece of flotsam in the fourth, a piece dedicated to the preservation of life. The name written on that piece? The name of the Sheridans’ yacht, the Aurora, meaning light.

Charles Hatfield absurdly small pectoral fins.) This blurring of organic and inorganic forms—a hallmark of Kirby—has everything to do with what “The Glory Boat” is about. Oddly enough, it is the more organic (or at least earthy) forms which will come to be associated with Apokolips, while the cool, metallic shine of machines will be associated with New Genesis. This spectacular spread, a beautiful example of deep composition and suspended motion, reintroduces the threat of the Leviathan without actually giving us a clear view of it. (The view at the end of the previous issue is much more complete.) I’m especially entranced by the arrested figures of the men in freefall—in deep and middle distances, and in close-up too. Like most good Kirby spreads, this twofer captures an entire sequence rather than a single interrupted motion: We witness the ramming and its consequences.

Page 5: Orion bursts from the sea and into the lives of the Sheridans, a family “at war with themselves.” They are turned away from us, toward the rising figure of the god, who gusts skyward in a column of spray. This tantalizing image—deliberately impersonal?—jibes with the emphasis of the story itself, which is not precisely about the Sheridans or the gods, but rather about the “rendezvous” between the two (and, more specifically, about irreconcilable points of view). Orion faces us, but distantly (contrast this to the title page in New Gods #1); the Sheridans, new to us, face away. The splash forces us to see Orion impersonally— as an enigma, an affront—yet gives the Sheridans no faces, no distinctive likenesses, with which we can identify. The result? Suspense, in a literal sense: Suspension of judgment. (Faces will come to mean much over the next twenty-one pages, especially near the end, as Kirby turns the logic of this splash on its head.) Father Farley is in the foreground, and has the last word, but it is son Richard who stands, shielding his eyes, to take in the sight. Is Farley’s thrusting arm meant to signal Orion, or to ward him off? Daughter Lynn sits behind; like all of them, she is in a defensive posture, (see HATFIELD on page 41)

Page 4: From the tableau on pages 2-3 we move to a divided surface, a classic Kirby 2x2 which succeeds in telling a story even when subjected to the Squint Test. Try it: Hold the page at arm’s length and squint, until the captions blur and you cannot read the narration. Watch the Leviathan rise in the first panel, top left, then sink in the second, top right, describing an arc across the page. Look for the Leviathan in the third panel, lower left, swimming away—it’s not quite as easy here, because the optic center of the image is a swirl of bubbles, describing the creature’s wake. Yet the lines curl to the upper right, toward the Leviathan’s tail—once again moving away from us, into the distance, on its way to further prey. Throughout most of this page, the carnage is vacant of the human element. But as we move to the fourth and final panel, a close-up shows a lost life preserver which symbolizes that human element—which is 38

Adam McGovern demonstration of how restrained the ultimate action artist could actually be, building to a fever pitch of suspense without a super-hero longjohn in sight. (Incidentally, somewhere between this story’s penciled and published versions, page 1 acquired a caption which was at once a punchier intro and a more effective recap: “‘Bring Apokolips to Earth!!’ This terrible command has been done!! The Deep Six — Mystic Mutators of the Deep — have resurrected ‘Leviathan,’ symbol of ancient disasters!! — which can only be stopped by The Glory Boat!!” It still sounds like Kirby’s writing [“command has been done”?], though after decades as a perceived sidekick Kirby didn’t take kindly to being rethought. I wonder whose idea the change was?)

Richard Kyle opposing humans also happens on a larger scale to the New Gods—and perhaps on an even larger scale. Pages 1-4: The Leviathan, created by Apokolips’ Deep Six, is a dark Moby Dick, the black side of Nature. The final vessel it destroys is the yacht Aurora— the Dawn—leaving three survivors adrift. The two men, father and son, figures representing generational conflict, are also two sides of a deeply conflicted superego. The girl, nominally, represents the world. (see KYLE on page 43)

Pages 2-3: A prime example of how Kirby didn’t compose for 4-color, but for 70mm — look at the spectacle he achieves with none of today’s comics’ glossy gimmickry. Page 4: If Frank Miller is comics’ greatest filmmaker, then Kirby is comics’ greatest storyboardist — consider how disjunctive each of these images is from the other, and yet how lucid and propulsive the narrative remains. (In an unrelated note, check out how Kirby hits the exact midpoint between his venerable notions of Biblical retribution and his more modern class-consciousness with the line, “Not even the private yachts of the rich are spared!!”) Page 5: A family “at war” with itself — in these characters we get the most literal representation of the generationally and ideologically-rent early-’70s America that Kirby allegorizes everywhere else in the series. (Of course, he situates them in a still thoroughly allegorical setting of drift and uncertainty — a neat elemental inversion of Waiting for Godot’s desert, if I may!) P.S. Why say the “final” war between the New Gods? That makes it sound like we’re reading the series finale. I’m sorry, but Kirby did need an editor. Page 6: Since we’re participating in what may be comics’ first rabbinic commentary, it’s fitting to note the (see McGOVERN on page 43) 39

Charles Hatfield dazed and confused. Farley’s words to Richard, already barbed, are very much in character—bluff, literalminded, ready to translate the unknown and threatening (the god) into something familiar and assimilable (a “Navy frogman”). But the joke’s on him: His family has drifted into a much larger War. (Kirby’s caption, speaking of a “final” war, hints at his unrealized ambitions for the series—and I do think he intends for this story to be “horrifying.”) Page 6: In The Jack Kirby Collector #21, Gil Kane points to Kirby’s late-period use of four-panel pages as evidence of his declining powers as an artist, as if the relative simplicity of the 2x2 grid reflects complacence or slackening interest on Kirby’s part (“he thought what he put down on paper would do”). Quite simply, this page puts the lie to Kane’s criticism—the layout is perfect. The sparseness of the design and the size of the panels allow Kirby to emphasize the distance between Orion and the Sheridans—a sign of Orion’s aloofness and the Sheridans’ hesitancy and mistrust. The odd compositions, which foreground elements such as Orion’s leg (first panel), insist on the gap between humans and god, and stress Orion’s far-off, unreachable nature. Kirby’s dramatic argument depends on space, and he gives the images ample room to breathe. (In the published version, Royer helps by discreetly dropping some borderlines—a smart habit. For Royer, an implied panel will often suffice.) Note that Orion does not speak until the bottom right-hand corner of the page—his first close-up— while the Sheridans appeal for his attention with word and gesture. Note too that Orion’s unspoken thoughts are of things which the Sheridans could not possibly know, and that Kirby (in both penciled and published versions) hedges the word “rescuer” within quotation marks (second panel). What have they gotten themselves into?

Page 7: The top tier on this page accomplishes the reverse of page 6: It links Orion and the Sheridans, though panel two immediately warns us that this linking could prove fatal. Farley Sheridan’s dialogue in the first three panels once again shows his rather prosaic outlook: The revelation of New Genesis technology does not faze him, and indeed he assumes (see HATFIELD on page 42) 41

tive interjection of Richard Sheridan’s “Listen, fellas” in the third panel. That neither Orion nor Lightray can spare a moment’s notice for Richard underscores the distance between god and human; his hesitant bids for attention are actually rather funny, as a contrast to the typically highflown dialogue of the two gods. We should pay strict attention to their talking, though: Note the highly-fraught exchange in panel two, in which, again, the difference between Lightray and Orion is underlined (see HATFIELD on page 44)

Charles Hatfield that Orion must be a representative of American military know-how. Son Richard is faster on the uptake but earns only his father’s scorn. Orion’s thoughts in panel three, already foreshadowing disaster for the Sheridans, provide a vague rationale for the family’s presence: Fate, linked to the mystery of the Source through Orion’s Mother Box. Fate also supplies the suture from third to fourth panel, in the form of a caption which introduces the “ugly” wooden ship of Jaffar, with its mysterious prisoner. (Note that the cover of this issue exploits the image of ship and prisoner without revealing a thing.) The sea is a roiling cloud of Kirby dots. I love that. Page 8: The scripting on this page impresses me, particularly the first panel’s description of the Astro-Force “stinging and stimulating” the prisoner’s bindings. There’s an intriguing conflict here between organic matter and the technological power represented by Orion’s harness and Mother Box, a conflict made obvious by Orion’s observation that the bindings are alive. Again, the four-panel page allows Kirby to take advantage of space: Panels one and four isolate the elevated figure of the prisoner/Lightray, as he is freed by Orion’s blasts. (Lightray was last seen in New Gods #3, being pursued by the Black Racer; this is his first appearance on Earth.) What I especially like about this sequence is the way Orion unmasks at the same time: Both gods stand revealed, as if in mutual recognition. I also like the immediate and obvious difference between the two characters. Orion (mis)characterizes Lightray as a “lamb” among wolves, while Lightray, not very much chastened by his imprisonment, refers to war as both a tragedy and a game, a game whose rules he intends to rewrite. There’s an admirable naturalism to Lightray’s pose as he frees himself of the last remnants of his bindings—and a trace of smugness too. Page 9: Orion has to mouth some fairly lumpy exposition in the first panel—again, a bit of rationalization for the peculiar twists of Kirby’s allegory—but on the whole the dialogue is nicely shaded, including the very tenta42

Adam McGovern Biblical sensibilities recreated in this story: Orion’s aloof omnipotence, by turns commanding and compassionate in an arcanely unpredictable way, is exactly the comportment of an Old Testament angel. Page 7: Orion’s unvarnished honesty and offer of independence to his charges in panel 2 are uncharacteristic for American action heroes, and give an interesting insight into Kirby’s possible views on what we should expect of heroes, and demand of ourselves. Page 8: Notice how, the tenser the pace of action, the greater the number of panels Kirby includes on a page — but in this story at least, never more than six and usually considerably less. It’s intriguing that the man who’s considered the most kinetic artist ever in comics was, in his mature phase, the one whose page composition was the most grid-like. In an era of “pretty picture” comics with high-end graphics that seldom coalesce as coherent storytelling, it’s instructive to see how Kirby uses the shape of panel and configuration of page as a window on the action — not the action itself. This need not be retrograde; no one’s really changed the shape of a movie screen since the medium’s inception, yet innovations and adventurism within that frame have certainly progressed, as they did in Kirby’s work. Page 9: “Your kind brings an undeserved honor to war!!” — Other than Lightray’s bemused disbelief at human hostility (see next page), perhaps this story’s most poignant expression of its theme is in Orion’s sad longing for peacefulness and seeming (see McGOVERN on page 45) of Apokolips’ creation.

Richard Kyle

Pages 6-7: Jack establishes the father and son conflict immediately. In many ways it parallels the potential conflict within the superego, of the ego-ideal and the conscience struggling with contradictory imperatives.

Page 5: Searching for the Deep Six and their creature, in part to avenge the death of his friend—the New God Seagrin—Orion is led to the wreck by his Mother Box—a clear analog of the healthy superego—and he rises from the sea as much like a sperm whale breaching as “a Polaris missile firing,” suggesting the warrior, well enough, but also an affinity with a “true” Moby Dick, a true personification of Nature, unlike the monster

Pages 8-12: Then, nearby, Orion discovers a strange ark-like boat, a “misshapen (see KYLE on page 47) 43

violence, or killing,” Lightray replies with an allusion to New Genesis, a place where such values prevail. The real exchange—the real mutuality— is here in this brief exchange, not in the bluff show of a handshake above. The art says it as well as the scripting. Perhaps inevitably, Orion breaks up this moment, suddenly

Charles Hatfield and Orion points out Lightray’s supposed unfitness for war. Farley Sheridan finally gets a close-up and, once again, bullies others with his words (last panel). Clearly, he is a man used to being listened to. Lightray acknowledges him, whereas Orion would not—note how this panel places the god and the Sheridans (all of them) into a relationship defined as much by space as by speech. At last, there is some recognition between humans and gods. Orion, of course, has already gone below. Page 10: Lightray doesn’t seem to be trying to be sarcastic in the first panel. Yet his offhand observation— that a handshake is a form of testing, not simply a friendly gesture— cuts decisively to the heart of Farley Sheridan, a man persuaded of his own importance and determined to keep others at bay. Confident that his name ought to be recognized, Sheridan attempts to co-opt Lightray with the hand of kindness, but the god reads him as casually as one would a billboard. (Note that Lightray does not introduce himself by name.) Sheridan is warlike, his son Richard a pacifist; the two of them are paired and opposed much as Orion and Lightray are paired and opposed. (When Sheridan introduces his son and daughter in the second panel, there’s no hint of affection in it.) The third panel brings Richard and Lightray together: Again, Lightray’s profile becomes a foreground framing device (replaying the bottom of page 9), but this time only Richard shares the frame with him, not the rest of the Sheridans. To Richard’s statement that he disapproves of “war, 44

emerging from the hold with dire words. Farley Sheridan offers to assist, “If I can be of any help, buddy—”, but Orion’s reply is blunt, unreadable, tossing the familiar “buddy” back at him. I’m tempted to read this as curt dismissal, but the drawing isn’t right for that—is there a suggestion of likeness? Page 11: There’s horror in the hold: A living computer, a beacon bred by the Deep Six. Quotation marks (notoriously abused by Kirby, but worth noting) tell us that this is something special, a “sender” or “organic director.” What does that mean? Those quotation marks also tell us that Orion and Lightray know exactly what it means, even though we don’t. The sender, like the Leviathan, parodies life: Huge eyeballs bobble on a gangly stem; fins and tentacles stick out uselessly. Its body is incoherent, clotted— an ugly mess—but it can lash out, like the binding kelp which giftwrapped Lightray earlier. Orion is ready to kill it, for he recognizes it as the Leviathan’s “brain”— but Lightray has plans: “It shouldn’t be destroyed!! It should be changed!!” Its medium of change will be light. Page 12: Like the Deep Six, Lightray too can manipulate life, but to opposite ends, transforming it into something more “sophisticated” and “unified.” Light, he says—not the light of gleaming weaponry, but the light of New Genesis—will purge the sender, and remake it. His language (as on page 11) is portentous but vague; once more quotation marks come into play, hinting at significance. The sender will become a “caller”—what does that mean? Something is happening here, but we don’t know what it is. Apparently, it entails reversing the course of the Leviathan (hence, of the narrative). It also entails a battle, one scripted by the “smiling lamb,” Lightray. (He’s not smiling at the bottom of the page.) (see HATFIELD on page 46)

Adam McGovern addiction to conflict. (The former is witnessed here and, on page 20, in his pleasure at seeing the astro-harness “serve the cause of mercy” for once; the latter, in his “fierce exultation” at the top of page 22.) Page 10: As a Vietnam-era nine-year-old, the anti-war undercurrents of this story made an indelible impression on me; as an adult, I see how schematized the theme’s execution often gets — Richard in particular is more a plot summary than a character. On the other hand, note the deft and succinct strokes of dialogue (panels 1-3) with which Lightray’s wistfulness and gentle condescension illuminate our species’ social infancy.

Page 11: It’s been observed before (in TJKC and elsewhere) that Kirby had a love-hate relationship with the machine age; he repeatedly implied that our technology will destroy us while he gave everything, including skin, a metallic shine. Ostensibly this page and the next are about the destruction/creation dichotomy in Orion’s and Lightray’s respective philosophies. But what strikes me most about this page — and about what it sets in motion for the remainder of the story — is the bizarre but definitive expression of Kirby’s mixed technophobia and technophilia to be found in Lightray’s transformation of an ugly organic pest into a gleaming, cybernetic... er, bomb. Page 12: It’s more applicable to preceding pages, but I haven’t been able to fit it (see McGOVERN on page 46) 45

Charles Hatfield

Adam McGovern

Again, the scripting on this page is mannered but powerful. Kirby’s gods do not speak like people, but rather like narrators, talking of “light at play with atoms.” My favorite word on the page is the term technoactive, which, presumably, is meant to echo “radioactive.” If radioactive materials emit radiation, what will a techno-active creature do? Change, yes, but how? The very phrase implies Kirby’s trademark blending of organic and inorganic form. For a page about light, this one does a lot with shadow—not simply the shadows cast about the hold by the glowing cube, but the shadows which fall across Orion’s face in panel three, or against which the gods stand out in panel four. Something is indeed happening—even Farley Sheridan is taken aback.

in till now: Notwithstanding the spotty characterization of this story’s human cast, note how convincingly its patently unbelievable deities are portrayed: The mystery of Orion’s and Lightray’s jargon and purposes, the intermittency with which they address or even notice their mortal companions, sketches a lofty otherness that a million “thee”s, “thou”s, and thunderbolts couldn’t. While I’m on the subject, skip ahead to the first two panels of page 16 and see how even bad-guy Jaffar is given a distinctive and plausible motivation (in this case, a strange kind of cross-species enmity and indignation).

Page 13: Whatever a “caller” is, the Deep Six think they know exactly what’s going on. Lightray is determined that they not interfere with his creation—I suppose the Sheridans are the farthest thing from his thoughts? Orion, ironically, is the one who expresses concern. For good reason: Though Lightray pierces the ocean depths with light, Jaffar of the Deep Six nonetheless escapes notice. What I especially like about this page is the way Lightray moves. Call them speed lines, motion lines, action abstraction, whatever—the lines in Lightray’s wake tell you something about his speed, energy, and range. As Scott McCloud observes in Understanding Comics, Kirby invests these diagrammatic lines with “a life and physical presence all their own.” Note how much of the impact of this page depends on this kind of pictographic symbolism. (Photorealism be damned.) Page 14: The crux of the story: The Sheridans. Farley browbeats his son about courage and “duty,” all the while denying that he is out of his depth; Richard struggles vainly to make his father see the extraordinary danger they’re in. The thing is, Richard is right, as events will soon prove. Though we readers may share Farley’s (see HATFIELD on page 48)

Page 13: A minor controversy has raged in the pages of TJKC over how “educated” Kirby was. As an exhibit on the side of those who say “very,” I submit panel 5 here, one of many instances in which Kirby exhibited a grasp of concepts from theoretical physics at least two decades before they would become common knowledge (in this case, the light-bending properties of “dark matter” that exist but can’t be seen). (see McGOVERN on page 49)

Richard Kyle craft made of aged wood.” Bound to form its mast is Lightray—by his name and nature as much “the dawn” as the Aurora was—who has been captured by Apokolips’ dark and primitive Deep Six. Orion frees Lightray, much as he has saved the three human survivors of the Aurora, and Lightray establishes a rapport with the conscientious objector son. Then, when Orion and Lightray discover that in the heart of the craft is the directing “brain” of the Leviathan—an organic “monstrosity” as Orion describes it, bred from sea life—Orion wants to kill it. However, Lightray insists on altering it, instead: “It shouldn’t be destroyed, it should be changed!” And stripping from it “the taint of Apokolips,” in Lightray’s words, it is made to “grow again in the image of New Genesis,” in the words of Orion. We’ve seen Orion begin by reflecting the father, as Lightray did the son, and now because he has the Mother Box—a healthy, unconflicted superego—we see him rejecting his instinctive urge to destroy, and instead yielding to Lightray’s greater vision. (Curiously, it is almost as though Orion is a figure of the Old Testament and Lightray of the New Testament. Yet Jack, a practicing Jew, founded much of the larger Fourth World narrative and its characters on the Old Testament, and seemingly took little from the New.) The altered being, now assuming the form of pure science-shaped geometric structures rather than its previous almost inchoate organic mass, is made to send out a call to the Leviathan—to bring it to its destruction. Pages 13-22: The father rages at the son he believes is a weakling. He was a warrior during WWII, and he believes his son should confront the new world in the same way—as a warrior. But then, as he “looks up” and sees the creatures of this new world—of Apokolips—board the craft, the father breaks down, unable to deal with the new reality. The son, to protect his father and sister, and able (see KYLE on page 57)

a cultural memory—casts a long shadow over this father/son conflict. Vietnam, after all, was not simply a war without consensus; it was an affront to nationhood. The war mobilized competing discourses of militarism and pacifism, duty and justice, on a massive scale, dissolving in some cases the closest, most important of bonds: Family and community. Farley and Richard’s internecine war mirrors the cultural and emotional fracturing of America during this era, a time when the rhetoric of patriotism (often associated, as here, with the sacrifices of World War II) was used to rebuff or discredit antiwar arguments. Farley, like Kirby a veteran of the Allied invasion of Europe, glorifies the past: “After the beach, we met them hand to hand!!— Gave it to ’em in the guts...” He desperately wants his arguments with Richard to be about war. Lynn, who has few words and little presence throughout the first half of the story, finds her words here: “Must you always bring me into your bickering?” Her role is interesting—she won’t take either side. What’s especially interesting is the way both father and son bid for rhetorical advantage by invoking her safety and security (panels three and four). In panel four, Lynn grips her head as if to block out the bickering, but Kirby foregrounds Farley’s face in a harsh close-up: Come what may, he will refocus the argument on Richard’s refusal to fight (an ironic bit of foreshadowing). Throughout this sequence the “acting” and composition are superb: Gesture, angle, and depth are marshaled for maximum impact. Consider the perspectival shifts, varied two-shots, and demonstrative poses (e.g., Richard’s, in panel five). I always enjoy seeing Kirby’s visual energy (see HATFIELD on page 50)

Charles Hatfield benign view of Orion and Lightray (“They look decent enough!!!”), the war between the gods will have terrible consequences for the Sheridans. The Vietnam War—still a war when Kirby wrote this story, not just

throughout the story, Kirby’s critique of his own generation in the person of Farley Sheridan is striking, and nearly singular for its time.

Adam McGovern Page 14: History records figures like Abbie Hoffman and Jane Fonda — still young at the time of this story’s publication — as society’s and pop culture’s standard-bearers against the Old Order—but on this page and elsewhere

Page 15: Some Kirby associates recollect that he worked on stories from start to finish; others, that he worked on individual sequences that weren’t necessarily executed in their final, published order. The latter would seem to be borne out by Mark Evanier’s observation that scenes rarely change in the middle of a Kirby page. Either way, the leaps in point of view from page to page, as seen between this one and those that directly precede and follow it (and indeed throughout the story), are a major key to the powerful dynamic of Kirby’s work. Page 16: An epic botch for an epic saga: A storm of fan controversy erupted at the time over whether Richard’s sudden outburst of gallantry on this page and the next was meant to show (however heavy-handedly) that conscientious objectors aren’t “cowards,” or that violence is inevitable, necessary, and admirable. Kirby’s intent was more toward the former, and he could’ve had a better shot at being understood by slightly amending Richard’s page 10 dialogue to read, “I believe in selfdefense but I don’t like war, violence or killing!!” — a balance true to the conscientious-objector creed. Page 17: I think it was John Ford who said that “America is a happy-ending country.” If that is so, then in panels 2-4, without a hint of gore, the aching meaninglessness and thudding finality of death in a violent age are conveyed in a most unAmerican (and, for mass culture, practically unheard-of ) fashion. (see McGOVERN on page 53) 49

we might expect the pacifist to turn under duress, since that’s an old trope—but Farley’s, I think, is a shock. This is no simple-minded critique of pacifism, nor, on Farley’s side, of hypocrisy. Rather, Kirby asks us to consider the gap between intention and action, and, more pointedly, between rationalization and instinct. Contrast Farley, in panel three, (see HATFIELD on page 53)

Charles Hatfield put to such controlled use—it’s as if he packed all the energy of physical combat into these talking heads. Page 15: God bless Kirby’s machines. The “techno-active” cube is a perfect example, because it grows. Metallic but fecund, it spreads, refashioning and extending itself—as if to become were the essence of being. This is an organic conceit, ill-suited for machines but quintessentially Kirby. What I find most fascinating about this is that Kirby presents cold, glistening metal as the symbol of New Genesis— that is, as a symbol of fertility, ordered growth, and natural function. Whereas the “sender” was a shapeless mass of ugliness, this “caller” is a thing of beauty. Farley and Richard discover it, as Orion and Lightray discovered the “sender” earlier (indeed, the layout echoes page 11). Once again Kirby asked Royer for a specific sound effect, and, in the published version, got it. (Even the SFX contrast: SSHHREEEE! versus ZZZEEEIINNGG.) Lynn finally gets a close-up (panel two), as she alerts Richard and his father to a new danger—and here comes Jaffar, up from the deep. Page 16: The “horrifying” part’s coming up. Indeed Jaffar is a horror, and Kirby writes him wonderfully, both in word and in image. He is lofty, supercilious, smart as hell (“arrogant little soft-skinned slugs” is wicked good), and happy to offend human sensibilities. He looms over Farley Sheridan in panel two and completely dominates the page. (Again, the 2x2 grid gives Kirby room to exploit scale and physical relationships.) Suddenly everything turns: Farley locks up, frozen with fear, while his son leaps forward to defend him. Farley breaks. Richard rushes in, ignoring his own advice (“Don’t face him down, Dad!”). Perhaps Richard’s transformation isn’t so surprising— 50

Charles Hatfield with the more self-possessed, even blindly confident version of the same character from two pages ago. Page 17: Discretion is the better part of horror: Witness the stripping of Richard’s face in panels three and four. Kirby conceals the fatal moment, cropping it out; then he foregrounds the result—panel four—leaving no doubt that Richard has been wiped away. It’s an extraordinary transition, calculated to foreground Richard’s facelessness. Lynn’s scream may be too obvious, but Kirby clearly wants to drive the point home: This is not mere death, but complete erasure. (On the significance of faces and losing them, see Jarret Keene’s fine Machine Man essay in TJKC #15.) There’s little doubt in Orion’s mind (or Kirby’s?) that Jaffar deserves death, for what he has done is thoroughly destroy another. Of course, Lightray and Orion have been the catalysts— Jaffar craves vengeance, not on the human, but on the gods of New Genesis. To him, effacing Richard’s identity amounts to a simple gesture, a goad; the human is a means to an end, no more. To me this is one of the most shocking moments of violence in all of Kirby. Page 18: Orion plays hardball: He will kill Jaffar, and he will do it without scruple, batting him with a volley of energy blasts. The violence mounts to an insane pitch, but the memory of Richard’s seemingly pointless death lingers on. Panel four emphasizes the human cost of all this carnage; oddly, it’s Orion (the hunter, the warrior) who questions what it all means. I like that—the violence here seems deadly serious in intent and consequence, in contrast to the many scenes of balletic combat throughout Kirby’s oeuvre. This is such an explosive page that it shames analysis. Panel two, in particular, is as unmistakably Kirby as any panel I’ve seen. The figure of Orion, flying at a crouch, radiates force; though nearly symmetrical, his body seems tense, compacted, aimed. He’s coming right at us, yet the image is just off-center enough to read from left to right, invoking motion. (The Looming Effect depends to an extent on asymmetry; a perfectly-centered Orion would seem static, lifeless.) Everything—vectors, dots, “Astro-Force”—comes out of Orion, toward the reader, in a surge of graphic energy. The total effect (including text, with its emphatic cadence) represents a beautiful distillation of Kirbyness. (Look in TJKC #6 for our editor’s swipe of this image. Heh heh.) Try the Squint Test on this page, and watch Orion’s shifting size and position as well as the continually shifting POV. This is bravura storytelling. Page 19: What has become of Farley Sheridan? His face—vacant, staring—foregrounds a panel which gathers in all of Kirby’s principal players. He’s lost. Forced to confront the gap between word and deed, as well as his son’s death, Farley has slipped into fantasy: A delusive scenario which replays the Allied invasion of Normandy, casting Richard as a GI on the beach. The irony here is fraught, complex: War entails the possibility of death (indeed, dying or avoiding death is what it’s all about), but Richard’s death only tips his old man into a dream of martial heroism, a romantic re-imagining of war. This is Farley’s refuge from shame, and loss. Orion understands this, knowing that Farley too has been destroyed, while Lightray suggests that this twist has settled the Sheridans’ long-standing conflict—though it’s not at all clear how the issue has been “decided.” Indeed, Farley seems to have avoided any decision, or recognition; his dementia salvages his position, assimilating Richard’s sacrifice into his own militaristic vision of heroism. Lynn is summarily dismissed from the narrative, a moment symptomatic of the story’s (and the series’) masculine ethos. This is war, after all, in which, according to patriarchal logic, women are merely to be fought over or defended—though thankfully Kirby sees fit to question this sort of chivalric presumption (page 14). Yet he partakes of it too: What’s really going on is that Kirby wants father and son to be there for the finale, for the sake of symbolic oomph, but wants daughter out of the picture, her role in this patrilineal drama having already been played out. The rationale for leaving Farley behind is, I think, thin. Most interesting, though, is the question of Richard, and what will happen to him now. He is dead—restoring him to life is out of the question—but his story remains unfinished. How to make his sacrifice meaningful? He has lost his identity and become simply “another faceless hero,” as Lightray puts it: Another unknown soldier, like most fallen soldiers. (Far from knowing nothing of war, Lightray seems to intuit its nature with a grim fatalism.) Placing Richard at the heart of the ship among its burgeoning, “machine-like” forms, Lightray holds out the possibility of transcendence—Richard will join the gods and “go to the Source,” whatever that means. (This is another of those moments at which the gods know just what’s going on but we don’t.) Page 20: Kirby knows how to nurse suspense: Watch the anticipatory gestures, both verbal and visual, in panels one through three, as the Deep Six draw nearer. I particularly like the prose in panel two: The ocean waters lash about violently under whitecap whips!!! In panel three, all of nature seems to (see HATFIELD on page 56) 53

Adam McGovern Page 18: “And poor, young Richard — what did he pay for?” It may be in a lowly comic book, but coming midway between the Kent and Jackson State massacres and the “end” of the war in Southeast Asia, the metaphor of this dialogue is clear — and its sympathy for the young quite rare. Page 19: Problematic proto-feminism, Kirby-style: Women are at once marginalized from the Great Conflicts and excused from culpability for them. It’s a paradox to which, throughout his mature body of work, Kirby would give at least more thought than most of his peers. Page 20: Panels 1-3 represent one of many “gathering storm” sequences in Kirby’s oeuvre, executed with as much economy as excitement. We see brilliant shots of the protagonists’ reaction and the antagonists’ effects before we ever see the antagonists themselves — to put it simply, Kirby invented Spielberg. (By the way, the previous issue referenced in panel 2 was, in a pop-culture premonition delicious to look back on now, titled “Spawn.” Is there anything Kirby didn’t do first?) Page 21: What can I add to this page? Except that Kirby’s dramatic touch could make any size panel feel like a double-page splash (he does it with panel 1 here, and an even smaller top panel on the next page). Page 22: Panel 3 is just one of many throughout the story which, in the inked and published version, didn’t have panel borders holding in the white voids around the figures (something of a Kirby-comic trademark at the time). This was a very dynamic design decision with the added utilitarian value of making none of Kirby’s panels seem lazy or underdrawn — boxed nothingness is more conspicuous than open nothingness. (Does anyone know whose idea it was?) In most places throughout the story, Royer adapts Kirby’s captions in the same way, removing the boxes around them and floating them either atop the panels or within rectilinear shapes cut into the sides of the panels. The sleeker look which results provides a quite fittingly modern graphic environment for Kirby’s streamlined, technological gods. (And while we’re discussing form, a striking discovery to be made in comparing these pencils to the finished version is the extent to which Kirby’s notorious over-use of quotation marks was actually reined in before publication — as was a heretofore unknown misunderstanding of the comma — though his tendency to mar his underrated writing with weird emphases was left intact.) (see McGOVERN on page 59)

Is it just me, or is the deck already supposed to be aflame in panel two, despite mis-coloring in the printed version? To be fair, the reason the colorist missed this cue may be that Kirby’s sea water and his flames look almost the same! Both are defined by clouds of dots—abstract, densely clotted, ever-present. Whether water or fire, the atmosphere around the Glory Boat fairly sizzles with such dots throughout (cf. the sea back on page 7). They become especially thick at the bottom of this page, as Orion walks through fire to find Lightray (remember him?).

Charles Hatfield rebel against what the Deep Six have wrought, for sea animals are shown leaping from the waters in a mad, headlong flight (I’m reminded of fish fleeing Monstro the whale in Disney’s Pinocchio). The next panel abruptly introduces Shaligo, literally in flight, from an odd angle—as if he were leaping over our heads. This POV drives Lightray and Orion to the bottom of the frame, clearly on the defensive, as Shaligo bursts into view. (Where has he come from? Out of nowhere?) Like Jaffar on page 15, Shaligo erupts into the image, crowding the other characters; like the Leviathan on page 1, he moves past us, away, until the last panel hurls him straight into Orion. Contrast this with the onrushing figure of Orion on page 18: The vectors are reversed (a strategy which not only ratchets up the kineticism of the artwork, but also serves the story’s dramatic argument). In panel one, tellingly, Lightray calls Farley Sheridan “soldier,” though Farley is low, diminished, and dazed. (For all that, he understands that the enemy is near.)

Page 23: A brilliant page, tense and crackling.

Page 21: The tightly-coiled mechanism of this story does allow for one fight scene, however brief. (Actually, the story is all “fight,” but this is the only melee.) It’s a corker, full of slashing linework and taut, contorted forms. In panel one, Orion connects on the left, knocking Shaligo to the right and drawing our eyes toward Trok’s flying “axe” (what a crazy idea that is). Trok and Gole clamber up the sides of the boat, the latter seen only by a scaled arm and helmeted head in the extreme foreground, violating the bottom margin. The illusion of depth and the synoptic action are dizzying. Everything is happening at once: The ship is under siege and crawling with danger. In panel two, the axe seems to move in serpentine fashion, less like a whip than like a creature with a will of its own. Orion twists it to his own use, turning the tide of battle decisively before it has even begun. Page 22: Orion exults in combat—savage is right—but ends it efficiently, lobbing Gole and Trok at the reader. Panel two is classic Kirby, exploiting the Looming Effect to the fullest: Once again Orion targets us, affronting our space, challenging the panel borders with violent motion. (How much of Kirby’s trademark tension stems from the conflict between rigid paneling and ungovernable energy?) Again, the motion lines have a presence, a physicality, all their own. 56

Again, Kirby cranks up the suspense: As the fire spreads, time runs out. Again, he deploys the 2x2 grid to advantage, building toward a climax via large, disjunct images—each one is indelible, and the movement from one to the next is abrupt, disarming. Again, Kirbyisms run rampant. In panel one, Orion’s body almost dissolves in a haze of fiery dots; in panel four, the sea turns into fire. Perspective shifts radically, ingeniously: Farley Sheridan (who wants to die) commands Orion’s attention in panel one, but in the next Lightray reaches out of nowhere and grasps Orion, stopping him in his tracks. (Synechdoche: All we see of Lightray is his arm, darting in from the margin, but from this we know what’s going on.) POV changes again in panel three, foregrounding Richard, whose face has returned, fully restored, beatifically calm. Panel four pulls focus to a much larger vista, setting up the story’s climax. Everything happens here, as Kirby whips the story to a froth. Farley (not Lightray) responds to Orion’s call from the previous page; lashed to the mast, he echoes Lightray’s position at the story’s beginning. Farley despairs of living, for he has begun to face the fact that it was he, not Richard, who flinched at the critical moment. Richard, in contrast, has been redeemed, his identity restored— note that, as far as Lightray’s language is concerned, Richard is still alive, and “ready.” And Orion suddenly sees Lightray in a very different light: No longer innocent or honorable, Lightray is a “fool,” a madman, a wielder of “pawns”—not a warrior but a “planner.” Here is a spot, at last, where Orion (see HATFIELD on page 58)

less hero—but this one shall go to the Source as one of us!” Lightray carries the son to the interior of the craft, as though to a funeral pyre, where he says, “the singing atoms are forging a new ending to this day.” The daughter is sent to safety. The father, hallucinating about his son’s heroism and his own failure, remains.

Richard Kyle to confront the world as it is, attacks one of the Deep Six, knowing the cost. Despite acknowledging his heroism, but as an abject lesson for New Genesis, the creature of Apokolips takes away the young man’s face, leaving no identity behind. Orion the warrior cries, “You’ve destroyed an innocent!” and Lightray says, “The skirmish has finally ended a quarrel, and decided an issue... It also created another face-

Page 23: As fire sweeps over the aged wooden surface of the craft, Lightray ties (see KYLE on page 63) 57

and spray. Until now, the Deep Six have relied on ambush, furtively approaching and then abruptly bursting into panels, obtruding on the foreground as if getting between us and the image. But not now. Now they loom: Leviathan and manta-sled bear down on the wooden boat, while the Deep Six strike postures of eager defiance. Kirby’s prose matches the intensity of the image, almost crushing an evocative reference to “the ‘Lorelei’ sound” in its thumping cadence: Smash it! Destroy it! Leave no sign of its existence!! (DC has corrected the spelling of focused since the first printing.) Pages 24 and 25 need to be seen all at once: Together they generate the story’s brilliant climax, at which theme and form are held in perfect tension. The two pages talk back to each other, conjoining to form a spread in which the keynote is contrast. Thematically, the two images represent opposite approaches to shaping life— those of Apokolips and New Genesis, the Deep Six and Lightray—approaches whose conflict has finally come to a head. Kirby takes pains to mention explicitly both Apokolips (24) and New Genesis (25), and to link the Source with the latter. Page 24 stresses the blunt and oppressive philosophy of Apokolips (smash, destroy, wipe away), while page 25 emphasizes growth and change as well as power. Even the strategies for presenting text differ between the two pages: Page 24 with its jagged caption, page 25 with its smooth. Formally speaking, these two pages constitute the climax of Kirby’s visual argument, for here he turns the compositions of page 1 and page 5 on their heads, exploiting the Looming Effect for all it’s worth. Whereas the story begins with things and people facing away from us, or partially obscured, faceless, it ends with things and people hurtling toward us, fully displayed, with all their dramatic and moral implications plainly played out. Neither image can fit comfortably within the borders which attempt to contain it, but that’s the point, isn’t it? At this crucial moment, the tension between image and panel is cranked up to a feverish extreme.

Charles Hatfield shares the reader’s confusion—though it would be a mistake for us fully to share Orion’s impatience, that is, to see Lightray as a ruthless manipulator. The two gods simply embody contrasting approaches to conflict. (For a different view, see Richard Bensam’s profile of Lightray in Jack Kirby Quarterly #9. I think Bensam overstates Lightray’s ruthlessness, and ignores his sympathy.) Page 24: Suddenly everything is coming at us—flame and water, fume and fury

Page 25: Using two single-page splashes sideby-side is an uncommon strategy for Kirby; ordinarily, the sameness of the layouts would dissipate tension rather than build it (Superman #75, anyone?), but here Kirby seems determined to underscore the contrast between the two sides, and to trump the bizarre image of the Leviathan with an even more astounding sight: The coruscating, techno-active image of the Glory Boat, transformed. In film editor’s parlance, we might say that Kirby has violated the 180° rule, in that both the (see HATFIELD on page 60) 58

space gods save his sister and dad, drape his corpse over the computer, burst out of the pyramid riding the computer, and drive it into the fish-people, blowing them up.” Of course, Kirby had specific intentions: To reflect upon his times and to create apocalyptic scenes of fevered imagination that would evoke the Book of Revelations and befit the character (Leviathan) he’d literally borrowed from it; but his exceeding of the conscious and transcendence of the rational is his greatest accomplishment here — and is what makes this story as classic as it is flawed.★

Adam McGovern Page 23: Look at the dynamic clarity and dramatic foreshortening of that upperright panel — is this a Pop Art masterpiece in search of a gallery or what?! Pages 24 & 25: Kirby’s most breathtaking jump-cut, functioning as one huge, two-panel page taking us to the intimate epicenter of the gods’ suicidal conflict before pulling back, in the first panel of page 26, to mortal scale for us to experience that conflict’s fatal outcome as a distant catastrophe. Bravura storytelling without a misstep. Page 26: The imagery of nuclear nightmare apparently without the lingering consequences, thanks to Lightray’s benevolent technology—a fantasy Kirby no doubt enjoyed and clearly knew was just that. (After so spectacular and moving a finale, it must be pointed out how offkey the explanatory caption at the bottom of panel 3 is; a sour note in a classic tale that a simple dialogue rewrite for Lightray earlier on—and yes, some outside editing — might’ve prevented.) Summation: Much has been made of “The Glory Boat”’s ideological themes (Kirby wears his peacenik leanings on his sleeve) and epic conflict (he even uses the term “Wagnerian” on page 26). But the tale is most remarkable in its abstractions: It stands out as perhaps the single most hallucinatory narrative in American pop-culture history. No drug-drenched underground comix auteur ever directly channeled the subconscious like our cigar-chomping WWII vet does here. Strung together with the arbitrary logic of a dream, Kirby strangely gives us a sequence of images which are at once indelible and unfathomable. Imagine how this would look as a story treatment: “The events occur entirely in an oceanic limbo. Some humanoid fish and their sea monster clash with Teutonic space gods. Released from mummified bondage on a floating pyramid, one space god transforms the sea monster’s detached protoplasmic brain into a benevolent living computer, then flies away with his friend. The fish-people arrive and wipe off the face of a young man who tries to stop them and dies. Then the 59

of the “life cube”? How does it relate to the idea of death as a return to “the Source”? (Check out Earl Wells’ essay in Comics Journal #181 for one fascinating if not wholly satisfying answer.)

Charles Hatfield Leviathan (24) and the Glory Boat (25) seem to be heading in the same direction, despite the fact that they should be aimed at each other. We might expect the two images to converge; they don’t. Yet Kirby has arranged each splash to read in the direction we read, so that both images surge toward the outer margin, where our eyes want to go. If page 24, with its frontal assault by the Deep Six, represents a reversal, then page 25 intensifies the surging, forward momentum of Orion (see especially pages 18 and 22). Now it’s the Glory Boat—with Orion out front, snarling defiance— that zooms toward us in a squall of motion lines, crackling with energy. It epitomizes New Genesis... and yet, it’s not only singing and shining and sleek (in contrast to the dingy earthen qualities of the Deep Six) but also deadly. If Orion and Lightray are unlike the Deep Six in many ways, they nonetheless mirror them in others, a resemblance which complicates the story’s balance of symbolic values and makes our heroes seem very dangerous indeed. Being around these gods can get people killed. (Not for nothing does Kirby call the night “calamitous”; not for nothing is the Glory Boat likened to a “warhead.”) Yet I cannot escape the conviction that all of this, fiery and violent though it may be, is meant to convey something heroic and fine. Paradoxically, the Source (organic wellspring of life and meaning) is linked to this image of burgeoning technology, and there’s a pattern of associations at work which gives this moment special symbolic heft. For one thing, Richard’s selfhood has been restored, and he sprawls in sacrificial posture across the hull of the Glory Boat, his fate connected with the gods’. Lightray has already linked Richard’s change with the ship’s (page 23) and suggested that Richard will become one of the gods (19), so his presence here takes on a special importance—but what, exactly? If Richard is to “transcend” his fate, as Lightray has said, then we have to ask how— how does Richard’s fate connect with the idea of evolution or change, implied by the growth

The Last Page: I’m afraid the conclusion just raises more questions. Having generated

a new life form, one in harmony with the Source, Lightray engineers its destruction in aa “all-consuming” fireball, a “holocaust” that nearly erases our heroes as well. To what end? Yes, the Deep Six and the Leviathan have been purged, but didn’t Lightray say that life should be changed, not destroyed? This life has become an “offering to the Source,” according to the caption in panel one, but I’m left puzzling

over what that means. Kirby’s scripting on this final page is loaded, almost histrionic, but the marvelous last panel bears up under the weight. Farley Sheridan lives on, human flotsam amid the floating wreckage, swept out of harm’s way by the recoil from the Glory Boat. (This itself is farfetched but works; it succeeds in saving Farley so that he can bear the brunt of the fable.) The caption tells us that Farley has discovered “new feelings,” while he himself tells us that he will live out the rest of his life “wondering,” as if he were responding directly to the narrator’s pointed question, “What is man in the last analysis—his philosophy—or himself!?” But it’s not simply the words that make that question so powerful, for the visual echoes hammer the point home: Farley is bound, captive, much like Lightray earlier, and he has been left behind. The previous page shows Richard, hallowed by his sacrifice, atop the gleaming missile of the Glory Boat, and shows Lightray, too, at the prow—not a mummy-wrapped figure tied to the ship, but the living, death-defying epitome of New Genesis, in heroic stance. Contrast this image to Farley, who seems to have been destroyed not only by his dreams of heroism and duty but especially by his refusal to admit anything new into his world. Whereas Lightray was liberated from his imprisoning bands, as if from a cocoon, and the Glory Boat, likewise, freed from its outmoded shell, Farley belongs to what is cast off, left aside, when those liberating moments occur. He is of the shell, not of the newborn life within it. Tellingly, Kirby gives Farley pride of place: The last panel, the last line of dialogue. For all of his bluster, he has become a rather sympathetic figure, confused the way most of us would be in the face of such unfathomable events. Conclusion: “The Glory Boat” may be my favorite story by Jack Kirby. For one thing, it presents stark moral and dramatic values which turn out to be not so clear after all—by the end of the story, the juxtaposition of life (the Glory Boat) and death (ditto) creates a thematic sus(see HATFIELD on page 62) 61

almost absurd intensity in the end, which matches its dramatic argument. Form and content are effectively fused. Readers have often remarked that Kirby’s work seems to leap off the page; in this case, that quality is pushed to its limit. For isn’t this a story about breaking free of constraints? Here (as throughout the wonderful run of issues from New Gods #5-10) Kirby pushes against his own, producing his most intense and alarming work.★

Charles Hatfield pense which is never satisfactorily resolved. The story, with its grim violence and shaded resolution, suggests that growth and change may be accomplished at the cost of much pain and bewilderment; in a sense, both the Deep Six and the heroes of New Genesis are destructive forces, beyond human ken, to be trusted at our peril. The human perspective and the gods’ are incommensurable, perhaps irreconcilable; yet the shining values of New Genesis remain unsullied, associated as they are with purity, ordered growth, and evolution. This story speaks very clearly to Kirby’s fascination with mingled organic and inorganic forms (remember, this is the designer of the Thing, the Silver Surfer, Brother Eye, and Machine Man). His personal artistic language places a premium on the “techno-active,” so that, ironically, the polluting influence of Apokolips is imaged organically (as a wooden ship, a manta-sled, a mutant fish), while the cleansing influence of New Genesis is imaged mechanistically, as a glistening, metallic, techno-active growth. This in itself creates an intriguing visual and thematic tension. The story’s images of environment (hostile) and form (protean, shifting) are among Kirby’s best, and the breakneck violence, though brief, is stunning. Yet the quieter human touches (including Kirby’s sympathy for youth, and his willingness to question the jingoistic certainties of nationalism and militarism) are likewise compelling. Perhaps best of all, “The Glory Boat” rests on themes— generation, emergence, and collision—which require Kirby to take full and conscious advantage of his trademark visual motifs, such as the Looming Effect and abstracted motion. The attack of Leviathan, the imprisonment of Lightray, the (re)birth of the Glory Boat—these incidents involve both artist and reader in a play of depths and surfaces, concealments and eruptions, which make the limitations of the panel an active part of the story’s meaning. “The Glory Boat” creates a powerful visual argument, ratcheted up to an 62

But if Jack could divide Roz into two women— one young, one old, in “The Other Woman” [see TJKC #20]— could he not as easily have divided himself in “Glory Boat”? If the old man is also the Jack Kirby who did not take up the struggle with the past— the Kirby who didn’t attempt “The Pact” in the face of opposition by Kirby in San Diego, 1976. Photo by James Henry Klein. all of his publishing contemporaries, in the face of tradition, in the face of experience— then he would have reason to wonder: Could he have done it? Could he have brought it off? Could he have succeeded with his heart’s desire? That man would surely have reason to wonder. And if Kirby was also the young man, with the courage of the young, then he’s dramatized the worst of failure—not that of a man who has lost face, but that of a faceless hero who has served his ideals and his conscience. I think this was at least one instance when Scott Free prepared Oberon for the test to come—when he rehearsed the consequences of what might be—and made his choice in the only way Scott Free and Jack Kirby ever could. In the end, the philosophy and the man were one.★

Richard Kyle the hallucinating old man to the mast—as he himself once was—and stops Orion from interfering: “This final act will be over before the flames reach him!” and Orion replies in a significant passage that seems oddly unnatural at first reading, “You’re mad, Lightray! You fight battles like a planner instead of a warrior. The enemy, myself, the dead boy and his father, we’re all your pawns!” However, the sequence is a virtual dramatization of the “secondary process” in Freud’s concept of the personality, the functioning of the “reality principle,” and suggests a deeper scheme for Jack’s story. Inside the craft, Lightray says, “Yet I’ve brought the enemy to us! And see the face of the boy—he’s changed like this room and is ready to join us in the confrontation!” Pages 24-25: The Leviathan and the Deep Six, figures from a savage and obsolete past, attack and as they do they confront rationality and modernity in the form of Orion, Lightray, and Lightray’s transformed creation, a true Great White opponent to Leviathan. Across Lightray’s creation, like that of a fallen warrior awaiting immolation, lays the body of the boy who sacrificed himself for his ideals. Page 26: In the aftermath of the destruction, Lightray helps Orion escape, and the parallel stories have been resolved—but not wholly in terms of physical action. The meaning of what has happened has been irrevocably changed as well, and the power and importance of things is in their meaning and in our understanding, not simply in the bald events alone— —and yet, it is not all resolved. In the final panel, left behind, floating on the calming seas, is the father, still bound, riding the old wooden ruin. Jack writes, “What is man in the last analysis—his philosophy or himself?” But the father says, “I’m alive! Left to live out my life—wondering...” Wondering? About what? In terms of the narrative, there is nothing left for him to wonder about. The word is seemingly wrong.

COMING IN JUNE:

COMIC BOOK ARTIST #5 (100-pages, $5.95) is the follow-up to our top-selling first issue, DC COMICS 1967-74: THE DARING & THE DIFFERENT, featuring: • A new cover painting by AQUAMAN and TEEN TITANS artist NICK CARDY! • Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviews with such DC greats as NICK CARDY, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MIKE KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, JIM APARO, NEAL ADAMS, MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Then on the flip side, ROY THOMAS provides the final installment of his groundbreaking fanzine ALTER EGO (an ALL-BATMAN SPECIAL), as A/E spins off into its own SOLO MAGAZINE starting this month!

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom. 63

______________________________

Classifieds (10¢ per word, $1 minimum) ______________________________ NEAL ADAMS French “Conan” reprint album wanted, “Superheroes” poster (Adams also), Bowen “Shadow” bust. Brian Postman, 238 E. 24th St., #2A, NYC, NY 10010. (212)213-6242. ______________________________ JACK KIRBY comics / cards. Stomberg, 303 S. 5th St., Oregon, IL 61061. ______________________________

LIMITED EDITION PRINTS FOR SALE. Jack Kirby—A Premier Presentation from the Ruby-Spears Productions Animation Collection—can be seen on the Web at: www.madmorgan.com or by contacting Jeff Cooke at Mad Morgan Enterprises, PO Box 6698, Burbank, CA 91510, (818)848-1445, FAX (818)840-1252, e-mail: morgancooke@earthlink.net (catalogs available). ______________________________

Submit Something-Get Free Issues! The Jack Kirby Collector is a not-for-profit publication, put together with submissions from Jack’s fans around the world. We don’t pay for submissions, but if 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 list of upcoming issues, to give you ideas of things to write about. But don’t limit yourself to these—we treat these themes very loosely, so anything you write may fit somewhere. And just because we covered a topic once, don’t think we won’t print more about it. So get creative, and get writing; and as always, send us copies of your Kirby art! In no particular order:

KIRBY ORIGINAL artwork for sale. Please visit www.cybercollection.com ______________________________

SIMO N & KIRBY SPECIAL! (JULY 1999)

From Blue Bolt to the 1970s Sandman, we’ll explore the ups and downs of the most successful team in comics history, with a special focus on the life and career of Joe Simon! Send your S&K art!

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

MARVEL IN THE 1970S!

We’ll examine the highs and lows of Jack’s 1970s return to the House of Ideas he helped build, and where he went from there. THE KIRBY INFLUENCE!

How influential was Jack? From the artists who’ve aped his style to the writers who’ve brought back his characters, we’ll have an all-star issue exploring his influence on the medium. Tell us how Jack influenced you!

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:

FANS’ FAVO RITES!

It’s a simple concept: What are your favoriite Kirby stories, and why? Let us know what you think! KIRBY’S GO DS!

Searching the Torah and Old and New Testaments for Jack’s influences, we’ll discover the spiritual side of Thor, Galactus, the New Gods, and more!

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.

Submission Guidelines: Submit artwork in one of these forms: 1) Clear color or black-&-white photocopies. 2) Scanned images—300ppi IBM or Macintosh. 3) Originals (carefully packed and insured). Submit articles in one of these forms: 1) Typed or laser printed pages. 2) E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com 3) An ASCII file, IBM or Macintosh format. 4) Photocopies of previously printed articles OK.

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.

We’ll pay return postage and insurance for originals—please write or call first. Please include background information whenever possible.

TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #24

www.twomorrows.com

TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE KIRBY ESTATE EDITOR: JOHN MORROW ASSISTANT EDITOR: PAMELA MORROW ASSOCIATE EDITOR: JON B. COOKE DESIGN & LAYOUT: TWOMORROWS PROOFREADING: RICHARD HOWELL COLORIST: TOM ZIUKO CONTRIBUTORS: MARK ALEXANDER JERRY BOYD ROBERT L. BRYANT JON B. COOKE MARK EVANIER MIKE GARTLAND WILLIAM GEE GLEN GOLD CHARLES HATFIELD RICHARD HOWELL JAMES HENRY KLEIN RICHARD KYLE STEVE LEIALOHA ADAM MCGOVERN MIKE MIGNOLA STEVE ROBERTSON STEVE RUDE TONY SEYBERT JIM SHOOTER MIKE THIBODEAUX R.J. VITONE TOM ZIUKO SPECIAL THANKS TO: JOHN AND RICK IN CHICAGO MARK ALEXANDER JON B. COOKE MARK EVANIER MIKE GARTLAND D. HAMBONE CHARLES HATFIELD RANDY HOPPE RICHARD HOWELL ROBERT KATZ RICHARD KYLE ADAM MCGOVERN MIKE MIGNOLA MARK PACELLA STEVE ROBERTSON STEVE RUDE JIM SHOOTER MIKE THIBODEAUX ROY THOMAS R.J. VITONE TOM ZIUKO AND OF COURSE THE KIRBY ESTATE MAILING CREW: RUSS GARWOOD D. HAMBONE GLEN MUSIAL ED STELLI PATRICK VARKER A

Posters For Sale! 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.)

CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND CAREER OF THE KING!

BIMO NTHLY!

O N SALE HERE!

FULLY AUTHORIZED BY THE KIRBY ESTATE

Collector Comments Send letters to: The Jack Kirby Collector c/o TwoMorrows • 1812 Park Drive Raleigh, NC 27605 or E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com _____________________________________________ (For starters, let me mention that the “Two Letters” article on page 43 of TJKC #23 was submitted by MARK GREENE. Also, those fabulous photos of JEFF GELB with Jack on page 42 were taken by SHEL DORF. Besides being a great photographer, SHEL made his mark as a comics letterer—for MILTON CANIFF on STEVE CANYON, no less—and founder of the SAN DIEGO COMIC CON. Now, on to your letters:)

Fie upon thee, brazen mortal, to presume to place divine Loki and his brethren in a class of vipers and base villains! Verily, our ambitions are too lofty for such as thee to understand! This collection of writings will cost thee dearly. Know you, John Morrow, the God of Mischief will not be trifled with! This affront will be avenged by ancient magicks far beyond your mortal comprehension! Unless... unless... perchance thou art friendly with the lame physician, Donald Blake? If there be an alliance betwixt thee and the accursed Thor... please disregard mine ill-tempered rantings. Ha! ’Twas but a jest. LoKI, norn Stone estates, Somewhere over the rainbow Bridge, ASGArD (no zip) Seriously though, issue #22 was da bomb! Scott (wakko) Bolton _____________________________________________ All the talk in the local comics shops ’round these parts are things like: “Are you picking up the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR? Did you read COMIC BOOK ARTIST? Fantastic material these guys are putting out! Man, you’re missing out if you’re not getting these magazines.” And so on. CBA is already matching the best issues of TJKC in overall quality. It’s almost scary to see fanzines done this well. I like the way you’re putting together your cover designs. In twenty-plus issues, you’ve featured all of Jack’s greatest (or most well-known) creations at least once. And the Spidey cover was a very pleasant surprise! Since you’ve done a villains issue, how about a special theme issue on the uniqueness of Jack’s heroes? Jerry Boyd, Mountain View, cA _____________________________________________ I have a small bone to pick with you guys. The last several issues you’ve had the “Failure to Communicate” feature outlining the differences in Kirby’s margin notations and Lee’s final dialogue. Not to be a Lee apologist, but I think that you’re going a bit too far in your criticisms. The margin notes certainly show a great amount of input into both the story and dialogue on Kirby’s parts, but if Lee were to merely go by those notes, as it seems you

wish, they may not have come up with the classic issues that we will always enjoy. If Kirby had a weakness, it seems to be Lee’s strength: Dialogue and keeping the story in perspective, and we can see those weaknesses show up in Kirby’s later work that he scripted himself (I’m thinking of KAMANDI, his second run on CAPTAIN AMERICA, and elsewhere). In the case of KAMANDI, I was recently able to buy a twelve-issue run and read them in one sitting. They were fun, imaginative, and well-drawn, but they were also all over the place. Stories seemed to change direction every few pages, all of the characters talked the same, and it was difficult to see any consistent pattern running through the series. It was still a great comic, but not as complete as his work at Marvel. That was what Lee brought to the comics: The completeness, the finishing touch. Can’t we agree that Lee’s main job in the process was to rein in Kirby’s ideas, creating a smoother product in the end? I hate to sound as if I’m trying to stand up for Stan, as he is always quite capable of tooting his own horn, but I also don’t think that you should diminish his role. raphe cheli, Three Bridges, nJ (I agree with you about Jack’s later work, but this prime Marvel work—the stuff we’re showing margin notes to in TJKC—was done when Jack was at his absolute peak. It’s easy to selectively choose works by Kirby alone that don’t match his Marvel stuff; by the same token, Lee’s greatest successes in storytelling didn’t begin until Kirby was involved in the plotting, and waned after Kirby left. Instead of being “all over the place,” these stories are extremely well-crafted, coherent, and tightly-plotted and paced; Stan himself has said at this point he was basically turning Jack loose to do as he wished, and all he felt necessary was a little editing in most cases. Editing was Stan’s job; it was his responsibility to take what Jack gave him and make it even better, and overall I think he did an excellent job—but rightly or wrongly, Jack didn’t always agree with Stan’s edits, and this was part of the reason he eventually jumped ship to DC—and refused to work “Marvel Method” ever again. We’re just pointing out instances of that editing—some severe, some not—and trying to put them all in an historical perspective so we can better understand why Jack got so disillusioned at Marvel. The idea of these articles isn’t to diminish Stan’s role in things, but to point out Jack’s— which he’s never gotten sufficient credit for anyway. I totally agree that Lee brought a much-needed “finishing touch” to Jack’s work, but getting that across isn’t the point of the articles. This is, after all, a magazine about KIRBY, and we’re attempting to understand things from Jack’s viewpoint. Doing so shouldn’t be construed as “knocking” Stan.) _____________________________________________ Fabulous 23rd issue. My favorite part? Despite the wonder of seeing more of FF #49, I found the greatest bit to be the two pages from FF #97. I dunno—it is probably thought of as one of Kirby’s lesser issues (I remember one fan writing in that it was one of the four worst FFs he’d read)—but I’ve always loved its wonderful holiday atmosphere, with the FF as very real people. Do you realize in Jack’s last year on the book, how often the FF appeared out of uniform? And poor Johnny seems to have been growing younger and stupider ever since. Thanks for those lovely two pages. The “greatest battles” theme next issue made me think of three of my favorite Kirby storylines, but which I realized are all a little offbeat. One of my earliest favorites was FF #65. The battle rages against Ronin, but Ben Grimm’s been sidelined and is struggling even to move. His struggle—and the perfect introspective thoughts penned by Lee/Kirby—made it a memorable battle and one that really impressed me as a kid—and still does. The second is FF #67, where the FF avoid the main antagonist, rescue Alicia and go home. No battle with the evil scientists. No struggle with ‘Him’. In fact they never even sighted ‘Him’. Brilliant. What sort of comic would do that? The third is the best, and I’m sure many others will mention it: FF #87. The battle between the FF and Dr.

Doom is short-circuited because a flunky of Doom’s imperils the art collection and Doom’s plan cannot proceed without too much risk to it. So the FF are released. The battle aborted. Doom is a madman on the one hand, but full of eccentric character and principle—and at the end, Doom is weary. He’d been frustrated by his inability to control his robotic army. Then he’d lashed out in frustration to destroy the FF, but was again frustrated by Sue Richards’ return. Then after regaining his composure and planning the FF’s demise, he is yet again frustrated, this time by his own man—and all throughout, Doom’s stature as a brilliant, if deranged, foe is maintained and enhanced. And he finishes... weary. Even when I was a kid, it all made sense. What comic ends with the foe being... weary? One of the greatest battles Kirby ever did, in my book. Regarding the ‘Fixing Kirby’s Art’ section from TJKC #21; I’ve found a couple more. THOR #129 (“The Verdict of zeus”) has a black background on the cover. I found amongst my Australian reprint stuff that cover used as a pin-up, but with a city background which looks very ‘Kirby’ to me. (I’ll send a copy to you soon.) Also have a good look at THOR #166. Much of the Him figure is redone by Romita—especially the right, raised fist, but perhaps also the right foot/leg. It’s hard to tell. Shane Foley, AuSTrALIA _____________________________________________ I discovered a number of peculiar instances of alteration of Kirby’s art in THOR: In THOR #143 (August 1967), the inks are credited to Bill Everett, but the cover and portions of the splash page and panels 1, 2 and 3 on page 2 are inked by Colletta. Panel 4 (pg. 2) is inked by Everett. These depict Thor drinking a milkshake at a soda fountain surrounded by adolescents. In panel 1 (pg. 2) the face of one boy appears to have been inked AND drawn by Colletta. However, the faces of two teenage girls in panel 2 don’t appear to be either Kirby’s or Colletta’s work and were probably inked and drawn by Everett. These two faces appear to be idiosyncratic enough to have been the likenesses of real girls. Are these cameos? Was Everett filling this malt shop with actual kids? What happened here? It is as if Colletta had begun to ink the book, and Everett picked up his pen in mid-stroke! In THOR #141 (June 1967), the cover is a pastiche of material from INSIDE the book. It is UNIQUE among Kirby THOR covers. Three photocopied panels from within the story are crudely reproduced around a central figure of Thor in deep perspective, throwing his hammer. This figure is not photocopied, but was REDRAWN either by hand or pantograph from page 10, panel 4. This new rendering was NOT drawn by Kirby, nor was it inked by Colletta! The hammer is completely different and very crudely drawn. My best guess is that the Thor figure was drawn by either Larry Leiber or Joe Sinnott and inked by Sinnott. This cover looks like a last minute substitution, as though it were slapped together as they were going to press. It begs the question, “What became of Kirby’s ORIGINAL cover for this issue?!” In THOR #148 (January 1968), the figure of Thor on the cover appears to have been drawn entirely by John Romita. It is NOT inked by Colletta. What happened to Kirby’s figure? In THOR #150 (March 1968), the figure of Hela on the cover appears to be inked by Sinnott rather than Colletta. It is probably drawn by Kirby, but looks a lot like a John Buscema imitation of Kirby’s style (as in the early Silver Surfer book later that year). The face of Loki also appears to be crudely “doctored.” In THOR #154 (July 1968), Thor chats with three “hippies” on pages 17-18. The faces of all three youths (pg.17, panels 3-5; pg. 18, panel 3) were NOT drawn by Kirby, nor were they inked by Colletta! Their heads are slightly out of proportion and appear to have been PASTED on top of Kirby/Colletta bodies! Their faces are very distinctive. Was this another case of a THIRD artist placing cameos of actual people in a Kirby book? John P. Alexander, white Plains, ny (You’ll notice the original cover to THOR #141 last issue. As for the other instances, some were covered in TJKC

KIRBY CONTEST ANSWERS (Remember, the decisions of the judges is FINAL—even if we’re wrong!) 1. Sando (Cap), Manoo (Amazing Adventures #2), Watcher, Modok, Gremlin (Hulk), Leader, Kurrgo (FF), Egghead, Arnim Zola, Double-Header, Ego (Planet-sized head!), and MANY others! 2. X-Men #7

THE WINNERS:

3. Prince Namor, FF #33 4. FF #3

GRAND PRIZE: Al Sjoerdsma, Ann Arbor, MI FIRST PRIZE: Kyle Androschuk, CANADA

5. FF #10, FF Annual #3, FF Annual #5, What If? #11, Boy Commandos #1, & others!

SECOND PRIZE: Jean Depelley, FRANCE THIRD PRIZE: Ernie Jeong, Fremont, CA

6. Agent Axis was a DC/Boy Commandos foe.

AND EVERYONE WHO ENTERED RECEIVED AN OFFICIAL TJKC “SOME-PRIZE”!

7. Captain America #103

Special thanks to John at Atlas Comics and Rick at Variety Comics in Chicago for the great prizes!

8. Tales of Suspense #84’s Cap story, issued a month before Avengers #35 9. 1-F 2-K

3-D 4-I

5-A 6-L

#14—which will soon be back in print in our new COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. 3 trade paperback, due out in July—but I’m sure our readers will let us know if they find out about any of the others you listed.) _____________________________________________ The KIRBY CHECKLIST omits several reprintings of Jack’s work in various ARCHIE DIGESTS during the 1970s and ’80s. Hidden between the ARCHIE, JOSIE, and SUPERDUCK stories were a sprinkling of Jack’s FLY and PRIVATE STRONG stuff as well as “PIPSY,” which I first encountered in one of those digests. I’ve never been able to find that since. I used to subscribe to a number of the ARCHIE DIGESTS, and I’ve since been searching for “PIPSY.” I know it’s out there, but am yet to find that elusive issue! Kevin Shaw, Los Angeles, cA _____________________________________________ Great “Villains” issue. What else could I expect? Fascinating look at the possible WWII influences on the NEW GODS characters. The parallels are kinda noticeable. I’ve thought once or twice about how Will Eisner got himself a position doing technical manuals & propaganda for the Army, while Kirby wound up in a foxhole. But it makes you wonder: Would we have had epics of such scope if NOT for such a situation? (Then again, I couldn’t help but feel the Army might have been better served keeping Jack at his drawing board, the way Eisner was.) I loved the way The Red Skull was described as “feeling the war was merely a minor excuse for his activities, that he’d be doing EVEN WORSE deeds without it.” This certainly came out in the Lee/Kirby “origin” in TALES OF SUSPENSE, where once he rose to power, Hitler’s top aides started mysteriously disappearing—because the Skull had his own agenda. The Steve Rude interview was a real highlight. He’s been my #1 favorite comic book artist for the last 15 years, and I’ve often noted his work reminded me of the imagination, power, excitement, & slickness of Kirby combined with the realism of Paul Gulacy. What a combo! If I ran a publishing company, probably the first book I’d go after would be NEXUS. It’s really only been from reading several issues of TJKC that I’ve come to realize JUST what Jack was up to with his NEW GODS stuff: A “modern mythology,” creating “gods” to represent TODAY’s world, today’s concerns. Somehow that NEVER hit me while reading all those original stories. I’m gonna have to go back and re-read the whole thing sometime soon. It’s like, NOBODY seems to have gotten a real handle on the series; it’s even tougher to “crack” than the FF, THOR or CAPTAIN AMERICA for other writers. Even John Byrne, the only writer to really

7-G 8-B

9-E 10-C

11-H 12-J

“get” the FF right, and the only artist to really depict the NEW GODS with the sort of overblown superlativeness called for, seemed to completely miss the “point” (let’s not even get into that pointless exercise “GENESIS”). In truth, I can “relate” to the allegorical aspects of Jack’s stories. A Darkseid who is “happy to have robbed of joy” someone’s wedding, and an Orion who “graduated from his father’s shadow through self-definition rather than conflict”— DAMN! I think I’m going through some of this in my life right now! And I thought I was the only one who saw the close parallel with the arms-race in the HUNGER DOGS book. It’s bugged me to no end that ever since its publication, numerous creators (Paris Cullins in particular) have tried to consider it “outside of continuity” or taking place in some unspecified “future.” No doubt this is because for that to be the “conclusion” it would deny all the hangers-on of doing their OWN tales— but I truly doubt Jack ever meant Darkseid to hang around forever. It’s only corporate greed and lack of imagination that “insists” that great villains keep coming back again—and again—and again—until they’re not really all that great anymore. (Put another way: Ian Fleming was RIGHT to kill Blofeld!) Henry r. Kujawa, camden, nJ _____________________________________________ TJKC goes from strength to strength with every issue, so congratulations on a brilliant magazine. I don’t have my back issues in front of me, so I’m going from memory here, but a recent issue had a feature on all-time great mistakes in Marvel mags. The writer claimed that the Thing being given a mask to wear by Sue Storm was a goof due to the fact that everyone knew their identities, which weren’t a secret. Quite apart from the fact that, in STRANGE TALES, the Torch’s identity was portrayed as being generally unknown (admittedly somewhat at odds with the FF’s own mag), the writer has overlooked the glaringly obvious here: The Thing wasn’t given a mask to conceal his identity, but to cover his repulsiveness, so I don’t think that this should have been included in the goof list. Speaking of goofs, Jack made a couple of howlers in the otherwise stunning “The Teacher” strip in TJKC #23. If you look at the second pic on page 4, the guy looks as if he’s had the top of his head cut off to accommodate the books he’s balancing on it. Otherwise, two of the books have been gouged out to make room for his head. Also, in the final pic on page 10, the woman seems to be kissing the far side of the guy’s chin, while he’s sticking what must be a partial nose in her right eye. It just doesn’t work... but, apart from that, the strip is wonderfully drawn. Gordon robson, Glasgow, Scotland

(Those SOUL LOVE pages are covered with “blue pencil” corrections, and Vince Colletta ignored most of Jack’s moody pencil shading, so I kind of doubt Jack drew them that way.) _____________________________________________ Steve Sherman’s “The Genesis of King Kobra” in #22 was especially interesting. I saw the complete original pages at inker D. Bruce Berry’s studio, and—as best as I can remember—the original version was significantly different. Since I don’t have the revised comic book, I don’t know if I’m confusing the two or not. I don’t think so. As I recall (and it seems to be borne out by the pencils on page 59), Jack set the origins of the story in Asia. The twins were separated when they were very young, infants, perhaps. Afterward, while they were recuperating in the hospital, agents of “The Cult of the Kobra,” or somesuch organization, stole one of the children—the weaker. The cult’s explanation for taking the sicklier child was to ask “who else but one borne into this world on the shoulders of death“ could best serve their god. I recall thinking this was a neat out for Jack. It put the stronger (and presumably more intelligent) twin on the good guys’ side, but still offered a psychologically plausible explanation for the selection of the other by the bad guys. The grace of the language and the narrative efficiency of the idea stayed with me, and when I mentioned it to Jack not long after, he said that he had written that part of the book. The problem with the story was that both Kobra and (of course) Snow were older guys, characters the young readers couldn’t identify with. And this, I think, is what DC was trying to fix in the inept revised version. Although Jack was winding things up at DC during this time—and fulfilling his page quota by doing work he did not write—he was very professional. I particularly liked his work on the JUSTICE INC. stories. (I was a regular reader of THE AVENGER, the ‘40s pulp magazine the comic was based on.) Once when I was at Bruce Berry’s, I saw a note Jack had written beside one of the JUSTICE INC. panels to Denny O’Neil. In a casual but businesslike manner he said something to the effect that there was a plot flaw a page or two earlier, and he’d corrected it here, and that was the reason he’d deviated from the script. Jack could have just knocked the stuff out (as he did on some of the minor work in his last days with pre-DC Marvel), but he didn’t. In part because he liked the stories, I think, and in part because they were not about superheroes—at least in the conventional comic book sense— and in part because he thought it was the professional thing to do. Those “Friday Foster” mouths in the SOUL LOVE pages are truly annoying—but fully as bad is the dreadful dialogue. Even the layouts have a forced look about them. Very disappointing. I think your conclusions about it and the TRUE DIVORCE work are absolutely correct. richard Kyle, Long Beach, cA

neXT ISSue: It’s a blast from the past in our special SIMon & KIrBy theme issue! we start with a BuLLSeye cover inked by JoHn SeVerIn and a cAP cover inked by DAn ADKInS! Then we’ll trace the careers of the greatest team in comics history, from their early days to their final collaboration on the 1970s SAnDMAn! Inside, you’ll find transcripts of Joe SIMon’s panels from the 1998 San Diego comic con, plus a lengthy interview with KIrBy about his Golden Age work, and a new interview with JoHn SeVerIn! There’s also a complete 14-page Boy eXPLorerS story (showing S&K at their peak), and throughout, we’ll showcase plenty of solo art by both Joe and Jack, plus rare and unpublished art from Simon & Kirby’s greatest stories, including pages featuring STunTMAn, BuLLSeye, cAPTAIn AMerIcA, SAnDMAn, THe newSBoy LeGIon, and more! (we’re taking an extra month between issues to catch our breath, so #25 will be out in July!) Deadline for submissions: 5/30/99.

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom. COMIC BOOK ARTIST back issues, featuring great interviews, features & UNPUBLISHED ART! $5.95 each postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other)

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR is fully authorized by the Kirby Estate. Nominated for BEST COMICS-RELATED PUBLICATION at the 1996, ’97 & ’98 EISNER AWARDS! See our WEB SITE for sample art and articles from each issue: www.twomorrows.com

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, Vol. One: 240-page trade paperback reprints KIRBY COLLECTOR #1-9, plus a new section with over 30 pieces of unpubl. Kirby art! $21.95

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, Vol. Two: 160-page trade paperback reprints KIRBY COLLECTOR #10-12, plus a new section with over 30 pieces of unpubl. Kirby art! $14.95

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, Vol. Three: 176-page trade paperback reprints KIRBY COLLECTOR #13-15, plus 30 more new pieces of unpubl. Kirby art! $16.95 (Available in July 1999!)

COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1: (100-pages) DC Comics: 1967-74! ADAMS, INFANTINO, KIRBY, KUBERT, SEKOWSKY, ORLANDO, new ADAMS cover & more!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #16: TOUGH GUYS issue! Interviews with KIRBY, EISNER, MILLER, features on Jack’s Gangster / War / Western books, unpublished art & more! 52 pages, color Kirby/Miller cover. $4.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #17: DC issue! Interviews with KIRBY, ADAMS, D. BRUCE BERRY, features on Jack’s DC work, unpublished art & more! 68 pages, color Kirby/Royer and Kirby/Rude covers. $5.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #18: MARVEL issue! Interviews with KIRBY, STAN LEE, THOMAS, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, features on Jack’s Marvel books, unpublished art & more! 68 pages, color Kirby/Sinnott cover. $5.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #19: ART issue! Interviews with KIRBY, KUBERT, EASTMAN, MILLER, thesis by GIL KANE, Jack’s paintings (in color), unpublished art & more! 56 pages, color Kirby/Alex Ross cover. $5.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #20: WOMEN issue! Interviews with KIRBY, DAVE STEVENS, daughter LISA KIRBY, unused 10-page romance story, screenplay for CAPTAIN VICTORY, unpublished art & more! 68-pages, color Kirby covers. $5.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #21: Interviews with KIRBY, GIL KANE, BRUCE TIMM, LEE’s DIALOGUE vs. KIRBY’s MARGIN NOTES, Jack’s work at TOPPS, SILVER STAR screenplay, unpublished art & more! 68-pages, color Kirby covers. $5.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #22: VILLAINS issue! Interviews with KIRBY, RUDE, MIGNOLA, uninked pencils from FF #49, genesis of KOBRA, features on villains, unpublished art & more! 68-pages, color Kirby and Kirby/Stevens covers. $5.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #23: Interviews with KIRBY, DENNY O’NEIL, granddaughter TRACY KIRBY, uninked pencils from FF #49, unused story from SOUL LOVE, unpublished art & more! 68-pages, color Kirby and Kirby/Horley covers. $5.95

CBA #2: (100-pages) Marvel Comics: 1970-77! STAN LEE, GIL KANE, STARLIN, STERANKO, WINDSOR-SMITH, PLOOG, new GIL KANE cover & more!

CBA #3: (100-pages) NEAL ADAMS: THE MARVEL YEARS! New ADAMS INTERVIEW, thumbnails, unused X-Men pages, Adams cover & more!

WE ACCEPT VISA & MASTERCARD! Fax, phone, mail, or e-mail your order! Name Street City State

Zip

Country ENCLOSED IS: ❏ Check or Money Order for US $ CHARGE MY: ❏ VISA ❏ MasterCard Cardholder’s Name:

CBA #4: (100-pages) WARREN issue! WRIGHTSON, FRAZETTA, CORBEN, WILLIAMSON, KURTZMAN, Wrightson cover & more!

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST: Lists every published Kirby comic, plus books, portfolios, fanzines, unpubl. work & more! 100 pages! $5

Card # Exp. Date:

Checks must be in US funds drawn on a US bank payable to: TwoMorrows

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR Subscriptions/Back Issues ❏ $24 for 6 issues ($32 Canada, $44 other Airmail) (Start my subscription with issue ❏ #24 ❏ #25) ❏ COLLECTED TJKC Vol. 1 • $21.95 ($24.95 Can., $34.95 other) ❏ COLLECTED TJKC Vol. 2 • $14.95 ($16.95 Can., $24.95 other) ❏ COLLECTED TJKC Vol. 3 • $16.95 ($19.95 Can., $26.95 other) ❏ KIRBY CHECKLIST • $5.00 ($5.50 Canada, $7.50 other) ❏ TJKC #16 • $4.95 postpaid ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 other) ❏ TJKC #17 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ TJKC #18 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ TJKC #19 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ TJKC #20 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ TJKC #21 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ TJKC #22 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ TJKC #23 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other)

COMIC BOOK ARTIST Subscriptions/Back Issues ❏ $20 for 4 issues ($27 Canada, $37 other Airmail) (Start my subscription with issue ❏ #4 ❏ #5) ❏ CBA #1 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ CBA #2 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ CBA #3 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other) ❏ CBA #4 • $5.95 postpaid ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 other)

TwoMorrows • 1812 Park Drive • Raleigh, NC 27605 USA • 919-833-8092 • FAX: 919-833-8023 • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

ISSUE #24, APR. 1999

A 68-P AGE ISSUE FEATURING KIRBY’S GREATEST BATTLES!