Jack Kirby Collector #31 by TwoMorrows Publishing

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR

It’s the KIRBY Bit! But Like

84 BIG pages

You’ve Never Seen It Before!!!

DON’T TAKE LESS! O N LY

995

THE NEW NO. 31 MAR.

2001

Look High! Look Low! Then Brace Yourself For

The

Number 1, March 2001

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A MESSAGE FROM THIS ISSUE’S COVER INKER “Okay, I am a comic book guy, through and through and I always will be. But I have a deep, dark, not-sosecret secret. I am also a geek… of the first order, a pitiful geek, and I study… (gulp) theoretical physics… and on one of my websites nealadamsentertainment.com I posted a 3 min. 15 sec. taste of the project geek Neal has worked on for nearly 30 years. Call it the opening gun… of an incredible voyage… join me.”

™

Hype and hullaballo from the publisher determined to bring new life to comics fandom

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Edited by Jon B. Cooke

And Baby Makes… ThreeMorrows! This issue of The Jack Kirby Collector isn’t the only thing that’s late! It seems that one of the TwoMorrows who bring you this periodical is pregnant! (We’ll leave it up to you to guess which one.) As of this writing, PAM MORROW’s twelve weeks along, and has been plagued by an awful case of morning sickness. This left publisher (and husband) JOHN MORROW trying his best to care for her, and juggle the workload at their ad agency, so the deadline on this first tabloid-size issue of TJKC just had to give. The happy couple’s lips are sealed on whether or not they’ll change their company name to ThreeMorrows Publishing, but both are looking forward to the impending arrival in September! We’ve also got a few other new members of the TwoMorrows family to welcome into the fold! First is ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, our full-time production assistant at the Raleigh, North Carolina headquarters. Eric’s responsible for only about a kazillion jobs here, from order filling, scanning, and proofreading, to all-around helping John and Pam keep the TwoMorrows mags coming out on a regular schedule. Also, we’d like to welcome CHRIS DAY, our new graphic designer on Alter Ego (freeing up the previous designer—and Comic Book Artist editor—JON B. COOKE to concentrate on some top secret new projects coming soon!). And lastly (but definitely never leastly), there’s MIKE MANLEY, editor of Draw!, our new “how-to” mag for comics artists, cartoonists, and animators. Mike’s a long-time comics pro with beau-coup industry connections, as you’ll see from his first issue line-up. Welcome to all these fine gents! (Now get back to work, allayeez!)

ABBREVIATIONS TO REMEMBER:

A/E: THE CBA COLLECTION E.T.A. A.S.A.P., O.K.? There’s a plethora of pencils from KIRBY’s 1970s Invaders covers in our new trade paperback, Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection. In addition to reprinting the Alter Ego sections from CBA #1-5, several of the book’s 30 NEW PAGES are taken up with previously unseen art from Roy Thomas’s 1970s “retro” comic, and Jack’s covers are well represented. Plus there’s an awesome, new gallery of JOE KUBERT artwork covering his work from the 1940s to the ’70s, and a previously-unpublished 1999 interview of the late, great GIL KANE, conducted by ROY THOMAS—Ye Editor himself! All of this—and more!—behind a spiffy JOE KUBERT cover (see our repro’ at left). It’s shipping within a week or two of when you read this, so order your copy today!

Warren Companion to kick a**!

THE

Why, you’d think TwoMorrows was a dating service with all of the Companions we’re producing, but—man!—are we psyched about this book! This 288-page tome—due in early Summer—is the definitive (and authorized) compendium to the great horror comics of Warren Publishing! Including an exhaustive checklist (with artist and writer cross-references), the book also features a complete redesign of the sold-out Comic Book Artist #4 (winner of last year’s Eisner award!) plus nearly 200 pages of new interviews, articles, a rarelyseen story by AL WILLIAMSON & ARCHIE GOODWIN, and much more, behind a new cover by Italian pal ALEX HORLEY! Look for it!

S&K SEARCH!

TwoMorrows is still in search of good photocopies of art from Stuntman, Boy Explorers, and Captain 3-D for our upcoming book The Best of Simon & Kirby (particularly pages from the never-published Stuntman stories “Jungle Lord”, “Terror Island” featuring the evil Panda, and “The Evil Sons of M. LeBlanc”). We’ll gladly reimburse you for copying/shipping expenses, and send you a free copy of the book when it’s published! Requests for anonymity will be respected, so get in touch with us today!

When Size Does Matter… Are you thrilled by the stupendous size of this issue of TJKC, but wondering where you’ll ever find plastic bags to store it in? Hmm? Is that what’s bothering you, bunky? Have no fear! Just call BAGS UNLIMITED (800-767-BAGS, or on the web at www.bagsunlimited.com) and order their Life Magazine-size “Large” bags (available in 2mil and 3mil thicknesses). They’ll fit this ish like a glove, and for less than $10 (cheap!) you’ll have enough bags to last you through TJKC #80, scheduled to ship Summer 2013!

Creatures Beware!

COMPANION

MR. MONSTER is back in June in Mr. Monster: His Books of Forbidden Knowledge, Vol. If you’re viewing a digital version Zero! Gathered within this of this publication, PLEASE read TwoMorrows trade paperback this plea from the publisher! are twelve twisted tales of Doc Stearn’s Forbidden Knowledge! his is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOTThis INTENDED FOR FREE non-ancient tome collects all DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you’re a print subscriber, or you paid the the hard-to-find the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere Mr. Monster thanks—your support allows us to keep producing publications like this one.Crack-A-Boom! stories from A-1, If EVOLUTION instead you downloaded it for free from some other or torrent, COPYRIGHT NOTICES: and website Dark Horse Presents in IS INEVITABLE The Fantastic Four ©2001 Marvel please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT, mysterious black-&-white. But JUL YPOSTING 200 1COPYRIGHTED an ILLEGAL OF OUR MATERIAL. If Characters, Inc. Mr. Monster ©2001and it was that’s not all! Volume Zero also Michael T. Gilbert. Uncle Creepy, that’s the case, here’s what you should do: Cousin Eerie ©2001 Warren 30 pages of ALL1) Go ahead and READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, andincludes see what over you think. Publishing. Stuntman ©2001 Simon 2) If you enjoy it enough to keep it, DO THE RIGHTNEW THING andMonster purchase art a and stories! Mr. & Kirby. Captain Marvel, Bulletman, legal download of it from our website, or purchase the print edition at our Bulletgirl, Mary Marvel, Capt. Marvel Friend, can your sanity survive website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local Jr., Spy Smasher, Isis, Ibis, All-Star our Lee/Kirby comic book shop. We’d love to have you as a™regular paid reader. monster spoof, Squadron and related characters 3) Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO NOT SHARE “Ooooak… The Tree That Walks ©2001 DC Comics. IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. Like A Man” by MICHAEL T. ILLEGALLY, 4) Finally, DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL for free. We offer one complete issue of all our magazines for free downloadGILBERT & MARK MARTIN? Or ing at our website, which should be sufficient for you to decide you want to how aboutif the long-lost 1933 purchase others. If you enjoy our publications enough to keep downloading Mr. Monster newspaper strip? them, support our company by paying for the material we produce. Coming this Summer is another Talk about Forbidden Knowledge! TwoMorrows paperback, The We’re not trade some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these There’s even an eight-page losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom shop—with dozens Fawcett Companion, presenting the Best and pop” of hard-working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekFULL-COLOR INSERT, featuring ofends, FCAto(Fawcett Collectors of America), make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this work. We love a terrifying Trencher/Mr. what we do, butfanzine our editors, authors,toand the long-lived devoted theyour local comic shop owner, rely on slug-fest, drawn by incomewriters, from thisand publication staythe in business. don’t rob us of the small artists, editorsto of Marvel PleaseMonster amount of compensation we receive. Doing so will ensure thereGIFFEN won’t beand any MICHAEL T. KEITH Family, Spy Smasher, Bulletman, and co. future products like this to download. GILBERT! Can you stand the Fans have been raving about editor Paul horror as titans at (and art-styles!) TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded Hamerlinck’s new FCA sections in Alter clash!? Look for this 136-page www.twomorrows.com Ego, and this volume delivers more great, Trade Paperback in the COMICS classic work by the likes of C.C. BECK, section of April’s Previews or MARC SWAYZE, KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, and more, including order directly from TwoMorrows interviews and historical articles galore, and a new, knockout JERRY for $20 postpaid—if you dare! ORDWAY COVER (above)! Look for ordering details next issue!

PRIME8

The Fawcett Companion

Contents OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (editor John Morrow gives his Top Ten List of Big Kirby Ideas)

NO. 31 MAR.

THE NEW

2001

UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (the scoop on this issue’s cover, and an excellent story about Neal Adams and our man Kirby) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 (Mark Evanier’s new column, answering your Frequently Asked Questions)

VIEW FROM THE WHIZ WAGON . . . . . .14 (our new travelogue journeys to Orlando, FL to find out how Universal Kirby is) INTERVIEW: KURT BUSIEK . . . . . . . . .16 (the famed Astro City creator gets us to the bottom of what happened at Topps Comics) MIKE GARTLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 (our controversial columnist shows how, when it comes to Giant-Man, the bigger they are, the harder they fall) ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 (some fresh perspectives on why the Fourth World failed) RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 (revisiting the FF Annual tradition) TWOMORROWS YEARBOOK . . . . . . . .37 (showing how we get by with a little help from our friends, plus this issue’s contributors and classified ads) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 (some of Kirby’s best 2-page spreads) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 (Adam McGovern looks at more Kirbyinfluenced work, from Rick Veitch to Erik Larsen and more) INTERNATIONALITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 (our ongoing look at the King’s international influence finds a kindred spirit in Ladronn) COMPARISON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 (how does Jack’s 2001 adaptation stack up to the film version?) OLD GENESIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 (examining the “big”-ness of Kirby’s gods, and connecting the mythological dots) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 (Mark Evanier hosts Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Roy Thomas, and Tracy and Jeremy Kirby at the 2000 Kirby Tribute Panel in San Diego) CREDIT CHECK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 (shouldn’t Kirby have gotten a byline on the X-Men film?) FLASHBACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 (25 years ago, Kirby went looking for America and found it) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . . . . .78 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Cover inks: NEAL ADAMS Cover color: TOM ZIUKO (This issue’s cover was inspired by Jimmy Olsen #138: The Big Boom!) 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: Dubbilex, Forever People, Goody Rickels, Guardian, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Mr. Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Orion, Superman, Whiz Wagon, Young Scott Free TM & © DC Comics • 2001 Images, Annihilus, Ant-Man, Avengers, Balder, Black Panther, Bucky, Cable, Captain America, Celestials, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Dracula, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Hercules, Hulk, Human Top, Hurricane, Inhumans, Invaders, Iron Man, Karnilla, Machine Man/Mr. Machine, Magneto, Mangog, Marvel Boy, Modok, Odin, Recorder, Sif, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Sserpo, Thor, Ulik, Wasp, Watcher, Where Monsters Dwell art, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Bombast, Capt. Glory, Captain Victory, Collage art, Night Glider, Satan's Six, Silver Star, TeenAgents TM & © Jack Kirby Estate

These Fantastic Four #49 pencils (Apr. ’66) were first presented in TJKC #22, but what better image to start off our first “big” issue? The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 9, No. 31, March 2001. Published quarterly by & © TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-8338092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Eric Nolen-Weathington, Production Assistant. Single issues: $13 postpaid ($15 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $36.00 US, $60.00 Canada, $64.00 elsewhere. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Opening Shot (background) Miscellaneous Jimmy Olsen pages. (©DC Comics.)

What’s The

9) Kid Gangs I have a special weakness for these youngsters; surprising, since I didn’t even know there was a Kid Gang genre until I first encountered the Newsboy Legion in Jimmy Olsen #133 (and their 1940s reprints in later issues). Boy Commandos was one of the top-selling comics of all time during World War II, and Simon & Kirby went on to produce a number of less-successful groups, all subscribing to the motif of street kids ganging up, much the way they did in Jack’s neighborhood as a child. Perhaps dismissed today, the Kid Gang genre was a staple of comics for decades. 8) Romance Comics Deemed by some as too cliché and sappy for today’s readers, these comics were the hottest sellers of the 1950s, and Jack and Joe were their pioneers. Check ’em out! 7) Mythology In Comics Others had delved into mythological underpinnings in an issue or three, but Jack managed to base an entire series (Thor) pretty faithfully around the Norse legends, and keep it interesting for a decade by interweaving sci-fi and super-heroics. That’s a pretty remarkable undertaking by itself, but Jack continually produced this material while concurrently spitting out epics in FF and other Marvel books.

Idea? by John Morrow, editor ave you ever stopped to think about how many really big ideas Kirby was involved with throughout his career? This issue, and our new “big” format, came about when I set out to compile a list of the most immense moments in Kirby’s illustrious career. I figure, if anyone deserves the “King”size treatment, it’s Jack, so here’s my personal Top Ten List of Kirby’s big ideas, which I call:

The Big Ones! 10) Captain America Sure, there’s a lot of talk these days about whether or not Kirby was actually involved in the creation of Cap and Bucky, or just came in after Joe Simon had presented the idea to Martin Goodman. I’ll leave that for the lawyers in Joe’s case to sort out, but either way, Kirby was pivotal in making the character come to life on the comics page, and later giving him a resurgence at Marvel. As Kirby heroes go, Cap is the biggest and longest-lasting.

6) Double-page Spreads Was Kirby the first to use a giant, two-page spread to evoke a single image? Some say no, but he definitely used it to better effect than anyone else, always managing to tell as much story in one giant panel as other artists would in several small ones. 5) The mid-1960s Fantastic Four run (#45-60) It may be unfair to lump these issues together in a survey like this, but how else could I ever pay tribute to all the amazing stuff Jack came up with during this run on the strip? The Negative Zone, Wakanda, Vibranium, the Black Panther, Inhumans, Prester John, etc. I’d have placed this higher on the list, except for the fact that Jack came up with it over several years, and a couple of breakout ideas deserve their own special treatment, namely: 4) Galactus and 3) The Silver Surfer Galactus is the ultimate cosmic character, long-since ripped off by nearly every mainstream comics artist who came after him. Bigger than life, no one had ever envisioned a comics character of this scope before Jack; and the Surfer is just such an out-there idea (think about it; a chrome-plated guy that rides through space on a surfboard!), he deserves to stand near the top of the Kirby idea heap, in my mind. 2) The Fourth World Granted, there are so many incredible concepts in the series, each could warrant its own mention in any list of Jack’s top ideas. But taken as a whole, this series stands as one of Kirby’s crowning achievements in terms of sheer scope and concept. We were introduced to Darkseid (Kirby’s ultimate villain), the Boom Tube, Mother Box, Metron (and his Mobius Chair), Granny Goodness, Mantis, Kalibak, Desaad, Lightray, Mister Miracle, Big Barda, the Female Furies, the Forever People, Highfather, the Pact, Himon, Funky Flashman, Parademons, Fastbak, Lonar; to this day, the potential of this epic remains largely untapped. Which brings me to only thing more mind-blowing than the whole Apokolips/New Genesis war; something I call: 1) The Olsen Effect I have to separate this from the Fourth World proper, as each issue was just chock-full of stuff. For sheer inventiveness and creativity, Jimmy Olsen stands above all the rest in my mind as the single series that, in the shortest time, managed to include the most amazing array of characters, concepts, and concoctions ever in a series.

Think about it: You’ve got the resurrected Newsboy Legion (including Flippa Dippa), the Whiz Wagon, the Hairies, Intergang, Morgan Edge, a new, hip Jimmy Olsen, the Zoomway, the Wild Area, Galaxy Broadcasting, the Outsiders (with such colorful characters as Iron Mask, Vudu, Yango, and Flek), Habitat, and the Mountain of Judgment, and you’re only through the first issue! Add to that the DNA Project, cloning (which is now about to be attempted in humans, 25 years after Kirby envisioned it), Darkseid (he appeared there first), Goody Rickels, Don Rickles, Scrapper Troopers, Angry Charlie, Count Dragorin and Lupek (and Transilvane), Ugly Mannheim, Dubbilex, the reborn Guardian, the Evil Factory, Mokkari and Simyan, DNAliens, the Four-Armed Terror, a forerunner to Virtual Reality, some way-out collages, Terry Dean, Pyro-Granulate, Magnar, the San Diego Five-String Mob, Arin the Armored Man, Victor Volcanum, Boxxa—get the idea? The fact that it appeared in, of all things, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen makes it all the more amazing! Now I hope you’ll sit back and enjoy this issue’s look at “The Big Ones!” ★ 3

Under The Covers At first, this issue’s cover inker Neal Adams would seem to be the total antithesis of Kirby, with his realistic style vs. Kirby’s cartooniness; but the two combined for a handful of memorable Jimmy Olsen covers in the 1970s, particularly #138 (shown at far right), the inspiration for this issue’s cover. For our first “big” issue, we asked Neal to ink the Kirby Superman pencil shown here (supplied by Sam De La Rosa), and combined it with a Kirby collage from Jimmy Olsen #134 (scanned from Jack’s original, color collage) and the one from the Marvelmania Portfolio (also scanned from the color original). Neal not only agreed to do the inks, but included a bit of prose about the process, and to notify readers that his re-pencils (see next page) and inks are for sale. Our thanks to Neal and all the fine folks up at Continuity Studios for working this into their busy schedules.

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t’s December 1975, and my friend Dave came over all excited and told me he read about an upcoming comic convention in Miami, where we live, that would have Neal Adams for a guest. (Adams was our favorite artist. Wasn’t he everyone’s favorite artist back then?) “Great,” I said, “let’s plan to go to it. When is it?” “It starts tomorrow,” he tells me. Somehow we decided to call Adams at the hotel—to say what, I had no idea. We’re young and stupid, we didn’t need any ideas. So I called the hotel the convention was at, and in the deepest voice I could speak, I asked if Mr. Adams had checked in yet. “Yes, he has,” I was told. “Can I have his room number, please?” I asked. “I’m sorry, sir” (possibly the first time I’d ever been called sir), “we can’t give out that information.” “Well,” I lied, “I have a very important message to deliver to him.” “I’ll connect you to his room,” replied the hotel clerk— but there’s no answer to his phone, and I dejectedly hung up. Then Dave said, “Why don’t we go to the hotel and find him?” “You’re crazy,” I constructively responded. But somehow, we ended up deciding that if we’re slick enough, we’ll figure a way to find him—for what, we didn’t quite know yet. And then I suggested, “Let’s get him a cake.”

My friend and I got a cake made that said “To the World’s Greatest Artist” on it at a bakery near my house, and headed to the hotel. We went to the front desk and I confidently announced, “I’ve got the cake for Neal Adams here, which room should I deliver it to?” Well, unknown to me, Mr. Adams had evidently just stopped by the desk for his messages and the clerk heard him mention he was on his way to eat in the hotel restaurant. So the desk clerk assumed that he knew about the cake coming, and directed us to the restaurant! Trying to keep our cool, Dave and I nonchalantly walked to where the clerk pointed, and tried not to give anything away. Figuring if it worked once, it would work again, we walked up to the woman at the door of the restaurant, and told her we had the cake for Mr. Adams, and asked where he was seated. Before she could say, “Who? Go away, little boys” (which is probably what she would’ve said, if we had given her the chance), Dave said, “I see him,” and started to walk inside. Of course he hadn’t—not yet—but his quick thinking got us inside before anyone could stop us. Then, we saw him, and we were speechless—

My Excellent Jack Kirby Story by Bill Field literally. Neither Dave nor I could do or say anything. I mean, it’s Neal Adams! The Neal Adams! Our hero, Neal Adams! But wait… he’s not alone. He’s sitting with James Doohan and Jack Kirby! Oh, and several wives were also present. Jack Kirby, God bless him, finally said, “Yes, boys, can we help you?” just as friendly as can be, while Adams and Doohan were doing their best to pretend we’re not there. I managed to stammer out, “We’ve brought a cake for Mr. Adams,” as I held it up for them to read. Don’t forget

now, it addressed Adams as the best artist, and again, God bless him, Jack grabbed the ball, and said, “How nice. Tell you what, kids. Let us eat our dinner in peace, and we’ll eat that cake together for dessert. Can you wait outside for us?” Can we? Does a bear… well, you know the rest. So Dave and I found a place to sit right outside the restaurant entrance (since we didn’t want to miss them coming out), and simultaneously sat down and floated in the air. For the next 45 minutes, the 5

two of us conducted the following conversation: “Do you think he really meant it?” “Of course not, he was just trying to get rid of us.” “But what if he did?” “He couldn’t have.” “But maybe he did.” “Wow, that would be so cool…” (Pause…) “Do you think he really meant it?” “Of course not, he was just trying to get rid of us.”

(above) Neal Adams hard at work on a fan’s sketch, at the 1999 San Diego Comicon. (next page) Jerry Siegel (l.) and Joe Shuster (r.), the creators of Superman.

“But what if he did?” “He couldn’t have.” “But maybe he did.” “Wow, that would be so cool…” (Pause… and repeat again for the better part of an hour.) Finally, after about forty minutes, we saw them coming: The Adamses, the Kirbys, and the Doohans. Jack came over and said something about how he’s glad we waited (he’s glad?!), because he’d certainly enjoy some cake! “How about it?”, he asked the others—and although James Doohan begged off (yeah, like we cared!), Neal said, “Sure,” as did Mrs. Kirby (not yet Roz to us). Somehow arrangements were made: Dave and I would go get a table in the coffee shop, while they went to their rooms to wash up. Perhaps 15 minutes later, the two couples came back, and joined us in the coffee shop. This was about 8:00 or 8:30 p.m. We ended up staying with them until about 1:00 in the morning! It was an incredible evening, full of good conversation. The night quickly turned into a social visit between the Adamses and the Kirbys, with Dave and I sitting there eavesdropping.

It was obvious the respect that Neal had for Jack, and he sometimes seemed as excited as us. I remember at one point, Kirby spent some time telling all of us what he was trying to do with the New Gods, and how frustrated he was with how it ended for him. Adams made several jokes about learning to draw as quickly as Kirby, or at least make deadlines as well. Kirby spoke a bit about the Wood brothers and the [Sky Masters] strip he did with them. Man, I wish I had been able to record the whole night. It’s tragic how few of the details I recall now. At the time, I had no idea of the significance of all I heard that night. Dave and I had each brought a sketchpad we had hoped to get Adams to draw in, and a stack of comics to be signed. During the evening, Adams was kind enough to work his way through them. I’m ashamed to admit that I was too often busy bagging and unbagging comics for him, and not always paying attention to what Kirby was saying! Ah, the ignorance of the young. But wait… there’s more: At one point in the middle of the evening, Adams was paged and told he had a phone call. I wondered if he’d be back. While he was gone, we all finished our coffee and Cokes, Kirby paid the check(!), and he, Roz, and Dave and I walked into the lobby and began our good-byes. As we walked with them towards the elevator, suddenly Adams came back, face flushed and all excited. When he saw us, he actually blurted

out, “They settled! They’re giving Siegel and Shuster the money! They’re giving them the money!” Yep, that was what the phone call was about: Adams had just learned that DC and its lawyers had agreed to a settlement with Superman’s creators that included a yearly stipend. If the night wasn’t cool enough already, Dave and I got to be there when he explained it all to Kirby!—which he did after we all found a place to sit in the lobby, where we ended up staying a few more hours; and listened to a few more stories, mostly from Kirby. The S&S news seemed to put him in a very reflective mood, and Adams became just another fan at the King’s feet with us. I sometimes think that Kirby needed the adulation he enjoyed from fans to make up for the frustrations he faced from the various publishers who screwed him. Although he was a positive man, there was a certain melancholy attached to Jack that seemed more visible the later the evening went. At some point in the evening, each man did a sketch for us. Each was of the character we requested. My favorites at the time were the Silver Surfer and Deadman, and those sketches are still treasured possessions today. And that is the story of my single favorite night in comics!

Some impressions 24-plus years later: Although I keep writing above “Kirby said this, Kirby said that,” I should point out that Roz Kirby was fully involved in the conversation, often finishing Jack’s anecdotes for him, or adding further details. What also stands out in my memory is how down-to-Earth the Kirbys were. Although Dave and I were just kids, and strangers to boot, they both afforded us the same respect they did Adams. It did not take long for us to feel as if we had known them for years—and that nervousness I felt early on was quickly forgotten. What’s also interesting was the Kirbys’ effects on Adams. He already had a reputation for having a certain way with his public, a certain arrogance— which I did manage to see over the course of the weekend—but it was not in evidence that evening. Somehow, the Kirbys made everyone around them as non-haughty as themselves. But besides the basic goodness of the man, what also was obvious that night was the devotion Jack had to his work. He cared very much about what he was doing. His frustration at not completing the New Gods story wasn’t due to his ego being slighted, or his pride hurt. Rather, it was because he thought the story a good one worth telling.

I may not have been much of a Kirby fan prior to this occasion, but believe me, I sure did become one. But, though it seems I’ve slighted him in this telling, Neal Adams also gained my respect that evening. In what seems a contradiction, his deference to Kirby only made him look larger in my eyes than he appeared before. Oh, yeah, the rest of the convention wasn’t bad, either. ★ (Here is an exchange Bill Field recently had with Neal Adams about this story: BILL: “Before submitting it to [TJKC], I thought it might be prudent to run it by you first for, one, your permission, since you figure prominently in it, and two, for any corrections you might notice are needed, since my recall of all the details is admittedly hazy for being so long ago. I know you’re very busy, and hope that the kick you get out of reading the following compensates for the time spent reading it. Any feedback you could provide would be most appreciated. And, as I said, I will not submit this without your OK first.” NEAL: “This is a terrific story. Please submit it with my approval. Arrogance? Really, perhaps if you saw it, it was because I did attract some folks who felt compelled to ‘tilt’ with me when I simply didn’t wish to ‘tilt’. I like people, and when people are nice to me, I am nice to them.” In the interim, I came across a copy of the RB-CC (Rocket’s Blast-ComicCollector) from that period. It featured an interview with Adams by Jim Van Hise conducted at that same convention (Miami, FL in December 1975) where Adams brought up the news he had “just received” about the Siegel and Shuster settlement, further verifying my aging memory of the evening in question.)

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A new column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier

(below) A representative page from Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961). Who is the mystery inker?

ack Kirby was the most amazing creative talent I have ever known and, easily, the most fascinating individual. As many of you know, I am currently assembling a biography of the man. It started shortly after he passed away and his widow asked me to undertake such a book... but it really started about two minutes after I first met Jack in 1969. He kept feeding me information and telling me stories he wanted to have preserved and disseminated for posterity. Jack was an extremely honest man and it mattered to him to have his life and achievements honestly accounted. The book is progressing nicely and, no, I have no idea when

you’ll be able to read it, though I’m sure it’s at least another year or two off. I keep happening on new information—things that I feel need to be included. So it’ll be done when it’s done— —and it’ll be huge. Matter of fact, it’s getting so long that I’m seriously thinking of having it published in two editions: A limited-printing “full” version including all the trivia and trifling data, and a shorter, “mainstream” version. The latter would be for those folks who need or want to hear The Story of Kirby without rummaging past eight pages on Marvel distribution arrangements and how they impacted what Jack drew for the company. Anyway, I ask your patience. I am not out to make money on this venture... only to see it done right. And doing it right takes time. To satiate the thirst for Kirby info in the interim, we inaugurate this column in the Morrows’ splendid publication. In it, I’ll try to tackle some of the questions I’m most often asked about Jack and his work. Queries are cordially welcomed. It has long been a Big Mystery of comic book history as to who inked Fantastic Four #1. Over the years, various sources have named—wrongly, I’m pretty certain—Bill Everett, Dick Ayers, Art Simek, Marvin Stein, Sol Brodsky, and Jack himself. The Simek identification was especially errant and its source, I’m afraid, was Jack himself. Someone at Marvel, compiling a book where that information was needed, phoned up both Stan Lee and Jack in the hope of settling matters. Stan did not remember. Jack, for some reason, said it was Art Simek. He was almost certainly wrong. Artie Simek was one of the best letterers in the business and he lettered #1, but there is no verified record of him ever doing anything in comics besides lettering. (His daughter reportedly recalls him inking something at some time, but I’m assuming it was a humor page filler or something on that order.) And whoever inked FF #1 also inked #2—which was not lettered by Simek—as well as a few concurrent non-series stories in Marvel’s anthology comics, and then stopped working altogether for Stan. It is doubtful that, even back in 1961, Jack knew who inked the first Fantastic Four, as he paid very little attention to that kind of thing. Matter of fact, one of the areas of occasional—but respectful—argument I had with Jack when I first met and worked with him was over his general indifference as to who inked his penciling. One time—this is early 1970—I mentioned to him that I thought Bill Everett had done a magnificent job inking Thor. Jack looked at me like I was nuts. Bill Everett inking Thor? He was sure I was mistaken. In one corner of his studio, he had a pile of old

I cringed at what certain inkers did to Jack’s work... especially after I began to work with him and became more familiar with what was in his raw, penciled art. There were several aspects to his position, one being—as mentioned— that Jack often did not look at the printed books, much or at all. Also, Jack was utterly and totally devoted to providing for his family. It was mandatory that he earn that weekly paycheck and in some ways, he was driven in a way that went beyond obvious financial necessity. He therefore hated the notion of doing anything that might impair someone else’s income. Even if Jack had perceived that his pencils were being harmed by an inker, he was reticent to say anything for fear he might cause someone to lose needed work. Only once in the Sixties at Marvel, to my knowledge, did he complain about the way his pages were being inked. Even then, he did not barge in and insist that So-and-so (it was not Colletta) never be allowed near his pages. Other pencilers were known to make similar demands, and Jack would almost certainly have been accommodated, had he done this—but in the one case, all he did was ask that someone tell the guy to try a little harder and to use bolder lines. So that was one reason Jack never complained about inkers. Another was that he

(left) A Bill Everettinked page from Thor #172 (Jan. 1970). Stylistically, it’s a far cry from Colletta’s inks of the time, such as the splash from Thor #166 (July 1969, shown below).

Marvels. I rummaged around in it, found a Thor that Everett had inked, and thrust it before Kirby. He was amazed. Unless there was a need to do so for research, Jack often did not look at his printed comics— especially in the late Sixties, when he so often felt that Stan Lee’s dialogue was in conflict with what he (Kirby) had plotted. If Jack had even looked at the Everett-inked Thors, the credit had not registered with him. He was also puzzled that Bill Everett, whom he loved and admired, would be inking someone else. To him, Everett was a creator... someone who should be originating his own work instead of helping bring someone else’s to fruition. (The same sentiment was occasionally expressed about Wally Wood, Steve Ditko and a few others who’d inked Kirby pencils.) Jack agreed with me that Everett had done a superb job. He did not, however, concur that it was a tragedy of vast proportions that Bill had been removed from the assignment— against his will, Everett later told me—and that Vince Colletta had been reinstated. Jack simply did not think it mattered that much. He said to me, “No professional inker ever ruined a comic that was well drawn.” 9

was less interested in the illustrative aspect of his drawing than in its story-telling function. Poor inking did not disrupt the part of the job that mattered to him as much as if, for example, the inker had changed something about the storytelling. (Tellingly, when he finally decided Colletta had to go, it was not because Jack decided the inking was poor but because it was incomplete. Comparing before-and-after stats of pages, Jack realized that Colletta was omitting background figures and details. That was intolerable because those details were part of the story. Colletta was leaving out part of the story.) Lastly, Jack sometimes felt it was a bit insulting to suggest that his work “needed” a certain inker. To him, it was like someone was saying, “Mr. Kirby, your work is great... but only when you hire this other guy to finish it.” He would later hear from so many fans—not just me— that it did matter and his attitude would change. He would finally insist on Colletta’s replacement on his DC work, but that was only partially due to what the inker did to the pages. It also had to do with an unpleasant personal discussion Jack had with Vince... with Jack hearing that Colletta, who was concurrently working for Marvel, was showing Jack’s pages around the competition’s office... and with Kirby’s desire to have his work finished on this coast, where he could—as editor— keep an eye on the lettering and inking. As everyone reading this knows, Colletta was replaced by Mike Royer, who had many things going for him besides being based in Southern California. One was that Royer could not only ink the work but letter it, as well. Amazingly, back in the early Seventies, there were very few professional inkers out here, and even fewer letterers. If Mike had not been able to letter, I don’t know what we’d have done. Moreover, Mike was one of the most reliable, never-miss-a-deadline workers in the entire industry. He worked off-and-on for Western Publishing (a.k.a. Gold Key Comics) as I later did. Our mutual editor there was a man named Chase Craig and I once asked him: Who among his dozens of freelance artists was the most dependable? He instantly named Dan Spiegle, Mike Royer, and an amazing, fasterthan-Kirby funny animal penciler named Jack Manning. Yet another plus-point Mike possessed was that, like Jack, he was a tireless worker, willing to work insane hours. Jack was then penciling around fifteen pages a week. Most inkers in comics could simply not finish fifteen pages of Kirby art a week, 10

let alone ink and letter them. Jack appreciated Royer for these reasons, but never more so than one brief time when Mike accepted a better-paying, less-fatiguing offer to ink for Marvel. He gave Jack proper notice, and Jack began searching for someone local to replace him. Turned out, there really wasn’t anyone. Mike was not only the best choice, he was pretty much the only choice. Kirby tried another artist but the individual was unable to even letter a whole issue in the time that the production schedule demanded a book be

lettered and inked. Royer was quickly lured back with a raise. All of these qualities were above and beyond the quality of Royer’s work, which Jack came to regard very highly. Mike was very faithful to Jack’s penciling and turned out to be the perfect choice, for as Jack became more conscious of how his work was inked, he came to prefer that inkers not

, KC #26 (See TJ

page 34

to this pencils for the

page.) splash

impose their own style or viewpoint. Just as he had come to want to handle all the writing himself on what he drew, he wanted the art to be, if not pure Kirby, then as close as he could get to that without doing the drudge work (to him) of inking it himself. Yet, it is entirely emblematic of Jack that—as happy as he was with Royer and as unhappy as he’d been with his predecessor—he was still worried that he’d harmed Vince Colletta’s income by insisting on the switch. For more than a year after the changeover, when he talked to someone at DC, he’d ask, “Is Vinnie getting enough work? Is he okay?” All of this brings us back to the eternal question: Who did ink those first two issues of Fantastic Four? Who is the artist who inked them and then disappeared completely from Marvel, at least for the next few years? Some argue for Christopher Rule, whose career dated back to work on newspaper strips of the Twenties. He had mostly drawn for comics like Patsy Walker but occasionally inked some of Jack’s stories for the monster anthology books. (Everyone I’ve spoken to who remembers the man described him thusly: “He looked just like Santa Claus.”) I believe it could be Rule. The inking in FF #1 does show some similarities to the linework in stories he signed for the teen comics and to Kirby “monster” stories that are believed to have been inked by him. But the match does not seem to me exact. Laying examples side-byside, I find I am not completely comfortable with the identification. Beyond that debatable point, there’s some circumstantial evidence that argues against Rule. At the time of Fantastic Four #1, almost half the Marvel line consisted of books in the teen or romance genres— Millie the Model, Love Romances, Teenage Romances, Linda Carter, Student Nurse; Kathy, Life With Millie, Patsy Walker and Patsy & Hedy. One might assume that if he even set foot in Stan Lee’s offices around then, we’d also see his handiwork in those titles, for Rule was mainly thought of as an artist for teen comics. In fact, when I asked Stan about Rule, he recalled him enthusiastically for drawing great “girl” comics and did not recall him ever working in adventure-type comics, let alone inking Kirby. From what I can ascertain—and, admittedly, I have not studied every teen comic of the period—Rule does not appear to be in any of them. In fact, I have yet to see a verified appearance of his handiwork in any comic published after around the middle of 1959. So for Chris Rule to be the mystery inker, one must accept this scenario: He stops drawing for Stan Lee in ’59 or so. Two years later, he turns up again in search of work and, instead of giving him a love or teen comic to draw, Stan gives him three or four Jack Kirby stories to ink. Then Rule suddenly vanishes once more and, insofar as we know, never again works in comics. (He passed away in 1983.) That is absolutely possible but a more likely candidate in my opinion is George Klein. In ’61, he was freelancing all over the business—but especially for Richard Hughes at A.C.G.—doing work that, to me, looks more like the inking of Fantastic Four #1 than known work by Rule. Comparing samples, the “match” does not strike me as a lock, but to my eye, it’s closer than the work we believe to be Rule. The scenario also makes more sense if it’s Klein, who had a history of bouncing back and forth between publishers. He had worked intermittently for Marvel since at least 1942 (some say earlier) and, apart from an in-house stint when the company had a “bullpen,” never stayed exclusive to them for long.

Around the time he might have inked Fantastic Four #1, A.C.G. cut back on production, which presumably sent Klein out in search of work elsewhere. In late ’61, he began working steadily for DC, primarily inking for Mort Weisinger on the Superman titles. An opening had occurred due to the death of long-time inker Stan Kaye. If this theory is correct then, with work drying up at A.C.G., Klein called Stan and wound up inking a couple of Kirby jobs, including the first two issues of Fantastic Four. Then, suddenly, the DC work became available... and there’s no way any artist at the time would have turned down DC for Marvel. The latter was still a shaky operation, rumored to be near closing, and they paid less than DC. Inking Curt Swan on Superman was probably the most “secure” job then available in the industry. If Klein is our man, that would explain the disappearance of the mystery inker after completing Fantastic Four #2. If Klein even had time to do the occasional job outside of DC, he probably wouldn’t have done anything for Stan. DC editors—Weisinger, especially—frowned on their people working for the competition, especially for Marvel. (A.C.G., because it had several business ties to DC, was more or less viewed as “semi-competition.” It was okay for a DC freelancer to work there, as long as he used a pseudonym and put his DC work first. Klein turned up in a few

(far left) Tom Kraft commissioned Mike Royer to ink a series of Jack’s pencil photocopies we’ve run in TJKC, and posted them on his website: www.whatifkirby.com Here’s the splash to Thor #166; see the previous page for Colletta’s version, and check out Tom’s site for more examples.

(above) Chris Rule inks(?) from Amazing Adventures #6 (Nov. 1961). Or is it Klein? Or both? You be the judge!

(above) George Klein’s inks on Thor #168 (Sept. 1969).

(next page) Kirby’s pencils from Thor #166 (July 1969) to show what Klein had to work from during this time period. (We weren’t able to track down any early 1960s examples of Klein inking Kirby. If you’ve got any of those issues, please send us a color xerox of a page or two to run next issue!)

A.C.G. books in ’62 and ’63, although this may have been inventoried material.) The one thing that might trouble some with the Klein Theory is if they compare Fantastic Four #1 to Klein’s 1968 inking of Kirby on Thor. That is not too close a match of styles... but in those seven years, both men had undergone some radical changes in their work, including the change to a smaller-sized original art and, in Klein’s case, a conscious decision to try and emulate Joe Sinnott’s approach. My opinion is based on matching Klein’s other work around 1961, and not his later output, to the first Fantastic Four. Actually, there’s one other thing that may trouble some... Al Jaffee, who knew both Klein and Rule, and who was their editor for a time, tells me that the two men were close friends who often helped each other on assignments. A study of Rule’s work for Patsy Walker—and especially, a short-lived Atlas knockoff called Wendy Parker—shows different inking techniques on

different stories, even different stories signed by Rule. It is not impossible that both of them worked on Fantastic Four #1; that one got the assignment and the other pitched in. It’s also not impossible that some of us don’t really know what pure Klein or Rule inking looks like. There are certain earlier Kirby stories in the Marvel/Atlas books that are believed to be inked by Rule... but no one can say for certain that Klein didn’t help out his buddy Chris Rule with them. Nor can one be certain that known “Klein” inking wasn’t assisted by Rule. This is a consternation of those of us who identify artists. We think we know a style and we think we know the name of the artist that produces that style... but we occasionally have them mismatched. Once upon a time, I believed I knew what Vince Colletta’s pencil work looked like. I later realized that my notion of that may have been based on faulty evidence. I had assumed that because Colletta signed some jobs and not others, the signed ones represented his penciling as well as inking. When I came across the same layout techniques and figure constructions in other stories, I assumed they too were penciled by Colletta. Then I came across signed Colletta stories that were clearly ghost-penciled by Joe Sinnott and others that were done by Art Saaf. A gent named Art Cappello, it turned out, penciled many ’60s Charlton romance comics that were signed by Colletta. (Cappello, by the way, assisted with background inking on much of Colletta’s Seventies work, including Kirby’s books for DC.) This was not at all uncommon in comics, especially among artists who were best known as inkers. Frank Giacoia and Sal Trapani, to name two, were notorious for farming out penciling work that their editors thought they were doing themselves. Colletta had dozens of assistants over the years, some of whom never worked on their own in comics. Ergo, we couldn’t possibly know their styles from other jobs, the way we can spot when Ditko ghost-penciled for Wally Wood because we know Ditko’s solo work. I honestly can’t swear that I know what Colletta penciling looks like. He may not have penciled the jobs I’d assumed were his pencils. In the same manner, when we compare the inking in FF #1 to “known” Rule work, we could actually be comparing it to work that was actually inked by Klein, or vice-versa. What all this boils down to is that, while I believe George Klein inked the first two issues of Fantastic Four, that is—at best—my opinion at the moment. Since at this late date, it’s unlikely that work records will turn up or that Stan Lee will undergo hypnotic regression to probe his memory, that’s as much as we may ever be able to say. ★ Got a Kirby-related question you’d like answered? Let Mark Evanier give it a shot! Send your questions to: Jack F.A.Q.s 5850 W. 3rd St., #367 Los Angeles, CA 90036 or e-mail Mark at: me@evanier.com Be sure to check out Mark’s website for a cavalcade of cool stuff about Kirby, Hollywood, and more: www.evanier.com

n December, desperately in need of a break while working on TJKC, my wife Pam and I threw caution to the wind and took a brief getaway in Orlando, Florida; but I wasn’t a total Kirby-slacker. I checked out the Marvel SuperHeroes attraction at Universal Studio’s new Islands of Adventure theme park and scouted out any Kirby influences I could find. The fact that there even is a Marvel “Island” is due to the influence of Kirby, Lee, Ditko, and others; but does Universal Studios pay homage to the men who created the characters—particularly Kirby? The Marvel Island features three main “rides”: A Hulk roller-coaster, Dr. Doom’s Fear-Fall, and an Adventures of Spider-Man 3-D/Virtual Reality ride. The Hulk coaster greets you with a striking display of Bruce Banner transforming into ol’ Greenskin— a sort of updated version of Jack’s cover to Hulk #1. This ride has wild corkscrews, flips, and sharp loops (wife Pam loved it, as you can see at the bottom of this page; that empty seat next to her is where I would’ve been sitting if I’d had the guts!), but its bright green hue and tremendous roar evoked a sense of its namesake character—although I found no direct Kirby homages. Doctor Doom’s Fear-Fall takes you several hundred feet up a support tower with your legs dangling in mid-air, and free-fall drops you, then shoots you back up all over again. The theme is that Doom is trying to extract fear from you (more along the lines of Kirby’s Desaad). Despite the somewhat Kirbyesque face of Doom on the logo, all the art at the Marvel Island looks more like 1990s Image-style drawing than vintage ’60s Kirby. Ironically, the only mention I saw of Jack’s name was while waiting in line for the Spider-Man ride. As you snake through a cheesy rendition of the Daily Bugle newspaper offices, on the wall are mock framed editions of the Bugle from different bygone years. One from 1963 showed a Kirby drawing from an early Hulk issue, with this “photo” credited to “Jack Kirby.” On another is a Kirby/Giacoia Captain America figure, but that’s all I found. However, someone with a knowledge of Marvel continuity had written the faux-articles for these papers, as they faithfully conveyed in text what occurred in the actual comics pictured. (For the record, the Spidey ride is nothing short of spectacular, handily beating any other Virtual Reality ride I’ve been on—and I’ve ridden most of the big ones. We stood through the 45-minute line twice!) To be fair, the Marvel Island is there to promote Marvel’s corporate image, not that of individual creators. Other than a street sign indicating we were at the corner of Yancy Street and Stan Lee Boulevard, I didn’t see any mention of Stan’s name (and I didn’t see Ditko’s at all). Instead, we were treated to in-jokes, like a facade of the Law Offices of Murdock & Nelson, and Dr. Don Blake’s medical practice. I was struck by how Marvel’s characters really aren’t household names to most people. Even Spidey, Marvel’s most recognizable character, isn’t known beyond his costume. The backstory of his ride, with Peter Parker and J. Jonah Jameson, elicited blank stares from most of the people in line, and I was unfamiliar with half of the villains involved. (Contrast this with a Superman or Batman ride, where I imagine more people would be familiar with the character’s secret identity or rogues’ gallery.) Given Marvel’s lack of widely-known icons, it’s not surprising they didn’t focus on any creators. Still, it would’ve been nice if they’d featured them somewhere. Nevertheless, Jack’s influence is evident throughout for those who know what they’re looking for. From the giant Modok illo on the side of the Captain America Restaurant, to the existence of a Fantastic Four Café, this attraction wouldn’t be here without Jack & Co.’s efforts. Do yourself a favor, and go to Universal’s Islands of Adventure; it’s a blast! ★

View From The Whiz Wagon Got a story about a Kirby-related trip you took—to a convention, attraction, Kirby’s house, or somewhere else? Send it in!

I by John Morrow, editor (with thanks to Eric Nolen-Weathington for the heading title)

AL?

R I B K Y S

V I E R N S U

The First In A Series of Kirby Travelogues

Full page pencils from Black Panther #5, page 2 (Sept. 1977). Kirby fans, get out your brushes, ink, and a light box, and have a ball! 15

Interview

((below) A Keith Giffen page of Kirby’s Ninth Men, from the unpublished second issue of Topps Comics’ Victory mini-series.

Kurt Busiek: Getting to (Kurt Busiek needs little introduction to readers of today’s comics. He made his first major splash on the scene as writer of Marvels, taking a more realistic view of many of the Lee/Kirby characters and events of the 1960s. He’s gone on to handle a slew of other Kirby-related characters, including work on the Topps “Secret City Saga” characters in the 1990s, of which we were privileged to examine some of his preliminary materials for the series. Kurt is continually winning industry awards for, among other things, work on his creatorowned series Astro City. This interview was conducted by e-mail, with questions devised by Eric NolenWeathington and John Morrow. Our thanks to Kurt for taking time out of his busy schedule!) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: When did you first become aware of Jack Kirby’s work? Did his work stand out for you at the time? KURT BUSIEK: I probably read Kirby stuff early on, back when I was reading comics occasionally, running across them at friends’ houses and such. The first time I became aware of his work, though, I wasn’t even aware of his name yet. I’d recently started reading comics regularly, and had issues of both Fantastic Four and Marvel’s Greatest Comics. I didn’t realize that Marvel’s Greatest Comics was a reprint magazine. In my confused youthful mind, I was trying to figure out how the people at Marvel knew to put the really great FF stories into Marvel’s Greatest Comics, and the just-okay ones into Fantastic Four. What did they do, I wondered, if the story being done for Fantastic Four came in and was one of their greatest? Did they switch it into the other book? So even then, I knew the Kirby stories were better. I just didn’t know why. TJKC: Were you influenced by his writing style at all, as far as plotting and dialoguing go? KURT: As far as dialoguing, not so much—though I get a kick out of Kirby dialogue. As far as plotting goes, though, I’m probably enormously influenced, even if it’s just subconsciously. When I’m having trouble pacing out a story visually, one of my tricks is to ask myself, “Okay, if this was a Kirby story, how would it play out on the page?” That usually solves whatever problem I’m having. TJKC: In my opinion, your greatest talent lies in characterization—getting to the heart of what makes your characters tick. How do you feel about Kirby’s characterization? Do you consider it a strong suit or a weak one in his work? KURT: I think Kirby’s characterization is the bedrock his work rests on, and one of the strongest aspects of his work. His characters are bursting with personality, projecting whatever essential emotion or attitude is right for their personality and that story moment through their body language, their facial expressions, their visual design, and more. The one piece of advice Kirby ever gave me was that a comics creator could do anything, no matter how strange, cosmic or bizarre, and if the characters just reacted to it like they should, like real people, then the audience would believe in it. I think that’s how he worked in everything, never forgetting who the characters were, and what their essential human (or at least emotional, in the case of the non-humans) center was. TJKC: How did you break into comics? KURT: I had been writing fan letters for years, and writing for the fan press—plus, Scott McCloud and I had been doing comics for ourselves, practicing and learning by working with each other, since high school. I interviewed Dick Giordano, then the

o the Bottom of Topps Comics editor-in-chief at DC, for a college term paper on publishing, and after the interview was completed I told him I was hoping to become a comics writer when I graduated school. He invited me to submit some script samples, so I did. I wrote four sample scripts—a Flash, a Supergirl, a “Superman: The In-Between Years” backup and a Brave and the Bold teaming Batman and Green Lantern—and sent them in. Dick parceled them out to the editors of those books, and as a result I got a tryout on a Superboy script (that didn’t go anywhere) from Julie Schwartz, and an invitation to pitch “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps” backup ideas to Ernie Colón. Ernie liked a couple of the GLC pitches, so he hired me to write one of them, and that was my first bigtime sale, in Green Lantern #162. While I was working on another GLC script for Ernie, I noticed that over at Marvel, they’d kept announcing that Bob Layton was going to be the new writer of Power Man & Iron Fist, but month after month, the book featured fill-in scripts written by Denny O’Neil, the book’s editor. So I figured Denny might be open to some deadline help, and sent him a story submission for a one-issue Power Man & Iron Fist story along with a note saying that I was already writing professionally for DC. Denny bought it, so I pitched another, and as things worked out, Bob Layton never took over the book, and I wrote it for about a year. TJKC: Marvels was what really put your name on the map. The story was told with a man-on-the-street realism that hadn’t really been used at Marvel before. What was your thinking when taking grandiose, larger-than-life stories, particularly Kirby and Lee’s introduction of Galactus, and showing them through the eyes of mere mortals? Did Alex Ross’ work make it easier to convey? Would you have been able to tell the same story with Kirby art? KURT: Showing the Marvel Universe through the eyes of the man on the street was, more or less, a way to do two things: First, it gave us a narrative hook that would tie together all the things Alex wanted to paint, from the original Human Torch to Gwen Stacy, and second, it was a perspective that took advantage of Alex’s breathtakingly photorealistic art. I’d written a couple of stories prior to that from “normal human” viewpoints and liked it, but I think taking advantage of how “real” Alex made the Marvels look was a big reason we chose it— and sure, the same approach could have been taken with Kirby’s art, though I don’t think it would have worked out the same, just as a straight retelling of the Galactus Trilogy by Alex wouldn’t

work out the same as the original. Both would probably be good, and have their own strength and power—but it wouldn’t be the same. TJKC: You use a similar stylistic approach in Astro City. I’m thinking specifically of your “First Family” storyline where Astra runs away from “home, sweet fortress” so she can be a “normal” kid. Do you think Kirby and Lee could have pulled off this type of story in the FF? They did have the Thing return to normal a few times, but it

(above) This page was used as page 2 of Captain Victory #3 (Mar. 1982), but was actually part of the original Kirby story that was drawn in the mid-1970s. 17

usually involved a super-villain trying to turn him against the others. Do you think a more down-to-earth story like yours would translate to their style?

(right) The original Kirby drawing that led to the TeenAgents series. Jack used the name long before these characters, though; you’ll find out where next issue!

KURT: Why not? Kirby did Boys’ Ranch with Joe Simon, after all, and plenty of romance comics that delivered more down-to-earth stories beautifully; but I don’t think it’s really a matter of whether their styles could accommodate the kind of story I told, so much as their creative instincts leading them somewhere else. If they’d done a story about a kid trying to find a place in a real world after growing up in a bizarre, super-heroic environment, it’d probably be very, very different, just because they’re different creators and have different approaches. I do think a more realistic style, like Brent [Anderson]’s, suits Astro City well. That’s not to say that a Kirbyesque approach couldn’t work—but it’d certainly play differently. TJKC: In Astro City, you’ve created archetypal heroes for the most part. How does your take on these archetypes differ from Kirby’s, particularly with characters like the First Family and The Silver Agent?

(above) The FF-inspired First Family (including Uncle Julius, undoubtedly inspired as much by Julius Schwartz as My Three Sons’ Uncle Charlie), from Kurt’s Astro City series. (© Kurt Busiek.)

The Silver Agent (shown below) from Astro City was at least partly inspired by Simon & Kirby’s Guardian (right, shown here from the final page of Jimmy Olsen #135, Jan. 1971, with Vince Colletta inks). (Silver Agent © Kurt Busiek.)

KURT: I’m not really sure what this question means. I’m kind of assuming it’s taking “archetypal” to mean “a copy of a preexisting famous character,” and that’s not what we do in Astro City. The First Family, for instance, is built around the archetype of a family—not specifically the Fantastic Four, but Henry, Jane and Bridget Fonda as a generational family of actors, or even something like the Forsyte Saga. Uncle Julius was inspired in part by Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons. We made them a family of explorers as a nod to the FF, but even there they’ve got similarities to other such groups, like the Robinsons in Lost in Space. So we weren’t so much trying to do “our” Fantastic Four as “our” super-hero family. The question that started that whole story rolling had nothing to do with the FF—it was, “What must it have been like for Bridget Fonda, growing up? Henry Fonda was a famous actor, and when Jane and Peter came along, there must have been some expectation that they were just getting work because of their name; but they turned out pretty well—particularly Jane—so by the time Bridget Fonda was growing up, it was almost expected of her that she’d have acting talent, that she was part of a dynasty. What would that be like as a super-hero story?” And that’s what gave us the story of Astra, growing up as a super-hero, on the inside looking out. I suppose we could have made them something other than a family of explorers—making them a super-powered law-enforcement family like a generational Irish-American cop dynasty could have been fun, too. And with all the assumptions that everyone

in Astro City is simply lifted from some Marvel or DC character, I’d probably go in some direction like that today, just to make sure that they wouldn’t be mistaken for an FF pastiche. But Alex and I worked them up early on, and Alex wanted to Kirby ’em up, and I couldn’t see any reason not to. With the Silver Agent, probably the closest Kirby character to him is the Guardian, since both of them are cops translated into super-heroes. But I don’t know that that resemblance even occurred to us when we started out with him—we wanted a generalized Silver Age “pure” hero, à la Barry Allen or Hal Jordan, and so we built him around this whole “serve and protect” metaphor. I don’t know if that answers your question—Kirby had a few super-hero families, including the FF and the Inhumans, but we weren’t intending conceptual parallels, just some surface nods to the best-known super-hero family in comics; and the Silver Agent’s underlying archetype is “neighborhood cop on the beat,”

but everyone takes him as a Captain America stand-in. It’s a similarity, to be sure—and one I’m plenty conscious of—but more a surface similarity than an archetypal one. I try to get at the roots of whatever characters I use in Astro City, and I expect I do that deliberately and analytically, while Kirby did it more on instinct and emotion—but I’m not really the guy to authoritatively say how Kirby’s creativity worked. I only saw the end result of it. TJKC: How did you become involved with the Kirbyverse? Were you approached by Topps, or did you seek this out? KURT: Neil Vokes and I worked up a proposal for Jonny Demon— which we eventually did at Dark Horse—but we showed it to Jim Salicrup at Topps while we were looking for a publisher, and he asked us to do TeenAgents. That led to Victory and Silver Star, which got abruptly canceled, so it didn’t lead to any more. Though I’d have liked to do more—we were talking about doing a Tiger 21 series when the line collapsed.

girls in the group. Did you try to incorporate some of that Kid Gang feel into the story, or was the concept too far removed from those old stories? KURT: We were definitely trying to make it a super-Kid Gang book, along the lines of X-Men or Forever People—again, without duplicating anything that had already been done. The girls were there in the original sketch—so that was Kirby, not us—but if you mean something like Boy Commandos or Newsboy Legion— no, we weren’t thinking in that direction. TJKC: How about Silver Star? I assume you read the series, but did you read the screenplay Kirby wrote as well? How did you prepare for the series?

(below) Pencils from Silver Star #6, page 2 (Jan. 1984), showing Darius Drumm as the Angel of Death.

TJKC: You started with TeenAgents. What did you have to work from? That is, how far had Jack developed the concept? How much was involved on your end creatively? KURT: All we had to work with was a single drawing Kirby had done of four kids in odd costumes, with the name “Teenagents” written on it. Whatever it was Kirby had intended them to be had been long lost, but they looked neat, and Jim thought we could do something with them. So Neil and I worked up names and powers for them, tweaked the costumes a little, and built a series concept out of it, trying to remain Kirbyesque without repeating any actual Kirby concepts. Our villain, for instance, Lord Ghast, was a cross between King Lear and Lorne Greene from Bonanza, with three super-powered daughters all from different human mothers. We wanted him to appear Kirbyesque without being Darkseid or Doom or anyone else Kirby had already done. We did have one other piece of reference—the Omni-Bus, which we found in a stack of xeroxes in Jim’s office. It was apparently an early sketch for what eventually became the Mountain of Judgment, but we thought it would make a great vehicle for the Teenagents, so we asked if we could use it. I really have no idea what Jack’s Teenagents would have been, or what they were created for—I have this vague idea that maybe they were non-super-powered espionage agents in the future, like The Mod Squad with science fiction, but that’s just me projecting; I don’t know anything for sure. TJKC: TeenAgents was quite different from the typical Kirby Kid Gang comic. For one thing, there were 19

KURT: I read the series when it came out, and liked it a lot. I also read the screen treatment Kirby wrote, which was very cool, full of a lot more information about how the Silver Star concept worked. I tried to soak in as much of Kirby’s initial work on the series as I could, and build my portrayal on that—but the impetus for the Silver Star project didn’t actually start with Silver Star. I’d seen John Woo’s The Killer, and loved it—not just the movie but the tagline on the poster: “One tough cop. One ruthless killer. Ten thousand bullets.” As I often do, I thought, “Hey, how could you do something like that with super-heroes, something that fun, that kinetic, but even larger than life?” I immediately changed the tagline to: “One bold hero. One brilliant crimelord. One thousand supervillains” and started wondering where it could go as a story. I kicked the idea around with James Fry, and we decided to pitch it somewhere, and settled on plopping Silver Star down in the lead role and pitching it to Topps. Once we were using Silver Star, we wanted to get him right, but the seeds of the story came before he was part of it. TJKC: Only one issue of Silver Star was released. What happened? KURT: Topps’ policy of bagging their comics had killed the line. Initial sales were great, but every new project beyond those first specials tumbled in sales, because readers didn’t enjoy those first few comics and refused to buy any more sight unseen. Retailers started slashing their orders more and more, and eventually Topps got rid of the bags, but it was too late, and both Silver Star and Victory were dead based on their initial orders. I have no idea if people would have liked them had there been enough copies out there for them to see them and sample them, but most readers never got a chance to see them at all, so we’ll never know. TJKC: Where was the story headed? Did you have more ideas beyond the mini-series? KURT: Two more issues were completed, and the fourth was under way when the plug was pulled— the whole thing built toward a big showdown on a remote island with Silver Star trying to save the master villain from the army of supervillains that were trying to kill him rather than risk him making a deal with the cops. The master villain was never going to make a deal anyway, and ends up sacrificing his life to make sure his secrets die with him, and to force Silver Star to save his daughter. We did all four plots; I’d have loved to do more Silver Star after the mini—I probably still would—but if I had any specific ideas, I don’t remember them. TJKC: In your preliminary notes for the Victory mini-series, you planned to kill off the Boojum from Ninth Men and Orca from Captain Victory. Granted these were minor characters, but did you have any reservations about killing off Kirby’s creations? Did you worry about what his fans might think? KURT: I was asked to kill off Boojum and Orca by Jim Salicrup—Boojum because he wasn’t really a Kirby character (he’d been added to the cast during the Secret City Saga mini-series) and the readers didn’t seem to like him, Orca because Steve Englehart was writing a new Captain Victory series, and as of the opening of it, Orca had died at some point in the past and been replaced with a female officer of the same race. I assume Steve did that simply to get 20

more women into the cast, but Jim thought it’d be fun to actually make the transition during the Victory mini-series. Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have killed Orca, but he was dead one way or the other— I was just bridging the gap—and Boojum, as I said, wasn’t a Kirby character at all. I wasn’t worried about being pilloried by the fans, in any case—I can’t see a storm of outrage arising over either death. TJKC: Also in your notes, you refer to Captain Victory, Captain Glory, and Silver Star as “level-headed, absolutely confident Kirby alpha-males.” You also note that all three are soldiers to varying degrees. Obviously, these characters weren’t originally intended to be in the same story together. Did you find it difficult to make them distinct individuals, or did Kirby imbue enough personality in each of them to make it work? How much did you have to embellish?

Steve Rude’s preliminary art for the Thor series he’s doing with Kurt.

KURT: I didn’t see a whole lot of problem differentiating them. Captain Victory was, in essence, a naval captain, an absolute commander with all the authority that goes with it. Captain Glory was more like an Army captain, part of a stronger chain of command. In his original notes, Kirby had intended for Captain Glory to wind up working as an investigator for a female lawyer, so while he was a capable officer, he didn’t have the same majesty or air of total authority Victory had; and Silver Star was an enlisted man. So they were all soldiers, but not the same kind, not with the same experience. I could build off of that to a different sense of each one. The embellishment, such as it was, was in going back to Kirby’s original notes for the Secret City characters. [Editor’s Note: See TJKC #21, page 61 for these notes.] He had strong archetypal centers planned for each one—Captain Glory was a soldier, Night Glider was a snooty aristocrat, and Bombast was a

Kirbyverse afterwards, assuming it hadn’t ended? If so, where do you go from there? Any particular ideas you wanted to develop? KURT: Aside from wanting to do more Silver Star, we were planning a new series called Tiger 21 that would have spun out of the Victory mini. Jim Salicrup wanted to do something with Darren, the black crack addict who’d been saved by one of the Secret Citizens, and who was still hanging around. Readers hated him, considering him an ethnic stereotype, so Jim wanted to fix the problem without killing off the only black character in the series. He thought we should redeem Darren and turn him into a super-hero, and his choice was Tiger 21, another sketch of Jack’s that he had. So over the course of Victory, I was going to have Darren wind up on Captain Victory’s ship, the Dreadnought Tiger, and find a set of powersuits intended for use by envoys/ spies on the various planets Victory’s civilization had contact with. Darren would have put on one of the suits—the one labeled “Tiger/21,” or its alien equivalent—and wound up having super-powers. After the mini, he’d be launched in his own series, going back to New York and picking up his old pre-crackhead life, but having problems due to the fact that the suit gave him the power to do good, but the galactic government that created the suit now thought he was a spy on Earth—their spy; but, well, that never happened either....

Some of Jack’s later Thor work, from the cover of issue #253 (Nov. 1976). The Thor face was retouched by John Romita before publication.

blue-collar salt-of-the-earth type who managed to bust every machine he ended up using. None of that really came through in the previous mini-series, probably because it was all set within days of the Secret Citizens awakening in this time period, so Roy [Thomas] didn’t have much opportunity to get

them integrated into society. I wanted to flesh them out and bring them to life—not with new takes on the characters, but by showcasing what Kirby saw as their essential personas. TJKC: Would you have stuck around with the

TJKC: I’ve heard you and Steve Rude are doing an upcoming Thor story/series. Will you stick with Kirby’s original take on the character, or branch out into something completely different?

KURT: Knowing Steve, it’ll probably be very Kirbyesque in its look; and we’re certainly informed by the Lee/ Kirby take on the character as much or more than by the Norse legends I used to love to read when I was young. There are parts of the story that take place in the Silver Age—and we’ll be staying true to 21

the flavor of the book back then—but above all, we’ll be serving the story and the idea behind it, and we’ll just have to see where that takes us. It’s early yet. TJKC: Currently you’re writing the Avengers and cowriting the Defenders with Erik Larsen, who is a huge Kirby fan. Both titles feature lots of characters Jack had a hand in creating. Do you find that limits you as a writer, that you have to stay true to Kirby’s version, or is it better for you to have that touchstone there as a basis? KURT: I can’t say I’m actually consciously trying to keep Kirby’s contribution to those characters in mind, so much as just keeping them in character according to their long and storied histories, something Kirby’s a part of, but not the totality of. So when I write Captain America, I’m informed by Lee/Kirby, but also by Englehart, Stern, Waid, and more, and the same for all the others. I like having the history there to work with, and when I work out an approach to a villain, or a character’s key motivations, or something along those lines, I often find that, unsurprisingly, the Kirby stories are the ones that establish the essence of the character best—but I’m not singling out those stories. That was one of the reasons I enjoyed working in the Kirbyverse—the Kirby essence in those characters hadn’t been overlaid with years of follow-up by later writers. I got to be the first guy (or at least one of the first guys) to screw them up. TJKC: You’ve written a large number of Kirby’s characters to date. Is there any particular one you haven’t written for yet that you’d like to take a turn at?

KURT: Sure. I’d love to write Kamandi someday, for instance—not any of the various alternate takes on Kamandi that have been done since Crisis, but continuing the Kamandi series that Kirby did, not reconceptualizing or reworking it. I don’t know if that’ll ever happen, though. I’d like to do a Machine Man project more in keeping with what Jack did—treating him as a new form of life in a largely-normal world instead of as just one more super-hero in a crowd of them. Something like a cross between Jack’s run on Machine Man and Paul Chadwick’s Concrete, with a lot of character and humanity and quiet introspection. Not that we could get enough people to buy it to keep such a thing going. I’d love to do Karkas and Reject from Eternals someday—or a lengthy run on Thor—or OMAC—or a bunch of others that aren’t coming to mind right now, probably.... ★

(above) A surprise bonus: Walter Simonson’s pencils from Secret City Saga #0, an April 1993 giveway premium issue from Topps. (left) Unused Rick and Rich Buckler image of the Ninth Men. (next page) Just for Mr. Busiek, here’s some of Jack’s Machine Man pencils, from 2001 #10 (Sept. 1977). We’d buy it, Kurt!

Mike gartland

Giant-Man:

“Giant-Man always sounded rather corny to me.” No, that’s not my opinion, but that of the character himself, or rather the opinion of the man putting the words into his mouth at that time; namely Stan Lee (see Avengers #28). Even though it was probably just another line of dialogue, Lee does tend to bear out the apparent history of ambivalence towards the character by many Marvel fans. The history of Giant-Man is pretty much the history of any media-created character, be it comic strip, television, book, movie, etc.; when sales (or ratings) slip, tinker with the formula and hope it catches on or finds a new audience. Unfortunately, GiantMan never really did; never in Marvel’s (then-new) history has so much been done to keep a character going. By decade’s end the Henry Pym character would be able to rival Sybil in alter-egos. s mentioned in an earlier article covering Ant-Man (TJKC #18), Giant-Man came out of expediency. The Ant-Man character had begun to stagnate soon after Kirby left it (Jack drew issues #35-40; his influence on the plots is unknown at this time, but appears to be negligible), and Lee was looking for a new approach to freshen it up. Jack came back in Astonish #44 and developed The Wasp, which was a step in the right direction; it was hoped that a team might boost sales. When this didn’t happen (to the satisfaction of Martin Goodman, anyway), Lee brought Jack back in for more changes and this is where the character deviated from his original concept. It must be noted that Lee and Lieber (who handled the plots and scripts) never utilized the full potential of the small hero vs. the giant villain as Gardner Fox so brilliantly did with The Atom. The Lee/Lieber stories were among the most lackluster efforts done for a hero at that time; Ernie Hart (under the pseudonym H.E. Huntley) came on as scripter in issue #44 and the stories improved to some extent. Ernie Hart dialogue (!), Kirby Don Heck was drawing and inkpencils, and Heck inks for the ing the Ant-Man strip Wasp’s intro in Astonish #44. whenever Kirby wasn’t called in, and his work fluctuated from issue to issue. Heck was still learning “Marvel method” plus drawing other strips as well, and in many instances his work on Ant-Man seems rushed and unfinished. These may have been contributing factors to the drop in sales; is it more than coincidence that sales began to drop on

Ant-Man after his first six issues (the issues Jack worked on)? The “Giant” theme was hardly new to comics; there were giant monsters and villains a’plenty fighting super-heroes since the Golden Age. There was even an early attempt at a giant hero (Green Giant Comics, 1940), and DC’s Spectre was growing and shrinking all the time; but this was the first attempt at giving a giant hero his own feature on a regular basis. Unfortunately by the Sixties, Jack failed to see that creating a hero whose power was that he was huge was almost taking a step backwards in comparison to the highly imaginative and unique heroes he was creating for Marvel at the same time. The Ant-Man was that type of intriguing character, but due to less-than-average scripting and art whenever he wasn’t on the strip, Jack kept being called back in to do a quick fix. Lee—to his credit—never stopped trying to make the character saleable; this is a clear example of how quickly a strip could founder when the Kirby/Lee team wasn’t directly involved. So it’s simple: Ya put a “Gi” in front of Ant-Man and violá: Giant-Man was born. As simple as it seemed, Jack was still trying his best to make the character interesting. Rather than a simple giant, Jack wanted Pym to become known as a master of sizes. The Ant-Man character was not to be fully abandoned (perhaps because of The Wasp), but his costume had to go through some revision. The Ant-Man costume was a perfect example by Kirby of form following function; but when he had to develop the Giant-Man angle, yet retain Ant-Man aspects, that costume conception went flying out the window. As mentioned in the Ant-Man article in TJKC #18, the Ant-Man costume became a diluted version of itself soon after its inception; with Giant-Man the costume became an absurd exponent of the original design. The wonderfully

Big Fish in a Bigger Pond unique Ant-Man helmet was abandoned in favor of a simple cowl with two antennae jutting out of it (in the initial story, Jack had the cybernetic antcommunication equipment inside the cowl with xylophonelike bars on both outer sides, giving Giant-Man’s head a somewhat rounded insect-like appearance; but as usual this was soon forgotten and abandoned). The boots and gloves were retained, and the belt was altered to contain the new size-changing capsules (inhaling gas was out, perhaps at the Surgeon General’s insistence). The red leotards that were acceptable when the hero was minute also stayed, but in his giant incarnation they gave the appearance of red long johns. The icing on this ludicrous costume cake came when the ant symbol that originally adorned the first costume then became a simple black dot on the hero’s chest, continued for one issue with the Giant-Man character; then it was to be replaced by two suspenders—originally pinstripe, later turning to black depending on who was drawing/inking the strip; how chic! (This should have been a red flag that some quality control was needed.) The initial Giant-Man story had him battle an inter-dimensional character called “The Living Eraser.” Les Daniels, in his book Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades points out that this was one of those nutty, unique Lee creations, to which Lee added: “I got a big kick out of it when I dreamed up that idea.” Apparently Mr.

Daniels never knew that this character was a derivative of a Kirby story called “Today I am A...?”, where a boy erases himself, originally done with Joe Simon for Black Cat Mystic #59 in 1957, or

(previous page, far left) Giant-Man from the splash page of Avengers #5 (May 1964), inked by Paul Reinman. (previous page, lower left) Inset of Ant-Man from Tales to Astonish #40 (Feb. 1963), inked by Sol Brodsky. (previous page, above) Shot of the Wasp from her first appearance in Astonish #44 (June 1963). Don Heck inks. (this page, above) Kirby splash page from Tales to Astonish #50 (Dec. 1963), inked by Steve Ditko. (far right) Giant-Man becomes Goliath, from the cover of Avengers #30 (July 1966). Inked by Frank Giacoia. 25

Giant-Man’s nemesis, the Living Eraser (right), had a Kirby precursor in Black Cat Mystic #59 (Sept. 1957, far right, © Harvey Publications).

(below) Another page from Astonish #50 (Dec. 1963).

(lower center) How’s this for forced perspective? Detail from Avengers #14 (Mar. 1965); layouts by Kirby, finishes by Heck and Stone.

he might not have been too eager to highlight the Living Eraser; as for Lee’s “idea,” keep “dreaming,” Stan. (Hey, it was a book done on Marvel by Marvel, what do you expect?) In any event, instead of his usual oneissue fix-up jobs, Jack stayed on for two more issues, helping Lee to establish a new arch-villain for the new character. Digging into past history (Red Raven Comics to be exact), Kirby & Lee come up with a villainous incarnation of the Human Top. Although the name is the same as his Golden Age counterpart, in keeping with his new direction, Jack made this character a mutant with the power of super-speed (the Human Top premiered around the time of X-Men #3 and pre-dated the Quicksilver character by at least two months). The Top story ran

for two issues (Astonish #50-51), making this one of the earliest two-part stories. FF #25-26 was still months away; it should be noted however, that Jack was already experimenting with interwoven plots leading to continued stories in issues of X-Men and Avengers. This story may also have been the last work by the artistic teaming of Kirby with Steve Ditko; Ditko inked the story in issue #50, rather hurriedly, it appears, as there are hardly any Ditko inclinations in the looks of the characters, as can be seen in their earlier works together. Also, almost all of the Wasp faces in the story were retouched by Don Heck; on the last page (of originals) Lee leaves a note for Roussos to “add blacks” which apparently doesn’t get done to completion; all indicating the frenetic pace in which these people were working and how many unseen hands may go into any given story. Astonish #51 was to be Jack’s last input on the Pym character in his own series; Stan had the second part of the Human Top story inked by Dick Ayers, probably to have him indoctrinated on the Giant-Man character since Dick picked up the art chores starting with the next issue. Kirby actually spent more time on the GiantMan character in the pages of The Avengers than in Astonish. Jack drew him in issues #2-8, and helped plot and lay out a Giant-Man/Wasp-centered story for Avengers #14, but it soon became obvious that, although Jack handled the character in a variety of intriguing perspectives, Giant-Man was little more than a secondary character. Like a human in a group of giants, Giant-Man never matched up to the originality of characters like Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, or the Hulk (who also had a difficult time finding his audience). In The Avengers, Pym was relegated into a Reed Richards-type mold as a respected scientific brain, but unlike Richards was not a commanding personality like a Thor or Cap. Jack did what he could with the character, but was hip-deep in other characters on a regular basis; Giant-Man’s fate was to be left in other hands. As mentioned previously, in Astonish Dick Ayers began doing a very nice artistic run on the Giant-Man strip. Although Dick did his usual good job, the scripts were once again less than stellar. Lee had stayed on this time as scripter and after a good start with the introduction of the Black Knight in

issue #52, old Ant-Man villains returned, and downright mundane new villains were introduced. With GiantMan having to battle characters like El Toro (a man with a bull horn headpiece, who charged at you) and the Magician (who is: right, a magician) it almost seems like Lee was saying you give a mediocre hero mediocre villains. Lee concentrated more on the Pym/Van Dyne love interest in the stories, which didn’t help because he gave Pym an almost chauvinistic opinion of women; Lee having his men think of women as scatter-brained and childish was nothing new. Added to that, he made the Wasp character man-hungry on many occasions. Anyway, within months Lee was once again trying to save the “Giant-Man” series from cancellation. In July ’64 (Astonish #57) he had Spider-Man guest-star to help boost sales and cross-market the character. Coincidentally, at the same time he had Ditko do the same thing with the Hulk in the pages of Spider-Man #14. As the story goes, Ditko—perhaps hearing about the problems with the “Giant-Man” strip and the “Hulk” looking for an audience—suggested to Lee that he could come up with a new Hulk strip and that it could either replace the Giant-Man strip or be used as a back-up feature. Within two months Stan had the Hulk appear in Astonish #59 and began the Ditko Hulk feature in the next issue. Unfortunately the issue where Ditko came in became the issue where Ayers did his last Giant-Man. In the next issue Ditko did both the “Giant-Man” and “Hulk” stories, and starting with issue #62 Carl Burgos (creator of the Human Torch) did a short three-issue stint. This was the start of the time where Lee was trying to train other artists to work “Marvel method.” This was a few months before Kirby was asked to do layout work, and the introduction of Marvel’s second line of artists: Romita, Buscema, Severin, etc. Burgos didn’t really meet up with what Lee was looking for, so starting with issue #65 one more artist came on board, and one more try was going to be made to invigorate the faltering Giant-Man. Bob Powell was an accomplished and well-respected artist and unlike his predecessors (with the exception of Kirby, natch) came in with ideas of his own to revamp the character. In viewing the original art to several of the stories he worked on here, it’s clear that Powell left border notes for Lee to follow. Some were accepted, some not. Powell finally addressed the ridiculousness of the Giant-Man costume and attempted to make it more acceptable and inkeeping with the character’s dual properties. (Powell wanted the Wasp to have a pet wasp that only talked to her, in a

“cocky Mickey Rooney” type way, he wrote; Lee touched on the pet wasp part, but abandoned the communication angle.) It was during the Powell run that the first mention of Pym having problems with size-changing was mentioned; things began to look promising for the character but it appeared to be too little, too late. All in all Powell worked on five issues, arguably some of the best work he did for Marvel, very overlooked and under-appreciated. Powell moved on to Daredevil to cover for Wally

(upper left) El Toro, one of a string of lackluster villains to plague Giant-Man.

(above) Kirby/Ditko art from Astonish #50 (Dec. 1963).

(left) Kirby’s rendition of Giant-Man’s new costume, from the cover of Astonish #67 (May 1965, inks by Chic Stone).

Wood while Wood would come to Astonish, but not on Giant-Man (and not on anything else it turned out, due to an argument he had with Lee). Stan may already have known that the writing was on the wall for Giant-Man even as Powell was trying to help the character. According to sales reports, all that was done wasn’t enough to satisfy Goodman, who wanted to try something new. Astonish #69 was the last “Giant-Man” strip, and the Sub-Mariner premiered in his place in the next issue. Lee retired the characters of Giant-Man and the Wasp, quite literally, which was unusual for its time (in the last strip, the characters actually say that they’re retiring). The characters left The Avengers one month before the demise of their own strip. Giant-Man and the Wasp enjoyed an eight-month retirement before coming back to instigate a plot thread in the Sub-Mariner story in Astonish #77-78 (a good move on Stan’s part, bringing them back first in the book they were best associated with). This led to their coming back in the pages of Avengers #26 (on the stands at the same time), and rejoining The Avengers with issue #28, at which time Giant-Man got his fourth costume change and third name: Goliath. No sooner did he arrive when he was stricken with the size-changing problems that Powell initiated during his Astonish run; he turned into one of Lee’s “angst-ridden” heroes. In time Goliath went on to become Yellowjacket, then AntMan again, then psychotic (not necessarily in that order). In fact, the character went through so many different incarnations, Silver Age artists who do commission drawings of the Avengers today very often put in two of Pym’s characters, not knowing that they were the same individual. Giant-Man wasn’t really a bad character, he just wasn’t meant to be a headliner, that’s all. He fit in just fine with a group like the Avengers (which soon became the depository for second-string Marvel heroes), and in the long run yielded a handful of (for good or bad) memorable adventures. As I said in my Ant-Man article, he may have deserved better, but you can’t say they didn’t try!

As a footnote to this article: I have to admit that I initially balked at writing a piece on this

character. “No one read his stories, so who’s gonna read this?” I said to myself. Then one afternoon I was at my local comic book shop: Comic Explosion in Nutley, NJ, and I was conversing with the owner, Scott Dambrot (who, by the way, supplied the cool Thing drawing for the Kirby inking contest in TJKC #19, and is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet). Scott asked me what my next article for TJKC would be. “GiantMan,” I said with a smirk, “but who the hell wants to read about Giant-Man?” I added. “I liked GiantMan and I’d read it,” Scott calmly said, after which I thought, “Let this be a lesson to you, wise-ass” (meaning me). Although some fans may be ambivalent, every hero has his fans; and I must admit, after researching the stories and art, to a new appreciation for the big guy; so to Scott I say, “Thanks!” ★

(top) Bob Powell’s margin notes from this page of Astonish #68 (June 1965) show how he set up the size-changing problems that so many Marvel writers would get mileage out of over the years. Vinnie Colletta inked this story. (above) Giant-Man becomes Goliath; cover to Avengers #28 (May 1966). Kirby pencils, Frank Giacoia inks. (left) A Kirby cameo for Goliath, from the Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #92 (Aug. 1967). Inks by Joe Sinnott. 28

Analysis (below) A remarkable find! We believe this is the only surviving copy (albeit a bit faded) from Jack’s initial presentation to DC Comics, to sell them on the Fourth World concept. Note that “Supertown” was originally called “Super City.” These pencils became the cover art to Forever People #1 (Feb. 1971).

Why Did The Fourth World Fail? by Stan Taylor ctually, this is somewhat of a misnomer; the Fourth World titles did not fail. The characters, concepts, and worlds that Jack Kirby created are still alive and ever-present in the current DC continuity, yet it is obvious that the original series did not make the immediate impression necessary for DC to continue them. So while I can’t label them as failures, they certainly weren’t rousing successes either. Much has been made—and very little convincingly—that for some unexplained reason, Carmine Infantino undercut Kirby’s series. The suggestion is that Infantino, in some Machiavellian scheme, had simply hired Jack Kirby away from Marvel with the

mistaken impression that without Kirby, Marvel would fold. Not really wanting—or caring about—Kirby’s books, Infantino lied about the sales and cancelled four successful books. How absurd! First, Carmine and Jack were longtime friends before and after Kirby’s tenure at DC. Carmine had personally sought out and hired Kirby, giving Jack an unprecedented four books to tell his tales, and DC had followed through with a huge advertising blitz spotlighting Kirby’s new books. As for sabotaging Marvel, Carmine was an editor; his job was to sell books, not work behind the scenes trying to undermine Marvel. At the time that Kirby left Marvel, he was doing three monthly books, and the occasional filler strip; no one could imagine that his leaving Marvel would cause irreparable damage to them. Editors have to answer to owners and bean counters; they don’t cancel books that are selling well, but they might cancel borderline series if they think the creators would have even better success with a different concept. He didn’t fire Kirby, he just had him go in another direction, in the hopes that the next idea would be the blockbuster title he so wanted. I see no evidence that there was any personal animosity or jealousy towards Kirby, just an editor doing his job—right or wrong. I have come to the conclusion that Kirby’s Fourth World series failed for four specific reasons; three were industry changes beyond both Kirby’s and Carmine’s control, and a fourth that Kirby might have changed, but it would have gutted any sense of grandeur and “epic-ness” from the concept. The first reason was simply bad timing. The comics industry was caught in the middle of one of its cyclical downswings, and nowhere was this more evident than DC. DC was hemorrhaging! Stan Lee and the boys had produced a new generation of readers to whom DC had become anathema. Nothing that Infantino tried since he became editor had worked; despite artistic and writing changes, many longtime series such as Green Lantern, Aquaman, and The Atom had reached bottom and were jettisoned. None of the myriad new series, despite quality work from such artists as Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, and Bernie Wrightson, had caught on; in fact, it was rare for them to last more than 6-7 issues. DC of the early ’70s was much like Marvel of today; nothing they tried caught the public’s fancy, and the editorial turmoil meant that the editors had to show immediate results or they (the editors) and the series got canned. There simply was no time for a series to grow organically, steadily building a hardcore following, with new readers joining each issue. The results had to be immediate and overwhelming. Perhaps this accounts for why Kirby’s series did last longer then most; Kirby did have a core constituency that followed him—not large enough to keep a series afloat by itself, but large enough to build on. Perhaps Carmine felt that with some minor retooling, the series still had a chance. The Deadman issues of Forever People, and the makeover of Mister Miracle from Apokolyptian palace intrigue into a typical super-hero may have been attempts to widen the appeal, especially among the many die-hard DC fans who had resisted the Kirbyization of DC. Either way, DC in the early ’70s was a black hole even Kirby’s cosmic light couldn’t escape. Which brings us to reason #2. When Marvel finally got out from under the yoke of having to use 29

DC’s distribution company in 1968, they embarked on a program of expansion that would see them go from fewer than 20 titles to more than 40—in two years—to over 60 by the mid’70s; first by increasing their super-hero titles, than by adding in sword-andsorcery and horror titles, then romance and western titles—but most of all, by flooding the market with reprint titles. In a normal market, this possibly would not have had any effect on Kirby’s Fourth World titles, but this was not a normal market. While Marvel was expanding their line, the retail

outlets were either maintaining the same shelf space, or reducing rack space, which meant that new titles had to fight for space like never before. This same thing happened after WWII; with the easing of paper restrictions, the companies glutted the stands, with the result that many new titles were returned unopened or got pushed to the side in favor of better-known quantities. If one ran a Mom & Pop store, and were faced with carrying only fifty titles a month from among 5-6 companies, you naturally would

choose the fifty most popular, or at least well-known, titles. Mister Miracle had to fight with Spider-Man, FF, Batman, Superman, and the other longtime favorites for decreasing space in a shrinking market. It’s no wonder that new series failed much more often than succeeded. Outside of large markets, just finding these titles was a major battle. This flooding of the market was an old stratagem of Martin Goodman’s; in fact, it was his usual m.o. when he controlled his own distribution. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise that as soon as he had the chance, he would revert to old ways. The big change was that Marvel had become a large fish, and his glutting of the market was killing DC, the largest fish. Added to this was possibly Martin Goodman’s final stroke of genius: As revenue from advertisers declined (due to the shrinking market) the companies felt the need to raise their prices. DC pages decided to DON’T TAKE LESS! jump from O N LY 15 cents all the way to 25 cents, enlarging the books with reprints, which cost the company very little. Two months later, Marvel followed suit, making their titles a similar 25 cents. But after only one month, Marvel reduced their book size back to the original 20 pages, and made the price increase to only 20 cents, giving the impression that they were reducing the price of their books, while actually they were raising the price for a smaller package. What this did was allow Marvel to sell more issues, giving retailers more profit, which by simple logic gave the shops more incentive to push Marvel titles. So not only were Kirby’s new titles fighting for space due to more titles, the dealers were actively pushing Marvel’s books because of a greater profit margin—

BIG

25¢

Pencils from the back-up story in Mister Miracle #6 (Jan. ’72). These filler pages were needed when DC expanded their books to 48 pages. 30

plus the kids buying the books could get more titles from Marvel for the same price. This changeover happened about the time of the fourth issues of Kirby’s four titles. At a time when the books were looking to appeal to new readers, the retailers were given another reason to either not order the books, or to minimize the amount and the prominence of the titles.

The really sad part of this is how long it took DC to react to this maneuver. The 25 cent issues lasted 9-10 months before they were reduced to 20 cents. By this time the Kirby titles had dropped in sales and the writing was on the wall. Some have called Goodman’s actions sleazy, but it wasn’t Goodman’s actions, but DC’s inaction, that hurt so much. Just as with today’s market, these behindthe-scenes industry games point out just how little quality matters if the product can’t reach its intended market, but there was another aspect of the Marvel glut that actually may have been even more damaging to Kirby’s series. With the huge proliferation of Marvel reprint titles, Jack Kirby’s new DC books were in direct competition with Kirby’s old Marvel books. From the very beginning of Kirby’s DC tenure, Marvel actually had more Kirby covers, and more Kirby pages published each month than DC did. So for any new or casual reader, which was still the lifeblood of the industry, the appearance was that Jack Kirby was still pumping out titles for Marvel, at a cheaper price. If one accepts the premise that a new generation of comics readers occurs every five years, these reprint books were just as new to the buyers as the Fourth World titles. For examples, let’s look at certain periods. Between Oct. 1970 when Kirby’s first DC book (Jimmy Olsen #133) appeared, and Feb. 1971 (when New Gods and Forever People started), Marvel released 25 books with Kirby work—10 sporting Kirby covers. That’s 3 DC books as compared to 25 Marvel books. In the next two months, February and March 1971, when New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Forever People would be introduced, Marvel countered with 13 books and 6 covers. This makes a total of 38 books and 16 covers for Marvel, as opposed to 7 new books by DC; over a 5-to-1 ratio, just when Kirby’s new books sought to make the strongest impact. Let’s review: August and September 1971, when DC introduced the new 25-cent format, Kirby did 4 books for DC, while Marvel released 10 books, with 6 covers; over twice the output, at a smaller retail price. When I first mentioned this on the kirby-l (the Internet mailing list for Kirby fans), an esteemed editor for Marvel responded that these policies were not directed at Jack Kirby in order to ruin his new books, and I agree. The negative results for Kirby’s books were just a sad collateral damage inflicted in the larger comics industry war. Yet it is possible for an objective person to look at the data, and come to the opposite conclusion.

DC vs. Marvel: 1970-72 Not counting the latter issues of Mister Miracle, we have 48 titles for DC against 106 titles for Marvel, over a 2-to-1 ratio for the life of the series. It actually got worse later in Kirby’s stay at DC. In 1973, Marvel would unleash a third wave of reprint titles including such series as Marvel Double Feature, Marvel Spectacular, SHIELD, Tomb Of Darkness, Human Torch, and Journey Into Mystery, in addition to the continuing titles such as Marvel’s Greatest Comics, Marvel Super Heroes, Special Marvel Edition, and Mighty Marvel Western, all frequently featuring Kirby covers and stories. There was never a time in Kirby’s five-year stay at DC that Marvel wasn’t publishing more Kirby work. • OCTOBER 1970 Jimmy Olsen #133

Astonishing Tales #2 Chamber Of Darkness #7

• OCTOBER 1971 Jimmy Olsen #142 Forever People #5 New Gods #5

Monsters On The Prowl #13 Rawhide Kid #92 X-Men #72 w/cover

• NOVEMBER 1970 Amazing Adventures #3 Fear #1 w/cover Nick Fury #16 w/cover Two Gun Kid #95 Where Creatures Roam #3 w/cover Where Monsters Dwell #6 w/cover • DECEMBER 1970 Jimmy Olsen #134 Fantastic Four Annual #8 Kazar #2 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #29 w/cover X-Men Annual #1 w/cover X-Men #67 • JANUARY 1971 Jimmy Olsen #135

• FEBRUARY 1971 Forever People #1 New Gods #1

• MARCH 1971 Jimmy Olsen #136 Mister Miracle #1

• APRIL 1971 Jimmy Olsen #137 Forever People #2 New Gods #2 • MAY 1971 Mister Miracle #2

• JUNE 1971 Jimmy Olsen #138 Forever People #3 New Gods #3 • JULY 1971 Jimmy Olsen #139 Mister Miracle #3

• AUGUST 1971 Forever People #4 New Gods #4

Amazing Adventures #4 Avengers Annual #4 Captain America Annual #1 Fear #2 w/cover Hulk Annual #3 Mighty Marvel Western #12 Nick Fury #17 w/cover Marvel Special Edition #1 Thor Annual #3 Tower Of Shadows #9 Where Creatures Roam #4 w/cover Where Monsters Dwell #7 w/cover Monsters On The Prowl #8 w/cover Our Love Story #9 Rawhide Kid #84 X-Men #68 w/cover Fantastic Four #108 Creatures On The Loose #10 Fear #3 w/cover Marvel’s Greatest Comics #30 My Love #10 Nick Fury #18 w/cover Sgt. Fury #85 w/cover Where Creatures Roam #5 w/cover Where Monsters Dwell #8 Monsters On The Prowl #10 Rawhide Kid #86 Special Marvel Edition #2 X-Men #69 Creatures On The Loose #11 w/cover Mighty Marvel Western #13 Where Creatures Roam #6 Where Monsters Dwell #9 w/cover Marvel’s Greatest Comics #31 w/cover Monsters On The Prowl #11 w/cover Western Gunfighters #5 X-Men #70 w/cover Creatures On The Loose #12 w/cover Fear #4 w/cover Where Creatures Roam #7 w/cover Where Monsters Dwell #10 w/cover Monster On The Prowl #12 w/cover Our Love Story #12 X-Men #71 w/cover

• SEPTEMBER 1971 Jimmy Olsen #141 Creatures On The Loose #13 w/cover Mister Miracle #4 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #32 w/cover Mighty Marvel Western #14 Rawhide Kid Special #1 Special Marvel Edition #3 w/cover Where Creatures Roam #8 w/cover Where Monsters Dwell #11

• NOVEMBER 1971 Jimmy Olsen #143 Creatures On The Loose #14 w/cover Fear #6 Mister Miracle #5 Iron Man Annual #2 My Love #14 Two Gun Kid #101 Where Monsters Dwell #12 • DECEMBER 1971 Jimmy Olsen #144 Fantastic Four Annual #9 w/cover Forever People #6 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #33 w/cover New Gods #6 Monsters On The Prowl #14 Thor #194 Thor Annual #4 w/cover • JANUARY 1972 Jimmy Olsen #145 Mister Miracle #6

• FEBRUARY 1972 Jimmy Olsen #146 Forever People #7 New Gods #7

• MARCH 1972 Jimmy Olsen #147 Mister Miracle #7

• APRIL 1972 Jimmy Olsen #148 Forever People #8 New Gods #8 • MAY 1972 Mister Miracle #8

• JUNE 1972 Forever People #9 New Gods #9

• JULY 1972 Mister Miracle #9

• AUGUST 1972 Forever People #10 New Gods #10

Amazing Adventures #10 Avengers Annual #5 w/cover Captain America Annual #2 w/cover Creatures On The Loose #15 Hulk Annual #4 Where Monsters Dwell #13 Fear #6 Marvel Triple Action #1 Monster On The Prowl #15 Sgt Fury #95 Special Marvel Edition #4 w/cover Beware #1 Creatures On The Loose #16 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #34 Mighty Marvel Western #16 Two Gun Kid #103 Where Monsters Dwell #14 Monster On The Prowl #16 Fear #7

Creatures On The Loose #17 Marvel Premier #2 Marvel Triple Action #2 w/cover Where Monsters Dwell #15 Fear #8 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #35 Monster On The Prowl #17 Marvel Triple Action #3 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #36 Western Gunfighters #10 Where Monsters Dwell #16 Fear #9 Marvel Triple Action #4 Monster On The Prowl #18

• SEPTEMBER 1972 Mister Miracle #10 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #37 Western Gunfighters #11 Creatures On The Loose #19 Marvel Super Heroes #32 • OCTOBER 1972 Forever People #11 New Gods #11

Monsters On The Prowl #19 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #38

• NOVEMBER 1972 Mister Miracle #11 Marvel’s Greatest Comics #39 Marvel Super Heroes #33 Western Gunfighters #12 Where Monsters Dwell #18

In the months immediately prior to Kirby leaving Marvel, there were three reprint titles regularly spotlighting Kirby work: Two active (Where Creatures Roam, Where Monsters Dwell) and one on hiatus (Marvel’s Greatest Comics). Within four months of Kirby starting at DC, the number had swollen to seven: The previous three (Marvel’s Greatest Comics had restarted), two new titles (Fear, Special Marvel Edition), and two regular series downgraded to reprints (X-Men and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD). Within six months another two series would be retrofitted and highlight Kirby work (Monsters On The Prowl and Creatures On The Loose), plus seven super-hero annuals (FF, Thor, Hulk, Avengers, X-Men, Iron Man and Captain America) would feature Kirby reprints in 1971, with three sporting Kirby covers. While many of these reprints didn’t have Kirby covers, it’s amazing how many had Gil Kane redoing Jack’s original covers. Why would anyone ever have an artist the caliber of Gil Kane redo a Kirby original? It was the equivalent of putting The Lucille Ball Show up against old I Love Lucy reruns, with the reruns on a major network, while the new show was on a public service channel. To new customers, a known quantity is often preferable to chancing an unknown one. It was basically a no-lose situation for Marvel, and a no-winner for DC. The fourth reason I feel the Fourth World books failed was that Kirby extended himself too far. His tale was told over four separate, yet interrelated books. It was very hard for anyone to casually pick up an issue and understand who the characters were, or where the plot was going. The cast was so large

and overwhelming, with new characters jumping in and out at the oddest times, and a strange non-linear plotline. The idea of picking up a new book, enjoying it, and tracking down back issues was unheard of (except for a small group of diehard fans). While in retrospect, these features highlight just how ahead of his time Jack was, at the time it must have been very off-putting to readers used to shorter, linear stories, with one main hero. At a time when the casual reader was still the bread and butter of the industry, Kirby’s extended epic format was too unwieldy and sprawling. It was just too large an undertaking for its time. It’s interesting that later, when Kirby returned to the typical comics format with Kamandi, he would have that long-running success that Infantino hoped for, but it was too little, too late. By then Kirby felt betrayed and resentful, his epic had been cut short, and while he enjoyed doing Kamandi, it was not where he had envisioned his career to be. So were they a failure? Yes and no; not everything that Kirby had hoped, but more than Infantino ever dreamed. If one deems them a failure, don’t look for scapegoats or conspiracies; there aren’t any. It was a simple case of the stars being aligned against them: A new-style series, at a struggling company, during a shrinking market, overpowered by a shrewd competitor. It’s a wonder that the

series lasted as long as it did, but as usual, Kirby left the company with a treasure trove of characters and concepts that are still in play today. ★

(above) Early 1970s drawing of Orion.

(below) Pencils from the New Gods entry in DC’s Who’s Who #16 (June 1986).

Retrospective

An Annual Tradition

Exploring the FF Annuals by Patrick A. Price

(this page) Four of the new pin-ups Kirby drew for Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964, inks by Chic Stone).

ertainly the adjective that best describes Stan Lee’s and Jack Kirby’s 102-plus issue run on Fantastic Four is seminal. Fantastic Four #1 is unquestionably the seed that sprouted into the Marvel Age. Lee and Kirby introduced a plethora of heroes and villains during their tenure on the FF. There was also considerable change in the lives of the fab four. Much of that change took

place in the six Annuals the team created. Reed and Sue were married in the third Annual; they announced Sue’s pregnancy in #5 and their son was born in #6. The lives of some of the FF’s most famous (and infamous) guest-stars were changed or revealed in the Annuals. Sub-Mariner finds the lost race of Atlantis in the first Annual; Doctor Doom’s origin is revealed in #2; the FF encounter the Golden Age Human Torch in #4; Silver Surfer starred in his first solo adventure in #5. “Sub-Mariner Versus the Human Race,” a 37-page story from 1963, is a fairly straightforward adventure. Subby nearly defeats Reed, Ben and Johnny in his quest to conquer the surface world for his race, but his love for Sue proves to be his undoing as he saves her from drowning. Upon returning to Atlantis, Namor finds his kingdom deserted. His subjects believe he has betrayed them and they have forsaken him. Jack illustrates a myriad of sea monsters and Subby’s denizens of the deep in this tale. It’s reminiscent of his aliens that appeared in comics like Tales Of Suspense and Tales To Astonish from a few years earlier. Lee and Kirby also recount Subby’s origin in this story, remaining faithful to Bill Everett’s version from Marvel Comics #1. Fantastic Four Annual #1 also recounts the team’s first encounter with Spider-Man. It’s an expanded version of a three-page episode that occurred in Spider-Man #1. Spidey breaks into the Baxter Building and fights the FF to a standstill to prove to them he’s worthy of joining the team and garnishing a top salary. They tell him they’re a non-profit organization. In the Torch’s words, “You came to the wrong place, pal. This isn’t General Motors.” The first 13 pages of Fantastic Four #1 are reprinted in this issue, familiarizing readers with their origin. My favorite parts of the issue (as with nearly all of the Marvel Annuals from the 1960s) are the featurette pages. Readers are treated to 11 pages of “A Gallery of the Fantastic Four’s Most Famous Foes,” plus “Questions and Answers About the Fantastic Four” and “Inside the Baxter Building.” Sure, I destroyed a rare Silver Age comic, cutting out the pin-ups of the FF’s foes, but I loved having my own Jack Kirby “gallery” hanging on my bedroom walls. “The Fantastic Origin of Doctor Doom” is the lead feature in Fantastic Four Annual #2. It’s also my personal favorite comic book origin. The story of young Victor Von Doom is full of pathos as he suffers the angst of witnessing his father succumb to the elements, fleeing the wrath of an evil baron. Von Doom also first encounters Reed Richards in this story while attending college. He’ll later blame Reed for the 33

(above) In this scene from the FF Annual #3 (1965, inked by Colletta), it’s clear from the margin notes that Kirby intended Dr. Doom to bust up the wedding as revenge for the Thing having crushed his hands in FF #43 (Oct. 1965). This nice bit of character motivation and continuity was either ignored or overlooked by Stan.

disfigurement of his face while supposedly tampering with one of his experiments. The future Mister Fantastic was, of course, merely trying to warn Von Doom of some errors in his equations. Von Doom abandons college and flees to Tibet “seeking forbidden secrets of black magic and sorcery.” While living with an order of mysterious monks, Von Doom is outfitted with his infamous iron mask which conceals his scarred face. “The Final Victory of Doctor Doom” is the second new feature of the issue. Doom plots to destroy the FF using a hallucinogenic drug. The quartet is invited to the Latverian Embassy for a banquet, not suspecting their host is their archvillain. All but Reed drink Doom’s potion under the pretense it’s a native juice made from berries grown in Latveria. Johnny soon imagines Ben has hit him for no reason and he takes off to find his partner in flaming retaliation. Sue imagines she sees Reed kissing another woman and she flees, heartbroken by the sight. Following a brief battle amongst themselves, the FF discover Doom’s plot and pursue him, but he gets away. They soon find him waiting for them at their headquarters and Reed challenges Doom to an ultimate confrontation. He tricks Doom into drinking a toast made of the same concoction that was used on his partners. Using Reed’s Encephalo-Gun (no self-respecting super-hero team should be without one), the two implacable rivals are soon locked in a battle of mental superiority, “pitting the power of their two brains against each other.’’ The loser will be hurled into a timeless limbo, never to return. Doom is led to believe he’s defeated Reed

and brags to the rest of the team that the loss of their leader is enough to satisfy him. When Doom leaves, Reed explains to his partners that his foe’s victory was merely an illusion caused by the same potion they drank at the banquet. An interesting sidebar occurs earlier in the story when Doom is rescued from suffocating in outer space by Rama-Tut. Doom was last seen hurling through space following his most recent encounter with the FF in “The Master Plan of Doctor Doom” from FF #23 (Feb. 1964). Both men have reason to believe they’re the same person since Rama-Tut tells Doom it was his time machine the ersatz pharaoh used to travel from the 25th Century to Ancient Egypt. He also relates his mutual hatred for the Fantastic Four since they also defeated him. Their encounter took place in FF #19, “Prisoners of the Pharaoh!” (Oct. 1963). Later Marvel continuity will prove that Rama-Tut is actually Kang The Conqueror (among other identities), an Avengers villain. FF Annual #2 also reprints Doom’s first appearance, “Prisoners of Doctor

Doom,” from issue #5 (July 1962). There’s also a rogues’ gallery of a half-dozen super-villains introduced the previous year, along with individual pin-ups of the FF and Alicia Masters. The Doctor Doom stories from the issue (as well as his other appearances) remind me of a quote from Jack that appeared in Comics Scene #2 (March 1982). “My mother was a great storyteller. She came from somewhere near Transylvania and she told me stories that would stand your hair on end.” Like Jack’s mother, Doom is also of Eastern European origin. Certainly, part of the diabolical Doctor Doom must be comprised of the hair-raising tales Jack’s mother told him. Dear ol’ Doc returns as the primary party crasher of Reed and Sue’s wedding in “Bedlam at the Baxter Building” from Fantastic Four Annual #3. It seems that Doom is so enraged by the idea of the Richards and Storm nuptials, he decides to activate his highfrequency Emotion Charger, thus fanning “the flames of hatred in the heart of every evil menace in existence.” With talk like that, it’s no wonder he didn’t get an invitation to the wedding! The beauty of his plan is that he doesn’t even need to leave the safety of his castle in Latveria to carry it out. He’ll just have other bad guys do his party crashing for him. What follows is a veritable donnybrook with an all-star cast of Marvel heroes and villains taking part in the fracas. Naturally, the villains are unaware they’re being manipulated by Doom’s Emotion Charger. Apparently, the heroes just happened to be hanging around the Baxter Building that afternoon in case they were needed for crowd control at the wedding. Just about every Marvel character of the period seems to make an appearance with the exceptions of the Hulk and Sub-Mariner.* Even Patsy Walker and Hedy Wolfe show up, but luckily they’re not called upon to slug it out with any villain. The brawl is eventually halted when Reed makes use of a Time Displacer he has appropriated from the Watcher. Reed and Sue take their wedding vows and all goes well at the reception until a couple of late arrivals show up. It seems Stan and Jack came sans invitations, so Nick Fury orders them out. The boys vow to get even, though. They simply “go back to the Bullpen and start writing the next ish!” The third Annual also includes reprints of “Captives of the Deadly Duo” from FF #6 (Sept. 1962), and “A Visit With the Fantastic Four” and “The Impossible Man,” both from FF #11 (Feb. 1963). The fourth Annual is essentially a Human Torch solo story. At 19 pages, it’s also the shortest of the six feature stories of the Lee and Kirby Annuals. “The Torch That Was” involves the Mad Thinker discovering and reviving the Golden Age Human Torch to do battle with the Fantastic Four. He threatens the original Torch with annihilation via his QuasiMotivational Destruct Organ (or Quasimodo) if the Torch doesn’t comply. Jack’s flaming fighting sequences between the two Torches are explosive

to say the least. There’s also a retelling of the origin of the first Torch, faithful to the version by Carl Burgos from Marvel Comics #1. With the aid of the Inhumans’ dog, Lockjaw, the FF locate the Mad Thinker, but he makes good on his threat to destroy the original Torch and activates Quasimodo. The Mad Thinker gets away, leaving Quasimodo alone and uncertain of his future. The original Torch is, of course, remade into the Vision, appearing next in Avengers. FF Annual #4 also includes a reprinting of the classic twopart battle between the Thing and the Hulk from FF #25 (April 1964), “The Hulk vs. the Thing,” and FF #26, (May 1964), “The Avengers Take Over.’’ “Divide and Conquer,” the lead story from the fifth Annual, introduces a new villain, Psycho-Man. Psycho-Man hails from Sub-Atomica, a series of micro-galaxies clustered within a single atom. His world is becoming overpopulated, so he decides to invade Earth, planning total conquest through use of his Mind-Ray. He carries a compact version of the Mind-Ray throughout the story. The first hero to fall victim of its effect is the Thing, who’s investigating a mysterious package that’s been delivered to Alicia Masters. Alicia is the inadvertent recipient of the final component Psycho-Man needs to complete the larger version of his Mind Ray. The story switches to Panther Island where the Black Panther is searching for intruders that have invaded his lair. The

(above) The two Torches battle it out in FF Annual #4 (Nov. 1966). Inks by Joe Sinnott.

(left) Splash page to the Surfer’s first solo story, in FF Annual #5 (Nov. 1967).

(far left) Schematic of the Baxter Building, done especially by Kirby for FF Annual #1 (1963).

*[Editor’s Note: Our everobservant proofreader Richard Howell pointed out to me that Giant-Man and the Wasp were absent also.]

power and the Surfer soon transforms the ugly brute again. Quasimodo meets a fitting end when he’s changed into a lifeless statue that ornaments an enormous clock high above the city. “If a body lack a soul, only a statue can it be” is the Surfer’s final comment to his now lifeless foe. There’s also a 3-page vignette in this issue [scripted by Kirby] entitled “This is a Plot?” In this humorous romp our hapless creators cavort throughout the Bullpen and are overrun by a horde of hyper-active Marvelites. There’s also a gallery of pin-ups featuring the Inhumans. Jack does a doublepage pin-up of the fabulous FF that still makes me tingly when I look at it after all these years. “Let There Be Life,” the 48-page story from the sixth Annual, is the longest single-issue Fantastic Four story Lee and Kirby ever created. It’s also my favorite FF story. The story involves a quest by Reed, Ben, and Johnny into the Negative Zone to retrieve an anti-matter element. Reed has determined that only this substance can counteract the cosmic radiation in Sue’s blood. Without it, Sue and her unborn baby are likely to die. The real kicker is that the element is contained within a

(above) Line art for the page 6-7 collage in FF Annual #6 (Nov. 1968).

(right) Possibly Kirby’s last major character created for 1960s Marvel, Annihilus made his debut in FF Annual #6.

(bottom) Franklin Richards is born, in FF Annual #6. Joe Sinnot inks.

intruders turn out to be the Inhumans. The Black Panther, the Inhumans, Johnny and Ben join forces to defeat Psycho-Man. Reed and Sue aren’t present for the confrontation since they’ve just announced Sue’s pregnancy. Since Lee and Kirby had established such a large stable of supporting heroes the previous year, it’s really the Black Panther and the Inhumans who get the lion’s share of the action in this Annual. The fifth Annual features a 12-page story entitled “The Peerless Power of the Silver Surfer.” The story involves the Surfer using his cosmic energy to change the sentient computer, Quasimodo, into a living being. Since Quasimodo had been created by the Mad Thinker solely for destruction, a battle quickly ensues above the streets of New York. Quasimodo is hardly a match for the Surfer’s cosmic

cosmic control rod worn around the neck of a new nemesis named Annihilus. Naturally, our trio of heroes are successful in their quest, surviving the tumultuous traps and a bevy of beastly minions of Annihilus called the Borers. They escape disintegrating into the atmosphere of an anti-matter planet by bargaining with Annihilus for safe passage out of the Negative Zone. They arrive back in time to save Sue, who gives birth to a healthy baby boy that we all know now as Franklin Benjamin Richards. By the way, this story has a great two-page photo montage by Jack, depicting Mister Fantastic, the Thing, and the Human Torch floating freely through the Negative Zone. During their nine years together on the Fantastic Four, Lee and Kirby nurtured the team. They began as a fairly straightforward group of adventurers, reminiscent of Jack’s own Challengers of the Unknown, and developed into a true mature family. Their six Annuals are a barometer indicating the changes among the group over the years. They’re also fantastic fantasies. ★

31 Credits:

While each of the TwoMorrows magazines is put together by a single editor (usually doing double-duty as designer), there are an amazing amount of people, spread all around the world, who assist us in getting our publications out each month. Shown here are just a few of the regular contributors who give of their time, talent, knowledge, and energy to making our publications as good as they can be. Many of these folks work on more than one of our mags, and we can’t thank you enough for all you do! ROW ONE: ALGER, Bill • Comic Book Artist Contributor AMASH, Jim • Jack Kirby Collector Contributor BLITZ, Stefan • Comicology Contributing Editor BOERNER, Brian • Special Projects Designer ROW TWO: CARLSON, Johanna Draper • Comicology Contributing Editor COOKE, Jon B. • Comic Book Artist Editor/Idea Machine DEPELLEY, Jean • Jack Kirby Collector Contributor FOLEY, Shane • Jack Kirby Collector Contributor ROW THREE: GILBERT, Michael T. • Alter Ego Contributing Editor GO, Jennifer • Fawcett Collectors of America Contributor HAMERLINCK, Paul • Fawcett Collectors of America Editor HAMILTON, David • Keeper o’ Copies ROW FOUR: HOPPE, Randy • Webmaster Extraordinaire KHOURY, George • Jack Kirby Collector Contributor KNOWLES, Chris • Comic Book Artist Contributor KNUTSON, Jon B. • Transcriber ROW FIVE: LAMKEN, Brian Saner • Comicology Editor MANLEY, Mike • DRAW! Editor MCGOVERN, Adam • Jack Kirby Collector Contributor MORRIS, Brian K. • Transcriber ROW SIX: MORROW, John • Jack Kirby Collector Editor, Publisher MORROW, Pamela • Co-Publisher, Mother-To-Be MUSIAL, Glenn • Mailing Crew Member NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, Eric • Production Assistant ROW SEVEN: SCHELLY, Bill • Alter Ego Associate Editor SCHUMER, Arlen • Comic Book Artist Contributor STELLI, Ed • Mailing Crew Member STEWART, Tom • Comic Book Artist Contributor ROW EIGHT: SWAYZE, Marcus • Fawcett Collectors of America Columnist THOMAS, Roy • Alter Ego Editor VARKER, Patrick • Mailing Crew Member ZIUKO, Tom • Colorist Supreme

Classifieds (10¢/word, $1 minimum) WANTED: Low-grade reading copies, scans, or color/ black-&-white xeroxes of NEWSBOY LEGION covers/stories from STAR SPANGLED COMICS #17, 23, 24, 28, 33, 36, 3840, 44-48, 51, 61, 62 for article for KIRBY COLLECTOR. Will pay cash or trade TJKC subs. TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Dr., Raleigh, NC 27605. 919-833-8092. ORIGINAL ART Marvel/DC Wanted! 1960s-80s, Spider-Man, FF, Green Lantern, Iron Man, etc. Contact: Aaron Sultan, 919-954-7111.

John Morrow, Editor Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington, Production Assistant TwoMorrows, Design/Layout Richard Howell, Proofreader Tom Ziuko, Colorist Randy Hoppe, Webmaster CONTRIBUTORS: Neal Adams • John P. Alexander D. Bruce Berry • Robert L. Bryant Kurt Busiek • Gene Colan Jon B. Cooke • Sam De La Rosa Evan Dorkin • Mark Evanier Bill Field • Shane Foley Tony Fornaro • Mike Gartland Glen Gold • David Hamilton The Howell/Kalish Collection George Khoury • Tom Kraft Richard Kyle • José Ladronn Marty Lasick • Adam McGovern Eric Nolen-Weathington Jerry Ordway • Brian Pearce Patrick Price • Steve Robertson Mike Royer • Steve Rude Marie Severin • Stan Taylor Mike Thibodeaux • Roy Thomas Rick Veitch • Tom Ziuko SPECIAL THANKS TO: Neal Adams • Kurt Busiek Gene Colan • Jon B. Cooke Mark Evanier • Mike Gartland Randy Hoppe • Richard Howell Robert Katz • Jeremy Kirby Tracy Kirby • José Ladronn Adam McGovern Eric Nolen-Weathington Marie Severin • Mike Thibodeaux Roy Thomas • Tom Ziuko and of course The Kirby Estate MAILING CREW: Russ Garwood • Glen Musial Ed Stelli • Patrick Varker Loston & Carolyn Wallace

Contribute & Get Free Issues! The Jack Kirby Collector is a not-for-profit publication, put together with submissions from Jack’s fans around the world. We don’t pay for submissions, but if we print art or articles you submit, we’ll send you a free copy of that issue or extend your subscription by one issue. Here’s a list of upcoming themes, to give you ideas of things to write about. But don’t limit yourself to these—we treat these themes very loosely, so anything you write may fit somewhere. And just because we covered a topic once, don’t think we won’t print more about it. So get creative, and get writing; and as always, send us copies of your Kirby art! KIRBY’S LEAST-KNOWN WORK! Know about some obscure aspect of Jack’s career, or have some unpublished art? Contact us! FAN FAVORITES! It’s a simple concept: What are your favorite Kirby stories, and why? Let us know what you think! Plus, a special section on KAMANDI! SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Original Art Wanted! Any page, any issue! Romita, Ross Andru, Frenz, Ditko, Mooney, etc. Contact: Aaron Sultan, 919-954-7111.

Submit artwork as: 1) Color or B&W photocopies. 2) 300ppi TIFF or JPEG scans 3) Originals (packed and insured).

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN original art wanted! Collector desperately seeking any pages by John Romita or Gil Kane. I am not a dealer! I would like a page by each in my collection. Contact Chris Carlisle, 573-624-7201 or carly@semo.net Let me make an offer!

Submit articles as: 1) Typed or laser printed pages. 2) E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com 3) ASCII or RTF text files.

WANTED: The Complete Jack Kirby 1947A and 1947B (Vol. 3 and 4) from Pure Imagination Publishing. Also the Complete Blue Bolt by Verotik Publishing. Patrick A. Price, 3925 Cornell St., Des Moines, IA 50313, (515)244-2159.

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

Gallery On the next eight pages is a look at just a few of Kirby’s double-page splashes, from different eras of his career. Shown on the following pages are:

Double-page spread (in pencil) from the new story in the 1984 New Gods reprint #6.

Two-pager from Captain Victory #3 (March 1982), still in pencil.

Black Panther #1 (Jan. 1977) spread, inked by Mike Royer. The original art for this piece is labeled Jungle Action #25, so Marvel must’ve originally planned to have Jack take over the Panther’s old series, rather than start a new one.

The memorable spread from Kamandi #1 (Oct. 1972), also inked by Royer.

Adam M c Govern Know of some Kirby-inspired work that should be covered here? Send to:

As A Genre

Adam McGovern PO Box 257 Mt. Tabor, NJ 07878

A regular feature examining Kirby-inspired work, by Adam McGovern

SINCEREST FLATTERY

(this spread, left to right) Pivotal page from the “New Jack City” story in Supreme: The Return #6. © Awesome Entertainment Big Bang Comics’ Kirbyinspired character Venus. © Gary S. Carlson and Chris Ecker. The Badge (shown here in his Silver Age rendition by “Mighty Joe Kingler”), from Big Bang Comics. © Gary S. Carlson and Chris Ecker. Splash pages from Kirby’s Thor #143 (Aug. 1967), and Erik Larsen’s more recent Thor #28. Both © Marvel Characters, Inc.

nyone can replicate a successful formula, but it’s a special extra something—an insight into legacy, a building on tradition—that marks the difference between an affectionate swipe from and an expedient swipe at. In this issue’s tracking of the Kirby influence, we look at some of the more prominent and successful homages and pastiches of recent months.

A Swipe Supreme We practitioners of Kirby praise could just about retire with the advent “New Jack City,” the story by Alan Moore and Rick Veitch in issue #6 of Awesome Entertainment’s unfortunately scarce Supreme: The Return. This tale of the endearing Superman send-up Supreme’s encounter with a mysterious Himalayan never-never-land of outlandish creations recognizable to any Kirby fan would be the last word in Kirby testimonials, if Kirby himself hadn’t left behind so many pictures for us to continue poring over. In a sweet story that uses the four-color camouflage of Kirbyesque spectacle to probe the secrets of creativity and the value of imagination, Moore makes the best case yet for Why Kirby Matters—one that would hold up in any scholarly forum, but which is mounted from the ephemeral, unloved, yet humbly enchanting medium whose possibilities Moore still champions. Kirby’s attendance to the need for supplying concepts with context in order to make stories real and urgent for the reader— his invention of whole worlds to go with every character, with a thoroughness that could make the wildest ideas seem plausible and the most simplified moralisms ring true—is a central subject of Moore’s story, but the lesson could only be explained so well by someone who’s learned and applied it more completely than any other creator since Kirby himself. Then, pivotally for so fundamentally visual a storyteller as Kirby, there’s the art. In this era of recombinant culture, where everyone from “appropriationist” painters to sound-sampling hip-hoppers pours uniquely mixed old wines from new bottles, Oscar Wilde’s axiom that talent borrows but genius steals has become the inscription on the gate to our new century. Such genius is found in Rick Veitch’s job on this story, a glorious jumble of the best gods, beasts, worlds, and warriors Kirby never created (plus a few slyly-inserted characters that he did). It’s a culmination of a talent fans have seen elsewhere, in Veitch’s recreations of everything from the

coloring-book folksiness of mid-century super-hero sidekick comics to the pastel psychedelia of late-’60s “relevant” revisionism (also in Supreme), and in his miraculous outEisnering of Eisner in the optically acrobatic noir satire “Greyshirt” (also with Moore) in ABC’s Tomorrow Stories. Veitch not only evokes the look but seemingly taps the imaginations of the creators (and whole stylistic periods) he emulates, as if picking up where they left off in a kind of massculture seance.

In the case of “New Jack City” a few unfortunate post-production decisions intrude. A nondescript, nauseously colored non-Veitch cover clunkily presages the story’s punchline. Inside, slightly murky ’90s color burdens Veitch’s brilliant pencils when they demand pop-art four-color (in the manner of previous Supreme issues’ note-perfect period color schemes on Veitch’s flashback sequences)—and publisher Rob Liefeld draws all the figures of the fish-out-of-water Supreme, but in deference to the story’s charm, self-consciously mutes his hyper-heroic style to neither-here-nor-there affect; the versatile Veitch could easily have set the figures off in any style Liefeld wanted and still delivered the desired contrast—but the achievement remains remarkable. As inspired as his conjurings of individual colleagues are, one must venture outside of comics for an analogy to Veitch himself; perhaps Prince, with his omnivorous stylistic taste and seemingly borderless artistic ability, is the closest comparison. So while Kirby is acknowledged as comics’ king, in Veitch we may well have found its, er, prince.

One for the Pantheon One of the best-produced Kirby pastiches in years arrives in the plain black-&-white wrapper of Image’s low-fanfare Big Bang, an underappreciated but long-running entry in the burgeoning genre of savvy retro. In the book’s 34th-issue “Venus, Goddess of Love and Laughter” story, artists Joe Zierman and Chad Sergesketter’s exuberant Kirbyisms are near-perfect (and the “near” part involves a slight cartooniness which in these anime-friendly days is more of an asset than an impediment). Principal scripter Gary Carlson (with Chris Ecker and Ed DeGeorge) is up to the task of approximating and improving upon his model, with an adeptness at sketching in a grander design than we necessarily see within a

given frame. In succinct captions that are like unfussily poetic stage directions, “a storm erupts in paradise... as thunder pounds out a primal rhythm of rage,” and, we are told, Venus’ “laughter is a golden sound, like tiny bells in a summer breeze.” Conceding the contradictions and embracing the possibilities of the anachronism which curses most divinities cast out from textbooks into pop culture, Carlson & Co.’s Olympus residents speak in a barbed, risqué contemporary banter much closer to the spirit of ancient Greek lit than the Shakespearianisms of Marvel’s “Asgardians” ever were to their Norse-myth molds. A crabby sidekick Cupid represents a clever and unlikely reinvention of Kirby-style gods by way of Jim Starlin’s Pip the Troll, and this is not the only way in which the narrative prospers by widening its referential focus beyond the continuum of the King. The Olympian gods’ absence from recent history is explained by their relocation to the namesake planet of Jupiter after the fall-off of human belief in them lessened their power. Not only does this lend refreshing credibility to a modern-day account of archaic characters by bothering to reposition them in a contemporary context, it also draws in precedents ranging from the original Star Trek series’ Greek-god-in-space episode to Nietzsche’s theory about precisely why “God Is Dead”—not to mention Starlin’s situating of godlike beings including “Eros” (the Greek name for Cupid) on Saturn’s moon of Titan (an early-’70s concept which, bringing us full-circle, was an inventive reworking of Kirby’s then-recent Fourth World cycle—which itself concerned techno-totemic modern gods believed to be descendants of Asgard). It is this spin-art of folkloric ingredients that can elevate pop from the merely derivative to the truly archetypal, and at this point Big Bang is eight miles high and rising. (Big Bang presses on with a loving and intricate alternate history of the comics, with stories of particular interest to Kirbywatchers in issues #2, 14, 18, 24 and 27—especially a spot-on [and to my knowledge, one-of-a-kind] Simon & Kirby swipe, “The Badge,” in #2. You’ll have to hit the back-issue bins for that one, but all the rest and many more are still available for $3 each, plus $1 postage [the latter per order, not per book] from Big Bang Comics, P.O. Box 2133, Appleton, WI 54912 [email: GCarl0007@aol.com].)

Reruns of the Gods A number of Marvel Comics alumni have claimed that their initiation consisted of being shown a pile of Kirby comics and being told, “This is what we want.” Even if this isn’t true, to this day it clearly looks it, and in lieu of the credit-line Kirbyphiles crave, humorous tippings of the hand substitute with a welcome wink. Such an in-joke for the faithful came with the opening page of Erik Larsen’s job on Thor #28, an almost line-for-line simulation of the Thundergod-at-the-ice-cream-stand splash page from

Kirby’s mid-’60s Thor #143. Throughout the newer issue, Larsen evinced a good sense of Kirbyesque layout, with bravura foreshortening which, while not quite pulling off the anatomical plausibility of the master, conveyed his overall sense of energy well. Though there may have been other direct liftings that the more eagleeyed reader is welcome to inform me of (this is definitely and unsecretively

the case in Larsen’s more recent back-up story for DC’s Orion #5), the general effect was that of an affectionate transitional tribute from the still-fresh post-Kirby Marvel of the early ’70s. The homage was deepened by a nervous, scratchy kineticism to the rendering (aided, and possibly added, by inker Klaus Janson) which evoked the other of fans’ all-time favorite Thor interpretations, Walter Simonson’s. Thus was synthesized all that has been most successful for the book in the past, and in the art as in Dan Jurgens’ writing the application of formula was done with caring professionalism—though as with so much of current Marvel, works based to such an extent on memory face a tough time being memorable, or being enduring, themselves.

Escape from the Vault of Euphemisms This space is usually reserved for those publishers and producers who distinguish themselves by not distinguishing Kirby’s contribution to his own creations—those who give “special thanks to” or “acknowledgment to the work of” Kirby and his collaborators, but do anything to stop short of the more legally-binding and less assembly-line-friendly “created by.” But this month the Vault is bare, as we celebrate the sweet turnabout of an interview with comic-inspired novelist Michael Chabon in the 9/24/00 New York Times Book Review. Therein, we see Kirby referred to by the Newspaper of Record’s reporter plainly as the “creator of Captain America and the Incredible Hulk” (not to mention by Chabon himself as “the Shakespeare or Cervantes of comic books”). While most TJKC readers would agree

that the Shakespeare remark isn’t too much of a good thing, surely the “creator” one is—we all know Kirby’s the co-creator of those iconic characters—but things have gone overboard in the opposite direction so many times that the

moment remains triumphant. And there’s still something for every historic taste, with a reference to Stan Lee as the “progenitor” of Spider-Man in the book review that accompanies the Q&A. The only bad that could possibly come of all this will be when that poor Chabon-interviewer gets sued by Joe Simon...! (While we’re on the subject of credit, belated thanks to French correspondent Jean Depelley for pointing out the Jean-Marie Arnon materials covered here last issue—and as always, to John Morrow for being the vigilant international operator who connected us.) ★

Kirby Koincidences Shane Foley writes: “The ‘black dots’ story run in TJKC #30 reminded me of a time I was watching TV years ago. It was footage of German and Russian troops in the snow in Eastern Europe. The contrast in the shots was really marked—old film + glare from the snow— and everything was either black or white. There was so much Kirby ‘spotting blacks’ that I remarked to the family something in the order of ‘so that’s where he got it from!’ Then, in later shots of the troops in the mud, while without the intense contrast from snow, Kirby-style black spotting was really apparent. Also, for a short time 15 years ago, I used to play tennis early Monday mornings, and my partner and I played against ‘Stan and Jack’. It was almost perfect. One was quite tall and lanky, really eloquent and with a bubbly nature. The other was short and stocky, much quieter and rougher ’round the edges—and they were a good team together. The only thing was that the tall one was Jack and the short one was Stan.” Got a coincidence involving Kirby? Send it in! 47

Internationalities

Ladronn: A Kindred Interview conducted by George Khoury • Edited by Ladronn & George Khoury

(below) Carlos Pacheco and Ladronn’s splash page to Inhumans #2.

(center) The Moebius influence shows through in this warrior by Ladronn. (© Ladronn.)

(A native of Mexico, José Ladronn has made a noticeable impact on the comics industry in very little time. As penciler, together with writer Joe Casey and inker Juan Vlasco, he took Marvel Comics’ Cable series through a renaissance to the excitement and epic storytelling of the Lee and Kirby era. Ladronn’s linework and sense of design made an astounding connection with comics readers everywhere, from its early Kirby homage through an evolution that hearkens toward a synthesis of Kirby and Moebius. Yet it wasn’t till last year that we were able to see what he could really do as an artist. With his work in The Inhumans and the Thor 2000 Annual, Ladronn was able to show his work as painter, a painting style that is beautiful, bold, and immaculate. It’s hard to believe that the best of Ladronn’s art is still to come.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Where are you from, and what type of art training did you have? LADRONN: I am from Mexico and I was born in Minatitlan, Veracruz. I never studied drawing—I studied graphic design—but all my life I’ve been drawing. I’ve always had that in me. TJKC: What were your first comics and influences? LADRONN: When I was younger, before even learning to read, I had liked comics. The first books that I had were from DC Comics; I had Kamandi issues, Mister Miracle, The Demon! I also had some Fantastic Four books; almost all of them were Kirby books, published in Mexico and [printed] in Spanish. TJKC: Can you explain the attraction to Kamandi and those other books? LADRONN: I liked reading those books because when I was a child I didn’t have a lot of friends, just my classmates. I would spend entire days in house, normally alone, but I was always doing something. I liked those books because the stories were very impressionable on me. That’s why I liked them a lot. TJKC: Would you consider Jack Kirby to be your most important influence? LADRONN: Yes. Kirby was an important influence, especially in books like Kamandi and Mister Miracle. TJKC: When did you start to lean towards a professional career in the comics industry? LADRONN: I always thought that one day I was going to create comics. When I was younger, I studied and sometimes during my leisure time I would make comics. But when I was older, I was fortunate to have gotten the break to be able to work professionally in comics. TJKC: Can you explain the Kirby influence in your artistic style? LADRONN: I think that Kirby has been an important influence for myself as an artist in the super-hero genre because his style is the strongest. His drawings show strength and were always so dynamic. TJKC: Does it ever bother you when people compare your artwork to Kirby’s work? LADRONN: No, it doesn’t bother me. When I’ve drawn something in the past, and I’ve drawn it close to Kirby’s style, that for me is a lot of fun and an honor to be able to do something like that. Especially today, there are so many out they’re who have forgotten his style, and I honestly believe that you can’t forget the lessons of the past. Today’s comics would be nothing without those influences that existed in the past. TJKC: Are there any others you would consider an influence?

Spirit LADRONN: The majority of the comics that I’ve read—not the ones when I was a kid, but the comics that I read when I was a little older—were the European comics. The majority of my artistic influences are European; they are Spanish, French, and Belgian. I am a great admirer of Moebius and other European artists. Those are my other influences. TJKC: Is there a comics market in Mexico? LADRONN: The market in Mexico is extremely tough. In Mexico, I worked in something completely different. In Mexico I worked as a designer at a television company; that was my job. I did storyboards and three-dimensional promotionals for a television company. Generally, most Mexican comics are translated comics from the United States. There are comics produced in Mexico, but the majority of them, especially the super-hero books, are American.

TJKC: How did you break into the American market? LADRONN: I was invited. A friend gave me the idea to come to San Diego, to Comicon, and I came one year to see what types of things were done in a convention. So I prepared a portfolio and returned the next year; that’s how I got work at Marvel. TJKC: So Cable was your first book? LADRONN: My first work was in Marvel’s Shadows and Lights. It was a Blade story, twelve pages in black-&-white. I only did the pencils and someone else did the inks. TJKC: How did you get the Cable series? LADRONN: After Shadows and Lights, the editor, James Felder, told me he was interested in doing an additional project with me and so I did Spiderboy in the second year of the Amalgam books. After that I was offered Cable Minus 1 which in turned got me the Cable series on a regular basis. TJKC: Was it challenging working on a monthly basis? LADRONN: Yes, it was difficult. I don’t like the idea of working month-to-month. It’s very tolling on an artist. You can’t always

do your best and you always have all this pressure on you. There are moments that the work doesn’t come out quite as intended. TJKC: Did your editor pick up on the Kirby influence immediately?

(above) Flame on! Kirby’s pencils from Fantastic Four #89, page 16 (Aug. 1969).

LADRONN: Yes, right from the beginning that Kirby was my influence. I’ve always combined the European works with the American works. I tried to combine many details as is done in Europe with the type of work that Kirby did, which was a style that was even too powerful for super-heroes—but for this market in 49

(below) Kirby’s cover to Thor #155 (Aug. 1968, with Colletta inks), and Ladronn’s rendition of Mangog, from the 2000 Thor Annual.

(right) Ladronn used a very Kirbyesque style for his “Transilvane” sequel in Legends of the DC Universe #2223 (Nov.-Dec. 1999); also shown here are Kirby’s pencils from Jimmy Olsen #143 (Nov. 1971) for comparison.

(next page, top) More Kirby-inspired work, this time from Ladronn’s run on Marvel’s Cable. Shown here is a page from issue #64.

America, the Kirby style works better. TJKC: How was it working with Joe Casey on Cable? LADRONN: It was very good. Joe is not only a great writer but he’s one of my best friends. We worked very well together as a team. Joe normally did the plots, and then he would talk to me over the phone to get my opinion. We would go over his ideas and I would suggest things that might work for our stories. He was always attentive and would give me the scripts to look over. I’ve always thought that we made a good team. I’ve always felt that he was writing especially for me, and I was drawing for him. We never had any problems. I think that till this day he’s one of the best writers that I’ve worked with.

I like his designs compared to the new characters of today. I feel that a lot of what Kirby did has been lost. Marvel has lost some of their luster. They’ve lost some of Kirby’s magic. TJKC: Did Juan Vlasco intentionally ink your pencils to get that Mike Royer look? LADRONN: I always told Juan Vlasco that I would prefer for him to ink

TJKC: How were you told that you were off Cable when Rob Liefeld took over the title? LADRONN: It was a surprise. I was preparing everything with Joe for the last episodes of Cable. We were preparing the grand battle between Cable and Apocalypse. Joe already had a lot of plans; he also had some ideas that I told him about. We never imagined it when we got the news to finish up. We still had a lot of hopes for the epic battle that we wanted to do. TJKC: It seems that a lot of the Kirby comparisons come from the over-the-top way in which you present your stories. I especially noticed that in the “Total Chaos” storyline. LADRONN: Joe was always a person who liked telling big stories. He would always tell me there were no limits. I always had to go further and further with my artwork. TJKC: Has it always been a goal of yours to draw as many Kirby characters as you can? LADRONN: Over the years, I feel that I get a lot of pleasure working with the Kirby creations because

me in a classic style. Juan is also Mexican; I’ve known him since Mexico. What is special is that Juan worked a long time with me. He understands my work. The problem that I have with other inkers is that most of the time they don’t know my work. Juan understands my style and we have the experience together. The first Marvel assignment I had, we did together. TJKC: Do you have any assignments planned with Joe in the future? LADRONN: We have a few plans. We’re not sure what’s going to happen. We’ve always tried to find an opportunity to work together again. I feel that Joe is a writer who sincerely loves comics, the classic comics, and the epic comics, and that’s also something that I like. He makes stories that are perfect for my style of art. Joe and I had made some plans but the right moment has still not presented itself. We’re thinking about maybe something for DC or the European market. TJKC: What can you tell me about the “Transilvane” story you did in Legends of the DC Universe? LADRONN: My friend Jean-Marc Lofficier came up with the idea to do the “Transilvane” story. He’s a real connoisseur of comics. He thought it would be cool to resurrect those Kirby stories, which weren’t continued—ideas that weren’t explored enough. “Transilvane” was one of those cases. It had all the possibilities of being a pretty good story, too. TJKC: Had you read the “Transvilane” story in the original Jimmy Olsen series? LADRONN: I did not read those stories. When I was younger they weren’t reprinted in Mexico. In Mexico I saw very little of the Superman stories despite the fact that there are a lot of Superman stories; but few had Kirby art. With the “Transilvane” story I became aware of all the things Kirby did in the Jimmy Olsen books. TJKC: Do you feel a professional attachment to Kirby? LADRONN: Yes. All my life I’ve been extremely respectful of the work of other artists—but every time I draw a Kirby character I feel overjoyed and proud doing something that

keeps the memory of the King alive. TJKC: In the recent Thor Annual, you had a chance to paint. How did this happen? LADRONN: I’ve tried little by little to make companies like Marvel familiar with my work. Before Marvel I used to do everything in my artwork: Pencils, inks, and colors. Normally Marvel only asked for the pencils, so I’ve tried to show them what I can do. I feel it would be a great loss if I wasn’t able to demonstrate what I’m capable of doing. TJKC: What are you going to do with The Inhumans? Are you leaning towards the Kirby interpretation or the Marvel Knights version? LADRONN: Good question. I’ve been asked a lot if this has something to do with Marvel Knights. The truth is I’m basing their characterizations on their original doing; I’m doing the classic Inhumans, the ones we’re all familiar with. TJKC: Is it different working with Carlos Pacheco than with Joe? LADRONN: It’s different. Joe is more literal. Joe’s vision is different because he is a writer. Carlos is more visual, but what is very important is that Carlos is a person with a lot of vision for comics. He’s very knowledgeable about American comics and European comics; Carlos is a person who would give his life for comics. In the scripts that he’s done, I can tell that he’s captured the complete essence of those characters. TJKC: Who else is working with you on the series? LADRONN: I’m penciling and inking the books and I have a few good Mexicans friends who are working on the colors. Carlos [Pacheco] and Rafael Marin are the writers; they are the ones behind the story. The story is centered on the origins of the Inhumans. The protagonist is Black Bolt, but I really think it’s Medusa who has the weight of the story because Black Bolt is so in his own world and everything that we hear from Black Bolt comes from Medusa. Medusa is a key figure and the voice of Black Bolt. The other important character is Ronan, the Accuser. TJKC: Is there anything you would like to draw but haven’t had the chance to? LADRONN: There are a lot of things I would love to illustrate, but the truth is that my favorite super-hero characters are all 100% by

(left) Detail from the splash to Ladronn’s 2000 Thor Annual.

Kirby. I would love to draw more Kirby creations; I hope that at some point in the future that I could do a Kamandi story. TJKC: What’s your attraction to Kamandi? LADRONN: I once explained this, that I think I knew how Kamandi felt when I was a lot younger. I felt very lonely and I felt a kindred spirit in Kamandi. He was in the same position I was. (Laughs) That’s my connection with Kamandi.

(below) A kindred spirit indeed, from Kamandi #1 (Oct. ’72, with Royer inks).

TJKC: As an artist, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned from watching Kirby’s work? LADRONN: I’ve learned a lot from him. I’ve learned the importance and responsibility that an artist has with the reader. That’s the most important thing that I’ve learned. There are many out there that don’t understand that. TJKC: The Fantastic Four Annual with Chris Claremont; how did that come about? LADRONN: I was just finished with Cable so I started my next project, The Silver Surfer; suddenly Marvel stopped that. They thought it would be better for me to do the FF Annual with Claremont. 51

TJKC: I heard something about the Surfer book. What happened to that?

(below) Kirby’s Inhumans from Fantastic Four #99 (June 1970, Sinnott inks), and Ladronn’s own versions from his recent Inhumans series. Be sure to check out his cover painting (over Kirby’s pencils of an unknown character) next issue!

LADRONN: Marvel simply decided that it wasn’t a priority and cancelled the book. I had already started on the book and Marvel cancelled it. They decided that there were more important assignments than this one and they offered me a few projects, which I didn’t like much. Afterwards they offered me the Fantastic Four Annual. I hadn’t even thought about doing this Annual but I did it because I had no other options and I had to do something. It wasn’t something I sought. I always wanted to do a Fantastic Four story, but not like this. TJKC: Can you tell me a little about the Surfer story? LADRONN: I felt that it was a big mistake on Marvel’s behalf because they didn’t consider the importance of this project. The Silver Surfer book was going to be the third arc of the Silver Surfer’s trilogy. The first one was the graphic novel by Kirby and Lee, the second one was with Moebius and Stan Lee, and this book was the third part, which would have completed the trilogy. When Jean-Marc and I approached Marvel with the book, we thought that we had to bring

the Silver Surfer full circle. The story written by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier—on which I helped a bit—was a story with the Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Nick Fury, and a few villains. Marvel decided now wasn’t the time. I had completed a few pages in color, but nothing else. TJKC: Of all your work, what stands out as your favorite? LADRONN: It’s difficult, I’ve always been happy with everything, but The Inhumans, which I’m doing now, is something that I’ve put a lot of time and care into. ★

Comparison

Kirby Vs. Kubrick A commentary on Jack Kirby’s adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, by John P. Alexander am almost as big a fan of Stanley Kubrick as I am of Jack Kirby. As a kid I spent many long hours drawing Kirby-derived comic books for fun. The Fantastic Four may be my all-time favorite comic, but 2001: A Space Odyssey is my all-time favorite film. I also filled canvases inspired by the promotional art from 2001 that had been painted by aerospace artist Robert McCall. Both of these artists, who were preeminent in their respective fields, had a profound influence on my aesthetic sense. I made McCall’s acquaintance while preparing a science fiction film festival in college in 1976, and cherish several original artworks I received from him. I will forever regret never having met Jack Kirby. It is therefore ironic that I must play devil’s advocate when it comes to the subject of Jack’s comic book adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s milestone motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you have a problem with anything here, I suggest that you consult Jerome Agel’s comprehensive book The Making of 2001.

(top) Quick Kirby convention sketch of Commander Bowman. (this page) Jack’s collage, source material, and assembly instructions for page 13 of the 2001 Marvel Treasury Edition.

(right) Kirby obviously had read Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 novel, since he altered this scene from the movie to have the apemen attacking warthogs (they hunted tapirs in the film version).

(below right) This scene didn’t exist in the 2001 film, only in a promotional painting done by Robert McCall (below).

I have previously written in TJKC about “Kirbyizations” or Kirby versions of film or television source that appeared in Jack Kirby’s comics over the years. In these, Jack would take an inspirational source and put his own spin on it. There were a number of occasions in which Jack got his hands on licensed authorized movie projects, where he could apply his talents directly to the original material rather than make his own second-generation versions. Strangely, these adaptations, like the 1979 newspaper strip version of Disney’s The Black Hole, lack vitality and compare poorly with the source material. Like Ted Turner’s “colorized” version of Casablanca, they hit the floor with a hollow thud. Unfortunately, Jack’s authorized “comic book” version of the feature film 2001: A Space Odyssey belongs to this category. This book was peculiar for a number of reasons. For one, it was made eight years after the film’s initial run and therefore cannot be considered a marketing tie-in. 2001 had not been in general release since the early 1970s when it was hyped as “The Ultimate Trip” to play up the “psychedelic” aspects of the final “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” sequence in the film in order to appeal to the “art house” crowd. It is hard to believe now, but for a few years, 2001 had the status of Rocky Horror Picture Show with midnight shows playing to stoned college students. Fantasia with its magic mushrooms was also re-released in the mid-1970s with this market in mind. 1976 was a full year before the release of Star Wars, and the advent of a self-perpetuating film/product tie-in market with endless paperbacks and action figures! With this one-shot book and the short-lived 2001 series which followed, Jack was toying with a marketing concept several years ahead of its time. The oversized format of the 2001 book, popular with Marvel during this period, did not enhance Kirby’s artwork because it was printed at close to a 1-to-1 ratio with his original renderings. Kirby’s style had become looser in later years and photographic reduction was “tightening” his art, doing to it what a truss does for a hernia. My real regret about the Kirby 2001 book, is that MGM didn’t authorize it back in 1968 when Jack was at the zenith of his artistic powers. The result might have been truly awesome. The 2001 book displays a panoply of artistic laziness on Kirby’s part. For instance, Jack made no attempt to draw the faces of Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, or other cast members. Instead, we see a set of interchangeable Kirby stock faces. One need only look at the October 1968 Mad magazine parody “201 Minutes of a Space Idiocy” to see how superbly Mort Drucker caricatured the actors’ faces. The actors had probably signed standard contracts allowing their likenesses to be used in promotional materials, so there was probably no legal impediment. A notable exception to this practice was Richard Dreyfuss’ refusal to sign such a contract for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As a result, his likeness appeared on none of the licensed merchandise for CE3K like the collector card set. As much of 2001 is wordless, Kirby’s addition of banal and often ludicrous dialogue like “Space traveling will never soften up that jogging nut!”(pg. 35), not only fails to enhance the story, it is as inappropriate as dubbing words into the mouth of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times! Jack took liberties with the final cut I believe to be all his own. Kubrick actually filmed scenes which did not make the first cut. These include a schoolroom scene at the Clavius moon base in which Kubrick’s own daughter appeared in the

cast, and the purchase of a bushbaby in a futuristic department store for Heywood Floyd’s little girl who appeared in the video phone scene (also played by another of Kubrick’s daughters)! Kirby used none of this material and was apparently unaware of its existence! Arthur C. Clarke’s non-fiction memoir The Lost Worlds of 2001 recounts a number of versions that did not make it to celluloid, but none of this appears in the Kirby book. It is

clear that Jack read Clarke’s original novel, for in a couple of instances Kirby prefers the Clarke novel over the Kubrick film. In the “Dawn of Man” sequence, Kubrick has the apemen attacking South American tapirs. Kubrick chose them because they look strange and “prehistoric,” even though it was a glaring technical error to place them in the Pliocene of Africa. In the novel, Clarke more accurately used warthogs, and so did Kirby (pg. 10, at left). Jack has Bowman abandon ship just before encountering the Jupiter monolith. This greatly telescopes events and makes no sense. One of the reasonable criticisms that has been made of the film is that its opaque plot fails as a narrative. This has lead to endless misinterpretations of 2001. It is disconcerting to find that in the final analysis, Jack Kirby himself really didn’t understand the movie. A critical moment in the film is when Bowman blows himself through the airlock without a space helmet. Kirby draws Bowman with a helmet (pg. 47-48) and ruins the whole dramatic point of the scene. In the film, during the lobotomy of HAL, Bowman is wearing a green helmet he grabbed off the equipment rack (off-camera) which clashes with his red space suit. Kirby misses this completely. Kirby gets an unusual credit as co-colorist with Marie Severin on the 2001 book, so he can’t escape blame for coloring Bowman’s spacesuit orange instead of red. I am certain that all of the pastel “Stargate” sequence was colored by Kirby himself. On page 47 (pl. 1, shown on next page) Kirby draws Bowman sitting in a control couch aboard the little spacepod. Unfortunately this is a rendering of the cockpit of the Discovery and not the pod. Ironically, the publicity still which Kirby used for this panel appears in the “Retrospective” section at the end of the book (pg. 73). Errors like this appear on nearly every page of the Kirby book and are too common to enumerate. There is one scene (pg. 35, left) depicting the interior of the Discovery centrifuge with astronaut Bowman in his spacesuit standing “under” the upside-down jogging Frank Poole, which never existed on film. It is, however, a copy of one of the four promotional paintings by Robert McCall. When I first laid the two versions side-by-side, I was struck by the fact that Kirby’s copy is too similar to have been drawn freehand. Jack must have traced the McCall painting or employed a pantograph. Likewise the scene with the astronaut surveyors on the rim of the lunar crater Clavius (pg. 19, pl. 1) is a crude copy of another McCall painting. In fact the splash page of Chapter 2 (pg. 13, shown on the beginning of this article), is a collage which actually includes a piece cut out of the McCall painting of the space station which appeared both on the original 1968 movie poster and on the album cover of the 2001 soundtrack! Now that is chutzpa! Jack cut more corners on this project than a New York cab driver! I know of one other case in which Kirby was inspired by another artist’s painting. This is the two-page spread in New Gods #4 (pg. 2-3), in which Metron zips over the heads of two tribes of

clashing primitives. This spread, in theme and composition (down to a boulder in one of the creatures’ hands) resembles a painting done by paleontological illustrator Jay Matternes depicting Australopithecus versus Homo habilis that is too similar to be coincidence. The painting appears in the Time-Life book Early Man which was first published in the 1960s (I have an autographed copy!). Compare the vitality of the New Gods spread with the static apeman fight in Kirby’s 2001 (pg. 11). It is sadly clear that by 1976, Jack was suffering from creative exhaustion. The very existence of a 2001 comic book probably gave Stanley Kubrick angina. A notorious perfectionist like Orson Welles, Kubrick insisted on a final cut of 2001 which left about 10 minutes on the floor after the April 1968 premiere. This footage includes some redundant spacewalk material and a scene where Bowman retrieves a spare antenna part from a hexagonal corridor. MGM made a publicity still from this which was used as a lobby card. As a result, this corridor is the only element from this lost footage which appears in the Kirby book (pg. 40, pl. 6, shown at left). To prevent exploita-

(above) Two Kirby interpretations of a Jay Matternes painting (top): from New Gods #4 (Aug. 1971, inked by Colletta) and page 11 of the 2001 Treasury Edition.

(left) This image was taken from footage that Kubrick cut from the film.

tion of his film, Kubrick had nearly all of the props and unused footage burned! They are lost forever! The one notable exception is the apeman costumes which were given to South African anthropologist Philip Tobias for classroom use. There exists a documentary film in which Tobias’ students are reenacting situations such as the aforementioned Matternes painting wearing the apeman suits from 2001. Kubrick’s rationale for burning his bridges is not as paranoid as one may think. He didn’t want inferior sequels to 2001 to be made. Similarly, Charlton Heston wanted the same for his film Planet of the Apes. In one of those cosmic synchronicities, both films, each featuring spaceships and elaborate “ape” makeup were released within months of each other in 1968. When Arthur P. Jacobs cajoled Heston into doing the unspeakably wretched sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes, he participated on the specific conditions that 1) his character Taylor be killed off; and 2) the future Earth be destroyed to prevent any further sequels (fat chance)! Kubrick was justifiably afraid of the perpetual use by MGM of the spacesuits, spaceship models, props, and stock footage from 2001. As precedent, he had the case of the 1956 MGM classic Forbidden Planet. This motion picture was the first big-budget science fiction film ever made by the studio, and millions of 1950s dollars were spent on lavish sets, props and costumes. One could write an immense catalog of the films and TV shows which utilized these leftover items for decades afterward. Rod Serling alone used them in dozens of Twilight Zone episodes. Robbie the Robot later appeared in scores of B-movies and TV episodes including juvenile matinee fare like The Invisible Boy and Lost in Space. Kubrick wanted his film to stand alone, and not to become the source material for godawful dreck. Douglas Trumbull, who made the models for 2001, would later regret that he did not have a contract like Kubrick’s when stock

footage from his 1972 film Silent Running was used by Universal Studios in Battlestar Galactica. When MGM produced a film version of Arthur C. Clarke’s sequel 2010: Odyssey Two in 1985, they had to rely on 35 mm frame blowups from the original film in order to reconstruct the sets of the Discovery spacecraft because Kubrick even had Douglas Trumbull’s blueprints destroyed! Kubrick, of course, had nothing to do with 2010. As a result there are a number of glaring errors in 2010 that could have been avoided had Peter Hyams done his homework. For instance, the black stripes on the floor of the podbay were supposed to be velcro, which accounts for the jerky movements of the astronauts’ walking 56

gait in 2001. These stripes are seen in the Kirby book (pg. 41, pl. 1, shown at left). There was not supposed to be any simulated gravity aboard the Discovery outside of the centrifuge. Kirby also used frame blowups throughout his version, to the point where they lead him to error. In the podbay scene just mentioned, Kirby draws it with a curved ceiling. In fact, the ceiling is flat. Kirby had used a frame blowup which had been shot from the perspective of HAL 9000’s electric eye (a photo appears on page 77), but he did not correct for the use of the anamorphic lens in the external perspective he had chosen. Similarly, Kirby fails to “go anamorphic” in scenes which are supposed to be from HAL’s fish-eye perspective (pg. 38, pl. 2, 4, and 5, shown at right), and the panels are rendered “flat.” 2010, with its intrusive over-dubbing by Roy Scheider, is not a tenth of the picture that 2001 is, and the Kirby comic could not possibly do 2001 justice! The Kirby book and series were exactly the sort of exploitation Kubrick had tried to prevent. It is ironic that two of the artistic geniuses who most profoundly affected a generation of young Americans, are at diametric opposites on this issue. Aside from some now-highly-collectible Aurora model kits, contemporary tie-ins with 2001 were virtually nil. The June 1968 Life magazine sneak preview which contrasted the hibernaculae in 2001 with the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen is a prized collectible. Another is a small comic booklet distributed at Howard Johnson’s Restaurants. It did not depict the film, but rather a typical American family going out to see the film! This booklet in now a true collector’s item while the Kirby book is an oddity. The Kirby version came out long after all but diehard 2001 fans like myself ceased to give a damn about the movie. The Kirby book is a rehash. It adds nothing to the film or the novel, and is not among Kirby’s best work. How can small static images compete with Cinerama, or mute paper compare with thundering Also Spracht Zarathustra? I place Kirby’s 2001 book in the same category as William Shatner’s schlock vanity singing album. Kirby did it because it was something he wanted to do, even though there was no market demand for it. In comparison, Kubrick did authorize a companion book to A Clockwork Orange, in which the final script is accompanied by blowups of actual frames of the film, so Kubrick himself was not averse to such a book, if it was done under his supervision. Kirby’s comic version of 2001 was a slap in Kubrick’s face.

The Kirby 2001 book illustrates the point that just because one can get the comics rights to a major work and it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. There is a distinction between adaptation and desecration. When Ted Turner got the rights to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (the movie recently voted the greatest American film of the 20th Century), he tried to “colorize” it. Welles went before a Congressional committee looking into the question of creative rights for intellectual property (a baton which Jack himself picked up with respect to the rights of comics artists). Welles testified that Turner should “keep his crayons off of my movie!” Jack Kirby should have heeded Orson Welles’ advice. ★

(previous page) Pencils from page 41 (top) and page 47 (bottom). Notice how faithfully Kirby reproduced the details of the ship.

(above) Pencils from page 38; Kirby didn’t reproduce the “fish-eye” lens technique from the film (left).

For a look at how other comics through the years have envisioned the future, check out Comicology #3, now shipping from TwoMorrows (and including Kirby’s cover pencils from 2001 #1). 57

Old Genesis

Kirby’s Morning of the Gods

by Adam McGovern othing embodies the “big”-ness of Jack Kirby’s ambition and the scope of his imagination more than the pop treatments of godhood which define his memory for most fans. There is also perhaps no interest which sprawls so widely across the breadth of Kirby’s career. It is illuminating to note the Golden Age provenance of the god-themed 1960s and ’70s works which would come to be considered his crowning creations. The very first installment of his “Mercury” series in 1940 features a page of introductions—one panel apiece, in keeping with the famous Kirby concision—in which Jupiter, king of the Roman gods, considers which of his pantheon is best suited to aid humanity in the global conflict then brewing on real-life Earth. Here we see in thumbnail form the blueprint for the kind

N (below) Page 2 pencils from Eternals #7 (Jan. 1977), featuring the Celestials—the real “gods” of the series.

of ensemble characterization Kirby would advance in both The New Gods and The Eternals in the 1970s—and which fandom would only embrace two more decades later in series like Astro City and Top 10. New Gods and Eternals were also quite loose in their borrowings and recombinations from ancient myth. The eponymous Eternals were said to be dimly-recognized models for all cultures’ deities, and New Gods mixed both Norse and Biblical end-times scenarios with a principal character, Orion, named from Greek myth. A more youthfully free-wheeling form of this can be found in Golden Age series like “Hurricane,” in which the son of the Norse Thor battles the Roman Pluto; and “Marvel Boy,” in which a youngster is predestined to defeat the Axis powers through his possession by the spirit of the Roman Hercules— who descends from the Norse Valhalla. By the time of his bestremembered work, Kirby would transmute this exuberant confusion into a kind of archetypal universality. (It also bears noting that these two series anticipate by a half-century the interest in inter-generational super-heroics that has bloomed only recently with such series as Kingdom Come and Marvel’s MC-2 line.) Perhaps most intriguing is the attention to characterization in “Hurricane,” at least one episode of which (recently reappearing in a Marvel Mystery Comics reprint) portrays the fright and puzzlement of the divinity’s human charges at the intensity of his wrath toward their common foes. This “Jacob’s ladder” scenario, evoking the inscrutability and decidedly ambiguous benevolence of the gods and their agents, would later show up in classic Kirby innocent bystander narratives about the effects of cosmic clashes on ordinary people. These include New Gods #6’s “The Glory Boat”— to say nothing of person-on-the-street super-hero accounts like Busiek’s and Ross’s fan-beloved Marvels—and the approach is an impressively three-dimensional take on larger-than-life characters in whatever age it appears. It is not entirely clear what level of script input Kirby had in these Golden Age stories, but what is clear is that certain sparks were kindled at that time which would fire his imagination for the rest of his life (and that of others beyond it). Like divine design, in the beginning seeds were planted of which we haven’t seen the last blossoming, even today. ★

Making The Connections by Eric Nolen-Weathington ack Kirby liked to tell big stories, and he found many such stories in the various mythologies of mankind’s past. But outside of some of the “Tales of Asgard” stories, Kirby wasn’t afraid to play fast and loose with the details in order to tell a great story. He also didn’t mind creating his own

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mythologies in the process. The “molecular diagram” of the gods shown here is my meager attempt at simplifying (emphasis on simplifying) the connections between his mythical characters. (Please note: This is one of many possible interpretations. Only the most direct links have been used here. For our purposes, lineage takes precedence over hierarchy.) Let’s start at the center, shall we? In the center hole is God, a.k.a. The Source. God was the center of Kirby’s beliefs and was always looming in the background of his stories as something beyond the gods he depicted on the page. God’s most prominent role (outside of possibly Galactus, which is a whole other kettle of fish) is that of The Source from the Fourth World mythology. It’s pretty clear they are meant to be one and the same. So let’s move on to the Asgardians of Norse

mythology. Kirby spent more time in this mythology than any other, especially if you count (and I do) the various versions of Thor that popped up in Simon & Kirby stories such as Boy Commandos #7 and “Villain from Valhalla” from Adventure #75. Norse mythology also served as the roots of Kirby’s Fourth World. Whether Kirby had truly developed the idea of the New Gods when producing the “Tales of Asgard” stories in Thor #127 and #128 is unknown, but he obviously makes the connection in Forever People #5 and in the “In the Beginning” segment of New Gods #7. “Balduur [read Balder] gave nobility and strength” to New Genesis, while Apokolips was “saturated with the cunning and evil which was once a sorceress [read Karnilla the Norn Queen.]” Then comes Captain Victory. He was originally meant for the silver screen, but near the end of his

short-lived series in the ’80s, he was retroactively made the son of Orion (though the names were changed to protect the innocent.) Next up are the Greek/Roman gods. Kirby never bothered to keep them separate, so neither will we—and let’s face it, the Romans changed the names, but they really didn’t change the myths behind the names. At this point, you’re probably saying, “Hercules didn’t have a kid.” That is correct, but Marvel Boy possesses the reincarnated soul of Hercules (one version of Hercules anyway.) Now here’s where the headaches begin. Hercules, a Roman demi-god, died and went to Valhalla, which is part of Norse mythology, then was reincarnated as Marvel Boy via Egyptian mythology. At least the writer, Martin Burstein (a possible pseudonym for Kirby?), got Mars and Jupiter right. You’ve probably guessed that the guy with the wings on his head is Mercury, and you’re right. So why the connection to Thor? Well, Mercury (also written by Martin Burstein) was a back-up feature in the first and only issue of Red Raven Comics cover dated August 1940. In March 1941, the same character fighting the same foe (Pluto, god of the underworld) appeared in Captain America Comics #1. However, he was now “Hurricane, son of Thor, god of thunder, and the last descendant of the ancient Greek [Greek?!?] immortals...”. The story may have been intended for the cancelled Red Raven Comics, but due to very poor sales was slightly repackaged in an attempt to brush off the stench of failure. Waste not, want not, right? By the way, Kirby is credited as the writer of “Hurricane” in The Golden Age of Marvel Comics, Vol. 2 collection. With The Eternals, Kirby again created his own mythology and, as with the Fourth World, it, too, was tied to established pantheons. However, rather than being the descendants of ancient gods, the Eternals actually were those ancient gods. Substitute Ikarus for Balder/Apollo, Makarri for Hermes/Mercury, Thena for Athena/Minerva, and you get the idea. (The later crossovers really destroyed this concept. The Eternals shouldn’t appear in the same universe as Thor, Hercules, et al.) The big difference, though, is that the Eternals don’t consider themselves gods. That title they reserve for the Celestials. I, however, prefer to think of them not as the Fourth Host, but as the Heavenly Host. Did Kirby truly mean for them to be gods, or were they merely representative of God’s choir invisible, the angels? Who knows? Kirby wasn’t given the chance to finish the “Revelations”-like storyline. Feel free to make your own connections; I left out lots of mythological characters. Just remember, I will not be held responsible for any headaches that may result from your endeavors. ★

(above) Holy six degrees of separation! Is there an industrious fan out there who’d like to take Eric’s beginnings for this chart and expand it to include other Kirby mythological characters? If so, let us know, and we’ll publish the results in a future issue of TJKC.

Tribute

2000 Kirby Tribute Panel Conducted at the 2000 Comicon International: San Diego Featuring (clockwise from left, below) moderator Mark Evanier, Gene Colan, Roy Thomas, Tracy Kirby, Jeremy Kirby, and Marie Severin, and transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington

(below) Detail from the splash page of Thor #173 (Feb. 1970), inked by Bill Everett.

MARK EVANIER: One of the panels I couldn’t possibly let anyone else do—I would’ve mud-wrestled anyone else who tried— is the Annual, except for last year, Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. The reason we didn’t have one last year was that it got lost in the schedule. It was being scheduled at one point and at the last minute there was just no room to do it justice, so we passed on it. Everybody came up to me and said,

“Where’s the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel? There must be room.” They were angry; and I said, “Okay, we will never miss the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel again.” As long as this convention is here we will do this every year. [applause] I would like to introduce to you—well, this panel is going to go in two chapters. We’re going to start by talking about the current legacy of Jack and the family; some projects they’re working on that involve Jack’s characters. Jack wanted very much to have his work be profitable for his family. Those of you who know Jack know he was very concerned with leaving first Roz and then his kids and his grandkids something on which to build; work that made them profit, both financially and personally, and use it to advance their careers and advance their creativity—and it has been very much a pleasure to see Jeremy and Tracy, grandchildren of Jack’s, run with some of this stuff and flourish in their own careers. I’d like to introduce you to Tracy Kirby and Jeremy Kirby. [applause] I’ll introduce the other three people in a moment, but let’s ask Tracy and Jeremy, in either order, a little bit about what they’re up to. I know a lot of things are happening that can’t be discussed. Which one of you wishes to go first? Jeremy? JEREMY KIRBY: [I’m] currently working on comic books— Captain Victory and the

Galactic Rangers. We did that using some of the original artwork as well as artwork that none of you have ever seen before—I can guarantee that because it was bound in a box for about 20 years. So that’ll be pretty exciting, when you take a look at that. We’re working on the Captain Victory mini-series as well as the website [www.kingkirby.com] and getting that set up and professional within the next few months, hopefully. There’s really a lot of projects going on right now. Tracy is doing a lot of the movie-type entertainment things—television. I’ve just been concentrating on comic books. If you want to talk some about the movies...? TRACY KIRBY: My brother is a fast talker. [laughter] This has just been an ongoing process, I think, for both of us. And we’re kind of looking at different characters and projects that we’ve taken personally to heart over the last couple of years. For myself, I went to Mike Richardson at Dark Horse Comics, who has been a long-time, close friend of the family for many, many years, and we want to do projects together. He wants to take some of Jack’s work and really do something wonderful with it. So, one of the first projects— one of my main priorities that I have been working on with Dark Horse—is an obscure project called Satan’s Six that Jack did in ’93; a very small comic book series that came out from Topps Comics. Basically, we just took Jack’s original concept ideas and characters and [Mike Richardson] helped us set it up. We just got two writers attached to the project who are finishing up Ridley Scott’s next movie. That’s a project that I’m really looking forward to. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because I’ve learned over the last couple of years that I’ve been in Hollywood that things change very, very quickly. You really get your hopes up high, then you take the fall and you have to get back up and try again. I’m also trying to develop Challengers of the Unknown as well. So those are the two projects that I’m focusing on. I love ’em, especially Challengers. I love the stories. I know Jeremy has always taken Captain Victory to heart. The good thing [is] that our grandfather left us not just the mainstream characters. I wish all the Marvel characters well. I mean, I’m so happy that X-Men took off; they did a wonderful job. I won’t say anything about the credit

issue at the moment, but Jeremy and I do have a wonderful opportunity to use obscure characters and show our own creativity as well. My most important concern is getting [Jack’s] name out there and keeping it alive. It’s been hard. It’s kind of hard when you see his characters all over the place and no one really knows who he is. I’d just love to one day see a project that’s solely Jack Kirby. I wish my brother well with his projects. He’s the

computer guru, so he’s in charge of all the websites. We have a lot of opportunities. It’s been a wild ride. Everyone that we have met over the past couple of years trying to get things going has just been wonderful. We can only go up from here. MARK: By the way, DC Comics is about an inch-and-a-half from producing either another volume of the Fourth World reprints or a Challengers of the Unknown volume. It would not hurt anything if you went by the DC booth, grabbed Paul Levitz by the lapels, and said, “Put out one of these things quickly.” They really seem to respond to what demand they get at the conventions. They are poised to do these things. A very slight nudge and you’ll see the rest of the Fourth World material collected in a volume, you’ll see Challengers. And they are poised to try to do Jimmy Olsen maybe next year. They’re doing a Supergirl Archive now. So we’ve moved

(above) Cover pencils to the 1975 Marvel Treasury Edition #7, featuring the Avengers.

into the later Superman family books, and they definitely want to do Jimmy Olsen, probably as two archives. We’ll probably see that soon, but it will help if you will just make a little noise about it. Any questions for Jeremy or Tracy? AUDIENCE: DC owns the Challengers. How exactly does the Kirby estate benefit from a movie based on those characters? TRACY: More or less, I know what DC provides for the estate. It’s actually almost easier for me, in a way—I have a good relation with Paul [Levitz] and Jeanette [Kahn] at DC, and they back me up on these projects. I just take it on myself. You go to a Warner Bros.-based production company and make a deal with them. Through Warner Bros., it just gets set up automatically. It makes it, actually, pretty easy. Challengers would be great. It’s Jack Kirby; DC loves it. They back us up. MARK: And they’ll put Jack’s name on it. TRACY: There will be a credit. AUDIENCE: Do you have anything in the works with the New Gods? TRACY: No. No, but I would love to. JEREMY: Both of us really like the New Gods books and we’d love to one day work on some type of New Gods project—but as for right now, nothing is planned. MARK: Warner Bros. developed an animated—I was hired as Kirby consultant for a big-budget animated feature, [but they] started redesigning the characters. One of the versions I saw had about as much to do with Jack as Chicken Run did, [laughter] and then Warner’s had a couple of their animated features die horrendous deaths at the box office and I think that thing is now an inert project. It came within a hair’s breadth of getting into development. Well, it got to development. It came fairly close to actually being produced. I think one of the problems was that half the Warner executives looked at it and said, “This is too much like Star Wars. We can’t produce this.” The other half went, “This isn’t enough like Star Wars. We can’t produce this,” [laughter] and that was really the problem there. AUDIENCE: About the credit issue with Jack Kirby: Rest assured, anyone who reads comic books, anyone who’s into comic books at all [has] to look at Jack Kirby’s exploding pages and everything he’s done. Most everything that Marvel does that’s popular—Fantastic Four, everything—should have Kirby’s name all over it. But creators today should give a credit to Jack Kirby for what they do, because he opened the door for everyone. If there’ll be a better artist or creator in super-hero comics than Jack Kirby, he hasn’t been born yet. We all know who did it, whether it’s official or—anyone who knows and respects comics, knows and loves Jack Kirby. TRACY: Yeah, thank you. [applause] MARK: We’ve been spending a couple of years here trying to get an official credit for Jack—and for Stan, also—on certain strips, obviously, where it’s 62

appropriate. It’s very maddening, because I’ve come to the point, I think three times now, where everyone at Marvel agreed to it; the president of the company would agree to it, fine, we’re doing it. The lawyers would draw up the papers and that president would get fired. At Marvel it’s kind of like, “If my boss calls, get his name.” [laughter] We keep starting over and starting over and I don’t think the current regime is that interested in it. Maybe the next regime will be willing to do it.

AUDIENCE: I think it’s interesting, with the X-Men coming out, and all the write-up—it’s in Time, it’s in Newsweek, yada-yada—they always say “created by Stan Lee.” Inevitably, there’s a letter written, usually published, saying co-created by Jack Kirby—but that’s just a little letter in the letter column while there’s still this mass-covered issue. It perpetrates it, it seems. The editors must know. MARK: Is Dave Schwartz here? Dave Schwartz of the L.A. Times. [applause] I don’t know about you, but an awful lot of the reviews I saw mentioned Jack—and they didn’t get it out of the press kits. Those people knew. Yes, over here.

AUDIENCE: I have one for Jeremy Kirby. I’m also a big, big fan of Captain Victory. Are you going to bring in some other people to carry on with the characters? JEREMY: Oh, definitely. Yeah. I think a lot of, especially Captain Victory and Silver Star, if you really go back and look at it, it grows on a lot of people. After they look at it a few times, they really enjoy it. Especially with Captain Victory, it’s pretty much like my grandfather uncensored. It’s him just letting himself go, as well as the New Gods and how it tied into that in some issues. There’s a lot of characters that he created that none of you have really seen. We hope to one day bring those in, whether it’s a comic book or a movie or some way to get it out so all the fans have a chance to take a look at everything he did. There’s some really neat stuff out there that would knock your socks off. MARK: Before we move into the subject of Jack in the ’60s, I wanted to introduce one other person. All the stuff I did with Jack in the letter pages and the stuff I wrote in the early ’70s was also worked on by a very good friend of the Kirby family. Say hello to Steve Sherman. [applause] Steve was part of the wonderful extended family around Jack, and people would work with him and help him out. Is Mike Thibodeaux here anyplace? If you see Mike anyplace, shake the hand that isn’t injured and say, “Mike, thank you for all the the wonderful things that you did for Jack over the years.” Mike’s a real trouper. He helped Jack and Roz tremendously in the last few years of their respective lives, as did Tracy and Jeremy and a lot of people. It was amazing to see the outpouring of love and respect. Anyway, I’m going to move onto the next chapter. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Tracy. [applause] There have been, in the history of comics, little pools of great talent here and there. Look around and you’ll see a line of comics where it isn’t just that one person or two people are doing great work, there seems to be a volume of fine, fine work. Three people at the table down there were part of this wonderful little Camelot of creativity that existed at Marvel in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s. Let me introduce them very briefly, because I’m sure you’re all familiar with their work. The closest to me of the three is one of the most prolific artists in our business. If you go back chronologically, one of the very first people to take the Marvel energy that Kirby and Ditko were doing, and to do it without doing any remnant of Kirby or Ditko’s style— to divide the page up differently, to get that excitement into his work—was this gentleman who worked on practically every single Marvel comic over the years, but will be remembered mainly for his runs on Tomb of Dracula, Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man—a fabulous illustrator, Mr. Gene Colan [applause]—and he’s still drawing good stuff, too. Sitting next to Gene is a lady who was part of the Marvel Bullpen. People think the Bullpen was everybody who did the comics sitting around and drawing. That wasn’t true. Jack worked in the office very rarely—a couple of hours here and there, maybe just corrections or to talk to Stan and get out of there and go home. But there were a group of people who worked in the office. I visited the Marvel office in 1970; Steve [Sherman] and I went up there to meet Stan. We went in this little building—you would not believe how cramped it was—and Marie was in there and Johnny Romita and Tony Marinero and Herb

Trimpe. Roy had a desk in the back. It was about the size of a big Milk Duds box. [laughter] One of the creative people who was in the center of this doing layouts, cover layouts, art corrections, coloring covers, and supervising the coloring work, and on her own was drawing the Hulk, Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, and Kull, is maybe the nicest person in comics: Marie Severin. [applause] Now in the history of Marvel, there was a period when Stan was doing all of the editorial work and dialoguing and writing everything. Stan for a while was trying out other writers to try to pass some of this on, because as Marvel got bigger, he couldn’t handle it all. A whole series of people came in and did one issue or two issues and Stan would rewrite them all and pass them on. One day he finally found what he was looking for. Roy, what year did you start at Marvel? ROY THOMAS: It was ’65.

(previous page) Cover pencils for Satan’s Six #1, done in the late ’70s, but not published until 1993 by Topps Comics.

(below) Splash page pencils to Silver Star #4 (Aug. 1983).

MARK: ’65. Roy walked in and within a year or so was the editor of the whole line. Not only covering his own books and his work, but basically running the office and contributing in ways that

(right) Gene Colan takes a turn at a Kirby character, Dr. Doom, in Daredevil #37 (Feb. 1968). This issue would cross over into Fantastic Four #73 (Apr. ’68), and these Colan stats were supplied to Kirby so he’d be able to continue the story. Notice Gene’s margin notes for Stan.

(below) Daredevil would become a Colan signature character, but Kirby handled him in Fantastic Four #40 (July 1965), featuring inks by Colletta with what appears to be a Wally Wood assist on the Daredevil figure in the second panel. Roy Thomas looked at the original art of this page, and mentioned that Stan would often stat Kirby’s pages many times, and send them as guides to other Marvel artists. This page would’ve been a prime candidate to be sent to Wally Wood, since Kirby drew an elaborate schematic of DD’s billy club in the upper panel (not shown here), and would want it consistent in Daredevil’s own book.

were not quite perceptible to readers at that time. Known as one of our finest writers of, again, almost every major Marvel book— certainly for extended runs on Avengers, and X-Men and the Sub-Mariner and maybe seven million pages of Conan the Barbarian, [laughter] and someone who took what Stan and Jack started and forged his own unique style to the point where other people later would imitate him and cite him as the influence for the way he picked up on what they did and took it in his own direction—a very fine writer, Mr. Roy Thomas. [applause] I’m going to start by asking Gene to tell a story. I did a Jack Kirby Tribute Panel in New York a few years ago with Gene and with Dick Ayers, I believe. At that panel I had the unfortunate job of announcing the death of Don Heck who had passed away and didn’t make the panel—and boy, the whole audience just went down and gasped. People were starting to cry—but Gene, tell us about that panel. After that he brought it back up. He told us a story about the first time he met Jack. [To Gene] Do you remember? GENE COLAN: Yeah. I asked Jack up at Marvel—and it was the first time I ever met him—and I said, “You are fabulous.” The background work and the beautiful stuff he’s done. Actually in the ’40s I was influenced by him. All the artists were. I said to him, “Suppose I get caught up in six ideas at once, and I don’t know what to do? What do I put down on the paper?” He said, “Don’t confuse the issue. The first idea is the best idea,” and I’ll never forget that. MARK: Gene, when you first started you were working for Marvel on and off in the late ’40s and ’50s.

GENE: Well, the top of his head was flat, [laughter] and that really threw me. I struggled with it. I never cared much for that strip, because I struggled with the top of his head. No matter how flat it was, I couldn’t make the rest of it look good. I did the best that I could with it. MARK: But in terms of page layouts, how did you feel about working from a plot outline as opposed to a script? Had you done that before that time? GENE: I was influenced by film. I went to the theater and I’d see how the composition was composed. I wanted to do something different—more like going to a movie and experiencing the motion of it. I tried to do the best that I could so that the reader would go for a ride. And that’s how I approached doing comics. I approached it as a cinematic event. When you came back to them, I believe the first thing you did in the super-hero age was the SubMariner. When you got that assignment, how did you approach that job differently from all the comics you’d done up to then? What was different about that job? 64

MARK: When you took on a strip that Jack had drawn before you, looking at his work, are you better able to adapt to his style and his designs, which sometimes had very peculiar anatomy, very peculiar designs? Did you find it difficult to do a Kirby character in your own style? Did you have to amend them in any way?

GENE: No. Jack drew a lot of stuff that looked like it was shot through a special lens. The foreshortening was literally coming out of the page, and the character was bashing down the door. All the villains were slipping all over the place. There was a lot of dementia in his work— and that’s the one thing I could focus on. His fingers and the pointing and arms and foreshortening, all that stuff, that’s what I could focus on. It gave me the impetus to move forward and put in some of my own stuff. Jack kind of got me into the action of the thing. MARK: You said in that panel in New York that because of Jack you learned how to draw faster.

MARK: 635 Madison, or...? MARIE: Yeah. I’m trying to remember. The first time I worked at 60th and Madison. Then we all got fired, [laughter] and then we wandered the streets. [laughter] I came back looking for work in ’64, and I never got out of the office. I’m trying to remember where we were. ROY THOMAS: The problem was it’s hard to remember, because most of the offices for a number of years were all on Madison Avenue a block or two away from each other. You’ll see a 625, 645. We moved up or down Madison Avenue depending on how much exercise Martin Goodman’s doctor told him to get walking. [laughter] We just kept moving

around. It’s hard to remember—I can’t either. I can’t remember which office they worked in then as opposed to when I came there as opposed to two or three others up and down Madison Avenue. MARK: In 1970, Marvel’s publishing address was 625 and they actually had the art and production department stashed away at 635. It was a secret where they were. They didn’t want fans coming around. The office we visited was microscopic. I couldn’t believe.... MARIE: That was 635. MARK: When we first went back there, Sol Brodsky was working there and Flo Steinberg—and who else? MARIE: Sol was there. There was a guy with the

GENE: I never learned how to draw fast. It’s like two students: One gets straight A’s and never studies, the other one has to work his butt off to make straight A’s. I worked long, hard hours and I could never understand how Jack was able to do what he did so quickly. He seemed to be very relaxed with the art at times, just knowing where he was going. There’s no question about it. I saw a lot of Jack Kirby’s stuff. I remember once I was trying so hard to break in at DC and I wasn’t getting anywhere. So I took a Jack Kirby page—it was a Boy Commandos; I guess I was in my late teens—and I just literally copied it line for line to see what was there that I needed to learn about comics. MARK: I should have mentioned in my introduction, for those of you who knew Jack, he had a term that he used when you’d ask him about another artist. He’d say, “That guy’s a first-rater.” He respected, frankly, every artist in some way. There were a number of people about who he used to say, “That guy’s a first-rater.” When you’d ask Jack what artist he admired, Gene was one of the first names out of his mouth. I think Bill Everett was always the very first, because he’d known Bill the longest, but Gene would be mentioned, and he would inevitably mention Marie. One of the few times I ever knew Jack was jealous of another artist was Marie’s ability to draw caricatures. Steve may remember this: When the “Goody” Rickels issues [of Jimmy Olsen] came up—which started out to be a cameo— we got a bunch of stills of Don Rickles and took them to Jack and said, “How are you going to draw Don Rickles?” His response was, “I’ll try to figure it out. If I can’t I’ll call Marie and she’ll teach me how to draw Don Rickles.” [laughter] Marie tell us about—you worked for Marvel, you left, you came back. What year did you come back to Marvel? MARIE SEVERIN: ’64. MARK: ’64. At that time the office was...? MARIE: That was on 60th and Madison. MARK: Was Sol Brodsky there at the time? MARIE: Yeah. MARK: And who else? Who else was in the office?

Kirby cover to Iron Man #90 (Aug. ’76), probably working from a supplied layout.

MARIE: You mean when I came back? No, they had moved to... 65

(this page) Kirby cover pencils from the Roy Thomas-written Invaders #4 (Jan. 1976). Frank Giacoia inked the final cover (below). Jack was probably supplied a cover layout to work from. (Don’t miss TwoMorrows’ new trade paperback Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection, now shipping, featuring more of Kirby’s pencils from 1970s Invaders covers.)

(next page) Marie Severin’s cover layout for Where Monsters Dwell #4 (July 1970, which surprisingly doesn’t feature a single Kirby monster story!). You can see more of Marie’s mysterious masterwork in Comic Book Artist #13 (the Marvel Horror issue), shipping in May from TwoMorrows Publishing. (End of shameless plugs!)

name of a famous baseball player that was doing lettering or touch-ups or something—and Morrie Kuramoto was in and out—but it was just Flo Steinberg, Sol Brodsky, and Stan was in the office. MARK: What did they put you to work doing? MARIE: Paste-up. I came in with a portfolio, because I was a late bloomer. [laughter] I’d started drawing and I had done some quick work in-between wandering the streets. [laughter] So I came back and I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll do some art. I don’t know what Stan’s doing.” So I went up and he wouldn’t even look at my portfolio. “Oh wait! Someone who’s serious! Sol Brodsky needs an assistant!” So I was doing paste-ups until they needed someone for Esquire magazine. I think Sol Brodsky decided not to tell Kirby that they wanted his style for this—he at that point was thought of as one of the symbols of the new stuff coming out. They sent me over, because they didn’t want to use up Kirby. I ended up with five pages for Esquire magazine. I fainted! Everybody liked it. Martin Goodman saw it and said, “What is she doing in the production department? She’s so cute.” [laughter]

I still did production stuff, but then I started doing cover layouts and color and doing everything but windows, right Roy? MARK: Marie’s most important function in the office was drawing insulting caricatures of people on the wall. MARIE: Yes. MARK: Talk a little bit about doing cover layouts. People don’t know, I think, that an awful lot of covers were done from layouts, generally done in the office. MARIE: Later on we couldn’t do that. There just wasn’t time, and there were so many editors later on. After Roy moved on to creator stuff and he didn’t want to be editor anymore—and I don’t blame him—we went to, like, seven editors, or... I don’t know. Now there’s, like, 70,000 of them over there. Anyway, Stan usually handled stuff, but he couldn’t anymore. So it 66

was easier to do a layout and supervise—but very often it would intimidate someone when you’d send them the sketch, because the first thought is usually the best, as Gene said, and I had a chance to go with the first thought. It’s a pain in the neck to follow somebody who’s gotten the essence down at the first jab at it and try to get that spirit into it. You try to do it yourself—but, I guess there’s also a time that individual editors would later on deal with their guys. I was doing it because I was so afraid that one month we’d have the same kind of layout with, I don’t know, the Hulk jumping off a cliff and Sub-Mariner swimming by a cliff and Sgt. Fury on a cliff. Obviously, if you don’t have any control, there might be three covers with cliffs on them. Most of the covers, like you said, were poor. A lot of the guys were much better on their own. Buscema didn’t want to have me do sketches. Kirby had

such a style, you couldn’t copy it. But I finally figured out, if you try to think a little like him; think what he was doing, think why Kirby does certain things. All of a sudden that becomes dynamic. His dynamics—he was the first one that really punched it out so ferociously. People thought it was so unusual that a woman could attempt to do some of this stuff. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman drawing. Women have fierce emotions and sometimes we’re so mad we want to hit somebody over the head. You’re drawing it and I got into super-hero stuff and as a colorist you look at everything. You’re almost the perfect proofreader, because you’re looking at everything. You’re looking at the way they put on balloons. With comics, I think anyone can do it; it’s the talent that counts. MARK: In the examples I’ve seen, when you did a cover sketch for Jack, he followed pretty closely. MARIE: Oh, yeah. Thank you for mentioning it. I’m very proud of that. I try to think like him. I think he was a genius. I think he was— MARK: And you colored an awful lot of his covers as well. MARIE: Oh, sure. Yeah. MARK: Was there anything special about coloring his covers?

this was just editing heavily—there was a lot of me in there—but Stan decided that it wasn’t really quite right, so he ended up having this one thing that says that everybody did this— Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and Gene Colan, and Marie’s on there; she probably colored it or something—and Flo Steinberg. I was all upset by that, but then the next day I got to dialogue a couple of issues of “Dr. Strange” that Ditko had basically plotted. Those were written and rewritten, but at least I got a writing credit. But I always thought that what Stan really wanted was for somebody to write as much like him as humanly possible. Even if he hadn’t said that, I had come in reading with the first issue of Fantastic Four. I bought two copies of Fantastic Four #1, but I sold the second one when the price went up to 50 cents. [laughter] So I had been reading them for three or four years before I came in so I knew that I should do this; but I did have other influences outside comics—other writers I liked. I knew I had to write like Stan, but at the same time I had my own thing. I’d try to ease in my own little thing, because I read different things from Stan, so I would try to put that in, too. I was always trying to balance it out. I once told Stan, and I’m proud to say he didn’t understand

MARIE: Easiest artist to color. Easiest. I mean, the blacks were all there. The force was there, and I loved his machines and his wonderful backdrops. Weren’t they great? Oh, so much fun. I used to doodle like that after a while. MARK: Kirby wallpaper. MARIE: Kirby wallpaper, right. [laughter] MARK: Roy, it seemed that when you started writing for Marvel, Stan was giving you books he didn’t want to do. ROY: I’d assumed that, yeah. [laughter] MARK: He kind of passed to you collaborators, artists he found maybe didn’t work as well with him in terms of their plotting or whatever. Now you’re starting to write Avengers, X-Men, and these things; to what extent were you saying, “I’ve got to build on what Lee and Kirby did,” or were you thinking, “I’ve got to move on direction-wise”? ROY: Here’s a question that I did ask myself; I mean I wasn’t going to tell Stan out loud, because his idea was, “The more you can write like me, the better.” [laughter] When Gerry Conway wrote Spider-Man, in particular, he used to really suffer, because Stan would look at Spider-Man in particular. That’s the character he felt really personal about. Like you said, he was giving things up to me. The first story I think I ever dialogued that was super-hero—I mean I did a couple of Millie the Models and Patsys; I closed down more comic books [laughter]—the first thing I think I ever wrote is one of the only Marvel titles that doesn’t have a writing credit. It was the first Gene Colan “Iron Man.” I think it was Tales of Suspense #73, Black Knight [on the] cover. It starts with Iron Man charging down the hospital corridor and then he’s with the Black Knight in somebody’s castle. By the time it was done, Stan rewrote about 50% of the dialogue. To me 67

this, that everything I did in comics was because of something he taught me or as a reaction against him. [laughter] Of course, I didn’t say that till I’d been working for him for two or three years. (below) “Let Colan be Colan”; sound advice, as this recent fan commissioned drawing will demonstrate. More of this gorgeous Colan work can be found in Comic Book Artist #13, shipping in May from TwoMorrows.

(next page) A beautiful example of Frank Giacoia inking Kirby, from Tales of Suspense #86 (Feb. 1967).

MARK: Working with Don Heck, John Buscema—the artists you worked with early-on there—tell me a little about to what extent these guys were being pushed to follow Jack’s lead. How do you get a Marvel super-hero look out of—there were a couple of places where you worked with artists with their first job for Marvel. ROY: The first regular book I had—Iron Man—Stan got back, and “Dr. Strange” got passed on to Denny O’Neil after a couple of issues—was with Dick Ayers on Sgt. Fury, which I inherited directly from Stan. Of course, he did a pretty good Kirby imitation, because he had been inking Kirby for so long and he drew a lot like that. The whole point was they were supposed to kind of imitate Jack Kirby and Stan would say “don’t exactly imitate.” Of course, what he wanted were those

dynamics, and for most people that meant making it look like Kirby. There were one or two people that didn’t try to draw much like Jack. Of course, there was Ditko who had some of that same flair, but was so different that you never look at Ditko and say, “This guy, because he was doing exciting comics, was imitating Jack Kirby.” The other person I was very impressed by was Gene Colan—or Adam Austin, excuse me. Adam Austin. [laughter] He was a guy who was not drawing—who drew in a more illustrious approach, and Stan would give you trouble when you spent a page opening a door or something or doing some quiet thing sometimes—but the fact remains I don’t think there was ever any question around Gene Colan to try to draw like Kirby, because he knew Gene had his own virtues that were just brilliant. Sometimes he would act too strong, like with John Buscema, even though he was good; but Gene Colan—he knew enough to leave him alone. MARK: I got a great quote from Don Heck who said, “Stan believed that everybody could find their own conventional style. He wanted Kirby to be Kirby, Ditko to be Ditko, he wanted Colan to be Colan, and everybody else to be Kirby.” [laughter] ROY: Most other people were on their own trying to be Kirby in a way. [To Marie] You probably were, sort of. MARIE: Well, I wanted to get into it—and with Gene, too. Kirby used heavy blacks. Gene has this lighting.... MARK: Marie, could you move closer to the mike? MARIE: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I was talking to Roy. [laughter] MARK: If you two would like to be alone... [laughter]. MARIE: What was—oh, the lighting thing that Gene had. What I was trying to say before was each one had his own approach and the spirit and the dynamics. Gene does the most wonderful lighting effects, and that’s the movie influence. Our generation went to the movies so much that a lot of our continuity is that way. The ease with which a lot of the old artists did it—and there are ones who do it now—but we had it, because we saw movies where you have downshots and moving all around; and we had that in us from childhood. We weren’t used to just looking at books and spitting out this stuff. Kirby was the one who started jumping toward the reader. MARK: What do you remember about when Jack started coming into the office, hanging out at the office? MARIE: I expected this giant to walk in. [laughter] He looked like a businessman with a cigar. I remember when he met me. “Hey, Marie, this is Jack Kirby,” and he says, “Judy Garland.” I didn’t say so, but no, I always wanted to look like Mary Astor. Now you

don’t know who Mary Astor was, but I do. She was a good actress. So I looked at Kirby and say, “How’re you doing? I’m Johnny Severin’s sister.” [laughs] MARK: When Jack quit Marvel in 1970, Marie had one of his cigar butts taped over her desk. MARIE: Yeah. It was in memorium. MARK: Then about a year or so later, Jack was doing the first issues of New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle, and he was sending them to DC. They were absolutely secretive. They were not going to come out for several months. They would not let other editors at DC see them. Julius Schwartz did not know what Kirby was doing. Dick Giordano, Carmine, Joe Orlando was involved with him and that was it. One day Sol Harrison called Jack and said, “We’re keeping them under security. Nobody here’s seen them. Don’t worry, Jack, nobody’s going to rip off your ideas. We have total security.” About four minutes later Marie called [Jack] and said, “Vinnie Colletta was just up here showing us what he was inking.” [laughter] That was the great security. Oh, Gene’s got a story. GENE: Some years back when I was attending a convention, Jack was on the floor, and I didn’t see a badge on his jacket. So I said, “Jack, do you have a badge?” And he says, “Badge? I have no badge. I don’t need no stinkin’ badge.” [laughter] I walked right into it. MARK: I’ll take a question from the audience. AUDIENCE: Did pencilers—yourself and Jack Kirby—ever ink their own work starting out? Were they assigned an inker? MARK: Gene should have inked more of his own work. AUDIENCE: I’m going for the beginning, like in the beginning of Marvel and before that. MARIE: That came from the fact that excellent pencilers were few and far between, I guess. They wanted guys like Gene Colan on another book as soon as possible. They would pay us as inkers so they could throw them another script. So we’d have the good stuff. The best inker on Kirby was Sinnott, I think. Excellent. [applause] I think Gene should have inked his own stuff—but it was all about time, and using his talents on more pencils, and that was true with a lot of guys. MARK: Let’s mention somebody else I thought did some good work over Jack, and that was Bill Everett. [applause] Bill was around the Marvel offices a lot at the time.

ROY: And we’re all, “Hey, he can ink!”, you know; but yeah, Bill was a good inker for Jack. One of my personal favorites, although good some ways and not good in other ways, was Frank Giacoia, who was never able to do a consistent line of books, because he’d jump from here to there. He never really stuck around as long to make an impression. But when he was doing some of those early Captain America stories with Jack back in the middle ’60s, I think those were as nicely inked as I’ve seen since the old Simon & Kirby days.

ROY: All of us liked it. Stan liked it. With Bill, if he dropped out it was probably because he’d sort of wander on to something. Then he got a little less dependable... but he did great work. I remember Gil Kane, who had a good eye, always felt that when people would ask him, “Who do you think was the best inker for Jack?”, he thought that Bill Everett on those Thor issues was probably the best. I don’t remember how unusual it was, but I think on Fantasy Masterpieces #5 or #6, Jack inked some little Captain America drawing on those terrible reprints we did of the ’40s stories, because there wasn’t time for an inker. Jack had to ink his own figure that was pasted on there.

ROY: The day I met Frank Giacoia, he asked me, “You ever see Gunga Din?” And I said, “No, I haven’t.” “I’ve seen it 40 times.” [laughter]

MARK: Fantasy Masterpieces #4.

MARK: Frank Giacoia, for all of the wonderful work

MARIE: Frank had a TV in the studio, and he was— [imitates Frank inking] [laughter] and the phone would ring, “All right, it’s coming!”

he did on Jack, I believe is the person who got Jack back to Marvel in the ’50s. He was a neighbor of Jack’s when Jack was looking for freelance work. Frank was looking for work also. He went up to Atlas and at that point everyone was inking their own work. Stan said, “I have nothing for you, Frank.” Frank didn’t want to pencil; he was a very slow penciler. Trying to figure out a way to get some work out of Marvel, he knew Kirby was looking for stuff, and he says, “Hey, how about if I can get Kirby back here to pencil some stuff?” Stan says, “Great. Get him back here.” And, of course, not only did Jack go back, but Frank did none of that work. [laughter] One of the many things we have to thank Frank for. Another question. AUDIENCE: One of my favorite inkers was George Tuska on that so-called “album” issue [#112] of Captain America. There was apparently a weekend fill-in when Steranko didn’t show up with the 69

(right) Our ‘big’ issue wouldn’t be complete without at least mentioning Jack’s 1975 work for Mattel’s line of “Big Jim” toys. Shown here is the packaging for the line. Ads for the toys appeared in mid1970s Marvel comics, (below) but there’s some question as to which of the art was actually drawn by Kirby, and which was done by someone else in his style. © Mattel Toys.

(below) Detail from the original art of page 7 of X-Men #12 (July ’65), featuring the odd collaboration of Kirby layouts, Alex Toth pencils, and Vinnie Colletta inks. Not a very good use of any of their talents! Jack’s margin notes are evident throughout the original art to this story.

concluding chapter. Can you speak to that situation? ROY: I remember it, yeah. This was into a couple of Steranko’s Captain Americas. Steranko was a slow, meticulous artist who resembled Jack superficially and had his own thing going for him, but he couldn’t really deliver the work quite that fast. We ran into trouble. So it just had to be done overnight. The funny thing is, sometimes those things turn out the best. I probably didn’t say too much to Jack about this, telling a lot of stuff about Captain America’s life. We probably talked for a couple of minutes on the phone or something. Jack knew the life of Captain America. Once in a while, he did get a little confused. What was the name in one story? In Jack’s notes on the side he mentions a Boy Commandos villain. [laughter] He just wrote it in, Agent Axis. The original Agent Axis was in Boy Commandos. But, this was done over the weekend, and George Tuska was a very fast inker and he happened to be around at the time. So there’s not too much to tell except, of course, that it was a rush job with what—three or four panels at most on each page? And Jack turned it around in what was probably an all-time record, until John Buscema had to do the last chapter of the KreeSkrull War. [laughter] AUDIENCE: Of all the inkers that Jack had at Marvel, I think one of the most interesting ones was—we only saw him once—Barry Smith, better known as Windsor-Smith, who inked some of

the WWII parts of Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles. And I wonder how that came about, why that had more inkers, and what Jack’s reactions were. MARK: I don’t think he thought it was a very successful issue, but Jack never complained about any inker, really, in his career. He liked just about everybody to the extent that he wanted someone to make a living. I don’t think he liked the idea of tens of inkers that much. He liked to have one guy, like Mike Royer or whoever it was at that time, handling his work. ROY: Wally Wood and Jack Kirby never got together at Marvel when they were both there—but did they ever do anything together? MARK: Not at Marvel, no. Actually, they did a couple of covers. They inked an old X-Men cover and an Avengers cover. Wood was supposed to take over finishing Jack’s layouts on X-Men, but he had a big fight with Stan and ended up walking out. ROY: And they got a great guy to go over Jack’s layouts for one issue. You remember who that was? MARK: Alex Toth. ROY: Alex Toth, the perfect guy to work over Jack Kirby’s layouts and then be inked by Vinnie Colletta. Now there was a team. [laughter] Three guys and not one within the same continent. ★

Extra Credit

The “X-Men” movie’s media spotlight shone on Stan Lee far more than Jack Kirby by Robert L. Bryant, Jr. (top) Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier, and Ian McKeller as Magneto, from 20th Century Fox’s X-Men movie. Early issues of Kirby’s run on the title served as the basis for several of the movie’s characters, such as Magneto and Toad (below), and Cyclops and Professor X (center).

(below) The sequel to X-Men is rumored to feature the Sentinels; based on Jack’s detailed margin notes from their first appearance in X-Men #14 (Nov. 1965, with Kirby layouts), shouldn’t Jack get a creator credit?

he media is always being accused of having one bias or another—but after the Summer of 2000, we know this much for a fact: The writers at Newsweek bought comics to read the words, not look at the pictures. Twice, in one month of covering the release of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men movie, Newsweek ignored Jack Kirby’s role in the Marvel mutants’ birth and gave all the credit to Stan Lee. In the magazine’s July 17 issue, writer Devin Gordon reported that the comic had been “created in 1963 by Stan Lee.” No one else. And in the July 24 issue, staffer Jeff Giles praised director Bryan Singer’s long-awaited film version of the heroes from “Stan Lee’s enormously popular Marvel Comics’ series.” Puh-leeeeeeze. The arrival of the $75 million X-Men movie in July, and its huge opening weekend, brought a hurricane of coverage in the nation’s news and movie magazines. And most of it blithely assigned Lee the role of the mutants’ proud papa. Some, though, got the story right, including the country’s most prominent entertainment publication. Writing in the July 21 Entertainment Weekly, staffer Jeff Jensen acknowledged “the legendary writerartist team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby” as the X-Men’s creators. And Cinefantastique, the granddaddy of science fiction/fantasy media magazines, explored the issue of who created which mutants when the magazine did its August cover story on the film. “Marvel... will tell you that the X-Men, like most of the Marvel characters, were created by Stan Lee,” Cinefantastique writer Paul Wardle reported. “But Jack Kirby, to his dying day, swore that the concepts for the X-Men and many other Marvel heroes came solely from his own head...”. (The movie’s splashiest coverage came from Premiere magazine, which offered three “collector’s covers” for its July cover story on the X-Men, including a Professor X photo that practically begged for Chic Stone inks. But the story itself implied that the mutants simply sprang up like a force of nature—the article mentioned neither Lee nor Kirby.) The most egregious case of Kirby blackout might have been in the Sept. 14 issue of Rolling Stone. In an interview conducted for the magazine by comics fan and filmmaker Kevin Smith, Lee talked at some length about his comics career. The article’s

headline referred to Lee as “the Marvel Comics titan and ‘X-Men’ creator,” and the introduction—not credited to Smith or any other writer—referred to X-Men as “one of Stan Lee’s countless Marvel Comics creations.” Portions of the Q&A interview follow: SMITH: For those with no clue as to how deeply integral you have been to pop culture for the past 50-plus years, can you take a moment and list some of the major characters that you had a hand in creating? LEE: The Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men, the Avengers, Daredevil, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Nick Fury, and the Silver Surfer. SMITH: ...When you list all those characters’ do you go back to the moment you created them? LEE: I can’t remember coming up with them. We didn’t know there was anything special. It was a job. I was trying to make a living... SMITH: How did you get along with the artists who brought your ideas to life? Because we should say, in all fairness, you are a writer. Some people who don’t know comic books think you just draw comics. LEE: I work with artists. I had the best artists. I didn’t have to be that good. I had artists who were geniuses. I had artists who—I could give them two words, and they would draw the whole story. All I had to do was put in the dialogue, and I loved doing it that way. Like doing a crossword puzzle. Kirby’s name never appeared in the published Rolling Stone interview, nor did the name of any other artist Lee alluded to. Most of the interview focused on Lee’s revamping of Superman for DC. In Son of Origins of Marvel Comics (1975), written when Kirby was still alive and working in comics, Lee was quick to share the credit for the X-Men’s genesis. “Jolly Jack Kirby and I were scrounging around for a dynamite new feature,” Lee wrote. “...There was a germ of an idea buzzing around my head... We would create a team of mutants! ...No sooner did I discuss the basic premise with Jack than we were off and running.” (Lee consistently used the word “we” in his account of the mutants’ birth.) Kirby wasn’t the only one left in the dust by the X-Men media gravy train. The character of Wolverine—and Australian actor Hugh Jackman, who played the part in the film—got vast amounts of coverage, but few if any reporters ever mentioned that Wolverine had been created by Len Wein. Readers who didn’t know better could only have assumed that Wolverine, too, had sprung from Lee’s mind (and this is not the fault of Lee, but of lazy reporting). Lee’s cameo appearance in the X-Men film—as a startled beachgoer who watches the mutating Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) stumble ashore—only cemented the media’s perception of Lee as Father of the X-Men Universe. Kirby (the reporters might have wondered)? Didn’t see him in the movie. The only writer who really aced the issue of X-Men credit was novelist Michael Chabon, who had been invited to write a script for the movie in 1996, but whose story proposal ultimately was scrapped. On Chabon’s Web site, he gets it exactly right: “The filmed versions of the Lee-Kirby-Claremont-CockrumByrne-Wein mutants have, at long last, made their appearance in the Great Multiplex.” ★ 71

Credit Check

Flashback

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee...

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (left) Kirby’s pencils from page 8 of the ’76 Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles Treasury Edition. Cap, Hitler, Nazis, Bucky, the Red Skull—this page has it all!

(this page) A smattering of scenes from Bicentennial Battles.

(next page) The page 14-15 spread, still in pencil.

It was the Summer of ’76, our country’s 200th birthday. I was six years old and on vacation with my family in the mountains of North Carolina. While picking up the key to our rental cabin, we stopped in one of the many gift shops in the area. I got a coonskin cap (I really liked the Daniel Boone reruns) and a faux-leather (read: Cheap vinyl) “Indian vest,” complete with a colorful print of a Cherokee chieftain on the back. I also got something to read—something big to read. I was already familiar with Captain America. I had two Cap

More importantly, everything you need to know about Jack Kirby’s storytelling is there as well: The action, the emotion, the big panels, the action, the oddball character with the goofy name— did I mention the action? It also has the big concept behind the story—and I think trying to define the Spirit of America certainly qualifies as a big concept. Now to paraphrase the old saying: I told you all that so I could tell you this. What really makes CABB special to me is the message of the story—something I call cynical optimism. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Maybe so, but the world would be a much better place if there were more cynical optimists in it: People who

comics (one was a Marvel Double-Feature reprint story), both of which were drawn by Jack Kirby. Even at that early age I was aware of the creators—at least their names, anyway—but this was different. For one thing, it was huge; and I loved it. By the end of our vacation, I knew Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles backwards and forwards, inside and out. In many ways, it was a defining moment in my love of comic books. As far as I’m concerned, everything you need to know about Captain America lies within its pages: From his relationship with Bucky to his never-give-up attitude to his willingness to fight for the rights of all Americans, it’s all there.

realize how rotten others can be, but who aren’t blinded to how wonderful they could be—people like Jack Kirby. Jack earned his cynicism the hard way, but he never lost his optimism. It was the very core of who he was, both as a storyteller and as a human being. No matter how many people would take advantage of him, Jack would always give the next guy the benefit of the doubt. No one had to earn Jack’s trust, it was given freely. It is this philosophy of life that lies at the heart of CABB: Believing in your fellow man and placing your trust in the future. This is why the story stood out for me as a child, and why I remain entranced by it to this very day. ★

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Comments

Send letters to: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR c/o TwoMorrows • 1812 Park Drive • Raleigh, NC 27605 E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com All letters will be considered for publication unless you specify otherwise. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity, or anything else we darn well feel like (so, nyah!).

____________________________________________ (Hope you folks enjoyed our new tabloid format; I know I had a blast putting it together! Sorry it’s so late, but having a pregnant wife took its toll on our deadlines. First off, a quick apology is in order to our new friend Harry Mendryk, for repeatedly misspelling his last name in previous issues. M-E-N-D-R-Y-K-! Sorry, Harry! Also, a correction on issue #30: The DEMON pencils we ran on page 36 were from the cover of Etrigan’s issue #13, not #16. Now to letters:) ____________________________________________ Hi, I buy your publication since the #10. Your magazine just come better and better! I am crazy about the work of the King in animation (showing in the #30). The best note is “Another Marvel Myth” because it shows the ingratitude of Marvel. I see this FANTASTIC FOUR #236 , and I remember thinking, “Why is only on the cover Stan Lee?” (I was ten years old at that moment and I don’t have an answer.) Thanks to your mag I start building a large back issues in Internet of Jack Kirby numbers from DC and Marvel. I like a lot the interview with Alan Moore. In my opinion the best of all is that I start to know all about the Kirby estate at a personal or family level. This enriches the magazine a lot. Diego Doce, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA Another doozie! Wasn’t too hopeful about an ’80s-themed issue but there’s a ton of great stuff in there. Particularly liked all the animation concept sheets; some beautiful, beautiful drawings. Shame you hadn’t thought of switching over to tabloid format this time around. Find any excuse to print more of these. Also good to see the personalized sketches in the Robert Katz interview and, after passing over SILVER STAR many times, thinking it looked like the most generic hackwork imaginable, I’ll definitely pick it up next time I see it in the 50p bins. Just want to echo James Romberger’s suggestion that you get Gary Panter to contribute something—cover inks & colour could be really distinctive—and while you’re at it how about Dan Clowes or Seth? Really love Seth’s painting of the X-Men & villains on the cover of Coober Skeber’s “Marvel Benefit Issue” of a few years ago. I’m sure a lot of people who grew up loving Kirby comics now appreciate more than just mainstream figures like your Alex Rosses or Mike Allreds. Marc Baines, Glasgow, SCOTLAND

The Paul Smith inked cover was great! The subdued cool colors worked well in this age of computer color overkill! I kinda wish Paul woulda stuck with Jack’s wonky (but loveable) “off-model” Spidey costume as it appeared in pencils. The caption for Jack’s “Cary Becomes a Car!” presentation says the show never got the green-light, but it DID! Called TURBO-TEEN, this was a mid-’80s Saturday morning show that was horrid beyond belief! All the wacky charm of what Jack would have done with it was nowhere to be seen!

And that brings up another notion. Looking at Jack’s farout animation ideas from 15 years back, it occurs to me that they don’t seem so nutty these days. Is ANIMAL HOSPITAL any crazier than CATDOG? HEARTBREAK HIGH any more wacko than any show on the WB or Fox Networks? Are his straight adventure concepts out of place next to the SciFi Channel fare or manga comics? Just food for thought, and maybe one more way the King was ahead of his time. Al Bigley, Monroe, NC 78

When I read that you were expanding the size of TJKC it gave me goose bumps. Why? Because I had a dream about that very thing a year or so ago. In the dream, which was very vivid, I went to a comics convention and found your booth (which I have done in reality a few times). On your table you showed me the latest issue, and it was huge, bigger than Treasury size, and on the cover in full-color was a “new” Kirby drawing of the Thing fighting Superman. Of course, I created this image in my mind (probably from years of staring at Kirby’s art) and it’s fascinating how the brain can cobble together a blockbuster piece of Kirby art that looks as though it came right off the ’60s when Kirby was at his height. This is not the first time I’ve dreamed of “new” Kirby books. I’ve dreamed of a whole shelf full of TALES TO ASTONISH that never existed before. I have bought a SILVER SURFER ANNUAL with a Kirby cover. I even dreamed about Kirby collector cards years before they came out. It would be interesting to hear from other Kirby fans about this phenomenon. “Send us your dreams!” as it said on the covers of S&K’s STRANGE WORLD OF YOUR DREAMS. John, you are making dreams come true. Every time I see a new issue of TJKC in my mailbox, I tear open the envelope in much the same way as I did when I was a boy and I got those folded subscription copies of the FANTASTIC FOUR in the slender brown envelopes. The feeling is the same. Thanks for continuing the dream. Fred L. Smith, Goose Creek, SC While reading my daughter the collected Hercules & The Underworld story arc collected in a Thor Oversized MARVEL MASTERWORKS (THOR #125-130), my daughter and I noticed something. We wondered if anyone else had noticed or commented on this trend over the years. Each appearance (as the issues lead through the story) of Odin has him in a larger and more fantastic headress, or helmet; that is, HIS HORNS GROW LARGER AND MORE RAM/STEER-LIKE IN EACH APPEARANCE, somewhat in proportion to his anger. Finally, by the time he’s holding Thor in his arms on the cover of #127’s “The Hammer and the Holocaust”, they are incredibly long horns, sweeping out over the scene. Does anyone know if this was a planned effect by Jack Kirby, or if it “just grew that way”?

Also, though it’s been mentioned many times in the past, just when did the change in original art size occur; that is, shrinking slightly from Silver Age size to Modern Age—and when, in the runs of stories that Jack Kirby was doing, does this fall? Was he concluding his run of FANTASTIC FOUR? Was he still doing THOR—or had he moved to DC and started the NEW GODS? Did the change in size fall during the Fourth World epic? Did this change in size of published art affect him, or cause him to draw differently? It didn’t change his drawn artwork or use of artboard, did it? Kirk Groeneveld, Athens, OH (I asked our proofreader extraordinaire Richard Howell, and he says FF #67 was the last of its twice-up issues. THOR’s somewhere around #146—the splash to that issue is the size of Modern Age art, yet it’s drawn on a twice-up page. As for Captain America stories, TALES OF SUSPENSE #93 is large-size art, while #98 is modern-size. Can anyone else out there help us pinpoint the exact issue numbers the art size changed?) Congratulations on thirty issues of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. The quality of the publication has only increased, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the larger format works.

Not having been a fan of Jack’s ’80s stuff, I approached #30 thinking the articles of interest to me would provide a quick and unsatisfying read. However, the enthusiasm of those who may have reached fanhood a few months or years earlier or later than I did (in this case, contributors Chris, Shane, and Michael) has once again forced me to reevaluate my attitude toward a period of Jack’s work. Now I’m seeking to add some of those books to my collection, and I’m still working my way through TJKC #30. It was also great to see the coverage of “Street Code” and Michael Chabon. Mike Hill, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA TJKC #30 was another brilliant effort. Chris Knowles’ look at Kirby’s “twilight years” truly saddened me. I hated reading about the abuse heaped on him and the decline of his drawing abilities. I’ve been a fan of Kirby’s work since 1964. Even as a kid I knew he was up to something far beyond the normal comic book fare. I’m glad your publication is around to celebrate his life and legacy. Speaking of your publication, I applaud your effort to go quarterly, even though I’d be glad if TJKC came out on a monthly basis (gasp!). Your choice to go tabloid is a great one. Some of the pages I’ve enjoyed most in the run of TJKC are the ones with huge drawings!! Thanks, and keep ’em coming! Gregory Janicke, Beaufort, NC THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN remains one of my favorite memories of the early ’80s, the period when I’d gone wild taping shows with my very first VCR. It was SO powerful, exciting, and dynamic compared to the 10 solid years of watered-down drek that preceded it, it remains vibrant and fun to watch even today. They even managed to sneak in “educational” stuff in every episode without it feeling like pandering. I never understood why Ruby-Spears didn’t just keep knocking out at least 13 episodes every year, instead of only doing 11⁄2 seasons like they did (21 shows total). CAPTAIN VICTORY blew me away. I loved the early issues so much, it seemed to me more time must have been spent on them. It was sad to watch the series slowly unwind as the pencils, inks, color, and paper all changed for the worse as it went on. It was on CV I first noticed Steve Oliff; I never thought it was “too dark”, in fact I felt, along with Royer’s inks, that Oliff brought a seriousness that too much of Kirby’s work at the time had seemed lacking. While I understand the anti-CLOSE ENCOUNTERS thing, I always likened CV to a more-correctly-conceived BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Huge spaceships, galactic peacekeeping warriors, frightening aliens, but with a “positive” drive to the series instead of a “negative” one. (Aggressively going after baddies, instead of constantly running from them!) Heck, CV & Major Klavus could have been inspired by Lorne Greene & Terry Carter!!! (Think about it!) I also appreciated SILVER STAR, partly because it was a complete, “finished” story! How often did Jack start off an epic and have it fizzle before it ever reached an end? One of the strangest things about the second SUPER POWERS series (the only one Jack penciled from start to finish) was it opened exactly where HUNGER DOGS ended. The whole SUPER POWERS thing, I believe, was supposed to be an “unofficial” series tied in with the toy line and/or the TV cartoons—yet it was also tied in with the “official” NEW GODS book. Can this be partly why so many creators since seem to think HUNGER DOGS is NOT an “official” part of the series—in a manner similar to how THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is really just a “what if” look into a possible future? Personally, I loved what Jack did in those last two books— whatever behind-the-scenes madness went on—and I tend to dismiss virtually everything done with the characters since, including John Byrne, who I feel tried too hard to “fit” them into the already-overcrowded “history of the DC Universe”. (Scott Free living on Earth for a couple hundred years BEFORE he met Oberon? NONSENSE!!!) Henry R. Kujawa, Camden, NJ © Ruby-Spears

(New TJKC reader Brian Heiler wrote to let us know that TURBOTEEN ran from 9/8/84 to 8/31/85 on ABC-TV, for a total of 12 episodes. Hope you liked the “Big Jim” art in this issue, Brian!)

Very much enjoyed the latest KIRBY COLLECTOR, particularly the article about the history of Pacific Comics. CK’s article was intelligent and thoughtful; I hope you’ll give the former Pacific editors space to reply, though, in case they have corrections or disagreements with his assessment of Kirby’s work during that period.

I loved CAPTAIN VICTORY, in fact, because it was the simplest, boldest, most direct damned bunch of adventure stories I’d come across in a while—for someone who’s always crowing about comics that adults could appreciate, I admit that CAPTAIN VICTORY appealed to the kid in me. (“We’re passing through a distortion zone!” I mean, what more need be said? It recaptured some of the slam-bang spontaneity that the FF had during its golden period—“Hey, Stretcho, what’s goin’ on?” “I have absolutely no idea, Ben!”) It was some of JK’s wildest artwork, perhaps the final flowering before the degeneration of his drawing skills that you very carefully, and honestly, documented. The Katz interview is one of the finest things you’ve run. Mark Lerer, Forest Hills, NY

I collected TALES TO ASTONISH back in the Silver Age, along with other Marvel titles. TALES TO ASTONISH #68 was the first one I ever bought. About five years ago I purchased the original art to the last page of that Hulk story. The first panel has been extensively redone. The Hulk originally had the Leader’s android’s arms in front of his arms and he had a different face. I have peeled back the edges on the cut-out figure of the Hulk and the face, which came from the cover drawing. I have only done this a small amount as I am afraid to do too much damage. I have just peeked behind the figures in a few spots. I would love to see the original unaltered pencils in TJKC if you have access to them. James Mariner, Seabeck, WA (Sorry, but ’60s xeroxes of pencils aren’t as prevalent as the ’70s and later, and the Hulk story you mentioned isn’t one we’ve seen; but don’t worry, there’s plenty coming up soon!) A great issue, as always (#30), but I was quite distressed when I read the final paragraph of “Kirby as a Genre” which refers to the character of the Sentry as “an abandoned character developed by Stan Lee and Artie Rosen to be Marvel’s flagship super-hero before the Fantastic Four.” There has never been an Artie Rosen who worked for Marvel Comics. The whole story about the creation of this character before the rest of the Marvel Universe came into being is nothing more than a fabrication devised to sell comics—THE SENTRY to be specific. This is the reason that when first approached with news about the character, Stan Lee could recall nothing about it. There is no truth to it at all! The name Artie Rosen is nothing more than a composite of the names of Marvel’s two major letterers at the time the company rose to popularity in the 1960s—Artie Simek and Sam Rosen—and the drawings of the Sentry character that I have seen published were very obviously recent work by John Romita Sr.

As if all of this were not offensive enough, there is another terribly insidious level that this fraud operates on— serving to undermine the credit Jack Kirby deserves for almost single-handedly creating Marvel Comics. Once again Stan Lee is being given his “due”—this time for something that never even happened—and a fictional artist is being credited with the creation of a heretofore non-existent flagship character. The very article in question ends by casting doubt over Jack’s assertions about the state of Marvel when he returned there in the 1960s and the significance of his contribution to its rebirth. Nice, isn’t it? It’s about time someone set the record straight here before this outright fantasy is allowed to grow into comic book legend. Lies, all lies, and nothing but lies! Let’s not allow it to make it into the history books! Please do what you can to set the record straight! Michael Higgins (via e-mail) Take a look at the splash page of FF #40 [right]. Is it me, or does the Thing have five fingers on his left hand? Salvatore Russo (via e-mail) Just a short note to say that you guys are still doing good work for THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. My initial exposure to the King’s work was British reprints of BLACK PANTHER, DC’s deluxe reprints of THE NEW GODS, SUPER POWERS, and yes, even FF #236 too. It took a while to trace back to the earlier classic works. Kirby’s art (and writing) would have looked strange to kids reading comics in the early ’80s. The hotshots then were John Byrne (X-MEN) and George Perez (TEEN TITANS). I remembered seeing some local fan art displaying the influence of Byrne. A closer look revealed Kirby’s touch. Somehow, by copying Byrne, one learns indirectly from the King. Unfortunately, the current crop of mainstream artists learned from second- or third-hand imitations of Byrne, Art Adams, etc. All sense of proportion is lost. That’s why those who have learned directly from Kirby, such as Steve Rude and Thomas Scioli, are still worth reading. I picked up such Kirby tributes as and when I’m aware of them (THE SENTRY #1, etc.). Singapore’s cartooning scene has not seen much of Kirby’s influence, but even when our local artists ripped off Mike Mignola, we can safely say that the King’s touch (the ’50s monster comics) had a hand in the creation of Hellboy. Lim Cheng Tju, SINGAPORE I enjoyed issue #30. Amazingly you were able to make Jack Kirby’s weakest creative period fascinating. As a big fan of Michael Chabon, I was glad to see the article on his newest novel, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. The new format sounds awesome! I can’t wait to see it. I actually prefer a quarterly schedule, because TwoMorrows is putting out so much great material these days it’s hard to

keep up with it all. One quibble, though. I think all of us Kirby fanatics agree that the man was the epitome of grace and charm. In light of that, I found the tone of Jon Cooke’s article, “Another Marvel Myth,” to be troubling. A strong anti-Marvel bias was evident, and apparently Marvel was not given any opportunity to respond to Jack’s earlier published charges. Some of Robert Katz’s statements regarding Marvel also seemed to me to be knee-jerk reactions. I doubt Mr. Katz follows Marvel comics these days, but I have seen credit given to Jack Kirby in many books influenced and inspired by the King. Note especially the new mini-series FANTASTIC FOUR: WORLD’S GREATEST COMICS MAGAZINE. Sure, we’d all like to see a “Created by” line attached to every book Jack helped to create, but I don’t think Mr. Katz’s inflammatory statements help his cause much. We’re all here to celebrate the life and work of Jack Kirby. We really don’t need to tear other people down in order to lift him up, do we? Peter Wallace, Lawrenceville, GA (Sorry Peter, but I have to disagree. To present a fair assessment of Jack’s “twilight years,” I felt it was necessary to delve into some of the less pleasant situations Jack found himself in. To ignore the Marvel art/credit controversy would be to deny a critical part of Kirby’s life that made what should’ve been his best years, bittersweet at best. As for Robert Katz’s comments regarding Marvel, yes, they were quite impassioned. He had the opportunity to review the transcript, and decided to leave those comments in, so it’s genuinely how he feels, and rightfully so. If a loved one of mine were treated as abysmally as Marvel treated Jack in his final years, I think I’d have some pretty passionate things to say about it, too. If nothing else, at least anyone at Marvel who read his interview will know where he stands.) NEXT ISSUE: Think you know it all when it comes to Jack’s career? THINK AGAIN! Our next issue is devoted to KIRBY’S LEAST-KNOWN WORK! Behind covers featuring a NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN Kirby character (one painted by LADRONN, the other inked by DAVID ROACH), we’ll examine such notable missing links in the Kirby Canon as IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB #2! SOUL LOVE! TRUE DIVORCE CASES! THE HORDE! Secrets behind SKY MASTERS! And THE BIG DADDY OF DEATH!! In #32 there’s a colossal KIRBY INTERVIEW, plus a new interview with CARMINE INFANTINO about his little-known 1940s and ’50s work with Jack! An interview with French sensation ARNON about his Kirby influence! Unknown 1950s work! And can you handle the KIRBY TRIVIA QUIZ? Our new GIANTSIZE PAGES allow us to show more unpublished Kirby pencil art—at nearly actual size—so don’t miss next issue in May, in our new KING-SIZE FORMAT! Submission deadline: 4/15/01.

SEND CHECKLIST CORRECTIONS BY APRIL 15! We need the help of Kirby fans out there who have these comics. The following comics are listed in OVERSTREET but not the KIRBY CHECKLIST! If you have any of these, can you please check them out for the benefit of Kirby fans everywhere? This list is growing much smaller due to the great information sent in since Christmas by Kirby fans everywhere. The information is due back by April 15, 2001. Please respond to bigflatcit@aol.com or mail photocopies and info to: Richard Kolkman • P.O. Box 50053 • Indianapolis, IN 46250 • e-mail: BigFlatCit@aol.com • DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2001 Dates, story titles and page counts are needed in each case of Kirby art. A major update to the KIRBY CHECKLIST will be published in the May 2001 Tabloid-Sized edition of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. All contributions will be duly noted. • ARCHIE COMICS DIGEST #32,33 (Fly reprints by S&K?) • HEADLINE COMICS #56 S&K - art? • JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY #27 S&K - cover? • JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY #28 Kirby - cover? • JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY #30 S&K - cover/art? • LITTLE ARCHIE COMICS DIGEST ANNUAL #3 (Nov 1978) (Fly reprints by S&K?) • MYSTIC COMICS #6 Kirby/Schomburg - cover? (no definitive word on this) • PRIZE COMICS WESTERN #78 S&K - art? • PUNCH & JUDY COMICS V2.#2 Kirby - art? Now here is the final set of questions (unrelated to OVERSTREET) that needs to be answered. Please provide accurate story titles, credits, page counts, publishers, and dates. Periodicals with Kirby articles are also needed if omitted from the 1998 CHECKLIST. All information sources will be duly noted. Thank you for your interest and persistence in helping to strengthen THE JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST. • AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #35 (cover Spider-Man figure NOT Kirby pencils? This is now being questioned.) • BOY COMMANDOS #24 (need page count for “Up, Up And Away”) • BOY COMMANDOS #30 (need page count for “Miracle Pitcher”) • CAPTAIN AMERICA ASHCAN #1 (1995) features partial Kirby - art (reprint)? • COMICS REVUE #3 (1988) (It would be greatly appreciated if someone could send in the Jack Kirby text tribute to Milton Caniff!)

• COMICS REVUE #151 (1998) (need dates for Sky Masters dailies) • COMICS REVUE #152 (1998) (need dates for Sky Masters dailies) • COMICS REVUE #153 (1998) (need dates for Sky Masters dailies) • ESSENTIAL THOR, THE (according to PREVIEWS, reprints JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #83112. Page count is listed as 528 pages) (Actual entire story content including “Tales Of Asgard” would be more like 437 pages—what exactly is in this book?) • FANTASTIC FOUR ASHCAN #1 (1994) features partial Kirby - art (reprint)? • MAGNETO ASCENDANT (need publication date) • MARVEL TALES #21 Human Torch (1 page pin-up reprinted from: ?) • STAR SPANGLED COMICS #55-59 (S&K art?) • THRILLS OF TOMORROW #20 (Apr. 1955) (need sources for reprinted text features “Guns On The Chisholm Trail” and “Jack McGregor’s Bluff” = both feature Kirby illos) • YOUNG LOVE #1 (Feb. 1949) (story “Fickle” features Kirby art? This is now being questioned.) VIDEOS: Twentieth Century Fox has released regular and deluxe editions of Marvel 1960s videos. (Need date for these releases) REGULAR EDITIONS: (need info on Kirby reprint art on boxes) DELUXE EDITIONS: (need info on Kirby reprint comics—ex: AVENGERS #1, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #83, AMAZING FANTASY #15—and box art and Kirby coins included with Deluxe Editions) 79

Parting Shot

Page 32 pencils from Kirby’s Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles Treasury Edition.

Read Back Issue Excerpts At: www.twomorrows.com

COMICOLOGY #1: (100 pages) The new magazine for MODERN COMICS fans, with a BRUCE TIMM cover, intv. & sketchbook, JEPH LOEB interview, LEA HERNANDEZ, MANYA, USAGI YOJIMBO, 60 years of ROBIN, & more!

COMICOLOGY #2: (100 pages) MIKE ALLRED interview and portfolio, 60 years of THE SPIRIT, 25 years of the X-MEN, PAUL GRIST interview and art, FORTY WINKS, new color ALLRED and GRIST covers, & more!

COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7: (132 pages) 1970s MARVELMANIA! BYRNE, GULACY, DAN ADKINS, RICH BUCKLER, STEVE GERBER, DOUG MOENCH, JIM MOONEY, DENIS KITCHEN, new GULACY cover & more!

CBA #9: (116 pages) THE CHARLTON COMICS STORY: PART ONE! DICK GIORDANO, PETER MORISI, JIM APARO, JOE GILL, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM GLANZMAN, new GIORDANO cover, and more!

CBA #10: (116 pages) WALTER SIMONSON: OLD GODS & NEW! Also, WOMEN OF THE COMICS! MARIE SEVERIN, RAMONA FRADON, TRINA ROBBINS, JOHN WORKMAN, new SIMONSON cover, and more!

CBA #11: (116 pages) ALEX TOTH AND SHELDON MAYER! TOTH interviews, art, appreciations, checklist, and more. Also, interviews with SHELLY MAYER’s kids, the real life inspiration for SUGAR & SPIKE!

CBA #12: (116 pages) CHARLTON COMICS OF THE 1970s! Rare art by & interviews with JOE STATON, JOHN BYRNE, DON NEWTON, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, NICK CUTI, a NEW E-MAN strip, new STATON cover, and more!

ALTER EGO #1: (84 pages) ROY THOMAS’ fanzine is back, all-new! STAN LEE, SCHWARTZ, ORDWAY, HASEN, H.G. PETER, FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA, MR. MONSTER, color ORDWAY cover & more!

ALTER EGO #2: (100 pages) Allnew THOMAS material! EISNER “SPIRIT” story, KANE, FOX & SCHWARTZ on The Atom, LARRY LIEBER & JACK BURNLEY intvs., KANIGHER, FCA, new color KANE & BURNLEY covers, more!

ALTER EGO #3: (100 pages) More all-new material by ROY THOMAS! ALEX ROSS cover & intv., JERRY ORDWAY, BILL EVERETT, CARL BURGOS, Giant FAWCETT section with C.C. BECK, SWAYZE, & more!

ALTER EGO #4: (100 pages) Allnew salute: 60 years of HAWKMAN & FLASH! ROY THOMAS remembers GIL KANE, intvs. with KUBERT, MOLDOFF, LAMPERT, FOX, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, KUBERT covers, & more!

ALTER EGO #5: (100 pages) Special JUSTICE SOCIETY issue! Intvs. with SHELLY MAYER, GIL KANE, MART NODELL, GEORGE ROUSSOS, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, INFANTINO / ORDWAY wraparound cover, & more!

ALTER EGO #6: (100 pages) GENE COLAN intv., how-to books by STAN LEE and KANIGHER, ALLSTAR SQUADRON, MAC RABOY section, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, COLAN and RABOY covers, & more!

ALTER EGO #7: (100 pages) A companion issue to the ALL-STAR COMPANION! SCHWARTZ intv., JLA-JSA teamups, more MAC RABOY, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, BUCKLER and BECK covers, & more!

KIRBY CHECKLIST: Lists every Kirby comic, plus books, portfolios, unpublished work, cross-references reprints, & more!! A must for EbayTM shoppers! 100 pgs!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #18: MARVEL issue! Intvs. w/ KIRBY, LEE, THOMAS, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, more! 68 pgs, Kirby/Sinnott cover.

KIRBY COLLECTOR #22: VILLAINS! KIRBY, RUDE, MIGNOLA interviews, FF #49 pencils, KOBRA, more! 68 pages, Kirby/Stevens cover.

KIRBY COLLECTOR #25: S&K! KIRBY, SIMON, SEVERIN intvs., unused BOY EXPLORERS story, MAINLINE COMICS, more! 100 pages.

#20: WOMEN! KIRBY, DAVE STEVENS Interviews, LISA KIRBY, unused 10-page story, CAPT. VICTORY screenplay, more! 68 pages.

#23: Interviews with KIRBY, DENNY O’NEIL, TRACY KIRBY, uninked FF #49 pencils, unused SOUL LOVE story, more! 68 pages.

#26: GODS! COLOR NEW GODS plates, KIRBY & SIMONSON intvs., BIBLICAL INFLUENCES, THOR, MR. MIRACLE, more! 72 pages.

#21: KIRBY, GIL KANE, BRUCE TIMM intvs., LEE vs. KIRBY, SILVER STAR screenplay, unpublished art, more! 68 pages.

#24: BATTLES! KIRBY’S original art fight, JIM SHOOTER, SGT. FURY, GLORY BOAT pencils, more! 68 pages, Kirby/Mignola cover.

#27: KIRBY INFLUENCE! ALEX ROSS intv., KIRBY FAMILY Roundtable, top pros discuss Kirby’s influence! 72 pages, Kirby / Timm cover.

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Street KIRBY COLLECTOR #28: KIRBY INFLUENCE Part Two! MARK HAMILL, KRICFALUSI, RUDE, COLLETTA, more! Kirby/Allred cover.

#30: ’80s WORK! ALAN MOORE intv., in-depth look at HUNGER DOGS, SUPER POWERS, SILVER STAR, ANIMATION, more! 68 pages.

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COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, Vol. Two: 160-page trade paperback reprints TJKC #10-12, plus a new section featuring a tour of the Kirby’s house, plus over 30 pieces of unpublished Kirby art!

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, Vol. Three: 176-page trade paperback reprints TJKC #13-15, a new introduction by STEVE BISSETTE, plus 30 more new pieces of unpublished Kirby art!

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#29: ’70s MARVEL WORK! Interviews with KIRBY, GIFFEN, BUCKLER, ’70s COVER GALLERY, more! Kirby/Janson cover.

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