Jack Kirby Collector #27 by TwoMorrows Publishing

AN ALL-STAR LO O K AT THE KIRBY INFLUENCE Featuring:

Kurt Busiek Steve Englehart Neil Gaiman Ron Garney Dave Gibbons Tony Isabella Dan Jurgens Michael Kaluta Erik Larsen Fabian Nicieza John Ostrander Brian Pulido Joe Quesada Dave Sim Jeff Smith Roger Stern John Totleben Jim Valentino Rick Veitch Charles Vess Mark Waid Barry Windsor-Smith Marv Wolfman AND MUCH MO RE!

$5.95 T

ISSUE #27, FEB. 2000

In The US

Spider-Man, Thor, Ikaris, Iron Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Fully Authorized By The Kirby Estate

Kirby-inspired art by (clockwise from top left): Mark Poe (“Kirby’s Trinity”, computer generated), Christopher Saghy (detail from New Gods #6, inked/colored), Paul McCall (oils on masonite, 20" x 29"), and Peter Clapper (“Orion & Darkseid” collage).

Issue #27 Contents SIDE ONE: The 2000 Virtual Kirby Panel.............5 (an all-star line-up tells us how Kirby influenced them—featuring Kurt Busiek, Steve Englehart, Neil Gaiman, Bob Gale, Ron Garney, Dave Gibbons, Tony Isabella, Dan Jurgens, Michael Kaluta, Erik Larsen, Fabian Nicieza, John Ostrander, Brian Pulido, Joe Quesada, Dave Sim, Jeff Smith, Roger Stern, John Totleben, Jim Valentino, Rick Veitch, Charles Vess, Mark Waid, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Marv Wolfman) Collector Comments.........................32 SIDE TWO: Kirby Family Roundtable ...................3 (a discussion with Lisa Kirby, Mike Thibodeaux, Richard French, and Steve Robertson about what’s going on with Genesis West and the Kirby Estate) Jack Kirby On: WWII Influences ......16 (second in a series—this time featuring a frank, firsthand account of Jack’s war experiences; for mature audiences only) Alex Ross Interview ..........................24 (the renowned painter discusses how Kirby influenced him) Kirby’s Fine Art Influences ...............30 (a look at the “two Jacks”; Pollack and Kirby) Kirby Cakes ......................................31 (a French Kirby fan’s wife(!) tells of Jack’s influence on French pastry) There Is No Hiatus ............................31 (believe it or not, Jack’s influence even extends into the music business) Kirby Collector Comicollage ............34 (enter our contest by naming the characters on this issue’s centerfold)

ISSUE #27, FEB. 2000

THE ONLY ’ ZINE AUTHORIZED BY THE KIRBY ESTATE

Side One cover inks and colors: Bruce Timm Side Two cover inks: Mike Thibodeaux Color on all Genesis West art: Rick French 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: Ajak, Avengers Forever, Bucky, Captain America, Crystal, Dr. Doom, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Hulk, Human Torch, Ikaris, Iron Man, Klaw, Lockjaw, Magnir, Mr. Buddha, Mr. Fantastic, Prof. Damian, Red Skull, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, SubMariner, Thing, Thor, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Wasp, Watcher, Yellow Claw TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Batman, Big Barda, Boy Commandos, Brute, Burnadeth, Challengers of the Unknown, Count Dragorin, Darkseid, Demon, Female Furies, Flash, Glob, Green Arrow, Guardian, Hawkman, Henry Jones, Jed, Jimmy Olsen, Lashina, Lightray, Losers, Lupek, Mad Harriet, Mr. Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Orion, Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter, Rose/Thorn, Sandman, Sandy, Scott Free, Spectre, Speedy, Stompa, Superman TM & © DC Comics, Inc. • Face studies, Gladiators, Great Gatsby art, Huns, Lisa Kirby’s birthday card, Mindmaster, Sky Masters, Thunder Foot, Toys for Tots art, Wonder Warriors, © Jack Kirby • Darkfyre, Descendants of Atlantis, Disciples of the Dragon, Gin Seng, Knight & Day, Kublak, Last of the Viking Heroes, Malibu Maniacs, Phantom Force, Phobos and his Galactic Bounty Hunters, Rincon, Rudolph Ludwing, Slug, Thunder Hunter, Whitestar Knight TM & © Genesis West and the Jack Kirby Estate • Captain 3-D © Harvey Comics, Inc. • Blue Bolt, Boy Explorers, Fighting American, Speedboy, Stuntman © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby • Shield/Pvt. Strong © Joe Simon • Fone Bone and Smiley Bone TM & © Jeff Smith • Evil Ernie TM & © Chaos Comics • Savage Dragon TM & © Erik Larsen • Rare Bit Fiends TM & © Rick Veitch • Cerebus TM & © Dave Sim.

Our thanks to Bruce Timm for inking and coloring this 1977 Kirby pencil drawing for our Side One cover. Our Side Two cover is of various Genesis West characters; pencils by Kirby, inks by Thibodeaux, and colors by Rick French. The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 8, No. 27, Feb. 2000. 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 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 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.

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AN INFLUENTIAL INFLUX OF INTIMATE INFORMATION ABOUT US! ITEM! Sorry gang, our stock of ARGOSY Magazine (featuring Kirby’s 10-page autobiographical STREET CODE story) is SOLD OUT! But we’ll be reprinting Jack’s story later this year in a new publication called STREETWISE, featuring autobiographical short stories by the top names in comics! So far, we’ve got commitments from such luminaries as WILL EISNER, ALEX TOTH, NICK CARDY, JEFFREY JONES, EVAN DORKIN, JOE KUBERT, MURPHY ANDERSON, SAM GLANZMAN, SERGIO ARAGONES, and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH! With a lineup like that, STREETWISE stands to be the breakaway publication of 2000, and we’re still lining up more talent! We’ll have the final details next issue, so stay tuned!

JOHN’S JUKEBOX Just how influential was Jack? That’s what we’re endeavoring to discover in this, the first of two “Kirby Influence” theme issues. We had SO MUCH stuff to cover, we quickly saw it wouldn’t fit into a single issue, so be sure to pick up next issue for more of our all-star look at the scope of Jack’s influence (as well as the Rich Buckler and Keith Giffen interviews we planned for this issue, but didn’t have space for). Long Live The King!

John Morrow, Editor

ITEM! The 68-page COMIC BOOK ARTIST SPECIAL EDITION #1 is now shipping! To keep CBA going, we need to increase our subscription base, so we went all-out to make it worth your while to subscribe by offering this FREE publication to subscribers only! Besides spotlighting the great ’70s DC Comics (including NEAL ADAMS’ Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali, and RUSS HEATH’S Sgt. Rock), it’s got interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN on KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD, plus his SOUL LOVE and TRUE DIVORCE CASES books! There’s also plenty of unpub-

TwoMorrows 1812 Park Dr. • Raleigh, NC 27605 • (919) 833-8092 FAX (919) 833-8023 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com lished Kirby art, so subscribe now for six issues for $30 in the US, and get the SPECIAL EDITION absolutely FREE! ITEM! Speaking of CBA, in February COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7 looks at 1970s MARVELMANIA! Behind an incredible PAUL GULACY cover you’ll find articles, interviews, and rare and unpublished art by the pros who made that era great, like GULACY, BYRNE, BUCKLER, ADKINS, MOENCH, GERBER, MOONEY, SPRINGER,

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THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27

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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 STAFF BRANDL KURT BUSIEK PETER CLAPPER JEAN AND NOELLE DEPELLEY STEVE ENGLEHART RICHARD FRENCH NEIL GAIMAN BOB GALE RON GARNEY MIKE GARTLAND DAVE GIBBONS TOM HORVITZ TONY ISABELLA DAN JURGENS MICHAEL KALUTA GEORGE KHOURY LISA KIRBY PETER KOCH RICHARD KYLE R. GARY LAND ERIK LARSEN MARTY LASICK VICTOR LIM PAUL MCCALL HARRY MENDRYCK TOM MOREHOUSE FABIAN NICIEZA JOHN OSTRANDER MARK POE BRIAN PULIDO JOE QUESADA STEVE ROBERTSON ALEX ROSS CHRISTOPHER SAGHY DAVE SIM JOE SIMON JOE SINNOTT JEFF SMITH ROGER STERN MIKE THIBODEAUX BRUCE TIMM JOHN TOTLEBEN JIM VALENTINO RICK VEITCH CHARLES VESS R.J. VITONE MARK WAID BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH MARV WOLFMAN RAY WYMAN, JR. DUNCAN YOUNGERMAN TOM ZIUKO SPECIAL THANKS TO: RICHARD FRENCH D. HAMBONE RANDY HOPPE RICHARD HOWELL ROBERT KATZ GEORGE KHOURY LISA KIRBY MARTY LASICK STEVE ROBERTSON ALEX ROSS MIKE THIBODEAUX BRUCE TIMM RAY WYMAN, JR. TOM ZIUKO AND OF COURSE THE KIRBY ESTATE MAILING CREW: RUSS GARWOOD D. HAMBONE GLEN MUSIAL ED STELLI ROBERT THOMASON PATRICK VARKER A

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The 2000 Virtual Kirby Tribute Panel Conducted by George Khoury

Who’s Who on the Panel In Alphabetical Order: • Kurt Busiek (writer of Astro City and Marvels) • Steve Englehart (writer of The Avengers and Captain America) • Neil Gaiman (writer/creator of Sandman) • Bob Gale (screenwriter of Back to the Future) • Ron Garney (artist of Captain America and The Hulk) • Dave Gibbons (writer/artist of Watchmen and World’s Finest) • Tony Isabella (writer of Satan’s Six and Comics Buyer’s Guide columnist) • Dan Jurgens (writer/artist of Superman and Thor) • Michael Kaluta (artist of The Shadow and House of Mystery) • Erik Larsen (creator of Savage Dragon) • Fabian Nicieza (writer of X-Men and Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty) • John Ostrander (writer of Spectre and Martian Manhunter) • Brian Pulido (creator of Chaos Comics) • Joe Quesada (artist of Daredevil and Ash) • Dave Sim (creator of Cerebus) • Jeff Smith (creator of Bone) • Roger Stern (writer of Captain America and Iron Man) • John Totleben (artist of Miracleman and Swamp Thing) • Jim Valentino (publisher of Image Comics) • Rick Veitch (writer/artist of Swamp Thing and artist on ABC’s Tomorrow Stories) • Charles Vess (artist of Stardust and Sandman) • Mark Waid (writer of Kingdom Come) • Barry Windsor-Smith (of Conan and Storyteller fame) • Marv Wolfman (writer of Crisis and The New Teen Titans)

A couple of gladiators duke it out in these 1970s Kirby pencils.

(Welcome all to the 2000 Virtual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. Don’t be shy, we’ve saved a special seat in the front row just for you! Many fans were left disappointed when the 1999 San Diego Comicon decided not to conduct its annual Kirby Tribute Panel, so we’ve decided to feature our own by contacting some of the top writers and artists in the industry via in-person, phone, fax, e-mail, and snail mail interviews for you, our ever-loyal readers and Kirby lovers everywhere. Given that all the members of our distinguished panel weren’t assembled together in the same room, we ask you to give us your imaginations just for a short while, and it’ll seem like we’re all magically together in an enormous auditorium for one special moment in time. So close your eyes, join us, and picture this:

The spacious hall is filled to capacity with fellow Kirby fans, young and old, as you take a seat down front. You overhear a few fans behind you discussing who is the better villain, Dr. Doom or Darkseid. While the guy next to you reminisces about his love for Moonboy and his loyal friend Devil Dinosaur, the people in front of you talk about Vinnie Colletta’s eraser and chuckle. Then suddenly the lights dim down and you feel a tingle on the back of your neck as the guests all arrive together and take their seats on the largest stage you’ve ever seen. In all, you see twenty-four gentlemen behind a long row of tables—twentyfour of the best creators who have ever contributed to our four-color medium. In an instant a sense of nostalgia overcomes you; you remember the great 5

tales and beautiful artwork that have at one moment or another touched your heart and entertained your mind. How can you forget the wonders of Marvels or the beauty of “Red Nails,” or where you were when even a Superman could die and infinite Earths became one? Who in this room can say he hasn’t laughed or cried with either Fone Bone or Cerebus? You could go on and on remembering something special about each of the panelists, but today we are all together for one reason: To celebrate the man who has brought us all together, the King of Comics, Jack Kirby. The room is electric. You feel a special kinship with everyone there. The hall is now Standing Room Only. The hubbub quickly dies down as the emcee approaches the podium, and the spotlight shines brightly at centerstage—and now the panel is ready to begin:

#66—“What Lurks Behind The Beehive?” What I do remember is that when I started reading comics regularly, Marvel was running Lee/Kirby FF reprints in Marvel’s Greatest Comics, and Thomas/Buckler new material in Fantastic Four. While I liked them both, I didn’t yet understand the concept of reprints—and I wondered how the people at Marvel knew to put the really good stuff into Marvel’s Greatest Comics. (laughter) I mean, it said “greatest” right on it, so clearly they were choosing the better ones, but what happened when a continued story came in, and half of it was one of the greatest and the other half was only good? Did they split it across Fantastic Four and Marvel’s Greatest Comics? Eventually I figured it out and felt really stupid. But even to my young and befuddled mind, the Lee/Kirby stuff was just head-andshoulders better—the power of it, the emotion, the characterization, the breathless pace. It all just hit harder.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Welcome to the 2000 Virtual Kirby Tribute Panel. (applause) For the next two hours we’re going to discuss the works of Kirby and the influence that he has had upon our panelists. My first question: What was your first Kirby comic book, and why did it have such an impact on you? Kurt?

DAN JURGENS: My first Kirby comic was Fantastic Four #58. Strangely enough, I remember not really liking it much. I was a total DC reader at the time, and I just found it all too strange and alien to embrace. The first Kirby comic I remember really going nuts over was Jack’s first Jimmy Olsen when he came to DC. I quickly hunted down all the other Fourth World books and became a devoted follower of the Kirby Magic.

KURT BUSIEK: I don’t remember what my first Kirby book was, though it may have been FF

MARK WAID: An avowed DC fan during the 1960s, I shamefully admit that I missed all of Jack’s work from that period the first time around. Like Dan, my first exposure to Jack was Jimmy Olsen #133—and at age eight, I thought it was the weirdest stuff I’d ever seen! Where was Curt Swan? Where was Pete Costanza? What is this? Nonetheless, Kirby got me. I bought all the Fourth World books— even though I didn’t love them yet, I’m grateful that some small part of me was pounding on the Al Plastino-ized part of my brain and screaming, “You lunkhead! This is genius!” (laughter) I wish I could say that he was an early influence on me, but thanks to my own naiveté, he wasn’t—at least not directly. Only in my teenage years did I come to realize how influential he was on the entire industry and everyone in it—past, present, and future.

Kirby’s production guide for assembling the collage on the cover of Jimmy Olsen #138, including finished inks by Neal Adams.

TONY ISABELLA: My first Jack Kirby comic was an issue of Fighting American, though I didn’t realize it until years later when Harvey reprinted some stories and I found that I remembered a couple of them. Next was probably Challengers of the Unknown, which remained one of my favorite titles even after Kirby left. Again, I wasn’t aware of Jack Kirby per se. I really became aware of Kirby with the Marvel Age of Comics and, most especially, Fantastic Four Annual #1, which I consider the greatest comic book of all time. (applause) DAVE SIM: I’m not really sure which were the first Kirby comics that I saw. I was a DC, primarily Superman-family-under-the-editorship-of-Mort-Weisinger fan, and Mort told us all not to read those other comics, so I thought the least I could do for Superman was to obey. A friend of mind, Dave Kelso, was exactly the opposite—Marvel fan through and through—so it was largely through him that I got persuaded to look at Marvel comics 6

(literally, up to the age of ten I would shield my eyes so as not to accidentally see a Marvel comic). I guess one of the first Kirby books I saw was Fantasy Masterpieces when they reprinted the first few issues of Captain America from the ’40s—or a few stories, anyway—all with dates and issue numbers attached. It was really ugly, muddy stuff, but ugly and muddy in a way that I definitely responded to with the first Red Skull story and all the Nazis and shooting and screaming and so on. People didn’t scream much in the Superman family books back in ’67 or so, so I found it to be attention-getting. A year or so later, I met Max Southall and John Cabeke and Manny and John Balge and other guys who all had these extensive Marvel collections since, back in 1967-68 it was a lot easier to have a complete run of Marvel comics than any of the major DC books. Max had an extra copy of FF #1 that he wanted ten bucks for, and I thought and thought and thought about it. I stole it from him at one point, but I felt bad after and gave it back to him with some lame story I don’t think he believed. As a newcomer to Marvel in 1967-68, I thought the 1961-63 books were the best, with the fat outlines around the word balloons on the cover and strange pinks and oranges and things like the cover to FF #9 and the flat yellow background on the cover of FF #4. That was really how I related to comic books around then. The stories seemed really sort of juvenile but the covers on Spider-Man #8 or FF #4 just looked like something I wanted to own and have with my Golden Age DC books, which also had very grabby covers. JEFF SMITH: For me, it was in 1964, a copy of the Fantastic Four. Ben Grimm wasn’t a comics icon then; he was truly grotesque and frightening. The tragic case of The Thing was really something new in comics. STEVE ENGLEHART: I started buying all the Marvels in the spring of ’65. I believe my first Kirby was FF #49, with Galactus and the Silver Surfer. A hell of a place to start.

JOE QUESADA: My first recollection of Jack’s work was during his stint at DC: All the Fourth World stuff, Kamandi, OMAC and the rest. I noticed Jack’s impact from the get-go; it was the stuff that separated the men from the boys in the super-hero genre. FABIAN NICIEZA: I don’t remember the exact issue because I was too young and had just come to this country, so my English wasn’t that good, but I am positive it was an issue of Fantastic Four around #60something. My older brother and I had been reading DC comics like Superman and Batman because we recognized the characters from television in Argentina (plus the Batman TV show on at that time), until a school friend of my brother’s told him we had to check out Marvel comics.

Simon & Kirby splash to Fighting American #1.

JOHN TOTLEBEN: I was always aware of Kirby’s work and even read his Captain America stories in Tales of Suspense around 1967-68. I didn’t care much for books like The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Thor or The Hulk so obviously I never read them. Kirby’s work really began to grab my attention when he made the move to DC in 1970 and took over Jimmy Olsen. What was once one of the most droll and boring comics around suddenly became one of the most interesting. When he launched into the Fourth World trilogy—especially The New Gods—I was hooked and stayed hooked right to the end. ROGER STERN: The first Kirby story I read was probably “The Case of the Super-Arrows” in Adventure Comics #251. That had a cover date of August 1958, which meant that I would have read it in the Spring of that year. That was a great Summer, as there was a Kirby Green Arrow story coming out every month. I definitely remember reading “The Green Arrow’s First Case” in Adventure Comics #256. Comics distribution was always spotty where I grew up in central Indiana, so I never saw

Bone by Jeff Smith; not very Kirbyesque, but one heckuva book!

He wasn’t even the first Marvel artist I saw, but he was the most indelible. I suspect that my first Kirby book was either Fantastic Four or Thor. I think it was Jack’s work on FF that was the greatest influence on me at first. It was the concepts and amazing visuals that got to me as well as the pell mell sense of story. So much energy and yet, at the same time, he was a consummate storyteller. I think it was the combination of the visual, big idea, along with the real storytelling that appealed to me. Later, I felt much the same way about his Fourth World books over at DC, especially New Gods and most especially “The Pact.” He gave us a story that was truly epic. MARV WOLFMAN: It’d be too difficult to remember the first Kirby story I saw because I didn’t know who Kirby was. The first I remember was his work on Green Arrow, especially a story about a giant arrow being shot into the city. I remember it was like no other GA story I’d ever seen and for the first time I actually enjoyed the character. Later on I saw Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Challengers, and then his ’40s stuff and his ’60s stuff. I guess the reason it made an impact was he didn’t believe in doing the small, usually boring stories I’d been reading, but insisted on having GA do something big, powerful, and at that time beyond my imagination. BOB GALE: I discovered super-hero comics in 1961 when I was 10, and DC was really the only choice at the time. Having watched the Superman TV show, the Superman books were where I started, but I quickly became curious about other characters. My first Kirby book would have probably been a Challengers of the Unknown, possibly the origin reprint in Secret Origins. I was aware that there was something different about the way this artwork looked compared to what I considered the “usual” DC look at the time— which would have been exemplified by Curt Swan— but I didn’t really think about it consciously. One thing I do remember from those Challengers books were the really incredible monsters! Kirby’s monsters were very organic and formidable—I think it was a combination of the monster itself and how Kirby depicted characters reacting to the monster.

Splash for S&K’s Double Life of Private Strong (oft called Private Life of Double Strong).

TJKC: When you hear Jack’s name, what comes to mind? WAID: That he never ran out of ideas. Fifty years, never ran out of ideas. I think I’m completely dry and start to freak out about it every, oh, four months. Not Jack. For Jack, writer’s block came and went in the time it took to sharpen his pencil. (laughter)

Jack’s Challengers of the Unknown until one of his stories turned up in the Secret Origins Annual in the Summer of 1961. My exposure to Jack’s work was the Sky Masters comic strip, the first few months of which actually ran in my hometown paper. The first issue of Simon & Kirby work that I actually bought was The Double Life Of Private Strong, fresh off the comics spinner in the Spring of 1959. Man, what a comic! I read it so much that the cover fell off—and I read it some more! Does that give you an inkling of the impact those stories had on me? By the time I was eight, I was a Kirby fan, and I didn’t yet know who Kirby was or what all he had already done. With Green Arrow, he took a character that even the seven-year-old me recognized as a second-rate Batman, and turned him into something special. I’d been watching Rocky Jones, Space Ranger fly to the stars on TV, but Sky Masters made space travel seem more real and more exciting! And Private Strong? I’d never heard of Captain America or Fighting American, so I didn’t know that Joe and Jack were revising their own concepts. All I knew was that I couldn’t get enough of this Shield guy. JOHN OSTRANDER: Jack wasn’t the first artist that I read in comics.

A sample of John Ostrander’s Spectre, featuring art by Tom Mandrake.

RICK VEITCH: Kind of a huge, complex, explosive and abstract bundle of wild mental images and outrageous concepts imprinted by the hundreds of thousands of Kirby panels (and outrageous ideas) my young mind absorbed over the years. Jack also served as an inspiration when I got into the comics business, being the quintessential professional that he was.

fannish musings aside, it was the rock ’em-sock ’em feel that Kirby had that set the work apart from the usual staid, worthy English science-fiction strips. TJKC: How important an influence was Kirby on you? BUSIEK: Considering how much work I’ve done for Marvel, he’d have been an important influence even if I didn’t like his work. But I love it, and it informed my sense of how a story should be told visually, so it influences everything I do, everything I write in comics. Kirby is virtually the starting point for me, and everything else is a variation from that beginning. BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH: I take it that you mean my comics work. Out of a hundred percent I’d say 95%. Kirby’s mid-to-late-’60s work completely enthralled me. JURGENS: I’ve always had a hard time pinpointing influences. I was, and am, in awe of Jack’s vision and capacity for creativity, as well as his sheer drawing ability. I believe one of the things about him that influences me most was his devotion to a title for long runs in which he’d go without fill-ins, all the while maintaining a remarkable level of quality. That breeds a more complete effect of illusion for any comic, and also rewards the readers. With the exception of a recent FF mini-series I just completed, my art isn’t much like Jack’s. However, since Jack helped create the blueprint of how modern super-hero comics tell their stories, it would be unrealistic of me to say there’s no influence whatsoever. It tends to be more subtle in nature, though.

BRIAN PULIDO: I worship Jack Kirby. He was a fountain of Detail of Brian Pulido’s Evil Ernie. ideas and his imagination was boundless. His output was incredible. DAVE GIBBONS: Jack Kirby means excitement, action and invention! Race For The Moon blended all these things together with the smooth line of inker Al Williamson. I loved anything to do with “outer space” at the time and was also intrigued that Sky Masters appeared simultaneously in an English weekly, causing the fanboy in me great interest as to whether the artist was English or American and why his art looked different in each feature. Sky Masters was inked by Wally Wood, so I was also struck by the resemblance to stuff I’d seen in Mad magazine. The notion of inkers was completely unknown to me then! But, these

ISABELLA: I’m influenced by the excitement, emotion, and humor he brought to his super-hero tales. I, like every other writer or artist working in that genre, have found myself solving a story problem here and there by trying to think like Jack. When I actually got a chance to work with Jack on Satan’s Six, I tried bringing something of myself to the work—at Jack’s urging—

Wally Wood’s gorgeous inking on Kirby’s Sky Masters strip influenced numerous artists. Shown here are dailies from 1/16/59 and 1/21/59.

while remaining very faithful to his core creation.

the Esquire “Comics on Campus” thing, there was a sense that comic books not only could be something else but were inevitably going to SIM: If I’m not mistaken there was about seven or eight years between turn into something else. Meaning no disparagement—okay, maybe a the time Jack Kirby went to DC and when I started Cerebus, so I would little (laughter)—I think Stan Lee saw that it could be a very big, fun, have to say that we both got caught up in the idea of what you could lucrative carnival which could be taken seriously and taken as camp and do with the comic book form on either side of the ground zero point both hands could grab the dough. Not only could you run away and where the direct market came into existence. That is, with the 1966 join the circus, you could run away and be the circus. Kirby, on the Batman fad and comic books becoming a collectible and Pop Art and other hand, looked on it as a chance to tell epic stories and really didn’t think much of An unused version of Jack’s 1960s Toys For Tots poster. the carnival side of it, which only makes sense. However much time Stan spent writing the stories, he had time left over and a carnival sounds like a great idea. Jack Kirby obviously slaved like a trojan from early morning of one day to early morning of the next. He was probably more concerned about finding time to shave than where he was going to find a good carnival to hang out in. Also, he could look back at 2000+ pages of FF in 1969 and he had to start considering what he was going to do on his next 2000 pages and, more importantly, how many thousand more pages he had left in him. Had he known that the direct market was only six or seven years away from coming into existence, he might have bided his time—or divided his time between his Marvel workload and his Fourth World epic, using the former to keep food on the table and getting the latter ready to sell to the comic book stores on a non-returnable basis. 20-20 hindsight. I knew enough not to trust any company to have Cerebus’ or my best interests at heart when I decided to turn it into an epic 26-year story. Kirby didn’t have that option. At the time he started the Fourth World epic he had to trust somebody and the only somebody besides the company he was working for was DC. He trusted that he would make enough money for them that they would see financing the whole epic from start to finish and then keeping it in print to be a smart idea. Of course what he didn’t take into account was that a corporate motivation in hiring him away from Marvel had as much to do with hurting Marvel as it did with helping their own bottom line. From 10

DC’s standpoint, I think, Jack’s departure didn’t hurt Marvel enough to warrant seeing the Fourth World though—as Mark Evanier has pointed out and I believe him, the books were still profitable. It was a tragedy and it was very, very regrettable, but that is what corporations are like. From where I sit it seems even more regrettable because, had DC seen the project through and released the first “phone books” in 1976—a 500-page New Gods, a 500-page Mister Miracle, etc.—it would have been timed perfectly with the arrival of the direct market and, presumably, Jack Kirby would have gone on to produce another 500-page story or two before he was done with this vale of tears. I also have a very large twinge of regret that, through self-publishing, I’ve been able to make a very good living doing my epic just the way I want to do it and without interference, when I consider that Jack Kirby labored for forty years in the comic book vineyards and missed being able to do the same thing by a piddling period of time like four or five years or so when I started Cerebus. Of course DC finally recognized that it is worth treating token creators better, so that Neil Gaiman did get to finish Sandman, and with what he makes year after year off of the Sandman collections, he probably leaves larger tips than I make a year. (laughter) So, I guess

This pencil drawing was stitched into one of Jack’s personal bound volumes of Star Spangled Comics.

(Yes, we know the Sandman appeared in Adventure Comics, but Jack had already put Guardian and Newsboy Legion drawings in another Star Spangled volume.)

fair is where you find it. I still wouldn’t trust DC any further than I could throw the Time-Warner executive washroom. (laughter, applause) Anyway, that’s my answer to what effect Jack Kirby had on my doing Cerebus.

Charles Vess takes a turn at Thor.

CHARLES VESS: The excitement of seeing his work in the early Sixties was what first caused me to cajole my parents into taking me to the local newsstand and buying my first comic—Fantastic Four #6. For many years his work, along with that of Frank Frazetta and Hal Foster, was a major influence on my first attempts at drawing. His “Tales of Asgard” made me realize that there were world mythologies other than Greek and Roman. I became enthralled by his tales of the Norse gods. I ran to the library and devoured everything ‘northern’ that they had on their shelves. Those tales in turn led me into the world of the Celtic hero, which is my primary interest to this day. 11

VEITCH: I learned how to draw by copying Kirby panels when I was a little kid. While I had to ‘unlearn’ a lot of that in art school, there is an essential underlying Kirby subtext to what I do. What Kirby did was evolve a whole new visual grammar for comics that just popped off the page. That was an achievement in itself, but the fact that he wedded the revolutionary look of his comics to a constant flow of new and greater story and character ideas propels his work into the realm of pure genius. I’ve always been in love with it!

1970s Thor drawing.

JIM VALENTINO: Jack Kirby was, without exception, the single most important creative influence on me both as a comics fan—child and adult—and a professional. He was also an inspiration to me as a person. Kirby was one of the humblest, most self-effacing people I ever met. When the “flavor of the month” superstars walked convention floors like they owned the place, Kirby was kind, considerate and patient with every single fan that came up to him with the same question he had just finished answering. Never losing patience, always appreciative. Giving everyone the respect and the dignity they deserved as human beings, regardless of their age. Take away everything he did as an artist and this remains an ideal to which we should all aspire to as people. It is, for me, what truly set him above all others. (applause) ERIK LARSEN: Jack’s influence on me does vary from time to time—I’m more influenced now than ever, actually. Some time ago my house burned to the ground and in it, I lost all of my old comics—finding replacement copies was a nightmare, but a couple of years back I managed to buy a long run of the Fantastic Four and it was like I was reborn again. It was great going over those old comics— just looking at Jack’s stuff inspires me to no end! All I need to do is page through a Kirby comic and I’m immediately

ENGLEHART: I’m one of those people who think that his ’60s Marvel work, especially with Joe Sinnott inking, was a real showpiece of comics; but above all the obvious benefits to reading him, the thing that impressed me most was that he made comics a career— that he changed with the times and innovated in every decade of his life. And at the same time, he also serves as a cautionary tale for all of us, since he never benefited fully from his contributions. Finally, he showed me that if you can’t do something—him, write dialogue; me, draw—you shouldn’t do it. Do what you can do; it’s enough. RON GARNEY: Well, considering that most of my earliest exposure and memories of comics were of Jack Kirby’s work, I’d have to say that his importance and influence lies at the core of my interest in them completely. Something in Kirby’s work and his imagination subconsciously had to have triggered my interest and imagination in the characters and reading comics at such an early age, and now that I work in the field as an adult and have an understanding of the art and craft, I have an even greater appreciation and level of gratitude for it than I did just reading them as a youngster. 12

Erik Larsen’s rendition of God vs. Satan in Savage Dragon.

filled with inspiration—I get all fired up to hit the drawing board! short while, and I’ve been trying to get it back ever since. Right now, The Jack Kirby Collector is pretty much my favorite ongoing NICIEZA: He wasn’t as much of an influence on me until I was a bit periodical—I absolutely love it! The best part for me is seeing Kirby’s older. My brother, who is three years older, bought New Gods which stuff pre-inks—even if the stuff was well-inked, it’s still a treat to see it was, honestly, a bit over my head at nine and ten years old. I knew I in its pure form. When the published stuff was destroyed by a later liked his work, but it was almost too powerful for me between the ages Vince Colletta or a heavy-handed Syd Shores, even better. It’s pure gold. of 7 and 10. I preferred John Romita Sr. on Spider-Man because it was As a kid, I discovered Jack a bit late. My dad had old comics a “less aggressive” style. around the house that he bought as a kid and we didn’t actively pursue When I became a teenager and got into Barry Smith, Jim Starlin, getting new comics—hell, I started drawing my own amateur comics George Pérez, and Marshall Rogers, I then went back and looked at featuring my Dragon character before I started regularly buying comics! FF, Thor, and the Fourth World titles with a whole new appreciation. When I first ran into Jack’s stuff he was almost through wrapping up his run at DC Comics. Now, I was a Marvel Zombie like nobody’s STERN: Well, if not for Jack and Stan, there wouldn’t have been a business. Rich Buckler was boldly swiping Jack on the FF and I didn’t Marvel Comics. Without the work they produced, without the way really know that he was flat-out tracing Kirby’s stuff—I was completely they revolutionized comics in the Sixties, there might not be a comics clueless—but I dug it nonetheless. When Marvel raised their prices to industry today. I owe those two—among many others, to be sure— a quarter and DC held the line at twenty cents, it didn’t take a math whiz to figure out that I could get five DC mags for the price of four Marvel books; and even though I liked the Marvel characters more—well, let’s just say that I became open to experimenting a bit. Enter: Jack Kirby. My first pure Kirby book was Kamandi and I was hooked! It’s strange that after all these years, Jack’s most successful DC book—it was the only one that continued in his absence, and it was Jack’s longest run at DC—has been the most neglected by successive creators; but I loved it! I was there for Atlas, there for Dingbats of Danger Street, for Justice Inc. and Kobra—I was hooked hard. When Jack came back to Marvel I was the happiest kid on the planet! I started aping Jack’s stuff early-on—copying poses and trying to figure out how Jack did it—and I’m still trying, although I don’t swipe anymore; nasty habit. My first job at Marvel was an issue of Thor—it featured Thor fighting the Hulk. Jim Shooter and I plotted it together at a Chicago Con and Jim went out of his way to get his favorite scripter to work on the job with me— not everybody’s first gig is doing an issue of Thor with Stan Lee and Vinnie Colletta! Vinnie was far from my favorite inker but in retrospect it was pretty damned cool to be the last guy to do an issue of Thor with those two legends—it was like I was filling in for Jack Kirby! When I sit down to draw these days, I’m thinking Kirby—I’m thinking, “How would Jack do this?” When I’m writing comics for others to draw, I’m always picturing pencils by Kirby in my mind—so is it any wonder that they seldom live up to what I’m picturing in my head? One time I was doing this issue of Savage Dragon—it was #31—Dragon was trapped in Hell and I had God show up to tackle the Devil. It was all so huge, so epic. I really felt like I was working on something bold and magnificent— bigger than life—and I thought to myself as I did this book, “This is what Jack Kirby must have felt like every day of his life.” I’ve done issues since that which were more intentionally Kirbyesque, when Dragon met Thor and Hercules on a planet called Godworld, but I never got that feeling back—that sensation that I was doing something so grand and so epic— Pencils from page 9 of Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter #3, one of Jack’s least-known ’70s DC works. but it was a great feeling to have, if only for a 13

TJKC: Michael, how would you define the influence that Jack Kirby has had on the comics artform? MICHAEL KALUTA: It was immense. I’m no historian, and I grew up in the company of artists who’d not paid attention to Jack Kirby’s work during their formative years—we were into Frazetta, Roy Krenkel, Al Williamson; hence J. Allen St. John, Hal Foster, Alex Raymond. But once in comics Jack Kirby’s influence was impossible to deny. Most of the guys we’d meet were influenced solely by Kirby in their formative years; Barry [Windsor-Smith] comes to mind. TJKC: Which are the great Kirby moments that stand out in your memory, and why are they so special? VALENTINO: There are, literally, a billion—I could recount them all day long. The grandeur of his work on Thor and New Gods; the excitement of Captain America in his Tales of Suspense run—still takes my breath away; the power of the Galactus Trilogy—but the single thing that stands out the most for me was the cover of Avengers #4. My father was a comics fan during World War II. His favorites were The Justice Society, Sub-Mariner and, especially, Captain America! He would often tell me about his hero and how these newer characters just did not measure up! One day, while driving down a road we stopped in at a liquor store so he could buy some cigarettes. Spying a comics rack in the back of the store, I immediately made a beeline toward it. And there, eye-level to my 11-year-old eyes, was the cover with Captain America fairly leaping off it at me! I grabbed it and went running through the store shouting, “Is this him? Is this him?” Both my father and the man behind the counter’s jaws dropped. They started talking about the war and their memories of this character. They sent me back to get a copy for each of them! It was the first time in my life I ever bought multiple copies of a single comic! The nice thing is, I got to relate this story to Jack and he seemed very pleased that something he had done had created a “moment” between a father and son. BOB GALE: The “Black Galaxy” series in Thor really blew me away, both from an art and content standpoint. The character of The Recorder was brilliant, and the concept of a Living Planet was like nothing I’d ever come across. The Captain America vs. Bucky, from a 1970s Marvel Double Feature cover. entire epic nature of Thor was captivating—it was truly modern mythology, and there was nothing else like it. my livelihood. The period of 1966-69 was to me where Kirby was at his best. What Also, it seems as though Jack had a hand in creating about half I came to appreciate about Thor and Fantastic Four was how huge the to two-thirds of the characters I’ve written stories about over the last canvas was for these adventures—events just exploded across the entire quarter century. That’s another debt I owe the man. I’m sure that I’ve universe! And of course, I was completely enthralled by Galactus and also absorbed a few things about story pacing from all those years of the Silver Surfer. I found Captain America far less interesting—to me, reading the FF, Thor, and Captain America, but that’s harder to quantify. it was overly mired in World War II, and that war was over. Iron Man or the Hulk vs. the Communists was more interesting to me. WOLFMAN: Jack influenced me by stretching the imagination. Not I was thrilled when I heard that Kirby was going to create a whole thinking small, and making sure characters always stayed in character new line of books at DC, but as much as I wanted to like them, I was visually as well as in writing. I remember seeing a “Tales of Asgard” disappointed. It may be sacrilegious to say so in this publication, but story where Thor and Loki are walking away from the reader, Thor I thought his artwork looked rushed and lacked detail, and I didn’t like standing straight and tall, Loki hunched over. Your immediately the writing at all. The names were so literal and broad, and lacked any understood the difference between the characters because of their body subtlety—“Apokolips,” “Darkseid,” “Granny Goodness,” “The Boom language. Jack also picked angles to show his characters that emphasized Tube.” The characterizations were flat, and there was none of the humor the power of the story. The first Captain America story in Strange that worked so well in the Marvel books, such as with Volstagg or the Tales when the Acrobat was pretending to be Cap had a remarkable Thing. I gave up on the stuff after six months. Every time something up-shot onto Cap that really gave a sense of the danger of the situation. new would come out from Kirby, I’d buy it, hoping it would recapture I actually own the original for that page. In the first Dr. Doom story the sense of wonder I got from those great FF and Thor books, but it in FF all the splash panels presented a world far bigger and dramatic never happened. Even his brief return to Captain America in the ’70s than anything I’d ever seen in comics before. 14

didn’t have the magic. I know it’s a subject of great controversy—judging the relative contributions of Jack Kirby vs. Stan Lee—but for my money, Kirby’s stuff was never as good after he ended his association with Lee, so I have to think that there was some sort of chemistry between them that worked. (I guess it’s like arguing over how much of which Beatles songs were Lennon’s or McCartney’s—whichever way you cut it, their solo stuff was never as good.)

family coming to visit their son at his boarding school and being greeted by Magneto; the Thing standing silently in the rain; and Doctor Doom, crackling with the Power Cosmic, standing over the body of the Silver Surfer. That’s just off the top of my head. Give me a few minutes, and I’m sure I could think of a dozen more. But looking back at the examples I just cited, I’d say there’s something character-defining in each one; a hero finds his destiny, a man has a revelation, or a tyrant exults in his power. Strong stuff. And Kirby seemed to produce more of it that just about anybody.

BUSIEK: It’s not usually moments—it’s characters, and emotions. Angel’s torment and rage in “Mother Delilah” from Boys’ Ranch, the raw emotion of “The Girl Who Tempted Me,” the energy and grace of his Captain America battles, the majesty of his Thor and New Gods—these aren’t confined to moments, but they’re the stuff that sings to me in Kirby. And then there are the little moments, minor bits that another creator wouldn’t bother with, but make Kirby all the greater. Two that’ll always stand out for me: There’s a panel in the Galactus Trilogy where the Thing has just hopped off the FF’s sky-cycle and is falling toward the crowd below. He’s drawn straightforwardly, but tilted slightly, and that slight tilt makes all the difference— it makes the scene seem more natural, not staged, which makes it more emotionally believable, and it makes the Thing look like he’s falling gracelessly, just plummeting like a rock, which is both funny and character-specific. It’s a tiny little moment, but it makes everything around it work that much better. There’s also a scene in Forever People where Darkseid has captured the Forever People, and instead of having them locked up, he lines them up like troops he’s reviewing. He walks back and forth in front of this line of nervous super-kids, his hands clasped behind his back, coming off for all the world like a military officer far, far more than a comic book super-villain. There’s such richness of personality in that scene—in Darkseid for acting specifically, not generically; in the Forever People for snapping to, even though the guy’s an enemy—it’s just got more life than anyone else would have thought to give that moment. Probably not the kind of answer you were thinking of, but it’s those little things that hit me the hardest.

TOTLEBEN: The Demon. I do have one particular favorite image of the character. It’s the splash page to Demon #3, where Jason Blood is dreaming that he’s chained to Etrigan and can’t get free. The image of a man struggling with his inner demon is, for me, a very compelling one that resonates deeply. As an aspiring young artist I was never much given to directly copying the works of other artists—I don’t know why really, I guess it just wasn’t my way of doing things—but I can remember at least two instances where I felt compelled to copy a drawing from a

TJKC: Roger, what were the great Kirby moments for you? STERN: Are you kidding? You could fill a whole issue with great moments! The ones which spring immediately to mind are: Oliver Queen solemnly painting his face with grease before running off to fight pirates; Sky Masters watching in amazement as a horrific space creature turns out to be nothing more than a rose; Lancelot Strong rising up out of a wrecked van with a mask on his face and a grin on his lips; Steve Rogers coming to life after years on ice, calling the name of his partner; Franklin Storm sacrificing himself to save his son and daughter; Donald Blake defying the will of Odin and revealing his true identity to the love of his life; the Worthington

Splash page pencils to Mister Miracle #10. According to DC’s production numbering, Jack actually started this issue before #9—perhaps he shuffled things so he could get “Himon” in print before DC pulled the plug on the Fourth World.

be told; the Fourth World stuff for its tremendous ambition; and, most of all, Thor, which I consider Jack Kirby’s best, and perhaps most personal work. WINDSOR-SMITH: I don’t remember titles or issue numbers. Just about everything from the Sixties, really. Thor, Fantastic Four, Captain America, and others. Certainly the so-called Galactus Trilogy was utterly extraordinary in its concept and execution. Who else but Jack Kirby could have created such a phenomenon of story and art? Kirby transcended his own medium time and time again; it’s difficult to annotate his triumphs without seeking out reference, and I no longer own any comic books, even Jack’s. ISABELLA: Ben Grimm having to become the Thing again to fight Doctor Doom—and then taking it out on Doctor Doom. “This Man, This Monster.” The “Delilah” story in Boys’ Ranch. Any number of Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos stories. “The Glory Boat.” And, all for the same reason, the humanity of the characters. VESS: The “Tales of Asgard” and Fantastic Four. Although I would also have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the 1950s goofiness of his Fighting American, and the John Severin inking on The Yellow Claw makes the issue that I have a spectacular delight. ENGLEHART: My all-time Kirby moment— out of at least ten thousand Kirby moments— was pointed out to me by Neal Adams when Neal was trying to show me what great art was. In one of Jack’s Challengers of the Unknowns there is a splash of a futuristic city in which the perspective is so extreme, because the city is so huge, that the parallel lines on a building are perpendicular—lines that are supposed to be parallel meet at a 90 degree angle—one of ten thousand moments when Jack’s creativity was working way outside the boundaries that held everyone else in.

(above) Splash page to Fantastic Four #78. (right) John Totleben’s inks over Steve Bissette pencils on the Demon.

comic book. One was a large panel by Neal Adams with a huge close-up of Green Arrow’s face. The other was the splash panel from Demon #3. I don’t remember much about that Green Arrow face now. I couldn’t tell you what issue of Green Lantern/Green Arrow it was from or what prompted me to copy it. But I can still remember that tug-of-war between Etrigan and Jason Blood and I know exactly why I had to copy it, even though I probably couldn’t have explained it then. Kirby had a knack for presenting these archetypal images with a certain clarity and force that very few artists can muster.

GARNEY: The first FF stuff he drew which involved the Surfer and Galactus; Captain America; and Hulk vs. Thing on the George Washington bridge. These have always stood out in my mind, probably because they were again my earliest exposure and what got me to love comics in the first place. Something about the energy and drama in the visuals just completely sucked me into the stories. At that age stories like that made you think and took on a level of importance only a kid understands at the time. You can’t help getting

JURGENS: Captain America, for the splendor of the character; Fantastic Four, for I believe it’s the perfect comic book, where any story, large as the universe or as small as a squabble between brother and sister can 16

hooked on them. Looking back on some of the Surfer issues, it was interesting to see how Kirby’s take on the character evolved.

Thing here. When you consider what Kirby did in developing the look of the character in a little more than four years—when Barry WindsorSmith did his Thing story in Marvel Fanfare, I got the sense that he responded to the character in the same way and had to do his “This Man, This Monster” take at some point or die a lesser man for not having done so. I’ve never been that way about corporate characters or I would probably have to do a Thing story myself at some point. I think Jack Kirby put a lot of himself into the Thing. I think Stan Lee was a mix of Reed Richards and Johnny Storm the way Jack Kirby saw him, but Jack was just this irresistible force of nature who saw himself as a big pile of orange rocks.

KALUTA: The one three-page strip I saw that got my attention as a young professional was a filler in a war comic—called “Hot Box” [Foxhole #2, Dec. 1954]—about the waist gunners in a WWII B-17 bomber. Their high altitude flight gear made them look just like Kirby gods. QUESADA: Mister Miracle, hands down. He was just the coolest character. Wild costume, big-ass girlfriend, and of course the Kirby trademark sidekick! What more could a kid want? (laughter) PULIDO: Though I had been enjoying his work for years in Captain America and Fantastic Four, what really captured me was Kamandi #19. The cover has Kamandi leaving Chicagoland—alone. I powerfully related to the character. WAID: In retrospect, the big, bombastic stuff in the early Jimmy Olsens—the Mountain of Judgment in particular. Curt Swan never drew anything like that. Probably my favorite specific moment is the climax of “Himon,” in which Scott Free declares his independence. Even when I was nine, the raw emotion of that moment spoke volumes to me, and stayed with me in a way that nothing else from the period ever has.

NICIEZA: The Fantastic Four issues [#57-60] when Dr. Doom stole Silver Surfer’s powers. The Forever People because I thought they were

When Mike Royer changed the face on Barda on this splash to Mister Miracle #5, Jack cut the faces off his pencil photocopies and reinked them, restoring the original faces.

LARSEN: When Joe Sinnott came on Fantastic Four and inked Jack’s stuff. That book was on fire—it exploded! Nothing before it or after it has come close. He created such great characters—such stories—they simply can’t be touched. To me, the peak was when Dr. Doom got the power of the Silver Surfer—it was just awesome. The Galactus trilogy was pretty cool too, but I didn’t get to experience that as a new book—by the time I saw it in a Marvel Treasury Edition, I’d already seen the Silver Surfer. It was hard for me to get the feeling of what it would have been like to read this as a new book. I wish I’d started buying comics when I was younger! I love Jack’s later stuff—New Gods, Forever People, The Demon, Kamandi, Black Panther, Captain America—but as good as it was, it just didn’t compare to that run on the FF. When the paper size Jack worked on got smaller, I think the work suffered. Jack couldn’t adjust accordingly—granted, the stuff was still spectacular. It was ten times what anybody else was doing, but it wasn’t what it had been. Jack’s last few issues of FF just look tired to me—it was time to move on. Lucky for DC; finally, somebody gave them some cool toys to play with! SIM: I’m not sure what issue the FF was up to at the time I finally started reading it. I think around #70 or #75 and, as I said, you could pick them all up for a dollar or two at the time—most of them for a quarter, so I had a run in pretty short order except for the first ten or so which I had seen and read. I don’t know if you’re allowed to say this in The Jack Kirby Collector, but I thought the quality had tailed off pretty dramatically by the time of Wyatt Wingfoot and the Negative Zone and stuff. The first Inhumans storyline—#44 or #45 and leading into #51’s “This Man, This Monster,” which I really thought was the high point of Stan and Jack’s run on the book—I guess that I’m really thinking about the

cool hippies. The New Gods issue [#8] featuring Sgt. Turpin. Then his return to Captain America—and especially that big tabloid Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles book. (sighs) Now you have me wanting to leave and go scan my comic book reference shelves! (laughter) I just loved the power and strength of his storytelling, the mythic scope of all his work. I loved seeing the differences his inkers brought out in him, from Joe Sinnott on FF, to Vinnie Colletta on Thor, to Mike 17

Royer on the Fourth World material. His writing never thrilled me as a kid, but when I re-read the work as an adult, I gained a new appreciation for the operatic sweep of his ideas. The sheer audacity of the things he attempted makes nearly everyone else’s superhero comic work pale in comparison when it comes to scope and reach.

Nicieza script, Kevin Maguire art on Cap.

TJKC: Folks, a surprise guest has just stopped by. Please welcome Neil Gaiman. (applause) Neil, we were just talking about everyone’s most memorable Kirby moments. What are yours?

GAIMAN: There’s a page of talking heads on a plane in The Demon... umm, #6? #9? The Howler story, whatever it was. [Demon #6] Jason Blood and the Howler-as-a-human just sitting on a plane and talking. I love it because it’s so unlikely, and so atypical in the Kirby cannon. But the great Kirby moments—the ones where one would laugh aloud or gasp with delight—let’s see: The Kamandi episode [#29], with the Superman costume and the catapulted gorillas; Darkseid’s appearance at the end of Mr. Miracle’s wedding [Mr. Miracle #18]; the Deadman-raising scene in Forever People [#9]; the thirteen Barry Windsor-Smith inked pages of Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles; Jason Blood’s empty apartment in the Demon; the skinny SF fan in “The Losers” [Our Fighting Forces #153], and the wonderful Scientifictional Rocket the Losers build for him. Then there’s the nostalgia factor—all the Stan and Jack really early Marvel titles, which I read in British reprints printed in black-&-white or black, white and red; the origins of Thor, the X-Men, the Hulk—all of them imprinted and primal.

Dave Gibbons does Cap à la Steranko (from CA #110) for 1995’s Savage Hulk.

His “Green Arrows” were a revelation and I could probably reel off dozens of covers and splash pages that are indelibly stamped on my visual cortex. One, at random, is the Captain America splash from Tales of Suspense [#63] where he’s holding his shield aloft above a burning landscape with the year “1941” in the background.

GIBBONS: I loved all the mid-Fifties science-fiction stuff he did for Harvey.

OSTRANDER: Well, I was reading the FF when Dr. Doom took over the Silver Surfer’s powers for about four issues, as I recall. What a story! It was classic. The FF literally go into the “Dismal Dregs of Defeat” as one story was titled and you had no idea how they were ever going to win, but then they come back and triumph. I also really remember a story set in the Negative Zone in which Reed is trapped on a rock that’s hurtling towards the explosive center of the Negative Zone and the rest of the team have no way of reaching him. The next issue showed someone—it looked like the Surfer but it turned out to be Triton of the Inhumans—coming for Reed while Blastaar was blasting him. I spent an entire month haunting the newsstands looking for that next issue, wanting to see how it came out. I carry that memory with me to this day and tell myself, “That’s how you do a cliffhanger.” Make people want that next issue right now. There’s so many other Kirby moments, but these stand out. 18

WOLFMAN: Too many. He gave scope to comics. As I mentioned, the first thing I remember was the giant arrows in the Green Arrow story. His war comic heroes seemed like they were in mud. His superheroes glistened. His westerns presented a heroic myth. TJKC: Of all the Kirby characters that you’ve written, which is your personal favorite? Kurt? BUSIEK: Technically, it’s Iron Man, but while Kirby was involved in the creation and development of Iron Man, I’ve never thought of him as a “Kirby character” in the sense of many of the others—he’s got Kirby in him, yes, but the Thing and the Torch are Kirby right at the heart. I’m not sure if that distinction makes sense, but it’s a feeling, not an analysis. So I’d pick the Beast and Iceman. They work best as a pair, so I can’t separate the two. Anytime Stan and Jack would send them off to Greenwich Village to that wacky coffeehouse, the results were always a delight. I got to write one of those scenes in an Untold Tales of SpiderMan, and I’ve rarely had so much fun. JURGENS: Wow. Tough question. I’d have to say Ben Grimm, the Thing, with Thor a close second. ENGLEHART: If I had to pick one story I’d pick Giant-Size Avengers #2, but all of Jack’s characters were great fun to work with. VALENTINO: Luckily, when I worked at Marvel I was able to do all of my favorites there—the FF, the Surfer, the Impossible Man, Captain America, Thor, the Avengers. I have never had the opportunity to do that with his wonderful creations for DC—Darkseid and the New Gods, Kamandi, The Challengers... I could go on for days. I’d love to do any of them. NICIEZA: You know what, I haven’t had the chance to write all that many! I would have to say that head and shoulders above the ones I have written, it would be the Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty limited series I wrote, because I was able to expand on Cap’s origin without violating the masterful concept of Simon & Kirby.

FF #78, pg. 2 pencils.

STERN: Captain America. He’s the patriotic hero who transcends nationalism—and he wears one of the greatest uniforms ever created in the history of comics.

is a interrelated group of titles like Kirby’s which tells a grand, melodramatic epic. I loved the Fourth World titles, particularly New Gods— and wished Kirby had the chance to finish it in style.

TJKC: Have you ever had a longing to do your own interpretation of a Kirby character—and why that character?

OSTRANDER: I’d love a crack at OMAC or the Demon. I think OMAC was a great idea and a great visual that was completely realized even at the time; and I’ve played a little with Etrigan and I’d like to get him closer to what Kirby did in the first place and then add a few touches of my own—and I think everyone in the industry has their own ideas of the New Gods and how it should play out, since it is Kirby’s unfinished masterpiece.

KALUTA: Never, as far as I can tell... unless he developed Dr. Strange. (laughter) PULIDO: I delved into Kirby Fourth World stuff and that’s where I see the biggest influence on my work. My universe—the Chaos Cosmos— 19

VEITCH: It was mostly a response to all the horrible, dark, violent, and grim super-heroes that had taken over comics in the early ’90s. AUDIENCE: Did you ever get a nostalgic sense or an idea of how Kirby created, and what he went through to make those Marvel Comics of the Sixties? VEITCH: Yeah, it got me working in a whole new way; instead of going through laborious tracings and loosely feathering the pencil line to find the right look and feel, I worked more directly. I think the best way to describe it is as pure ‘drawing’ rather than ‘illustrating.’ Rick Veitch dreams The focus is on the point of the pencil at the given of Kirby in this panel from his moment, not on the larger elements of the picture. groundbreaking “dream” comic Rare Bit Fiends. You’re not creating an image that is supposed to duplicate real life; you are making a picture of what is TJKC: Rick, your “Wavelength” story was in your imagination, which can be a much different thing. I think this your first written tale for Swamp Thing and is how Jack worked and projected his will right into those pages he did! perhaps one of the truest to those characters. What was the appeal in using Darkseid and Metron for that story? TJKC: Jim Salicrup mentioned that there was a possibility of the 1963 characters crossing over with the Topps Kirbyverse; would that have VEITCH: It was really that bit Jack had done with Metron never been something that you would have looked forward to? In the end, quite able to get to the Source that fascinated me when I first read the did 1963 succeed creatively? series. As a metaphor, it worked beautifully as a description of the metaphysical dilemma of modern man; sort of knowing there is a God VEITCH: I think it was about a year or two ahead of its time. It sold out there but never being able to quite reach him. I also wanted to get really well, but everything was selling in those days, and I got the sense back to the essential character of Jack’s Darkseid, who’d been watered when it hit the shops that most readers didn’t know what to make of down and lost by the various incarnations he’d had in Super Friends. it. They were expecting Watchmen from Alan [Moore], and the ads made them think it might be a parody, but the stories were as 1963 TJKC: Let’s take some questions from the audience. authentic as a bunch of aging ex-Marvelites could make them. Today, AUDIENCE: My question is for Rick Veitch. In your 1963 series, you with Retro a well-known genre, readers would get it, but they had paid the ultimate tribute to Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Stan Lee; trouble with it in 1993. What would have helped is if we had succeeded what was the goal of doing that series? in finishing the 80-page Annual, which really was the point of the

Joe Sinnott inked this unused Kirby pencil (presumably a leftover animation piece) and added the Fantastic Four to it.

exercise: To pit the lovely ’63 characters against the grim and gritty ’93 characters to demonstrate the contrast between where it began and where it had ended up. TJKC: What made the Marvel Silver Age stories so important and innovative? Tony? ISABELLA: Stan, Jack, Steve, Dick, and Don. As a kid, I thought they were the five greatest comics creators of all time. They were doing things with super-heroes, my favorite type of comic back then, that DC never did—and they made it seem like a big party with Stan’s shameless but wonderful hucksterism. WOLFMAN: The imagination. We were reading super-hero stories that held nothing to anything ever done in comics before them. Also, Spider-Man was completely different from Fantastic Four which was completely different from Dr. Strange, yet all of the stories were new, innovative and compelling. You also felt they all belonged in the same universe even though their stories were not interchangeable as they are now. We have done nothing since those early stories that has been as original. We need to credit Stan for his varying approaches to his writing. As I said, all the main characters and books were written in completely different styles and with completely different approaches. Stan understood something that has gone by the wayside; he aimed his stories to fit the characters. That is, with rare exception, Spider-Man never fought anyone with ‘natural’ super-powers and stuck to it, which made the world feel real to the reader. He understood Fantastic Four faced big super-villains, Thor faced menaces we’d never imagined before, and Dr. Strange existed in a world beyond our imagining. Stan also made the letters pages and the Bullpen page something that made the reader feel they were part of the process, not just commenting on it. AUDIENCE: What, for each of you, was the most mind-boggling ability or innovation of Kirby’s? WINDSOR-SMITH: You’re kidding me, right? You threw that in to see if I was paying attention. (laughter)

Darkseid makes war in these pencils from page 16 of the first Super Powers mini-series.

GIBBONS: The ability to make things fresh every time. He would always lead, never following other artists.

VEITCH: That’s a tough one! I mean, the guy made breakthroughs in just about every aspect of comics while pumping out more pages than anyone else in the business! How did he do it? I think what really impressed me, and seemed to signal that he had made a quantum leap in his own understanding of his work, was the New Gods stuff. I get the feeling that up to that point, Jack was tapped into the deepest levels of the imagination but was sort of running on automatic, not really realizing what he was giving to the culture. With the New Gods, we see Kirby not just downloading stories and concepts with mythical context, but creating a myth from scratch, designed to speak to people of our time in the same way operas and paintings and novels do. He pulled it off, too!

TJKC: What are the elements that a classic Kirby story has to have? SIM: Square fingers. (laughter) No, seriously, through the mid-Sixties I think that the thing that you could count on from a Jack Kirby comic book was the fruition of a style that had been evolving since the late 1930s, and which needed such dedication and productivity to eventually find its shape, that it beggars the imagination to even consider. You don’t go from say Challengers of the Unknown—serviceable but undistinguished—to “This Man, This Monster” in under a decade without passing through an arduous process of remaking yourself on a... (pause) words really do fail me. Let me try again. If you are talking about anyone besides Jack Kirby and the subject 21

is “ten pages of finished pencils a day,” you are talking about a hack and the work you are talking about is “an atrocity,” “abominable,” “putrid.” It’s inescapable. But because that does not apply to Jack Kirby—even when you perceive a drop-off in quality between “This Man, This Monster” and Wyatt Wingfoot, as I do, the drop is from “individual who is defining how the best comic books are done in a given year” to “one of the individuals who is defining how the best comic books are done in a given year”—you are talking about a person who is refuting irrefutable commonly-held beliefs; several of them simultaneously. There are moments when I really, really know what I am doing. I see the page more clearly in my mind and my hand is able to reproduce what I see in my mind more accurately than at other times. It is a better page and easier at the same time—like the “sweet spot” for a hitter of baseball. The bat connects with the ball in such a way that the hitter doesn’t even feel the impact. The ball just goes way, way, way up into the fifth deck. I have had maybe a dozen days like that in the twentytwo years that I have been doing Cerebus. On not one of those days— not one—could I have produced ten pages of tight pencils. The closest I ever came—with chemical assistance (laughter)—was ten pages of layouts with some of it reasonably tight; tight enough to ink, here or there. And then I crashed for most of a day and it took me the usual ten days to finish penciling, lettering, and inking those pages. If you were to flip through every page Kirby penciled between 1963 and 1968, you would find maybe a dozen substandard pages. The rest would be between 80-95% of Kirby’s best, every time he stepped up to the plate. “Sweet spot.” On the Fourth World material, the same is true except for the addition of very, very, very, very strange concepts that were obviously part of the zeitgeist stream where Jack Kirby lived. “Goody” Rickels—

a nice version of Don Rickles—and this somehow applies to Jimmy Olsen? If they would’ve just left him alone and let him finish, who knows how it would’ve all pulled together? BUSIEK: I don’t think I could boil it down to a list of elements. Kirby defied that kind of analysis—he broke rules more than he fit them. I’ll just pick “emotion”—the best of the Kirby stories are the ones where the characters’ humanity shines through, when they get down to that inarticulate place within them that defines who they are even if they can’t explain it. JURGENS: Grandeur and poignancy, all wrapped into one nice bundle, with a dash of personal conflict. ISABELLA: Humanity. There have been great Kirby stories where the action has been secondary and the setting mundane, but his oftinstinctive understanding of the human condition made them as exciting as any slugfest. NICIEZA: Big knees and bigger forearms coming right at your face, (laughter) and a comic you can read whose story and art create an operatic soundtrack in the back of your mind that plays throughout the entire time you’re reading. STERN: Suspense. Excitement. Humanity. Nobility—and a great sense of fun! TJKC: What is your opinion of Kirby’s writing talent, Neil? GAIMAN: I tend to think of Kirby as a raw creative force, not really as a writer. It’s not that he wasn’t a writer. He could write... but I don’t think (with exception of the Demon rhyme) I can quote you a single line of Kirby dialogue that’s remained with me—or that remained

Kirby art for a Super Powers toy design.

TJKC: Barry, what makes a Kirby drawing so magical? Unused art for the proposed Mindmaster movie, as reported in TJKC #11.

WINDSOR-SMITH: Not all of them were. By his own choice Kirby worked under deadline restrictions, and although one can’t fault him for that, it did mean that sometimes he couldn’t do his very best. However, Kirby’s second-best was everybody else’s first-rate. Jack’s greatest gift was his sense of wonder. Even before he’d fully mastered his craft, his sensibilities were always apparent. The dynamism of his figure drawings—even in the silliest of stories—always spoke of his romantic sense of wonderment. In his later work on the Fantastic Four, etc., and his Fourth World series, too, he had integrated man and machines, characters and architectures, and form and function into an organic, holographic, wholeness of vision. Kirby’s prime vision was one of wonderment, and the nobility of humankind. TJKC: Anyone else care to comment? VESS: The epic scope of his imagination combined with a firm grounding in reality that all of his characters sprang from, giving his stories a firm structural counterpoint that makes that epic stuff all that more powerful. JEFF SMITH: To me, it is the solidness of the people and objects he draws. When a Kirby character holds something, or touches something, or crushes a wall, you can sense the weight and contact. This ability to convince completes the illusion that the story is really happening.

with me once I’d closed the comic. (I can quote you lines of dialogue or captions by any writers who made an impact on me, from Stan and Will Eisner to Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, Steve Skeates, Alan Moore, Denny O’Neil, and so on. Not Jack.) What I remember from Jack is the raw sweep and power of the story. At his best he was carving mythologies out of rock with his bare hands. At his worst he was better than most of us. AUDIENCE: I love your Back to the Future films, Mr. Gale. I wanted to ask you if you think Kirby’s comic book storytelling has reached into today’s motion pictures?

GARNEY: Hmmm—I guess if I could completely explain it, it wouldn’t be so magical, would it? I think that what makes something magical is that it’s tough to explain why it affects a person in a positive way. All I can say is the stuff just grabs you and gives you a rush when you read it. There was such confidence and love in the way he created and drew his characters that the reader ends up having the same feelings about the characters and that made Kirby’s whole personal perspective and imagination so believable. If you really examine some of Kirby’s work technically, break it down, you could say, “Well, his anatomy’s off a little here” or “that doesn’t look right there,” but you know what? None of that matters when you take it all in. You’re just overwhelmed by how intricate and beautifully together it all works. At some point we all as professionals would love to capture some of that confidence in our own work and hope one-quarter of it would translate in our own unique styles as effectively. QUESADA: His sense of drama and over-the-top-ness! Every time I’m about to foreshorten a figure, I think to myself, “How would Kirby do this?”

GALE: I can’t say that I think movies have been influenced by Kirby’s work, but rather the other way around. Reading a Kirby book was like VALENTINO: Everything. It is his complete mastery of composition, seeing a movie—his compositions filled the frame, there was always a of foreshortening, perspective, and camera angles. Notice how he sense of movement, and a clear understanding of how to use close-ups frames the characters so regardless how detailed the background is, and wide angles for dramatic effect. Kirby always knew how to use the the eye is immediately focused on the principal. right panel size and what to put in that panel to effect a cinematic sense of storytelling. He was a master at creating a great sense of drama by pacing and layout, so that you’d turn a page and find a dramatic moment enhanced by a full-page image of the vastness of space, or some huge piece of machinery in the Baxter Building, or simply Galactus. Kirby clearly set a standard here, and I don’t think anyone in comics today has surpassed it. Comics were a huge influence on me as a kid and teenager. Comics were (and still are) modern mythology, and the stories and characters were inspiring and empowering. I have always said that the “alternate universe” section of Back To The Future Part 2 is very much like a DC imaginary story—“What if Lex Luthor married Lois Lane?”—but instead it’s “What if Biff Ron Garney (art) and Mark Waid (script) combine on Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #2. had married Lorraine?”. 23

Every gesture brings life to the character. There is always enough detail to set the scene and hold it in the reader’s mind, without distracting from the character. His juxtaposition of the two-shot, long-shot and close-up. His unusual and distinctive cropping; he can make two people talking in a living room more exciting than most artists can make a fight scene. LARSEN: I think more than anything, I respond to the pure power—everything is alive and crackling with energy! I was just looking over some Kamandi comics the other day and here he was getting hauled around on skis and the water felt like water—it had volume— it was chumming and heaving and I just sat there and thought, “Nobody else would do this; nobody else could give me what I’m seeing here.” Really amazing stuff. Jack has a way of making even the ordinary things seem exciting—everything. Some younger artists don’t respond to it like I do, unfortunately; they see the big knees and the squiggles on legs, the chunky, inaccurate anatomy and bullish women, and they shake their heads, completely missing the deft storytelling and sheer power of the stuff. I’ve learned more from Jack than from anybody in the field—I’ve recently started acquiring originals and there’s nothing that gets me more fired-up than looking at his stuff. I’m a huge fan. TOTLEBEN: To me, Kirby’s appeal lay in his wildly imaginative ideas and the power with which he could communicate them. His whole drawing style was actually a form of expressionistic shorthand that seems to have evolved for the single purpose of quickly telling his stories with the greatest amount of impact possible. GIBBONS: Kirby’s work has an abstract quality which elevates it above the herd. Having been lucky enough to ink a couple of Kirby pieces, I’ve become very aware that each line has a specific dynamic that the inker “fudges” at his peril! I recently saw some Picasso drawings in Madrid and felt the same certainty and power in them.

Splash page from Kirby’s 1970s Sandman #4.

(below) Bone creator Jeff Smith took a shot at several Kirby characters on this cover for Avengers Forever.

AUDIENCE: This is for Jeff Smith. I remember reading how Joe Kubert was an influence on your page layout for Bone. Has Kirby ever been a source of inspiration for Bone? And how did that wonderful Avengers Forever cover you did with the classic Kirby team come about? JEFF SMITH: Well, I noticed Kirbyesque fingernails sneaking onto my human characters, (laughter) but generally I think it was his pacing in action sequences where Kirby had the strongest influence on my own work. Regarding the Avengers Forever cover, I got a call from Kurt Busiek who invited me to do the cover, and since it involved the bulky, yellow Iron Man, I couldn’t resist. AUDIENCE: Ron, how did Kirby’s influence aid your take of Captain America, Silver Surfer, and the Hulk? What was your take on these characters? GARNEY: With the exception of the Surfer, a lot of my take on the characters was more just going on the way they felt naturally. The Surfer was a real conscious effort on my part to create a feeling of “alienness” that Kirby seemed to evoke in his renditions of him. Something in the eyes and his presence, and I tried to

(above) Neil Gaiman turned in a disturbing take on Kirby’s Sandman, Brute, and Glob in 1997 in his own Sandman #12, shown here with art by Chris Bachalo and Malcolm Jones.

combine that with the effortless grace I found in Moebius’ renditions as well. With Cap I think that stuff just came out by itself. Maybe it was channeling of some sort—I don’t know—but when I look back at my first run in particular on Cap, I notice more than I ever did things about it that clearly show an influence. I wasn’t quite as conscious of it at the time I was drawing it. It actually surprised me. And maybe that’s where you really see the power of influence—when you’re not even so aware of it. With the Hulk, maybe the same thing will happen; I don’t know.

don’t know why I never managed to sneak Joe Simon’s Sandman poem “There is no land beyond the law...” into Sandman.) TJKC: In an interview for the Comics Journal you mention that one of the reasons that you haven’t created new characters for DC is because of what happened to Kirby there; is there a moral lesson for creators to learn from what happened to Jack Kirby at Marvel and DC? GAIMAN: There are a number of lessons. That Jack was cheated out of his monies and credit that were his by unethical publishers who profited from his creations was a bad, sad thing, but not unusual, then or now—but that Jack didn’t get to complete the Fourth World storyline he’d conceived and created, as he had imagined it, and while still at the height of his powers, was a tragedy.

TJKC: A lot of your work has brought back that classic feel of adventure and imagination that Kirby instilled in his work. Do you find this is an element that’s lacking in today’s comics? GARNEY: Well, thank you, and I do think that some books could be more adventuresome, and less cumbersome in their soap-operatic feel. We need more outer exploration and less self-involvement. That seems to have been so prevalent in the last few years. I think that maybe since a lot of the super-hero characters have been vacuumed and rewritten and redefined and updated that eventually it becomes harder and harder to come up with something different and fresh, no matter which way you slice it. So you end up with characters being stripped down and handled on a level with the readers’ (mostly young males’) basic instincts. In other words you get characters standing around posing and posturing trying to look heroic or sexy, rather than being involved in adventures where their actions make them so. I think it reflects some of the particular generation’s mindset as well. All MTV and flash and no substance or imagination—it’s all been done for them. But that’s not across the board, though. There are some really great things being done, fresh and innovative, and it’s inspiring. And in lieu of the shape the industry’s been in the last few years, that’s what makes them extra special. The pursuit goes on....

TJKC: Barry, what was your approach when inking Kirby on Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles? WINDSOR-SMITH: I only inked Jack Kirby once, so it isn’t as if there is any notable quotable “approach” involved. There’s an adage among

WAID: What works, works. Jack knew that the best Captain America stories started at the point most writers wouldn’t get to until about page seven. Cap’s tendency to move like a bullet train over, past, and through anything in his way was, to myself and Ron Garney and Andy Kubert, a quintessential aspect of the character. GIBBONS: I think an awareness of what has gone before is a good idea in any field. Not to emulate or copy it, but to be reminded of the foundations and roots of what you do. It may be that, in time, Kirby’s importance is overlooked but it will still be there, even if via a third or fourth generation influence. It would be hard to think of a comic book that would look the way it did, if it wasn’t for Kirby’s work. AUDIENCE: How did Kirby’s Sandman serve as an influence for your own Sandman, Neil? GAIMAN: The Simon & Kirby Sandman influenced me in a couple of ways—the biggest was just seeing the cover of the ’70s Sandman #1 with the comics of the time, and wondering what kind of comic it was (the reality was disappointing, the idea wonderful). The second was the Sandman and Sandy incarnation of the ’40s—the idea they somehow pursued people into dreams. (I still

Barry Windsor-Smith inked the first chapter of Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles. Shown here are Kirby’s splash page pencils.

the character. Right from the start we wanted him to be very cat-like, feral, and tightly wound, so to speak. It was a complete blast doing those issues and drawing the Demon was always loads of fun. TJKC: Did you ever have a chance to meet Kirby? TOTLEBEN: Only once. It was at the San Diego Con in 1986. Greg Theakston introduced me to Jack and Roz as they were entering the hotel that I was just leaving. Later, after the Kirby Awards were presented, Jack spent a few moments talking with a bunch of us young hotshot pros. He seemed to have a very paternal attitude towards us and was extremely gracious and encouraging to everyone there. VEITCH: I saw him a few times at San Diego, and was always amazed at the Panel from Fantastic Four #82, shown as published after Romita reworked Reed (left), and in the original, unaltered Kirby version (right). outpouring of love the guy got from everyone. Jack Marvel’s Silver Age creators that has evolved beyond its comics origin. may not have gotten a fair shake from Marvel, but he certainly had “Anybody can ink Kirby” means indestructible, can’t go wrong, too the respect and affection of every comic book reader in the world. I good to ruin, can’t beat it with a stick. I can think of a few inkers who remember being with Peter Laird the first time I laid eyes on Jack. We were so inept that they damn near did, but nevertheless, “Anybody can saw him across a hotel lobby and we just looked at each other and said, ink Kirby” is both literal and euphemistic. “Man—it’s him!” I started out trying to emulate Joe Sinnott, who in my opinion is Kirby’s most refined and successful inker; but I quickly changed my mind AUDIENCE: I understand you named one of your sons “Kirby.” How on that (what might be called) “approach” because it was unnatural. did you decide to do that? Eventually I decided that I should ink Jack the same way I inked my own VEITCH: Peter Laird suggested it and I kind of liked it. My wife was drawings. Some people thought it was a successful collaboration, certain she was going to have a girl which she was going to get to name, other people sent me hate mail. I was told by somebody or other that so she agreed to my name for a boy, and—lo and behold!—a Kirby either Stan Lee or Sol Brodsky—or perhaps both—went ballistic when walks among us! (laughter) they saw my work over Jack’s Captain America. They wanted somebody, perhaps John Romita or John Verpoorten, to ink over my pen work to AUDIENCE: Jack Kirby had a passion for comics that lasted over fifty make it look more like... like, well... more like John Romita or John years. Dave, you yourself have worked in comics over twenty years. Verpoorten inked over my pen lines, I suppose. If memory serves me After that long do you understand what his drive was for doing all these correctly, both Romita and Verpoorten were against the idea. creations? Or how he lasted so long doing this artform? My work was saved by the bell, though; the deadline for the book GIBBONS: That’s a big question! I think what Kirby did, and what I try meant that there was no time to re-ink the mess I’d made of Jack Kirby, to do, is to find something new and enjoyable in the work. It might be who, by the way, is indestructible, who can’t go wrong, who is too good doing a different kind of story, attempting some new way of telling a to ruin, and etcetera, etcetera. story, looking at the same material in a fresh way, or whatever. I think TJKC: John, those Demon appearances in those early Swamp Thing Kirby loved to draw stories and just found the perfect niche for his stories were impressive. How did the guest appearance of The Demon talents. come about? Did you enjoy drawing him? TJKC: What can today’s younger generation learn from the works of Jack TOTLEBEN: The Demon has always been my favorite Kirby character Kirby, Joe Kubert—whom you studied under, John—and others like and it seemed to be an obvious choice to use him in a Swamp Thing them who have worked in comics and made it an artform? storyline. I mentioned this to Steve [Bissette], who readily agreed, and TOTLEBEN: Hmmm. Well, on the surface, Jack Kirby and Joe Kubert we came up with some story ideas, mainly involving the Kamara (The seem to share little in common. Two completely different approaches to Fear Creature) from Demon #4. We then pitched it to Alan [Moore], he storytelling, drawing styles, and sense of dynamics; one wonders what grabbed it up and the rest is comics history. I did a couple of sketches they might have in common as artists besides the same initials and a of the Demon which I passed on to Steve. He added a few of his own love of comics. Although not as obvious a thing as, say, storytelling touches and basically that’s how we arrived at the look we wanted for 26

techniques or some other creative aspect, I do think there is one very important thing that they share in common that would be of immeasurable instructional value to any artist working or hoping to work in the comics industry. Simply put, these guys aren’t afraid to work. In fact, I’d say that they actually love it. I’ve never seen Kirby at work, but I have seen Kubert, and I can imagine that they shared similar work habits. When watching Kubert go at it, the first thing you notice is the high level of concentration; he’s totally focused on and absorbed in the matter at hand. He’s not watching TV or otherwise distracted while doing the work and he’s not in any particular rush to get the thing done (save for those deadline doom occasions), although he does work quickly. He doesn’t avoid the hard parts by continually putting them off. His commitment to the work is total; his involvement is 100%. I strongly suspect that Jack Kirby operated pretty much the same way. I can’t imagine either of these guys blowing off after having done one or two panels to go play video games or whatever for the rest of the day. The creative process, as pleasurable and rewarding as it can be, demands that a certain amount of hard work be done. Artists the caliber of Jack Kirby and Joe Kubert throw themselves head first into the work and become totally immersed in the creative process. Their ability to do this with such apparent ease stems from a strong work ethic and a lifetime of good solid work habits. I think this is probably one of the most important things that we all could do well to learn from them.

Although Kirby continually allowed his visions to be compromised by the machinery of commercial comics, his work was, after all, the epitome of what we’d all like to think the industry of commercial comics is capable of. In this regard Jack Kirby’s most fateful failings were his grand illusions regarding the spirit of mankind. Nevertheless, his ungoverned genius shone through and through everything—every idea, drawing, character, storyline—that he put his faith in.

TJKC: In history, how will Jack Kirby’s role in comics be defined? Will he be blamed for creating the bland line of super-heroes that are now being put out, or will he be known as the foundation; an innovator who saw that comics had many genres to explore? WINDSOR-SMITH: What history? The history of comics? There is very little perspective inside the fan or professional field. You have to step far away from the incestuousness of comics to properly see the form for what it is. The in-breeding, mother f*cking, lost planetoid of comicsprocessed thinking is the last place where a real assessment of Jack Kirby can come from. Who the hell would blame Kirby for all of the lame-brained imitators that followed in his wake? After Picasso and Georges Braque had finished fiddling with Cubism, there were hundreds of followers/copyists/devotees still churning out half-assed post-Cubist sh*t—and what can be more pitiful than post-anything, let alone half-assed post-sh*t?— for the next twenty years. Neither Braque nor Kirby can be blamed for the incompetent parasites who imitated them.

Page 9 pencils from Thor #144.

ISABELLA: You know, Jack would never have approved of such a question. “Bland line of super-heroes?” Maybe you should ask if we still beat our wives. Jack didn’t believe in knocking the other guy, even when the other guy was working on Kirby creations—and, in deference to that, I refuse to answer this question. (applause)

building has left a very high mark for all that follow after to strive for. GARNEY: The legacy of what and how he created. I think there are some in the industry who seem to fancy themselves in their mind the ‘chosen’ ones to try to continue and guard Kirby’s work the way that they seem to think is the ‘only’ way, but the fact is that you can’t—you’d only be a pretender. We all have taken something I’d like to think personal to ourselves from it. Kirby’s legacy, at least to me, is that he showed how to try to love your work unconditionally, and from that comes great creation and a freedom of imagination. I doubt that Kirby himself would have described himself so poetically but sometimes the greatest teachers do so by example and by what they produce.

TJKC: Let me reword my question: What is the greatest legacy Kirby left in the comics industry? WAID: Easy. He set the bar for the power of human drama in this medium.

VEITCH: Jack’s whole life was a demonstration that the power of human imagination combined with talent can overcome any obstacle or market

WOLFMAN: Oh, come now, that’s a dumb question. Everyone still doing super-hero comics in one form or another copies what Jack did. I guess that’s an influence. You can’t think superheroes and not think Jack Kirby, whether you know who Jack is or not. SIM: In the industry? Sad to say, I would have to call Jack Kirby “Corporate Comics’ Greatest Martyr” although I’m sure he never saw himself that way. Obviously you can’t be as productive as Kirby was, Cerebus by Dave Sim. as profitable as Kirby was, and also pay attention to what the corporate sharks are doing to you when you aren’t looking; so, at least from 1961 to 1990-something we found out what an “industry” does to someone like Jack Kirby. I mean, there’s the urge to cry “Shame! Shame!” but who would listen? If they had any sense of shame in the first place they wouldn’t be who they are. It would be like saying to Charles Manson: “Do you know how bad you are?” To even address Charles Manson directly, to me, dignifies him above his place in this world—it’s the reason we have solitary confinement. Bad enough that I just referred to him. (applause) BUSIEK: Far more than all the great characters and great stories he produced, I think Kirby’s greatest legacy is that he did it—he stayed true to himself and he kept finding new things to do. That’s a lesson all of us can learn—that we can make our own path rather than following someone else’s. He did it, and that shows everyone else that it can be done. JURGENS: If not his legacy of characters, then certainly the incredible volume of work he did. If Jack Kirby had been an athlete, say a professional baseball player, we wouldn’t talk about him just in terms of any one season (creation) he had, but his entire career and the fact that he did it year after year after year, constantly topping himself. From a creative standpoint, that’s impossible for all but a few to accomplish. VESS: His continued level of imaginative world-

The cover to Jimmy Olsen #142 went through three versions before being published. Above is the original version fully inked by Mike Royer. On the next page are the second version with Superman reworked by Kirby, and the small inset is the final, published version with Neal Adams re-inking/revising the Superman figure.

LARSEN: He left us the comic book industry— period. I’m not sure it would exist today without him. Without Jack there would be no Marvel Comics; there would be huge chunks of DC sadly lacking. Jack saved comics, or certainly pumped them full of new life. In addition to that, Jack educated generations of creators—even those who say that they weren’t influenced by him were influenced by creators who were influenced by him. Jack Kirby personifies comics. Jack is comics. And as human being, from all accounts, Jack was a hell of a guy—very gracious and humble and friendly. We could all learn something from that. NICIEZA: The very fact there even is a comics industry right now is the contribution Kirby left! I firmly believe none of us would be here if it weren’t for the work Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby did in the early Sixties. STERN: His body of work, of course. His work ethic—the man kept creating most of his life— and the example of his boundless imagination. downturn. That he and we were denied his finishing the New Gods magnum opus because of lame business decisions by his publisher should be a red flag to everyone who wants the comic book form to grow and evolve.

OSTRANDER: The characters, the concepts, the techniques that he has left behind. Jack Kirby was too important to the industry to point to just one thing and say, “This is his greatest legacy.” SIM: Okay, before I go, I have to tell you about meeting Jack Kirby at the 1981 Chicago Comicon—I think it was ’81. I was sitting with Bill Sienkiewicz by the pool at this party and I saw Jack Kirby a dozen yards away or so on the other side of a bunch of tables and chairs. Bill says to me, “Have you met Kirby?” And I said, “No, but I’d sure like to.” And Bill says, “Well, come on—I’ll introduce you.” So we’re moving aside the chairs which are sort of all jumbled together and making some progress to where Kirby is standing and I hear off to one side somebody yelling “Jack! Jack!” which Kirby doesn’t hear. I look over and I see Julie Schwartz, and he’s got his arm around Colleen Doran (who is like 12 in 1981—I’m kidding, I think she was 19 or something) in that Julie Schwartz way of his that, for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom, some feminists like Cat Yronwode find really endearing and other feminists like Colleen Doran find really creepy, and he’s bringing her

KALUTA: His body of work and the host of artists that might never have drawn comics if it hadn’t been for Kirby’s influence. QUESADA: His legacy is seen in every cover and every page of superhero sequential art today. Younger readers and artists may not be aware of Jack or his contributions due to ageism, but they still get a healthy watered-down dose of it from mortal artists like myself and my contemporaries. VALENTINO: His influence on this industry is incalculable and impossible to underestimate. He created, defined and perfected the visual language from whence all action comics were derived. His influence is allpervasive in the dynamic gestures employed by super-hero comics and will, in my opinion, never be approached, let alone equaled. 29

(l to r) Julie Schwartz, Colleen Doran, Jack, and Dave Sim.

over to meet Jack Kirby. So, it turns into this really strange kind of footrace with Bill and I moving all of these chairs out of our way and Julie Schwartz and Colleen moving the chairs out of their way and I’m thinking, “I have got to get there before Colleen does or I’ll never meet Kirby” (because Jack Kirby, whatever you might have heard, was flesh-and-blood and a manly guy and Colleen was about the cutest little thing you ever laid eyes on when she was nineteen—not that she isn’t now—and from my own experience I have to tell you that if one guy that I know is bringing another guy to meet me at a con and another guy I know is bringing a nineteen-year-old girl to meet me, I can tell you who is going to get the lion’s share of the attention and for that I don’t apologize one bit). (laughter) So Julie is going “Jack! Jack!” and just as Bill and I get there, Kirby hears him and he turns that way and Julie pushes Colleen towards him and says, “Jack, I’d like you to meet this lovely goil” (Julie Schwartz is the only New Yorker I know who actually pronounces it that way) “this lovely young goil, Colleen.” And Colleen was charming and starstruck and Kirby was charming and grinning from ear-to-ear and I’m standing behind Bill thinking, “Oh well,” (laughter) but still pretty jazzed that Jack Kirby is only two feet away and that was pretty amazing in itself, let me tell you—and I’m watching Jack Kirby talking to Colleen when suddenly Bill lunges forward and says, “Jack! I’d like you to meet Dave Sim!” And Jack says, “I admire your philosophy.” To which I said something like “Abth dahbt bladdda thabba thut” (laughter) and Julie— like any good poker player who knows he has a winning hand—suggests that Bill take a picture of Julie and Jack and “this lovely goil, Colleen.” Well, Bill pushed me into the picture, flash, Julie edged me out of the picture and I sort of staggered away leaving Kirby to enjoy the rest of his chat with Julie and the “lovely goil.” (laughter, applause) Philosophy? Philosophy? I puzzled over that one for a while and then I remembered that the Comics Journal had just published a piece of mine called “A Declaration of Independence,” which was to be one of a series of pieces by various publishers about their ideas on publishing comic books (or, in my case, a comic book). I had talked about as much as I thought I dared to for a punk kid who had only been in the business for a few years about Kirby’s situation at Marvel and what I saw as the origins of the unfair treatment he got. Anyway it was very reassuring

Page 15 pencils to Eternals #4.

to find out that he had read it and not thought that I didn’t know my place. And then to find out that he admired it—well, wow! TJKC: So, at the end of time, how will Jack Kirby’s role in comics be defined? Neil? GAIMAN: At the end of time things will be cold and empty and dead and there will be no one around to talk about anything, let alone Jack Kirby. (laughter) Looking forward maybe 25 years, instead, I hope that enough of Jack’s work will be in print and collected that he’ll be seen as a vibrant and present force in comics. No one else has done what he did, and consigning him to comics history loses so much of the power. TJKC: On behalf of The Jack Kirby Collector, I would like to thank our distinguished panel for taking part in this very special event—and a bigger thanks to everyone reading these words and to those who keep the work of the King close to their hearts, because remember that as long as there are comics—in any form and all over our small world—Jack Kirby’s memory will never die.★ (The audience gives a thunderous applause that quickly becomes a standing ovation for the 24 gentlemen of the panel, and to the jovial spirit of the man who has brought them together.) 30

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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 _____________________________________________ (This “Influence” issue grew so quickly, I decided to make it a two-parter, stretching across this issue and next. Look for more great stuff next time. Now, on to your letters on #26, several of which pertained to my editorial:) _____________________________________________ Respectfully, I’ve got to say that I think you crossed a serious line between publisher & preacher with your editorial in the latest JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. I don’t object to religious themes in the issue, and I don’t begrudge you or anyone else your heartfelt convictions of faith—but I do cringe to see you use your editorial column as an opportunity to proselytize. This is the wrong forum; we’re gathered here for funnybooks, not matters of faith. Personally, I think it’s the wrong message to send in a Kirby magazine. Jack’s work was always about openmindedness and tolerance, yet by preaching your own Christian beliefs, you’re essentially shutting out your readers of Jewish, Moslem, and other faiths. I’ve been an avid supporter of your publications, but I’ve got to say that my support right now is shaky. I think you made a bad call when you turned your publisher’s forum into a pulpit. If this is an anomaly, then fine; I can forgive and forget. But if it’s a recurring theme, then sadly you’re going to have to count me out. I come to the TwoMorrows publications for entertainment, not ideology. Tom Field, Stratham, NH (Despite a heated discussion on the Internet—which got into issues of freedom of religion, speech, expression, and censorship, from what I’ve been told—yours is the only negative letter I received regarding my editorial, and respectfully, I’ve got to disagree with you, Tom. For better or worse, a publication is always a reflection of the editor, and it appears up to this point you’ve mostly approved of what’s been produced in TJKC. If I’d somehow “stacked” the issue to put across a personal political or religious agenda, THAT would be wrong, in my humble opinion. I utilized my editorial column to state my own opinions and beliefs, in the context of the issue’s subject matter. Editorial sections are, by nature, intended as the one place in journalism where you can put aside objectivity and “editorialize.” The whole issue was focused around the subject of faith, so to expect the editorial NOT to focus on it (or to try to focus on ALL the many varied faiths that exist) isn’t realistic, to my mind. I’d already given coverage of Jack’s own beliefs (as best we can know them) in the “Judaism” article—something I felt absolutely necessary to give proper context to the issue. I’d have gladly run articles about how Jack’s work was influenced by the Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist, or other faiths as well, but no one submitted anything (and I’m not well enough versed on those to attempt my own article on them). All I can say is I managed to make it 25 issues with nary a mention of my faith (which I’ve had since long before I started TJKC), so I don’t think you have to worry too much about it. If you feel I’ve indulged my editorial privilege too much, I respect that, but the whole issue WAS centered around ideology. While I don’t have plans to do it again at this time, I won’t rule out the possibility at some future point, if I feel the opportunity is relevant and appropriate. I hope all our readers can understand that— and thanks to the many readers who wrote in support of my editorial, such as the following:) _____________________________________________ I just got my new KIRBY COLLECTOR in the mail; thanks as always! I read your editorial right away, as comments both pro and con about it have been on the Comicart list. Shortly after I got to know the Kirbys, I enrolled in a theological seminary in Orange County, so I would work during the day and go to class at night. Since spiritual issues were very much on my mind, I would often talk these things over with Jack. He never took offense at my overt evangelical zealousness, and was always open to

talk over the pros and cons of our different viewpoints. He would sometimes say, “If Jesus ‘does it’ for you... that’s great!” Instead of taking offense at viewpoints he didn’t agree with (which is all too easy to do), Jack would enthusiastically grapple with these ideas, and use them to clarify his own thoughts and stimulate his imagination. One case in point I clearly recall, was Jack and me discussing whether or not Adam and Eve were literally people, and just what the significance of their story was. A couple of months later, Jack expounded on these ideas in DEVIL DINOSAUR #6 and 7! So if you get a lot of flak for discussing matters of faith in a periodical devoted to a comic book artist, your critics should know that Jack himself took no offense at such dialogue... he thoroughly enjoyed it! Steve Robertson, Simi Valley, CA _____________________________________________ I am greatly enjoying the latest JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, as I do every issue, but my highest regards lately has been for the series by Mike Gartland, A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE. This delving into the relationship of Lee/Kirby and the deviations that took place in the stories are fascinating and may one day reveal the secrets that have plagued researchers for many years. No one will ever fully agree on the relationship of Kirby and Lee, or of who contributed what, but the margin notes, along with Lee’s editorial changes and use of dialogue in the script reveals much about what went on behind the scenes. If one were to ask Lee, he probably felt that Kirby’s “notes” were only a starting point for him to expand upon, and probably never thought twice about it. Kirby probably never made any direct comments to Lee about his changes, and moved on to the next story. The other question one has to ask is: When did Kirby notice that Lee was changing his basic plots? Did this begin when Lee sent him stats of the stories? I always thought that Jack was too busy to take notice of these things. Or did someone else point these inconsistencies to him? In rereading FF #66, I don’t see any use of Lee’s dialogue heavily suggesting that the scientists were the villains of the story, so perhaps Lee asked Kirby to change the story when he gave him the stats for the following part. Looking over the artwork in FF #67, without reading the dialogue, one can get a very different story. Are there any pages of these two issues with Kirby’s margin notes available for study? The most fascinating question to me is one that Gartland points out this issue involving the beginning of Kirby’s use of notes in the margins, one that I’ve been researching myself. I’ve noticed quite a few original art pages at conventions, along with the ones printed in TJKC, and it does seem that there are many clean pages before 1964. My theory is this: In late 1963 Lee took over the scripting reins of practically all Marvel’s books, stories that were being handled by Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart, and Larry Leiber (according to a recent interview with Leiber, as well as conversations I’ve had with Dick Ayers, these were all full scripts). Lee was not pleased with the final product, even though he was providing the writers with a plot, and he soon took over the Giant-Man, Iron-Man, Thor and Human Torch strips, in addition to his duties on FF, SPIDER-MAN, AVENGERS, X-MEN, DAREDEVIL, SGT. FURY, the western and girl titles—more than 15 books! Before this, Lee was probably able to give a written synopsis to Kirby & Ditko to work on, but with the addition of all these books, for expediency’s sake he only discussed the plot with them in person or over the phone (Dick Ayers has mentioned that he worked with Stan in this manner). Either Lee requested that Kirby write notes in the margins to refresh his memory of the story, or Kirby took it upon himself to provide Lee with the information. Whoever originated the idea, Lee approved of this system and soon must have requested all his artists to provide him with margin notes; they can be seen in Don Heck’s and Dick Ayers’ original art pages also (the earliest instance I’ve seen recently was at Sotheby’s; I believe it was SGT. FURY #12, cover dated Nov. 1964 with very detailed notes, placing it one month earlier than the JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY story described in TJKC #26). The only other artist who did not use this method was Steve Ditko, who wrote out his notes

on separate pieces of paper. Sometime in late 1964 this “policy” must have been instituted by Lee’s editorial edict, and the “Marvel Method” was in full swing. It is interesting to note that Gartland mentioned Kirby’s writing earlier for a pin-up page in FF ANNUAL #1, in 1963, so there are still questions as to its true beginnings. Gartland’s other observation of Kirby as “layout artist” over other artists is another point that needs to be examined thoroughly. I remember seeing Kirby’ handwritten detailed notes on an original art page a few years ago (a HULK tale featuring Boomerang, illustrated by Bill Everett) and it really blew me away, making me question how much Kirby was really doing at the time. Looking over the many books and physical evidence (note the discarded X-MEN page) as well as the concepts that were being used in the books, leads me to the conclusion that Kirby was basically plotting those books as he would his normal titles. The difference is that Kirby was too busy to draw the full stories, so Lee used his imagination (and speed) to help guide these stories, keeping Kirby involved and letting other artists follow (and learn) his basic procedures. Lee was a smart editor and knew how to utilize his finest talents (when they allowed him to). It is obvious to me that Kirby did far more than just “lay out the story” for other artists (one clue may be in TALES OF SUSPENSE #75, dated March 1965. The credits read “Kirby layout” and “Dick Ayers art,” but the splash blurb states: “Introducing: Lee and Kirby’s newest bombastic baddie... the blockbusting Batroc”). At the very least Kirby invented the villains that were introduced and designed here, but his responsibilities at this transitional period at Marvel, when new talent was just beginning to come aboard (both writers and artists) is one of the least heralded contributions in Kirby’s overwhelming resumé. Whether we will ever have all the answers (or even agree to the proper questions) in the Lee/Kirby partnership is doubtful, but it’s good to see that the various mysteries themselves are being studied and dissected, as Kirby himself spent many years doing in the pages of the comics he worked on throughout his life. The more that we dig beneath the surface of this period, the more we may understand the creative process of both men (Lee’s notes are as interesting as Kirby’s, what he felt was important: Continuity, art changes, emphasis on words, etc., gives some understanding that he spent time on the books), what their individual strengths and weaknesses were, and why Kirby ultimately felt he had to make his own contributions as an individual, out of the shadow of Stan Lee. My compliments to Mike Gartland for an outstanding series of articles. Nicholas Caputo, Glendale, NY (Fans of Mike Gartland’s FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE series will have plenty to look forward to in the near future. Besides another new installment next issue, look for a special all-FTC issue from TwoMorrows soon, which we hope will be the ultimate statement on the Lee/Kirby collaborations.) _____________________________________________ Concerning the article A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, on my oldest original Kirby art, page 7 of the Torch story “Prisoner of the 5th Dimension” from STRANGE TALES #103 (Dec 1962), Kirby wrote text, not in the margin, but in the balloons and text boxes. As a matter of fact, the lettering was rewritten by Artie Simek on a badly erased penciled text that seems to be a mixture of Kirby’s and Lee’s handwritings (mostly Kirby’s); quite surprising for a story crediting Stan Lee (plot, which seems to be his style anyway), his brother Larry Lieber (script), and Jack (plus Dick Ayers, of course!). This discovery has left me wondering how those three men worked together on this episode. Moreover, the Kirby text still legible was completely respected when redone by the letterer. Naturally nobody can conclude anything from just one piece of art. In fact, this story is not a Marvel key issue (not even a masterpiece), so who cares? But I’d advise other Kirby collectors more fortunate than I to check their treasures from that time—because it proves that Kirby wrote text on his pages for this publisher years before the Marvel boom.

Another point: In his excellent article “Theology of the New Gods,” Donald D. Ensign wondered what was Kirby’s idea behind the Source. I think the answer is in Judaism rather than in the BIBLE. An important aspect in the Jewish culture, not developed in this issue unfortunately, is Kabbalah. Kabbalah means “Tradition” and is a Jewish mystical doctrine explaining the nature of God. This tradition is thought to come directly from God. He taught Kabbalah to His angels in Paradise and to Moses at the burning bush on the Sinai. This doctrine is explained in the Zohar book. God’s infinite, unknowable Self called “Ein Sof” contains and fills the universe at the same time and is totally above mankind’s comprehension, beyond Good and Evil (like the Source). He irradiates ten intelligent forces called “sefirots,” creating and ruling the universe, each corresponding to a particular intellectual, moral, or physical quality: Crown (1), Wisdom (2), Intelligence (3), Grace and Love (4), Strength and Justice (5), Beauty (6), Victory (7), Splendor (8), Foundation (9) and Kingdom (10). These Sefirots intervene on our created world (like the gods from New Genesis). Human beings can perceive and influence these ten Sefirots, causing Ein Sof to send forces of compassion or judgment (Galactus or Darkseid are not far). Maybe a competent reader will be able to write a fine article on this and bring us a real new angle on Jack’s Fourth World (and beyond). As Jack was very fond of mysticism and had deep Jewish roots, I think it is reasonably probable to suppose he knew this theosophy. Jean Depelley, FRANCE _____________________________________________ On your Judaism article—two things: 1) Most modern Jews do not believe a Messiah will still come. In fact, many Conservative and Reform Jews think of the existence of the state of Israel as the modern equivalent of the Messiah. 2) I would be interested in knowing if Jack had read the New Testament—most Jews have not (what they know about Jesus comes from Christmas cartoons) and if he hadn’t, it’s unlikely he used those names on purpose in the Fourth World. Bill Meisel, Statesboro, GA _____________________________________________ On May 11, 1999, Kirby fandom lost a devoted supporter with the passing of Joeseph Fitzpatrick at his home in Banbridge, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. A lifelong Kirby fan, Joe was always searching for Kirby material and information about Jack. As a journalist working for a number of local newspapers, Joe would slip in comicsrelated news often and always in a positive manner. A very popular figure in collecting circles, Joe loved to meet other collectors to talk comics. Many’s an hour I spent in conversation with him and I am proud to have been his friend. Back when you were requesting submissions for the International Issue (#12), Joe sent you an article which you chose not to use. I kept a copy of what he had written and I am enclosing it again in the hope that you may find a space to run it on the letters page. It would have meant a lot to Joe and I can think of no better tribute to him. Paul Trimble, Co. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland (What follows is Joe’s submission:) Even if I am now into the ‘forty-something’ bracket (and let’s not be too precise about the ‘something’ side of it), I can still vividly recall when I first discovered the magic, the allure, the vitality of that great master of graphic art, Jack Kirby. Here in my hometown of Banbridge, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, I began reading comics at the age of four or five—titles issued by English and Scottish publishers on different days each week and consisting of full-colour strips and some text (short stories) and out of the usually well-scripted, well-drawn content my favourites were always the sci-fi adventures. My parents had no objections; they were both avid readers themselves and in his young days my father had been a keen collector of American pulps. They no doubt hoped that enjoying comics would develop my reading skills in general (as indeed it did—

parents of today take note!). At age seven or eight, I was given a (small) weekly allowance, which I put to good use buying comics at a little ‘mom and pop’ store—a ‘corner shop’ as we would call it—near where I lived; and it was there, one afternoon, on the way home from school that my comic book reading— and my whole imaginative life—took a giant step forward. In among my usual weekly favourites was something new: A batch of album-size, 68-page titles, with magnificently vivid full-colour covers and, inside, in black-&white, a treasure trove of sci-fi and sci-fantasy. Even just flipping through these exciting pages, I realized that while the comics were distributed by English publishers, what was being served up between the covers came from that Wonderland across the Atlantic, the United States. The content and source of origin were enough for me. I was hooked there and then and began buying these 68-pagers regularly as they came out each month. The different issues from different publishers all had one thing in common: They reprinted work by some of the greatest talents in the American comic book industry. Then, in one particular issue, immense new vistas opened up for me, like the character in the short story by H.G. Wells who, as he wanders through an obscure London street, discovers a mysterious door in a wall. I had found a portal that led into lands of the fantastic, the eerie, the beautiful and the exciting. The story was Jack Kirby’s “Secret of the Flying Saucers,” a cleverly different and, of course, superbly drawn sci-fi yarn. I had to have more of this remarkable man’s work and as each month’s 68-page black-&-white came out, I snapped up every issue I could find that contained work—even if only on the cover—by the magical Mr. Kirby. By the time I was nine or ten, my corner shop was stocking American originals: Mostly DCs and Marvels (before it became Marvel), then fully-fledged Marvels. I can’t describe my delight at getting to see my favourite artist’s work in full-colour (I still remember my sense of excitement when I picked up the first issue of an astonishing new title called... THE FANTASTIC FOUR). Over the years that followed, and for all that I admired and enjoyed the work of other comic book greats, Mr. Kirby occupied a special place in my affections. Like the storytellers of olden times, who wandered from town to town, village to village, spinning tales of wonder, Jack Kirby transported me, throughout my childhood and teenage years, across time and space, into high adventure and worlds weird and wonderful. And I think the secret of his allure, for me as for countless others across the world, is that such was the depth and detail, the elegance, fluency and power of his art, that it was never a matter of simply ‘reading’ his pages: You actually felt part of it all. Sadly, he has been taken from us—but what a rich legacy he leaves: The titles we collected back then and have got in safe-keeping, to enjoy re-reading over and over again, and the unpublished work that, to our delight, is still appearing in print. It’s quite a while since I first discovered the might and majesty of this uniquely talented artist. And I am still as much in awe of his work as ever—and still as grateful to him for opening up a universe of excitement, mystery, wonder, and adventure. Joeseph Fitzpatrick, Co. Down, Northern Ireland _____________________________________________ Concerning Jerry Boyd’s article “Prof. Reinstein, I Presume?” (TJKC #25), the term ‘eugenics’ is only ever used to denote selective breeding helped either by positive or negative reinforcement. There’s nothing that suggests to me that Prof. Reinstein’s serum caused a genetic change in Steve Rogers. If it was genetic factors that caused him to be weak and sickly in the first place (and it could as easily be environmental factors, such as a lack of infant nourishment or health care due to poverty), then the transformation need not have affected his genes at all. Simon & Kirby lived in an era of ‘wonder drugs’ like penicillin, which enabled millions to survive things which would have otherwise killed them, without affecting their genes. A eugenicist might hate the Captain

America scenario on the grounds that a transformed phenotype might disguise a—to them—undesired genotype. David Morris, Bristol, ENGLAND _____________________________________________ When TJKC #1 came out, I appreciated all of the hard work and research you put into this project, and I had no doubt that you would find a sizable audience, but I didn’t expect the COLLECTOR to last beyond a dozen or so issues. For all of your efforts, I didn’t see a magazine that merely reprinted Jack’s artwork, ran old interviews with Kirby, and carried reverent articles encapsulating his work gaining a lasting grasp on the marketplace. After a couple of years, I figured that too many readers would come to view TJKC as the “Same Old Same Old,” and they would simply stop picking up the magazine over time. And now, here we are, 26 issues into a run whose finish lies far beyond the horizon! How, I ask? Simple: You’ve continued to reprint Jack’s artwork (including much rare and unpublished work), you’ve continued to uncover some great interviews given by Kirby over the years, and you’ve packed each issue with delightful articles which run the gamut from charmingly reverent to—and this is the key to TJKC’s success—deeply, critically insightful. Such is the case with your latest issue. Too many writers in the past have been content to issue the same stock responses that Galactus was just Kirby’s take on God himself, or the New Gods simply blended Norse mythology with Judeo-Christian analogies. TJKC #26 goes beyond such “givens” and gets to the root of the truth. In retrospect, it almost seems far too limiting on Jack’s part to “merely” adapt religious tenets into comics; such was Kirby’s genius (and I don’t use that word often, believe me) that he could take the seeds sown from religion and mythology and harvest such bountiful crops. I do have a question regarding the cover, which was a piece of art that originally appeared in THOR #134; the inking for both pieces appears identical. Does this mean that Jack had inked the art in the first place (which was rare), or that the inking was done by another (Colletta? Sinnott?), and that Jack was working from the returned original? I was under the impression that almost none of Kirby’s ’60s work was returned to him by Marvel. I doubt that Jack’s hand-coloring was done on a xerox copy of the inked original, because I wouldn’t think that the paper would have stood up to the watercolor paints. Gene Popa, Hammond, IN (The original inks on the THOR page were by Colletta. Jack enlarged a small stat of the original inked page Marvel had sent him to help him maintain continuity in those days before xerox machines—he didn’t have the original art, since Marvel didn’t return his originals until the late 1980s. Jack doctored up the stat, inking over word balloons and adding small details like the funky chest symbol on Galactus, then hand-colored the stat. From photos I’ve seen of early 1970s conventions, Jack did this on many occasions and put them on display at public appearances.) NEXT ISSUE: Issue #28 features Part Two of our all-star look at the KIRBY INFLUENCE! It starts with a color wraparound Kirby cover inked and colored by Madman’s MIKE & LAURA ALLRED! Then we present an interview with JACK KIRBY, plus new interviews with Ren & Stimpy’s JOHN KRICFALUSI and Luke Skywalker himself, MARK HAMILL! Plus, there’s more conversations with the top names in comics about how Kirby influenced them, including KARL KESEL, MIKE ALLRED, GEOFF DARROW, GARY GIANNI, AL WILLIAMSON, MOEBIUS, ANDREAS, and others! We’ll also talk with more Kirby family members about their upcoming Kirby-related projects, examine the career of VINCE COLLETTA, and present Kirby-inspired art by pros like STEVE RUDE and ALEX HORLEY! And throughout, we’ll showcase plenty of rare and unpublished Kirby art (much uninked) from your favorite stories, and more! Deadline for submissions: 2/28/00.

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ISSUE #27, FEB. 2000

In The US

A Roundtable Discussion With

Mike Thibodeaux, Richard French, Lisa Kirby, & Steve Robertson about What’s New with Genesis West and the Kirby Estate

Jack Kirby Talks About His

World War II Influences Interview With

Alex Ross about His Kirby Influences

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1999 Eisner Awards Nominee for “Best Comics-Related Publication”

Characters © Genesis West and the Jack Kirby Estate.

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(above) Two upcoming Kirby-influenced projects from Genesis West: Disciples of the Dragon #1 (renamed from Phantom Force; Kirby pencils, Mike Thibodeaux inks) and the cover of Malibu Maniacs #2, featuring the Whitestar Knight (Kirby pencils, Marty Lasick inks). (below) Covers for two of the Genesis West proposals discussed this issue. (lower left) Marty Lasick after Kirby. (lower right) Pencils by Kirby, inks by Thibodeaux and Lasick.

A Kirby Family Roundtable Discussion featuring Lisa Kirby, Mike Thibodeaux, Richard French, and Steve Robertson Conducted at the Los Angeles home of Richard French in August 1999 by John Morrow (Following last Summer’s San Diego Comicon, my wife Pam and I were treated to an afternoon of warm hospitality with the Kirby family. It’s all too easy to forget that the term “Kirby Estate” doesn’t refer to some cold, impersonal corporation, but rather Jack and Roz’s children and grandchildren. Although only one of those relatives was present—Lisa, Jack and Roz’s youngest daughter, and the Estate’s co-executor—it’s not a stretch to use the word “family” to describe how the Kirbys felt about the others sitting around the dining room table that day. Mike Thibodeaux is a longtime friend and confidant of Jack and Roz, who still acts as agent for selling the family’s original art. Rick French is Mike’s friend and partner, who got to know Roz and Jack well, and worked with Jack developing ideas for their comic book company Genesis West. Steve Robertson became close with the Kirbys through regular visits since the 1970s, and has been Mike’s inking assistant, (l to r) Richard French, Steve Robertson, Lisa Kirby, and Mike Thibodeaux. idea springboard, and close friend just as long. Together, they form an extended family whose MIKE: Yeah. We would show up at the Kirby home once a week and goal is to further Jack’s reputation and legacy through the development of spread the artwork out on the kitchen table. Jack was amazing. We’d his unused concepts in Hollywood and the comics industry. We extend our hold up a drawing of a character and, lo and behold, Jack solidified the sincere thanks to them for taking time out for this roundtable discussion.) phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Jack had a thousand words, instantly creating character names and attributes, like he’d THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: To start off, let’s get an idea of what’s been rehearsing for going on with the Kirby Estate. Here’s a stack of Kirby-based ideas; this moment for are you pitching these for animation? weeks. Every detail RICK FRENCH: Animation or live action. On several of the concepts, was impeccable. He we’ve already started production of comics stories, like the Malibu would then segué Maniacs. into his version of the story without TJKC: Was this stuff intended specifically for Malibu Maniacs, or is it missing a beat. unused stuff of Jack’s that you’re recycling? TJKC: You had ads for MIKE THIBODEAUX: We’ve completed four of the twelve scheduled Malibu Maniacs out issues of Malibu Maniacs, and part of it’s Jack’s artwork. There are six at one time, but the double-spreads and a handful of pages penciled by Jack, while half of books never appeared; the twelve covers are also drawn by Jack. Being as prolific as Jack was, what happened? if I came across unused material that could be worked into Malibu Maniacs, Jack gave me permission, saying, “If it fits, use it.” But the MIKE: I wasn’t able bulk of the artwork to these stories is mine. to finish the project. My hand problems TJKC: Did Jack assist you guys in coming up with any of the concepts kind of shot that down. in these? Did you discuss them with him at all? I stupidly undertook too many projects at one time. I was working about twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. My ulnar nerve and Cover for Rincon—formerly Malibu Maniacs—#6 my radial nerve gave (pencils by Kirby, inks by Marty Lasick). out. I quickly realized I could never produce even half the volume of work that Jack could. To this day, finishing Malibu Maniacs is my priority. RICK: It’s hard to keep Mike concentrated on more lucrative projects. He’s always working on Malibu Maniacs in one way or another. MIKE: Malibu Maniacs was born out of my desire to breathe new life

Jack with Mike Thibodeaux at one of Roz Kirby’s birthday parties in the late 1980s.

(top) Kirby pencils and Thibodeaux inks for the cover of Last of the Viking Heroes #1. (bottom) Dave Stevens inked these Kirby pencils for the cover of Last of the Viking Heroes #5.

back into Last of the Viking Heroes. Jack was aware of my passion for the comic and told me there’s nothing like creating new interest in an old title by developing a new set of exciting contemporary heroes. Once you’ve established the new characters, then revert the spotlight back onto the characters of the Viking Heroes, and wham!, you’ve introduced a new set of fans to the Viking Heroes that might not have normally picked up this period-piece comic. For emotional drama, the plan was to kill off a few members from Malibu Maniacs, but I don’t think I can destroy any character that Jack had a Double-spread for Malibu Maniacs #2. Kirby pencils, Marty Lasick inks. (below) Darkfyre, from Phantom Force. Pencils by Kirby, inks by Jim Lee. hand in creating. I and Mystiko from Phantom Force. Slowly enter Windom into the main wouldn’t normally attempt such an intricate, complex story with two cast and then reintroduce the Viking Heroes with twists and turns to dozen characters, but I thought Jack’s story plot was so exceptional; keep three monthly issues coming out simultaneously for two years, I’m determined to attempt it. to culminate into a well-awaited emotionally charged climactic endRICK: This is a group of characters who are all surfing maniacs, but ing!” Sure, Jack could put out three quality books monthly, but even if they each have their own special sport identity. Thrasher competes I pushed it I would be lucky to get one book out a month. So I’ve comwith his skateboard, Andre is a jet-ski stuntman, and Helen Wheels is bined Jack’s bold multi-book crossover into a 12-issue (printed once a the roller-blade queen. (laughter) month) mini-series, hopefully without sacrificing story or detail. TJKC: That’s a great name! RICK: I don’t even know how it’s going to go. Mike hasn’t told me. I get little bits and pieces of it, but I wish he’d write it all down. (laughter) RICK: We were all sitting around one day at Jack’s house and Mike pulled out a drawing from his portfolio. I said, “Jack, look at this,” MIKE: It’s well written in my head. I’m gonna finish it sooner or later, and before the drawing hit the table, Jack had her name, character even if I have to do it lefttraits, and what she was going to have for dinner that night. (laughter) handed. Typical of Jack’s witty mind. STEVE: Before we TJKC: At one point, weren’t you concerned about Malibu Comics getmove on, I’d like ting upset about the name Malibu Maniacs? to say something. There’s some MIKE: Somewhat; that’s why we toyed with Jack’s name of the Rincon things I’ve seen Raiders—-we eventually dropped the name “Raiders.” Rincon—I love on the Internet it! It’s such a powerful name and such a classic surf break here in that I thought California. So if you hear us refer to Rincon, it’s actually Malibu were really abraManiacs, they’re one and the same. The title issue is an ongoing battle sive and unfair— between me and Rick. I prefer Rincon. I brought these characters of and untrue— Rincon into the last pages of Phantom Force #8. Had the series continued, basically implyall of the characters from Viking Heroes and Phantom Force would have ing that somebeen combined with common ties in the Rincon series. how or other STEVE ROBERTSON: Jack wasn’t actively drawing at that time, so he Mike was trying couldn’t launch into it. Only he could’ve done it; juggled three or four to rip Jack off, different books at one time. and pass off things as Jack’s MIKE: Yeah, Jack wanted me to put out three or four books per month that weren’t and I said, “Jack, I’m not fast enough.” Jack said, “Mike, you have an his. That is really epic brewing here. Start with the Malibu Maniacs, then bring in Darkfyre just not true. I 5

RICK: Right. These two are ones Lisa has been involved with, The Descendants of Atlantis and Phobos and his Galactic Bounty Hunters. We were just digging through the files at the storage unit, going, “Wow! Isn’t this cool? Set this aside, we can do something with this.” We set out maybe five different unused concepts. Jack had notes on them, so you could kinda tell what his thought was behind the drawings. So we started combining them, thinking, “How would Jack continue this?” We all got together, and sat down with the artwork and that’s when The Descendants of Atlantis was created. LISA KIRBY: We kind of mixed and matched, and came up with our own twists to the concepts. STEVE: Throughout we tried to remain true to the kind of things Jack would want, and the kind of things he would do. TJKC: Which ones do you think are sold at this point? MIKE: Malibu Maniacs and Kublak have been optioned for animation production. The other projects have not been shopped yet. We’re in the process of doing it now. TJKC: So let’s see; The Descendants of Atlantis is one we ran a blurb for in Kirby Collector #22 [originally called The Others]. Lisa, basically you took some of your dad’s existing concepts...?

The character “Day” from the Knight & Day proposal.

saw some snickering about a pin-up in the back of Phantom Force that was taken from another drawing, and altered to look like one of the Phantom Force characters; like he was trying to get away with something. But Jack and Roz were both alive at the time, and that was under their auspices. No one seems to take that into account; that Jack would recycle concepts. There’s nothing underhanded about that. TJKC: That’s an interesting point; there’s all these leftover Kirby ideas that haven’t been used.... MIKE: Let’s use them! RICK: Through the years, while we were developing Phantom Force, other characters mushroomed from our weekly sessions. That’s where Darkfyre was created, and the Whitestar Knight, the Star Slavers, and Knight and Day, and all these other concepts we have. We did a lot of brainstorming with Jack on what we should do with it. After Jack passed away, Roz granted to us the rights to Phantom Force, Malibu Maniacs, and a handful of other characters and concepts co-created with Jack. Those concepts are what you see in some of these presentations. The other presentations are projects we developed with Lisa using some of the Kirby Estate concepts. TJKC: Let’s talk about those; this is a pretty huge stack here. These booklets are all proposals to try and sell the concepts?

Splash to an unused “Bruce Lee” story Jack gave to Mike to use in Phantom Force, as related in TJKC #15.

MIKE: Right; they were everywhere. Jack loved what he did. Strangely enough, even relaxing you’d find Jack drawing at his board. RICK: Yep! Drawing is what Jack did in his spare time for recreation. LISA: These were characters he never used for whatever reason, and we found them very interesting, so we thought, “Why not? Let’s try to make something from them.” TJKC: Are we talking a couple of dozen, or a hundred ideas? MIKE: Yes, a couple dozen, that’s all we have now. There were more but unfortunately throughout the years, the Kirbys sold them; drawings with entire written concepts. TJKC: Do they range over the years from the 1960s up to the 1980s? MIKE: I would say 1970s-80s. I remember Jack and Roz selling these concepts when I went up to his house in the early 1970s. He was so prolific; there’s no telling what may have been sold from the 1960s. TJKC: I imagine there’ll be a few fans out there who would view it as blasphemy to try to develop Jack’s concepts without his actual involvement. How would you respond to someone who feels this way? MIKE: He was originally involved. Jack designed the characters and laid out a brief story synopsis. Some of Marvel’s greatest characters came from this type of process. STEVE: I know what you mean, though: “Who are they to presume what Jack would do or think?”—almost as though we’re trying to undermine Jack somehow. LISA: Y’know, of course we can’t get into the mind of somebody [else]. What we can do is take what Dad’s left, and sit around and say, “Where do you think he was going with this?”

Another “Bruce Lee” pencil page, which was inked and used in Phantom Force #1.

LISA: Right, just basically going through the archives and utilizing the most impressive concept—-which happened to be The Descendants of Atlantis. TJKC: Let’s backtrack for a minute. When you say “the Archives,” everybody that reads our magazine thinks there’s probably this giant, Fort Knox kind of thing somewhere. (laughter) RICK: We’d like them to continue thinking that! (laughter) [Editor’s Note: The “Kirby Archives” were originally stored at home in the Kirbys’ “art room”—formerly Lisa Kirby’s bedroom—and now are kept in a small, climate-controlled self-storage unit, like the ones you can rent by the month in nearly any town in the US. This modest facility houses several flat files and stacks of boxes, filled with Kirby art and photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils—the ones we run in TJKC. Needless to say, this editor experienced a fanboy’s dream-come-true rummaging through it the day of this interview. My thanks to Lisa and Mike for taking me to see it!] LISA: I had to go through so much, doing inventory. I didn’t have any clue what was in there. There were boxes and boxes; Mike helped me so much. MIKE: There were three large lateral file cabinets we had to go through. TJKC: So these unused ideas are the end result of thirty years of... what, in a spare moment, he’d come up with an idea and jot it down? 7

Pre-Image Phantom Force #2 page. Layouts: Kirby, finishes: Marty Lasick.

RICK: At first we didn’t know if we should even do anything with this stuff. Should we just leave it the way it is? LISA: Why let it just sit there? There are these wonderful characters all just waiting to be set free. RICK: Lisa wanted to get involved in something her dad created and carry on his legacy, but she didn’t know how to get started, so we pooled our individual strengths and did the work as a team. LISA: I don’t expect to fill anyone’s shoes. Nobody can fill shoes like that! If I have even remotely a small amount of any kind of Kirby talent at all, I would be most grateful. That’s all I can try to do. Yeti character concept from the Descendants of Atlantis proposal. Pencils by Kirby.

STEVE: I don’t know how anyone could fail to see that parents would be really happy that their kids wanted to do something with what they had created. For Lisa and Jeremy and Tracy to want to become involved in things Jack has done, and do something with them—I don’t see how anyone could fail to see that Jack and Roz would be very pleased with that.

LISA: For me too, a part of it is thinking, “Gosh, I can make them proud of me for doing this,” or creating something that was successful, and he could be proud of. It’s important for me personally to feel that way. TJKC: Jack said repeatedly in interviews he was doing this to leave something for his kids and grandkids—but sometimes it seems no one wants to hear anything about the financial end of it: “You mean someone’s actually out to make money off these ideas?” They forget that was Jack’s whole purpose in drawing all those years. RICK: If these concepts were designed for the family’s use... it would surely be a sin not to use them as Jack intended.

Heebie and Jeebie from the Phobos proposal. Pencils by Kirby, inks by Marty Lasick.

STEVE: That’s right. If you’d ask him, “Jack, you knew you were getting ripped off at Marvel, and you’d have no part of what you created; why’d you do it?” He’d say, “I had a family to support, I have rent to pay. I have to make a living”—and that’s what he did. The people that want to nitpick or snipe, and say, “None of Jack’s unfinished work should be developed; just print the pencils that are left and let it go at that” aren’t taking into account that Jack’s most famous creations—[the ones] that everyone admires— the family doesn’t own. Somebody else owns and makes money off them. How is it wrong for his family to take things that weren’t used by somebody else and bring income into the family? TJKC: Without getting too deep into the family’s personal business, as these concepts are developed, will the whole family benefit from them? LISA: A percentage must go to the Estate. Basically, it has to all be approved by Robert [Katz, co-executor of the Estate] and me. TJKC: What can you tell me about The Descendants of Atlantis? Carla and Dr. Stern from the Descendants of Atlantis proposal. Pencils by Kirby.

STEVE: The storyline deals with the lost continent of Atlantis. A woman, Medea, is the Queen of Atlantis. Antimon is her

lover; he was her pupil first, and they became very close, and he turned on her. This causes rebellion which ultimately leads to the sinking of Atlantis. Medea has allies who are a race of Yetis—Bigfoot— which was a more prolific race at that time. This is all pre-history stuff. She’s worried when the continent sinks, Antimon may survive and come back to go about his plans of world conquest again, so she goes into a state of suspended animation in case that should happen, in a cave with these Yeti guardians to awaken her if Antimon should ever show himself again. In the present day, we find Antimon did survive the sinking, and he and his people have been in suspended animation. They wake up and raise the continent of Atlantis, and she has to be awakened to combat him. RICK: Antimon is awakened when a nuclear test in the 1950s activates some failed mechanism and returns Antimon to consciousness. The following forty-plus years are utilized to prepare his armies for world domination. It is here in the present day he causes Atlantis to rise again. STEVE: Medea gathers some people to help combat Antimon. She finds people who are of Atlantean descent, who have the spirit of Atlantis, who she turns into super-heroes to help combat Antimon. TJKC: I take it the people with the Atlantean spirit are unaware that they’re descendants? LISA: Yes. Shortly after the sinking of Atlantis, Medea had the Yeti place mystical crystal skulls in various places around the world. STEVE: These skulls that were planted around the world act as beacons when Medea activates them, and draws these certain people to her and transforms them into these super-powered beings. TJKC: What can you tell me about Phobos and his Galactic Bounty Hunters?

LISA: Basically, we found a drawing [above] of these four characters. They were a group already. STEVE: Originally, Jack had slated these to be the Wonder Warriors in Captain Victory, and for whatever reason he changed his mind and redesigned them. These are the characters that were developed to be the Bounty Hunters for Phobos. Lead character from Thunder Hunter. Pencils by Kirby, computerinked by Rick French.

LISA: I thought they looked great, so I took them and thought, “Let’s make them bounty hunters.” Phobos is kind of like Charlie on Charlie’s Angels; he sends them on missions into the Nocturnal Nebula, which is the badlands of space. The dregs of the universe congregate there. TJKC: So The Descendants is almost mythological, whereas Phobos is more cosmic or sci-fi. LISA: Right, we’re trying to diversify. TJKC: Each one of these pitches contains lots of Kirby art. LISA: The majority is Kirby art. We took his art and expanded his concepts. But then Mike and Marty Lasick made additional illustrations for the projects. TJKC: Who came up with the names “Heebie” and “Jeebie”? (laughter) These sound like something Jack would come up with. RICK: That’s a Lisa Kirby idea. (laughter) 9

MIKE: Yeah. I think it’s also the appeal of his soft, gentle interior. What kid wouldn’t want the protection of this lovable behemoth creature? Kublak is the one character that had undergone the most changes. Jack made changes to my original concept; then I made changes and we ended up with a patchwork design, perfect for an alien from another dimension. TJKC: So you’re shooting for animation on it at this point? MIKE: Yeah, we modified the story for animation. We took Kublak out of Phantom Force and developed a new story concept with a new secondary cast in order to make Kublak stand on his own. I’ve also designed several model sheets for animation. TJKC: Thunder Hunter; what’s the story on that? STEVE: This is an example of how Roz had given some characters to Mike and Rick to use after Jack had died. These are some of the characters she said to take and do something with. The Thunder Hunters are these three young people from an English village in the 1500s. A wizard has retired to their village; he’s tired of that life. It’s like being a gunfighter; there’s always someone coming to prove they’re better than you, and to cast their spells at you. TJKC: I noticed the wizard’s name is “Nilrem,” which, if you spell it backwards, is very familiar. MIKE: That’s the first I’ve heard of it. (laughter)

Thunder Hunter original concepts. Pencils by Kirby.

LISA: Those are kinda corny, but Dad would come up with corny stuff. TJKC: So you guys were able to extrapolate all this from basic, simple drawings? RICK: I don’t know if Jack’s drawings were simple; visually there was plenty to work with. We all got together and brainstormed. Sometimes we got into some pretty big fistfights deciding which way to go. (laughter) Fortunately we learned to work well as a team. I think it shows in our presentations. TJKC: That’s what Stan Lee had said; your dad would come up with all these throwaway background characters, and Stan could’ve built entire twelve-issue story arcs around them. MIKE: It’s a testament to Jack’s creative genius. And that’s what we’re trying to accomplish, to nurture, and hopefully harvest Jack’s planted seeds of creativity. TJKC: You’ve got a Kublak proposal here. He was obviously a character in Phantom Force. MIKE: We received more letters on him than any other character. So we thought it worked pretty well to bring him into a solo act. It’s gone well so far. Kublak’s been optioned for animation; Genesis West has optioned several of the Jack Kirby properties, as well as some of our own. TJKC: That seems to always be the way; the big, strong guy is always the most popular. 10

STEVE: This wizard retires to this village, and no one knows who he is. He’s living peacefully, and these three young villagers befriend him. At some point, he’s tracked down by his worst adversary, Slaykaria, who steals his staff of power, called the Midgard Serpent Staff, and goes on a destructive rampage. The old wizard empowers his young friends with the powers of the storm to combat Slaykaria, but he knows they’re too young and inexperienced to go after him immediately. So he sends them into the future, which is our present, to try and hide them from this sorcerer. Slaykaria pursues them into the present, and they have to try to stay hidden from him to keep from being caught, but they have to try to thwart his evil plans as well. MIKE: Our analogy is “The Fugitive meets The Predator.” RICK: When they use their weapons to transport themselves, our Thunder Hunter heroes create a miniature electrical whirlwind. That’s why we see crop circles today; whenever they activate their powers, it creates crop circles. TJKC: That’s interesting; just like with The Descendants—where you give a reason for the sinking of Atlantis—you’re giving pretty logical reasons for “unsolved mysteries.” MIKE: As wild as Jack’s concepts were, there was always a sense of realism. TJKC: These are pretty impressive-looking proposals.

A birthday card drawn for Lisa by her father.

MIKE: Thanks. We owe the final output to Rick’s savvy on the computer. He’s really good. We’ll sit here and give him a handful of scribbled notes, rough pencils, and he always returns with an impressive proposal package.

TJKC: So these are all potential properties for Hollywood; you’re not just shopping them around for comic books?

LISA: I got to do the fun stuff, but Rick worked hours and hours on the proposals.

RICK: Because of his love for the art form, Mike insists on comic books, but animation and movies is the group’s final goal, and if we get them in the right hands, I think they’re very strong possibilities.

STEVE: Rick also does all the coloring.

LISA: I really enjoyed working with the guys on these projects. This is a fun little group to work with, and it was nice of them to bring me in on it.

RICK: Mike’s the one who taught me how to color. MIKE: Rick’s a natural. In our college years I talked Rick into taking some art classes, and two years of airbrushing by the famous Sol Dember.

MIKE: We’re the lucky ones, Lisa. TJKC: Obviously you guys have been slaving away at comics for years; what got Lisa involved in it? RICK: After Jack passed away, Mike and Lisa had to start inventorying the artwork and cataloging it, and we’d see the art, and Lisa showed interest in continuing her father’s work, and that’s what planted a seed. MIKE: She had good solid concepts while throwing ideas around. Thunder Hunter concept. Pencils by Kirby, inks by Thibodeaux/Lasick.

LISA: I was not an avid comic book reader, but they helped me out with that part. Steve was really good; I could feed off of him. We would e-mail each other back and forth. TJKC: So this wasn’t just getting together at a bar one night, and kicking around ideas? MIKE: Sure. Getting juiced and hanging out at Mondo’s [Lisa’s favorite surf spot] was most inspirational for our creative mood. (laughter) RICK: Why do you say things like that during a serious interview?! (laughter) It was months of going back and forth, evaluating and reevaluating characters; bouncing off each other’s ideas. Most of it 11

start watching the campers’ portable TV, and they see on the news that Atlantis has risen. So they go back and wake Medea. But Lisa said, “C’mon, Yetis going down there to watch TV? That’s ridiculous.” We all finally agreed that it has the aroma of Kirby comedy to it. LISA: Mike and Steve had the Yetis grabbing this TV set, and I was thinking more logically. And they’re saying, “No Lisa, your dad would do that!” And I thought about it for a while, and I decided, “Yeah, he would. (laughter) It would be corny and funny, but he would do it that way. You’re right to leave it in there.” MIKE: I just hope we can execute the idea as well as Jack would have drawn it. With a stroke of the pencil, he could create a moving scene greater than any cinematographer could bring to a movie screen. TJKC: In addition to discussing these proposals, I had a few other questions to ask. How has Jack influenced each of you? LISA: Me? He’s my dad! (laughter) That’s how he influenced me. RICK: He told her what to do, and if she didn’t do it, she got swatted. (laughter)

The Yetis in Descendants of Atlantis originated in this unused Thunder Foot concept (see TJKC #21).

was done right here where we’re sitting.

LISA: No, I was babied. I was “Daddy’s little girl.” He was always working in his studio, and I’d go in there from time to time. Everyone who wanted to see my father would immediately go into the studio, and that was it. It wasn’t until I got older that I read his work. It didn’t even dawn on me until later in life, which is a shame. I wish I had started earlier. It just amazed me later on when I discovered what everybody was crazy about.

TJKC: Of the people who came over to the house, were any female?

STEVE: It helps to be willing to discard your own personal ideas when you hear something better, and we worked that way.

LISA: There might’ve been girlfriends or wives who came with the guys, but the majority were guys. Speaking for myself growing up, I didn’t sit down and read comic books either. It was more male-oriented.

MIKE: We’ve worked with people that have the “done by me, so it’s perfect” syndrome, and that’s the worst. Steve used to be that way, but he’s really good now. (laughter)

TJKC: I understand your mom was always trying to fix you up with guys who came over. Is this true?

TJKC: Let’s pretend for a minute that Jack was still here. What would he think of these presentations? Would he think they were on the mark—that they’re as faithful to Kirby as they could be without him actually being here?

LISA: Turn off the tape! (laughter) MIKE: Lisa, this is the stuff people want to hear! (laughter) STEVE: I remember early on, when Mike and I were going up there, I was already married, but Mike was a bachelor. Roz would be quizzing him and talking to him: “Y’know, maybe I should set you up with Lisa”— and Mike, in his real subtle way said, “Well, is she good-looking?” (laughter) and Roz says, “Look, I’m her mother. What do you think?!” (laughter) I told Mike back then he should marry Lisa and change his last name to Kirby. (laughter)

MIKE: I can only hope so. I really do. Steve and I have not only read the classic Marvel and DC books from the 1960s and 1970s, but our tastes reach back to the 1940s and 1950s, although Steve’s favorite is the ’50s. I think Jack would appreciate our attempt at the concept of his creations. STEVE: To me, the best part of all this is Lisa’s involved, and Jeremy and Tracy—the grandkids—are working on things, too. I think Jack and Roz would be really pleased that their kids and grandkids are willing to take these ideas and do something with them. I think they’d be proud and happy about that.

LISA: My mother was always trying to fix me up with strangers on airplanes. Once we were going to a comic convention, and there was this poor man sitting next to her; she had to know his whole life story. “This is my daughter.” (laughter) It was a constant thing. She was a typical Jewish mother.

MIKE: Yes. Absolutely. Very well said. LISA: I think so too. Like with The Descendants, there was this scene in there with the Yetis, and a TV set. I thought, “That is so ridiculous; how can you even come up with that?”

TJKC: Was this a horribly embarrassing line of questioning? (laughter) LISA: I think this’ll be scribbled out of the transcript.

MIKE: That was funny; she didn’t like the idea at first. It was a scene where Medea’s been sleeping, in suspended animation. She’s in a cave, and the Yetis roam around, and they find a campsite. The Yetis

TJKC: Steve, how did Jack influence you? STEVE: The most profound effect Jack and Roz both had on me was on 12

a personal level. When I first met him, I was in awe of him. Getting to know them, Jack and Roz were so nice, and such decent people. They always had time for anybody, y’know? I’d like to think that’s had an effect on my life: To try to be like them; to be giving and sharing, and not hold back; to have the time for other people, and take time out of your life to do something for somebody else. They really did that for their fans. I remember a really extreme example, where a group of people showed up at their doorstep one day, claiming they had been sent by aliens. I think they were from Oregon, and they claimed they had been sent to fetch Jack; the aliens wanted to take him, and Jack was supposed to come back with them and head off in the Mother Ship. Most people at that point would be trying to edge the door shut and call the cops, but Jack and Roz took them in, let them spend the night because they had nowhere to go. Jack was pretty open-minded; he said, “Heck, for all I know, it was real! (laughter) I just told ’em, ‘Hey, I love my family, I have a life here, I’m not ready to go. I appreciate the offer, tell them ‘thanks a lot.’” (laughter) That’s pretty darn nice; most people wouldn’t do that. They were really inspiring on a personal level.

RICK: I could sit there and listen to him for hours. Even though I’d heard that story before, something new would somehow translate. TJKC: How’d Jack influence you, Mike? MIKE: Excluding my mother, he was the most influential person in my life and my strongest teacher. Because of his art, I found a direction in life. Even as a sophomore in high school, my obsession for Jack’s comic books turned my attention from any hope for school subjects to the American born art form of telling stories through a series of pictures— comic books! It was during this time that I discovered Jack had a life before Marvel. I purchased a comic collection from a friend’s older brother who was going into the service. I came across a copy of Fighting American #2 in the collection. What an angle to draw from! It was a salamander’s eye view, looking up out of a well

TJKC: Lisa, were you aware of the extent to which fans deified your dad while you were growing up? LISA: I really wasn’t aware of the extent then, but I am now. It’s hard to deify someone you’ve seen in their bathrobe, especially if he is your dad. He was just so humble; it wasn’t like he had this big ego. He was so pleasant to everybody. He treated everybody the same. MIKE: I believe Jack’s soul was naturally kind. I also think it’s his war experiences that helped make him the way he was. I think

y. Great Gatsb oject on The pr ol ho sc s n for Lisa’ Kirby art draw

he saw everyone on Earth as part of his team, except for Nazis. Jack once told me that we all need to help one another—and I believe Jack truly lived it. STEVE: You could never talk to Jack for any length of time without him getting into experiences from World War II. So it must’ve had a really profound effect on him. He’d always bring up something that happened to him in the war to make a point. 13

with a group of creatures dropping Fighting American and Speedboy into the well—executed like only Kirby could. I looked at the signature and, lo and behold, the name “Kirby” was there. Once I finished that book, my years in high school were spent on an obsessive quest to locate everything Jack did in the 1950s. This obviously affected my study habits, because I couldn’t think of anything but Kirby comic books. The Kirby bug bit me—it was worse than drugs, only it was legal, and you didn’t lose money. (laughter) It actually became a savings, yielding high dividends. My college years suffered as well. Then I realized Kirby’s art reached back into the 1940s—-the hunt was on! Now back then, the search for these comic books was difficult and immeasurably time-consuming. There were no comics specialty shops— you were lucky if bookshops even carried comics—and there was no Internet. I located most of my information and books from people at garage sales or swap meets; and thank God comic book conventions started around this time. Due to his influence, comic books and storyboarding fascinated me—it’s the bridge between the written word and the silver screen. So, needless to say, Jack was exceptionally influential

Jack was amazing; the one man who should have an ego was so humble and so kind. I remember answering the phone at Jack’s house, and the caller couldn’t speak very clearly; I couldn’t understand him at all. I tried communicating for a few minutes, but I got so frustrated with him I handed the phone to Jack, where he literally talked to the caller for an hour; I found it so amazing that he had this kind of patience. I remember when Jack got off the phone, I said, “Jack, how can you do that?” And Jack said, “He just needed to talk to someone.” Jack made time for everyone.

Slug, the main villain in the Phobos proposal. This is one of the Marty Lasick drawings used in the proposal; you can see the heavy Kirby influence on Marty’s penciling.

TJKC: Lisa, how’d you meet these guys? LISA: They showed up at the house one day, and they’ve been there ever since. (laughter) Actually, I met Mike first. Mike and Rick took me surfing, before I was a surfer. We went to the beach, and I kind of hung out with them. Now I surf every day, every morning. That’s my passion.

in my career path, but even more so on a human and spiritual level. He was kind, his criticisms were constructive, and if someone was in need, his hand always reached out. To this day, I’ve never met a better man. I am proud to have stood in his circle. Did Jack influence my life? Hell, he rocked my world!

MIKE: Her answering machine message says, “If I’m not here, I’m out surfing.” (laughter) She truly loves the sport.

STEVE: Jack influenced Mike so deeply that he wanted to share Jack’s talents with everyone. He supplied me with all my back-issue Kirby comics.

TJKC: Mike, who were your inking influences? MIKE: They’ve varied in stages throughout my life. I first liked Chic Stone, Dick Ayers, and Wally Wood. I never liked Paul Reinman or George Bell. I know a lot of people didn’t like Vince Colletta, but my only beef is that he would sometimes erase some of Jack’s artwork just to meet a deadline. I’ve owned originals where I could clearly see the indentations of pencils erased. Usually only in backgrounds, but that’s still unforgivable. But due to my young, impressionable years, Joe Sinnott has to be one of my favorites. His dynamic brush stroke was exceptional! It was even perfect during his first job for Jack on a six-page monster story in 1961’s Strange Tales #96.

MIKE: That’s true. If I could find duplicates of Jack’s comics, I bought them. I felt it was my duty to get the books to potential fans and hopefully make a buck or two in the process. I would then drive 20-plus miles over to the infamous Simi Valley [a Los Angeles suburb]. There was no comic book outlet in Simi Valley, so I’d set up and sell comic books at the local swap meet. STEVE: Yep. He got all my extra dough; we referred to Mike as the local supplier. (laughter) This is where Mike and I first met. MIKE: Steve was my biggest customer—but being such a huge fan of Jack’s, we became good friends, which backfired on me because he then got comics from me at cost. (laughter) I lost a good customer but gained a best friend. RICK: Steve was the guy that got Mike over to the Kirbys’. MIKE: Yeah, and what an experience! STEVE: We both wanted to meet Jack so badly, and we knew he lived nearby. So we’d talk to him at cons, and Roz would tell us, “Hey, give us a call, our number’s in the book.” MIKE: And I’m here thinking, “He’s a god. No way am I going to just call him.” LISA: Why not? Everybody else did! (laughter) STEVE: We talked to Jack’s son Neal. Neal was handling art sales at that point, so we went over to his house and bought some stuff. Then he let us go up to Jack and Roz’s house, and it kind of went from there.

Rudolph Ludwing, an unused character from Phantom Force. Pencils by Kirby, inks by Marty Lasick.

MIKE: I remember I was buying artwork from Neal then—it wasn’t Neal’s passion to sell art; he was just doing it. I’d bought a Black Magic cover for $25, and I turned around and sold it for $100. I was using the profits to buy more Kirby art; upgrading my art collection. So one day Roz calls me up and says, “I hear Neal sold you this for $25, and you turned around and sold it for $100.” How she found out, I’ll never know. I thought she was going to yell at me, and she said, “Well, if you can do that, I want you to start selling Jack’s art for me.” (laughter) I always felt I had to get out and meet my idols. I was so disappointed with so many of the newer artists I’d met; after you get to know them, the ego in them just kind of destroyed how you felt about their work. 14

There were a handful of Captain Americas inked by Dan Adkins that were outstanding. I wish he had done more. I’ve seen some of his recent recreations. He still has the magic. Hell, I’d love this guy to ink my work. Though a small body of work, I immensely appreciated the inking style of Steve Ditko over Jack Kirby. Since I’m heavily influenced by Ditko, I like the teaming of the pair. One other time I appreciated the actual collaboration of styles was when Barry Smith inked the first ten pages in the Bicentennial Captain America Treasury Edition in 1976. Though most of Marty Lasick’s inks for Jack were unseen by the fans, I think he’s a master of his craft— especially if he’s immersed in the inking style of the 1960s. Last, but surely not least, is Mike Royer, he’s at the top of my list.

that family and friends are more important than just about anything, and living that type of life is much more rewarding. LISA: If you don’t mind, I’d like to add something. I just want to thank the guys for including me. They got me all involved in this, and I probably would not have ventured out on my own. I’ve always loved to write, but it was always something I just kind of did on the side; poetry and whatnot. The whole process has been really cathartic for

TJKC: Your inks on Battle for a Three-Dimensional World looked very influenced by Royer. MIKE: Wow! What a compliment. Royer was Jack’s favorite inker and deservedly so. At that time, I tried to emulate his style. I’m glad some of my efforts came through. TJKC: Did you have to ink that on overlays for the 3-D process? MIKE: No, I got to do the straight artwork, but Ray Zone had the difficult task of preparing the 3-D visual effects. My main memory of this project was the nightmarish board I had to ink on. No matter how careful the brushstroke, the board would just cause the ink to bleed. Paul Jensen, a talented artist who was lettering it at the time, was just cursing it. STEVE: You’d try to ink something, and it would go off in these little veins off the lines. I remember Royer telling about some of the paper Jack bought; that he’d iron it with a hot iron before he’d ink it, just to keep it from bleeding out. MIKE: I remember telling Jack I was pretty upset about having to ink on this, and Jack said, “I didn’t have any trouble drawing on it.” (laughter) TJKC: Rick, how did Jack influence you? RICK: I didn’t grow up with a comics background. Mike and I met in the fifth grade, and I’d go over to his house and (above) Unused Kirby cover pencils for Viking Heroes Summer Special #1. The original plan he would make me read his Thors, Captain Americas, and was to team Kirby and Frazetta together, but Frank ended up doing a solo version (shown inset). Fantastic Fours. Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading Jack’s me, as far as getting involved in my father’s work. It’s really helped comics, I just wasn’t a fanatic like Mike. I would read them periodically. me through the whole healing process. It’s continually going on, espeI had other interests like racing quarter midgets and playing handball. cially since I see it all the time; it brings back more and more memoBeing Mike’s roommate in my early twenties, some of that influence ries. But I just wanted to personally thank them. It’s been fun; even spilled over on me. We talked about getting into business together, my other friends have mentioned, “You’re so happy when you’re and I started taking a few art classes. Then I would start going up to doing this.” It’s been a fun process, and I’ve really enjoyed doing it. the Kirbys’ with Mike, hanging out. So I had a totally different perspective about Jack. I’d walk into his house, and he wasn’t an idol to MIKE: I think Lisa’s father is still trying to reach out through her. me. He was just a guy, y’know? But like Steve was saying, I was truly LISA: I get these crazy dreams sometimes that are real science-fiction amazed at Jack’s humbleness, especially after I’d learned what Jack and strange, and I go, “Aahh, Dad’s gotta be sending me these.” (laughter) had done in his life and how he treated all people. It’s amazing to me I wouldn’t have thought of them on my own. I just feel like it was kind that a man who’d accomplished so much was so open to the world, of meant to be, for Mike, Rick, and Steve to bring me into this.★ and so friendly to everybody. The thing I learned most from him was 15

on: World War II Influences The second installment from a work-in-progress entitled “Conversations with Jack” by Ray Wyman, Jr. Essays in first person based upon interviews with Jack Kirby and his family between August 1989 through June 1992. Copyright 1999 by Ray Wyman, Jr. (Author’s Note: Although always a gentleman when it came to the public, privately Jack could indulge in a bit of profanity from time to time, particularly when discussing his soldiering days. Couple that fact with my own propensity for the same linguistic crutch and there were times when the bluster of fourand five-letter words (and various combinations) was so thick that Roz—Jack’s wife of 50+ years— had to step into the room and politely remind us that our voices were ‘carrying.’ We must have sounded like a couple of old GI’s resting our bones on a park bench, cursing away the afternoon. Roz asked me to not encourage him, but really he needed no encouragement—in this he was fairly self-sufficient. So, sensitive readers, beware.)

General Patton ell, I can’t remember what happened yesterday; I could not tell you what I ate for breakfast this morning, but I recall the faces of everybody that was in my unit. I recall their names, I recall where they came from, I recall the manner of their speech and even the common everyday things they did; unimportant things that make the whole event real. That is how the mind works: It retains the significant events of our lives by memorializing the important moments. It happens when we are faced with events that are pleasurable and those that are unpleasant, especially when we are faced with danger—at times when our lives are hanging by a thread. It was like that nearly every day of the war. The threat was never far from our thoughts, I can tell you. I am not a master on how the human mind works but it seems fantastic that the mind stores all the little things that make up a period of your life; a string of incidents will fall into place, you know, from all your memories, and that is what produces the image we have of ourselves. Still, it kind of amazes me that I went through all of that. I’m amazed that I’m still here to tell you these things. These interviews, these questions are good for me to reflect and bring back all those times; small things, big things, sometimes insignificant, but all of them are stored right here for the asking. For instance, you ask me how it was during the war and just the mention of the word brings to mind the first time that I saw General Patton. My outfit was lined up and Patton was there with my Colonel and all the other officers. We were all mustered together and the officers stood there talking. We were freezing our asses off; those French winters are extremely cold. A heavy coat is nothing; a heavy coat didn’t mean a damn thing. Whatever you were wearing, it didn’t matter. Only walking saved you from the cold; any physical exertion was better than just standing at attention

Kirby splash-page pencils from Our Fighting Forces #159.

in the cold. There was no snow yet, but it was unforgettably cold. It didn’t matter to the officers; these guys were arguing over something, most of it I couldn’t hear very well, so what I remember is what other guys told me. We were in Northern France very close to the border of Germany and Belgium; and like I said, it was so cold, every one of us was shivering in our boots—not because we were afraid, you know. My outfit was a strong group of fighting men. Every one of them you could trust with your life; we had to, we had no choice. Well, there was Patton, sore as hell. Sometimes he was agitated, but their voices kept low. We couldn’t hear them very well. He wanted to know why we were screwing up his map. He came there with this big map and he spread it out over the hood of this jeep and got all the other officers in my outfit all around to look. Then he looked up at each one of them and said, “What the f*ck are these guys doing here?” and he pointed at the map again and yelled, “What is this? What is this? You’re fouling up the whole f*cking thing! If you’re here, then why the f*ck aren’t they dead? They are all supposed to be dead.” I myself was saying, “Well, sh*t on you. I feel great.” But like I said, I couldn’t hear most of what he was saying, except when he raised his voice and all the other officers stepped back like he was going to slap them. Of course, that wouldn’t happen in an American army, not in public at least where all the GIs could see. So, this went on for—I don’t remember, I was too frozen to care, but it went on for quite a while. I heard that Patton ordered replacements. He thought my outfit had been wiped out. So some foul-up I guess, signals crossed, messages mixed up; it happened quite a lot during the war. The Colonel had fouled up Patton’s schedule and his ability to predict what went on on the battlefield. This is a personal opinion, but I think he was a great General; he kept all of the outfits moving—you can’t win a war just by digging in. He kept his troops moving constantly so the Germans never got any rest—never, at least not in my sector. So in that way Patton was a good leader, a soldier’s General. While he kept us moving, he kept everything else moving with it; we got the best meals and medical care—and if his Colonels needed new troops, he’d bring them himself; and that’s what happened. There he was, mad as hell with our replacements, and there was my Colonel standing there like a common private, scared sh*tless.

tunist. He knew that people were about to revolt because things were so bad by then. At that time, the common man felt downtrodden; it was the same for Americans, we were feeling the same pressures back then, but we had Roosevelt and they had Hitler. It almost happened here; Hughie Long tried the same approach as Hitler. He wanted to take things over and run things for himself. Guys were unemployed and would listen to anybody. They thought he had a better idea; that he could fix the situation. I forget where he came from, but he was always making a big deal about everything. Somebody finally got fed up with him and had him shot. Hitler was immune to this because he was the one doing the shooting. After he took over Germany he grabbed Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland; he wanted everything and we all knew it was coming. Everybody could see that, but Chamberlain missed the signs. People do not think of him as a good leader because a good leader has to see all of this at once. Now, if you ask if I blame Chamberlain for this war—well, that is possible, but when something happens, who gets blamed? Usually the loser. If we had lost the war they would be blaming us for the whole thing. Poor judgment is only part of the whole story; the rest is buried in everything that happened before you were ever around and what comes out at the end. I was drafted June 7, 1943. I found out the same way as everybody else: They sent a telegram. You get two free telegrams from the Army: One to tell you that you are drafted and one to tell your wife that you are coming home in a casket. Sure, I was drafted, but I didn’t mind going. You didn’t complain about it because it was the thing to do. All my friends were gone, even Joe. You did this sort of thing without asking questions. It was your duty—but, I can tell you that I wasn’t happy about Basic Training. I was at Camp Stewart, Georgia during the Summer; it was always hot and humid. I hated it there and they always gave me a hard time. I am not a guy who likes to be disciplined. I hate discipline of any kind except the kind of discipline I make for myself, like when I draw. If it is not right I’ll redraw it 19 times until I get it right, but Army discipline I wasn’t ready for. “Stand straight. Get up. Lay down. Do this. Do that.” They would wake us up at two o’clock in the morning and make us hike 50 miles, 25 miles up and 25 miles back. That is a long walk with a full pack, a rifle and everything else—that’s a long walk without them. And at two o’clock in the morning, are you sleeping or walking? And you are doing this all on roads as rough as hell. I was not prepared for the military experience personally; most of what I knew about the world came from the papers, books and movies—mainly movies. Like everybody else I was fed stereotypes by the movies, by writers who were pulling down big dough for writing that stuff; they didn’t realize that it was a kind of a beginning of an education for most of the country. There were very limited communications: A telephone was very hard to come by, not like today. To own an automobile you had to be semi-rich, and nobody ever took a cab; those were taken by rich people too. And airplanes? We all took trains back then and you only went on a train when you really had to go someplace. All the things we take for granted today were as far away from us as the sun. I know I may sound like an old rehashing-type, but those were different days. But I did appreciate the opportunity to meet all sorts of people from all over the country. It was a great opportunity, I can tell you. There were guys from Florida, Michigan, Utah, Texas—I don’t think there was one

Boot Camp

(this page and throughout this article) Very early Kirby face studies, circa the late-1930s.

World War II didn’t happen overnight. There are layers of history, a whole series of occurrences that brought us to that critical moment when war was inevitable. I think the British actually knew that but were too proud to admit that they had already failed to contain Hitler. To understand what happened you would have to go back to Napoleon, the Kaiser, the Russian Czar, the British Royalty; these guys never liked each other, they were horrible to each other. They never could keep a promise. They were so busy trying to outdo each other that they lost touch with their own people. Then there was the Great Depression; it hit everybody, not just here. In Germany it took 2 million marks to buy a loaf of bread. Hitler was an oppor17

state that wasn’t represented there. The experience helped me appreciate was the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. We were there for the variety of the country, in the people, the language, and culture. It about 2 days, then we left for France and landed on Omaha Beach. is incredible to think that we are as diverse as we are and how we have It was some days, maybe weeks after D-Day. I don’t remember the held together as one country. Really, it is the one clear fact of this exact day; they still hadn’t finished cleaning the place up. It was still country that makes it unique to the world. quite a mess and I still remember parts of it like it was yesterday. They Communications were very poor back then. We had no idea where moved us very quickly into the hedgerow country and into waiting some of the places were. Some guys didn’t even know where New York trucks, put us on more trucks and drove down so many roads that I was. Once I told a Texan that I was from Brooklyn and he asked me, could never tell you where I went. After a while you just forget how “What’s a Brooklyn?” Those were the times when convention collided long it took and where you were. But I remember the villages that we with new beginnings. I mean, the world was changing; the attitudes drove through. Those villages are still etched in my memory, really, were changing. Movies had a tremendous role in that change. No because they were in utter ruins. Utter ruins! You could see the former matter what people say, we learn from what we see in the movies and beauty of these places and I felt very sorry for the former inhabitants read in books. Through them you began to meet different types of because I am certain that many of them were killed. I felt sorry because people and learn about different types of cultures. I knew that we would probably add to the destruction, but it was a I met Southerners for the first time. That was a big experience. I necessary sacrifice, one that was apparent to everyone. We bypassed didn’t know anybody who spoke like that. Well, they spoke like that Paris—I never saw the city—and joined the rest of the forces that were in the movies, but here it was live and real. I met Texans. I met people being gathered together for Patton. who had grown up on 40 acres of farm and never seen a person they didn’t know for years, never seen a big city, and here I was from the big city and all I ever saw was a lot of people I didn’t know. In that If you have a place where there is communication between different particular way, I think the war did a lot for uniting America; it was a people, you are going to have collisions because of the stereotypes that galvanizing experience. It united the states because it forced people to have been learned. Many stereotypes live longer than many of the truths work and live in close quarters with each other; it forced us to meet they originally exaggerated; some of these stereotypes are still with us each other on common terms, but I can tell you that there were times today and are part of how we perceive the world around us. Back then when these meetings weren’t the happiest of meetings. the stereotype was a closely-held truth, something that you did not And I was right there; I was one of them. I had never seen a Texan in the flesh, the Texan had never seen somebody from New York; it was a country of people who had never met each other. I never saw a Texan until I got into a truck with one during the war. I wanted to talk to one and so I did and I can tell you that it was harder to do than I had imagined. It turned out that he had never talked to a New Yorker either; he thought we were all swells, wise guys with money to burn. Well, I corrected him on that and he was very surprised, but so was I; he had never ridden a horse in his life, he was from a big city like Houston, and he didn’t know anything about ranches—but he was still a tall man that talked like a Texan, so at least some of what I expected held true. I can’t say that about myself; I was not the stereotype of a New Yorker of the time. The thing is that we all met. I met people from Georgia. I found people of my own religion living in Georgia. There are a lot of Jewish people living in Savannah and there were a lot of Jewish people living in other parts of Georgia, in all parts of the South— even in Texas. I realized that there were a lot of similar people living all over the place. I began to get a feel for the United States in a way I never had before. I could envision the United States as the American flag, the stars and the stripes—the meaning of it. We were sent for the POE, the Port of Embarkation, in August and boarded this big crowded ship. I don’t remember the name, but it was part of a large convoy of ships escorted by small battleships and destroyers. We had what we called “baby battleships” which were pocket battleships, and large cruisers. There was a line of those on both sides of us. We were all there, together stretched out on the deck; pooped as hell. And, of course, the ocean was tossing everybody around. And no matter where you slept or stayed, you got seasick. I think we reached England at nightfall. We landed in Liverpool. England was in a terrible state. They were still suffering from the Blitz. The German Stukas and bombers had dropped bombs everywhere. The people were still sleeping in the subways—the Germans had made a mess of Liverpool—but we didn’t stay there long; they immediately took us out of Liverpool and we reached Gloucester. I remember a lot of walking and a lot of waiting. We were tramping through the streets there and were on our way to another POE. I House ad for Boy Commandos #30. Was meeting a Texan what prompted Jack to bring Tex into got a glimpse of the English countryside when we reached the the group after the war? (Andre is so excited about meeting Bob Feller, he lost his French accent!) embarkation area near Dartmouth and it was like a garden; it 18

Soldiering

mud. You look like garbage. Look at me. My uniform is pressed, three guys worked on my boots this morning.” He pointed at the mud on my helmet and said, “I can’t fight a guy like you. No wonder we are superior to you guys.” So, I pointed my rifle at his direction, like this to make a point, and I said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but you are my prisoner and my CO says you have to get into the truck.” He shut up after that and got into the truck, but this is what we saw; that’s the communication we had with them, so what else could we think? They probably believed everything they thought about us; they had a very effective propaganda system back then. I heard them say “We make better soldiers than you guys” more than once— so there must have been a reason they believed it—but usually we would yell back “I don’t really know about that” and that’s when everybody would start shooting at each other. Most Americans have an image of war—especially that war—that it was a carefully planned event; groups of men— groups of professional fighting men— going up against other professional soldiers, moving in columns, aiming their rifles, all under the orders of their commanding officers. Well, let me say that guys are guys no matter what the circumstances may be and different rules apply. We called each other names all the time; we were cursing each other in English, German, French, Hebrew; I had quite a large vocabulary by the time I got back—I could cuss somebody out in four different languages. Sometimes a shot was never fired but we’d still be yelling at each other to ‘go to hell’ or ‘go sh*t on yourself ’; but you never said anything about somebody’s mother, not unless you wanted somebody to take a potshot at you. Once while I was on patrol I entered a street and somebody from a window started calling me all kinds of names in German, and he was laughing. “I’m going to kill you,” he said. “I’m going to shoot you right in the face.” I stepped back against the wall and pulled back the bolt on my machine gun. I was More pencils from Our Fighting Forces #159 (these are from page 15). ready to wait this guy out, but then he dispute. If you saw a Texan in a movie, you believed what you saw. So, said something about my mother. I forget what, but it gets me pissed— what did I know about a Texan? That he would talk differently, that he I mean really pissed—so I stood back and began spraying where this was tall, he lived on a ranch, and rode horses for a living. Now if you ask voice has been calling. Then he started spraying me and soon the whole me what we thought about Germans, it was a very different picture before street is riddled with bullets. I guess there was more than one guy because the war than during the war. That’s one thing about stereotypes: They I could hear them running through the buildings. We all ran like hell, can change with the times and the situation. When they were peaceful but I never saw these guys. I think I hit two of them, but I didn’t stick friends, we thought of them as happy, jovial types—they had a beer stein around to count. I ran like crazy, the whole place was filled up with in one hand and a sausage sandwich in the other—but as our enemy they flying stuff. We were always calling each other names; we were always became high-stepping big jerks with an even bigger jerk for a leader. cursing each other and yelling slogans, like “Sh*t on Hitler” and The first German I met on the field was a German officer. He bawled whatever seemed appropriate for the moment. It was like what we did me out. He said, “Look at you, you look like a prick. You’re covered with in my neighborhood, only here we had guns and bombs—so it was 19

very serious business. I was a Scout in the infantry. If somebody wants to kill you, they make you a Scout. So, I was a Scout. I don’t know who wanted to kill me—maybe somebody that I upset somewhere, I don’t know. You don’t pull that kind of duty just because you’re a nice guy. Nice guys don’t get Scout duty. Maybe I was the new guy, so they said, “Give Scout duty to the new guy.” That’s probably what happened. You don’t pick some guy that you like to be a Scout; you’ll never hear the end of it. I remember that I walked into this town where they had the Command Center. This Lieutenant called me over and said, “Private Kirby?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Jack Kirby? The artist?” I said, “Yes sir. I drew Captain America…” “And Boy Commandos,” he said. Lots of guys knew who I was, so this did not surprise me—you have to remember that the Simon/Kirby name was very popular at the time and many adults were reading comic books back then. “So you can draw?” he said. “Yes sir,” I said, “Of course I can draw.” I was thinking, “Great, some officer wants me to draw his portrait.” Then he said, “Good. I am making you a Scout. You go into these towns that we don’t have and see if there is anybody there. Draw maps and pictures of what you see and come back and tell us if you find anything.” Well, I can tell you that was one time I was not happy to be known as an artist—but, I did my duty of course; I did what the Lieutenant told me to do. I went into these towns and it was like they show it in the movies, nobody was around and the place was a mess; buildings burned out, shattered rubble everywhere. I saw lampposts twisted into shapes, bent like pretzels. I once saw a piece of metal, an iron fence post, imbedded into the side of a brick building like a javelin, stuck right into the wall. It was probably thrown there by a huge explosion or a big German— probably by somebody that I didn’t want to meet. Pencils from Our Fighting Forces #159, page 16. (next page) Late 1930s Kirby drawing with political overtones. Once I entered this village, I was this time I was thinking that I was going to see some action. sent out with my platoon to scout for Germans. I went up one corner Then this big dog came out from behind the pile. It was a great big and looked into these store windows. All of them were empty of hound that was badly injured; it was cut and burned all over. They must course; the place was completely uninhabitable. It was like walking in have blown the building when the dog was in it. It stopped in front of on a movie set; I was walking around these foreign towns in full gear, me and just stared. It didn’t growl or whimper, it just looked at me with full uniform in these bombed-out French cities—it was like a dream or these deep accusing eyes; it was the most human expression I have ever a nightmare. Then I came to this French hotel. The front door was seen on an animal. It was like he was saying, “You, you did this to me!” charred and still hanging from its hinges. It had a big winding staircase Oh, I felt so guilty. I felt just terrible and so hurt, because to me it was in the lobby—probably a swanky place where all the swells went to like an accusation by a dumb creature that didn’t care why I was there or pick up girls. When I pushed the door open, I was startled by a sound anything about the Germans. All he knew was that I was there and he was from behind a pile of rubble. I was ready with my weapon and I said in hurting; that’s all this animal knew. All this was happening around him German and French to come out with your hands up. I waited for a and even though I had nothing to do with it, I’m still the cause. I didn’t moment. Nobody answered so I got worried and I called out again; 20

have the courage to look this beast in the eyes any longer. I lowered my rifle and it limped past me out of the wreckage and onto the road. He kept giving me these dirty looks, terrible dirty looks. I think I stood there for several more minutes before I continued my sweep. On another patrol I was with this guy, he owned a furniture store in Michigan; I was never in Michigan in my life and I had no idea what you did in Michigan. We probably called him ‘Mitch’—all I remember about him was that was all he would ever talk about. We came to this field and saw nine Germans on the other side; they were about 100 yards away. I remember there was high grass on either side of a narrow path. We saw each other and started yelling names; both sides were on patrol and you really didn’t stop to shoot unless you had to, unless some officer was there telling you to—the common German foot soldier felt the same way as we did. But this guy gets tired of yelling and said to me, “I’m going to get me that first one.” He pointed to a tall one and said, “I’m going to get him right in the eye.” I said, “You’re crazy. There are nine guys there, we are only four and we are on patrol at that. Now, let’s go and report what we saw.” He said, “No, I’m going to get me one of them.” You know—a guy gets stuff into his head; suddenly he can do this and that and all hell breaks loose. I was thinking, four guys against nine wasn’t really good odds, and you can’t hit a bucket at ten yards with an M-1 rifle. The standard issue GI weapon was the M-1 rifle; M-1s buck in your hand, you can’t hit a damn thing with an M-1. It is not a sniper’s rifle—the M-1 is a sh*tty gun—so if you hit something you are aiming at at 100 yards away, then it is by luck. So, I’m thinking what this guy will do is miss or nick somebody and then they’ll put fifty holes in us. So I yelled at him, more forceful because I can see it in his eyes that this guy was getting serious. “Get in the g*ddamn f*cking jeep.” He said ‘no’ and stood out there where they could see him with his rifle raised like this, and they see him. He said, “Watch me do it” and from 100 yards— an impossible shot with an M-1—he gets this guy square between the eyes, just because he convinced himself that he could do it. Of course everything broke loose then and we all took off in a big hurry. In the Army we used to say, “Taking off like big-assed birds.” Well, we took off like big-assed birds, you know? There might have been fifty Germans after us for all we knew, coming down from the other direction. We were on patrol, constantly on patrol. On patrol you see the strangest things—things that I can tell you are beyond anything you could call normal. Once I had an old guy with a little gray beard run over to me. I can hear his thin little voice as he looked into my eyes. Tears were running down his cheek. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He blinked a couple of times and he said, “You’re Jewish.” I said, “Yeah, I’m Jewish.” So he said, “Come with me.” So I ran after this little old guy with the rest of my squad behind me. It’s a long road; I remember some farm buildings and a factory. It could have been an ambush, but we figured that it probably wasn’t—I mean, what would the Germans be doing with this little gray beard? Then we came to this walled-in place, this stockade, and he pointed. “There, there,” he said. I stopped. German guards were leaving by the dozens; I could see them jumping over the wall and getting out of there the best way they could. They knew that I am a Scout, they knew that this big division was right behind me. I was standing there looking at them as they yelled out ‘f*ck you’ in English. They all said that by that time. They thought it was a big insult, but I don’t think they really knew what the word meant. There they went, over the side, and then my buddies and me opened up the stockades. I thought I was going to see Prisoners of War, you know, some of our guys that got caught in some of the early fighting—but what I saw would pin you to the spot like it did me. Most of these people were Polish; Polish Jews who were working in some of the nearby factories. I don’t remember if the place really had a name, it was a smaller camp—not like Auschwitz, but it was horrible just the

same. Just horrible. There were mostly women and some men; they looked like they hadn’t eaten for I don’t know how long. They were scrawny. Their clothes were all tattered and dirty. The Germans didn’t give a sh*t for anything. They just left the place; just like leaving a dog behind to starve. I was standing there for a long time just watching, thinking to myself, “What do I do?” Just thinking about it makes my stomach turn. All I could say was, “Oh, God.” Well, my outfit was not too far behind me. They never sent us too far ahead. We knew the Germans were out there, we just didn’t know where and what kind of troops they had; and the Germans—well, they knew we were coming. That’s why they ran. They saw me and thought that the rest of the Army was right behind me. The Germans never fired a shot; what the hell were they going to waste time with me for? What the hell was I going to do? They knew I was just a Scout. They probably said, “Screw him. We’d better get out of here,” or else they would have all been prisoners or worse. I’m sure it would have been worse when my outfit had seen what I had seen and captured any one of them. We would have gone crazy on them. They probably knew what would happen and tried to get out of there before we realized what they had done in that place. My outfit finally caught up with me. They were as astonished as I was. Whatever went on, I certainly didn’t have charge of it. I went wherever my Lieutenant posted me. I never knew what really happened later. I don’t know who took credit, but I can tell you that I found it. War is a sequence of events; you’ve probably heard that there were these long periods where there was nothing to do but to sit and wait. Then you walked a lot, and then there were those times that you knew that any second it was curtains. I had a few of those moments. Most of the time was when they were shooting 88s at us; the German 88 was an anti-armor gun, but it was also a very effective anti-personnel weapon and they used it quite a lot on us. You could shoot hundreds of 88 rounds in a minute; a battery of 88s would churn the ground around you and pulverize bricks in an instant. The 88 was a fairly big shell, not like long-range artillery, but big enough that if you came into contact with one of these things you’d

never see tomorrow. Once we came up against some of these things; they were all coming in and stepping up and shooting, pumping lead. I was lying there just shooting away with my rifle—that’s all I had. My whole division was pinned down. Eventually our artillery cleared them out, but not until a bunch of us were killed. It was a holy mess. You could hear the shells fly past your head like a high-speed mosquito. That was when you knew you had a close call. But not just the sound, you could feel the pressure. I experienced that more than once. Once during a fight some guy crawled up to me from the back and he grabbed my feet. I almost shot his head off. He said to me, “Pick out five men and go see Marlene Dietrich.” This was while this fighting is going on! I turned to this guy and said, “You are out of your mind. Report to the doctor.” I was at the end of this rock wall and chunks of it were flying around from 88 shells, the earth around me was going up in big clots, all the rest was being pounded by machine guns, and I was laying there talking to this big jerk. This guy said, “If you don’t want the detail then I’ll get another guy.” I said, “All right, all right. I’ll take the detail.” I still didn’t believe this guy, but I picked out five other guys—they thought I was crazy too—and they came along with me. We crawled about 100 yards and walked another 400 where there was a truck waiting and other GIs were getting on. So these other guys and me got on this truck and they took us about 7 miles down the road away from the action. And sure enough, there she was, Marlene Dietrich, along with Bing Crosby, Martha Raye, and some other actors. They put on a show for us; comedy, Vaudeville acts, singing, dancing—all that in this hell on Earth. I couldn’t believe it, the guys with me couldn’t believe it—our jaws must have dropped and hit the ground. After a while I wasn’t even thinking about the friggin’ war. At one time Marlene Dietrich came out in GI underwear and it was crazy as all hell. Meanwhile the Germans had deepened their defense and some of the fire reached this little theatre they had set up. A shell hit not far away, I felt the concussion, and we all expected to be called back to the action, but the show went on. Bombs fell closer and gunfire got clearer, and all the while these actors kept the show going as if nothing else mattered. It was a real morale booster for us. It upped my respect for these performers immensely; for all performers everywhere—they were really what they said they were, real troupers. There they were right up near the line; I mean, how far is 7 miles? They took the risk almost as much as the soldiers did. It was a crazy war, but the next big war will probably be crazier still. There were no atom bombs back then. We had no technology to speak of, nothing that was very reliable. Our radios barely worked and the telephones were almost as bad; the lines were always getting cut. In many ways I think that war was the last human war. We were just a bunch of guys with guns. The danger was always very real—there wasn’t an unknown enemy figure coming up against you, you could see their faces and you fought them at very close quarters. It was very personal. The danger was especially real if you were a Scout. Now we use satellites and high altitude aircraft to watch the enemy from a safe distance; but a Scout can be captured and have the sh*t beat out of him—you’d probably never get out alive. Scouts were treated like spies even though we were covered under the Geneva Conventions. We had a very high mortality rate. You didn’t live very long as a Scout—but you still did your job. Sooner or later you got so you just didn’t care about the danger or you just got stupid. That is the way it was.

Home Soon it was the middle of Winter and the winds were bitter cold— colder than before—and there was snow all over the place. When you are in the field there is no place to sleep except in the snow. My outfit was about to move into Bastogne but I was withdrawn, my whole unit was withdrawn. We were beat up and replacements had to take over. Myself, I had a bad case of frostbite on both feet and lower legs. Don’t think I just got nippity-ippity frozen—they were frozen. It took them a year to even get back some of the original color. I was in the hospital, but part of my outfit went on to Bastogne; the others went further to Metz. One of the publishers who published comic books, his young cousin was in my regiment and he was a replacement for what was left of my regiment. He was one of the guys who went to Bastogne and Belgium with my outfit and he told me about it. I was in the hospital for several months for my legs and I was in the hospital for a little over a year waiting for my feet to recover. They were considering amputation; my toes were black, but I eventually recovered. It was a hell of an experience. So they could send me home, but I missed the Queen Mary. I caught a cold in England and they wouldn’t let me go aboard; so I missed the Queen Mary and they put me on this g*ddamn tug, a hospital tug that went like this, back and forth all the way across the ocean. I heard that they gave us the best meals in the world, but I couldn’t eat them. I almost starved myself to death because I was so seasick. I was so seasick. Once I fell out of bed; I was glad to fall out of bed so I could feel pain someplace else in my body. I was sick as a dog. There were thousands of other guys on that ship, doing about the same thing: Lying out on the deck like dead men. I was never so sick in all my life. The Queen Mary was back in three days; this ship took nine. It was a slow ship, and it had a lot of men on board. I didn’t see nurses; I didn’t see anybody except the other guys that were on this ship. The funniest thing I saw was a Lieutenant jerking off because the Germans shot one of his balls away. He wanted to see if it still worked. This guy was uncertain. I just saw him working away on it. This gave the whole event a little lightness because most of the other cases were very serious; many men lost limbs, some lost part of their faces. I saw guys with half a face; one you could look inside part of his head. And I saw a lot of guys who were scarred deeply in other ways. Listen, I was doing all right compared to most of the other guys. Once I got into a game of poker with some paratroopers; it was like going to a party with a bunch of killers. These guys are off the battlefield, but still they have the instinct to kill. They were in wheelchairs, and I was in a wheelchair, but these guys are playing cards like we were going to kill somebody. Some of them were sending home the jackpots they won—I heard some guys really raked in the cash that way—but in this game, the jackpot was only a couple of hundred dollars. I forget exactly how much was in the pot, but it was a pile on the floor of stuff that looked like French coupons. They were occupation marks and the pile was starting to get bigger and these guys are getting quieter—and the worst part was that I was winning. I don’t win card games, I don’t win anything, but in this case I hit the jackpot. They got pissed and started chasing me down the deck in their wheelchairs. I said ‘sh*t on this’ and got out of my wheelchair and took off. It was funny as hell because I won—I won that jackpot— but I took off and the money went flying through the air. I don’t know what happened to anything. We caused a riot on the whole ship. 22

Whoever won that jackpot would have gotten the same treatment. It was a whole nutty affair. War itself is a nutty affair, but somehow I think it may get worse. Look at Russia and Afghanistan. The Russians are a great big power and she goes down over Afghanistan and kicks the sh*t out of their people, but then she runs like hell. Why? The Afghanis have one thing that the Russians haven’t got—they like to die. That is part of their religion and they are very religious. The Russians had never run up against that and I can tell you that the war in Europe would have been very different if the Germans were like that. A guy from another culture wouldn’t know what to do. The Russians didn’t

know what to do. I mean, what do you do when you fight an enemy who has a martyr complex? I myself, as a General, if I came up against a culture that was completely different than my own, I would investigate it thoroughly. I don’t believe that the Russians were that thorough with the Afghani and this was their fatal mistake. They assumed they just were peasant people and they could just mow over them with their high technology. The Afghani had some technology and I imagine that plenty of them got killed by what the Russians threw at them, but they held their line and they held the Russians back. There were plenty of dead soldiers around—thousands—and it was these farmers and peasants who were doing most of the damage. Soon, even our technology will not protect us. Our opponents will have a different mind and we will find it very difficult to understand them. The Russians are very much like us and our soldiers have a lot in common. Can either army afford the odds of losing thousands and thousands on a war? We will have to find another way to settle our differences. It is in that way that I would say that war is senseless. There is nothing that you would call “romantic” about war. Sure, in the movies and on television they paint a great picture of the fellowship that it creates. I’ve seen war bring lots of people together, but I can tell you that the cost is extremely high: Not just in terms of lives, but in the human spirit. I think that we are diminished by war; our character as a race is somehow reduced by each war that we allow to happen. Hitler had to be destroyed, there was no choice and I was glad to do my duty— but if there were another way to bring him down I would have preferred it. Perhaps the Germans would have been defeated by their own ambition; they could not possibly hold all of Europe forever—the more you force people down, the more they will push back. It is human nature to be free and I feel that eventually there would have been a revolt. Perhaps it was the right thing to do, but I do not think that this applies to other wars that this country has fought. This country has always been at war—it was started by war. Perhaps that is how it will end.★

Pencils from Our Fighting Forces #159, page 17.

(Parting Note: Private First Class Jack Kirby returned to the United States January 1945 and was honorably discharged July 20. He was awarded a Combat Infantry Badge and the European/African/Middle Eastern Theater ribbon with one Bronze Battle Star. There was only one negative comment in his official records regarding an incident just before his discharge when he apparently left the base without leave, but that’s another story.)

Alex Ross Interview Interviewed by George Khoury (Who can forget the first time they saw an illustration by Alex Ross? He is quite possibly the most popular artist to arrive on the comics scene since the Neal Adams experience of the late Sixties. He blew us away with his romanticized vision of the Marvel Universe in Marvels. Kingdom Come caused shockwaves throughout the industry and fandom for its sheer power and epic storytelling. And with Earth X, Ross continues to develop as a storyteller, exploring the inner workings of Marvel’s characters, especially many of the ones created by Jack Kirby. Our thanks to Alex for taking time out of his busy schedule to conduct this telephone interview in late 1999, and to Gary Land for supplying much of the Ross art that accompanies it here.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How has Jack Kirby been an influence on you? ALEX ROSS: For me, he’s more of a direct influence upon artists who have influenced me. I’m one of those guys who grew up reading comics by guys who were influenced by Kirby. Even though I did see Kirby—I don’t know; as early as when I was five when he was doing the Sandman comic for DC. I love that comic to this day; it’s one of my favorite things that was forgotten about him. But guys like George Pérez, who he influenced heavily—just about everybody drawing comics post1960s had a huge amount of Kirby in them, whether they like it or not. Even Neal Adams probably owes a great deal to Kirby because of the energy the man put into the entire nature of the art form.

TJKC: In your opinion, where does Jack Kirby fit into the history of comics? ALEX: Well, I’ve said this before in interviews: I feel like Jack is, more or less, the Picasso of comics. He took the form from an infancy stage—you know, the basic illustrations—to all different levels till eventually creating his own form of art out of the language of comics. Also, his expression was indigenous to comics; the energy that he gave comics was unlike anything else, anywhere else. TJKC: What were your first Kirby books? Was it mostly his ’70s work? ALEX: I had a handful of them, and very early on I was familiar with the stuff he was doing for Marvel in the Seventies. I was also equally familiar with reprints, the origin stories of this or that Marvel character (because Marvel was doing a lot of paperbacks at that time) and so I was seeing some of the earliest adventures he had drawn of the FF, Avengers, or whatever. At an early age I was seeing the stuff that really made him famous—really made him what he was to the comics industry. TJKC: Were you naturally drawn to his stuff, or was it too rough for your taste? ALEX: In a weird way I did have a natural draw to it to some degree. In that time period I was personally influenced by what John Romita or Neal Adams brought to art. Those guys were actually a bigger, more direct inspiration on what I thought was the ultimate comics style, but then Kirby had this unbelievable charm for me. I know it doesn’t sound right to just put it in terms of charm, but that’s really what it wound up being. I really loved what his stuff looked like. Alex’s pencil rough for his version of Kirby’s cover to Avengers #4.

TJKC: Do you ever wonder what drove him to do comics for over fifty years, in all different genres? ALEX: It seems to me that he was always exploring different stuff. In the Forties, he bounced around with a lot of different titles other than Captain America. Then going into romance, going into the humor stuff that he did, going into all the stuff that occupied his time 24

in the Fifties—I mean, the guy tried to do so many different things. He always kept trying to expand his horizons. The reason that he had such a long history of super-heroes is that he always found new concepts and new creative room to expand upon them. TJKC: It appears that a person like Kirby only comes every hundred years. How desperately does this industry need a new Kirby to inject some life into it? ALEX: I don’t know if it’s so much based upon just the talent of a talented individual, you know? Kirby wasn’t the reason why comics sold in the first place; that can’t be credited to him. Kirby has more to do with the greatest work, the most inspiring work, that happened within comics. He doesn’t deserve the credit of being necessarily the juggernaut of why comics ever sold, period. In fact, the comics that Kirby is most associated with weren’t often the best-selling comics of their time. I don’t need to argue what Kirby’s worth was. In essence Kirby’s greatest accomplishment was the degree to which one man could inspire so many others—that his works last for so long. There’s simply no better creative force within American comics. Having said that, let me clarify this is American comics, not worldwide comics—because there are plenty of comics around the world, outside the fact that comics were invented in America. Their styles are not affected at all by whatever Kirby did, and in fact they have a better, more stable industry than we have. Japan is not really reeling because of what Jack Kirby did. But as far as America goes, he’s tops. He’s the thing.

TJKC: With the Kirby recreations that you’ve done, you’ve had a chance to study his art a little closer than others. Where is the power inside his art? ALEX: The layout. The energy that is in every single stroke the guy put in. You could sit there and take it apart and compare it to other illustrators and say, “Well, it’s not as realistic as this or as overrendered as this.” But it’s all based upon the energy of the layout, the energy of the line—which is simple enough on its own. By looking at the Kirby Collector, you can really see just how much more power there was in his pencils than any inker, generally, was able to capture. TJKC: What was the process behind the Captain America artwork you did for the cover of TJKC #19? ALEX: I basically just xeroxed it right out of my Steranko’s History of Comics so I already had a copy of the thing. What I did was I took the xerox of that, blew it up to the size I wanted the piece to be, and then had that transferred to a board. I would than basically redraw every single line over his, down the board. I was basically redrawing the thing; before that, all I did was a rough sketch of the same piece to sort of loosely break down the shadow areas that I was going to create that Kirby did not have already, and I was taking the same light sources that he already created: The explosions, the gun blast, and taking all of that and using that as where the In case you missed it: Alex’s cover painting for TJKC #19. It’s just been released as a full-color lithograph; check your local comics shop.

lights were coming from. So you can sort of figure those figures lit by those particular points. It creates certain shadows here and there that Kirby might not have been considering fully, and the thing is that it didn’t really change too drastically what he already had there, it just sort of augmented it. TJKC: Were you given a choice as to what piece you would paint? What attracted you to that drawing? ALEX: That was my choice; John [Morrow] was talking about a [different] piece that he thought I might be interested in, which he eventually did run as a recent cover—I think the Red Skull was in it. TJKC: The one Dan Adkins inked [TJKC #25]? ALEX: Yeah. I just thought, “You know what? If I’m only gonna get to do one piece like this in my entire life...”, I wanted it to be something that... I know I love it. I know I wanted to paint it. I just kept thinking, “I’d rather paint that Steranko piece.” That’s when I started talking about it. Had anybody actually even inked the thing? Because nobody even inked it at that point. It was totally up in the air for somebody to come in and do what I did. TJKC: In that issue, Dave Stevens inked the same piece.

ALEX: Right. That turns out to be this really weird twist of fate, where Stevens [inked it] without any knowledge of what I was doing. It was kind of screwy that they even printed it in the same issue. But John told Stevens what the plans were, and Stevens didn’t mind that we would sort of be basically running against each other. If I were Stevens I wouldn’t have wanted that to be the case. I would have said either put me in the issue before or after or whatever. I didn’t think it would be a good thing to have two artists so directly compared like that; I don’t think it benefits anybody because all people are going to do is just sit there and go, “Huh? I see that he did this and he didn’t do this.” TJKC: Yeah, it sort of becomes like that book on comic book inking where there’s the same panel inked by twelve different guys. ALEX: Right. I don’t want to beat out anybody else, and I don’t want to be directly compared to anybody else. I think it creates a level of animosity no matter what you do, so I almost prefer to stay away from that kind of thing; but again, Dave knew exactly what they had planned for it. TJKC: What’s the origin of the Mister Miracle and New Gods sketches [shown here]? 26

ALEX: Well, I threw a bunch of different covers at Overstreet to do recreations of. TJKC: So they all had Kirby for the main theme? ALEX: No, not all of the them. That was the year I did Avengers #4 and a recreation of the Superboy cover—that was a Curt Swan recreation. But the two pieces kind of parallel well enough, so I did wind up doing one Kirby recreation and another that wasn’t. They could have picked covers like the Mister Miracle #1 or the New Gods #1. TJKC: Are these some of your favorite covers? ALEX: I just think that they are covers that stand out; we all know them instinctively. I like to do that: To take covers that we all know very well, that have sort of a presence in the history of comics, and do them again, just so you can see what the take might be. A lot of times I’m thinking about how I’d be capturing what the artist himself was thinking of. When I recreated the Captain America #1 piece, I altered the way that Cap’s jumping out at you. It’s the kind of force, the intent of that—it may not translate as much to modern audiences the way that it might with a little bit more of the polish that comes with painting. With the figures, I overstress a lot of the drama in the placement of people’s bodies and the placement of Cap in the scene. I would never claim that I was actually improving upon what Kirby did. It’s just sort of like I’m hyping the tension. I did recreations of X-Men #1, Fantastic Four #1, and in each case I follow generally the same principle. You find that if you compare all of those pieces a lot of the same aesthetics are being tried. Where I take an actual lower angle on the shot, maybe I close in a little. These are also not necessarily Kirby’s greatest compositions, but probably the most classic covers we remember of things that he did covers for. Let’s say for example, the covers of Action Comics #1 and Superman #1 are not the best pieces that Joe Shuster ever did of Superman; he actually got to be a very good artist beyond that point, but still that’s what is known the most. Avengers #1 has a cover we all know pretty well, but it’s a sh*tty cover. You’ve got Loki barely on the side. It’s not a dramatic shot for your first issue cover of a brand new group of super-heroes.

vision of Orion in Kingdom Come. How did you arrive at this conclusion? ALEX: Well, I never officially knew anything about what Kirby intended for the future of the New Gods storyline. I just really felt like the kind of things he was laying down about “like father, like son” could be played out in this sort of pastiche with the Godfather film where you see Michael Corleone essentially become his father by the end of the movie. Everything about his personal character seems to be driven to make sure that didn’t happen to him, but that’s exactly what happens to him. In some ways it’s slightly different, but it’s a feeling that ultimately there’s been a failure of fulfillment—that the person just became their father. TJKC: Which are genuinely your favorite Kirby moments, and why do these stand out? ALEX: Generally, I love the Kirby sense of design. It’s probably a whole thing unto itself; Kirby took it to a whole new alien level, like some of the more freaky stuff he started to do in New Gods and Eternals. My favorite designs are probably the designs he did of the Celestials; really freaked-out stuff that was just completely incomparable to anybody else—completely his own thing. TJKC: Is there a particular Kirby character that you really love? ALEX: That’s a pretty heavy question, because there are so many. In a weird way, my first exposure to Kirby as an artist and as a designer was the 1970s Sandman series he drew, which was very short-lived, but I really loved that character design.

TJKC: I loved your Fantastic Four #1 recreation in which you slanted the angle, making a more dramatic cover. ALEX: I’m giving you a little bit of a sense of vertigo. I’m thrusting you. The arm of the monster seems to be raised more and it thrust the camera through more. It’s stuff that I feel when I think about the cover as I remember it. It’s the kind of energy that Kirby’s stuff infused in me, but maybe the placement of it is a little bit more Neal Adams or something. TJKC: What would have a completed New Gods #1 by you looked like? Would it have had that collage-type thing behind Orion? ALEX: I was probably going to create it with a real brilliant sunflare behind him and have a lot of glow coming off that—a lot of rim lighting of the figure and then some under(previous page) Alex’s pencil roughs for versions of the covers to New Gods #1 and Mister Miracle #1. lighting to underscore exactly how clearly (above) Kirby/Royer cover to Sandman #2. we see Orion. Maybe it would increase a sense of mood and drama or even darkness about the character. All I love that character. I always thought it was a shame that nobody ever those things would have been possible with that. really did anything cool with it after he left. Nobody embraced it with the same respect that they give the New Gods, so it just kind of got TJKC: One of your most interesting Kirby interpretations is your dumped on by a lot of different people, including Neil Gaiman. 27

But as far as any specific guys, I love Captain America, Reed Richards, The Thing, all those guys equally. Jim Krueger and I have a special affinity for Machine Man that we had talked about for years before realizing how we would make use of him as our lead protagonist [in Earth X], and then just how much more that turned out to make sense over time. It was weird how it worked out to such benefit. It’s my belief that we tapped into a lot of the things that Kirby had, where he just started these characters initially—like, you know, Machine Man was HAL 9000 from 2001, taken to the point of being a hero instead of a villain. TJKC: He was the robot with a soul. ALEX: Right. That’s what the movie did with him, and then of course it was something that Kirby gravitated towards by doing the 2001 adaptation and then working on the series—and then Machine Man was born out of that as a response. I believe—I don’t think I have to ask Kirby this to find out—that he was really taking the HAL 9000 concept to the point of, “Why does a robot have to turn out to be a villain?”; when in fact the robot turns out to be a sort of Adam of the human creator, who more or less has abandoned this creature to fend for itself. In fact, this Machine Man turns out to be the best of what a man can be. That actually was the simple moral tale that Kirby wanted to relate. I think that we were able to readdress a lot of that same sense that Kirby had with it, and take it to a level that was right within the same framework. We brought it right back to the root of 2001 by using the Monolith again, which he used in the initial phase of the character. It brings it full circle with other aspects of the world Kirby created with the Watcher on the moon, that relationship with Earth, the history of The Eternals as far as them coming from the Celestials, and how it all relates with Marvel history. TJKC: Do you ever find it scary that many people who work in the medium HAL the computer goes bonkers in these Kirby pencils from the 2001: A Space Odyssey Treasury Edition. today don’t know who Jack Kirby was, and what he meant to this industry? TJKC: But you know there are times this industry is pretty harsh on its ALEX: I don’t think that ‘scary’ is the term I would use. It’s more creators. ‘unfortunate,’ but to a certain degree it doesn’t matter because the ALEX: The business side of it, the business sucks. Just about everybody truth of the matter is that no matter who they’re being influenced by that’s been through it has been scarred by it unless they worked out a out there, those people are being influenced by Kirby—and whether really good deal up-front. You’re gonna have your Kevin Eastmans, or not they realize it or want to admit it, Kirby influenced the entire but you’re going to have more guys like Bill Finger who co-created field. The field was never the same after the work he did within it. So I Batman, but his name isn’t on it—just like Jack Kirby’s name isn’t on could be a huge follower of guys that are all post-Kirby, but that’s the Fantastic Four whenever you see it appear, and it probably will never thing: They’re all post-Kirby. appear on there. TJKC: Do you think there might have been times that Kirby questioned TJKC: Just the fact that New Gods wasn’t finished the way it should why he continued to work in this mostly thankless industry? have been was a big enough crime. ALEX: I don’t believe that’s the case. If you want to say thankless in terms ALEX: That was unfortunate, but again, when you’re going to work of money—that he might have gotten screwed out of rights or—! 28

with DC and Marvel, they’re “the man.” They can pull the rug from under you at any time. I don’t like it but I have to put up with it. I can make my own decision about when I’m not willing to put up with that anymore. I always feel, myself, that I’m walking on a tightrope that’s eventually going to be pulled out from under me. And everything that I’ve invested myself, emotionally and businesswise, is going to be wrecked by some thoughtless action on the part of a major publisher I work with.

root. In a lot of ways, the best way to see something for what it is, is to reexamine it from a fresh perspective, and a lot of it has to do with changing what appears to be in the immediate visual. TJKC: Your stories bring back a lot of that classic grandeur that’s quite reminiscent of the glory days of Kirby. Is this an element that you find lacking in today’s comics? ALEX: I find that everybody is trying to do their best for the most part. So much of it is regurgitation of what they’ve already read and I’ve already read. The best you can try and do is take a few steps backwards and reassess for yourself the whole thing as much as you can. If that’s influenced by Kirby, or if I’m following through on something he was doing, that’s cool.★

TJKC: How does a renaissance man like yourself do Earth X and go into the future of these characters—and at the same time do you believe that you’ve succeeded in keeping the Lee and Kirby essence alive? ALEX: If we haven’t proven that to everybody who’s actually reading the series, I don’t know what series they’ve been reading; because everything we’ve been doing in the entire first double-sized issue of the series was all about the history that related to the stuff that Jack created. There’s always going to be a debate about “who did what?” in Fantastic Four writing, right? TJKC: Yes. ALEX: Or Thor or any of that stuff. But all the stuff Jack did when he came back to Marvel in the Seventies, we know he wrote it all because it said so. That’s the stuff we actually went with the most: Everything that’s related to Machine Man and the Eternals, which means the history of the Celestials. The Celestials wind up being the most important thing about the Earth X series as far as what they did to mankind—why the world is what it is. The visual changes that might seem extreme or immediately unorthodox to the fan’s reception of those characters is really born of the history of the characters. Captain America is Jack Kirby’s first main character, with Joe Simon. In a lot of ways he’s a very tragic hero, because he’s the soldier for whom the war never ends. For him to be revived from the Forties into the Sixties, and still be fighting what seems to be an infinite battle with various forces of evil—this is a guy who’s cursed by the fact that he is the ultimate soldier who serves no other purpose in life than to be that. He’s never ever been allowed another side to his life. He hasn’t developed a lot of really notable personal relationships of the normal kind.

Alex’s unused pencil rough for a proposed recreation of the cover to Captain America #1.

TJKC: Yeah, it’s not like he can take a day off or something. ALEX: Right, he really has always been that leader. It’s what he was designed to be. It’s what he was created to be as a man. So we have that, as far as it wearing on him in his future. The scars that are personal to him are now visual; the fact that he was a man essentially wearing a flag instead of something that’s a designed costume. That’s a reflection that he’s somewhat decayed; that’s a reflection, more or less, of the nature of the country today, really—not even so much the country of the future, but just what the truth is. So again, in defense of the whole thing as it relates to the history of super-heroes, we spend four pages in the beginning of each book going through why you should give a sh*t about any of these characters. For those who are uninitiated and for those who already are, we’re giving you a different perspective in a way to look at the historical events leading up to these characters’ lives and importance. So I don’t argue that everything about Earth X is an appreciation and a celebration of the history of even the present of Marvel Comics, but specifically of what came from the original twenty years of Marvel Comics publishing. Look at every single thing I did; there’s somewhere you can bounce it back to the history of those characters, and some things that are having some fun at the expense of things, like making a fat Spider-Man. In a lot of ways I’m making fun of the comics fan with that; here’s a guy who is sort of like the fan-favorite super-hero, and at a certain point he just becomes a regular guy. He’s beat himself up for letting himself go; when you work it into the actual story, it makes so much sense with the personal character and history of Peter Parker. Anybody looking at what I did with Kingdom Come or Earth X can compare it back to where the idea came from. What I’m going back to is the 29

The Two Jacks: Kirby’s Fine Art Influence by Mark Staff Brandl he relationship between the comics art world and that of the ”fine” arts has been a strained one. Yet both are important forms of creativity and are of equal importance to many people, including some fine artists—including me. Traditionally, “high” artists have been condescending to comics art, seeing it as at best a kind of accidental success, and at worst as corporate hackwork. Even the adjectives one must use to name the fields reflect this. Comics fans, similarly, view fine art as too elitist, assuming that the often difficult works of experimental artists are publicity ploys. Impartially judged, both camps are wrong—and yet, unfortunately, sometimes right. Accept my terminology here as simply indicative, not judgmental. Fine artists are those who create in the context of galleries, selling to collectors. Comics means artists of the sequential who create in the context of publishing and sell to a “mass” audience. (This is now in transition; probably niche audiences are replacing a mass public, but that’s a subject for another time.) The Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein were the first to begin breaking down this barrier from the “fine” side. His work began as “slumming,” yet he gained respect for comics art as he developed. Many fine artists today grew up with comics as their first art source, thus referring to them without cynicism. This is not always well understood by the two opposing camps. My large abstract paintings, for instance, feature images conceptually derived in processes reminiscent of John Cage or Marcel Duchamp. I have great respect for these two, for Marc Rothko, Jackson Pollock—and Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, and Al Williamson. It is time to end the silly separation of “high” and “low.” Both ends should concentrate on being against mediocrity and cliché, the greater enemies of all art. We must ignore the division. This conviction surfaced in a series of works based on the artistic heroes of my childhood—comic book artists of the ’60s. I made twelve handmade books, some very large installations, and the illustrated drawing, called The Two Jacks—that is, Jack Kirby and Jackson Pollock. I used my standard technique to create the source images, thus it helps to understand this activity. As two critics (Ammann and Schuenze) recently described it:

be far more complex in fractal magnification, dissolving and simultaneously resolving themselves. Broken-down details in zoom allow new structures to originate. The images resulting from this process are then painted.”

While altering Kirby’s drawings in this process, it struck me that they reminded me of Pollock. The images of both these artists are huge in spirit. When I visually remember most comics art, it appears in my thoughts at ordinary comic book panel scale. Likewise much fine art is unintentionally the small scale of an art history book reproduction. However, think of Kirby’s work. Don’t the drawings come into your mind’s eye as huge, mural-like explosions? His images are small in reality but immense in scale. Pollock’s paintings, in a similar fashion, can only be understood live, and then appear larger than they are. Reproductions lose all layering and violence. I realized the power lay to a large extent in Kirby’s marks themselves, as well as in what they represent. No matter how wonderful the inker, his pencils are always light-years better. Using the process outlined above I transformed the strokes making up the knees of Captain America in Kirby’s drawing for Jim Steranko’s first History of Comics. Undreamed-of abstract power was the result— that’s Jack! It was a heady delight to feel as if I were collaborating with him and celebrating him, while uniting important disparities in art:

“[Brandl] enlarges lines, figures, strokes, or aspects of an image important to him in numerous steps and with a profusion of technologies, e.g. photographing, copying, faxing, computer print-out, etc. Interference, ‘noise’, mistakes or irregularities come to the fore through this ‘microscopying’ technique. What are perceived as perfect contours in the source image prove to

The Two Jacks by Mark Staff Brandl, black colored pencil on paper, 1999, 5' x 3'. Mark took Kirby's Captain America drawing from the Steranko History of Comics, isolated the knee, enlarged it, and spun it 180 degrees [as shown above] to become the source material for this abstract work.

Kirby Cakes By Noëlle Depelley, wife of French TJKC reader Jean Depelley n France, on the Epiphany day (the coming of the three Kings at Bethlehem’s crèche—or “cowshed” if you prefer—on the first Sunday of January after the Christ’s birth), it is a tradition for families and friends to gather around a special cake, called Kings’ Cake (the French equivalent of the Twelfth Night Cake) made of brioche or frangipani, in which a one-inched porcelain or plastic figurine—a so-called “bean” (fève in French)—was initially put. The youngest guest goes under the table to blindly assign a piece of cake to everyone. The lucky one who finds the bean is elected king (or queen) of the day and must choose his queen/her king among those assembled, the two monarchs finally wearing golden cardboard crowns. Last January, my husband and I were at home with a few friends, mostly comics fans, to enjoy this popular custom. After the pieces of cake were all distributed, everyone started eating, wondering who would find the precious object (I must confess that I am an avid bean collector, owning more than 5000 fèves). All of a sudden, someone screamed “I got it” and pulled a small colorful character out of his mouth. “He’s got a weird name: Darkid? No, Darkseid!” The other guests suddenly stopped eating. “But, it’s a Kirby character!” We all stood up to see the peculiar figurine and it was indeed the famous DC super-villain (as my husband explained to me). You can easily imagine my surprise (and disappointment), as I desperately wanted to change the subject of our previous discussions. No such luck! Is it necessary to say that the following day, my husband visited every bakery he could to complete the series, wishing to find other Kirby figurines? No luck again. This Darkseid bean belongs to a 12-piece Superman series and is the only character from Jack’s Fourth World (I’m trying to improve my comics vocabulary!). New series of beans related to comics, pulps or movies have been released, such as Tarzan, Zorro, Spider-Man, and Batman, in addition to the traditional characters from the crèche (Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and their animals, and the three Kings). Now my husband accompanies my collector friends and me to the fève conventions to find other Darkseid figurines for his fellow comics fans. Every year now on the Epiphany day, my husband’s got a special thought for a fourth King named Jack Kirby.★

Detail from Jackson Pollock’s painting Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952, enamel and aluminum paint on glass on canvas, 6 7⁄ 8 ' x 16' .

comics/fine, conceptual/sensual, and abstract/representational. However arranged, the resultant strokes worked well and suggested the great Pollock painting Blue Poles. I drew these marks in black colored pencil on paper, layers upon layers over one another, each polished with a stump. They are painstakingly drawn, not ”splashed” as it might first appear; one can see the numerous small strokes inside each larger, represented stroke. The implications are many. Questions enjoyable to consider arise. Is there an effect of Kirby on the fine arts, in addition to his clear and imposing position in comics? Is the effect Zeitgeist, or are these Jacks the two true, antipodal kings of American art as my title suggests and as I now believe? Much is discussed about Kirby’s imagery, themes, narratives, and characters, but what of his development of an overwhelming, powerful plastic mark-making? That too is a wondrous “ballet of violence.” Is the absence of such quality of line one reason why much recent comics art (to say nothing of fine art) seems so flaccid and rococo? In the future will we see works by Pollock, Duchamp, Kirby, and (I would hope) Brandl in the same room, more similar than dissimilar to those future eyes? These are important, poignant questions. I end by quoting Barbara Kruger’s witty New York Times article: “What’s High? What’s Low? Who Cares?” For me, we are all high and low; Kirby is much higher than we know; and I care.★ (The author is a painter who also writes about art frequently for Art in America in New York and The Art Book in London. See his work on the Web at http://markstaffbrandl.home.pages.de/)

happen to be involved with. The “High”/”Low” divide added to the eye/ear dichotomy would seem to make them stand at diametrical ends of the Western cultural experience, right? Not for me. It took me years to painstakingly find out, but there is no hiatus between Kirby, Strawinsky, Picasso, James Brown. Below the immediate surface, on the deep level that matters, “High,” “Low,” visual, musical, literary, all are one, and for musical inspiration I’m now just as likely to look at a classic Kirby/Sinnott cover as I am to press the keys of a piano. It’s been of great relief for me to discover all too recently that my “Comicdom Lost,” this magical anthropomorphic cosmic carnival which accompanied my growth into early adolescence, has not only never left me, but lies within me as a rich ferment, a rare treasure from which to draw continual lessons in power and immediacy. Kirby’s take-no-prisoners physicality and boldness of imagination: My secret dynamite against the walls rationalistic musical training

There Is No Hiatus A Musical Tribute, by Duncan Youngerman “My physical structure is now composed of solidified sound...” Klaw in Fantastic Four #56 he dynamic-yet-static ink figures inside square or rectangular panels on large white sheets of Bristol paper that I breathed, ate, and slept as a young aspiring comic book artist must surely have something to do with my attachment now as a musician to the indelible quality of composition—every rhythm, every pitch codified and fixed black on white for eternity on score paper. But aside from that, nothing could apparently be farther from the raw pop aesthetics of the comic book than the over-refined realm of contemporary classical music I now

built between me and myself. Centuries of creative distortion from cave art to El Greco to Cubism are stored inside Kirby’s sprawling figures and abstract shadows, and if one is willing to make the jump, so are the Rite of Spring’s vocabulary of polychords and irregular meters, or the Blues’ harmonic inflections; Hip-Hop’s backbeat paradigm; and Perotin’s, Bach’s, or Beethoven’s emotional constructivism. The fact that, caught as he was inside the unforgiving commercialindustrial machinery, Kirby seldom if ever had a chance to think twice or go over his work, makes the high-flying results all the more impressive. His don’t-look-back, no-erasing, do-or-die ethic, akin to the Jazz improviser’s bravado, has helped me put in perspective my creative blocks and to shame the luxury of hair-splitting common to most self-proclaimed “serious” music. Careful analysis of the deliriously full-tilt, high-tech cosmicscapes, Manhattan overviews, or Asgardian helmets and armors reveals an unequaled sureness of hand, and taste, and instinct. Whether organically or geometrically abstract, there is never amidst these flamboyant sums of hundreds of minuscule visual decisions a less than perfectly convincing or thrilling detail, the whole always logical-seeming, yet everything perfectly gratuitous. Pure irrationality for exacting visual coherence... ...and then, emerging from clouds of black split pea energy dots and totally arbitrary shadows, comes erotic strangeness itself: Kirby’s signature near-abstract anatomical distortion. Muscular structure stretched, amplified, reinvented, contradicted by thick, sharp, smooth, rough, rhythmic black lines and shapes that have a life of their own, that are a dance inside the body’s dance. Hypnotic ambiguity emanates from the willful confusion between the musculature’s shades and tension lines and the tightly stretched costume folds and/or fluid squiggles of reflective shine, masterfully blending the static and the dynamic to the point even of awkwardness, but with the result of riveting the eye to the body-as-supernatural force. Anchored to a visual equivalent of the Funk down-

A page of art by Duncan back in 1971, at age 14. Kirby’s influence is readily seen.

beat, Kirby’s panels and pages are choreography-with-attitude. No artist makes you see and feel the pull of gravity as he does, and just for that reason, no one makes you fly as he does. To get some of all this out of my system and into practice, I’ve written what’s come to a 90-minute series of 14 pieces called “Splasheon,” in homage not just to the King, but to some of the other greats from the latter Marvel Silver Age: “Jaunty Jim,” “Gene the Dean,” “Cheerful Chic,” “Fearless Frank,” etc. The instrumentarium is 4 saxophones (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Baritone) and electric guitar—all versatile, loud axes with a strong footing in 20th Century Pop Music. Performances and recordings by the Arte Quartet and myself on guitar are due later this year in various cities in Europe and Japan. As with each piece, the one called “King Kirby” is a free, necessarily imperfect evocation of a particular style and personality, but above all it is about the way this one artist’s work has allowed me to be. Rather than an illustration or an imitation, it’s an initiation. For width, thickness, mass, the saxes are locked from beginning to end of the piece in four-part harmonic parallelism (echoes of the Big Band Era will surely not fall on deaf ears when Jack hears it from up where he is). Yet for all this constant texture, what they are actually playing is always new and unpredictable, with no backward glance, no repetition or recapitulation. All the while, the electric guitar provides an unwavering low-register alternate-picking grid, reminiscent of the pulsating Kirbytech or cityscape background, or in another way, of the King’s inexorable work ethic. The paradoxical tension between the exactly repeating microvariations of the guitar and the continually evolving yet fixed music of the saxes is meant, well, to produce a sound image greater than the sum of its parts. The piece goes on for about ten minutes and ends as abruptly as it began, as if the tape were cut off. No protocol, no hurrahs, no tears. Music carved out of a single mass of rock for a mountain of an artist.★

Page one of Duncan Youngerman’s 11-page score “King Kirby” (1999), with Klaw inset from FF #56.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #26: GODS! COLOR NEW GODS DRAWINGS! KIRBY & SIMONSON interviews, BIBLICAL INFLUENCES, THOR and MR. MIRACLE pencils & more! 72pages, color Kirby covers. $5.95

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❏ $24 for 6 issues ($32 Canada, $44 other Airmail) (Start my subscription with issue ❏ #27 ❏ #28) ❏ 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 ($6.00 Canada, $8.00 other) ❏ TJKC #17 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #18 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #20 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #21 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #22 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #23 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #24 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #25 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #26 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other) ❏ TJKC #27 • $5.95 postpaid ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 other)

The Kirby Collector Comicollage by Tom Morehouse ave you ever been involved in a project that, over time, begins to take on a life of its own? That’s what happened to me with this issue’s full-color centerfold! Let me give you some background: I’ve always loved comic books primarily for their art. I’ve had some recognition through the years of my own ability to draw, but in reality I was only copying the styles of whomever I was reading at the moment. Growing up, I was a fan of Kubert and Heath war books and in the simple innocence of youth would (after reading them, of course) cut out my favorite panels and create my own stories, filling in panels wherever needed, aping whoever drew the panel before. In 1963, quite by accident, I picked up a copy of Sgt. Fury #3, my first comic with Jack Kirby credits. Once I went Jack, I never went back! My friends and I bought and traded mostly Marvels from then on and pretty soon I had my first “Kirby” collection (many of which ended up being sold to the local barber for a nickel apiece when I discovered that girls were more attracted to guys who didn’t read “funnybooks”)! Flash ahead—through college, my first marriage, and my media career—to the mid-’80s. About all I had left from my 9.5 years of “wedded bliss” was a few pieces of furniture, among which was an old cabinet that held the nucleus of my current Kirby collection which I’d begun assembling while living in Detroit. No longer bound by monetary commitment to anyone but myself and now residing just outside Manhattan with its wealth of comic shops and shows, I set about the task of acquiring a copy of every known comic book that Jack Kirby had ever been associated with. It was on one such buying excursion that I was introduced to Greg Theakston and Pure Imagination Publishing through a copy of his Jack Kirby Treasury Vol. #1 that I bought from Mitch Itkowitz (now of Graphic Collectibles) at some comics shop I found him working in on the Upper East Side. Sensing a fellow Kirbyite, I got in touch with Greg who sent me a note on the back of a copy of the inked (but as yet unpublished) JKT Vol. 2 cover (above). By then I had begun to experiment with collage as an art form using my old beat-up comics for source material. I looked at that JKT cover with its 1950s characters and began to toy with the idea of combining it with the S&K letterhead (JKT Vol. 1’s cover, shown at right) with its 1940s characters. I had a b-&-w copy from Steranko’s History of Comics Vol. 1 and could enlarge the JKT Vol. 2 art to match it! That was the germ of an idea that’s since grown into a Jack Kirby life’s work collage, encompassing his entire career and including, wherever possible and appropriate, unique pieces from my own comic art collection (which grew as my income did in the late 1980s). When I met Jack

and Roz in 1988 at a show in New York, I brought with me a few examples of smaller collages of his Hulk and Captain America work as well as one of just Kirby female characters which I’d made for my current wife. He, in his usual manner, was gracious and quite complimentary, which encouraged me every year thereafter until his passing to send him, on his birthday, an update of the collage as it progressed. Here we are now, some 13 years after first beginning to experiment conceptually, with what I believe to be the ultimate Jack Kirby tribute. I call it Esak Learns of the Kirby Universe; a comicollage of 210 characters.

There’s doctors, demons, New Gods and old, captains, professors, and astronauts bold. Three fathers and sons, a brother and sister, kid gangs and cowboys, a couple named Mister. Archers and mutants, red men and black, Asians, Caucasians, commandos and Jack. Royalty, robots, a husband, his wife, good guys and bad guys from throughout Kirby’s life. All swooping and diving and crowding around with the California coastline seen in the background. A baker’s dozen have no given name, three pairs appear different but their i.d.’s the same, One pair’s name’s the same but not their i.d., some share the same name (two sets of three) And one of them’s surrounded by partners who shared his fame. What do you say, Kirby collectors? Wanna play the name game? Use the numbered outline guide in this issue and try to identify them all; deadline is March 15th. A free year’s subscription of TJKC goes to the first person to get them all, and everyone who gets at least 200 will receive a free copy of TJKC #29. Answers next issue!★ BONUS: Can you figure out which primary Simon & Kirby character is missing from the collage? Hint: His replacement is shown!

(left) Kublak presentation poster, with pencils and inks by Mike Thibodeaux.

(right) Kublak cover. Pencils by Kirby, inks by Thibodeaux.

(left) Malibu Maniacs cover. Pencils by Thibodeaux, inks by Marty Lasick.

(right) Malibu Maniacs cover. Pencils by Kirby, inks by Marty Lasick.

(above) Covers for two of the Genesis West proposals discussed this issue. (upper left) Kirby pencils, Thibodeaux inks. (upper right) Colored from Kirby pencils. (below) Use this numbered diagram to enter our contest this issue! 6

2 1

204 26

19 12

4 8

154 153

142

146

152

145 149

116 93

160

148

119 120

167

169

170

138 172

177 151

150

137

136

175 179 178

130

197

210

205

71 62

81 70

102 108

79 80

104

128 109 129 127 132 110 131 111

105

186

74 185

112 183

180 182

184

181 195

78 207

100 101 103 107

139

174 171

176

126 106

133 124 135 125

173

77 76

134

164

122 123

168 165

163

92 98

121

57 56

206

166

162

147

200

201

196

187

190

194 193 188 192

191 189

202 53

89 90

115 114

161

51 52 55

117 118

159

203

97 144

50 47 49

157

141

143

113

155 156 158 209

140 208

198 199

23 20

34 35

31 32