Jack Kirby Collector #35 Preview

GREAT ESCAPES

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84 PAGES $9.95

NO. 35 SPRING 2002

BIGGER AND BETTER TWOMORROWS JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR

It’s the great Kirby

84 PAGES $9.95

Mister Miracle TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

“BUSTOUT!! ”

BIGGER AND BETTER

Contents OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (why was Kirby always running from something or another?)

THE NEW

UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (Steve Rude and Marshall Rogers outline their respective covers this issue) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (regular columnist Mark Evanier answers a pair of Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby)

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BAD GUISE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 (just who was Kirby’s greatest villain?)

WRITER’S BLOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 (author Michael Chabon offers up a few words on Kirby) HOUDINI & KIRBY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 (a brief look at each man’s approach to the artistry of escape) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 (Adam McGovern finds the Kirby in a few of his favorite things) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 (Marshall Rogers chats about Mister Miracle, Kirby, and Batman) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 (death traps, dwarfs, and bathing Bardas, all shown in pencil) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 (the 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring the late John Buscema, John Romita, Mike Royer, Will Eisner, and some guy named Carson) DECONSTRUCTING HIMON . . . . . . . . .58 (three different writers take apart one of Kirby’s finest tales: “Himon”) IN CLOSING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 (an examination of Kirby’s second Mister Miracle series) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . . . . .76 (escape the humdrum letter columns of other mags by perusing these missives about our last issue) PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (on the way out, take a quick look at Jack’s final Mister Miracle page) Front cover inks: MARSHALL ROGERS Back cover pastel art: STEVE RUDE Front cover color: TOM ZIUKO

Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils from published comics are reproduced here courtesy of the Kirby Estate, which has our thanks for their continued support.

COPYRIGHTS: Batman, Bekka, Ben Boxer, Bernadeth, Big Barda, Bruce Wayne, Darkseid, Female Furies, Forever People, Funky Flashman, Granny Goodness, Himon, Houseroy, In The Days of the Mob, Jimmy Olsen, Joker, Kamandi, Kanto, Komodo, Lashina, Losers, Mad Harriet, Madame Evil Eye, Metron, Mister Miracle, Morgan Edge, Oberon, Orion, Renzi, Scott Free, Shilo Norman, Silver St. Cloud, Stompa, Superman, The Lump, Tigra, Virmin Vundabar, Young Scott Free TM & ©2002 DC Comics. • Annihilus, Black Panther, Captain America, Daredevil, Devil Dinosaur, Eternals, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Jasper Sitwell, Moonboy, Mr. Fantastic, Nick Fury, Dum-Dum Dugan, Silver Surfer, Thing, Thor, Ultron TM & © 2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Jacob & The Angel, Jupiter Plaque, Stereon, Street Code TM & ©2002 Jack Kirby Estate.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 10, No. 35, Spring 2002. Published quarterly by & ©2002 TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092.

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 ©2002 Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2002 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

(above) Uninked pencils from Mister Miracle #5, page 4.

Characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

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heard a war story or two) can attest—and unlike a stage magician’s act, his death-defying feats were the real thing.

Opening Shot

Escape from a dying industry (1950s).

After the end of his Mainline company (and parting ways with Joe Simon) as the comics industry looked to be collapsing, Jack picked up whatever work he could find. He may have seen the writing on

(inset) Convention sketches of Barda and Mister Miracle done for Al Milgrom.

The Great Kirby “Bust J (next page, bottom) The final panels of several comics Jack “ran from” (usually not of his own choice): Eternals, Forever People, Jimmy Olsen, Our Fighting Forces, Captain America (in pencil), and Devil Dinosaur.

Celestials, Capt. America, Falcon, Devil Dinosaur, Moonboy TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Forever People, Superman, Jimmy Olsen, the Losers TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

(background) A map of New York’s East Village, highlighting where celebrities grew up, including Kirby (as shown below). (top) An artist’s representation of Kirby’s neighborhood (at the corner of Suffolk and Delancy streets) as it stands today; Jack’s home would’ve been to the left, where a parking lot is today.

ack Kirby was running from something all his life.

Okay, I know that statement might sound strange to any number of longtime Kirby fans, but bear with me a minute, and I’ll explain what I mean.

This issue is all about the theme of “escape” in Jack’s work, and so it naturally will feature lots of Mister Miracle, Kirby’s super escape artist; but while the rest of the issue will deal with some of the “close calls” that character experienced on the comics page, I want to delve into what may have made Jack so inclined to submerge himself in this particular brand of escapism called comic books—what I term “The Great Kirby Bust-Out!” (to borrow a line from the cover of Mister Miracle #9).

Escape was a part of Jack’s life, from beginning to end. To demonstrate my point, I’ve compiled a list of what I consider to be Kirby’s top ten biggest real-life escapes, in chronological order:

Escape from the Lower East Side (1930s).

As a son of Jewish immigrants, Kirby spent his childhood in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York. Daily gang fights were the norm, as few kids on his block had much else to live for; but Kirby surreptitiously kept his imagination and artistic talent alive and flourishing through reading, movies, and drawing, and instead of following in his father’s blue collar footsteps, used his talents to find a way out of the slum.

Escaping anti-Semitism (1940s).

Early in his career, Jack chose to legally change his name from Kurtzberg to Kirby (much to his parents’ dismay). Although he never turned his back on his faith and ancestry, he opted for the new name for commercial reasons, undoubtedly feeling it could help him avoid any anti-Semitic backlash in his search for work.

Escape from death (World War II).

After enlisting in the Army, PFC Jack Kirby was assigned to numerous life-threatening situations as an advance scout.

The experience would be great fodder for future comics stories, but he barely lived to tell them. After scraping by alive in Patton’s army, he was discharged with frozen feet, and nearly had them amputated. WWII was a profound influence on his life—as anyone who met Jack in person (and

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the wall much earlier, because from the late 1940sonward, he was constantly pursuing his dream of landing a coveted syndicated newspaper comic strip. The opportunity finally arose with Sky Masters, and its promise of a better, more secure living and greater prestige; but the strip waned after an impressive start, and Jack found himself trapped back working for a comics page rate just to survive.

Arguably, the desperation of the situation led to the development of the Marvel Universe, which in turn helped save a dying industry, but it also propelled Kirby squarely back into it. So in some ways, his escape to newspaper syndication led him right back to a trap of his own making.

Escape from New York (1969).

After more than 50 years living in the city of his birth, Kirby uprooted his family and moved to the other side of the country. Jack claimed the California clime was better for his daughter Lisa’s asthma, but no doubt the freedom of being 3000 miles away from an editor made the decision all the easier. The change in scenery appears to have started new ideas brewing in his mind, which would lead to some of his most mind-boggling concepts making their way to the comics page.

Escape from Marvel and Stan Lee (1970).

Perhaps the biggest career move he ever made, the switch to DC Comics meant he was leaving behind the success of 1960s Marvel Comics, for a chance to prove

himself without a collaborator to share the credit with. From this point on, with rare exceptions, Jack wrote and edited his own stories (usually sending in completely lettered and inked work), and never again worked “Marvel method.”

Escaping DC (1975).

Although what waited for him back at Marvel ended up no better than what he was leaving behind, Jack chose not to renew his contract at DC Comics when it expired. The failed Fourth World experiment and a string of unsatisfying post-New Gods series left him looking for somewhere, anywhere else to ply his trade. For better or worse, Marvel Comics was the only other game in town, so he jumped ship yet again in hopes of a better situation.

-Out!” Escaping the comics industry entirely (1978).

Just when things seemed hopeless in the comics field he helped pioneer four decades earlier, the animation industry came calling.

With higher pay, more respect, and much-needed health benefits as he entered his declining years, Jack ironically ended his career where it began; only instead of doing in-betweening for Popeye cartoons, he was a much sought-after concept man (creating thousands of ideas that will likely never be seen by the public), and scoring a major hit with Thundarr the Barbarian.

Escaping the “Big Two” (1980s).

Jack’s final major foray into comics, rather than for DC and Marvel, wound up being for independent publishers. Freed of the constraints of company-wide continuity and editorial dictates (which he experienced one last time on DC’s 1984 Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel), Kirby produced wild, frenetic work like never before.

Some loved it, some hated it, but no one could deny his unchained imagination was working at full speed on such projects as Captain Victory and Silver Star.

Escape from obscurity (1990s).

After years of no new Kirby work on the stands, and a gradual lessening of attention being paid to Jack (including smaller crowds at conventions, where younger readers flocked to the Image creators), Jack experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1990s. The debut of Phantom Force (with Kirby concepts combined with Image inkers) and the Topps Secret City Saga books, as well as the release of The Art of Jack Kirby (and not one, but two fanzines devoted to Kirby) helped bring him back to the forefront of fans’ minds (although his place in comics history was undoubtedly assured anyway).

Is it any wonder then, that Jack was destined to make his mark in a field of escapist entertainment? While he may never have mastered the intricate escape techniques of a prestidigitator like Houdini, he certainly worked his own brand of magic in comics; and the personal chains that encumbered him throughout his life and career were every bit as difficult to surmount as anything David Copperfield and co. have ever dreamed up for their acts. ★

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Under The Covers

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teve Rude didn’t waste a second when we asked him if he’d ever done a Mister Miracle #1 cover recreation that we could run on this issue’s back cover. Although he hadn’t, he immediately offered to give it a shot. (We thought Steve was a particularly appropriate choice since, on the the original cover of #1, Mister Miracle is saying the villains “are in for a RUDE shock.”)

We assumed “The Dude” would do a traditional pen-&-ink version, and were totally stunned when a gorgeous pastel drawing arrived less than a week later.

Steve had this to say about the creation of the piece: “Some of you may be familiar with a magazine called Step-by-Step. Though I collected it solely for “Methods of the Masters,” a section devoted to vintage illustrators, I have yet to learn a thing from any of the Step-by-Step articles. Maybe I’d have to be there watching over the artist’s shoulder, or physically work alongside them, but for me these articles just don’t seem to work.

“With that in mind, I’ll describe the process of the Mister Miracle #1 recreation. It was rendered in Nupastel, a hard, sticklike chalk, and done on orange Canson paper. I began by enlarging a copy of the actual Kirby cover and transferring it onto the pastel paper. I juggled some elements around since there were no logo or word balloons to worry about, and began to apply the main colors throughout.

“Pastel is a new medium for me and is best suited to painting large images where you can use broad, suggestive strokes. Eventually, you hone-in on details with smaller and smaller strokes. This is more difficult than it sounds. Pastel smears easily. Like all mediums, its drawbacks work side-by-side with its charms. At one point I dragged my sleeve along an area I’d spent an hour on and smeared the whole thing. I finally realized the baggy sleeves I was wearing were the culprit. Instant wipeout. Pastelists have a thing against fixative for some reason, but it’s the only sane way to work with the stuff. (I rolled up my sleeve after that incident.)

“For the budding illustrators out there, know that mediums don’t make an artist. Practice and accumulated knowledge do. As Andrew Loomis once said, the principles apply to all art regardless of the medium used; be it oil, acrylic, watercolor, or a stick dipped in mud.

“Problems arise in all mediums as an artist struggles to improve. This situation usually applies throughout our entire lives.

Our job is to become smarter than the medium, and not let technical things interfere with the fundamentals that make a good picture.”

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(left) Kirby cover for Mister Miracle #1, inked

by Vince Colletta, and a detail of the word balloon that provoked us to get Steve Rude to recreate it.

Mr. Miracle TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

(below) For those who didn’t get enough “Rude” in Steve’s pastel interpretation, here are a couple of fan commissions he did in the 1990s.

Mr. Miracle, Big Barda TM & ©2002 DC Comics. Artwork © Steve Rude.

Marshall Rogers took the more conventional route for this issue’s front cover, inking a xerox of the Kirby pencils shown on the previous page. He had this to say about the experience: “How does one approach a legend’s work? Jack is so definitive in his linework that there is little room for interpretation, and yet I consider his style to be representative of form rather than absolute.

“I also feel an artist should bring something of himself to his work. With this in mind, and a personal preference to an “organic” rather than “plastic” look to inks (as I talked about during this book’s interview), I inked the cover you see on this issue.”

We originally toyed with the idea of adding one of Jack’s photo-collages to the front cover’s background, but after seeing the color work Tom Ziuko added to it (not to mention the spiffy “planet” detailing by Tom’s pal Scott Lemien), we thought the white background aided our goal of making it look like the cover of one of those 25¢ 1970s DC 52-pagers (think Jimmy Olsen #148, among others). ★ 5

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

by Mark Evanier Once again, we attempt the seemingly-impossible: We shall endeavor to answer not one but two Kirby-related queries in one long, rambling reply. The first comes from Kirk Groeneveld, who writes:

(below) A 1980s fan commission drawing, featuring Galactus.

Galactus, Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

“I’m not Jewish, but I wonder how Jack Kirby’s faith interfaced with his continuing theme of hidden races being genetically manipulated.

How did he feel about the assignment to “Have the FF meet God” in Fantastic Four #48-50?”

And the second comes from someone who signs their e-mail “Washing2000lb,” which I guess means their name or their locale is Washington. Anyway, he, she or it writes: “What’s the deal with Mister Miracle? Everyone says it was based on Steranko but that Big Barda was based on Roz taking care of Kirby.

Wouldn’t that make Jack Mister Miracle?” irst, to Kirk: I’ve always been skeptical about that “meet God” anecdote, as I see absolutely nothing in those issues to suggest that Galactus represented a view of the Almighty on the part of either Mr. Lee or Mr. Kirby. Think about it: Galactus was an intergalactic force who created nothing, gave life to no one and left each world he visited a barren, lifeless wasteland. How

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(next page, top) Photo of Roy Thomas and Flo Steinberg, circa 1965, shortly after Roy started working at the House of Ideas. The similarities between the Rascally One and Jasper Sitwell (see inset) are pretty evident. Photo courtesy of Flo Steinberg.

Jasper Sitwell, Nick Fury, DumDum Dugan TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(next page, bottom) Jack did a later, less flattering parody of Roy as Houseroy, flunky to Funky (Stan Lee) Flashman.

Funky Flashman, Houseroy TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

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does he relate to any interpretation of God that has ever been enshrined in any book, any teaching, any religion? Last I heard—and I doubt this has changed—God was supposed to foster life, not destroy it for his own enrichment.

Yes, I know a few “scholarly” essays have sought to read between the panels and make the case, but I remain unconvinced. My suspicion is that Stan said to Jack—or maybe Jack said to Stan—“Let’s have the FF fight someone who’s supremely powerful” and somehow, that suggestion was later recalled as, “Let’s have them meet God.” Obviously, just because a comic book character has awesome might, it does not mean that he in any way corresponds to his authors’ vision of you-know-who.

Just what was on Stan’s mind, I can’t say. He does not recall individual issues well and the one time he and I discussed that story arc, he didn’t have much to say about it. Neither did Jack, but I did come up with a theory as to what he was thinking at the time he worked on that little epic. To explain it, I need to detour and answer the question from Washing2000lb....

Almost everything Jack wrote (or plotted) had autobiographical elements. In some cases, they were so obscure and disguised that even he didn’t recognize them in the final mix.

But just as an actor utilizes personal sense memories in acting, Jack used his own emotional experiences throughout his work. When he drew a scene that involved anger, he was usually thinking about something that had once angered him, and so forth. In some cases, the reference points are even slightly visible.

Here’s one example of many: Last issue in this magazine, there was a mention of Jasper Sitwell, the young, collegeeducated S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, as clearly being based on Dudley Do-Right.

Writer’s Bloc

(next page, left) Photo of Michael Chabon by Patricia Williams. © Patricia Williams.

(this page) Mister Miracle battles the Lump from Mister Miracle #8, the issue that made Chabon a lifelong Kirby fan.

Mister Miracle, The Lump TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

(next page, top) Dust jacket for the hardback version of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, featuring his character The Escapist—a character who, according to published reports, is getting his own series from DC Comics soon (gee, maybe they’ll team him up with Mister Miracle!). ©2002 Michael Chabon.

(next page, bottom) Panel from Kirby’s autobiographical story “Street Code,” done in pencil. Kirby fans who’ve never experienced this remarkable 10-page story can read it as part of TwoMorrows’ trade paperback Streetwise, available elsewhere in this issue. ©2002 Jack Kirby Estate.

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A Few Words From

(Acclaimed author Michael Chabon was born in 1963, and grew up reading comic books. He’s penned several books, but the one of most interest to Kirby fans is undoubtedly The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel dealing with the Golden Age of Comics and escape artistry as its themes. In the midst of his extremely hectic schedule these days, Michael took time out to conduct the following interview in March 2002, via e-mail.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What were the first Kirby comics you read? Did you read Mister Miracle when Kirby was working on it in the 1970s?

MICHAEL CHABON: Absolutely. Mister Miracle was my favorite of the Fourth World books. I was a devoted reader of DC books in the very early ’70s, as a seven- or eight-year-old. I really didn’t care for the Marvel books. I suppose they went over my head.

Michael Chabon They had a frenetic, sweaty quality to them. The DC books were cool and mannered and the values were easy to comprehend. Little kids really do believe in truth and justice and the American way.

So I didn’t know from Kirby. Then all of a sudden those banners started appearing in the DC books: “Kirby Is Coming!” and then, finally, “Kirby Is Here!” I had no idea who Kirby was. I thought it might be a character—some vague association chiming in my mind with the Rip Kirby newspaper strip. Then my dad brought me home the first few Kirby Jimmy Olsen books. That was always a book prone to bizarre flights of fancy, but— whoa. I don’t think I knew quite what to make of Kirby at first.

The book that really, truly, permanently blew my mind was the issue of Mister Miracle in which he fights the creature from the Id [#8]; a big, pink, comatose but sentient wad of bubblegum. There’s this incredible double-page spread of the Female Furies killing time in their barracks. That panel just completely unhinged me. The dynamic layout, the wealth of figures and the variety of their costumes, the air of violence and sexuality, the bizarrely stilted dialogue. From that point on I was a confirmed Kirbyite.

TJKC: Did any characters or scenes from Mister Miracle influence your novel? For instance, could a parallel be drawn between Joe Kavalier’s mentor Bernard Kornblum, and Himon from Mister Miracle? How about between Joe Kavalier’s own escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and Scott Free’s escape from Apokolips?

MICHAEL: There may very well be underpinnings of Mister Miracle in my book.

I’m sure there are; but if so, I was totally unaware of them at the time. You could toss in that the ‘fictional’ character of Max Mayflower who trains the Escapist is a bit like Thaddeus Brown, the original Mister Miracle. And I guess that makes Sammy Oberon!

The surest connection, and the one that I really was conscious of, was between my guy and Jim Steranko. It was reading about Steranko’s first career as an escape artist that encouraged me to develop the motif of Houdini and escape artistry that was very lightly emphasized in the first few drafts. And Steranko also underlies Mister Miracle. So that’s the strongest link, I think, between my book and JK’s.

TJKC: Your novel features a who’s who of Golden Age comics creators making cameo appearances, from Stan Lee, Joe Simon, and Gil Kane to Will Eisner and others; but Kirby seems conspicuous by his absence, not actually appearing as a character in the novel. Was this intentional, and if so, why?

MICHAEL: Well, I guess I just sort of felt as if this book was, in a way, for Jack Kirby, or of him—as much as, in a very different way, it was for and of my dad (to whom I dedicated it).

Having him also appear in it might have seemed like too much, somehow.

TJKC: On page 100 of the hardcover edition, it’s revealed that Sammy Clay’s mother fell in love with Sammy’s father in “Kurtzburg’s Saloon” on New York’s Lower East Side in 1919. In what other ways was the novel inspired by Kirby’s own escape from his Lower East Side upbringing?

MICHAEL: There was no direct inspiration from Kirby’s life; not really, except insofar as Kirby’s history mirrored so closely the history of my own grandparents and great-grandparents, many of whom settled in the Lower East Side, too.

TJKC: An underlying theme of Kavalier & Clay seems to be “Comics are escapism, but there’s no getting away from real life.” Is that an accurate assessment, and is there a message there for comics fans?

MICHAEL: I don’t see it that way. I might restate it thus: “Comics are escapism, and thank God, because without escapist art there really would be no getting away from real life.” By the way, I believe that all great literature is, in part, escapist. When you inhabit the life of a fictional character or characters, you are given a taste of what it might feel like to be somebody else—to escape, if only for a moment, the prison of your own consciousness.

TJKC: Can you elaborate on the theme of “escape” in the novel? An example that seems to fall under the theme is Joe Kavalier’s journey to Antarctica during the war to escape his past and his brother’s death.

MICHAEL: I read this sequence as more in the nature of an escape in itself; that is, Joe is locked away in this great frozen box of death, a trap that kills everyone but him, and he alone escapes; and yet, at the same time, learns that the trap of memory, of guilt and remorse and shame, is one that he cannot escape, not even by taking revenge.

TJKC: Another is the Escapist’s secret identity of Tom Mayflower; of course, the Pilgrims escaped persecution on their ship, the Mayflower.

MICHAEL: Interesting. I just wanted something that sounded super-WASPy. TJKC: Help us get into your mind as a writer. Are those types of occurrences coincidental or planned? Do you consciously set out to develop these ideas from the start, or do they evolve, and come to you as you write? What are some other areas in the novel that tie into the “escape” theme?

MICHAEL: Theme is absolutely the very last thing I consider. I start with a character, a setting, or a story idea; an interesting event or episode or sequence of events. Then I start writing, and I try to use my ability to manipulate language to the utmost, hoping to make these characters, this setting, this story, come 13

Adam M c Govern

As A Genre

Know of some Kirby-inspired work that should be covered here? Send to: Adam McGovern PO Box 257 Mt. Tabor, NJ 07878

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

GREAT EVASIONS (right) Simonson splash page from Orion #5. Ahh, Walter, how we’ll miss ye.

Characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

(below) Chapter splash for Modern Myths. ©2002 Juan Gonzalez.

(next page, top) Example of recent Black Panther art by Jorge Lucas.

Characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(next page, bottom) Lucas pays homage to Kirby’s Annihilus (right) in this panel from The Ultron Imperative (inked by Mike Royer).

Characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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hose keeping score will remember that an all-humor column was promised for this space; the amount of material to go through, and the small avalanche of other verbiage I have unloaded on this issue (check out my Simon/Cap summation and my Mister Miracle discourse, plug, plug), have pushed that theme to next time. So this issue we’ll revisit some favorite types of comics, and particularly-admired specific series, covered in our run to date. The timing was right as these books came to my attention, came to a sad close, or ran very pertinent current story arcs—and if my previously-announced timing was off, well, it’s a poorly-kept secret that I aspire to professional comics scripting, and if I’m really serious about pursuing that career I gotta start missing some deadlines.

Wonders Never Cease As we did in our inaugural column examining Tom Scioli’s 8-Opus, we begin our return to roots by spotlighting some of the indie newcomers whose emulation of the King shows how fundamental his style is to the vocabulary of comics, and how spontaneous is the positive reaction to it not only in the halls of entertainment giants mindful of its salability, but the hearts and home studios from which the next generation of creators will come.

A fan counterpart to the professional cast-of-thousands Kirby tribute Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics Magazine, Modern Myths is an exuberant and enjoyable homage to the Lee/Kirby heyday masterminded

by California-based writer and artist Juan Gonzalez. As Erik Larsen did with the WGCM project, Gonzalez laid out the entire first issue for himself and other artists to complete; like Larsen and then some, he plotted and wrote the whole thing himself, without a collaborator. The result is an introductory tale of the “Wonder Warders,” an FF-like team of superscientists protecting humble human lives in struggles of cosmic scale.

Characters walk a line between postmodern archetype and too-recognizable pastiche, but all are done with love and some hit the heights of Kirby’s own wordplay

(like the Thing-esque enforcer “David Goliath”). Some of the artists are more ready-for-prime-time than others, but the design is inspired throughout, with many a close approximation of Kirby’s great sense of psychedelic tech and spaceoperatic costumery. Gonzalez chooses the exhilarating, joined-inprogress narrative structure of a Lee or Kirby tale—we feel as if we’re coming in on issue #15 of a classic series—and while this sometimes makes the smoothness of the exposition slip out of his hands, it necessitates a brevity which is usually executed well.

Gonzalez’s storytelling instincts, while action-packed, tend more toward dramatic reconciliation than bombastic fisticuffs, and this is one of many refreshing approaches that make him and most of his cohorts talents to watch. (For a copy, please send $2.50 [$3.70 in Canada] to: Juan Gonzalez Publishing, 1112 Orchard St. #1, Santa Rosa, CA 95404 [email: modmyth@hotmail.com].)

Goodnight, Bitter Prince Welcomed in our very first column, we must now bid a fond farewell to Walter Simonson’s take on Kirby’s Fourth World saga, Orion. Fourth World continuations seem to be as short-lived as they are frequent, and that’s too bad in the case of this elegant and

INNERVIEW

Marshall Rogers Inte Conducted by Jon B. Cooke, transcribed by LongBox.com Staff (Marshall Rogers burst on the otherwise dull comic book scene of the mid- to late 1970s, and caused a sensation with his work on Batman in Detective Comics, Dr. Strange for Marvel Comics, and others; but it was his 4-issue revival of Mister Miracle that impressed Kirby fans, and is still fondly remembered. This interview took place by telephone in March 2002, and was copyedited by the artist.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How far back do you recall Jack Kirby’s work?

MARSHALL ROGERS: I grew up with Kirby’s work.

He’s probably the reason I wanted to get into comic books.

TJKC: What work specifically?

(above) Photo of Marshall Rogers from the late 1970s. (right) Rogers pencils and Terry Austin inks on a page from Detective Comics #468, featuring Bruce Wayne’s encounter with an old Kirby character, Morgan Edge.

Morgan Edge, Batman, Bruce Wayne TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

(next page) Kirby pencils from Mister Miracle #6, featuring Jack’s thinly veiled parodies of Stan Lee and Roy Thomas.

All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

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MARSHALL: Everything, but it wasn’t until he started working with Marvel that I knew what the man’s name was. Then, once I realized who the guy was drawing that work, I realized I had probably first read him when he had done either the Shield or the Fly. I don’t remember exactly which of the two, but Jack’s work was so distinctive that even as a young kid, I recognized it: “Hey, this is the same guy that did the Fly.” I went back and I checked it out and looked at the art and realized, yeah, this was the same guy.

TJKC: What was it about Jack’s work that was compelling?

MARSHALL: The dynamics, I guess, would be the best way to say it.

Jack brought the work to life for me. It made it seem more than twodimensional to me. One thing that I remember noticing was when some villain would uproot a building from a New York City block, the pipes and the guts of the building underneath were dangling down, as compared to Superman; when he lifted a building up, it had this nice clean flat surface, you know— as if it was a toy placed

on a chess board or something—but there was always rubble and junk coming out of Jack’s buildings whenever they were lifted up.

TJKC: Were you into his Atlas monster work? Did you look at those—like Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales, you know—the preMarvel hero stuff?

MARSHALL: A little bit, but I don’t honestly remember seeing it straight off the shelves. I was collecting comic books as a youngster, but I didn’t get right in on the very beginning of Marvel. I ended up running around the neighborhood trading to get back issues, so I don’t remember exactly if I started out with some of the monster books and had seen them, or had picked them up during trades, etc.

TJKC: Have you looked at the monster stuff since? Did you find anything of interest in there to this day?

rview MARSHALL: I guess, really, the monster genre was not my favorite genre, but I looked at everything and anything that Jack did at one point, that I could lay my hands on.

TJKC: You were born in 1950, right?

MARSHALL: That’s right.

TJKC: So, generally speaking, you started picking them up around ’62?

Were you about 11 or 12 years old?

MARSHALL: No, I was reading comic books earlier than that.

TJKC: I meant the Marvel stuff specifically. You said you didn’t get in on the ground floor necessarily.

MARSHALL: I just missed it because a friend of mine had Amazing Fantasy #15 that Spider-Man first appeared in.

Then I ended up buying the second issue of Spider-Man, but it wasn’t like I was hitting the newsstand every week to get them, so it was hit and miss in the beginning.

TJKC: Did you find Fantastic Four compelling the minute you encountered it?

MARSHALL: Yeah, and actually X-Men was one of my favorite titles. That was the one I think I really glommed onto because I always felt I had large feet and I really related to the Beast. (laughter) I wanted to be able to walk up the sides of a building. That was one of the things about Jack’s work, particularly in the beginning, that I think was the most attractive thing to me. The situations were more downto-earth. They weren’t as fantastic as the DC stuff. It was Jack creating characters that would walk up the side of a building or shrink to the size of an ant. It was more basic fantasy elements rather than the fantastical type of elements. The Fantastic Four was certainly a departure from that, but his other stuff was even more compelling to me, and Thor would not necessarily be included in that.

I think the work of his I found most compelling were the simple fantasy elements, like shrinking down to a real small size or being able to swing around a building as if you were on a jungle vine.

TJKC: Did you also clue into Stan Lee’s contributions to it?

MARSHALL: In the beginning I was attracted to the artwork. I realized Stan’s name from the signatures.

When I got a comic book, I would basically flip though the pages just to see the artwork and then go back and read the story later on. Particularly with Jack’s work, you could tell what the story was without having to read the captions.

TJKC: The X-Men was a title on which he later did quite loose breakdowns. Could you still see the Kirby through the guys who inked and finished the penciled stuff?

MARSHALL: I could, and I was able to quickly tell as soon as Jack stopped contributing to it as a ghost, because the layout and dynamics just took a vast turn, and became very different.

TJKC: Prior to Marvel, did you collect comics? Did you save them or were you a reader?

MARSHALL: I was a reader.

TJKC: And once you got bit by the Marvel bug, did you continue to read DC comics or did you pass them by?

MARSHALL: I always went back to Batman, hoping to see that “something” that I’d always wanted to see, but—.

TJKC: You didn’t see it.

MARSHALL: No, I never did, you’re right.

TJKC: So did you remain with Marvel pretty much throughout your teen years?

MARSHALL: Well, I don’t know; about 15 or 16 I started getting interested in girls and losing interest in comics. Then once I got into college, I started to take up the interest again. It coincided with a serious interest in getting into the business.

TJKC: Were you losing interest in the comics just as Jack was getting into the Galactus trilogy, for 19

Gallery

On the following pages are a plethora of pencils from various Mister Miracle issues, as follows: Issue #5 (pages 26-28), #6 (pages 29-33), #7 (pages 34-37, including a “Young Scott Free” story), and #8 (pages 38-39 and 42-43).

Our centerfold (pages 40-41) features the two-page spread from Mister Miracle #11, inked by Mike Royer.

All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

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TRIBUTE

2001 Kirby Tribute Panel Held at Comicon International: San Diego on July 22, 2001 (Featuring Will Eisner, John Buscema, John Romita, and Mike Royer, moderated by Mark Evanier, transcribed by Brian K. Morris) MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Eighth Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, and my eleventh panel of this convention. (applause) I’m probably Mark Evanier and I’ve made a rule that I do not go to any convention that will not let me host a Jack Kirby Tribute Panel.

Actually, in some cases, that’s superfluous because we’ve been talking about Jack on half the panels I’ve done here

(top to bottom) The panelists: the late John Buscema, John Romita, Mike Royer, and (next page) Will Eisner. (right) Pencil page from Mister Miracle #6.

All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

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so far. I just did a Russell Myers panel and we brought him up in there, too. Jack was an amazing gentleman.

You all know that, and many of you had the pleasure of knowing him and meeting him. Let me introduce the dais of people we have assembled and I’ll talk to them about Jack for a while, then we’re going to show a videotape that is not one of the happier moments of Jack’s life, unfortunately, but which is part of the historical record.

It is a two-part tape, the first part of which is Johnny Carson libeling Jack Kirby, and the second half is Johnny Carson apologizing to Jack Kirby. (applause) Jack liked pretty much everybody in comics. I don’t

WILL EISNER: I hate to tell you what it took to get one. (laughs) JOHN ROMITA: You didn’t know the right people. (laughs) EVANIER: So you’ve finally done work that lives up to the standards of Will Eisner. (laughs) EISNER: I lied about my age. (laughs) EVANIER: And here to my left is a gentleman that Jack handpicked as his favorite inker for the last twenty years of his life. I don’t think people realize how hard this man worked. To ink everything Jack Kirby did, alone... well, a lot of people could not have done that, even badly. To ink it and letter it so well under those time constraints for that rotten money was an amazing achievement. We owe an awful lot of thanks to Mr. Mike Royer. (applause) Let me also introduce in the audience a couple of people very briefly. When I was working for Jack, I had the pleasure of having as my friend and colleague and partner and co-conspirator, a gentleman who did an awful lot of work for Jack personally and professionally, and was a lifelong friend of the family, Mr. Steve Sherman. (applause) And Jack’s other favorite inker in the last decade or two of his life, and a very close member of the Kirby family—I mean “family” in the very best sense of the word because he was practically almost blood over there, Mr. Mike Thibodeaux. (applause) I also do see one other person here. Jack had an amazing ability to get into trouble, usually not of his own making, and he had two attorneys throughout most of the Eighties and Nineties who were dealing with these problems. One was a man by the name of Steve Rohde who is now a high muck-a-muck in the ACLU. He spends one hour a week making money as a lawyer and fifty hours a week protecting civil rights.

His former collaborator and partner is now in his own practice and I knew him mostly as a voice on the phone, dealing with all of Jack’s problems, calling me in exasperation at whatever stupid thing Marvel was claiming this week. This is Mr. Paul Levine over here. (applause) I’m going to start with Mr. Eisner—and, by the way, you all bought this, right? (holds up Eisner’s book Shop Talk to wild applause) I know you’ve told this story before but you never told it at one of these panels, about hiring Jack Kirby and his coming to work for your studio—and at some point, you’ve got to tell the towel story. (laughs) Tell us about the operation that Jack came into.

EISNER: Well, the company was Eisner and Iger. I former a company with Jerry Iger who’d been formerly the editor of Wow, What A Magazine that collapsed after two issues. We owned a shop producing, or packaging, comics. In those days, the pulp magazines were dying and the publishers who were still trying to survive, were looking for other things to publish. They were publishing comic magazines, as we called them in those days. They weren’t called “comic books.” Then, as it came to pass, into my shop comes this kid named Jacob Kurtzberg. Whatever happened to him, I don’t know. (laughs) He kind of looked like John Garfield to

A French Kirby Exhibition (or nearly)!

by Jean Depelley and Philippe Jecker The 2002 Angoulême International Comics Festival (which took place last January 24th-27th) was a nice opportunity for European comics fans to admire a wonderful display of originals from the greatest US comics artists, and the King was not forgotten!

The CNBDI (standing for National Center for International Comics) is a one-of-a-kind museum in France, since it presents original comics art only and has been doing so these past twelve years, as well as organizing important thematic exhibitions focused on the nominated artists once every year during the Festival.

Although it usually displays a wonderful collection of classic French Belgium “bande dessinée” (including art from Hergé, Jijé, Franquin, and Moebius), US comics are also well-represented, with samples from the Golden Age of comic strips, EC, underground, and mainstream super-hero comics. The 2002 edition celebrated nominated artist Martin Veyron’s sophisticated, Parisian humor, but it was the US artists’ exhibition that definitely caught the public interest.

The museum authorities (around Jean-Pierre Mercier and Thierry Groensteen) decided to open their holdings, and displayed a fantastic selection of art “made in the USA,” with a very original scenography created by Marie-Annick Beauvery which occupied two floors of the CNBDI. First, the visitor was introduced to American comics by a comic book store reconstruction (much different than our French shops!), before admiring samples of modern independent artists (featuring art by Jill Thomson, Jeff Smith, Mike Mignola, and others).

Then, upstairs began a real feast for the eyes: a wonderful Kirby Torch poster (statted from a Kirby original) welcomed the fan! The tone was set; pages of the greatest artists were showcased under the moody lights of the museum, including George Herriman, Charles M. Schulz, George McManus, Robert Crumb, Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Burne Hogarth, Joe Kubert, Jack Davis, Barry Smith, Jeff Jones, as well as a special exhibition of Will Eisner’s Spirit! (Will was attending the Festival as guest of honor and, by the way, he likes TJKC! ) In the middle of these treasures, three wonderful Kirby pages, intelligently chosen to show different inkers on Jack’s work, were presented:

All characters in these images TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

remember ever hearing of a writer or artist he didn’t like, the lowest being those people whose books he felt were highly derivative or who he felt were just imitating or tracing other people’s works.

That certainly did not apply to any of these gentlemen. He could not mention Johnny Romita without the phrase, “the guy who saved Spider-Man.” When Jack went over to DC, one of the things he very much wanted to do was a very sophisticated romance comic.

Eventually, the idea got dumbed down into that True Divorce Cases/Soul Love thing which we did that Jack never really understood. Through it all, he kept mentioning how much he wanted to get this man to work with him. He truly admired his work; Mr. Johnny Romita, ladies and gentlemen. (applause) Another artist for whom Jack never had anything but the highest regard was the gentleman who followed him on the Fantastic Four and Thor. My first question, when we get to him, will be, “Just what’s it like to follow Jack Kirby on Fantastic Four and Thor?” (laughs) Those of us who felt a certain loss when Jack left those books were more than delighted to see the expert handiwork of Marvel’s supreme penciler, Mr. John Buscema. (applause) And if you said to Jack, “Who do you really admire in comics?”, the first two names heard would be Bill Everett or this gentleman, whom he especially admired, not only as an artist but as a role model. I think Will was almost a father figure, in a way. He was in the business about an hour before Jack. (laughs) And we’re going to talk about that a little bit. But actually, this man finally achieved something the other night when he actually won an Eisner Award. (laughs, applause) Is that your first Eisner? I’ve got three of them, and that’s your first?

• Fantastic Four Annual #1, page 28 from the “Sub-Mariner Vs. The Human Race” story, inked by Dick Ayers (from which the Torch art had been swiped for the poster) • Thor #130 page 5, (not too badly) inked by Colletta • Fantastic Four #97, page 4, inked by Frank Giacoia One complaint: the frames made it impossible to read Jack’s margin notes and give a clear shot on the Marvel method, but the art spoke for itself: brilliant, energetic and inspiring! If consideration was proportional to the amount of art displayed, Kirby was really honored in Angoulême as he had as many pages displayed as Foster or Hogarth, and actually more than anyone else!

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me at the time. I think he thought he was John Garfield, and he got to working in the shop. He was one of the hardest-working guys in the shop, very serious, and... the towel story. (laughs) EVANIER: The story that Jack told me was that he saw Wow and he wanted to be part of it. He went to the address in the magazine and it was out of business. Someone there told him about Eisner and Iger and sent him up there.

EISNER: And actually, the shop resembled an Egyptian slave galley. We were out in the Nile, guys are sitting all around and I’m sitting at the head, beating the drums, (laughs) but it was such a new field that, really, anything you did was innovative. Jack sat on the right-hand side of the wall and drew in some miniature room. The penciling guys were sitting alongside the wall—Bob Powell, Chuck Mazoujian, and George Tuska. At my big desk, I would sit down and rough out the initial characters and pass them down the line and back up, almost like an animation studio.

We were trying very hard to make it profitable because we were getting five dollars a page for the work. I was being very innovative from a production point of view because, in those days, people were working on salary. They were not working freelance because I reasoned that if I was going to get any quality work out of them, I had to have them on salary. It’s very difficult to tell a freelancer to change panel three and move it over to panel five because it’s going to cost money. The guy who’s getting salary, he’d be very happy to change it. Jack was very accommodating, very easy to work with. A lot was going on and the shop grew. It started out with, maybe, five people. We were up to about ten or fifteen people at the time. We got to move to a larger office on 42nd Street, right across the street from the News Building, and we had two offices, two rooms; one great, wide one where all the artists worked and a little front room. For the artists, it was a big office building. Therefore, we decided we needed a towel service. So we subscribed to a company that would bring in towels every two or three days, changing them. Of course, we didn’t ask questions. Well, one day, I was in the office and Iger, who was my partner at the time, came in to me and he said, “Hey, there’s this guy out there who wants to come in and talk about the towel service.” He said, “You’re in charge of production,” meaning I was the partner in charge of producing. Iger was the businessman.

He was maybe thirteen years older than me. Therefore, he was the businessman. So I went out and there stands this guy, straight out of a Mickey Spillane movie, with a black hat and a white tie and a black shirt, looking like he broke a nose, speaking “like dis.”

He said, “I’m in charge of the towel service,” and I said, “Well, we want to change the towel service. We’re not 46

happy with your company because the towels are not coming out white,” and so forth. “Well, you know,” he said, “we got the franchise here.” (laughs) So I said, “Well, I know you have but I called a couple of other companies and none of them wanted to take on our account. They said, ‘It’s not our territory.’”

So he said, “Look, we don’t want to have no trouble with you. We want everything to go nice, see?” (laughs) So he says, “You tell me what your problem is, I’ll try to fix it.” So I said, “Well, I want more towels.” He said, “I can’t get you more towels. Only four towels.” By the way, his voice is getting a little stronger and I’m getting a little worked up. I was getting a little angry and suddenly, out of the back, comes Jack. This guy is about 6' 2" and Jack’s about 4' 3". (laughs) Jack says to me, “Hey, boss.” He always called me “boss.” Even through all of his life he always called

me “boss.” He said, “Both of you, just a minute. I’ll take care of this,” and he looks at this guy and said, “What do you want, you big ox?” The guy looks with terror at this little guy. Jack says, “Look, we don’t want any of your crap from you. We don’t like your damn towel service. Now, get the hell out of here.” (laughs) Now I figure I’m going to be mopping up the blood off the floor. (laughs) To my amazement, to my astonishment, this big guy turned around and walked out. (laughs) Jack says to me, “He comes back again, call me. I’ll take care of him.” (laughs) That was Jack. He changed his name very shortly from Jacob Kurtzberg, or whatever it was, to “Jack Curtiss.” He was doing the Count of Monte Cristo story at the time. Then he changed it later on to another one and became “Jack Kirby,” but it was always a joy to work with this guy. I always enjoyed working with him. I didn’t see him after he left and joined up with Joe Simon, I didn’t see him until many years later, here at this convention, where we were really going to talk to each other; and this interview that I tried to do with him [for Spirit Magazine #39, conducted circa 1982], more than any-

Thanks to Adrian Day for the logo treatment!

Himontary

How Do You Kill The Man Who’s Died A Thousand Deaths?

Surely he couldn’t be dispatched as easily as Darkseid did in the Hunger Dogs graphic novel (and with as pedestrian a means as a gun; talk about a scene that rang hollow. Himon would certainly have utilized a “follower” to stand in for him, as he did so many times before).

Regardless, it’s amazing that a character who

only appeared in one Fourth World issue—and nearly two years after the epic began—could be such an important part of the tapestry. So for this issue, we resurrect the “lovable old rascal” who taught Scott Free his craft by having three writers give their take on one of Kirby’s most personal (and fan favorite) sagas: Mister Miracle #9’s “Himon.”

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Charles Hatfield (throughout this article) Scenes from Mister Miracle #9’s story “Himon” in pencil.

All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

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imon—master of disguise, escape artist par excellence, and \ above all the “master of theories”—is Kirby’s embodiment of imagination. A protean genius, Himon has a disconcerting tendency to “phase” in and out of everywhere, and the power to shake off bodies like dry husks, thus to sidestep death again and again. Kirby suggests a prosaic explanation for Himon’s impossible escapes (apparently he can create convincing replicas or standins for his own body), but, finally, Himon is a metaphor; every literal-minded explanation of his powers falls short. He is imagination personified—the inspiration for designers, craftsmen, dancers, artists—and his visionary energy threatens Darkseid’s

H

suffocating, totalitarian world order.

On Apokolips the free exercise of the imagination carries terrible risks: Himon’s students often die for dreaming. When young Scott Free witnesses this firsthand, when he sees dreamers tortured and destroyed, he cracks, and finally, fully, commits himself to breaking free. For him Himon becomes no longer merely a source of furtive escapism, but a genuine means of escape. The story of “Himon,” then, is about the horrors that break Scott’s conformism and harden his resolve for imaginative freedom—as the cover says, the great “bust-out.”

The tale is unpleasant, yet exhilarating. Its setting is a nightmare, and its pervasive violence is cold, appalling. After decades of reuse, Apokolips remains one of Kirby’s best and most frightening ideas: a blotted, smoking, industrialized hell that makes mythology out of the author’s formative experiences, fusing Lower East Side squalor with visions of a thumping, jackbooted technocracy. “Himon” depicts this worldscape without much grandeur but with an astringent, unsentimental, and brutal clarity. (There are few dark places in Kirby’s oeuvre that can match it: the City of Toads, perhaps, from Eternals #8-10, or the chilly dystopia of OMAC #1.)

The story metes out torment and death, indeed a surplus of outrageous violence, with steely matter-of-factness.

When I look at the pages of “Himon,” these are some of the things I see: I see signs of Kirby’s overarching ambitions for the Fourth World saga. Page 1’s explanatory caption links this story with “The Pact” (New Gods #7) and assumes a knowing audience that is following Mister Miracle and New Gods at the same time. At several points, Kirby foreshadows how Scott’s escape from Apokolips will factor into, perhaps spark, a new war; the darkly prophetic dialogue of Himon and Metron hints that Scott’s moment of decision may also be a decisive turning point in the whole saga. These hints suggest just how much narrative and thematic material Kirby was holding in his head at the time, and how meaningful the larger tapestry of the Fourth World had become for him at this decisive point in his career. This was a new and complex undertaking for a yarn-spinner whose work had most often been driven by the tyranny of frequent deadlines, and whose degree of engagement (not his work ethic, which was tireless, but his artistic interest) would so often vary even within a single month, waxing and waning according to his imaginative sympathy with the material. Here his engagement was at its fiercest, and his maintenance of continuity (so often a trouble spot for Kirby) most deliberate.

I also see effective scripting. Admittedly, Kirby’s pounding urgency is often hard to take—his scripting is prone to overkill—and even here there are times when his captions are momentarily confusing; but “Himon” boasts an elegance and compression that are rare in Kirby’s scriptwriting, and the cadences of the text are hypnotic (dig the incantatory rhythms of pages 1 through 3, or the relentless

Adam McGovern concentration camp inmates, or the Darwinian strife of Kirby’s own childhood in the ethnic ghettos of early 20th-century America.

That last point is central in distinguishing this story from much of adventure fiction. The tale is so riveting that the reader might not at first realize how decisively it diverges from the conventions of its genre. It is stunning to note, for instance, how little “action” the story contains—or at least how little in the forms pop-culture consumers are conditioned

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here came a time when the Fourth World cycle, Jack Kirby’s symbolic war of cosmic forces, benefited from a much more mundane contest. A battle for newsstand supremacy between Kirby’s then-publisher DC and the other industry giant of those days, Marvel, led to an increased page-count for several issues of each series in Kirby’s trilogy. This gave his saga the space it seemed most suited for.

“Himon” in Mister Miracle was one of the longest episodes of that title’s run (though it appeared in the first issue after the pagecounts came back down, presumably produced by Kirby before he saw this coming).

However, this most momentous and moving story of his career is remarkable not for spectacular sprawl but expressive economy.

Like “The Pact” in New Gods, “Himon” flashed back in Kirby’s modern-day mythos to give the nightmare-fairytale background of how the saga’s apocalyptic celestial conflict—which mirrored the real-life superpower struggle of the time—came to pass.

The enlargement of the preceding few issues had serendipitously created the most favorable conditions for this tour de force, carving out pages for some establishing chapters in the life of “Young Scott Free” (though in a sure sign of Kirby’s concision, these three installments themselves totaled 10 pages). While lacking the poetry of the full-length conclusion, their mise en scène is thoroughly imagined, and they let Kirby dispense with all needed exposition before the psychodramatic main event.

That finale reads as Kirby’s most poignant and personal tale, and it can scarcely be coincidental that it is his most distinctly Jewish. Himon is a sympathetic reinvention of a literary icon with infamous anti-Semitic overtones (Fagin), and his name is a phonetic equivalent of the Hebrew one most ridiculed in English (Hyman, a.k.a.

Hymie), though it translates as “Life.” Scott’s story is clearly a Moses narrative, though in keeping with the corrupted times it reflects, the hero is not saved by his family, nurtured by their enemy, and destined to become a prophetic liberator, but is instead sacrificed by his own kind, brutalized by his foster society, and consumed with rebuilding his own life as a haunted refugee. The entire cast’s dog-eat-dog relations recall the dehumanized pecking order among WWII 68

to expect it. There is violence aplenty, but mostly of the kind we turn to fiction to forget: guerrilla war-style peasant slaughters; attempted political executions; senseless torture; petty assassinations; haggard fugitive flights. In an acute understanding of the essence of terror, we are given scares by much more than we actually witness: we don’t see the shocks administered to Auralie; we don’t see Willik’s club connect with Kreetin; we see few of Himon’s sentences carried out to the end, and Willik’s fate

Adrian Day “Darkseid, Highfather and the rest of the cast have always been sincere expressions of my feelings—reactions to all the things I knew were out there in the night, like the scrabbling of an unseen army of claws, or the beating of wings in nocturnal vigilance over sleepers in repose.”

Jack Kirby ’m a survivor,” Jack once said of himself, then thinking for a moment quickly revised his statement. “I’m a master survivor!” It was a defining statement for a man who, in the latter part of his career, saw survival as the theme of his most serious work.

It should be no surprise then that when Jack chose to align himself with one of his own creations, the character he chose was also a master survivor, or in Jack’s words, “the master technician, the master of swiftness and temperatures, the ultimate escape artist.”

To the best of my knowledge, Jack never acknowledged any kinship between himself and the central figure of Mister Miracle #9, yet the similarities are striking. They are so striking, in fact, that not even a quote from Kirby to the contrary could convince me otherwise. Himon vacillates between a caricature and a serious portrait of Jack, both physically and spiritually. Even within the context of the story, the references made to Himon are equally fitting as epithets for Jack.

Our introduction to Himon has a wonderful mixture of the farcical and the dramatic. When an attempt is made to exterminate him in the slums of Armagetto, he appears as a formidable shadowy figure in a wall of flame. His humorous side is quickly revealed when his escape attempt, via Mother Box, lands him inside a wall due to faulty circuitry. Scott Free comes to his aid and saves him from being imbedded there permanently. Their relationship in this scene is reminiscent of W.C. Fields and Freddie Bartholomew in Cukor’s David Copperfield, a story that also played no small part in the inspiration for the Mister Miracle series.

Even Himon’s most serious moments are tempered by the mischievous pranks of the trickster. His escapes are underscored with a sense of humor, when Himon resurfaces in a crowd as a spectator to his own execution. The elimination of Wonderful Willik by way of an exploding dinner tray, when Himon avenges the deaths of his pupils, is something out of Looney Tunes.

Through all this, it is an image of Jack that we see in this unlikely hero.

The meeting between Himon and Metron, near the story’s climax, reads like some imagined exchange between Jack and a young Roy Thomas. Metron greets Himon as the “master of theories,” an appropriate title for Kirby. Himon calls Metron the “master of elements” which Roy unquestionably was in his heyday at Marvel, when the best of his efforts involved a masterful weaving of storylines previously established by Jack.

When Metron declares, “the wonders I build are born in your brain! The roads that I travel are opened by your massive perception!”, he makes a statement to which every writer and artist following Jack in the field of comics is heir.

“I

(above) Next-issue blurb from Mister Miracle #8. (below) The “master of theories” meets the “master of elements.” (next page) Himon made his final appearance in the Hunger Dogs graphic novel, to plague Darkseid one last time before his eventual demise.

All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

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Symbols of Duality in the Fourth World Of all the stories within Jack’s Fourth World series, “Himon” is the most mature and central to the greater theme concerning the duality of God in the consciousness of man. “Himon” is a masterful allegory about making a choice of which God or power we will attach ourselves to and the rewards and consequences that come with either choice. These ideas, which are subtext throughout Jack’s other tales, are the focal point of the plot here.

Himon and Darkseid represent the opposite sides of that duality. Scott Free is in the middle, finally confronted with his moment of decision. This is the theme laid out for us since New Gods #1 where the setting for the Fourth World conflict was established with New Genesis and Apokolips on either side and Earth (man) as their battleground at the center. The internal struggle represented by this duality and the dark side of human nature are very much at the heart of Jack’s story and a key to understanding Darkseid and what he symbolizes.

As Jack explains, “Darkseid never told a lie. He never deserted his son. When he meets this old man with his grandson in Happyland, he says, ‘When you’re asleep and you have a nightmare, I’m the guy you’re seeing—the other side of yourself.’ Because the other side of yourself is insecure. It’s villainous, it’s treacherous— and don’t tell me that there may not come a time, in considering your life against someone else’s, you would betray him.”

Himon, in counterpoint to Darkseid, is all that is noble within us. He is an indomitable spirit that, to the frustration of Darkseid’s minions, proves indestructible. He dares to have an imagination.

He dreams beyond Darkseid, an act that on Apokolips is unthinkable and perilous. The freedom that he shows Scott Free is in reality an internal one. Scott’s physical escape is merely that final act of commitment to a choice he has already made.

The Source of Inspiration Many understand the New Gods books to be stories about war and to be Jack’s statement on the nature of war. Certainly, those elements are there. When the series was produced, the Vietnam War was still raging and much of the sentiment of the times filtered through Jack’s stories. His views on the futility of war can be found throughout the New Gods. Kirby, himself a veteran of World War II, had seen firsthand the worst in human nature. Apokolips, without question, is the logical extension of the Nazi Death Camp, encompassing an entire planet. Kirby was also well aware that Scott Free’s infraction of military guidelines for aero-troopers in growing his hair long would resonate within the culture of American youth who were in opposition to government and war. These examples notwithstanding, Jack’s vision was much broader and the evils he was attempting to uncover were more subtle; indeed, more personal.

Kirby saw the fires that feed an Apokolips or an Auschwitz burning in the normal situations of everyday life. He saw destroyers like Darkseid, seeking an equivalent of the Anti-life Equation, operating at every level of our existence. These were the themes and convictions closest to Jack’s heart when he embarked on his Fourth World series. Said Jack, “I felt there was a time that a man has to tell a story in which he felt, not anybody else, in which he felt there was no bullsh*t. There was absolute truth.”

In “Himon” and the like, Jack had an opportunity to tell that truth. It is the conviction that Jack didn’t pull any punches with these tales that convinces me the inspiration

Parting Shot

Kirby’s final Mister Miracle page (from #18), still in pencil form. Other than some statues, and the flashback scenes in issue #9’s “Himon” story, this was Darkseid’s only actual appearance in Mister Miracle—on the last page of the final issue of the series.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #35 GREAT ESCAPES! MISTER MIRACLE pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER, MARSHALL ROGERS & MICHAEL CHABON interviews, comparing Kirby and Houdini’s backgrounds, analysis of “Himon”, 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel (WILL EISNER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, MIKE ROYER, & JOHNNY CARSON) & more!

KIRBY/MARSHALL ROGERS and KIRBY/STEVE RUDE covers!

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