Jack Kirby Collector #37 by TwoMorrows Publishing

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR THIRTY-SEVEN IN THE US

$995

NOW SHIPPING FROM TWOMORROWS! SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Number 10, Winter 2003 • Hype and hullabaloo from the publisher determined to bring new life to comics fandom • Edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington

First off, some disappointing news: COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine is moving to Top Shelf Productions. After five years and two Eisner Awards at TwoMorrows, “Ye Ed” JON COOKE got an offer he couldn’t refuse, so #25 (slated for April, and featuring Alan Moore’s ABC line) will be the last issue before the switch. Refunds to subscribers for issues beyond #25 have been mailed, so if you didn’t get yours, give our phone or e-mail box a jingle. And if you’re missing some CBA back issues, don’t worry; we’re still handling sales of all the TwoMorrows issues until they’re sold out, so now’s the time to stock up! (If you’ve been anxiously awaiting the previously announced SWAMPMEN book, sorry—it’s been shelved due to CBA’s switch.)

Whatta December!

First, an ice storm ripped through Raleigh, NC (TwoMorrows’ home base) and knocked out the electricity for 8 long, cold days! Then, just 36 hours after the lights came back on, wife Pam woke publisher John Morrow at 4am and put him on a plane bound for Miami, to take a surprise week-long Caribbean cruise to celebrate his 40th birthday! (Pam packed his bags while he was consumed with working on the COMIC BOOK ARTIST #23: new KIRBY COLLECTOR, so he didn’t MAGIC OF MIKE MIGNOLA! suspect a thing!) By the time they returned, the • NEW HELLBOY COVER by MIKE MIGNOLA! For those misguided individuals who still think we only holidays were here, and • Career-spanning MIGNOLA INTERVIEW! cover the “old school” artists of the Golden and Silver a trip to visit family • Possibly the most remarkable gallery of RARE AND EE ART ever published! Ages, take note. TwoMorrows production assistant (and (and show off 16MIGNOLA FOR FR TENDEDUNSEEN IN T NO all-around good guy) ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON is is ich month-old daughterERIAL, wh •or JILLyo THOMPSON u paid interviewed, from Sandman to r, be cri AT bs M So TEinDorder. editing our new book series spotlighting the top talent COPYLily) RIGH Scary Godmother! was u’re a print su cere r sin his is WHERE. If yo r website, you have• ou ANYwhy working in comics today! MODERN MASTERS: VOLNG know HARLAN ELLISON talks comics in a lengthy interview! DIyou now at ou one. NLOA it is W d th e loa DO lik wn ns do UME ONE showcases the work of ALAN DAVIS, the catio e to be argwon’t • JOSÉtoDELBO #37 we ch feeTJKC oducing publi rrent,speaks in our classic artist showcase, t pr es or ep od ke m ite e to bs th us we British superstar known for his stunning work on DETECs her owFeb. plus our regular features and more! shipping until pport all su from some ot NSENT, TIVE COMICS, X-MEN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, KILLRAVEN, thanks—your Sorry,do UT OUR CO(EditedL. ded it for free wnloa fans! u Kirby IA by IfJON B. COOKE • 116 pages) DONE WITHO ER 0% AT 10 M and of course, CAPTAIN BRITAIN! This first volumeIfofinstead yo D ely lut TE PYRIGH $9 US POSTPAID (Canada: $11, Elsewhere: it was abso the series explores his life and career with theple longest, G OF OUR CO ase know that $12 Surface, $16 Airmail). GAL POSTIN most in-depth interview Davis has ever given.an Indaddiit was an ILLE what you should do: here’s at you think. tion to pages and pages of rare and previouslythunpubwh e se at’s the case, d an E, purchase a GITAL ISSU lished artwork, Alan gives a tutorial on the artists that DI(March) Alter EgoIS #22 D TH T THING and and REA influenced him, plus his views on graphic storytelling. DO THE RIGH the print edition at our it, Alter Ego #23 (April) ep 1) Go ahead ke to gh e ou as en Also included are interviews with long-time collaborators Paul Neary and Mark Farmer. (Neary bsite, or purch If you enjoy it at your local r we 2)also m ou it fro n for free) or Comic Book Artist #24 (Feb) provides the Foreword, while Farmer contributes the Afterword.) The 128-page trade paperbackleg ships al download of les you to the Digital Editio ader. re id pa lar tit CBA #25 (April, final issue) gu in March for $17 POSTPAID IN THE US. And next up for Volume Two? GEORGE PÉREZ! (which en you as a re T SHARE

ion

TIDBITS lthough DRAW! is consistently our top-selling magazine, it’s also our most erratic at shipping ontime. While the magazine has fallen behind due to contributor and scheduling issues, MIKE MANLEY has vowed to get DRAW! out more regularly in 2003, and has a ton of material “in the can” for future issues, so look for solid quarterly or better shipping starting with #6 (above)! ow that ALT ER EGO is monthly, it’s our most regular mag, and ROY THOMAS hasn’t missed a deadline yet! (Of course, designer CHRIS DAY helps a little, too!) Be sure to check out #23 in April, showcasing the recent discovery of two NEVER-PUBLISHED Golden Age Wonder Woman yarns! RITE NOW! editor DANNY FINGEROTH shared with us this quote he received from STAN “THE MAN” LEE: “WRITE NOW! is a great mag… reading the interviews will turn all your subscribers into better writers. As if we ain't got enough competition now!“ If Stan likes it, we bet you will too! Pick up issue #4 (above) in April, featuring HOWIE CHAYKIN, WARREN ELLIS, and other top pros on both sides of the desk giving tips on writing for comics, animation, and science-fiction!

So just what is TwoMorrows going to do with that empty slot on its schedule once CBA is gone? Glad you asked! We’re hard at work on SUPER-SECRET PLANS for the launch of what we predict will be the NEW MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR! Look for the formal announcement next issue, but rest assured it’ll appeal to the same audience as CBA, and is destined to be THE ULTIMATE COMICS EXPERIENCE!

All characters TM & © their respective holders.

S’long CBA... ...Hello ?

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Coming Soon!

Lightning Strikes Again!

ve NO website e’d love to ha TER and DO op. WDRAW! #5 (Feb) YOUR COMPU . comic book sh OM FR IT TE RE Y, HE DELE DRAW! #6 (April) ST IT ANYW R MATERIAL ILLEGALL 3) Otherwise, dIENDS OR PO DING OU OA IT WITH FR r free downloa NL fo W s ine DO Modern Masters Vol. One (March) az EP ag m r to N’T KE issue of all ou e if you want te(April) cid 4) Finally, DO ple de m to Sons of Thunder co u e yo on r r fo fe downloading for free. We of , which should be sufficient ep ke to gh ou ite Kirby Collector #37 Thebs Jack (Feb) cations en e. r publi ing at our we enjoy ou#38 ial we produc you Collector rs. IfKirby heJack The (April) g for the mater purchase ot by payin ny pa m co r ou sorb these them, support Write Now! #3 (Feb) ets, and can ab dozens with deep pock th wi ion — at or op rp sh co p” Write nt #4 (April) e giaNow! a “mom and po night and on weeklly ra We’re not som lite — ny a small compa away day and e love losses. We’re ators, slaving all this work. W rely on g freelance cre of income for r, nt ne ou ow am op of hard-workin ONTACTS al sh m ic com a pretty mini ake Morrow, and your local don’t rob us of the small thors,KIRBY publisher, ends, to mJohn itors, auJACK e ed as r Ple ou s. t es bu , sin n’t be any y in bu COLLECTOR editor, and stasubscripwhat we do to for ensure there wo is publication m thtwomorrow@aol.com . Doing so will tions): ive ce income fro re we compensation load. amount of wneditor: to do Roy Thomas, ALTER EGO oducts like this future prroydann@ntinet.com wnloaded at ld only be do ations shou ic bl WRITE NOW! #2: THE NEW pu s Mike Manley, DRAW! editor: w ro TwoMor

Hot on the heels of the success of THE FAWCETT COMPANION, TwoMorrows presents BECK AND SCHAFFENBERGER: SONS OF THUNDER, a splitbiography book (with a Foreword by KEN BALD) on the careers and lives of two of comics’ greatest and most endearing artists, C.C. BECK and KURT SCHAFFENBERGER! Both men are known for their seminal work on FAWCETT COMICS, and this upclose and personal retrospective journey takes you from their childhood years to the Golden Age of comic books and beyond! Co-written by FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) editor P.C. HAMERLINCK and MARK VOGER, this book is chock-full of previously unpublished art by both artists, including pre-comic book work, art from CAPTAIN MARVEL, LOIS LANE, and more, plus hundreds of RARE PHOTOGRAPHS! If you’re a fan of either of these Golden and Silver Age greats, this is a book you can’t miss! The 160-page paperback ships in April, for $20 POSTPAID IN THE US.

Barnes & Noble, Here We Come! TwoMorrows has signed an exclusive deal with DIAMOND BOOK DISTRIBUTORS to get our trade paperbacks into major bookstore chains around the world! This extra exposure means we’ll have the opportunity to publish some groundbreaking tomes by authors who might’ve overlooked us with just Direct Market distribution. Next issue, you’ll see the type of material we’re talking about. STAY TUNED!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #36: THOR’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY!

ALTER EGO #21: IGER STUDIO AND THE JSA!

With pages of KIRBY’s UNINKED THOR PENCILS plus:

• DAVE STEVENS COVER and “SHEENA” section with art by FRANK BRUNNER and other “good girl” artists! • Inside the Golden Age Iger Shop with art by EISNER, FINE, CRANDALL, MESKIN, CARDY, EVANS, & others! • ROY THOMAS on the JSA & ALL-STAR SQUADRON, with art by GIL KANE, JACK KIRBY, ALEX TOTH, and JERRY ORDWAY! • MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, SCHAFFENBERGER, & more!

• KIRBY THOR COVERS inked by MIKE ROYER and TREVOR VON EEDEN! • Never-published 1969 KIRBY INTERVIEW! • Interview with JOE SINNOTT about his THOR work! • JOHN ROMITA JR. discusses his work on THOR! • NEW REGULAR COLUMN by MARK EVANIER! • Huge THOR ART GALLERY, “Tales of Asgard” explored, “FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE,” & more! (Edited by JOHN MORROW • 84 tabloid pages) Four-issue subscriptions: $36 Standard, $52 First Class (Canada: $60, Elsewhere: $64 Surface, $80 Airmail).

(Edited by ROY THOMAS • 108 pages) Twelve-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard, $96 First Class (Canada: $120, Elsewhere: $132 Surface, $180 Airmail). FOR SIX-ISSUE SUBS, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

“I HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS GUY!” TRADE PAPERBACK

DRAW! #5: THE HOW-TO MAG ON COMICS & CARTOONING!

Writer Blake Bell explores the lives of the partners and wives of the top names in comics, as they share memories, anecdotes, personal photos, momentos, and never-before-seen art by the top creators in comics!

• Interview and sketchbook by MIKE WIERINGO! • BRIAN BENDIS AND MIKE OEMING show how they create the series POWERS! • BRET BLEVINS shows how to draw great hands! • The illusion of depth in design, by PAUL RIVOCHE! • Must-have art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY! • Plus reviews of the best art supplies, links and more!

rrows.comMAG FOR WRITERS OF ww.twomo w COMICS, ANIMATION, & SCI-FI P.C. Hamerlinck, FCA editor: mike@actionplanet.com fca2001@yahoo.com Danny Fingeroth, WRITE NOW! editor: WriteNowDF@aol.com Jon B. Cooke, COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor: jonbcooke@aol.com And the TWOMORROWS WEBSITE (where you can read excerpts from our back issues, and order from our secure online store) is at: www.twomorrows.com

READ EXCERPTS & ORDER AT: www.twomorrows.com

Get practical advice and tips on writing from top pros on both sides of the desk, including: • ERIK LARSEN on writing/drawing Savage Dragon! • STAN BERKOWITZ on scripting the Justice League show! • STEVEN GRANT offers 10 rules for comics writers! • TOM DeFALCO shows the nuts & bolts of plotting! • PLUS: LEE NORDLING, TODD ALCOTT, and more! (Edited by DANNY FINGEROTH • 96 pages) Four-issue subscriptions: $20 Standard, $32 First Class (Canada: $40, Elsewhere: $44 Surface, $60 Airmail).

• ALAN MOORE • WILL EISNER • STAN LEE • GENE COLAN • JOE KUBERT • JOHN ROMITA • HARVEY KURTZMAN • DAVE SIM • HOWARD CRUSE • DAN DeCARLO • DAVE COOPER and many more! (208-Page Trade Paperback) $24 US (Canada: $26, Elsewhere: $27 Surface, $31 Airmail).

(Edited by MIKE MANLEY • 88 pages w/color section) Four-issue subscriptions: $20 Standard, $32 First Class (Canada: $40, Elsewhere: $44 Surface, $60 Airmail).

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(right) Big John Buscema did a fine job on How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way, but even as a kid, I knew Jack was the one who should’ve been doing that book. So, here’s the cover the way it should’ve been!

C O P Y R I G H T S : 2001 Characters, Alicia, Arnim Zola, Balder, Betty Ross, Black Bolt, Black Panther, Bruce Banner, Bucky, Capt. America, Crystal, Devil Dinosaur, Don Blake, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Dragon Man, Ego, Fantastic Four, Howard the Duck, Hulk, Human Torch, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Ka-Zar, Loki, Machine Man, Magneto, Mechano, Medusa, Mole Man, Moonboy, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. Little, Odin, Power Man, Professor X, Quicksilver, Recorder, Red Skull, Red Wolf, Rick Jones, Scarlet Witch, Sgt. Fury, Sif, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Stranger, Super-Skrull, Thing, Thor, Tigra, Toad, X-Men, Yellow Claw TM ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Big Barda, Blue Beetle, Darkseid, Demon, Desaad, Forever People, Guardian, In The Days of the Mob, Jimmy Olsen, K a m a n d i , L i g h t r a y, Mantis, Martian Manhunter, Metron, Mr. Miracle, Newsboy Legion, Oberon, Orion, Sandman, Sandy, Scott Free, Slig, Sonny Sumo, Superman TM & ©2003 DC Comics. • Bombast, Capt. Glory, Darius Drumm, Gladiators, Gods characters, Jacob and the Angel, Jericho, King Masters, Silver Star, Street Code TM & ©2003 Jack Kirby Estate. • Boys' Ranch, Justice Traps The Guilty, Strange World Of Your Dreams, Stuntman TM & ©2003 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby. • Destroyer Duck TM & ©2003 Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby. • Young Gods TM & ©2003 Barry WindsorSmith. • Black Hole TM & ©2003 Walt Disney Prods., Inc. • Conan TM & ©2003 Robert E. Howard Estate. • Spirit TM & ©2003 Will Eisner. • Prince Valiant TM & ©2003 King Features Syndicate.

IT’S ISSUE #37 OF...

...THE NEW JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR!

Contents OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (the Editor tells how he does it)

INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 (Kirby tells us how he did it)

COMPARISON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 (does Jack’s writing stack up to Stan’s?)

UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 (gods, gods, and more gods; but where are they?)

KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 (Adam McGovern tells how others do it)

COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . . . . .78 (letters on #36; we’ll do #35 next time!)

GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (tracing the evolution of Jack’s style)

NEW COLUMN! KIRBY OBSCURA . . . .56 (Barry Forshaw tracks down obscure Kirby work)

PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (a great big snake, Kirby-style!)

THINKIN’ ’BOUT INKIN’ . . . . . . . . . . . .24 (Mike Royer tells us how it’s done)

TECHNIQUE SECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 (analyses of Jack’s tricks of the trade)

JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 (Mark Evanier tells us how Jack did it)

INFLUENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 (from Foster to Kirby to Windsor-Smith)

Front & back cover inks/colors: JACK KIRBY 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.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 10, No. 37, Winter 2003. Published quarterly by & ©2003 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 ©2003 Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2003 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Opening Shot

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

ver since our first few issues back in 1994-95, but even more and more recently, we’ve been getting mail from readers asking us questions, questions, questions about how we go about putting an issue of TJKC together, and how many of Jack’s pencil photocopies exist (and from what issues). They want to know

what’s involved in scanning the Kirby pencil art we show, and why some images look so much better than others (why some, in fact, look almost like actual pencil drawings, while others barely have discernable detail in them). Frankly, I’ve always felt I should stay as far out of the limelight in this magazine as possible, and just let Jack’s work—and his other fans—do most of the talking; but since this is the first of two (count ’em, two!) issues that’ll deal with Jack’s art from a technical standpoint, I figured it was about time I clued readers in to the ins and outs of my job as editor and designer of the Kirby Collector. If this technical hoo-hah doesn’t float your boat,

Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Pencils? don’t worry; there’ll be plenty of never-seen Kirby art in both this issue and next, so if nothing else, sit back and feast your eyes on some amazing penciling! One of the areas of TJKC that hasn’t always been fun is getting ahold of Kirby art to run in this magazine. Just where do we get all our art, you ask? From a number of sources, which have changed a lot since we first began this ’zine back in 1994. For our first issue, I pretty much depleted my personal supply of interesting Kirby art, but word of mouth spread quickly, and fans all over started sending us photocopies of Kirby work from their collections—convention sketches, unused pages, that sort of thing (and for those of you out there who assume I’ve got some massive collection of Kirby originals, sorry to burst your bubble; I own a whopping three pages, all acquired since starting TJKC). Over the last two or three years, that flood of art has slowed to barely a trickle, so I think we’ve pretty much depleted the supply of private collectors who have art to share (or at least those who are willing to send in copies). Most of our art these days isn’t from individuals, although if you’re out there reading this, and have something in your collection you’d like to share, please send it! We still need every piece of Kirby art we can get, to keep this magazine going indefinitely. Our other source of art, and probably the one that’s the biggest draw for Kirby fans, is the xeroxes we show of Jack’s pencils before they were inked. Longtime TJKC readers know that sometime around when Mike Royer started inking Jack’s work at DC Comics (say, New Gods #5 or so, in early 1971), Jack’s son Neal worked for a copier company, and got his dad a photocopy machine for their home. It’s not like today’s models; the technology used at that time was akin to thermal fax machines of a few years ago—flimsy gray paper, with images that were far from dark black. Like thermal faxes, these copies tended to fade over time, particularly when exposed to sunlight (although not 2

as quickly as the thermal faxes I used to use). Jack (or more likely, Roz) would photocopy his pencils before sending them to be inked, in case the pencils ever got lost and had to be recreated quickly. Years and years of these exist, from 1971-on; some with water or coffee stains or cigar burns on them, some faded over time, but still a remarkable visual record of a man’s creative output, unchanged by an inker’s hands. These copies have come to be known as the Kirby Archives, and the Kirby family has been kind enough to loan us a large batch of them (nearly 2000 pages), which we’re in the process of scanning and archiving in digital form, full-size, so these images will be around long after the actual paper copies fade to nothingness. Also in the Archives are a lot of “thermal fax” copies of 1960s Marvel Comics pages before they were inked. Most of these are from 1968-onward, after the time Marvel switched from “large art” to “small art,” making it feasible to copy them on a standard 11" x 17" photocopier (like the one Jack would get for his home). Several whole issues of Thor and Fantastic Four exist from this time period, plus scattered pages of Captain America and other strips, still in pencil form. When Jack moved from New York to California in 1968, the Marvel offices would copy the pencils after they were lettered (but before inking) and send them to Jack so he’d know what was going on with the dialogue in one issue before he started penciling the next. Other, more random pages exist from the earlier “large art” period, where actual photostats (shot on a large stat camera) were the only feasible way to copy the art. Again, these were shot and sent to Jack so he could keep up with issueto-issue continuity, but many of these are from the inked pages. However, there are a few (like the Thor #144 pencils we’ve shown in past issues) that are stats of the pencils, and the quality of these is far superior to the “thermal fax” copies. Readers last issue commented on why some of the Thor repros looked like actual pencil art; those are ones from stats as opposed to xeroxes. There’s even a handful of old copies made on tracing paper; I have no idea what technology they were using for that in the mid1960s, but those are crumbling to dust quickly. Now, what do we do to these pencils to make them reproduce optimally in the magazine? Glad you asked! Shown here is a “before and after” comparison, showing what a typical 1960s “thermal fax” copy looks like [left], and what it looks like after we scan it and clean it up with Adobe Photoshop software [above]. By beefing up the contrast so the image becomes clearer, we lose a bit of the delicate variations of Jack’s pencil work, but that’s the price you pay to make these faded copies viewable (and very little subtlety exists in these copies anyway). I think it’s a good tradeoff. Other tricks we use are to clean up borders by deleting stray tones outside the panels (and then in many cases going in and redrawing the panel borders), darkening up the margin notes more than the art (so they’ll be more readable), and adjusting individual panels differently on the same page (to compensate for

variances in the copies themselves). Just the scanning alone is an incredibly time-consuming task (count the number of scans in this issue, then figure out how long it takes to scan one image, and you’ll get a good idea what our production assistant Eric spends a lot of his time doing!). Then, the even more cumbersome task of cleaning up these scans comes in, and that doesn’t include keystroking text, working on layouts, doing interviews, etc. TJKC is a big job, and I really appreciate everyone’s patience when an issue doesn’t ship on-time. Believe me, nobody here at TwoMorrows is sitting around goofing off while you’re waiting for the new issue to ship. Before the Kirbys loaned us art from the Archives, we had to rely on second (and sometimes third or more) generation xeroxes made from the “thermal fax” copies. The quality of these is pretty poor, since the originals were so faded to begin with, although they worked okay for our early, photocopied issues of TJKC. More on where those came from—and just what exact pages exist in the Kirby Archives—next issue! ★

(this page, top) An example of a third- or fourth-generation xerox of page 3 of Fantastic Four #89, and (right) the original “thermal fax” copy. (left) Detail panels from page 11 of Thor #144, taken from a high quality stat of the pencils; if our printer didn’t run the black ink too heavy, these should look almost like actual pencil art! All characters TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Under The Covers

his issue’s front cover is Jack’s original, mid-1960s concept drawing of Captain Victory—at least, that was his name when Jack drew this piece. In the mid-1970s, Jack developed a sci-fi screenplay using that name (and later turned that into the Pacific Comics Captain Victory series, as detailed in TJKC #20), so when Topps Comics came knocking for Kirbyverse characters in the early 1990s, Jack dug this piece out, rechristened him Captain Glory, and loaned him out for a brief run reuniting some of the old Marvel Bullpen stalwarts on his creations. Inks appear to be by Frank Giacoia, after which Jack went back with Dr. Marten’s dyes to add the color. These florescent dyes may have lost their vibrancy over the years, but Jack’s unique sense of color comes through loud and clear. Back in issue #26 (and on the back covers of #22 and #23), we ran full-color plates of Jack’s New Gods concept drawings (shown at right), all done around this same time (mid- to late-1960s). We’ve got another slated for next issue’s cover, but two that still elude us are the one for Bombast (shown at far left in later inkedonly art, also used in the 1990s Topps Kirbyverse), and the African-American hero shown at left. If anyone out there knows the location of the either of these full-color pieces, please let us know! An interesting anomaly we’ve recently come across is the existence of some signed and numbered limited edition plates from the Gods portfolio (all four plates are shown below). Shown at left are details from #47 of a 50-copy, hand-signed limited edition of the Balduur plate, so we assume there were similar editions of the other three Gods plates. Anyone who’s seen others of these is encouraged to give us details, so we can keep the ongoing Kirby Checklist updated. The back cover of this issue is a watercolor piece that’s been languishing in the Kirbys’ art storage unit for years, and Mike Thibodeaux was kind enough to send us a copy when he came across it. Again, Jack uses color like no one else, and his sense of design in the vehicle this character is riding shows his love of elaborate gizmos. We suspect this was a piece he knocked out during some idle time in the mid-1970s; not his finest work by any means, but a fascinating curiosity nonetheless. ★

Gallery

The Evolution of Kirby’s Style Unfinished Abdul Jones strip (1937) (age 20) One of the few remaining examples of Jack’s pre-comic book pencils, while he still went by his given name, Jacob Kurtzberg.

WHERE DID KIRBY’S TRADEMARK SQUIGGLES, KRACKLE, AND KIRBYTECH COME FROM?

TO KNOW, WE NEED TO EXAMINE HOW HIS STYLE EVOLVED, FROM HIS EARLIEST WORK, TO HIS LAST. SO FOR THIS ISSUE’S GALLERY, WE PRESENT A KAVALCADE OF KIRBY FROM THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, IN AN ATTEMPT TO SHOW THE EVOLUTION OF HIS STYLE, STARTING WITH WORK FROM THE

1930S Two gladiator studies, circa early 1930s.

Blue Beetle newspaper strip (1/19/40) (age 23) Under a variety of pseudonyms and styles, Jack worked solo on numerous newspaper strips for a small syndicate. You can see the early development of his Golden Age style in the Blue Beetle.

Captain America Comics #4 (June 1941) (age 24) Now we’re cookin’! Though still a bit crude, his work with Joe Simon at this stage really starts to take off, and you can see he’s learning as he goes. The Simon & Kirby team leaves the competition in the dust, and makes Kirby a name to be reckoned with in comics.

Adventure Comics #75 (June 1942) (age 25) A jump to DC Comics leads to better pay, a more refined and slick style, and faster production. As war loomed, Jack stockpiled work and broke his previous speed records.

1940 8

1945 Interlude KO Komics #1 (Oct. 1945) This book was recently sold on eBay as having a Kirby cover. Does it? The signature “JCA” doesn’t seem to lend any clues.

Unused Stuntman page (1946) (age 29) Returning from World War II service, Joe and Jack’s reputation got them an unprecedented deal at Harvey Comics. This partially inked page shows the elaborate panel designs that characterized much of Jack’s work of this era, and his solid anatomical structure; stylized and exaggerated, but always believable. Post-war failures would be forgotten after the success of S&K’s million-selling romance comics in the later 1940s. 9

1950

(top) Unused Strange World Of Your Dreams cover (1952) and (bottom) King Masters newspaper sample (mid-1950s) (age mid-thirties) You can begin to see the foundation for the wider, rounder bodies and faces that would populate Jack’s later work. Jack was at an age when many of us start to notice a “middle-age spread” of our own. These stockier males are still lithe but with much more mass—and as always, Jack could pack more “punch” into a small panel than other artists could in a full-page pin-up. 10

Yellow Claw #3 (Feb. 1957) (age 40) The “big-headed alien” that would appear again and again in Jack’s later work surfaces, along with explosion debris that would evolve into Kirby Krackle. 11

Early ’60

Journey Into Mystery #62 (1960), and Strange Tales #84 and #86 (1961) and #96 (1962) (age 43-45) Short, throwaway monster stories keep food on the table, but the formula-style plots don’t leave much room for creativity, but Marvel Age success was waiting just around the corner.

Fantastic Four #10 (Jan. 1963) (age 46) The Fantastic Four’s debut just over a year earlier came at a time of economic uncertainty in Jack’s career, following the late 1950s slump in sales and the end of his syndicated Sky Masters newspaper strip. At this point, with no hope of work from DC (due to disagreements with editor Jack Schiff ), Jack pours everything he’s got into making the Marvel books succeed, turning out 1000+ pages a year. 13

Fantastic Four #36 (March 1965) (age 48) The simple, open inking style of Chic Stone faithfully followed the less detailed, slightly rushed pencils Kirby was turning out at breakneck speed, as he was called upon to help Marvel expand by working on as many as ten different books a month, doing everything from character creation and layouts to full stories.

Journey Into Mystery #101 (Feb. 1964) (age 47) Clear, simple storytelling, as Jack uses nice transitions and close-ups to add drama to this story.

Strange Tales #120 (May 1964) (age 47) The FF evolve, and we see vestiges of the elaborate Kirbytech machinery to come.

MID ’60

Thor #134 (Nov. 1966) (age 49) Even Vince Colletta’s soft inks can’t dampen the intensity of Jack’s work.

Fantastic Four #46 (Jan. 1966) and #49 (April 1966) (age 49) Joe Sinnott’s slick, detailed linework lets the Fantastic Four finally mature, ushering in Kirby’s Cosmic Age. By year’s end, Jack would have cut the number of books he worked on in half, and began putting more detail in his pencils. Kirby’s trademark “squiggles” start popping up everywhere.

LATE ’60

Fantastic Four #75 (June 1968) (age 51) With his workload down to three books a month (Captain America, Fantastic Four, and Thor), Jack’s pencils take on a mass and power never-before-seen in comics.

Fantastic Four #89 (Aug. 1969) (age 52) A move to California, and growing discontent with his situation at Marvel leads to virtually no new creations, but lots of solid work by an artist at the peak of his talents. Sinnott’s inks get even slicker, to the point where every panel of FF is a virtual pop-art masterpiece, with both penciler and inker playing off each other’s strengths to maximum effect. 17

1971-75

Unpublished page from In The Days Of The Mob #2 (1971) (age 54) The move to DC Comics brings inker Mike Royer on board, who does the most faithful inking Kirby’s ever had. Without Sinnott’s stylization or Colletta’s softening, we see as close to “pure” Kirby as possible.

Kamandi #1 (Oct. 1972) and #39 (March 1976), unused New Gods #1 cover (1971), Sandman #5 cover (Oct. 1975) (age mid-to-late fifties) A flurry of imagination springs forth as Kirby is unleashed to do what he does best: come up with ideas no one’s ever thought of before in comics. Royer and, to a lesser extent D. Bruce Berry, provide inks that let Kirby shine through, but with the loss of the Fourth World and the advent of less personal projects at DC, Jack’s style gets cartoonier as the 1970s progress. 19

Late ’70

Marvel Chillers #7 cover (Oct. 1976) (age 59) A long string of covers for Marvel shows Jack working from supplied layouts for the first time since the early Simon & Kirby days. His return to Marvel begins with a bang as he takes over Captain America, but refuses to work on his other old strips, instead concentrating on new creations.

Devil Dinosaur #3 cover (June 1978) and (inset) unused Machine Man cover (1978) (age 61) Kirby’s nearly 40-year string of monthly comics work comes to a close with final offerings at Marvel that don’t seem to appeal to comics’ older audience of the late 1970s. He heads to the more lucrative field of animation, garnering the accolades and benefits he couldn’t find in mainstream comics. 21

1980

Unused Destroyer Duck page (1982) (age 65) After several years in the animation industry doing fairly loose work on storyboards, Jack returned to comics and helped inaugurate the direct market with Captain Victory. While his time away from comics may have subdued his skills, there’s still solid work with a nice sense of design and detail.

Unused Silver Star cover (1983), page from DC Comics Presents #84 (1985), Big Barda Who’s Who page (1985), and Super Powers detail (1985). (age 66-68) After one last hurrah on Hunger Dogs, Jack’s final comics work clearly shows signs of a struggling giant. By 1985, lack of interest and health and eyesight problems lead to figure distortions and perhaps the weakest work since his start in the 1930s. Still, that old sense of Kirby dynamism is evident; impressive for a man about to turn 70. ★ 23

Thinkin’ ’bout inkin’

Fastest Inker In The

Interviewed by Jim Amash (below) Jack Kirby with Mike (looking very “Austin Powers” shagadelic, baby!) at the 1975 San Diego Comicon.

(far right, top) Mike, at home on the range during one of his many trail rides.

(center) Mike was kind enough to supply us with this list of the inking supplies he uses, both while he was regularly inking Jack, and now.

(above) Mike with mentor Russ Manning in the early 1970s.

(Editor’s Note: I’d always planned to have interviews with both Mike Royer and Joe Sinnott in this issue, and I figured, who better to interview an inker than a fellow inker? After my pal Jim Amash agreed to take time out from his work for Archie Comics to get Mike and Joe on the record, I set out to compile a stack of key Kirby pages inked by each, to use as fodder for discussion. But the stack grew ever larger as I got into it, and both gents sent back additional art of their own to include. So rather than truncate what I think is the most indepth discussion ever conducted with Jack’s premier inkers, I’m holding Joe’s interview till next issue, and giving Mike the full treatment in this one.) MIKE ROYER: When I was a youngster, a couple of things happened. I became fascinated with the artwork and storyline of V.T. Hamlin’s Alley Oop comic strip, which I discovered in some old newspapers at the bottom of my grandmother’s trunk in the attic while looking for letters with old stamps on them. There was a pile of old Sunday sections there. I got ahold of an Alex Raymond Flash Gordon reprint comic book at the local market, and immediately fell in love with Raymond’s work. I began cutting out the new Alley Oop strips from newspapers and taped them together. Then I built a cardboard box and got a crank handle so I could run the strips through the box like a movie screen. Around this time, I found some Big Little Books my mother had stored in the attic. All these things inspired me to do comics. I did amateur comic books in high school. My mother had an artistic bent and encouraged me to do all this. But I didn’t learn quite as much as I should have because my mother was always telling me how good I was. When you constantly hear that kind of praise from one source, you develop an attitude that you don’t have that much left to learn. This isn’t meant as a criticism of my mother because she said what she believed. Artists go through this sort of thing a lot when they are young, I suppose. But there comes a point when you realize you don’t know very much. Another cartoonist and I did a strip for the local newspaper, which we didn’t get paid for, but it was a lot of fun. I was on the high school newspaper and did cartoons there and contributed drawings to the school yearbook, too. After high school, I decided I wanted to do comic strips, not comic books. However, in the late 1950s, it wasn’t the best time to try doing adventure strips, as the newspapers had started turning away from that genre. I got married at twenty and had three children by the time I was twenty-three, so I did all kinds of jobs. In 1964, I decided I couldn’t just go on doing “jobs.” I still wanted to do comic strips, but amended that goal to just wanting to do comics. I fell into the age of Marvel Comics and was enthralled by what was happening: the way Jack Kirby drew and the way Stan Lee told the stories. Since newspapers weren’t interested in the kinds of things I wanted to do, I started leaning towards doing comic books. I still have the rejection letters from Marvel Comics (and other publishers) from the early 1960s. I got into Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom at this time and was getting all the fanzines, eventually drawing a few things for them. I discovered that Russ Manning was a Burroughs fan and I assumed that he would be going to the World’s Science Fiction Convention at Oakland in 1964. Another fan and I produced a comic book based on The Wizard Of Venus, which was one of the last of the

“Carson Napier of Venus” books. We took this fanzine to the convention, but Russ Manning wasn’t there. Camille Cazedessus, Jr., publisher of ERB-dom was there and took a copy of our comic book to him. A few months later, I prepared samples, with the encouragement of Kaz, to send to Russ Manning. I wrote a cover letter, saying that if he ever needed an assistant, that I would like to have the job. Russ wrote back, saying, “If you were here, I see no reason why you couldn’t assist me.” So, I packed up my family, moved to Southern California and bless his heart, Russ gave me some work. Russ put me to work on “Aliens,” which was the four page back-up story that appeared in Magnus, Robot Fighter #12. The pages were sixty percent tightly penciled and sixty percent inked, and my job was to finish the pencils and to match the inking that was already there. I had an advantage because I was a self-taught inker, so I was able to do what Russ wanted me to do. I started working with Russ in 1965 and worked with him until 1979. Of course, during that period, is the ten years of almost constant work with Jack Kirby. I did other work during those early days with Russ. I was working weekdays in a paint store because Russ couldn’t give me full-time work. In the late 1960s, Western Publishing, for whom Russ was doing Magnus, asked Russ to take over the Tarzan comic book. He told them the only way he could do that is to have me assist him, but that it wouldn’t be enough work to afford me a full-time income. Russ informed Western that they would need to give me other work, so that I could help him and also have enough other work to live on. Western did that, so now I was into doing comic books on a full-time basis. This is how I became known in the comic book community in California. In the mid-1960s, I also did some work for an animation company named Grantway-Lawrence. I met Mike Arens there and while I owe Russ the thanks for getting me started in the comic book business, it was Mike who taught me the most. Mike also pushed me into lettering because he knew the importance of an artist being able to handle all facets of the trade, so I’d never have to turn a job down. He said, “Lettering is just like drawing. All those letters in the alphabet are just like objects you draw. You pencil them, and you ink them.” Mike really mentored me and I ended up working for him, too. Richard “Sparky” Moore worked there and he gave me this great piece of advice: “You get your first job on your ability and you get your other jobs on your dependability.” On a fateful day, when my wife and kids were swimming and I was walking from my studio at the rear of my garage, the telephone rang in the kitchen. I ran in, picked it up, and heard a gruff voice say, “Hello, Mike Royer. This is Jack Kirby. Alex Toth says you’re a pretty good inker.” That’s how my association with Jack started. THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: I know the story about how you

West: Mike Royer went over to Jack’s house and inked that great drawing of Jack sitting at his drawing board, with the Marvel Comics characters all around him. And I know you inked a few things for him when he was doing work for Marvelmania. Did Jack try to get you as his inker on any of the Marvel comics? MIKE: I don’t know. All I remember is that Jack said he had me in mind for something and then he left for New York. A few days later, I got a call from Maggie Thompson saying, “What’s this I hear that Jack Kirby’s left Marvel and gone to DC?” I told her I didn’t know anything about it. That same evening, I got a phone call from Jack and he said he’d had it in his mind that I was to letter and ink all his DC books, but they wanted to control those aspects of the books in New York. You know, it’s funny, because I used to see the rare page of Jack’s pencils that were printed in fanzines, and wonder, “Why isn’t anyone inking what Jack’s penciled?” Maybe that thought occurred to me because I worked with Russ Manning and everything had to look like Russ’ work. When I penciled and inked Tarzan filler stories at Western, it had to look like Russ Manning, or at least be pretty close. When I inked Doug Wildey at GrantwayLawrence, I wanted it to look like Doug had inked it. Mike Arens wanted me to ink his work as though he had inked it. I had to match other people’s work at GrantwayLawrence. This was the mindset that I had. When it came to work, I guess I was a chameleon. I didn’t develop a natural style of my own, though I have a bent towards the Alex Raymond/ Russ Manning school of illustration. TJKC: Tell me about the work you did for Jack at Marvelmania. MIKE: I don’t remember what all I did for Jack there. I do remember doing a few pin-ups and some letterheads with the Marvel characters. I remember that Jim Steranko came out here and stayed with me for a couple of weeks in 1970. Jim penciled a bunch of Marvelmania pin-ups that I inked. Jim let me keep the originals since I put him up for a couple of weeks, which I later sold to acquire my first 16 millimeter movie. TJKC: I take it that you inked them in the Steranko style. MIKE: Yep. TJKC: What was the first Kirby book you inked at DC? MIKE: New Gods #5. What amazed me about it was early in the story, Orion was trapped by a giant clam. On one page, it was his right leg that was trapped in the clam’s mouth and on the next page, it was his left leg. But it didn’t matter because Jack’s pencils were so damn powerful that they defied reality. You truly had a suspension of disbelief when reading Jack Kirby’s work. TJKC: Which is something that only a few comic artists ever really achieve. Of course, Jack Kirby’s work was very different than Russ Manning’s.

MIKE: Ohhhh, yeah! However, let me state here for print that they were both master designers. They both learned from the same people: Hal Foster and Alex Raymond. Jack and Russ both designed beautiful pages but were polar opposites. TJKC: Since that’s the case, and since Jack’s work was quite different from what you were used to working on, were you forced to look at a paneled page of Jack’s as a total design element? MIKE: Yes. It was not hard to ink Manning in a Raymond-like illustrative style, and then ink Kirby, who was expressionistic. When it came to inking, it was my job to finish the penciler’s statement. I’ve been accused by some fans of just tracing Jack’s pencils, and sometimes, I thought that’s what I did. But now, when I compare Jack’s penciled work to our finished pages, I realize that wasn’t what I did. I brought something to those pages, but I don’t know if it was me or if it was my conceit that I was trying to finish the page the way Jack would have. TJKC: I understand, but as you know, Jack didn’t always ink his work quite the same way that he penciled it. MIKE: I wasn’t exposed to that then, so it didn’t mess up my illogical logic. (laughs) TJKC: I did the gray tones on a couple of Jack’s paperbacks when DC reprinted New Gods and Mister Miracle. I developed an even a greater appreciation of Jack’s design work and how he put things together, than I’d had before. For instance, Jack would use three different light sources on the same figure, even when there was only one possible light source. Jack was thinking about design more than he was reality. MIKE: Comics are not real life. It’s a mistake for people to approach them as if they are. As Russ Manning used to say, “When you’re drawing comics, you’re drawing something that can’t be done on film.” Of course today, there isn’t anything that can’t be done on film, except for telling stories. (laughs) TJKC: I agree. And you can’t take a naturalistic approach to Jack’s work. You had to think of it as pure design. MIKE: I think you’re right. I might have been thinking that way at the time, but it was probably a subconscious thought process on my behalf. I just looked at the drawings and my first feelings were about being swept away by the power. My second thought was, “I’d better not blow this,” knowing full well that I had to do three pages a day to keep up with him. I had to letter a book in two days and then ink three pages a day. TJKC: Correct me if I’m wrong, but you got a whole book at a time, right? MIKE: Yes. I’d open the package up and breathe in the smell of the Roi-Tan cigars that Jack smoked while he drew these pages. That powerful pencil work, with the carbon smeared all over the pages and the smell of those cigars... it was intoxicating! Then, it was slightly intimidating, because I was thinking that I had all this powerful 25

MIKE: That’s probably because those creators were influenced by the adventure newspaper strips. I don’t recall Milton Caniff ever doing much with sound effects. work and I’d better not screw it up. If you were to ask me who my favorite inker was, in most cases, I’d probably say Joe Sinnott. However, I think the best inker for what Jack Kirby wanted, was me. Now, I loved Frank Giacoia’s inks and even those early Fantastic Fours with George Roussos’ inks. But what Jack wanted at the time I went to work for him, was what I gave him. That’s why I saved the best for him. I guess this sounds egotistical. TJKC: No, it doesn’t. You knew what had to be done and you guided your natural sensibilities in that direction. MIKE: The only originals I ever had were a couple of books that Jack gave me, because he retained everything. Since I knew they had some market value, I sold them off so I could get sixteen millimeter movies, being an avid movie buff. I didn’t collect my work, even though it was Kirby pencils. If they were Joe Sinnott or Giacoia or even Chic Stone pages, I’d have probably kept them. I remember at the wake, after Jack was laid to rest, we were looking at Jack’s work in his flat files in his house. I’m looking at this work that I had done, twenty or more years ago, and said, “God! I’d love to have them.” I was looking at a Black Panther double-page spread and said how much I wished I could own it. You see, enough time had passed that it didn’t seem like my work anymore. TJKC: I was with you when you said that and remember how you felt. Now, when you got a story, you sat down and read it first. MIKE: Yes. In the first few issues, Jack indicated in the margins what sound effects he wanted. In fact, one of the first disagreements we had... and it was never verbalized, but the evidence bears it out, was that he was not happy with how I placed the sound effects, which we called “bangs” in those days. After the first three or four issues, Jack started indicating the sound effects on the penciled pages. My feeling, as a designer, was to put them where I felt they should be, but it wasn’t exactly where he wanted them. That’s why he started putting them in, and he never said a word to me. I don’t think I was doing it “wrong,” but they weren’t quite where he wanted them to be. TJKC: Do you think Jack’s placement of the sound effects was influenced by Marvel letterer Artie Simek? MIKE: I’ve never, ever thought about this, but at this moment, I’d agree with you. Thinking back, and knowing how Jack worked back then, you may be right. And now that he was in total control of the books and I was doing his lettering, he probably thought, “Why should I leave this up to Mike? I’ll put them where I want them.” TJKC: Before the Marvel Age, there really wasn’t much done with sound effects. 26

TJKC: He didn’t. Roy Crane was really the first one to do much with them, and even then, he didn’t go crazy with them. Now you have the 1960s, and Jack’s work was even more dynamic than before, so they did the lettering to match up to the power of Jack’s drawings. MIKE: Those Marvel letterers did all kinds of wonderful things. It wasn’t just the snappiness of Stan Lee’s dialogue, but the shapes of the word balloons by the letterers. I wouldn’t say that I always agreed with their choice of balloons, but it was an attitude in all their magazines that was so effective. When I lettered at Western Publishing, I was sometimes influenced by what they did. I didn’t do

real “burst” balloons, but did a kind of “burst” balloon that Russ and I had worked out. I always looked at what other letterers did. In a script for a film, when there’s a pause in the dialogue, there’s usually a (beat). That means the speaker pauses. In comic books, it’s three dots. But it never looked right to me to have the three dots on the bottom of the invisible line that holds the characters. At some point, in the ’70s, I started paying attention to Ken Ernst’s lettering in the Mary Worth newspaper strip. He would use the three dots, but put them in the center of the line. I still do that, though I don’t know if anyone else does it. From a design sense, it makes more sense to me. You put dashes in the center of the line, don’t you? I always ruled pencil guidelines before I lettered to insure my lettering consistently came out the right size. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed this, because it’s subtle, but I did something that makes for a better design and easier reading. The normal way would be to rule seven or ten lines down from the top of the panel border and then letter. I found it took a little extra time, but if there was a character talking in three different, contained balloons and a fourth balloon is coming from someone speaking off-panel, I made sure that none of those lines of dialogue are on the same plane, in any of the balloons when possible.

Look at page fourteen of Mister Miracle #6, third panel, for an example of this. If you measure it with a ruler, you’ll see what I’m talking about. If you’ll look at a page with a lot of dialogue, and squint your eyes, you’ll see that it’s just not a mass of uniform dialogue that goes across the page. They bounce and bump into each other. It’s makes for an easier read, in my opinion. TJKC: I always thought your lettering really fit Jack’s work. There was something about it that made it look like Jack himself had lettered it. Your lettering style fit the design of the page in every way, from the balloon and text placement to the balloon shapes, to the very way you lettered the alphabet.

up the paper and the lines would bleed. I had to find something else that would work. Now, I’m not knocking Jack for using that paper. It was probably the best paper in the world for his penciling, but by the time he’d finished penciling a page and the heel of his hand had gone over it, it was like toilet paper. I used to take a iron and press the pages out in order to make the paper surface a little denser. The first lettering point I found that worked on Jack’s pages was the old Speedball FB-6. The sound effects were done with the B series Speedball points. The B-5s and B-51⁄2s were good. If I’d had the time, I’d have used things I learned from Russ Manning, like when he did the corners of balloons. He’d make those corners a little squarer than I did. There’s all kinds of things I’d have done, if I’d had the time. TJKC: One of the things that you did do, was on splash pages, where Jack would write a caption and then have a title for that chapter. I loved the typography you used and it was different from anybody else’s. Did you just make up that style of title lettering?

MIKE: I don’t really know what to say here, because my lettering was different from the way that Jack “greeked” the dialogue in. If I’d had the time, I would have lettered everything I ever did in the Frank Engli style. If you’ll look at the Black Hole strip Jack and I did, you’ll notice my lettering is different from my other work with Jack. That lettering style is how Engli did it in everything that Milton Caniff did, from Terry And The Pirates to Steve Canyon. I fell in love with that lettering, not from Milton Caniff, but from Warren Tufts’ work on Casey Ruggles and other features. That was patterned after Frank Engli’s work, but it takes longer to do it that way. When I first started doing the lettering, I found that I couldn’t use the pen points that I really wanted to use. I normally used Esterbrook 314s, which were gold-plated pen points. Guys like Engli and Tufts used them, because as the pen points spread from usage, you could take a razor blade and shave the outside edges, restoring the point, which would give a beautiful thick and thin line. But the paper that Jack used was probably the cheapest paper ever made. It just literally drove me nuts. Those points would tear

MIKE: “Made it up,” is okay when you understand that there’s nothing “new.” I looked at all kinds of lettering and cut out pages with styles of lettering that I liked. On the splash page of Demon #10 [left], you’ll notice the skull in the “D” in the word Demon. There was a story that Tony DeZuniga did in DC Comics’ House of Mystery, and he put a skull head in the letter “D.” I said, “Oh, that’s cool! I’m going to use it.” I think the Filipino artists did their own lettering because they understood that lettering is just an extension of drawing. I had xeroxes of title pages from Italian reprints of Raymond’s Flash Gordon which were done in the 1960s. I couldn’t understand the language, but loved the lettering. There was a particular style that I used a lot, because there wasn’t always enough time to do the lettering in two days. Then, there’s the style I used the most of, which I made up from two or three typefaces that I saw the Filipino artists use. I made my own alphabet based on the lettering that they did, like the organic lettering with the drop shadows. On the Prisoner story, I didn’t even think about it. I knew I had to use a stenciled lettering style. I knew the numbers on prison uniforms had stenciled lettering. Sometimes, these things just came to me naturally. Other times, I’d sweat bullets trying to come up with something that didn’t look like the last seventeen books. There were several things that I picked up from Larry Mayer, who was a designer and editor for Western Publishing for many years. Larry, a “jack of all trades,” was more involved with coloring books, but he also did the display lettering and occasionally splash page layouts on the comics. He did something that I really liked,

(previous page, top) As Mike mentions in this interview, when lettering a panel with multiple balloons, he’d take the time to rule separate guidelines to make sure none of the balloons lined up with the other. We superimposed a horizontal guideline to this detail from Mister Miracle #6 (Jan. 1972). All characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

(above) Looks like this photo was take just as Mike finished inking the splash page from Demon #10 (July 1973), and had pinned it up to his drawing board to dry. Shown at left are Jack’s pencils and Mike’s final inks. Note how Royer changed Etrigan from speaking the dialogue to thinking it. All characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

which was the tall, vertical narrative box, though he didn’t do it all the time. Working on Jack’s stuff forced me to call upon all my influences and “teachers.” Jack usually laid out all the splash pages in the same way. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the old EC splash pages. That was also the way he did it when he worked with Joe Simon in the late 1940s and on into the 1950s. It was just ingrained on Jack. I don’t think I consciously thought, “I want to put my personal stamp on this page.” I thought from a design sense that it’d just look cooler if I didn’t do it the same way all the time. TJKC: That changing of the caption boxes from horizontal to vertical boxes certainly did add to the page design. MIKE: As the years went on, Jack began to print larger, which gave me the opportunity to make changes. I had two choices to make. I could letter the balloons where he put them and then have all this negative space to fill, or I could break up the

dialogue into multiple balloons to make it seem more conversational, as if real people were talking. Breaking up the dialogue into two balloons, and then slightly offsetting the second balloon, not only made it more conversational, but more natural and occupied the space where Jack wanted the lettering to be. That only left me a minimum amount of design space to fill with black or whatever backgrounds that Jack had indicated. You’ll see that the most in Hunger Dogs: my version, not the printed version. TJKC: Let’s go back to that Demon #10 page. You not only changed the number of word balloons, but you had him thinking those words instead of saying them aloud. MIKE: I used to do a lot of that. I couldn’t imagine 28

the Demon hiding behind the stage, amongst all those props, and speaking aloud. TJKC: You broke up the dialogue into multiple balloons. Will Eisner, mainly later in his career, didn’t like a lot of exposition in a panel. He preferred to have one person speaking and the next person would answer him in the next panel. This was partially done to dramatize the passage of time as well as to break up the text. To me, you were not only breaking up text and creating a design element harmonious to the page, but you were also adding an element of time to the verbal exposition. Was this a large part of your thinking?

those changes, without feeling like I’d overstepped my bounds. As an inker, I’m supposed to finish the penciler’s statement. As a letterer, I’m still finishing the statement without weakening or changing anything. I’m supposed to “plus” it and that, to me, was “plussing” it. In addition, Jack would always just write “inked by,” and I’d always add the lettering credit because I wanted that credit. TJKC: Did you change the sound effects when Jack started adding them? MIKE: No, because Jack was a superb designer. If Jack had any weaknesses, it was the way he laid dialogue in. Inside his head, Jack had written the story and

MIKE: That’s what I had in mind when I was trying to make the dialogue more conversational. We do have pauses between sentences. We do pause when thinking aloud. By

breaking the text up and making it a pleasing design element, I hoped to keep a big block of text from becoming boring. That’s why I think newspaper strip writers like Caniff began “socking” words. That’s the phrase we used to use for using bold words in text. The “sock” not only helps you “hear” what you are reading, but adds pattern, which is very important in lettering dialogue. Without it, it just becomes a block of “gray,” and nobody wants to read it. TJKC: Right. And look at how you took the last sentence that Jack wrote in that Demon splash. You not only emphasized the word “return” as Jack indicated, but you gave it a separate balloon, which emphasized the pause. You added to the moment. MIKE: I guess that’s just the frustrated actor in me. I had to be conscious of it or I’d have done it a different way. It was perfectly natural for me to make

then he’d write the dialogue. Every time I’ve ever penciled anything and I put in the lettering, I’d sometimes erase it two or three times until it fit the way I wanted it to. When Jack put it in, sometimes it came off a little clunky. I’m sure, with his years of experience at Marvel and other places, with people taking the next step in a job and completing it, that Jack expected me to do the same. I did that the best that I could in the time allowed to me. He never complained about any of my lettering. Of course, the one thing that I wouldn’t change, though I might have done so in the last days of our working at Marvel, is that when he put down three exclamation points at the end of a sentence, I put down three exclamation points. In the early days, when he’d “sock” words, I’d “sock” them exactly where he did. I think in the last year or two, I’d take it upon myself to change them. I read the dialogue and realized that if I said it aloud, that the “sock” didn’t mean what Jack wanted it to mean. You’ll look at page four of Jimmy Olsen #147

panel two [right], at the dialogue that Gabby’s saying. If I’d had my way, I don’t know if I’d have emphasized the words “Stand back.” I’d have emphasized the word “I.” That would have been more realistic; but this is all subjective. Al “Jazzbo” Collins said in 1949, and Wally Wood immortalized it in a story in Mad magazine, “Art is cool and cool is everything.” I’ve added, “And everything is subjective.” TJKC: Very appropriate. Now, let’s look at the splash page to Black Panther #4. [below] MIKE: That’s the kind of title lettering that I think I did too much of. TJKC: That’s the title lettering I really liked! I used to imitate that style when I did homemade comics as a teenager. MIKE: Well, I guess it’s okay then! It’s evident in some of the pages, when I could rearrange things and put the caption in a tall, vertical box, that I only did it when the negative space allowed me to. In a case like this, I couldn’t because the title would have interfered with the weapon the statue’s holding. I lettered in the title before inking the page and stopped at Jack’s pencil line. If I happened to go outside the pencil line when inking and had an ink line creep into the title, then I’d take a razor blade and cut out the stray line. If you’ve ever studied any of the inks I did over Jack, you’d realize that maybe one out of a million times, did I ever use white-out. I have never liked white-out and the only white-out I felt was worth a damn was Snow-Pake, but they don’t make it anymore. With Snow-Pake, you could take a Guilotte 290 pen point and ink over it, and the line wouldn’t spread out and be three times thicker than what you intended. Any other kind of white paint, and I especially mean the vegetable whites, will lay down like a light gray. It also makes a soft surface on the page, so the ink line you stroke will be thicker than you want. I just didn’t like working with white, period. If you hold one of my inked pages in your hands, you won’t see corrections. Well, maybe you’ll see a razor blade correction, but I didn’t have to make very many of those. I got the idea to use a razor blade for corrections from a book Gene Burns wrote, titled How To Do Comics, published around 1948. In those days, cartoonists used

three-ply Strathmore, and they’d take a razor blade and lightly cut around what they wanted to change and peel it off. Then you could burnish that area smooth and work right over what you had just pulled off. You can’t do that with today’s paper, and it was hard to do it when I was inking Jack, because the paper he used wasn’t as good or as thick as what the old cartoonists worked on. If you’ve ever seen Hal Foster originals with lettering corrections, you’ll see they just took the lettering off of the first ply, relettered on another ply and pasted it into the cut-out area. This way of working leaves you with a much cleaner original. TJKC: You gave me another reason for not using white-out when we were in Jack’s art room at the Kirby wake. Steve Rude made a comment about how clean your pages looked and asked why you didn’t use white-out. You said, “I read somewhere that Joe Kubert doesn’t use white-out and I figured if it was good enough for him, then it’s good enough for me.” MIKE: I don’t remember saying that, but I probably read that in an old fanzine... Alter Ego, if memory serves me right. But hey, until this interview, I’d forgotten that I had inked those Steranko pin-ups, too; but that might have been the reason why I shied away from white-out: Icon envy. One thing I remember about that night was Roz Kirby introducing me to some of her relatives as “Jack’s favorite inker.” That was special. I’d heard that privately from Jack, but in print he wouldn’t make a remark like that. Jack was such a gracious man, that he didn’t want to risk hurting the feelings of anyone who’d inked him. But it might have been an influence on Mike Thibodeaux and D. Bruce Berry, who were told to “ink like Mike.” TJKC: Let’s discuss the “Murder, Inc!” story, which was originally slated for In The Days Of The Mob #2. [see next page]

(previous page) Jack supplied Mike layouts, which he finished and inked for this story intended for Spirit World #2 (1971), but it didn’t see print until July 1972’s Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #6 in the altered form you see here. Based on Jack’s note at the bottom of the layouts, he mistakenly drew this at comic book size instead of magazine size. All characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

(above) Notice how Mike kept Jimmy Olsen’s face consistent with the DC look, but also kept it from standing out like the previous Murphy Anderson and Al Plastino heads had. All characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

MIKE: Why did they change my lettering? TJKC: That’s what I was going to ask you. MIKE: I have never understood why they changed my lettering, 29

(above) The published version of this 1971 story intended for In The Days Of The Mob #2 (finally published in Amazing World of DC Comics #1, July 1974) was almost completely relettered; you can see Mike’s original lettering at right. All characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

(next page) Someone in DC’s production department must’ve felt this Forever People #5 cover (Oct. 1971) would read better with the background omitted, and a halo around Sonny Sumo. We think the original was just fine the way it was. All characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

unless, for all those years, they really didn’t like my lettering. I think this is John Costanza’s lettering. What’s interesting is that on the fanzine publication of “Murder Inc!” [Amazing World of DC Comics #1], you’ll see the credit box for Jack and me. They pulled that from somewhere else and that’s the only lettering of mine that’s left from the story. If you’ll look at the original page, with my lettering, you’ll see that there’s no credit box. I have no idea why the relettering was done, unless they preferred the house lettering style on that story. As for these pages, Richard Kyle once explained to me his theory about how Jack Kirby worked. It’s fascinating, but I don’t believe he’s ever committed it to paper. Richard told me that Jack’s work was very Freudian. Just look at any page of Jack’s work and it’s full of crotches and phallic symbols. It’s a Freudian link to power. This was something that Jack did without thinking about it. I’ve tried doing this consciously with good results. With Jack, it came from his subconscious... the power was in him. Kyle said that about that whole issue of In Days In The Mob, and said it was the closest thing to pure Simon & Kirby that he’d ever seen, which I took as a compliment. TJKC: I agree, because Simon & Kirby were a great team. It’s a great compliment.

MIKE: I took it as such because as a kid, even though I didn’t pay much attention to who drew the comics that I read, a lot of them turned out to be Simon & Kirby books. Those images stuck in my subconscious, I guess. While we’re discussing lettering, let’s go look at the cover of Forever People #5. [next page] The lettering on the left side of the cover is mine. The blurb on the right of the page is not. I don’t know why they thought that cover was more powerful with all that solid black behind it. That’s not what Jack and I had done. Also, DC’s production staff did something that I’ve seen other inkers do, and I’ve never understood why. Here’s a solid black background, with characters in front of it, and they put a white halo around Sonny Sumo. Why the hell did they do that? Years ago, Mike Arens showed me that black running into black makes things more real and gives things more dimension. Russ Manning taught me that black in the foreground and in the

backgrounds, in the same panel, creates multi-planes. So you see two people talking with a black background and there’s a white halo around them. It’s not like having a person in a black costume with a solid black background. Then, you can put highlights on the inside of the figure, instead of putting a halo around the outside of the form. TJKC: Maybe they felt he wouldn’t stand out from the background figures if they didn’t? MIKE: But that’s the colorist’s job. As an inker, I always felt a page should stand alone... i.e. “read” (without color) in black-&-white, and I think this cover was just fine as it was. They didn’t need to change it, because the man who drew it knew what he was designing. There’s no way the reader can avoid looking at Sonny Sumo. Every phallic symbol on the page is pointing at his chest. Right in the center of the page is Sumo’s crotch. How could you not see Sonny Sumo first? The background shapes that Jack originally had were designed to force the reader’s eye towards Sonny. It’s a great design and should have been left alone. Readers aren’t idiots. If there’s five panels on a page, they know how to get from panel one to panel two, and so on. But you can really screw it up visually if you don’t understand the storytelling design work that you need to think about. So, as an example, a shoulder of one character touches the head of another from panel to panel, which gives the reader a visual clue as to where his eye goes next. It unconsciously guides you into the panel exactly where the artist wants you to enter into the scene. Not that you just know sequentially where to go next, but to go into that room through the door the artist wants you to open. That’s what I learned from Russ Manning and Jack Kirby and it’s on every page of Jack’s work. Subtle or overt, it’s there and you just go where Jack wants you to go. TJKC: Even to the extent that, when I gray-toned those Kirby books, I had no choice but to use a certain pattern because Jack’s design already led me there. His work was so powerful that nothing I did would change where Jack wanted to lead the reader. MIKE: There have been some absolutely brilliant draftsmen in comics, but some of them can’t tell a story for beans. It’s the visual techniques that an artist uses that manipulate the reader’s eye. That’s one thing I learned from Jack and I try to do it all the time in my work. TJKC: Let’s go back to Jimmy Olsen. You took over from Vince Colletta and Murphy Anderson. Did DC tell you what faces to change? How did that work? MIKE: I asked DC to send me the model sheets on Superman and Jimmy Olsen, so I could fix the faces. That way, the inking all came from the same hand and wouldn’t be a jarring juxtaposition. They sent me the model sheets, though from the beginning, I knew to fix the “S” on Superman’s chest. Now that I think about it, the hair on Jimmy Olsen did look a little like what Murphy Anderson had done. But the model sheets they sent me were done by Al Plastino, who had corrected the heads on the first couple of Jimmy Olsens. TJKC: I’m looking at some of the faces you changed and you didn’t stray that far from what Jack had penciled.

MIKE: You see, that’s what I wanted to do. They were making drastic changes, but what I did looks like their model sheets, without deviating from what Jack did. TJKC: As a reader, I found it disturbing to see those elegant Murphy Anderson faces on those Vinnie Colletta inked bodies. I’d stop reading and start checking out what changes were made, which disrupted the narrative flow of the story. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. With your work, I got into the flow of the story and didn’t pause to check out the art corrections. MIKE: That’s because all the inking was by the same hand. Jack endorsed the idea because his man was making all the changes and now it looked more like what he had intended. Personally, I don’t think it needed to be done. If it’s Jack Kirby’s Newsboy Legion, and Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen, then it’s Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen. But this could have had something to do with trademarks. TJKC: That’s what Carmine Infantino told me. MIKE: Then, I guessed right. In order to trademark those characters for foreign countries, they needed to have the same look. No matter who drew it, you had to know it was Jimmy Olsen and Superman... not Jack Kirby’s version nor even Murphy Anderson’s. It has to be DC’s official version. TJKC: That was Carmine’s reasoning. His analogy was that Disney wouldn’t change the look of Mickey Mouse, no matter who the artist was. It always has to look exactly the same. That was what was behind Carmine’s thinking, even though Jack was very upset about it. MIKE: I’m sure that was what was behind Jack’s comment to me when he said, “Don’t ever change the faces.” I’m sure that saying that Jack was upset is putting it very mildly. It was more of those nails that DC kept driving into Jack’s coffin. TJKC: I’m not sure DC really understood just what they had in Jack Kirby. MIKE: You could say that about most of the really interesting creators in comics. TJKC: I know better than to argue that with you. Now, in your early days of inking Jack at DC, I notice your holding lines around figures and objects were thinner than what you did later. I’m comparing your work on Jimmy Olsen to your later inks at Marvel. On that Olsen panel that we discussed earlier, look at how thin your lines are around Gabby. Compare that to, say, the Black Panther work, you’ll see how your holding lines had thickened. Was this because Jack was changing or was this your doing? MIKE: I’m not sure. It might have been me or it might have been a case of being more comfortable with what I did. But look back to that Forever People cover. That’s pretty gutsy inking. Sonny’s inked very gutsy and the lesser characters are as. It depends on what’s happening in the scene, what the page is all about. That panel with Jimmy Olsen, Gabby, and Tommy is a little different, but there’s enough negative space in Gabby’s face that the little black in his hair makes it obvious that he’s in the foreground. I don’t know if punching up those outlines would have helped. TJKC: If you look at the holding lines of the guns in front of Sonny Sumo, they are thinner than Sonny Sumo, which is the proper thing to do. MIKE: That’s right, because Sonny Sumo is what you’re supposed to see. I kept them thin because I didn’t want to change the emphasis that Jack had placed 31

on the main figure. A lot of times—and it may have been a result of having worked for Russ, doing mainly backgrounds and other bits and pieces when I first started assisting him—in inking Jack, I would begin with the backgrounds. If I did backgrounds first, it’s easier to give weight to the foreground figures. When you’re working on deadlines, you sometimes don’t have the luxury of going back and beefing up the inking on a main figure. My way of working enabled me to get it right the first time... hopefully.

If you look at the splash page to Silver Star #2 [above], you’ll see that I did not use a thick holding line on his helmet, which you might think is the obvious thing to do so the face would pop out. I didn’t need to because there’s so much other black on his face that it’s not necessary, because his face is what you’re supposed to focus on. The helmet’s only supposed to frame the face, not overpower it. To a certain extent, you’re not supposed to see 32

the guns on that Forever People cover at first. If this were film, the camera would open on Sonny Sumo’s face, and then pull back, so you could see the guns and the men holding them. When you have a static frame, you have to sublimate some things to keep the power of the storytelling intact.

TJKC: In the same regard, I think it’s also because Jack’s style changes a little. He begins simplifying and cartoons to a greater degree than before. It seems like that happened right about the time he went back to Marvel in the 1970s, or maybe a little with OMAC at DC just before switching companies.

TJKC: Agreed, but I still think your inking on Jack was a little different at Marvel than at DC.

MIKE: Maybe. If Jack had stayed exactly the same, he wouldn’t have been true to himself. Jack was always evolving in the way he told stories. The kinds of stories he was telling at Marvel during that period were different than they were during the 1960s. You can’t compare Devil Dinosaur to Fantastic Four. I don’t think that Jack, if he had been doing the Fantastic Four in the 1970s, would have done it the same way he had done in the 1960s. Jack was evolving and if he hadn’t evolved, I think it’d have

MIKE: Everybody tells me that. Tom Kraft, who I’m doing a lot of recreations for—as long as he has walls to fill—said that, too. In regards to one recreation, he said, “I’d like you to ink this a little slicker as you did when Jack went back to Marvel.” I’m saying, “O-kay.” I don’t see it most of the time, but you’re probably right. I’m looking at page eight of Silver Star #1 [next page], which was one of the last things I inked for Jack, and it doesn’t look any different to me than Forever People. It’s the subject matter... the forms are different, and maybe there are bolder outlines and thicker things. Look at page thirteen [detail, right], which is hands and heads and compare it to page twelve [detail, left]. I guess you could say that the inking is a little different, but look what’s in it.

been ultimately boring for him. TJKC: How conscious of this were you at the time? MIKE: Probably not at all. Oh, maybe consciously, if I had time to think about it. Sometimes you’ll hear this from me on the Jack Kirby Tribute Panels at San Diego, which I keep “crashing.” Mark Evanier’s brought up the point several times that “Lest we forget, Mike had to keep up with Jack. Joe Sinnott didn’t have to do three pages a day because he didn’t have to ink and letter everything that Jack penciled.” If people want to knock me for not being Sinnott or Giacoia, all I can say is that it’d have been interesting to see what they’d have done if they had to do three pages a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year. TJKC: Did the work Giacoia and Sinnott do over Jack at Marvel influence you in any way? I know Joe Sinnott thought so, because of how slick your inks were and how pristine your finished pages looked. MIKE: I think I was always in the slick school and was always influenced by the things that Joe did. Now, it may not be the things that Joe thinks of. What influenced me most was the way Joe inked the “Kirby dots” in outer space scenes. I think I know what Joe was doing and he can correct me if I’m wrong, but I looked at those and decided the only way to do those dots was with a Speedball point. Maybe he did it with a brush and actually had the luxury of time to do it, but I figured he was using a Speedball B-5 to do the “Kirby dots.” What’s interesting is that Sinnott had a great influence on Jack. Jack didn’t draw them that way in the beginning, but once Joe started inking them that way, Jack started drawing them that way. I don’t know if Joe ever used a triangle to do the bursts of speedlines, but I would say that two-thirds of the speedlines I did in those days, and still do, are done with a triangle and a Guilotte 1290 or 290. Sometimes, to assure that the thick part of the “burst” line is fully butted against the panel border, I would pull the pen into the gutter (space outside the panel) and then cut and peel off the excess with a razor blade. While we’re talking inking tools, I should mention that the brush I always used was a Winsor-Newton Series Seven #3.

Look back to that Forever People cover we keep discussing and you see the action lines above Beautiful Dreamer are done with a brush. They’re not perfectly straight. If I didn’t pick that idea up from Sinnott, then it’s what I developed so I could make it as perfect as what Sinnott did. He was so good that he probably could do it perfectly every time with a brush when he so desired. I need a pen. So, yes, Joe influenced me, but I was doing slick work before that. You can’t spend all that time with Russ Manning and Mike Arens and not be. I still think Joe’s one of the best. TJKC: And one the nicest, friendliest guys there is. MIKE: Yes! Isn’t it great when you meet one of your artistic icons and discover that? When I finally got to meet him, it was such a delight to find what a warm, wonderful human being he is.

TJKC: I agree, and anyone who doesn’t know that will discover it for themselves by the time all the Joe Sinnott interviews I’ve done are out. We had one last issue in the Jack Kirby Collector, and will in the next issue, too. But I’ve also done one covering Joe’s whole career for Alter Ego, which will probably appear sometime late next year. I must say here that you were one of my inking influences. I took to the idea that an inker was part of a team and that he shouldn’t just impose a style, but enhance the artwork. You and Joe Sinnott are my two biggest influences. 33

could make her a bit “prettier.” I was slimming down ankles and hips and Jack never noticed that because it didn’t weaken the power of his work. That face was just too obvious on the splash page. TJKC: I’d like to discuss how you inked outlines a little more. I wonder if you were using a more varied thick and thin outline because Jack’s work at DC was more lush than it was later, at Marvel. MIKE: You know, it just might have been a case of the kind of paper we were using. At DC, sometimes I just couldn’t do a decent stroke with the brush and I learned to take a well-used Speedball C-6, in one of those oldfashioned, long handled holders with the cork at the bottom, and pull a line with a C-6 that looked like a brush stroke when it was printed. TJKC: I’ve noticed that you were able to do that. Let’s look at pages seven and ten of Forever People #9. [page ten shown here] MIKE: I did a lot of the inking with a Guilotte 290 and 291 on page ten. For some reason, the ironing I did of the pages worked and was able to restore some of the solidity and denseness of the paper. The bolder lines were probably inked with a C-6. Then again, it’s funny because I can also remember that there’d be a panel inked completely with a pen and then the next panel would be entirely inked with a brush. As you well know, when the muse is with you and the humidity is with you, and the density of the paper and ink is with you, you can take a brush and ink stuff that you’d normally do with a pen point. When you’re sitting at your board and that’s happening, you revel in that moment! Then the phone rings, you clean out your brush and answer the call and by the time you get back to the page, you can’t do diddly with the brush! TJKC: Oh, man, don’t I know it! MIKE: So, I’m looking at this page and it appears to be predominately done with a pen. That might have been one of those instances, that in panel four, I probably used a 290 or the 1290 on that woman’s hair. Then there were times I could pull every one of those lines with a brush and when it was printed, you couldn’t tell the difference.

MIKE: But my thoughts about how to ink came from working with Russ Manning. The idea didn’t come from out of the blue. Mike Arens, Russ Manning... all those guys I’d inked before Kirby wanted my inks to look like theirs. If there’s any validity to what the penciler did, then it’s not my business to change it. It’s okay to “slick” the work up. There’s an awful lot of times I changed the eyes on Jack’s work because he didn’t always put them on the same level. He was going nine hundred miles an hour and he was the master expressionist. I suppose if I’d inked them lopsided, it’d have worked, but I preferred them on the same level. There’s the famous story of when Jack fixed the face of Big Barda on the splash page of Mister Miracle #5, which was my first Mister Miracle book. I didn’t notice it until recently, that the face on the splash was the only face he did fix. All the rest were the ones I had done. Basically, I wasn’t really trying to “change” him. Maybe it was my conceit at the time. I was studying artists like Leonard Starr, Bill Draut and European artists like Estaban Maroto, who were in the more classical style, and I thought I

TJKC: On the average, you started with the backgrounds.... MIKE: Yes. In addition to what I’ve already stated, it was also a way of warming up when I started inking for the day. If you screw up a drape, it’s better than screwing up a woman’s nose. TJKC: Most of the inkers I know start inking with a pen first and then switch to a brush. Did you do that or did you vary your approach from time to time? MIKE: I varied. If I were using a 290, and things were going well, I’d do everything with that pen. If pressing on it gave me a slick line, I’d keep on going. If it wasn’t going well, I’d switch off and use a brush. If that quit working, I’d switch off and go to the C-6 pen point and give it a brush stroke look. Sometimes, even today, when working on Steve Rude’s

pencils, I’ll start off with a brush and then go to the pen, or I’ll start off with a pen and then fill in the blacks with a brush. I joke about it all the time, but it’s really just how me and the muse are getting along. I’ve never had a real formula for working. In the beginning, I tried to work the way I had worked with Russ Manning, and if there was the luxury of extra time, I’d try to work with Jack the way I inked the Prisoner. I’d ink a panel on one page, and then ink a panel on another page, and hopefully by the end of the day, I’d have the equivalent of three pages done—which is the ideal way to work, because if you have a good day, then the work is spread all over, and if you have a bad day, then it was spread out, too. Hopefully, by the end of the book, it’d all look good, or at the very least, consistent. Sometimes, even when I had to do three pages a day, if I was working with a pen and the muse was with me, I’d work on all three pages with a pen, until it wasn’t working for me anymore, then finish up with brush... or whatever.

MIKE: I think it was about the same. There’s a period before that, when we were at DC and I took my family up to Mount Whitney for a vacation. We were up there for nine days and I stood at the top of the mountain, asking myself, “This is so peaceful and beautiful. Why am I going through that rat race every single day?” I came down from the mountain and asked Jack if I could only do some of the books. His response was, “It’s all or nothing.” That’s why you suddenly see D. Bruce Berry ink an OMAC story and I only lettered it [see credit box, below]. That must have been the transition period. I had inked the first two issues of Dingbats also. Now, Jack was not being mean, it’s just that Jack wanted it all done by one hand. So I didn’t work with him for at least three months. I don’t remember how I got back together

with him, but I don’t think I went crawling back to him saying, “Jack, I’m starving!” (laughs) I had immediately gotten a ton of work at Western Publishing, so I had income. I don’t know whether we just kept in contact or what, but I was back with Jack before long. Maybe Mark Evanier knows the exact details regarding this period. TJKC: Wasn’t D. Bruce Berry already assisting you? MIKE: Either right before or right after the Mount Whitney trip, I was doing some things for an advertising agency, doing an imitation of Mary Worth called “Media Madge.” This was a one-page comic strip to get people to advertise in a particular newspaper. To do those assignments, which paid much better than comic books, I had Bruce finishing pages and doing backgrounds. I even had Palle Jensen

TJKC: Joe Sinnott told me that he always saved the splash page for last. Since he felt that the splash was one of the most important pages of a comic, he waited until he was really warmed up before tackling it. Did you start inking with the first page? MIKE: Yes. I would bounce around from page to page, but I did them all in chronological order. If I was just starting up at the top of the page, I’d do page one, page two, page three. In the case of the Prisoner, which I mention since John Morrow’s printed a lot of it, I don’t think there’s any page I got to where something on it hasn’t been done. There’d be at least a panel or part of a panel already done before I was told to stop. The only thing I managed to finish was the lettering. There was some point when Jack returned to Marvel and didn’t have anything for me to ink. I don’t remember why that was, but John Verpoorten and others were doing the inking. When I came back on board, they weren’t ready for me for some reason, so they sent me a Conan story by Barry Windsor-Smith. I didn’t start with page one this time; I wanted to ink another page first to warm up on. I inked that whole page and then Jack called up and said, “I’ve got work for you. I’ve talked to Verpoorten (who was head of production at Marvel at that time), and he said to send the Conan job back.” Barry Windsor-Smith was understandably peeved because he wouldn’t have penciled so tightly if he was going to ink it himself. They gave it back to him to ink. For years, I’ve challenged people to find the page in “The Song of Red Sonja” that was inked by me. It’d be very hard for you to find it. If I didn’t remember what I did on that page, I wouldn’t be able to find it. TJKC: Did you have the same amount of time at Marvel to ink and letter that you had at DC? 35

letter a book for me. I felt like I was in a rut and wanted to do a variety of things. I remember one time when Shel Dorf brought to the house a whole contingent of the San Diego fan base. They used to go over to Jack and Roz’s place, but I don’t think we ever fed them as well as the Kirbys did. They spent the whole day talking to me as I sat at the board working and someone asked me, “Mike, do you always just want to letter and ink for Jack?” I said, “No,” and metaphorically speaking, I could hear Shel’s jaw hit the floor, because he was amazed that that wasn’t enough. Now, I’m not knocking Shel; from a Kirby fan’s standpoint, why would I want to do anything else? I said I didn’t want to do this forever. I wasn’t 100% sure what else I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do other things and stretch my wings and learn how to draw well, which I never had time to do. Once I started inking and found that I could make a living at it, I found myself typecast, always busy, with no time for “experimenting.” TJKC: We briefly talked about how Jack drew women. Some of them were very imposing like Big Barda, since Jack drew with a big, bold macho style, and some weren’t. Sometimes it seems like you used a little more delicate ink line when you inked the female characters.

(above and right) Details from Silver Star #1 and Black Panther #4. Note how Mike added “gray” to the boulders above, and the back of the Panther’s head below, with a series of ink lines that weren’t indicated on Kirby’s pencils. Silver Star TM & ©2003 Jack Kirby Estate. Black Panther, Mr. Little TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(next page) Royer’s recreation (done in 2000 for fan Tom Kraft) of the splash page to Thor #144. Vince Colletta inked the published version (Sept. 1967), but Mike worked from a tracing of Kirby’s original pencils we ran in TJKC #26. Thor, Balder, Sif TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MIKE: My first experience in changing was the Big Barda character in Mister Miracle, which we discussed. If you look at the other pages in that book, Barda was just as zoftig as Jack had drawn her. What I did depended on what the book was. I always slimmed down Barda’s hips and ankles, but I never did the job that Joe Sinnott did. The best looking women that Jack ever drew were because Joe embellished them. The more time I spent with Jack, the more I decided to ink “her” as he drew “her.” I wanted to make it as “pure” Kirby as I could. I might have been a little delicate around women’s eyes. I don’t know if I really handled the outside holding lines any differently. Perhaps, I was evolving some as an inker. If you look at my work on Silver Star and compare it to The Forever People, they do appear to be inked differently and there are bolder outlines, but is this Jack’s evolution, or my evolution, or... the muse again? I’m not sure anymore. TJKC: And the backgrounds are simpler, too, though that was Jack’s doing, not yours.

MIKE: That’s right. By the way, I loved to do vignette panels, eliminating the borders, although I know they didn’t care for it at DC and Marvel. Some of my favorite comic books of the 1960s were the three issues of Flash Gordon that Al Williamson drew for King Features. They are full of vignette panels. They’re full of white, which is a color, though some people forget that. They’re just beautiful! But most comic book colorists of the ’60s and ’70s were afraid of using all that white, or they worked in an environment where if they didn’t use a lot of color, they were afraid the publisher wouldn’t pay them for a full page of work. I don’t know what the reasoning was. There’s a Captain America story where, at the bottom lefthand of a page, there are two or three characters standing. I wanted it to be “poster-like,” even though it’s a semi-downshot of three characters just standing. There’s no border at all, because I wanted it to just “pop” off the page. But the colorist added a soft yellow or something. There was no border lines to hold the color, but it still conformed to the negative space. What I did was to try to make some panels “poster-like,” but “no color” was a frightening thing to colorists, I guess. TJKC: You must have been making those decisions when you lettered, since you rule the borders before lettering. MIKE: That’s right. With Jack, I just made the decision of when a panel needed to be open and when a panel needed to be closed. Same thing for lettering: i.e., this lettering needs to be in a horizontal box or this word balloon has enough lettering so I go right to the border, without having a line across the top of it, which I learned from Roy Crane. I also picked up from Crane the use of very bold panel bordering, if I felt it would help emphasize the action contained therein. I used a Speedball B-5 for those. TJKC: Let’s look at Silver Star #1, page twelve, panel three [detail, left]. I want to get your feelings about when and why you decided to add a little gray to the boulders. MIKE: I did that so they’d be a little more three-dimensional, which I did on occasion, but only in a subtle way. I wanted to make sure it read in black-&-white, and sometimes a little gray area is needed for emphasis. It needed that mid-range of tone. Without that gray, there’d be too much white weaving in and out of the black areas on the boulders. In that case, I used a brush, but sometimes I used a pen. It retained Kirby’s expressionism, but made the form a little rounder. TJKC: Now, let’s compare that to the last page of Black Panther #4. [detail, below] You added those same kind of lines to the back of the Black Panther’s head. Same reasoning as before? MIKE: Same reasoning. To me, it looked like a character with an outer space scene on his head. In the pencil stage it works,

but doesn’t always in the ink stage. TJKC: I notice on the face and the cheek, that you feathered out of the black area a little bit.

MIKE: Every once in a while, if I had the time and felt like it, this little card would pop up in my head saying, “Joe Sinnott.” Joe was right; from time to time he did influence me, because you’ll find the occasional issue where there is feathering. A lot of it was governed by the amount of time I had, how involved the pencils were, because no matter what, I had to ink three a day. I guess Joe influenced me more than I realized. TJKC: I’ll be sure to tell him that. (laughs) There’s only a couple of instances where you used zip-a-tone for a shading effect. [Mr. Miracle #9, splash page and page 6] Why didn’t you use more of it? MIKE: It wasn’t necessary, although I’m sure there were times that I wanted to use zip-a-tone. In fact, if you remember the splash page for Galaxy Green, you’ll see that I used zip. That was my idea, not Jack’s. TJKC: That was because that story was to printed in black-&-white. MIKE: True, which is the first thing to think about. Zip-a-tone, thirty years ago, was $2.50 a sheet. Now of course, it’s about $14.00 a sheet and they only make four patterns. I was not compensated for the use of zip, but it could “enhance” if used judiciously. The use of zip could cause printing problems if you’re not careful. You have to make sure the zip patterns are placed at a ninety degree angle or it will cause the color to “moiré” when printed over it. In those days, color was composed of dots, which is why there could be problems, printing dots over dots. It takes to time to cut out the exact sizes and shapes that you want, put them over the area you want covered, and then burnish them down to make sure they don’t come up. The bottom line is that it wasn’t worth it. If I felt I needed a gray area, it was much easier to do as I did on the Black Panther’s hair or those boulders in Silver Star. As for textures in the background, like on rocks and trees, Jack did that so well that there wasn’t much point in changing it. Sometimes I would add a little bit or change it ever so slightly, like with grass treatments or the “Kirby” dots. I might change the patterns just a bit to make them look a little more organized in design, but Kirby did it so well, that it wasn’t something I needed to do that much of. The main thing is that the muse means so much to how I did things. Sometimes, those textures were done with a brush and other times, a pen. It’s easier for me to discuss my philosophy than to do a “nuts and bolts’ type of discussion of how I did each kind of line, since I switched around the tools I used so often.

Getting back to the “Kirby dots,” I did organize them a little differently at times. When you’re putting them down in pencil, it can look different than how it looks when inked. Sometimes, the negative space didn’t work, so I’d expand the number and size of the dots in one place, or rearrange them to create the right pattern. TJKC: When we were in Jack’s art room, looking at some pages from In The Days Of The Mob, you told me, as Richard Kyle noticed, that you are aiming to do Joe Simon-type of inks on those stories. You made mention of the fact that you were more conscious leaving white areas in black shadows, as Simon & Kirby had done. MIKE: Right. In The Days Of The Mob was designed

to be a black-&-white book so I wanted to do more of that. Since Jack was reaching back in time for the stories, I wanted the art to reflect some of his earlier techniques. In color, those white areas can get lost, and I did all those types of shadows with a brush. I didn’t go back and cut white into those areas with paint. That was another thing I observed in Joe Sinnott’s inking of Jack. I learned how to do “open blacks” from Joe. I don’t think he did it as much as I did, but seeing how he did it inspired me to do more of it. TJKC: This was a technique you never quit using. Looking back at that Silver Star #2 splash, I notice how you left white in the black area under Silver 37

Star’s lower lip. This gave it less of a cartoony look. Jack did the same in the black area between the eyes, but you carried it further than he did. You helped add to the metallic look of the head and differentiate it from the blacks in the background. MIKE: What I liked to do, if I had the time, was to cast a shadow over the pupils of the eyes, from the eyelids. Jack added no texture to the eye here, which I added. I also added more white between the rim of the helmet and the right eye. I didn’t do it on both sides because it’d look too mechanical. TJKC: I’m comparing how you did the shadows around his left eye to what Jack had penciled. That subtle change added life to your black area. You did a lot of that, and I felt that kind of change made your blacks appear that they are moving across the picture plane. MIKE: I was just playing with the design, maybe unconsciously. There were times I’d leave it white, didn’t like it, and black it out. Other times there’d be too much black, so I’d take a razor blade and cut some white into it. TJKC: In this case, it’s very effective because it gives me the feeling that Silver Star is standing in front of a window and the light is sweeping across his face. MIKE: Maybe it was the mindset I was in. I do have the chrome lettering above it, which adds to that feeling. TJKC: Still, the way you design your black areas makes them look like they are alive. MIKE: My intent was that they look alive. Jack’s work is very stylized, which is why I call it “expressionism,” yet it’s organic. When you ink it, it can’t be dead. In the stack of of pages that we are going through, my two favorite pages are the Forever People pages. In

the early days, I felt that was some of the best work I did, especially the story with Abe Lincoln. I loved doing that one, and maybe it was just that the Guilotte 290 was working well. Of course, it may be the difference between Forever People and Silver Star. Jack was drawing differently, too. In those early books, Jack was putting one hundred percent of his sweat into them. TJKC: Your inks were a big change from Vinnie Colletta, who didn’t break much of a sweat at all on those DC books. I noticed the difference as a reader and certainly as a professional, when I gray-toned those two DC reprint books. Vinnie was eliminating backgrounds and adding huge areas of black to keep the background from being completely devoid of detail. [see above for an example from New Gods #2] A lot of scenes looked like night scenes and I’m not convinced that’s what Jack had in mind in some instances—certainly not when compared with your inks. I know the Demon series is an exception, but you kept the light in his pages, even with those great, juicy blacks that you were spotting. MIKE: The most difficult problem I ever had in inking anyone is deciding what not to ink. I will look and see construction lines in the figures that I want to ink because they’ll make it more alive. Look at this Jericho page [below], at the figure on the horse. Look at his knee. I know there are construction lines there and maybe nobody else would

have inked them, but to me, they made it more alive. I felt I could get away with it because Jack’s style is so expressionistic, that it’s not out of place. TJKC: It’s accentuated by the fact that the horse’s right knee isn’t rendered in solid black. If you had, the viewer’s eye would have been pulled farther away from the soldier who’s riding him. MIKE: Yes. I think some of the best inking I did over Jack was on these Biblical pieces. TJKC: I agree. What was it like to ink them, because I know the originals are much bigger than the standard 10" x 15" comic book page? Did it force you to change your approach in any way? MIKE: No, I just had to make sure I didn’t flop the edge of the page into my ink bottle. Most of the time, I started on the backgrounds when I did a page, however that’s not a hard and fast rule. Sometimes, I’d see an area and decide that’s where I want to start inking. It’s a funny thing about Jack’s influence. I have done some large group scenes of the “Winnie the Pooh” characters; for example, a large Christmas scene with all the Pooh characters involved with

homemade presents and I’d start in the center, with Pooh sitting on the floor. When I was finished, I looked at it and thought, “Damn! Did I do this?” I started it thinking about Jack Kirby, who could take a piece of paper and start at some point, any point, like this Jericho piece, and create a unified composition. Who knows where I might have started inking it, because I can’t recall. There’s every reason in the world to suppose I might have started with those characters, supporting all that hardware; or I might have started with the horse’s nostril. Sometimes, I’ve looked at the pages and wonder where I started. I don’t know how I made those decisions. Basically, I’d look at a page and grab a pen or brush and think, “God, I don’t want to lose any of the feeling that Jack’s work generated,” and just... start. I wouldn’t have thickened my linework just because the piece was bigger. It had to work within the context of the piece. Just because a penciled piece is huge, doesn’t mean you have to use bolder lines. Jack’s whole approach to storytelling was akin to the movies: the screen size never changes. Jack felt it was what happens within the frame that’s important, not the size of the frame. Jack occasionally did bigger panels and some people have remarked, “Oh, he did a lot of those four-panel pages.” So what? It’s what’s in the panel that matters. Remember that panel in a “Deadman” story where Neal Adams had smoke coming out of a cave and the smoke reads, if you turn it sideways, “Hey! A Steranko effect!”? I loved Adams’ “Deadman” stories, but I didn’t think he could “tell a story” worth a damn; certainly not like Kirby could. Jack’s main concern was to tell the story. Look back at page eight in Silver Star #1 [see page 33]. There are no panel borders. It’s just drawings of his granddaughter, but it’s designed so you can easily follow the sequence. TJKC: While we’re discussing Silver Star, let’s discuss page thirteen from #1. [detail, below] I noticed you changed Tracy’s face in the first panel. You improved it. MIKE: I just felt that Jack had drawn it too fast. But I did a lousy job on those eyes in panel seven. It’s close to the pencils... oh well. Sometimes, I might change the shapes of heads. I remember modifying Darkseid’s dome a number of times. TJKC: We briefly touched on the Demon series and I’d like to follow up on that, as it’s one of my favorite post-Fourth World series of Jack’s. We were discussing the use of blacks and maybe your handling of blacks made them look alive more here than maybe anywhere else. MIKE: I really enjoyed The Demon, maybe because it wasn’t the usual super-hero type of feature. It was a good book. You know, when we did that first issue, we did twentysix pages, but only twenty-four of them were published. The original complete page eleven was deleted [see above]. I recently recreated it, and it is for sale.

TJKC: It’ll certainly be exciting to see the page you recreated! There’s a certain lushness to your inks and to Jack’s pencils, too, that’s a little different than what you two normally did. I felt that the first couple of issues are a real high point for you and Jack. I’ve got a couple of xeroxes of Jack’s early Demon designs, one of which John Morrow used for a back cover inked by Steve Bissette. I bring this up because the design of the Demon’s costume is slightly different in the first issue. On the last page of #1, the Demon’s face is slightly different than the page before. I’ve always wondered if Jack had drawn that earlier and then maybe used it for the last page. MIKE: I don’t know. He does look a little different though, but sometimes Jack unconsciously made subtle changes in the costumes and I’d have to change them to keep them consistent. Darkseid looked slightly different at first, but it was still

(far right) A photo of Mike at a Disney party in 1980, around the time he inked the Black Hole strip. (lower right) Carl Fallberg’s layouts for this Sunday page, which Jack followed pretty faithfully. Black Hole TM & ©2003 Walt Disney Productions, Inc.

Darkseid. That last page you mentioned is a great looking piece. TJKC: There’s just something different about those first two issues. I wonder if Jack took more time with those than he usually did on his books; it looks like you did too. MIKE: He may have taken more time. If I remember correctly, I probably used a brush more on this stuff than I did on other books of the time period. Maybe the muse was really with me then? I’m looking at page fifteen and it has the feel of those Forever People pages we discussed, and those were done earlier than this. The only weak part of this book is my title lettering, “Unleash The One Who Waits.” I guess I didn’t have time to do that, because I did the Old English-style lettering on page seven. It’s hard to say if I took more time with this book. I inked three pages a day, so maybe some of those three-page days were eight-hour days and maybe some of them were twelve-hour days? A lot of it may have been that Jack was really into this book and his creative juices were flowing all over the place. I may have just really tuned 40

into it myself and was inspired by his pencils. I think a lot of the quality of my work depended upon how much I felt Jack had put of himself into the work. I hated doing Sandman and I know Jack hated doing it, but he was committed to doing so many pages a week, and he was going to be professional about it. TJKC: I’d like to talk about “The Psychic Blood-Hound” story where you finished the art from Jack’s layouts [see example, page 38]. MIKE: Oh, I don’t even want to talk about it! As you know, Jack only did layouts, and it just didn’t work out. It wasn’t that I was that bad at drawing; it’s just the circumstances under which I drew it. That sounds like an excuse and that’s what it is. Look at the finished page and you’ll see the captions above and below the title aren’t my lettering. I guess Jack just wanted to see what it’d look like. I had done some fan drawings Jack had liked, so he gave me this. I drew this story when I was at Al Williamson’s house for four or five days, following the New York ComicCon in 1971. I was just too distracted by being around one of my icons/friends. I was spending a week at Al’s house, and did I sit in another room and give these pages the attention they deserved? No, I didn’t. When I was finished with them, Jack went over them and beefed up a few things. It was an experiment that didn’t work and it’s my fault. TJKC: Well, I don’t think the story’s as bad as you think it is. In comparing what Jack had written, I notice they not only relettered those captions, but some of the wording is different too. MIKE: I don’t know why they did that. (slightly exasperated) I don’t remember Jack expressing any disappointment, but I know that if he really didn’t like it, he’d have said something. The fact that he went over it with a brush in a few places tells me he wasn’t one hundred percent happy. However, I’d have to look at it much more closely to see if he really changed that much. This was a chance to develop a relationship with Kirby that might have gone somewhere else and I blew it because it was more fun being with Al Williamson. If you’ll remember that Freedom Fighters story that I finished from Ric Estrada’s layouts—that worked! I could have done better by Jack on this one. TJKC: Since we’re on the subject of changes and such, let’s talk about the Black Hole newspaper strip. [examples, this spread] MIKE: The script writer was Carl Fallberg, who wrote a lot of Treasury Of Classic Tales strips for Disney. This series was a sales tool for Disney. When there wasn’t a film story to do, they’d create a new story from one of their old films, using their characters. But they are very linear versions of their films, which I lobbied against. No one was listening to me. I tried to bring this into effect on the Rocketeer and Dick Tracy books that I produced for their music company, and no one would listen to me. What I was doing on these two projects was adapting a radio show done from the film in a straight, linear form. My feeling is that if you’re doing a comic strip or a comic book from a film, it still has to work as a comic strip or book. Be true to the source material, but adapt to the form of comics. The Black Hole suffered from having to be a linear version of the film. Also, Carl did not steep himself into the world of comics, so that he’d approach it with the mindset that this had to be a great comic strip. His assignment was to simply adapt the film as a comic strip. On one hand, I’m not blaming Carl for it being as dull as it is, but at the same time, if he’d been told, “Hey! This is The Black Hole, but make

it one helluva comic strip,” it might have been better. Jack could tell from the very first meeting he had with Disney, that he’d have to be very conservative in his approach. I’m responsible for Jack doing the strip; I recommended him from Day One. They tried a staff artist, but Disney wanted more pizzazz than that artist gave them. Another freelance artist came in, showed samples, then had scheduling conflicts and he was taken off the strip. So there were two artists who had done great jobs, but Disney wasn’t happy. Finally, they told me they’d talk to Jack. All it took was one meeting for Jack to realize this strip was going to be pretty boring. You can look at Carl’s storyboarded scripts and see that they are. I’m not trying to point a finger at anybody, but it was the way Disney operated. They wouldn’t listen to guys like me or Bob Foster, with whom I, at the time, shared an office. “What

do you guys know?,” we were told. The one thing that I had to do with every page was to redraw Jack’s robots and ships. I had to occasionally change the faces a little, too. Jack was the master impressionist/expressionist, but since they were international trademarks, they had to look exactly like the things in the film. Look at panel five, where Pizer is saying, “Relax, ol’ buddy.” You’ll notice the difference between how Jack penciled the robot and what I did. By the way, I drew the title panel. TJKC: So Fallberg drew those layouts? MIKE: Yes, Carl Fallberg. Jack knew he was expected to stick to these layouts, so he did. If you’ll look at the first Sunday, you’ll notice a couple of the faces are strange looking. Disney had someone else change them and I told them what a bad idea it was, because they stick out like a sore thumb. I told them that this

was wrong: “When you buy Jack Kirby, you buy Jack Kirby. I’ll make the changes and keep it consistent.” I laid out the last Sunday page, too. TJKC: When you were inking Jack’s work, did you listen to the radio or television? MIKE: Way back then, I used to listen to reel-to-reel tapes of old radio shows like The Lone Ranger, I Love a Mystery, or run soap operas on television. Like my childhood movie cowboy hero Roy Rogers, I also dug daytime divas. TJKC: Since we’re now discussing Jack’s later period, I’d like to talk about the Hunger Dogs a little. Jack’s work had gotten very cartoony at this point. His machines are simplified, with basic geometric shapes that didn’t look as functional as his machines had previously. There’s more black areas in his backgrounds, too. MIKE: If you look at my pages, the ones I did before Greg Theakston decided to change them, there are more blacks because I added them. There was so much space left over after I lettered them, since Jack had used too much space when he wrote the dialogue. Jack was doing simpler machinery and adding more blacks too. I added the solid blacks so the pages would remain consistent. It was a challenge and it was fun. TJKC: Overall, I think Jack’s work at this point became more graphic because of what we discussed. His work looks more geometric than organic, and the solid black areas don’t have much white in them as they had before. MIKE: I’ve never really thought much about that, at least from a historical viewpoint. At the time, I got the pages and I did them. I really wasn’t analyzing Jack’s style then. There are some pieces I’ve looked at and wish I owned. Maybe I’ll recreate them, just for myself. There’s one page I recreated, which is one of my all time favorite pages of Jack’s. It’s page twenty-five of New Gods #6, “The Glory Boat.” I did that for an artist in New York and he compared it the original page. The person who has the original page told him, “I can’t tell the difference.” TJKC: What got you started doing recreations? MIKE: Two or three years ago, Tod Seisser called me and said he had the complete art for “The Pact” (New Gods #7), except for either page ten or eleven. He asked me how much I’d charge to recreate it. Now he has all the pages to the story, though one of them is a recreation. Out of that, Tom Kraft contacted me, wanting to see how I’d do inking Kirby pages that hadn’t been inked by me. Those were the Thor splash pages, originally inked by Colletta. [left, and on page 47] That led to other things. I wish there were more people interested in my recreations, because I wouldn’t mind being a master forger for a while. The first recreations I did were way back in 1966. A scientist wanted me to do some Alex Raymond pastiches on 30" x 40" illustration board. I did them and when I was finished with the first one, I took it to a collector’s bookstore in Hollywood. They wanted to know where I got the Raymond art, because they’d never seen this drawing before. I told them that I had done it.

TJKC: When you did these Thor recreations, did you bother to look at what Colletta had done? MIKE: No, I totally ignored his work. Tom Kraft carefully traced Jack’s pencils onto Strathmore board and I inked it. He did send me a xerox of the printed page so I could reproduce the lettering. It’s Jack’s pencils, filtered through Tom, and inked by me. I did use Jack’s pencils as reference in case Tom didn’t quite get something Jack intended when he traced it. My goal here was to ink them the way I would have, had I actually been the inker on the book. I tried to put myself in the mindset of over thirty years ago, when I first started inking Jack’s work. It took me about a day to ink it and another day to letter it, including display titles. I hope to do more of these. Ultimately, the ones that are the most fun to do are when I actually do the pencil tracing. That’s because I’m in the mindset of thirty years ago and I’m tracing them off the way that I would have inked it, so the inking will go a little faster. It’s easier to do some of my thinking when I do them that way. Another thing I did was to recreate the double page pencil splash from “Street Code.” [above] I did this for the heck of it, and it’s for sale too, although now it’s been inked. TJKC: What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you for recreation work? MIKE: At my e-mail address: Mowkwurst@aol.com. The name is a play on “mouseworks.” I’m working on developing a website, still working on trying to get into the Twentieth Century before I get into the Twenty-First. TJKC: After all this time, how do you think Jack influenced your work? MIKE: Number one, Jack taught me to never be afraid of a blank piece of paper. Every time I do a large group scene, I think of Jack. Those scenes are like frozen moments in a story. Most people might look at them and not think “Jack Kirby,” but I do. It’s like the double-pager from “Street Code.” Everything that’s hap-

pening in there is part of a story. What I learned from Kirby was that everything I put down has to be part of a story. Even if it’s just one figure, it’s still telling a story. All the design elements are constructed to tell the story. A lot of people only know me as an inker, but I’m much more than that. My entire body of work proves that. I’ve done a lot of drawing at Disney for many years, both as a staff artist in consumer products and on some of their comic books, and on all the Winnie The Pooh work I did, as chief artist for years. In fact, I did a little redesigning on those characters in the 1990s, so all of what you’ve seen the last decade on consumer products is from my work done for the world-wide licensing launch of the 100 Acre Wood characters. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in my career and I hope it continues for a long time. ★

(previous page) Another recreation of a Thor splash that was originally inked by Vince Colletta, this time from issue #177. Again, fan Tom Kraft traced the pencils from TJKC for Mike to ink by. Thor, Loki TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(above) Dig out your copy of TwoMorrows book Streetwise (or better yet, order one today!), and compare this Mike Royer pencil recreation of the twopage spread from Jack’s “Street Code” story to the original. We bet you can’t tell the difference! Street Code TM & ©2003 Jack Kirby Estate.

(left) Mike Royer as he looks today (that is, if he happens to be doing some horseback riding today...).

Mark evanier (below) Robert Latimer took this photo of Jack during a visit to the Kirby home in the 1980s, sitting in the chair, at the drawing table, next to the taboret he used to create so many classic comics pages. (next page, top) Pencil rough for the neverrealized cover to In The Days Of The Mob #2. There are at least two other rough versions of this cover that exist. © Jack Kirby Estate.

(next page, center) We found this collage assembly in Jack’s files; it was probably for one of the experimental black-&-white books he developed for DC Comics in the 1970s (perhaps True Divorce Cases).

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier “So how did Jack do what he did?” hat’s a question I get from legions of Kirby Kollectors, most recently Tim Woolf. That is, of course, one of those Mysteries of the Ages. How does the human mind function? From whence comes Imagination? How does an artist create a vision and transfer it onto paper? You could study and ponder and wax philosophical from now ’til the world looks level and not come within twenty blocks of a satisfactory answer. Two things I can say with some certainty are: 1. No one can ever fully explain how Jack Kirby managed to create all that wonderful Jack Kirby work. Even he could not explain it. His work was spontaneous and based on whim, instinct and a hefty amount of pure Gut Feeling. Everything he saw, everything he read, everything that happened to him and those around him was input. Just how he distilled and combined all that, forging odd associations of elements, both in story and design, no one will ever understand. Had he been a chef, Jack would have somehow taken salt and cinnamon, mixed them together and wound up with a new and improved kind of Prime Rib. (That is probably not as silly an analogy as it may appear at first glance.)

(next page, bottom) Jack in 1993, sporting the thick glasses he needed later in life, due to years of close-up artwork at the drawing board. Photo by John Morrow.

2. Even if one could elucidate how it was done, that account would apply only to Kirby. I don’t know how he did it; only that nobody else could have. So you’ll have to settle for some more prosaic revelations, like where he worked, what he drew on, what he sat on, and so forth. We’ll start with a brief studio tour. Jack’s first California home was in Irvine, which is located in Orange County, a little less than an hour south of Los Angeles.

That was where I first met him and saw his studio—a small, windowless room that might otherwise have been used for storage. It was on the second floor, not far from the master bedroom. His wife Roz would tell visitors that it was convenient when she woke up at 5 a.m. and discovered that Jack was still at the board: “I just walk down the hall, poke my head in the door and yell, ‘Kirby! Knock it off and come to bed!’” I never saw Jack’s earlier workspaces in New York, but both he and Roz described them as not much grander than the Irvine quarters. The studio in their last East Coast home had been nicknamed “The Dungeon,” which suggests it was not the lap of luxury. Don Heck told me, “He’d be sitting there with his little drawing table and the cigar smoke. The room was full of pocket books, all science-fiction stuff. He was a very avid reader. He was unbelievable—he would turn out five, six pages a day. I was struggling and he was knocking this stuff out... he really did a terrific job.” After Irvine, the Kirbys moved to the first of two homes located in Thousand Oaks, around 45 minutes northwest of Los Angeles. Both of these dwellings had magnificent canyon views out the back and in each, Jack had a large, airy studio with plenty of room to entertain guests. Nevertheless, the physical set-up of his immediate workspace did not change much from Irvine. His drawing table was the same one he’d had for years, the same one he’d had since the Simon & Kirby shop had closed in the mid-Fifties and he’d hauled home one of its tables. When the Kirbys moved to Southern California, it was the last thing loaded onto the moving van and the first thing unpacked in Irvine. The movers brought it in to the new home, and Jack sat down and resumed drawing Marvel Comics on it while the men fetched the rest of the belongings. The table was battered and old and you could see little burn marks where Jack’s cigars had sat too long. Still, it was his table and he insisted it did everything he needed. Fans and friends who visited sometimes offered to get Jack a newer and better one but he wasn’t interested. (Shortly after Jack passed away, the Smithsonian Institute requested the table for their collection in Washington, in recognition of all the memorable work created on it. Owing mainly to red tape, the transfer has yet to be made... but the table has been promised and that’s where it will presumably end up.) To the right of the drawing table was a very shabby end-table that he used as a taboret. Its drawers were filled with antique art supplies and it too was decorated with cigar burns. He sat in a straight-back, upright chair that had been part of a dinette set the Kirbys once owned. Jack had experimented with various “artists’ chairs” offering fancy cushioning and complex hydraulic supports, and decided he liked what he liked. It is no exaggeration to say that, for decades, he spent half his life in that hard, wooden chair. One could perhaps extrapolate an emotional attachment to the seat. Jack often told of how, when he was just starting out as a teen cartoonist, he did his early work at the dining table in his parents’ flat. During the day, his mother would serve him sandwiches and soup as he drew. Then later, he would race to get one more page inked before his mother insisted he vacate so she could set for supper. Perhaps the chair he worked in as an adult reminded him of that. Or perhaps he just found it comfortable and good for his

posture. He labored all kinds of hours but the preferred schedule went something like this. He would start drawing around 11:00 a.m. or Noon, stop for lunch in the mid-afternoon, then work until dinner. Then he would draw a bit more, perhaps taking a break to watch a favorite TV show with Roz before returning to the board until the wee, small hours of the morning. My sense was that the real “creating” was primarily a nocturnal activity and that, during daylight hours, he primarily executed the ideas he’d had at 4 a.m. Much has been written about how fast Jack was—and he was fast. Much of that was because he was direct. He drew with very little planning, very little in the way of roughs. About once a year, I’m approached by some enterprising publisher who says, “Let’s put together a fancy art book of Jack’s rough, preliminary sketches!” I have to explain that there really aren’t that many. Jack got and refined the picture in his head, then transferred it to paper. The few Kirby roughs that exist are mainly cases of an employer insisting on a preliminary comp. At least once at Marvel, he was told a cover was needed for a certain project and he drew one, only to have Roz then remind him he’d been asked for a sketch, not a finished drawing. So he did a sketch based on a cover he’d already finished, sent in the sketch and then, after it was approved, mailed in the drawing he’d done a week before. Still, I think saying Kirby was swift misses the point. His incredible output was also a function of devotion to duty. A lot of artists could have matched his productivity had they also put in 12-14 hours a day at the drawing table, often seven days a week. Many would not be physically capable of this... but Jack somehow was. Insofar as I could tell, he enjoyed the work itself, though he hated the pace at which it had to be created—the fact that he had to leap immediately from the end of one story to the beginning of the next without ample time to think. He regretted that appeasing his employer took virtually all his creative hours and energy. He would have liked to have had more opportunity to create his collages and to experiment

with non-comic forms of writing and art. Unfortunately, after fulfilling his work obligations, he only had a limited amount of time to devote to his wife and children, and he sometimes felt that to write or draw for himself was to steal time from them. Even worse was that he had to labor as hard as he did for what was never that great a paycheck. What he mainly objected to was the “prisoner” aspect of

it... the fact that he had to do it, rain or shine, in good health or poor. “If I don’t draw, we don’t eat,” he said on several occasions and often spoke of being “chained to the board.” During much of his life, Jack lived with a constant worry that his health would fail him, particularly his eyesight, with which he had intermittent problems. The financial effects on his family could have been devastating, and Jack (who never had health insurance until well past age 60, when he began working in TV animation) was ever-conscious of the danger. The insurance was a life-saver—almost, literally—when Jack had his first heart attack a few years later. A brief aside here might be in order. One day when I was working with Kirby, we got to talking

about a recent TV biography of the great comedian, Ernie Kovacs. Kovacs was killed in 1962 in an automobile accident not far from where my parents and I lived. The special, which Jack and I had both seen, had portrayed Mr. Kovacs as a wonderful, free-spirited madman. Almost as evidence, they offered the fact that ol’ Ernie had spent every cent he ever earned and then some— often, recklessly. As a result, his widow (actress Edie Adams) had found herself some three million dollars in debt. This was all presented in the documentary as something quite carefree and colorful. 45

(this page) Kirby pencil art for the 1977 Marvel Comics calendar, showing a number of characters he co-created, as well as many he didn’t. Characters TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. except Conan TM & ©2003 Conan Properties, Inc.

(next page) Art from the two-page spread of Forever People #1. Ideas for the series began percolating in Jack’s mind around the time he first moved to Irvine, California—and had to deal with noise from motorcycle riders echoing up the canyon he lived above. Forever People TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

(inset) Steve Sherman in 2002. Photo by John Morrow.

My father was about the same age as Jack, and had also been born into a very poor Jewish family. Often, when we drove past the intersection where Kovacs died, my father would mutter something about how awful it was that a man should die and not leave his loved ones provided-for, let alone in such trouble. To him, it was not carefree or colorful. It was disgraceful. I told this to Jack and he said, “Your father is absolutely right. A man who doesn’t provide for his family is no damn good.” That is an exact quote. Kirby said it with such force and conviction that it is imprinted forever in my memory. It’s something I thought about often when Jack was battling Marvel for proper credit or for the return of his original art. Some of his few detractors at the time tried to suggest it was all about greed, as if somehow it’s greedy to want that which you believe is rightfully yours. But it was never about self-indulgence. It was about Jack, who was in poor health at the time, wanting to leave something to Roz if, as he fully expected, he predeceased her. And he was right: After Jack passed away, selling some of that artwork is what paid for her mortgage and groceries, up until Marvel finally came across with a modest pension. It was the “nest egg” he could leave her because he could not leave her royalties from the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk and so forth. I should also add that a couple of the folks who accused Jack of avarice at the time of the original art dispute later decided otherwise. Perhaps it was hindsight; perhaps, as they got older, they began to worry about providing for their own families. Whatever, at least one or two decided they hadn’t really said what they’d said, while others sought Jack out to apologize. After he left us, I even received a few apologies that could no longer be made to him. Forgive the detour but I think this is one of the most important things I could ever tell you about Jack Kirby. When I think of all the things he said to me that defined who he was and how he thought, nothing stands out quite as significantly as

that one declaration: “A man who doesn’t provide for his family is no damn good.” End of detour. Tim Woolf further asks: Did you ever watch Jack draw? Was he in another world when he drew? Several. Jack’s powers of concentration were intense. Except when he was adding little trifles—tightening backgrounds, for instance—you couldn’t really talk to him while he drew. Matter of fact, it didn’t really work for him to have anyone else in the room. He was too polite to utterly ignore you as he transported himself to Apokolips or World War II or Asgard or wherever he was that day. Drawing was, for him, an intensely personal, individual action and the worst drawings I ever saw out of him came when he was persuaded to sketch something in front of an audience. But on occasion, I did catch him in the act. I can only report that he was totally focused on the page before him and that little preliminary graphite was laid down. While planning out the sequence of a page or group of pages, he might sketch in light lines—“This will go there, this will go in this panel...”. If it didn’t flow for him, he’d erase it all and start again. The minute he knew what would go on the paper, all sketching would cease. He would then start drawing as if the image was already there and all he had to do was trace it. Some of his double-page spreads were created not by laying in vanishing points and perspective lines but by starting on the left and working his way methodically to the right margin. Once all the panels on a page were more or less finished, he would look at the total design of that page and perhaps add a few more black areas to balance the overall composition. (This step was done more often after he began drawing on the smaller original art format, as I’ll explain in a moment.) The page would then go in the “finished” pile. As has been mentioned before, Jack did not start at Page One of a story and work his way through to the end. He might begin with one important

sequence, then go back and draw the material that led into it, then draw a sequence for later in the book. Pages that were partially or wholly completed for one issue sometimes went into a “holding” pile and were used in other issues. He was constantly juggling around those pages, seeing what story they told if arranged in a different sequence. Often, he would discover a more compelling narrative than the one he’d intended. Not only was Jack constantly surprising his readers; he sometime surprised himself. Once the 20 (or however many) pages were completed and Jack was satisfied with the story told by the pictures, the final step would be the words. If he was penciling for another person to write dialogue, he would go through and write the little marginal notes that you’ve all seen in this magazine. If he

out, were among those who steered Harleys through the canyon. He never stopped hating the racket but he grew more benevolent towards the teenagers who were making it. Moreover, the chopper-annihilation he’d envisioned never quite fit into the storyline that emerged. (I vaguely recall Jack drawing and then discarding some panels of Superman smashing noisy motorcycles.) He had to settle for an even vaguer, if less subtle means of retribution. At the time, his daughter Lisa had a horse in their backyard and, every day, someone had to go out and shovel out the droppings. Jack’s kids volunteered to do it, or it could have been assigned to their

was handling the final copy, he would now write out the dialogue he already had roughly composed in his head, penciling it in on the artwork. And once he was done, it was on to the next story. Right away. Very little could distract him as he toiled, but a few things could. The canyon view in the first of his Thousand Oaks homes proved to be a mixed blessing. It was gorgeous but it was also noisy. Motorcycle riders were constantly racing down the canyon trails and the noise echoed up and shook the Kirby studio, especially on weekends. Even when one lone rider was down there, it could be deafening in a way that drove Jack to distraction. As he often did, Jack sought to use in his work whatever was making an emotional impact in his life. He created a tribe of bikers and inserted them into his first Jimmy Olsen stories. What he had in mind for some upcoming issue was a scene in which Superman (or someone) would get so furious at the sound of the super-cycles that he would rip them to pieces. Ultimately, though he did some damage to the bikers in one story, he never got around to that scene of mass ’cycle destruction... for two reasons. One was that he met some young neighbors who, it turned

gardener. My then-partner Steve Sherman and I, when we were working out there, even offered to undertake the unseemly chore so that Jack could remain at the drawing table. Nope. Jack insisted on doing it himself. “It’s good, honest work,” he told us. He would march down to the small stable, grab a spade and begin scooping up horse excrement and flinging it down into the canyon, pretending he had a good shot at hitting the motorcycle riders. He didn’t—they were a good quarter-mile out of range— but the “game” afforded a bit of exercise and a lot of fantasy-revenge. Later, when the Kirbys moved to their final home a few miles away, the transaction was simple. Roz had seen the home without Jack, fallen in love with it and brought him over to approve her selection. He walked right through the house and out the back door to look over a spectacular panorama of lush,

green canyon. “Do you ever hear motorcycle riders up here?” he asked the realtor. “No,” she said. “Then we’ll take it.” The real estate agent was startled. “Don’t you even want to see the room that would serve as your studio, Mr. Kirby?” Jack said, “I don’t have to. If Roz thinks it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine. We’ll take the house.” That’s a great example of how much Jack trusted Roz, and how he knew she watched out for his best interests. Still, just to make sure, Roz decided to double-check. She went door-to-door up and down the block, polling the neighbors on whether they ever heard motorcycle riders in the canyon. When the answers came in unanimously negative, the Kirbys signed the papers and Jack set up his new studio. Again, the workspace was identical to those before it. The main difference was that he had reference books closer at hand. He knew precisely how it had to be. Creative people are funny that way. Most require certain rituals and a certain physical arrangement of their workspace— this brand of pencil, that kind of keyboard, a chair exactly so high, etc. And they all have their near-inviolate rules of whether the TV or radio has to be on or off and, if on, to what station. Jack generally had on a battered TV that, owing to rusty rabbit-ears, pulled in terrible, static-filled reception. But that didn’t matter since it was for company, not to be watched. In fact, he usually had it tuned to a local Spanish channel since he didn’t speak the language and therefore, didn’t have to pay attention to what was being said. It provided a kind of White Noise, allowing him to shut out the world and turn his concentration inward. It didn’t distract him as the bikers had. This might be a good time to tackle a question that I’ve received from a few folks, though this particular asking is from Jeremy McGraw... I’ve seen Kirby original art in two sizes, one larger than the other. When did he decide to change and why? It wasn’t that Jack decided to change. Had it been left to him, he would probably have stayed with the larger size forever... or even drawn larger. When Jack did those tabloid comics in the midSeventies—2001 and Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles—he was disappointed that he had to draw them close to printed size. He would have preferred to work much larger. Before 1967, with only a few exceptions, most of the industry worked on an original art size larger than is the norm today. The change was made primarily to save money in the engraving process. It’s a long, complex explanation as to why but, 47

basically, with pages of the smaller size, the folks who made the printing plates could photograph four pages at once instead of two pages at once. They could also save a step or two in the stripping-up of negatives. The image area of the larger size was 121⁄2" by 1 18 ⁄2" at Marvel. The smaller size was 10" by 15". By way of historical interest, the first DC or Marvel artist to work the smaller size was Murphy Anderson on one of the Showcase issues of “The Spectre.” Murphy did it just to save himself time but it gave the idea to

the production department at the company. From processing that story, they came to learn of the fiscal advantages of the format and soon, both DC and Marvel were adopting it. Since some books were ahead of schedule, not every comic went to the smaller size original art at the same time but most Marvels changed within a month or two of the issues dated November, 1967. Jack’s first work on the small size was the Captain America story in that month’s Tales of Suspense (#95)

and he didn’t like it. He said, “The first time I finished a page, I picked it up and half the art was on my drawing table.” You can see that everything on the pages in that story is bigger—bigger lettering, bigger heads and figures. It took a while before he adjusted to drawing smaller people on his pages and he never got completely comfortable with it. The main change— for him and many other artists—was a tendency to do more full-page panels and to look at the composition of pages, more than at individual panels. No one queried about the paper he drew on, but I have an anecdote here so I’m going to address that unasked question... Jack did not like the drawing paper that DC was supplying its artists in 1970. “It was obviously picked out by an inker,” he remarked. The surface did not take well to the soft pencils Jack liked to use and he was constantly smudging the work and having to go wash his hands, especially with the stock that was intended for covers. This was more than a matter of inconvenience. It was slowing him down and harming the work. On his first few DC stories (Forever People #1, New Gods #1, Mister Miracle #1 and the first couple of Kirby issues of Jimmy Olsen) the pencil art that was passed on to Vince Colletta for inking was not quite as clean as Jack would have liked, and it probably smudged further before Colletta got it. “Can you guys get me some paper I can draw on?” he asked Steve and me. We went to a store in downtown Los Angeles that specialized in art paper, and purchased samples of every kind of Bristol Board they had in stock that seemed good for pencil. Jack tried them all, picked the one he liked, and had us go back and buy him a hefty supply. Shortly after that, DC artisteditor Joe Kubert and much of his family paid Jack a visit, rolling up to the Kirby house in a large mobile home. Kubert was surprised to find that Jack was buying his own paper. No one else at DC did that, Joe said. When Jack explained his problem with it, Kubert suggested that it worked well if you first penciled (as he did) with blue pencil, and then tightened that up with a normal pencil. “I’ve been drawing comics for thirty years,” Jack replied. “I’ve never used blue pencil and I can’t start now.” He stayed with the paper we bought him. I don’t know about Colletta but when Mike Royer took over from him,

he was constantly, probably justifiably, complaining about it. “It was obviously not picked out by an inker,” he told us. The day of the Kuberts’ visit, the story that was on Jack’s drawing board was Jimmy Olsen #135, and Joe spent a long time admiring the large shot of the Guardian that Jack had drawn for the last page (see above). “That would be so great to ink,” Kubert exclaimed, and there was a brief discussion on whether it would make ethical or creative sense for him to finish the art for just that one page. They quickly decided it would be unfair to Colletta to take that page away from him, and that the change of styles would be too jarring. As little as I liked Colletta’s inking, I suspect they made the right decision. That issue, by the way, presented an enormous headache due to Jack’s well-known absent-mindedness. At the time, he was also drawing stories for the short-lived black-&-white magazines—In the Days of the Mob, Spirit World and two aborted romance titles. Since these were magazine format, the original art needed to be a little wider—11" x 15" instead of 10" x 15". Jack had two piles of paper in his studio and without thinking, he drew that issue of Jimmy Olsen on the 11" by 15" paper. When I pointed this out to him, he blushed, handed me an eraser and said, “Here—take an inch off each page.” It was an enormously difficult task. Jack’s compositions were so perfectly designed within their panels that to erase a half-inch off one side was a form of desecration. I did it but I didn’t like it. In a few places, I took a quarter inch off one side and threequarters off the other. If you look at that issue, you may note that on a few pages, the “center line” is slightly off-center. Jack usually divided his pages up in a symmetrical manner and these started out that way. A few figures are rather oddly cropped but Jack was on a quota—he had to start right in on the next story—so there was only so much we could do. In most panels, it was necessary for me to reletter the penciled dialogue that Jack had applied to the pages. In some spots, figures had to be moved. What I did there was to trace the drawing and erase the original—an action that actually made my hand shake

with a certain horror. Then, I lightly traced the now-expunged drawing back onto the page in its new position. Jack then went in and redrew the figure over my light tracing. This was one of the few times I ever had a hand in his artwork. (In case it isn’t clear, my contribution was utterly non-creative, though he did take the opportunity to have me redraw the insignias on Superman’s chest—just about the only thing in the world I drew better than Kirby. Later, in New York, Murphy Anderson repenciled the Superman and Olsen heads and Colletta inked the whole thing. On some of the later issues of Jimmy Olsen, Anderson inked those heads and then Colletta inked everything else.) That was one of the few times since the days of the Simon & Kirby shop that anyone had even a finger (let alone a hand) in the creation of Jack Kirby pencil art. 99.99% of the time or more, he just sat and did it all by himself—plotting, penciling, sometimes the dialogue. New characters and concepts just poured out of him and that was where the magic occurred. A lot of poor-tomediocre artists can “see”—or believe they can “see”—wonderful drawings in their heads. They just lack the skill to duplicate that vision on illustration board. I always had the feeling that with Jack, the second part was a breeze. Once he had it in his head, it was as good as on the paper. But ultimately, I have to admit that I really don’t know how he did it, Tim. Only that he did it better than anyone else ever has. Next question? ★ Mark Evanier welcomes your Kirby Questions (and has answers to many, as well as lots of non-Kirby stuff) over on his website, www.POVonline.com, by e-mail at: me@evanier.com, or you can mail your questions to: 5850 W. 3rd St., #367 Los Angeles, CA 90036

(previous page) Jack did the layouts (with margin notes) for George Tuska to finish in Tales of Suspense #74, which was still being drawn at “large art” (121⁄2" x 181⁄2") size. Characters TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(above) Pages from Jimmy Olsen #135; at left is the “Guardian” shot Joe Kubert considered inking. The middle image shows an example of the page where the center line is off-center. The right image appears to be a case where, on the top tier, most of the extra art was removed from the left panel, whereas it was removed evenly from both panels on the second tier. Characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

Now shipping is Comic Books & Other Necessities of Life (shown at left), a collection of the best of Mark’s POV columns, plus new ones, complete with illos by Sergio Aragonés. See the TwoMorrows ad in this issue for ordering info, and look for a second volume this Summer! 49

Innerview

“I Don’t Like To Draw Sling Part Two of an August 1969 Interview With Jack Kirby Conducted by Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld Transcribed by John Morrow

(above) Cast and crew of the 1971 Disneyland Convention in Anaheim, CA. First row, center is Carmine Infantino, flanked to his right by Kirby and Shel Dorf. Photo courtesy of Shel Dorf.

(next page) Pencils to an unfinished, unused page from Battle For A Three Dimensional World, the 1982 one-shot comic that presented Jack’s work in true 3-D, complete with stereoscopic (green and red) glasses, and led to Johnny Carson’s gaffe about Kirby on The Tonight Show (see TJKC #35 for details). ©2003 Jack Kirby Estate.

(Last issue, we presented the first part of this never-published interview, conducted in August 1969, just months before Kirby left Marvel for DC Comics. This time out, we pick up where we left off, as Jack discusses his working techniques and philosophies.) SHEL DORF: What is your average work day like? JACK KIRBY: My work day is very erratic. I’ll do a page, and I’ll get up and break up the day that way, and I’ll come back and do another page, and begin work another hour. Sometimes I’ll decide to work very late, and I will work very late. Sometimes I’ll do my quota of pages in quick time, and get off early enough to catch a movie. So, it’s a rare privilege, I think, to be able to do that, because there’s no restriction on an artist in that respect. It’s the pattern of work that I feel is a kind of a boon to me; somehow I’ve earned that kind of routine, and I enjoy it. Possibly I might like a 9-to-5 routine just like a lot of other people, but somehow I feel that I enjoy this more. SHEL: Have you ever had a 9-to-5 routine in your life? JACK: Yes, I have, several times, but somehow I’ve grown accustomed to this way of living. I see nothing wrong with it, I enjoy it, and I break up my day as I see fit. It’s something that makes me feel I’m my own man, which of course I’m not. (laughs) RICH RUBENFELD: What direction do you think the comics are going in today? JACK: I’d love to know that. I’d love to know what’s in the heads of the young fellows who see the images that we project, and

good in it, and use it for himself, but I wouldn’t like to see him telling my story. I’d like to see him telling his story, and I’d like to see what emerges from him; that’s the fun of comic art to me. It might be a technician’s view, but I feel that’s the fun of any creative medium: Seeing what comes up from the next guy. If the fellow has a bland personality, maybe something nondescript will come out. If he’s a passionate person, maybe we’ll see something really powerful. That’s the fun of it for me, to watch what comes out of a human being, and project it for the reader. RICH: Sort of originality from inspiration, in other words? JACK: Not originality exactly, but... RICH: An original thought coming from an inspiration from something else? JACK: No, nobody has an original thought; there’s nothing original. You take what comes before you, and you turn it out for yourself, in your own way. It’s the only thing you can do. There’s nothing in this world that I haven’t seen before, and I’m not familiar with. I can be given any kind of a familiar form, and just turn it around my own way. I won’t draw a car like anybody else. I won’t draw a shoe like anybody else. I won’t draw a hand like anybody else. I’ve been bawled-out for drawing choppy fingers without fingernails, but that’s the way I see fingers. It may be rebellious in a way, and gotten me into trouble, but I can’t help it. That’s how I see fingers. SHEL: It seems to me there’s so much energy being generated, someday they may put your brain in a glass in some museum and study it for a couple of hundred years. JACK: Well, I hope it’s at an Ivy League school. (laughs) SHEL: It seems to me there’s an industrial designer in there, there’s a poet, a storyteller, an adventurer, a graphic designer. There’s just too much for you to be satisfied with any one of these specialized fields, and you seem to have found the perfect medium for expressing all these directions. JACK: Well, I feel that this is not the end of it. I feel that I’d love a little more time to take it down to where it ought to go. I don’t know where it should go, but I feel that the medium leads the artist. I sometimes draw a line and try to find out where the line goes. I don’t feel that you control the line; I feel that the line controls you. And you should follow the line, and probably come up with a very interesting form. I don’t believe in the conventional in art. I don’t feel that art should be so abstract that nobody can get your meaning. I feel like you shouldn’t allow yourself to become trapped in one style, or one form of art, or live in any static way. I feel that anything static is dead. I don’t go for anything that’s dead. That’s why my figures have a lot of motion. I feel that motion is life, and I feel that anything that moves is alive, and that’s where you ought to go. SHEL: Why don’t we see any clay around here? It seems to me the next direction for you is sculpture.

won’t accept them. I hope they won’t accept anything I draw. I hope whoever is coming up with comic art won’t accept anything anybody draws. Give us his own version of what he sees. I’d like to see him take the technical part of my work, if he finds anything 50

JACK: Why don’t you see any harpsichords around here? Because that’s just not my thing, and I don’t know why it is. I don’t have any aversion to clay. I feel that clay has been done; I feel that oil paintings have been done. I feel that watercolor has been done. I don’t want to do them. I don’t know why, I just don’t want to do them, for the reason I don’t give Thor a red beard. I don’t feel he

shots; I Like To Draw Cannons.”

ought to have a red beard. I like to do my own version of Thor. SHEL: Maybe next week you’ll suddenly decide to pick up a lump of clay, and make a figure of the Thing or something, and this’ll take you in a whole different direction. JACK: I wouldn’t say no. I don’t think there’s a set rule for anything. I’m not saying that rules are bad, but I’m saying that rules shouldn’t be unshakable. SHEL: I’m looking at this just from a collector’s standpoint. All the great artists of our times have dabbled in sculpture; Michelangelo, DaVinci and so on. They had some kind of an impulse. Paper was just a canvas, a flat surface; they reached a point where they had to do something in three dimensions. The Jack Kirby pages are 3-D without the crutch, perhaps, of actually doing the object in 3-D. You’ve taken the flat paper as far, I think, as you can go without actually building up on the surface. JACK: That’s because I don’t see it as flat paper. Like I said, I feel that I’m fighting a camera all the time. I feel that the camera has so much more scope than I have. I’d like to try to get that kind of scope into my drawing. I feel that drawings should be expansive, they should be powerful. I can’t see anything going “ping”; I like to see things go “BAM!” I don’t like to draw slingshots; I like to draw cannons. It’s that way with me, and I think everything we do should have impact of some kind. I think that we should be passionate human beings. Really live life in a way that gives us some impact, not to let it flow over us. Of course, I’m living a placid type of life, although I’ve done all the things that make men passionate; that’s under the bridge with me, and I don’t miss them in any way that would frustrate me. (laughs) SHEL: I think you’ve put your finger on the “Jack Kirby Appeal.” Unfortunately we’re not all built that same way. We have these passions within us, but somehow

society has put frames on it, and inhibited these emotions to such an extent that we need this escapism. Kids that go to school and study the books have to keep quiet during class, and they head for the corner drug store. They pick up a Jack Kirby magazine, and these emotions, these passions, come out in them through the medium of the comic. JACK: Well, I agree with you, because who knows what other channels there might’ve been for these passions, if that’s what they are? Around the neighborhood I came from, you were either a gangster or a lawyer. It was that kind of a neighborhood, where there was no in-between; just black-&-white, no grays. A man was either for you or against you; he either didn’t like you or he liked you. And you did the things you wanted, or you were told not to do them. So it’s that kind of atmosphere in which I was brought up, and it’s simplistic, I suppose. Maybe that’s what comes out in the drawing. SHEL: I can’t think of anything else, except, “Who is this guy, Stan Lee?” JACK: Stan Lee is my editor. (laughs) SHEL: How did you first meet Stan Lee? JACK: Stan Lee, I guess, came to Marvel when I was doing Captain America in the 1940s. He was a young fellow, and we were just nodding acquaintances. He was very nice, certainly, and we were nice to each other; we got along. That was about it; there was no evidence that we’d ever get together in any way as editor and artist. It just happened that way, that’s all; I came back to Marvel and Stan Lee was editor. I went to work for Stan Lee, and whatever Stan Lee’s policies are, they’re my policies. Whatever kind of a job Stan Lee wants done, I will do that job. I feel that’s the artist’s job; to cooperate with the policy of the publishing house. I’ve always done that. 51

right. I feel as Stan does, that these are real people. RICH: Of all the features you’ve done over the years, is there any particular one that stands out in your memory as what you would consider “Jack Kirby”?

(above) One of Jack’s runins with censorship, from Boys’ Ranch #1. At left is the original as it appeared in Oct. 1950, but when it was reprinted in Western Tales #33 (July 1956, shown at right), the newly formed Comic Code Authority must’ve felt those whizzing bullets looked too dangerous, and had them removed. Instead, a word balloon was added, explaining that Angel had fired shots.

(next page) Page 23 pencils from the Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles Treasury Edition (1976, natch!). We suspect getting yanked by the arm hard enough to take a car door off would cause serious bodily harm, but in Kirby’s stories, such a consideration was never a problem. Captain America TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

SHEL: I was just curious as to what was behind the most successful team in the history of comics. What kind of a working relationship—like a Rodgers and Hart, do you wait for the words and do the drawings from the words like he would do the music from the words, or does the music come first, and then the words? JACK: Not really; it can come any way. An idea can come from me, it can come from Stan, it can come from a reader. Sometimes we’ll get ideas expressed in letters from readers that we utilize in the comic. We’ll build a plot around that type of story. I feel that Stan Lee is very wise in looking over the letters from the readers, and keeping tabs on the progress that the character is making. Sometimes we’ll do too many science-fiction stories, and we’ll find that the reader is ready for some other kind of events, so we’ll take the character out of the science-fiction atmosphere, and put them back into a credible Earth atmosphere. SHEL: Like the marriage of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, and the subsequent birth of the child. JACK: Yes,

JACK: Captain America, I suppose, and a little bit of everything else. Captain America is all-motion, it’s all-movement, and it’s all-life, really. Not the story part of it, but the movement that Captain America is winning. That’s the way I analyze it. When Captain America jumps, he really jumps. He doesn’t do things halfway. When he lands on somebody, he lands on ’em good. Splat! (laughs) I suppose that’s my style, this moving. The quick and the dead. (laughs) SHEL: Have you ever had any problems with censorship? You’ve had so much freedom; have you ever gotten into any real trouble with the censors? JACK: Yes, all the time when censorship began. By the nature of my own drawing, if I draw a fierce character, he’s going to look very fierce. Of course, that doesn’t strike the censors as viable. So I get the roof pushed in on me every once in a while, and I find myself with smiling Indians, and cowboys with no guns, and ineffective fight scenes, where everybody is smiling and having a wonderful time. Of course, that doesn’t sell books; it didn’t sell books at that time. I’m not saying that non-violence doesn’t sell books; I’m saying that nobody actually has tried to create a format in which it could sell books. I think that’s a challenge to the comic artists of today. SHEL: The fact that you’ve put this comic element into your stories—the relationship between the Human Torch and the Thing, the personality clashes and so on—this human element has made the characters more lifelike. Sure, we’re violent people, we do things that are violent, but when we hit somebody, they don’t go “splat” all over the page. At the same time, when we do something violent—perhaps an example would be Leonard Starr working within a completely realistic framework. Leonard has mentioned that if he does do a murder—and he’s stayed away from something like this—using such a realistic media and style and approach, if he does do a murder or the death of a character... Perhaps going back to Caniff for a minute, when he killed off Raymond Sherman, this was such a tremendous blow to the reading public. He’s still having repercussions from it, because these characters were so lifelike. Now, with you having the fantasy element, the science-fiction, you seem to have the perfect blend. When you do put violence into something, it’s kind of a comic violence, isn’t it? JACK: I think we’re labeling it wrong. It’s not violence; violence for violence’s sake is abhorrent to me. I’ve seen every type of violence you can think of; it’s very ugly to me, it just repels me. Violence to me means movement, strictly movement. I can choreograph violence like a dance. When I think of violence, it’s actually very beautiful to me. You’ll never see any of my characters with blood running down their chins and their eyeballs out of their sockets. I don’t go for that stuff. That’s dead to me; it’s just as dead to me as a static figure would be. I can’t see it that way at all. SHEL: I read one of your stories where Captain America was just smashed to the ground, and had a tremendous blow to the midsection. I suddenly realized, good grief, there’d be internal hemorrhaging and everything. This guy’s not made of steel, he’s flesh and blood, and there’s organs inside. With an impact like that, this guy would be completely messed up inside. Realizing this, I accepted it and I didn’t question it too much because it was just too fascinating to see this guy get up. This hasn’t bothered me; it bothered me that one

time. Now I’ll read these things and I won’t even think of it any longer. JACK: I know what happens to a human being when he gets a blow to the midsection. It’s happened to me many times. I experienced it myself, and I’ve seen the effects of it on other people. But what you saw in Captain America was pure reaction. In other words, Captain America is pure action and reaction. There’s nothing in the violence that’s related to the physical aspects of it. If Captain America gets a blow to the stomach, he’ll react. He’ll tense up, his face will contort, but that’s all. It’s a reaction to the blow. It has nothing to do with the effects of the blow. If he’s struck hard, he’ll go back hard; it’s reaction and action. SHEL: Can you tell us a little about the technical aspects? What happens after you finish a page, and where does this artwork go? You’re working out in California now. What happens when you complete a page? Give us the procedure from the finished pencil to the finished comic book.

say something in our own way. I don’t know how you guys express it, but this is the way I express it. I don’t always know what I’m saying, but I’m saying something, and it’s strictly me. SHEL: Thank you very much for a wonderful interview; it’s been a real pleasure. JACK: It’s my pleasure to have you here, and if there’s anything you gentlemen would like in the way of refreshments, (laughs) just say the word and we’ll be glad to accommodate you. It’s been my pleasure. ★ Editor’s Postscript: Shel Dorf, in addition to being the founder of the San Diego Comicon, worked as a letterer for Milton Caniff on the Steve Canyon strip. Kirby, in addition to being a fan of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, had great respect for Caniff, as the following comments Jack made in Comics Revue #30 will attest:

“Milton Caniff was the first American cartoonist to install a classic nature into the American comic strip, and his work will always be remembered as the beginning of true journalistic art. “His work not only inspired those who came after him, but also involved them in the evolution of this art that is now truly universal and ranks with the best of those masters in every classic medium. “As a young man his work had a great influence on my life and stimulated my ambition to pursue my own way in this field. “It was a great honor and a privilege to have met him, and to know him as a friend. “I shall also be thankful to him, and shall miss him.” –Jack Kirby

JACK: When I finish the pencils and I write the motivation on the side of the panels, I send it back to Marvel. There, the dialogue is put in, and the inker gets it, the letterer gets it, and it goes on down the line to the photoengraver and to the printer. SHEL: How far ahead of the publication date do you work? JACK: Gee, I’ve been a little bit ahead this time. (laughs) I think, at the very least, two issues ahead. RICH: Are the covers done first, or after the stories? JACK: After the stories, because when we do the stories, we may get one illustration from the story that may be very striking, and can be used on the cover. SHEL: Jack, do you have any words of advice to someone who now goes home, burns the midnight oil, and has a page of Jack Kirby in front of him, and copies it and improves his own style, and wants to be another Jack Kirby? Do you have any words of encouragement for these people? JACK: No, I have words of discouragement. I say don’t be a secondrate Kirby; be a first-rate whoever you are. Take whatever you can from mine, or from somebody else, and integrate it into your own style, and be yourself. Don’t be a photograph, don’t be a Jack Kirby, don’t be anybody. Be yourself. You have something to say. You’re valuable; you have as much value as the next guy. You have something to say, so say it. Say it to the people around you, and if the people around you are of any interest to you, they’ll be in your strip too. They’ll be a part of the story. I think we’re all trying to 53

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

(center) Detail from X-Statix #1, by Mike Allred.

aking a break from last issue’s blockbuster expanded edition, this month we thumb through items cut from past columns and things that suddenly came up. Then, as befits this issue’s theme, we make room for a let-the-pictures-do-the-talking minigallery of how a new generation is drawing the Kirby way…

’Nuff Zed

(this page, bottom) Mock antiqued cover and sample page created by designer Robb Waters for the characters peopling Irrational Games’ Freedom Force videogame (covered here last issue). Now wouldn’t you like to see some publisher unleash Robb on the missing pieces? ©2003 Irrational Games, Inc.

(next page, top) Pages from the recent Kirbyevoking run of Black Panther, issues #41-47 (covered in our own TJKC issues #34 and #35). Shown at bottom are a retro cover and characterbubble, each by penciler Sal Velluto and inker Bob Almond and each rejected. Now would you have objected to these? Well, maybe you’re partial… TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(Thanks to T.A. Ewart, who commissioned the Kirbyesque Black Panther cover.)

From our grab-bag of over-the-transom treasures, Michel Gagné’s Zed is in the childlike yet mature tradition of the best French graphic albums, with a bit of gentle anime and a lot of warped imagination thrown in—no surprise from the Quebecois animation director of Osmosis Jones. It’s always refreshing to see the struggling comics industry graced by talents from its more successful cousin, the cartoons (à la Bruce Timm), and Zed is a breath of fresh air in its own right. With elegant and intricate yet always accessible imagery, and dialogue that floats between storybook simplicity and subtle satire, Zed tells the tale of a humble inventor whose device for unlimited, safe and healthy energy goes horribly wrong, destroying

a planet and making him a marked, um, antenna’d Smurf to alien aggressors seeking an excuse for war. The energy-crisis theme, the sights of blasted buildings, and the storyline of guilt and conflict reverberate in ways probably unexpected by

a creator who got his first issue into stores by September 2001, but they lend Zed dimension as a fairytale of the future, told with innocence and optimism while reflecting the anxieties of its time as all the best fairytales, charming yet “Grimm,” do. Stylistically, the interstellar sequences are excursions straight into the spacescapes of Kirby’s imagination, showing the timeless touch of his fables, too. (Explore Gagné’s comics and actual storybooks at www.gagneint.com.)

Not Brand X While our editor is letting me get away with Stuff I Like That Has Little Connection to the King, you’ve gotta take a look at Marvel’s X-Statix, formerly X-Force (as seen in The New York Times Book Review, kids). The relaunch to satirize all relaunches actually does connect to Kirby with a new member, Venus Dee Milo, whose theoretical limbs themselves are composed of the fabled “Kirby krackle”—a more fundamental metaphor than most for how centrally the King’s energy is imbedded in comics’ genetic code. Other than that, the sardonic saga continues to soar on the

super-powers of penciler/inker Michael Allred, whose pop-art refraction of real life distills a kaleidoscope of expression and imagination into a bizarrely plausible parallel present; colorist Laura Allred, whose neon gloom has in little over a year done for secondaries and intermediates what the preceding century of comics did for primaries; and writer Peter Milligan, whose savvy scripts always manage to stay a few inches ahead of our own genetically-modified, cameracrazed, paranoid post-9/11 reality. If you’re not reading this book you’re missing the Marvel Millennium of Comics!

The Vault of Euphemisms Strikes Again Regular readers will be familiar with the Vault, our well-stocked cellar of no-trophies for those who fall short of giving the King his full credit. Recently, though, we’ve been having to mint more turnaboutis-fair-play awards for those loyal subjects who give him too much credit. Another one is due to alternacartoonist Gary Panter for a picture-essay at the back of May 12, 2003’s New York Times Magazine on the simultaneous growth of the comics medium and the modern skyscraping cityscape. In a panel depicting the optimistic urban wonderland of 1960s Marvel, which shows the Silver Surfer speeding amongst Kirby’s spectacular building-block spires, Kirby becomes the only super-hero creator Panter mentions by name as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Judge Dredd go unattributed and Stan Lee remains unmentionable. How wrong it is, but how right it feels! And now make yourself at home in our gallery of what might have been and what should still be, as I take some time figuring out what’s next… ★ P.S. I hate leaving anyone out in this most creditconscious of magazines, therefore know ye that, while Bongo Comics’ uproarious Radioactive Man is indeed nowadays written by Batton Lash with rotating artistic co-conspirators as noted in last issue’s column, the simulated ’60s-Kirby classic we covered was written by Steve and Cindy Vance with art by Bill Morrison. These talents have my apologies, while an early-’70s

Kirby pastiche planned by Batton and destined for the column promises to finally make an honest man of me.—A.M. 55

Obscura

Barry Forshaw A new regular column focusing on Kirby’s least known work, by Barry Forshaw

he prodigious energy and invention of Jack Kirby (both as writer and illustrator) helped to create many great ideas and concepts, some enduring, some not. Often, others took up the baton and ran with characters that he created (such as the passable work by Bob Brown on Challengers of the Unknown that followed his glorious stint with Wally Wood inking Kirby’s dynamic pencils). For Harvey Comics, Kirby (and long-time partner Joe Simon) came up with a short-lived entry in the science-fiction comics boom, Race for the Moon (1958). The all-too-brief life of this magnificent title contained (in the second and third of its three issues) some of Kirby’s best art and writing, along with stellar work from such comics giants as Reed Crandall and Al Williamson. Ironically, the title had a longer life in the UK—I bought many issues of the bumper-sized shilling reprint (“Big 68 Pages—Don’t Take Less!”) in Liverpool and London newsagents; English reprint agents Thorpe & Porter ran the first three issues (backed up with DC and Harvey reprints), then simply continued the title using material from other sources, such as Marvel’s World of Fantasy (in fact, issue #4 of the UK edition of Race for the Moon had a splendid Kirby cover from the latter comic). The first US issue of RFTM, however, need not detain us long, as it was an all-Bob Powell issue—excellent stuff, but this magazine is not called The Bob Powell Collector. The cover, though—wow! One of Kirby’s most eye-catching space scenes (one of the many genres of which he was a master—his spacesuit and spacecraft design was second to none, infinitely more imaginative and sophisticated than the simple fish-bowls and silver needles most illustrators of the day settled for). A terrified spaceman in a yellow and red suit shoots way from an authenticlooking space shuttle, his lifeline snapped (“Man overboard! Adrift in space a million miles above the Earth!”). The impact of the cover alone makes this an essential purchase for Kirbyites. Longer life, however, was granted to another Simon & Kirby venture: their contribution to the horror genre, Black Magic, the first issue of which appeared from Crestwood/Prize in October 1950 (and, like Race for the Moon, had a lengthy reprint history in the UK in bumper-sized editions). Actually, as horror comics go, Black Magic is something of a non-starter, with horror elements played down at the expense of a more generalized supernatural atmosphere. In fact, Simon & Kirby’s work on BM looked forward to the distinguished writing of Richard Hughes on ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds, when the Comics Code forcibly removed the horror sting from both those titles. The Simon & Kirby approach was to farm out work to such reliable professionals as Mort Meskin and the

workaday Bill Draut (Bruno Premiani, later to draw the Doom Patrol for DC, was also a regular). Usually, Kirby came up with the lead story, or at least a splash panel for many of the stories— again and again, a magnificent Kirby splash is followed by less impressive work from other artists. The very first story in the very first BM, however, is all Kirby. “Last Second of Life” is a classic example of early Fifties Kirby: atmospheric, grotesque (too much so at this stage for traditional houses like DC), brilliantly designed. The story is conventional enough: a rich man is determined to see what a dying person encounters in the last second of life. He succeeds, but (of course) at a catastrophic price. This “true” story (did anyone buy the fact these were “true stories,” according to the blurb that many of these early issues carried?) is quite the best thing in the first issue of the magazine; the cover story “My Dolly is the Devil” (illustrated on the cover by a dramatic if sloppy Kirby scene showing a man thrusting a yellow-faced doll into a furnace) is illustrated by Leonard Starr rather than the King. But Kirby fans should look out for the low-grade copies of this issue that occasionally turn up—you’ll need deep pockets for a high grade copy. While his tenure at DC Comics famously ended with Kirby leaving under a cloud (after clashes with DC editor Jack Schiff over the Sky Masters newspaper strip), he still had time to turn in some remarkable work for Schiff’s mystery and SF titles. For the 13th issue of Tales of the Unexpected, he produced not only a classic Kirby cover but also a remarkable story, “The Face Behind the Mask.” That cover (beautifully colored, incidentally) shows a striking red-haired woman in a mink stole and figure-hugging green gown leaving a stage door, her face swathed in bandages while a trench-coated man watches her, thinking, “Every night, her beautiful face thrills the audience… and when she leaves the theater, she always wears that strange bandage!” The cover would certainly persuade any buyer to have picked up the comic in 1957, and the story (largely speaking) delivers the goods. However, before going on, I should point out that the next paragraph contains a spoiler—so if you’re planning to read the book, skip the next few sentences. The tale turns out to be one of those beloved by DC mystery editors from the days in which supernatural events are logically explained away. The actress (behind her mask) hides the ravaged and creased features of a woman 300 years old. Within the restraints of the Comics Code, Kirby ensures that the page in which she peels away the bandages to reveal her grim visage still packs a punch (even if it is later revealed to be a hoax). Elegant and arresting design are in every panel of the story; further proof that Kirby’s work for this title (and the others in the DC SF/Mystery stable) was the finest from any contributing artist of the period, even Nick Cardy who contributes a well-drawn tale in this issue of Tales of the Unexpected. All of the Kirby’s Fifties DC books are worth tracking down, but this one is something special. ★

The Eyes Have It

Technique

by Shane Foley (below) Kirby’s pencils to page 2 of Fantastic Four #91 (October 1969), and (right) the published page, diagramed to show how Jack would flow panels according to the eyes. All art this article ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. unless otherwise noted.

an Cairn’s “The Kirby Flow” (TJKC # 19) was a very good piece on Kirby’s storytelling. Here are some further characteristics of his techniques that are important to the success of his work. These involve the way the reader’s eye is moved within a panel (which could largely be read in conjunction with what Ian said) and also the way the reader is guided when he wants to get out of the panel and go to the next (which, at this point, makes Ian’s laying out the panels in a line inappropriate). (Now I’m sure I’ve read the basis of this before, but can’t remember where or who wrote it.) Here’s how I see it: Kirby pages are designed for those who know how to read; that is, the reader expects to start top left, read to the right then drop down to the far left of the next line and so on. Sounds simple, but Kirby uses this to move the eye where he wants so that the key storytelling points are found quickly and not missed.

WITHIN PANELS Kirby usually uses either a circular motion between main points of interest (usually heads) or a line between them (usually at heads’ or the eye level), and uses other ‘buffers’ to stop the eye from wandering away. Using this method, Kirby gets readers to see the main points of the story first, while backgrounds and other decorative material are only subconsciously absorbed unless deliberately looked at. A quick reader will never, in a Kirby story, overlook the main elements of the story and see only the backdrop.

MOVING TO THE NEXT PANEL Here is where I think Kirby is master, where many other artists fail—and it’s so simple. Kirby knew that his readers know how to read; that is, read left to right, then drop down and read left to right, etc. So he facilitates that to make sure the eye of the reader lands exactly where he thinks it should—i.e. not in the decoration of the panel, but at the main storytelling point (usually a character/ head). He does this by making ‘pointer arrows’ out of body angles, arms, shadows, action/stress lines, etc.—anything at all. He’s already using all those things to lead the eye around the panel in its circular (etc.) motion as stated above, but when the reader is ready to exit the panel and knows to go either ‘right’ or ‘down left,’ Kirby provides the easiest route for the eye. He then places the subject of the next panel directly in line with this route, thus, subconsciously to the reader, leading to the next point of importance. Therefore the storytelling continues uninterrupted. So simple, yet so often not done. Here are a few arbitrary examples: Fantastic Four #91 page 2 [left]: The eye enters top left, meets Barker’s head and travels right. It scans circularly between him, the thug on the right and the woman, and perhaps, the picture. (The far right thug is hardly noticed, he’s a buffer, keeping the eye in the panel, but adding subconsciously to the atmosphere.) When the reader is ready to leave the panel, he knows to go ‘down left,’ so Kirby aids that by having Barker’s arm going ‘down left.’ When the eye follows that, it strikes the key point of panel 2: Barker’s head again and/or the front thug. The eye scans around the circular arrangement (aided by the curtains) and settles on the invisible line between Barker’s eyes and the right thug’s eyes. 57

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would be the readers’ eyes escape route. (Cover up the figure of Johnny in panel 1 and you find your eye does exactly that—goes along Ben’s arm and comes to Reed in panel 2.) Working at the speed he did, it’s amazing he didn’t make tons of goofs, let alone this rather minor example. He was then perfect again in the next panels, with the eye leaving panel 2 along the curve of the planet and finding the two small subjects of panel 3 directly in that line. I’ve also included another example, this time from Quesada/Palmiotti’s recent Azrael/Ash graphic novel, page 46 [right]. I do this with my son’s “permission.” He loves these guys, yet acknowledged this glaring mistake. Let me add, most of the rest of this book works well and I’m not meaning to dump on these two artists. It’s just that they gave such a great example of what I’m talking about. (Sorry fellas.) The eye follows the 3 small heads in the first 3 panels, goes to the figure in panel 4, then runs along his arm to... nothing! The subject is way up in the top right. AAARRGGH!! The layout should have been something like this:

(We always look at peoples’ eyes.) To go to the next panel, Kirby knew we would follow that eye level line, so he puts the subject of the next panel directly in line with it. Our eye comes straight to Louie. Kirby’s framing techniques ensure we see Louie as more important than the henchmen. There’s no action in the panel, so, after it is scanned by the reader, there is little need for Kirby to be at pains to direct the eye carefully out of it. The corner/cushion is enough. The eye then ‘bounces’ off Barker’s forehead in panel 4 and easily finds Louie’s face. The reader subconsciously looks along the ‘line’ between the two men’s eye levels, so when he exits right, he follows that line—and meets Louie’s face again, right at that level. Look away quickly—you haven’t taken any notice of the back of Barker’s head, have you, even though you know it’s there. It’s Louie’s face you’ve been led to clearly. How about this page from Captain America #210 [right]: Eye enters top left—meets Zola’s headpiece/face (normally, the eye would not be drawn to the chest as it is here. Eyes always draw attention)—scans back to Primus’ face— his shoulders and arms create the circular motion and stops the eyes wandering out of the panel—time to leave the panel—the eye is assisted to go ‘down left’ by Primus’ arm and Zola’s hand—that line of vision is continued by Primus’ pointing arm/hand-eye directed to Zola’s face—eye scans around the panel— to leave the panel, it goes back up Primus’ arm (more along the heavy line at the base of it this time)—comes directly to Zola’s head piece in panel 3—eye scans along the ‘line’ between the two combatants’ heads—leaving ‘down left’ is aided by the shadow/paving—this line of vision is enhanced by the stonework in the next panel and the reader again sees Zola—eye goes around his body and the shadow and back up to Primus—a line between Zola and Primus’ heads leads directly to Primus’ head in the following panel. All the stress lines Ian talked of in TJKC #19 are there, and all the interesting camera angles of a good director. So are these basic methods to keep the readers’ eyes seeing the right thing first. Often, this ‘flow’ is not found in other artists (not only today’s, though it seems worse now) and thus reading is more difficult. Occasionally, Kirby himself didn’t live up to his own standard, even in his best works. Here’s one from one of my all time favorites: FF #62, page 14 [below]. In panel 1, the eye sees mainly Ben and Johnny’s heads. When exiting the panel, the eye follows that line to panel 2 and... the bottom of a rock. Search around a bit (the eye bounces off the planet, up to Ben’s hand and along the thumb to Reed, who is the subject.) It seems to me Jack subconsciously placed the subject of panel 2 along the line of Ben’s outstretched arm in panel one, thinking this

B U FF ER

BUFFER

To show that what I’ve said compliments what Ian Cairn wrote, here are the XMen #10 pages he referred to. Page 2: the eye enters at Scott, moves to the right, either as Ian suggested or similarly, from Scott to a line between the other three faces. To move to panel 2 (down, left), the eye takes the easiest route: the natural curve along Beast, Iceman and Jean’s hand, through to Iceman’s head. The eye scans in a circular way between the three heads. The rifle has the effect of a barrier to push the eye back to the heads, but it isn’t really necessary. What the rifle does do is point directly at Scott’s head in the following panel, as does the line between the three heads. (The rifle isn’t necessary to help the flow at all, but Kirby makes sure, that if it’s there, it’s only going to help, never distract.) In panel 3, Scott’s head tilt means a line through his eyes meets Jean’s eyes. Then, when exiting the panel, the reader subconsciously follows the head tilts out bottom left, and is carried along in the same flow by Scott’s body angle. The Beast’s head and body angle swing the eye back up, through his foot, to Scott’s head, down his arm to Iceman’s head. All important facets of the panel are quickly assimilated. The eye then follows Scott and Iceman’s arm/head directions, find the hand on the door knob and are led directly to Warren’s head in panel 5.

= Essential storytelling points/the subject of the panel) = eye movement within the panel = route of the eye from one panel to the next

BU FF ER

B U FF ER

Page 3: This page is busier, but works the same. In panel 1, the eye subconsciously moves between the five heads. It moves along this ‘line’ to get to panel 2, where it settles, aided by the pointing guns and Kirby’s framing, on the small figure carrying the body. The eye scans in a circular fashion around the panel, then exits by taking the easy ‘down, left’ route of going through the passive middle ground, bouncing off the foreground head and fur FER BUF collar directly to Zabu’s shoulder and head. Ka-zar is clearly kept in the background and is only seen after deliberately scanning around the picture. Notice how easy it would be to avoid the right half of the panel altogether and only subconsciously take it in. If reading quickly, the eye goes to Zabu’s head, then straight down the leg to panel 4. Once we follow that leg to panel 4, we go straight to Zabu again, with Ka-zar again sidelined. The circular motion is from Zabu, to the flying figures at left, down the legs to the vehicle side, along the tracks and back up the gun and Zabu himself. Ka-zar and the lifted figure are buffers at the side. When it’s time to go on, the eye follows either the angle of the lifted figure out to Scott’s head, or down the motion lines behind Zabu, through Ka-zar’s shadowed leg to Warren’s face. Once in panel 5, the eye goes mainly between the two important faces (Scott and Warren) and around, taking in the Beast (a buffer at the side) and Jean at the back. So simple, yet so often not done. ★

Art-Direction or Mis-Direct

Technique

(next page) Look how good Johnny and Crystal look together, side by side, ready to kick some butt! The re-drawn panel seems off-balance by comparison.

(right) “Unfinished and too cartoony” was Stan’s assessment of Dr. Doom’s chest buttons in this original art panel from FF #85. In the next issue Kirby had responded accordingly by adding more detail.

An examination of three panels which suggest that Stan Lee’s “corrections” on Kirby’s art may not have always been correct by Mark Alexander very picture tells a story,” besides being a great old Rod Stewart album, also could’ve been Jack Kirby’s motto insofar as his approach to the “illustrative narrative” (i.e., the comic book) was concerned. As magnificent as Kirby’s drawings were to look at, Jack himself considered them to be of secondary importance in the total scheme of things. Kirby’s main priority was to get the story told. The artwork had to function in that regard, otherwise, in Kirby’s view, it failed. This is why you’ll seldom find “poster friendly,” drawings in Kirby’s books, unlike in today’s “image-conscious” comics, whose main function seems to be to show off the artists’ pyrotechnics, while the storyline (if there is one) is relegated to secondary status. (Note: Kirby saved his poster-quality drawings for his covers, where they belonged: See Sgt. Fury #13, FF # 50, TOS # 59 and TTA #60 to name a few.) At this point, I’d like to state that I’m an avid fan of Stan Lee. I view the comics that Lee produced with Kirby and Ditko as the most potent and revolutionary ever created. However, with that said, it’s clear that Lee’s tenure as Marvel’s art director was due to default as much as anything. When Kirby returned to Martin Goodman’s comics company in the late 1950s, the operation was hanging by a thread. Goodman was ready to pull the plug, and the idea that he would pay a real artist to act as Stan’s art director was laughable. Commendably, Lee rose to the task, and for some-

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one who didn’t draw, he knew an awful lot about the medium. In fact, several of Lee’s changes to Kirby’s art (as seen in his margin notes) were surprisingly accurate and insightful. Many of them went beyond a mere “proofreading,” for continuity’s sake (i.e., “six buttons on Thor’s chest— should be four”). For example, when Stan noted that Dr. Doom’s chest emblems in FF #85 “lacked detail,” making them look “too cartoony,” he was right, just as he was right when he rejected Jack’s original FF #94 cover, for being “too cluttered and hard to read” (my conjecture). In view of this, I was shocked when TJKC #33 ran two of Jack’s original penciled pages from FF #44 (Nov. 1965—what a find!). Here we see two glaringly obvious changes to Kirby’s art wherein Lee’s judgement (in my opinion) needs to be taken to task. On page 20 (panel three) we see that Kirby originally drew

ion?

Sue Storm fully visible (no pun intended) in helpless anguish, as Dragon Man rockets skyward with her in tow. In the “corrected” version, D-man’s underside is seen mostly in silhouette, as are a pair of hastily drawn (i.e., mis-proportioned) feet, which are obviously Sue’s. Kirby’s original drawing conveys a greater dynamic to the scene. Every comic panel that Kirby ever drew could be thought of as a snapshot, wherein a specific arrangement of elements occurs, all with a clear and specific narrative purpose. Nothing in a Kirby panel is placed there casually, or accidentally. Discounting perspective, Kirby’s fundamental goal in panel composition is twofold: (1) He draws the reader’s eye naturally to the scene’s primary center of attention, i.e., the focal point that captures the viewer’s gaze, and contains the most important element(s) of the panel, and (2) to capture the prime moment. If one imagines the unfolding events as a series of moving images captured in motion, then Kirby’s aim is to capture the quintessential image at just the right moment in time, to give the scene maximum (visual) impact, in regard to its narrative flow. In this respect, Lee’s revised panel fails on both levels. The focal point should be Sue (specifically Sue’s face) which conveys her abject horror at being spirited away by the hideous Dragon Man. What this panel should have expressed, is how totally helpless Sue looked (like a rag doll) and how menacing the monster’s huge, grotesque hand looked wrapped around her waist. Moreover, in the “revised” version, the prime moment has passed (albeit by seconds, but that’s enough to capsize the panel’s effectiveness in regard to its narrative consequence). The solid, black mass that is now Dragon

Man’s underside, is a weak and visually unsatisfying primary center. As such, the reader’s eye rejects it as a “landing point,” and subsequently pulls back to Reed. This was clearly not Kirby’s intent. His original drawing has the opposite effect: it always draws your gaze to Sue’s face; there’s no way it will ever land anywhere else. Without Jack’s intelligently chosen focal point, the panel reeks of oversimplification and wasted space. What was the point? This same oversimplification rears its head again in the next panel (#4) and if anything, it’s even worse. Kirby’s original drawing of Madam Medusa pounding her fists furiously (but futilely) in an effort to break Gorgon’s tight grip around her waist, serves the narrative perfectly. It’s quite clear that the “lady of the living locks” abhors the idea of being dragged back to Attilan, and forced to marry “Maximus the Mad” (which we didn’t know yet). The published version seems under-drawn, and as the reader’s eye moves from left to right (which it does naturally) it comes to rest on an abundance of negative space on the panel’s right side, which seems like a bad choice. Again, why was it done? Jack left plenty of room for the corresponding dialogue, and Medusa’s presence doesn’t clutter up the shot. Is it possible that Lee (and I’m really reaching here) decided the depiction of these two beauteous babes, being gripped around the torso (i.e., right below their breasts) was too provocative for the kiddies? If this were the case, then a complete re-drawing of the panels (even by another artist) would have been preferable to this type of mutilation. Moving on, let’s examine page 20 from FF Annual #5 (Nov. 1967) which appeared in TJKC #21. Crystal (Johnny’s beau) was inexplicably erased from every panel in which she originally appeared

(after page fourteen). Her absence, in almost every instance, creates an unnatural gap (i.e., negative space) wherever she had originally been drawn (shades of Vince Colletta!). Nowhere is Crystal’s cancellation more noticeable than on panel five, where her omission totally disrupts the scene’s compositional balance, and an unnecessary “caption arrow” was added, to fill the void created by her absence. In it, Stan rambles on about the panel’s “aggregation of raw power” while Lee, ironically, has diminished that power with this unnecessary edit! Kirby’s original drawing is undeniably more balanced, and visually satisfying. Was there any valid reason for Stan to second-guess Jack’s artistic instincts throughout this entire story?

Analogy The Beatles’ song “Strawberry Fields Forever” is a unique recording. It’s actually a pastiche of two entirely different “takes” spliced into one. In his book All You Need Is Ears, the Beatles’ producer, George Martin, blows the lid on this audio abnormality, and reveals the exact point in “Strawberry Fields” where the splice appears. Once you know where the edit is, the song will never sound the same to you again. From then on, you’ll hear it for what it is: a pastiche, or “patch-up job” (albeit a brilliant one). This analogy (for me anyway) holds true for these classic FF stories. I’ll never again view those panels without thinking that they look “wrong,” or unnatural. They’ll hereafter seem less satisfying, knowing that Kirby’s original intent was undermined. ★

Floating Heads 101

Technique

by Ger Apeldoorn

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Ger Apeldoorn is a professional writer from Holland, who has written and produced several sitcoms for Dutch television in the last ten years and articles about comics for Striprofiel and Stripschrift for even longer. Last year, he wrote a play about Jack Kirby, Joe Simon and Stan Lee called The King And Me, which was given its first public reading at the British Comic Convention in Bristol. He is currently trying to find the time to rewrite it, so he can offer it to conventions in the US.

uess what, boys and girls? Today we are going to do a practical scientific experiment. The subject at hand is comics and we are going to have a look at a specific storytelling technique that was invented and almost exclusively used by the great master of the field, Jack Kirby—or was it? As numerous scholars have observed, comics are a unique type of storytelling that uses different combinations of text and illustration to convey a message. Most of these techniques have been catalogued in books by the pros themselves, such as Graphic Storytelling by Will Eisner and The Lexicon Of Comicana by Mort Walker. It’s everything from ways of dividing time between panels to how to draw that little squirly thing that indicates a character is running. Jack Kirby is famous for introducing a certain kind of dynamism on one level and the one panel page on another. But about the floating head panels (or FHPs as we call them here at the science lab)? As a true Kirby fan you must know what I am talking about, but for those few who are not that familiar with Kirby’s work and are only reading this publication to find out why your husband, brother or son spends so much of his time with this stuff, I’ll explain. For a short period at the end of the Fifties and at the start of the Sixties, Jack Kirby was called upon to draw angry mob scenes for his ‘monster comics’ (as in “professor in a castle creates monster; people from little village don’t like it; monster escapes; people form an angry mob and chase the monster; monster turns out to be an alien from Venus, a machine that could have made everybody happy, or a Russian spy who deserved to die anyway”). Usually there were even several angry mob scenes— one where they find out that the professor is at it again, one where they get together and tell each other how bad

this will end, and ©2003 one where they Marvel C haracter s, Inc. chase the monster with torches and mid-European farm utensils. Having become bored with drawing the obligatory “looking up to the castle in dismay” shot, he came up with a unique way to draw the panel quickly and interestingly while still keeping enough room from the average of three text balloons such a panel must have—a multitude of floating heads, symbolizing the mob, while focusing on their expressions, in a way that is more design than illustration, more storytelling than picturealizing, simply more comics than any other way. A nice example is on the third page of “I Created Sporr, The Thing That Could Not Die!” from Tales Of Suspense #11 [Sept. 1960, left]. In it, a nameless professor comes to a little town in Transylvania, where “Frankenstein supposedly created his monster” to try out his new “growth machine.” It’s an early example of Kirby design, which is intended to “make cattle, sheep and poultry much larger to feed more people.” A caption is over the FHP, as it is over almost every panel, since this was the Marvel Age Of Not Knowing When To Shut Up. Six villagers are shown; they are clearly distraught, as the dialogue in this panel illustrates. One of the beauties of this storytelling device is how recognizable it is. Even the first time you see it, you immediately know what is meant by it. Here are several people talking, almost all at once. Their urgency builds from one to the other. It’s like a montage of close-ups in film in a way a film could never do it. When I interviewed Will Eisner for the Dutch fanzine Striprofiel twenty years ago, he told me a story about an educational comic he had made for farmers in Pakistan. In it, comic storytelling was used to show them how to sow their crops. In one of the panels it showed a hand going into a bag to get a handful of seeds out. Some of the intended readers, who were unfamiliar with comics or film, were afraid to follow the instructions, because they didn’t want

to cut off their arms like the guy in the picture. The close-up was deleted from the comic. Here, this problem doesn’t exist. Kirby invented a unique way of telling this part of the story, relying on his ability to draw expressive faces and drawing the reader further in a frankly ludicrous story. I seem to remember he used it a lot, but when I started looking around for examples, I only found one more. It’s in “Vandoom, The Man Who Made A Creature” from Tales To Astonish #17 [March 1961, previous page, center]. I was curious to see if he used it in any places other than the monster comics. I can imagine it popping up in some of the western comics Jack did. A stranger comes to town—but the townspeople don’t trust him as they get together in the village square. What would have been Jack’s earliest use of this device? Was it in “I Created Sporr,” or has he found and developed it in some of his earlier work in the Fifties? A quick look through my collection of Black Magic and Alarming Tales reprints unearthed nothing. Such a clear storytelling device couldn’t have just appeared out of nothing, could it? I set out looking and found two more uses of the same idea, both predating the monster comics by more than fifteen years—and both not by Jack Kirby. One I bumped into while preparing this article was in a book reprinting the daily Spirit newspaper strip from the mid-Forties. In this particular storyline the Spirit promises not to fight crime for six weeks. On the seventh of July, one of the bad guys finds out and tells his friend: “Hey, Mike... hear about the Spirit refusing to fight?” He tells his friend, who tells his friend, who picks up the phone... and soon everyone is talking about it. Cue FHP—

John Severin (with Will Elder inks), Young Love Vol. 2, #2 (1950)

Mort Meskin, Golden Lad #3 (1945)

six crooks (two even dropping out of the panel) all shouting: “Spirit yellow! Spirit yellow! Spirit yellow!” So here the technique is also used to compress time and to suggest a montage—but a mob connotation of a different kind. The earliest example of a FHP I could find was in Superman: The Sunday Classics, a nice softcover paperback published by DC and Kitchen Sink recently, compiling the first three years of the Superman Sunday comic. On the ninth panel of the 73rd Sunday page from 1941 [right], a washed-up racedriver is looking for a job, but he “receives the same discouraging reply” everywhere. We see five floating heads shouting ‘No!’ six times. Same technique, using it mostly as a way to compress time.

So if Jack Kirby’s thunder is stolen here, at least it is by four of the other masters with whom he shares the Pantheon Of The Comics: Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel, Will Eisner, and Jack Cole, who clearly was the artist of that particular Spirit storyline, apparently over a Will Eisner script. Now for homework, class. I would love to see more examples of FHPs from any time period, Kirby or otherwise. Hey, maybe there have even been artists who used it after Kirby did. I will collect them and in a year’s time I will type up a nice list to send to Ohio State University for safe-keeping and for all future scholars to see. In the year since I wrote this article, I have found several new examples of floating head panels in comics all through the Fifties and Sixties. This storytelling device was used by enough artists to be considered normal but still not enough to be more than a rarity. The nicest examples I have found were by Alex Toth in a DC reprint comic, one by Mort Meskin in one of the early S&K romance comics, and even one by The King himself in Strange Tales #90 (in “Orrgo, The Unconquerable!”, reprinted in Fear #2 and Monster Menace #4), but no early Kirby examples—until I wandered through my collection of S&K crime comics once more and found a supreme example in Justice Traps The Guilty #7 (Nov. 1948). The story is called “A T-Man Triumphs Over The Phony Check Racketeers!” and is as long as the title, fifteen pages. The Floating Head Panel occurs on the last page (shown at the beginning of this article, the blotchy color barely fitting, as per usual) . As always, Kirby uses this time-shortening device both for great graphic and storytelling effect. In it we see a young lady who has taken over a phony check racket stand trial, and as the caption says, she faces a parade of witnesses—eleven floating heads, seven of which are speaking. She gets convicted, of course, because, “Those chumps are always after a big pay-off... never realizing it’s waiting for them in a prison cell!” In conclusion I am adding the cover for The Golden Lad #3 as an illustration. It doesn’t really count as a FHP, but hey, it’s floating heads and with Mort Meskin there is a Kirby connection and, eh... it’s a great cover. Class dismissed. ★

Mort Meskin, Young Love Vol. 2, #2 (1950)

Three FHPs, all from the same story! Alex Toth, Green Lantern #37

Pete Morisi, Danger #6 (1953) 63

Technique

Director’s Cut: Kirby’s Composition, continuity, & close-ups, caught on camera, and copied in comics... CUT! • directed by Mark Alexander “Nobody drew a strip like Jack Kirby. I always felt he’d have made a great movie director. He knew just when to present a long-shot or a close-up. He never drew a character that didn’t look interesting or a pose that wasn’t dramatic.” —Stan Lee he Man was absolutely right. Some of filmmaking’s most basic requirements are techniques that Kirby had down pat: imaginative camera angles and a powerful sense of composition, which not only gets the story across, but is also pleasing to the eye—scenes that are startling, evocative, and powerful, yet simple, with a direct (and natural) flow of narrative. If you think of the late 1950s and early 1960s Superman comics, you’ll recall an endless array of boring*, medium-shot panels depicting the subjects from the waist up. If you were a little kid, this wasn’t intolerable, but if you were over ten, this “standard DC” approach to composition seemed simplistic and greatly lacking in dynamism. At the same time all this boring b.s. was going on, Kirby was over at Marvel, avoiding medium-shots like the plague. He was tilting his “camera lens” every way imaginable, resulting in a multitude of endlessly interesting and dramatically compelling panel arrangements. He was doing things with perspective and foreshortening that lesser artists (i.e., everyone else) wouldn’t dare. Kirby had definitely adopted a cinematic approach to his art, and one of the filmmaking techniques that he toyed with for a few years (and then abandoned) was the old-school “cinematic segué,” a gimmick that proliferated in films of the 1940s and 50s. It was a simple, yet effective narrative device that was used to change from one venue to another, with a definite sense of flow and continuity. Here’s a great example [shown above] of how it worked in comics: In Sgt. Fury #4 (pages 6 and 7, panels 5 and 1 respectively), we see a close-up of “Lord Ha-Ha’s” left hand. The focal point is a ring on his pinky-finger which bears an unusual pentagonshaped crest. If this were a 1950s movie scenario, the camera would zoom in on the crest, then freeze. When the camera pulled back (slowly), you’d see the crest, now present on the envelope that Fury—who’s an ocean away—holds in his right hand. Voilá: the scene has changed, but with a great measure of continuity (and flow), in regard to its narrative consequence. And so, without further ado (and in no particular order), here are some of Kirby’s all-time greatest Silver Age cinematic segués... ROLL ’EM! ★

T (right) Of all Kirby’s cinematic segués, this one (from Sgt. Fury #4) was the most subtle. It appeared in the last panel of pg. 6 and continued on the first panel of pg. 7. The two scenes could not be viewed simultaneously because they appeared on nonadjoining pages (i.e., the crest on pg. 7 couldn’t be seen until the reader turned the page). As such, many younger readers (with short attention spans) may have only noted it subliminally, which was probably Kirby’s intention!

*Pun intended, Wayne.

Classic Silver Age Segués! Asgardian sonto-father fingerpointing segué. (Avengers #7, August 1964)

would pper segué” superior su ohad om “h en th is e and l time: Th o to the scen et Mutant mea n rof. X ag )— P 4 M e 6 9 er ed 1 arch had add neto (wh ag ck M Ja if en th ct X-Men #4 (M fe per that the o, Wanda, diametrically cts told him rmind, Pietr in te st as in M s , y’ have been b ad To sly, Kir underlings left to right) anel). Obviou erior” to his p p u s “s ou o vi drawn (from to re r p the g, note rce” was fa had been in of not eatin magnetic fo d speaking n (A ! as she “master of w em ; th te h da’s pla an W to “sup” wit on od fo ter?) the lack of st a fast ea dieting or ju

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Good m utant to evil mu tant seg (X-Men ué. #6, July 1964)

Influences

Foster, Kirby, & Windsor—

nfluence in the visual arts is a strange phenomenon. It can take the shape of the most superficial kind of imitation all the way to a profound identification of one’s own talents and goals. Jack Kirby’s influence is so overwhelming on the comic book artists that followed him that, it has been suggested, younger comics fans might not even be aware that there were comics before Jack Kirby! Let’s examine the principle influence on Kirby’s life and work, a man whose presence is not detected by simply applying the magnifying glass to either man’s drawings, but one whose career influenced Jack Kirby in the fuller sense of being an artist-storyteller— and powerfully influenced Barry Windsor-Smith, whom I would categorize as one of Kirby’s greatest disciples. His name was Hal Foster, and the jewel in his crown was Prince Valiant.

Some History Foster occupies a crucial position in the history of comics, as the first illustrator of a newspaper adventure strip. When Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan became the first commercial property to be licensed to the Sunday comics, Foster got the assignment, and he went to work fertilizing virgin territory. Of course, he was not the first man to tell stories with pictures—the narrative pictorial tradition goes back hundreds of years. But he was the first to apply to the newspaper “funnies” the attention of a master of illustration—a major development in the history of comics, inaugurating a new era after the predominance of the comparably primitive early humor strips that had begun with the Yellow Kid. Foster’s Tarzan run, of course, is still available in beautiful volumes, and all the elements of sophisticated figure drawing are there to be admired and, for many artists, imitated. He knew his anatomy very well, understood the need for Tarzan to move and pose with a tense-muscled catlike elegance, vividly characterized the other characters in the cast, understood where to position the “camera” to best display the action, and was faithful to the original concept of the characters. The Foster Tarzan is still highly important when appreciating the men who drew Tarzan after him, particularly those masters Burne Hogarth and Joe Kubert. Foster’s next contribution to the history of comics took the form of a career move, one that would be echoed, coincidentally or not, in the careers of many great cartoonists to follow. Having made his mark with Tarzan, a property created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Foster wanted to do a property of his own creation, Prince Valiant. In so doing, Foster, in a way he could not have known, established a pattern for many ambitious comics creators after him. As Foster left Tarzan to pursue Prince Valiant, Jack Kirby left the FF and Thor to do his Fourth World, and Barry Windsor-Smith went from Conan to, ultimately, the series in his exquisite Storyteller anthology. Many other artists have done, or attempted, the same thing. Now, I’m not suggesting that either Kirby or Windsor-Smith consciously thought of Hal Foster when they made their moves—but clearly the desire for an accomplished cartoonist to stretch his creativity to encompass the creation of his own ideas was present in Hal Foster well before any other comic book artist went through this experience of selfevaluation and self-direction. 66

—Smith: A Celebration of Influences Prince Valiant: The Ingredients Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant is the crucial paradigm for the adventure comic that Kirby ultimately sought. This is not to slight Alex Raymond, the other great creator of the adventure strip—indeed, bits and pieces of Flash Gordon show up through the history of super-hero comics in ways that are far more than

trivial; Jack Kirby assimilated Raymond’s elegant figure drawing into his early style more noticeably than he did Foster’s, in fact. But I’ve identified certain elements of Prince Valiant that make it so important to the history of comics, and in particular to Kirby. “All societies, all civilizations, have their legends, their myths, and stories,” Jack Kirby was often quoted as saying, and a brief examination shows us that the aspects of the Camelot legend that have made it so appealing are also present in the Norse mythology of Thor, and Jack Kirby’s own original mythology of the New Gods, and also, in turn, in Barry Smith’s “Young Gods” series in BWS Storyteller, which Smith introduced with “Dedicated to the Everlasting Memory of Jack Kirby” on the first page of every story. The King Arthur legend, like Thor, New Gods, and “Young Gods” presents a pantheon of characters, each with his own special story, personality, look, and exceptional abilities. Prince Valiant was the first such body of lore in the comics pages, and Foster executed it with such skill and love that it seemed as if the Knights of Camelot were created with the colorful Sunday pages in mind. Foster did his research and reproduced faithfully the distinctive weaponry, colorful dress, styles (beards were always a distinctive

elements of certain kinds of characters in particular), and architecture of medieval England. There are the knights, monstrous ogres, wizards, politicians, magic potions, swordfights, beautiful women of both noble and deceitful character, and, of course, Val himself, the star of the show, who plays against the more exotic characters with the heroic bearing that every reader would love to have himself. Colorful costumes and fascinating weaponry—and, on the female characters, hair-styles—are particularly important. Weaponry represents the extent of the technology of the period, and both weaponry and costume are key features for identifying the characters immediately and visually; without reading a word of text, a young reader can get the whole sense of a character as “the guy with the sword,” “the guy with the axe,” or “the fat guy in the red robes.” The magnificent blues of the belted tunics, the red capes, green tunics with yellow trim and pastel gowns on the women have a strong similarity, in fact, to those of Michelangelo’s colorful garb on the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel (which, not coincidentally, people have referred to as the “world’s grandest comics strip.”) The characters in Prince Valiant wear the predecessors of the superhero costume—and Kirby’s complex and imaginative costumes, like Foster’s, always made full use of the whole range of tassels, shirts, belts, buckles, collars, helmets, boots, and decorative motifs. One of the key lessons Kirby undoubtedly learned from Foster was that rich, detailed costuming is as important to a characterization as facial expression. Foster based his depictions on careful historical research; Kirby, having learned what he could from Foster, from Viking

design, and from many other sources over his life, went wild and concocted his characters’ costuming from his imagination. But each man excelled at rendering in exquisite detail every character’s accoutrements, so valuable to the validity of each character. The crowded battle scenes of Prince Valiant also stand as a precedent to the crowded battle scenes of so many Kirby stories. The most important difference between how Kirby and Foster choreograph battle scenes is compositional. Here, too, is where Kirby departs from Foster and assimilates his influence, rather than just imitating his style. Foster, for all of his drama, kept his drawings very much on the horizontal and vertical. Kirby, of course, in the development of what would become the cornerstone of the Marvel style, threw away the straight up-anddowns in favor of lines of action that magnified the drama a hundredfold. (“That’s Marvel!” Stan Lee would write in How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.) Foster’s battle scenes, even when hundreds of soldiers are battling and axes are being thrown and swords drawn, look positively civilized when compared to Kirby’s intense close-ups, exaggerated perspective, and dramatic scale. Perhaps here is an instance where Kirby is not as much like Hal Foster as he is like Alex Raymond—those classic Flash Gordon episodes have all sorts of diagonal and oblique shots of the hero in action, in a way one could call romantic, if not downright cinematic.

Carrying On the Tradition As I consider Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant to be such an important influence on Jack Kirby, it is hard not to see Jack Kirby as the similarly profound influence on the work and career of Barry WindsorSmith. Indeed, one can identify a “grandfatherfather-son” (or perhaps “father-son-grandson”) relationship among the three artists. The “Young Gods” series, in the late BWS: Storyteller published by Dark Horse, is an outand-out tribute to the work of Jack Kirby and, as I mentioned before, Windsor-Smith proudly and

humbly says so on each splash page, but in many ways it is the most genuinely personal and individual of all of his comic book work. For, the influence on Windsor-Smith is more than a superficial imitation of Jack Kirby’s style—it is a far deeper and more significant part of what makes Windsor-Smith the artist that he is. When Smith began his career in American comics, he pretty much did imitate Kirby, and his first story for Marvel in X-Men #53 was little more than a recitation of Kirbyesque figures, down to the fictional muscles. It was not a great piece of work, but fortunately, the powers at Marvel recognized his talent, and knew that there are many times when an exceptional creator’s first work is nowhere nearly as good as what follows. The young Englishman developed dramatically in stories he drew for Avengers and Daredevil. When Smith found his mature style with Conan, his work no longer looked like Jack Kirby’s, but it did have the weight, the drama, and the powerful storytelling quality that he had learned from his master. Just as we saw Jack Kirby’s departure from Hal Foster, we see in Windsor-Smith’s “Young Gods” the more individual and imaginative elements that Windsor-Smith brings to the work, in particular his exotic architecture and settings, costumes, and the wild flora and geography that populate the stories. What’s particularly charming is that the aspects in which Windsor-Smith’s work differs most dramatically from Jack Kirby’s— for instance, his rendering style and the general “template” of his characters’ faces—

(top to bottom) Barry Windsor-Smith’s evolution as an artist, from his early “Kirby-clone” work (although showing some Steranko layout influence in this unused 1960s Avengers page), to his solo Thing story from a 1980s issue of Marvel Fanfare, to his more recent work from “Young Gods” in BWS: Storyteller #2 (Nov. 1996), where he does his take on Kirby’s Asgardians, with finishings not unlike Hal Foster’s pen-&-ink style.

reveal the powerful influence of Windsor-Smith’s stylistic “grandpa,” Hal Foster himself. There are moments indeed where some of the women in the strip are dead ringers for Val’s wife, Aleta—and Windsor Smith carries it off with such natural grace that it makes a reader smile the way a parent may smile when he sees his children resembling their grandparents. And so we’ve come full circle. From Hal Foster to Jack Kirby to Barry WindsorSmith, we see three stages in the evolution of a comic strip genre. Whether with knights or Norsemen, New Gods or Young, the thread that works its way through the tradition sustained by these exceptional comic artists is one that has given me a great deal of joy and inspiration. I hope it will continue. ★ All art ©2003 Barry Windsor-Smith. Young Gods TM & ©2003 Barry Windsor-Smith. Rick Jones, Thing TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Comparison

Let Comics Be Thy Battlefield

by Rex Ferrell

The combatants? The fifth issues each of Silver Surfer (scripted by Stan Lee) and 2001: A Space Odyssey, scripted by Jack Kirby. Although written about 8 years apart, they make for an interesting comparison. Both books and all characters TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

o all my fellow members of Kirbydom Assembled: In our exuberance for the work of Jack Kirby, some of us have been guilty of taking potshots at Stan Lee. While some of it has been amusing, in the long run these jibes are counterproductive at best, and at their worst, a distraction from what should be our main objective: The establishment of Jack’s name as one of America’s greatest storytellers and certainly, to champion the cause of having him recognized as one of the elite representatives of American Cartooning—just as Ralph Steadman, Hergé, Osama Tezuka, and Keiji Nakazawa are respected overseas, if not world-wide!

As it relates to the Lee/Kirby collaboration and “who did what,” I have always believed that the best way to judge Lee’s story contributions (as opposed to his promotional abilities) was to look at the work that didn’t involve Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko (both of whom had major problems with Stan’s accepting the full writing credit for some of Marvel’s best known stories). On the flipside, many of Stan’s fans have accused us, both directly and obliquely, of dismissing Lee’s contributions while being delusional whenever we praise Jack’s writing talents. I have never “dismissed” Stan, I have just admitted that I actually prefer Jack’s stories more and I think some of my fellow “Kirby-philes” may feel the same. John Grisham may outsell Emily Bronte and may be more “popular”; this certainly can’t lead one to presume that he is somehow a “better” writer. Since the proof is in the pudding as they say, in the following comparison of two of my favorite stories, I hope to show that “The King” more than holds his own against the “Master of Words.”

The Tale of the Tape These two stories are both about the same length; are constructed similarly; both involve the basic concepts created by others and most importantly, portray the heroism of the

ordinary individual. Stan Lee’s story, “And Who Shall Mourn for Him?” (from Silver Surfer #5) and Jack’s tale, “Norton of New York 2040 A.D.” (from 2001 #5-6) are true showcases for their respective styles. Stan Lee is a true student of melodrama. He relies heavily on the use of the three A’s—adverbs, adjectives, and analogies—in addition to humor in order to pepper standard prose. (Example: “Slowly, inexorably, like a human dreadnought, the mighty...” etc.) The overall pacing is slowed down sufficiently to allow him to inject a certain amount of reflection by many of the characters, that which is known by the broad term “characterization.” (As we have learned from numerous imitators, in less talented hands, this practice can be extremely tedious or just plain boring!) By contrast, Jack Kirby, an untrained writer, knows nothing about “standard prose” by definition, only by experience from constant reading. As an artist (like Van Gogh in his letters to his brother) Kirby tends to think visually, relying on allegory and metaphor, in both his prose and his story construction. (Example: “It is said that every man has his dream! And, there is one which belongs exclusively to Captain America! In the private purgatory of the mind, it explodes in the aftermath of a trying experience! And ends in the shadow of a new and greater danger...”) In writing dialogue, Lee endeavors to make the characters speak in a contemporaneous fashion (i.e., present-day English). “Foreigners” and “extraterrestrials” speak English in a stilted or formal tone to imply their “exoticism.” Whenever possible, Lee includes contemporary slang. The fact that no one in real life ever spoke like Mary Jane Watson is irrelevant; her dialogue screams “It’s the ’60s, Tiger!” The drawback is that this dates the work. Much has been said of Kirby’s “awkward dialogue” and “lack of characterization.” Frankly, I don’t agree with either argument. Kirby’s dialogue exposes his influences. The speech patterns of the lead characters is Dickensian in arrangement and operatic in inflection. Metaphors are tossed willy-nilly and declarations are made in short, rhythmic bursts. Whenever someone of less education speaks (replete with “ain’ts” and dropped Ns), the influence of the Warner Brothers’ 1940s gangster movies rears its head, wherein dialogue is delivered with dynamic rapidity. The uniqueness of Kirby’s verbal medley can be unsettling to someone accustomed to a house style, but the reader is well rewarded for their patience. As for characterization, I think what fakes out a few people is that Kirby rarely employs the thought balloon; in other words, his characters seldom stand around and mope. Their pain, love, sorrow, and joy is expressed through their speech and more specifically—through their actions! Because Kirby is also the artist, he is able to infuse the character’s body language with emotional potency.

The Fast & The Ticked Off “And Who Shall Mourn...” begins with a caption reassuring us that Marvel Comics hadn’t accidentally put a Fantastic Four label on the Silver Surfer’s comic despite the fact that we are indeed looking at two members of the FF. In the middle of bathing for the day’s events, a soapy Thing exclaims that he hears the intruder alarm. Still in his PJs, Reed Richards believes that someone is trying to steal his “space scrambler” and curses the publicity that was given to the device. (Good ol’ Reed, why should we keep secrets from the Soviet Union and China right in the middle of the Cold War?) The two meet up with the fully-dressed Human Torch and all three of them head for the not-so-secret laboratory. They spot the exit of the super-fast thief whom Reed assumes is using jets (chances are Warner Bros. reassured them that the Road Runner was indeed out of town). When it is confirmed that it was the space scrambler which was taken, Johnny Storm decides to give chase. The “gleaming” object remains just out of reach no matter how fast he pursues, and soon soars beyond our atmosphere. Without oxygen, the Torch’s flame begins to go out. Before tragedy can take place, Johnny “flames on” in the nick of time. He flies away wondering if they will ever find out who stole the scrambler. “Gleaming?” “Super fast?” Come on, after all that time you mean to tell me “Big Brain” Reed Richards couldn’t hazard a guess? In space, we learn that the thief was the Silver Surfer, who is aiming the device at the barrier Galactus had created to imprison him on Earth. The “space scrambler” is designed to penetrate dimensions and Norrin Radd believes that it might just be his “key to eternal freedom.” He didn’t ask to borrow the device because he didn’t want to take a chance on Reed’s refusal. He had had enough of Earth and it was time to get the heck out of Dodge! However, the scrambler is unstable and explodes into fragments. In his delirium, he sees the image of

(this page and next page, top) John Buscema art from Silver Surfer #5, showing us “How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way” long before he and Stan teamed up on the how-to book of the same name.

(next page, bottom) White Zero lives out his fantasy in Comicsville, in this two-page spread from 2001: A Space Odyssey #5, scripted by Kirby. This story is dated April 1977, shortly before the first edition of How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way was published in 1978.

his lost love, Shalla Bal! It turns out that this was a dream and he awoke to find himself in the home of physicist Al B. Harper. Harper explains that he had been out rock collecting when the Surfer literally fell out of the sky. He guessed the Surfer needed help so he took the unconscious former herald home with him, sympathetic with how the Surfer had been “pushed around” by humans. Harper is an African-American but Stan chooses not to approach the topic of racism directly, feeling that readers would get the point. After the Surfer explains his problem with the Galactic barrier, Al agrees to help him but admits he doesn’t have the substantial funds needed to tackle such a problem. The Surfer flies off saying that he would get the money. “I’LL FIND YOU, EARTH MAN! AND WHEN I DO...!” snarls a multieyed, multi-limbed, gun-toting alien. Behind him is a new Kirby creation— The White Zero—who declares, “This hidden lair is alive with hostile aliens!” Thus begins “Norton of New York” which is followed by a two-page orgy of Kirbyesque action [see next page]. In the caption, Kirby explains that comics have taken on a fantastic lifestyle for the average man! The White Zero waylays the aliens while searching for the gravest menace to face the solar system—“The Holocaust Bomb!” He finds it and with sheer brute strength, the Zero lifts the machine and destroys it just as the villain makes his appearance! Although the Death Master cries that the beautiful Princess Adora is in his clutches, the Zero vows to rescue her and begins searching the dark corridors for her. Throughout, Kirby’s captions alternate between sarcasm and melodrama, relishing in the heroics one moment only to subvert them the next. Why? It is only with the appearance of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Monolith” that the tone seems to shift back to the voice we have heard

in the previous issues. The White Zero embraces the Monolith but before he can fully “hear” its message, a trap door opens and down he plunges. The Zero continues his adventure and soon catches up with Death Master. A blast of his “ray gloves” and a blown-away villain later, the Zero walks over to the escape vehicle to rescue the beautiful princess. She turns out to be a rather large woman and definitely not the Carrie Fisher-type he was expecting! “What’s the matter? Didn’t I speak my lines correctly?” she asks. The White Zero tells her, “You said the right lines; but you’re the WRONG princess!” Angrily, the Zero picks up the communicator and tells the manager that they had made a mistake. The manager calmly explains that the model they hired couldn’t make it and his

contract made no specific mention of the type of princess that he wanted; naturally, refunds were out of the question! The Zero enters the next room where he finds other “super-heroes” awaiting their time in “Comicsville.” This whole sequence of events was a very elaborate drama, complete with special effects, villains and a... princess. In his dressing room, “The White Zero” removes his ruggedly handsome mask to reveal the mundane, pug-nosed face of Harvey Norton. (There’s no way you can confuse this blonde gentleman with Steve Rogers or any of Kirby’s other blonde-haired heroes!) The manager suggests that if Harvey wants real adventure he should stop sitting on the fence and join the space program. (They’re hiring?!) Norton scoffs at the suggestion and leaves Comicsville. Kirby’s caption is especially brutal: “Harvey Norton discards the hollow glamour of the White Zero and once again faces the drab reality of his existence...” (ouch).

New Jack Cities With some clothes supplied by Al Harper, the Surfer makes his way to the city and still manages to frighten a few passersby. “Poor, pathetic creatures! So riddled with FEAR...

with gnawing DISTRUST... what monumental IRONY... that they, who rule a PLANET... should be so INSECURE!” After this brief moment of profundity, the Surfer makes the rounds to several outlets of potential employment. This is humorously depicted by Stan and artist John Buscema which hearkens back to some of the best Ditko/Lee moments in the early Spider-Man adventures. The Surfer is repeatedly turned down either because he doesn’t have proper documentation (a Social Security card, references, etc.) or they feel his odd appearance would frighten customers! Desperate, he turns to his only(?) recourse: He decides to rob a bank. With the Power Cosmic, this proves to be child’s play until guilt gets the better of him and he refuses to sink to “our lawless level.” After mesmerizing a guard who stumbles onto his presence, the Surfer flees to the streets where he encounters a badly beaten man in an alley.

The man details how he got into this sorry state. His wife was sick and the medical bills were piling up. He turned to gambling, hoping to win the needed money. After several losses, he noticed the dice were loaded! Needless to say, this is how he wound up in the alley. Outraged, the Surfer asks to be taught the game and decides to visit this illegal gambling establishment. At the dice table, the Surfer again uses the Power Cosmic to control the toss of the dice so that he always wins, believing as Frank Langella said (in the role of Zorro) that “taking from a thief isn’t stealing— merely irony!” After the former herald cleans everybody out, a group of these thugs decides to meet him outside and “relieve” him of his winnings. The thugs attack Norrin and try to run him over with their car in order to make it look like an accident. The other man whom the Surfer had met earlier tries to save him by standing in the path of the onrushing vehicle. Having had enough of playing “possum,” the Surfer decides to end this farce and does so immediately! Afterward, he gives some of his money to his would-

be savior so he can pay for his wife’s medical bills. When Norrin flies away on his board, the man is astonished to find out that not only is there a Santa Claus, he goes by the name of The Silver Surfer! “New York, like ALL large cities of the year 2040 A.D., is a vast community sheltered by an ASTRODOME. It is a great shopping mall, stretching for endless miles—and Harvey Norton is now just another mote among the shuffling masses...” Added to this horrid description of the future megalopolis, Kirby includes Norton’s bitter recrimination: “I don’t know what prompted me to take a fling at that LIVE ACTION hero mill! At any rate, I WASN’T the only fool in the place!” The dark vision continues as Kirby describes how the few remaining cars are status symbols for politicians. The bulk of the population travels by the efficient but often overused and overcrowded subway system. Entire urban districts have been abandoned to rot away under a perpetual cloud of smog. Riding on the train, Norton sees all of this

and “...he accepts it like all the others!” After exiting the train, Norton approaches his home: a multi-paned building that fills the entire panel. (I suspect this condominium complex was as large as the Empire State Building! Although Norton’s own apartment is no bigger than the average living room, here in the 21st century, there are many who would give their eye teeth for such a haven.) Once inside, Norton prepares an automatic chicken dinner and turns on a “cassette film” that looks like a (three-dimensional) version of our present day VCR. It’s a superhero saga, of course, and he comments that he would like to rent it again. After a while, he decides to relax with a canister of “fresh air.” (This last bit of “prophecy” is something I hope we never have to face. Bottled water is heart-breaking enough!) The next day, Harvey Norton goes for a swim at the beach, but even this idyllic moment is misleading, as we discover when Harvey walks toward the distant horizon. He is stopped abruptly because “It’s all a mirage! Just another hologram projected on the large walls that enclose the beach— and Harvey’s life...” “I-I’m a CAPTIVE—in a MAN-MADE cage of illusions—a world-wide Comicsville which has LESS substance than my own dreams... It’s a comfortable Hades—and not without beauty—BUT IS IT ENOUGH FOR HARVEY NORTON?” Just then, the Monolith appears before Norton again and this time his connection is not broken. It probes his innermost thoughts and leaves him with a desire to go ahead and join the space program. He does so and two years later he is orbiting the planet Neptune with his fellow astronauts! The astronauts are loading aboard their ship a mysterious “alien capsule” they have discovered. It is the first contact with anything constructed by non-humans since the “legendary” first appearance of the Monolith on the moon in the year 2001! (Remember, this takes place several years after the end of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel!) Careful observation seems to reveal a face within the capsule! In the airlock on board their ship, the scientists learn this is exactly the case. The commander is prepared to use cyanide gas on the chamber unless they get a look at the creature. The capsule soon opens on its own, and who should it contain but a large-headed, “beautiful” alien female! (That is, if one likes women with gargantuan craniums!) Harvey Norton is ecstatic because this encounter fulfills all of his comic book dreams. “Man! Look at her! She’s REALLY something else!” Harvey says gleefully. “Remember that, Norton,” his commander admonishes. “She’s SOMETHING ELSE! Alien and possibly—LETHAL!” The ship is suddenly rocked by violent impacts! Norton is shocked and rushes to the observation blister to get a fix on what’s happening while he tells his fellow crew members to mount the weapons systems. (Do they even have weapons?) He is aghast

at the sight of an enormous battleship! He feels that its presence could only lead to the fulfillment of his “destiny.” (This sequence of events is especially intriguing because it is almost an exact replaying of the beginning of the first Star Wars film... which didn’t open until 1977, several months after this story was published! Actually, Kirby probably wrote this in the middle of 1976!)

Some Kind of Heroes The Surfer returns to Al Harper with the money and reassures him that it was “justly” (as opposed to “honestly”) obtained. He beseeches Harper to build a device that will allow him to breach the barrier. Although he is no Reed Richards and certainly no Galactus, he will do his best. “I didn’t REALIZE what I’d be getting myself INTO...” Harper muses as he works. “But I CAN’T let him down now! He’s treated like an OUTCAST wherever he GOES... just because of the way he LOOKS! Just because he’s... DIFFERENT! Maybe it takes a guy like ME to really UNDERSTAND!” Harper, a master physicist, designs a device which he hopes will disguise the Surfer’s molecular structure and not activate the barrier if the Surfer approached. The Surfer tries using the device only to watch it fail. However, he has no time to grieve due to the appearance of the powerful alien known as The Stranger. This intergalactic buttinski has decided that we humans are a barbaric plague that should be eliminated before we have a chance to spread across the “peaceful” universe. (Yeah, never mind the Skrulls, the Kree, et al.) He plants a “Null-Life” bomb designed to purify the Earth of human life. The Surfer argues that all we need is enough time to mature and that we are not a race without promise. The Stranger laughs at this and departs. The Surfer is frantic. Humankind must be warned, and who’s the first person he calls? Reed Richards? Nope. The Avengers? Nope. None other than his friend Al B. Harper! Harper calls the cops, but they tell him they’re too busy with robberies and gang fights to chase after some “mad bomber from space!” Harper and the Surfer decide to find the bomb themselves. Using a “Geiger scope” Harper designed to locate “unearthly substances” like meteorites he had hoped to add to his rock collection, the two search city after city until the Geiger scope reacts above what appears to be New Jersey! Harper searches for the bomb while the Surfer tackles the Stranger. The Stranger invites Norrin Radd to accompany him into space and leave the humans to their fate. The Surfer’s response: “My EVERY waking hour is spent seeking ESCAPE from this chaotic world! But, even if I now were FREE to go, the Surfer chooses to REMAIN to FIGHT for those who have TORMENTED him!” The Surfer’s dialogue has been contradictory and self-righteous in the past, but with this statement, Stan summed up the Surfer’s character in a way he hadn’t done successfully since Fantastic Four #50. While the two extraterrestrial titans engage in a cosmic slugfest, Al Harper patrols suburbia with his device. He is soon accosted by a group of Joe Sixpacks who think this guy with the “gadget” may be responsible for the chaos in the city, which they’ve heard about in the news. They attack him but he manages to get away in one of their own automobiles. He follows the increasing signal until he finds the bomb encased within a rock just outside a cemetery. Harper shatters

the stone and attempts to deactivate the bomb when a defensive, acidic vapor is triggered. The caption recounts the following events: “And, even as the very breath of LIFE is agonizingly DRAINED from his tortured body, Al Harper works ON... until, at last... the valiant HEART can beat NO MORE...” Harper dies and the deactivation of the bomb sends a signal to the Stranger. He concludes that none could have stopped the bomb without giving his or her life. “...once AGAIN I have MISJUDGED the supremely SAVAGE... yet strangely SELFLESS human race!” He departs leaving behind the Silver Surfer who reflects: “He is GONE... while I REMAIN a PRISONER... as before, upon this tragic world of TORMENT!” (There he goes again!) Just like numerous episodes of Star Trek, Harvey Norton and his fellow astronauts are staring at three alien figures who glare from their communication screen. But unlike most sci-fi shows, the crew cannot understand them because they are speaking in their native language—instead of English! However, they must want something and they are determined to get it. While the others are concerned, Norton calmly reassures them that the “home team” always comes out on top. He also expresses his admiration for the alien battleship, a comment that infuriates his commander! “WE’RE IN A LIFE AND DEATH SITUATION, NORTON! What we need the LEAST is your comic book mentality!” However, Norton reasons that what the aliens want is the alien-female whom he insists is a princess! She’s obviously frightened but is she afraid of the humans or the aliens? If it’s the aliens, we don’t truly know why. (Is she a princess or an escaped criminal? A politician—crooked or otherwise? A former lover?

We readers have no idea; we have only Norton’s fantasies, and Kirby, to guide us through the subsequent events.) What is certain is that she definitely resembles the other aliens; they have tracked her capsule to the Earth vessel; and they won’t leave until they have her! While the other crew members and their obtuse commander prepare to abandon ship, Norton leaves the command post. The caption states: “There is in many men, a sense of the dramatic which governs their lives, in Harvey Norton this instinct is vital and STRONG! He acts upon what he feels is the truth, and let’s the Devil take the hindmost...” He runs to the airlock and faces the alien-female. “Hi, Princess, looks like the wolves are snapping at our heels! That’s right... I said OUR heels! Y’see, the way I feel about it, your enemies are MY enemies! TRUST me, we’ll beat them—TOGETHER— you and I!” Soon, the crew notices that the aliens have stopped firing upon them and have actually departed. After searching the ship, they check the airlock and find that the capsule and the alien female are gone. So is Harvey, who has left a note behind. In the note he says that he wanted to take the heat off them as well as give the “princess” a fighting chance. Their ship hadn’t sustained major damage but they are incredulous over Harvey’s action. What happened to him? Would they ever see him again? Would they ever know? “I know this,” the commander says. “He was a damned HERO!” It turns out that the capsule was a space cruiser of some kind and the alien female may have been making repairs while she came aboard the Earth ship. The cruiser now hurtles beyond the solar system, 74

with the battleship in hot pursuit. On board, while she pilots the ship, Norton is a veritable, and delusional, chatterbox: “What’s your name? Where do you live? Why are the “bad guys” trying to run you down? Well... that’s not important right now! We may be blasted into powder in the NEXT ten seconds... what counts is our being TOGETHER— trusting each other—a dude and a chick from DIFFERENT worlds! I-IT’S A MIND-BREAKER!” You can say that again, especially since the alien female has no idea what the heck this guy is saying! The “princess” activates the “Star Drive” causing the cruiser to warp into another galaxy! However, the battleship isn’t far behind and begins to fire upon them. She manages to evade them and comes to a landing upon an alien world, but not before being grazed by a lucky shot! Norton and the female escape but just barely, because she has been hurt. A landing party emerges from the battleship but the alien female gives Norton a small device that resembles a pistol. Norton fires this at the aliens and finds it’s powerful enough to decimate the entire landing party! The “princess” points to a large edifice in the distance which Norton assumes is a fortress. In the captions, Kirby tells us this is actually a

“sending station” used to transport the citizens of this galaxy from place to place; a teleporter, if you will. The alien female invites him to join her on the platform. When Norton hesitates, she vanishes. Before Norton can follow, the battleship’s guns blast away at the platform: “A frustrated enemy does not take defeat easily! He stabs the sending station with lethal bolts! He pulverizes it, stone by stone... when his destructive work is done, the enemy departs. In his wake he leaves jagged scars, scorched rock, and the battered shell of Harvey Norton...”

Interstellar Epitaphs The Surfer eventually makes his way to the graveyard where Al B. Harper met his end. He discovers two men—their memories wiped away by the Stranger—who had found Harper’s body and buried it: “It’s a good thing we did come by... or that poor Joe mighta lain there for MONTHS! I wonder

who he was... and what happened to ’im?” “Aww, what’s the DIFF?” asks his companion. “We ALL gotta go sooner or later! Who’s gonna care about ONE guy more or less? Just a NOBODY!” After the two have gone, the Silver Surfer steps forward. “‘One guy more or less...’ who gave his LlFE... that men might LIVE! And there he LlES... unknown... unmourned... I say it is not FlTTING... and so, it must not BE! Of ALL who have dwelled upon this planet, NONE is more deserving of solemn TRIBUTE... than HE! AND TRIBUTE HE SHALL HAVE!” The Surfer ignites a cosmic flame atop the grave. “So long as Earth itself ENDURES... that flame shall BURN! May you sleep in PEACE, Al Harper! For you have been... a HERO!” Harvey Norton lay amongst the debris, death rapidly approaching. It seems at first that his ending is a terrible waste. In pursuit of his fantasies, he unwittingly saved his fellow astronauts only to meet his end on an alien world... still lost in his dreams, never really knowing if he did the right thing. Rising from the soil like an ebony Rosetta stone, is the Monolith. Like the Surfer, the only witness to this ending is extraterrestrial in origin. As in previous stories, Kirby only allows the Monolith to appear before those who are somehow “worthwhile.” In some way only the Monolith really knows Harvey Norton has achieved the heroism he has always wanted... and is rewarded! In a vision, Norton has become Captain Cosmic and from his secret headquarters, he sees the city he loves; no longer the rotting, smog-covered city on a faraway Earth, but a shining, prosperous metropolis from his favorite super-hero titles! He sinks into his chair to rest, unaware that he is aging rapidly. He looks back “...upon a life of great adventure and a NEVERENDING future of jousting against injustice...” He continues to age until he finally expires: “For Captain Cosmic, the day is TRULY done...” Although this is the end of Harvey Norton, it isn’t the final act. Harvey’s raw essence undergoes a transformation into one of A.C. Clarke’s “New Seeds.” “The Monolith appears as one odyssey passes and another one begins. For what was this man, but the preparation for a NEW SEED! And what is the

New Seed, but man’s admission to a WIDER universe...? The New Seed adjusts HAPPILY to its surroundings. The universe is a VAST home in which it will live and thrive. Before it departs to fulfill its destiny among the stars, the New Seed gazes ENIGMATICALLY from its RADIANT POD. There is a deep wisdom in its eyes—and the forming of VITAL decisions. When they are made, it will be gone...”

Conclusion There we have it. Yes, Stan Lee was a talented scripter, but when it comes to storytelling, he was no Jack Kirby. The Surfer story, although touching, was not that much different from Lee’s earlier tales of “ordinary guys who make good.” With the Kirby story, there are many layers of which I have only scratched the surface. Some have speculated that it may even be an allegory of Kirby’s career in the comics industry! Although Kirby did super-heroes better than anyone, when one looks back at his output, especially at his approach in handling some of those same heroes, one gets the feeling he preferred a wider variety of genres. Also, this story demonstrates Kirby was more literate than we give him credit for. The captions may be “heavier” than those in the Surfer story, but nearly every word is integral; nothing is wasted— and the story still flows at that frenzied Kirby pace we have come to love. By the time we reach the finish, we are left breathless and yearning for more! All Kirby needed was an editor who was in his employ, rather than the other way around; someone to catch those occasional grammatical missteps. However, when I realize that he was writing and penciling so many titles simultaneously, each one a classic more often than not, I’m willing to forgive the occasional slip-up! I choose not to bemoan the cancellation of projects like the Fourth World before they were completed. Instead, I feel that we should applaud the fact that he was able to achieve so much within the current system, despite the fact that he didn’t have the freedom and support his European and Japanese peers have enjoyed for years. Finally, what separates Kirby’s work from Lee’s is the vision: their respective views about the comics medium and its potential for interpreting life in general. Lee’s stories, although interestingly told, are in black-&-white—good and evil—heroes and villains. It’s a very juvenile viewpoint. Yes, there is real evil in the world, from Ted Bundy to Hitler to Milosevich; however, the vast majority of blood has been shed because of conflicting and many times perverted value systems. People have died over things like access

to minerals, skin color, different religions, and even something as simple as children’s sports! In Kirby’s stories, without nudity or extreme profanity, he was able to present this lesson in an entertaining and occasionally fascinating manner; a lesson that children and especially adults must never forget! I’ll let other fans speculate as to how he developed this vision and what shaped it. One clue came from the Jack Kirby Quarterly #1. When asked to sum up what his work was “about,” unhesitatingly, Jack responded: “It is one word: people. I’ve always loved people, people have always been a part of my life. I think people are very valuable...” Amen, brother. “Roll, baby, roll!” ★

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SENSE OF WONDER Acclaimed historian Bill Schelly gives you AN INSIDER’S TOUR of comics fandom of the 1960s & ’70s. The fans, the comicons, the fanzines—they’re all here!! • Introduction by ROY THOMAS, cover by DICK GIORDANO! • Share Bill’s encounters with FREDERIC WERTHAM, STEVE DITKO, BOB KANE, JIM SHOOTER, and more! • Over 150 photos and illustrations by KIRBY, DITKO, NEWTON, EISNER, C.C. BECK, KALUTA, KRENKEL, COCKRUM, SINNOTT, GIL KANE and others! (216-page Trade Paperback) $20 US

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HIS BOOKS OF FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE, VOL. ZERO MR. MONSTER is back with a new book collection featuring TWELVE TWISTED TALES of Forbidden Knowledge, featuring: • Over 30 pages of ALL-NEW Mr. Monster art and stories by MICHAEL T. GILBERT! • Collects the hard-to-find MR. MONSTER stories from A-1, CRACK-A-BOOM! and DARK HORSE PRESENTS! • The lost Mr. Monster NEWSPAPER STRIP! • New 8-page FULL-COLOR STORY by KEITH GIFFEN & MICHAEL T. GILBERT!

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JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST

This is the definitive checklist of Kirby’s work! Lists all his PUBLISHED COMICS in detail, plus PORTFOLIOS, UNPUBLISHED WORK, & more. It even CROSS-REFERENCES REPRINTS, making it easy to find inexpensive alternatives to the original comics! A MUST-HAVE for eBay shoppers! (100-Pages) $7 US

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Edited by ROY THOMAS ALTER EGO, the greatest ’zine of the ’60s, is back & all-new, focusing on Golden & Silver Age comics & creators with articles, interviews, & unseen art. Each issue includes an FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) section, Mr. Monster, & more!

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CO OMIC COLOG GY Edited by BRIAN SANER LAMKEN COMICOLOGY, the highlyacclaimed magazine about modern comics, recently ended its fourissue run, but back issues are available, featuring never-seen art & interviews.

CC #1: (100 pgs.) BRUCE CC #2: (100 pgs.) MIKE CC #3: (100 pgs.) CARLOS CC #4: (116 pgs., final issue) TIMM cover, interview & ALLRED interview & portfolio, PACHECO interview & portfolio, ALL-BRIAN ISSUE! Interviews sketchbook, JEPH LOEB inter- 60 years of THE SPIRIT, 25 ANDI WATSON interview, a look with BRIAN AZZARELLO, view, LEA HERNANDEZ, years of the X-MEN, PAUL at what comics predicted the BRIAN CLOPPER, BRIAN MANYA, USAGI YOJIMBO, 60 GRIST interview, FORTY future would be like, new color MICHAEL BENDIS, BRIAN years of ROBIN THE BOY WON- WINKS, new color ALLRED & PACHECO & WATSON covers, BOLLAND, huge BOLLAND portfolio, & more! $8 US DER, & more! $8 US GRIST covers, & more! $8 US & more! $8 US

Edited by MIKE MANLEY

Edited by JOHN MORROW

DRAW! is the professional “How-To” magazine on comics, cartooning, & animation. Each issue features indepth interviews & stepby-step demonstrations from top comics professionals on all aspects of graphic storytelling.

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR celebrates the life & career of the “King” of comics through interviews with Kirby & his contemporaries, feature articles, & rare & unseen Kirby artwork. Now in tabloid format, the magazine showcases Kirby’s art at even larger size.

DRAW #1: (108 pgs. with DRAW #2: (116 pgs.) “How- DRAW #3: (80 pgs.) “How-To” DRAW #4: (92 pgs.) “How-To” DRAW #5: (88 pgs.) “How-To” color) Professional “How-To” To” demos & interviews with demos & interviews with DICK demos & interviews with ERIK demos & interviews with mag on comics & cartooning, GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY, GIORDANO, BRET BLEVINS, LARSEN, KEVIN NOWLAN, BRIAN BENDIS & MIKE COOPER, BRET OEMING, MIKE WIERINGO, with art demos by GIBBONS, KLAUS JANSON, JERRY ORD- CHRIS BAILEY, MIKE MAN- DAVE ORDWAY, BLEVINS, VILLA- WAY, BRET BLEVINS, PHIL LEY, new column by PAUL BLEVINS, new column by MARK McKENNA, BRET GRAN, color BLEVINS cover HESTER, ANDE PARKS, RIVOCHE, reviews of art sup- PAUL RIVOCHE, color section, BLEVINS, PAUL RIVOCHE, more! $8 US color section, more! $8 US & more! $8 US STEVE CONLEY, more! $8 US plies, more! $8 US

TJKC #18: (68 pgs.) MARVEL issue! Intvs. with KIRBY, STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS, JOHN ROMITA, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, HERB TRIMPE, unseen Kirby art, Kirby/Sinnott cover. $8 US

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N GI MIN H! CO ARC M

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Edited by JON B. COOKE COMIC BOOK ARTIST, 2000-2002 Eisner Award winner for “Best ComicsRelated Magazine,” celebrates the lives & work of great cartoonists, writers, & editors from all eras through in-depth interviews, feature articles, & unpublished art.

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IN INGL! M I CO APR N GI ! MIN L I O C APR TJKC #36: (84 pgs.) TABLOID ALL-THOR issue! MARK EVANIER column, SINNOTT & ROMITA JR. interviews, unseen KIRBY INTV., ART GALLERY, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, more! $13 US

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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. If you think Jack needed an editor, you should read the letters we get! We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity, or...

publication, can you shed any light on the subject? Mike Hill

(If all goes as planned, next issue will be hitting stores and mailboxes about two months after this one, in my effort to make up for the time we lost on this issue due to power outages and unexpected trips as detailed on this issue’s “TwoMorrows New Today” page. We’ll have comments on #35 then. While I’m at it, let me apologize to David Russell for running his Kirby pencil drawing of the Fantastic Four in issue #35, page 6, and forgetting to credit him. David contributed another surprise piece, which’ll be gracing the cover of our upcoming ’70s Marvel issue, and I’ll be sure to credit him then. Now, your letters on #36:) Thanks, folks, for the INCREDIBLE pencil reproductions from THOR #144. These are the greatest I’ve ever seen! The quality is so superb that I can just about believe I’m holding the real pencils as they were back in 1967. Now, don’t get me wrong—the other pencil art reproduced in this and in other issues is great, and I do truly appreciate all of it—but the repros from this issue are excellent beyond description! The gray tones here add so much depth to such masterful art—oh, why am I still trying to find words when no words can suffice?!?!? How ’bout giving us rabid readers an article explaining the processes you use to make the pencil art more visible and ready for print? Also, any more information as to how these copies or “stats” were originally made and/or how much is still in existence yet unprinted would be welcome as well. Mike Trehus, Lino Lakes, MN As usual, the Thor Gallery was phenomenal, especially pencils from issue #144 which were incredibly tight. Does it come from Jack’s greater interest in a specific story or from the quality of the xeroxes? As for the stock at the Kirby Estate, was it ever referenced? Jean Depelley, FRANCE I’m not a big fan of THOR. Jack’s pencils passed through too many sets of hands—well, at least Stan’s and Vinnie’s—bent on altering his vision. Thanks to you and TJKC, however, I do have a favorite issue. It’s hard not to warm up to THOR #144 with the wonderful (lush?) pencils so masterfully exhibited. Throw in Tom Kraft’s commission of Mike Royer’s inks on the unused cover, magnificent at tabloid size in full Tom Ziuko color, and it’s almost possible to see the book through Jack’s eyes. What makes the pencil pages from that particular issue so lush-looking? I put the question to Kirby-L and discussed it privately with Shane Foley: the consensus seemed to be that the reproduction methods were responsible for distinguishing that issue (and the seeming similarly-textured pages from FF #49 and ANNUAL #5) from pencil pages from other issues. Having prepared a vast assortment of these pages for 78

(These are just a few of the comments we’ve gotten on the varying quality of the pencil repros in the THOR issue. Hopefully, my “Opening Shot” article in this issue and next will go a long way toward answering everyone’s questions!) Whew! What a great issue! You sure crammed a lot of stuff into this one! Great interviews with Joe Sinnott (a little brief) and the latest installment of “A Failure to Communicate” was well written although not anything especially new to long-time readers (looking forward to seeing all the chapters in this series published together sometime in the future!). Mark Evanier’s column was great as usual although I disagree with a lot of it. Okay, Jack went back to Marvel and wanted to do other kinds of books. It just seems incredibly shortsighted to me to think that at no point did someone say, “Jack, if you want to come back to Marvel we want you to do THIS...” I guess everyone was so happy to have Jack back that they forgot to tell him what their expectations were. It’s a no-brainer to me; if including more of the Marvel Universe is what the fans wanted, and the publisher wanted, and knowing that doing this will sell more books with the side benefit of being able to provide a good living for your family, than that’s what needs to be done. THAT is what being a professional is about. If Jack did not find out what was expected of him prior to his return to Marvel, or better yet knew what was expected of him but didn’t want to do it, than he shouldn’t have returned! I’m probably in the minority here, and I can feel the rocks and brickbats being thrown my way— but come on, we’re talking common sense. Well, it’s a mute point at this stage of the game, and my griping doesn’t change anything. Be that as it may—you continue to top yourself with TJKC. I’ve often wondered how long you can keep this magazine going, but by gosh I really think it’ll be around for some time to come! You could easily (I think) devote entire issues to Jack’s books—just think; an entire issue devoted to DEVIL DINOSAUR... THE ETERNALS... BLACK PANTHER... 2001...! Man, I can see it now! In fact, let me clear some space on my bookshelf! What more can I say? Another winner! Gary Picariello I must say that I’m a person of two sides when it comes to THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. On the one side I really like looking at all of the great work of Jack Kirby. It’s like owning the originals without the great cost. On the other side, I can’t stand to read any of the articles. They have such an anti-Stan Lee bend to them that I can’t get past the first paragraph without getting the feeling I need to throw the magazine in the trash. Even the interviewers try to bait their guests into bad-mouthing Stan! Why can’t your magazine celebrate the great work of Jack Kirby? Why do you gentlemen have to make it

your live’s work to crucify Stan Lee? Is Stan Lee a saint? Probably not. Was Jack Kirby a saint? Once again, probably not. What Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did was magical. We need more of this magic today in comics. Jack Kirby did some good work after Stan was no longer his writer. Then again, Jack’s work never seemed to gel with the dialogue as well as it did with Stan’s. Stan Lee also worked his magic with the likes of Steve Ditko, John Buscema, Gene Colan, John Romita, Don Heck and many others. To say who did what and when seems kind of pointless. So with my two sides torn on your magazine, one has to win out. The side that enjoys looking at Jack’s great work is just going to have to live without seeing those great drawings, because my disgusted side has won out. I will no longer be buying your magazine. You would think after 36 issues you would run out of ways to bad-mouth Stan Lee. I guess not. Michael Wolner, Jr., Ravenna, OH (I certainly hate to lose a reader, since the point of this mag is to continually expose people to Kirby’s life and career. However, I print what people contribute— I don’t intentionally set out to try to stack the deck for or against Stan, or anyone else. Plus, I do think it’s important to have an open forum to discuss Stan and Jack’s relative contributions to their work, such as this issue’s comparison of their respective writing styles. For all you “Stan Fans” out there, contribute something! As long as it’s Kirby-related, I’d certainly consider running it, pro or con.) Mark Evanier really tickles the wonder bones when he challenges us to try to find those sequences Kirby reused. Nothing comes to mind for the aborted Silver Surfer origin but the only ‘extended’ Watcher sequence that I know which fits the criterion is that from THOR #165, where the Watcher encounters ‘Him’. And perhaps ‘Him’ being an FF character to begin with makes it more likely that this is the sequence in question? On page 30, we see in Jack’s margin notes for panel 4 that he mistakenly refers to ‘Forsung’ when it is ‘Magnir’ that he means. I love seeing funny little bits of Jack’s workings like this. And on page 38, the margin notes read “Ulik says this is more like it—now we can fight dirty.” How far from Thor’s pseudo-Shakespearian can you get??? (I wonder how Jack would have scripted Thor had he the chance?) This time around, “Failure to Communicate” left me with a couple of questions. Mike says Jack couldn’t get a new contract. Was this unique to Jack or were all Marvel’s artists and writers in the same position at this time? If the former, was Kirby singled out? Why? If the latter, how come more didn’t head for the financial security DC offered? (For surely they would have taken Buscema, Colan and Romita as well as Kirby?) Or were Marvel’s rates so much better than DC’s that the risk for them was worth it? While we’re on the subject of contracts, when did such contracts begin to be offered? I thought in the ’60s the freelancers worked without them, relying on a ‘Gentlemen’s agreement’ that if they were faithful to one particular employer they could usually depend on steady work. A real pity to my mind that Mike was unable to unearth more nuts and bolts on the working relation-

ship between Stan and Jack during this period. I asked once on Kirby-L how come it was that if Jack got his plots from Stan during this period, why then should Stan feel the ‘Janus’ story was ‘undialogueable’ (to use Mark Evanier’s words). It was his own plot after all. But then the answer from Tom Brevoort, who said he had asked John Romita about it, was that Stan felt that Jack had ‘lost his way’ mid-story, so that the end result was a mess. So it appears that even if Stan had given some measure of plot, Jack was still doing the lion’s share of it. As Mike suggested, there is so much about this period that makes no sense. Surely it is not possible that no one at Marvel noticed the change in Kirby’s output. Not only had his creativity stopped, but the content of his plotting was meagre compared to his previous work. Not only were the panels on his pages bigger and telling less story, but unnecessary splash pages abounded. There is also the question of the actual number of pages he produced per month. When Kirby was doing CAP his regular output was 60 pages per month (which, at 15 pages per week, is what we are told Jack contracted himself to do at DC in the ’70s and which he produced at Marvel in the later ’70s). After he left CAPTAIN AMERICA in 1968, he did not pick up another book to replace it. He thus went from 60 regular pages per month to 40. Even Annuals stopped showcasing new material. Mark Evanier says however that Kirby did not reduce his page output at this time, despite it appearing so, and he simply got ahead of schedule on FF and THOR. So I had a check and came up with this (I know the cover dates are not the best guide, but they surely provide some idea of a period of time involved, especially for one like Kirby who created very regular work): After Kirby left CAP in Jan. 69 (cover date), he produced (round figures) 760 published pages of THOR and the FF. He also did a further (approximately) 140 pages that we know of (the couple of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS stories, 60 pages of “Inhumans” and “Ka-Zar,” the FF/Janus story, SILVER SURFER #18, CAP #112, plus a few covers). This is about 900 pages. At 60 pages per month (15 pages per week) this amounts to 15 months work. But between Jan. ’69 and JIMMY OLSEN #133 (cover date Oct. ’70) there is 20 months. So either he was working at a lower production rate, or he took an extended holiday between employers, or else there is a ton of work we know nothing about. Which of these is most likely? It appears to me as if he was producing less. And Stan Lee MUST have seen both this and the quality of his work. One more comment that comes out of “Failure.” Mike feels Jack was preoccupied with getting Galactus’ origin into print. While Jack certainly seemed to have wanted to do Galactusrelated stories, it looks to me as if he did NOT want to do an origin. Hence we get the chopped and changed versions of THOR #168-169, with the original story having only vague hints of an origin, and the final version, which we presume was more to Stan’s liking, having a very weak one (by Kirby standards). To my eyes, the art is light on as well, like the issues that follow. Kudos to Mike Trehus for taking me to task on the Kirby Krackle issue. Certainly no apologies are necessary, Mike. By the same token, I disagree with some of your observations. I see no need at all to differentiate between ‘water’ krackle and any other. The sort you referred to as seen in “Green Arrow” is similar to what every artist uses to represent water, from Wally Wood at the time to Alfredo Alcala years later: Lots of solid black in generally circular forms. But when Kirby began using his unique krackle later on, he began using it to represent water also—so that if you removed his ‘water’ krackle from its context, you wouldn’t know whether it was water, cosmic energy or whatever. Still, I see your point—and therefore the example of ‘pre-Krackle’ from FF #46 loses most of its force. The BLUE BOLT example is a beauty, but it presents us with a new problem, because the best examples we have of early Kirby pencils show that he penciled with little or no blacks in them. So what did he draw here? And since the best authorities tell us that the inker is Joe Simon, what should we conclude? John, the book continues superbly. I hope it is as rewarding for you as it is for us readers. Shane Foley (Oh yeah, it certainly is, particularly when readers like you take the time to absorb every issue, and come up with thought-provoking

questions like those above. Hopefully there’s some other reader(s) out there who’ll take a stab at answering them!) Another great issue! I loved the back cover way more than the front. Fred Marcus, my comics-shop owner, doesn’t believe Vince Colletta had the authority to say that piece of art was “too detailed to ink” (he figured Stan would’ve told him, “Yo Vinnie, wanna find another company to work for?”). I recently got a copy of THOR #133, and you know, that Ego face did look a bit odd. If it was changed, was it one of those typical “arbitrary” and uncalled-for changes, or was it an improvement? Normally Marvel’s reprint covers, even when they use the originals (and I could never see any reason not to) were altered, edited, etc. Aside from the face in this instance, I note how the coloring of The Recorder has changed, making a farce of those highlight black lines on the arm, which originally served as a guide for the colorist. “The Quest” was my favorite piece in the issue. “Not new-reader friendly” is a good description—it’s taken me decades to put together enough TALES OF ASGARD episodes to really appreciate it. Having the WRONG episodes in the back of MARVEL SPECTACULAR didn’t help, either—which is why I’m glad the MASTERWORKS books have been including the complete issues of JIM. I don’t think I ever quite realized the full impact and importance of this series in the evolution of both Jack Kirby and Marvel Comics in general. Jack started doing multi-issue stories— or “worse,” endless “epics” where one story dovetailed into another without any obvious breaks (FF #48-50 a prime example—the Galactus story was really a two-parter, except it starts halfway through #48 and ends halfway through #50!). Suddenly everyone at Marvel was doing sprawling epics with fewer and bigger panels per page. So it was Martin Goodman’s idea, not Stan’s to SUDDENLY insist on “complete in one issue” stuff in late 1969? Yet the art styles didn’t change, so suddenly you had stories with no depth, no complexity, no substance! (Having read the ATLAS COMICS issue of COMIC BOOK ARTIST, I don’t have too many good thoughts about Goodman. What can I say? He may have ignored and/or mistreated his employees for decades, but Marvel started on its long decline right about when he SOLD what had up to then been a family-owned company.) Page 69—WOW!!! This was the FIRST time I’ve laid eyes on a Kirby-Klein collaboration! Man—if only the guy hadn’t been at DC for all those years! Marvel really could have used a guy that good during the ’60s. Page 72—Wow—AGAIN!!! Kirby-Grainger is FANTASTIC!!! It strikes me as a “better” version of KirbyRoyer. How come Sam Grainger has been overlooked for so many years?? I’ve seen him teamed with some “inappropriate” pencilers, but overall most of his work I’ve seen over the years has been TOP-NOTCH! I’m tempted to take that back cover to my local printer and have them run a color photocopy off for me to hang on my wall. Mike Royer, take a bow! Henry R. Kujawa, Camden, NJ (Well, don’t forget the coloring by Tom Ziuko! Take a bow too, TZ!) NEXT ISSUE: JACK KIRBY: STORYTELLER is the follow-up to this issue, detailing more secrets of how to draw comics THE KIRBY WAY! Behind two never-published Kirby covers (colored by Jack himself), you’ll see: Kirby swipes! The evolution of the Human Torch and the Thing! And enough squiggles, krackle, explosions, and gizmos to make your head spin! Plus: Master inker JOE SINNOTT talks us through how to ink the King! You’ll spend an afternoon with the Kirbys (where you’ll hear from JACK DAVIS, ROY THOMAS, PAUL GULACY, the HERNANDEZ BROS., and others on the King’s work)! And don’t miss regular columnists MARK EVANIER, ADAM McGOVERN, BARRY FORSHAW, and the most amazing Kirby Art Gallery you’ve ever seen (all at TABLOID SIZE)! The issue ships in April, and since it’s already roughly laidout, there’s no submission deadline, cause there’s no room left!

37 Credits:

John Morrow, Editor Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington, Production Assistant and Proofreader TwoMorrows, Design/Layout Rand Hoppe, Webmaster SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Alexander • Bob Almond Jim Amash • Ger Apeldoorn Jon Cooke • Shel Dorf Mark Evanier • Rex Ferrell Shane Foley • Tony Fornaro Barry Forshaw • Mike Gartland David Hamilton • Rand Hoppe Richard Howell • Frank Johnson James Henry Klein • Tom Kraft Bob Latimer • Mark Lerer Adam McGovern Eric Nolen-Weathington Brian Pearce • Mike Royer Rich Rubenfeld David Schwartz • Tod Seisser Mike Thibodeaux • Sal Velluto Curtis Wong • Bruce Zick and of course The Kirby Estate If we’ve forgotten anyone, please let us know! MAILING CREW: Russ Garwood • Glen Musial Ed Stelli • Patrick Varker

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 tentative 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! LEGENDS! Exploring Jack’s use of myths and legendary figures in comics! FAN FAVORITES! What are your favorite Kirby stories? Plus: Kamandi! The Hulk! 1970s MARVEL! Taking another look at Jack’s final stay at the House of Ideas! GOT AN IDEA FOR A TJKC THEME ISSUE? What are you waiting for?! Drop us a line and let us know what you’d like to see! SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Submit artwork as: 1) Color or B&W photocopies. 2) 300ppi TIFF or JPEG scans 3) Originals (packed and insured). Submit articles as: 1) Typed or laser printed pages. 2) E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com 3) ASCII or RTF text files. We’ll pay return postage and insurance for originals—please write or call first. Please include background information whenever possible.

Parting Shot

This issue’s Gallery section didn’t include anything from Jack’s days in animation, so here’s a Kirby original (inked by Alfredo Alcala) that was done in the 1980s for Ruby-Spears Productions, and sent in by animator Bruce Zick. Bruce writes: “While it certainly is not one of his great pieces, the thing that strikes me about this piece, as in so many of his compositions, is that a very powerful, clear, simple concept of high entertainment is being created. A giant snake serpent strangling a city building! I’ve never seen it anywhere before, it’s a great idea, and it was no doubt a quick and effortless sketch for Jack, yet it typifies what a consummate storyteller and conceptual genius he was.”

This piece was part of a Thor presentation, and the blank space below was intended to have an image of Thor penciled in.

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