Jack Kirby Collector #40 by TwoMorrows Publishing

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR FORTY IN THE US

$995

THE TWOMORROWS LIBRARY NNER! RD WI A W A EISNER

COMICS ABOVE GROUND

SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

TRUE BRIT

CELEBRATING GREAT COMIC BOOK ARTISTS OF ENGLAND

ACTING WITH A PENCIL EFFECTIVE DRAWING FOR COMICS AND ANIMATION

COMICS ABOVE GROUND features top comics pros discussing their inspirations and training, and how they apply it in “Mainstream Media,” including Conceptual Illustration, Video Game Development, Children’s Books, Novels, Design, Illustration, Fine Art, Storyboards, Animation, Movies & more! Written by DURWIN TALON (author of the top-selling PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators sharing their perspectives and their work in comics and their “other professions,” with career overviews, never-before-seen art, and interviews! Featuring:

Make your drawings come alive with this n ALL-NEW sioof British indispensible guide to creating vtheerichrhistory l Ait celebration of a ig d a animation and comic book art. Cartooning g Comics Artists and their influence on the in w ie v d e and lively figure drawing are explained in a Explore the lives of the partners and wives ’r e US with in-depth interviews and art by: u r o SE • DAVE MCKEAN clear, easily understood prose and demonIf y EABOLLAND as theyn share , PL• BRIAN CAPTAIN ACTION debuted in the wake of of the top names in comics, MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ Top creators discuss all aspects of the An unprecedented assembly of talent tio capersonal strated by HUNDREDS OF DRAWINGS li memories, anecdotes, photos, b u the ’60s Batman TV show, and could is p most prominent and affable personality! DESIGN OF COMICS: drawing NEW autobiographical stories: r!O’NEILL created KEVIN • ALAN DAVISshe h t f especially for this book by two li •• BARRY and never-before-seen art by o With momentos,creators bGIBBONS become 13 different super-heroes. p •u DAVE e • Covers his career as illustrator, inker, and h • WILL EISNER • SCOTT HAMPTON • Barry WINDSOR-SMITH • C.C. BECK t Emmy Award-winning masters of the in comics! m o over 200 toy photos, this trade paperback the top a • BRUCE TIMM r f WINDSOR-SMITH subject: Mike Manley and Bret Blevins of • BRYAN HITCH editor, peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL le • MIKE WIERINGO • WALTER SIMONSON • Sergio ARAGONÉS • Walter SIMONSON p isbook chronicles his history (including comic • BERNIE WRIGHTSON th

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS

• MIKE MIGNOLA • MARK SCHULTZ • DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI • MIKE CARLIN • DICK GIORDANO • BRIAN STELFREEZE • CHRIS MOELLER • MARK CHIARELLO If you’re serious about creating effective, innovative comics, or just enjoying them from the creator’s perspective, this guide is must-reading! (208-Page Trade Paperback) $26 US

DICK GIORDANO

CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

REFLECTIONS on his career milestones! • Lavishly illustrated with RARE AND NEVER SEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art (includes a color section)! • Extensive index of his published work! • Comments & tributes by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO & others! • With a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS and Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

STREETWISE

TOP ARTISTS DRAWING STORIES OF THEIR LIVES

• Brent ANDERSON • Nick CARDY • Roy THOMAS & John SEVERIN • Paul CHADWICK • Rick VEITCH • Murphy ANDERSON • Joe KUBERT • Evan DORKIN • Sam GLANZMAN • Plus Art SPIEGELMAN, Jack KIRBY, more! Cover by RUDE • Foreword by EISNER (160-Page Trade Paperback) $24 US

WARREN COMPANION • A history of the Legion of Super-Heroes, with DAVE COCKRUM, MIKE GRELL, JIM STARLIN, JAMES SHERMAN, PAUL LEVITZ, KEITH GIFFEN, STEVE LIGHTLE, MARK WAID, JIM SHOOTER, JIM MOONEY, AL PLASTINO, and more! • Rare and never-seen Legion art by the above, plus GEORGE PÉREZ, NEAL ADAMS, CURT SWAN, and others! • Unused Cockrum character designs and pages from an UNUSED STORY! • New cover by DAVE COCKRUM and JOE RUBINSTEIN, introduction by JIM SHOOTER, and more! (224-page Trade Paperback) $29 US

GET ALL THREE COLLECTIONS OF MARK EVANIER’S ACCLAIMED POV COLUMNS! Each volume includes new essays, plus new illustrations and new covers by Mark’s GROO collaborator and MAD artist SERGIO ARAGONÉS! 200-page Trade Paperbacks • $17 US EACH

THE LIFE & ART OF

MURPHY ANDERSON R.C. HARVEY’s lavishly illustrated autobiographical memoir of the man whose style defined the DC look for a generation!! • Covers his work on SUPERMAN, HAWKMAN, ADAM STRANGE, ATOMIC KNIGHTS, BUCK ROGERS, and more! • Loaded with ANDERSON ART, plus behind-the-scenes anecdotes about FINE, EISNER, SWAN, KANE, and others! • Includes a deluxe COLOR SECTION showcasing many of Murphy’s finest cover recreations and paintings! (176-page Trade Paperback) $22 US

“I HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS GUY!”

• ALAN MOORE • WILL EISNER and other gents! • DAVID LLOYD appearances), with historical anecdotes by • STAN LEE • GENE COLAN ED FOR FREE DRAW! magazine! INTEND NOT(192-page Trade Paperback) US is ich the late GIL KANE, JIM SHOOTER, STAN paid wh (160-page Trade Paperback) $24 US you $26 L, • JOE KUBERT •AT JOHN ROMITA or M ER•IA subscriber, TEDKURTZMAN WESTON (co-creator of GI Joe, Captain • HARVEY DAVE you’re a print . If SIM is COPYRIGH our sincere RE hisGreatest ve HE ha W u Action, and Mego’s World’s yo NY , A ite • HOWARD CRUSE • DAN DeCARLO NG NLOADI it at our webs is one. loadmore! Super-Heroes), and others,DO plusW never-seen wnmany • DAVE cations like th e to doand chargCOOPER artwork by GIL KANE, JOE producing publi r website or torrent, odest fee we (208-Page keep$24 e mSTATON, to th us s he Trade Paperback) US ow ot all e t CARMINE INFANTINO, JERRY ORDWAY, suppor from som NSENT, —your thanksIncludes UT OUR CO ded it for free and MURPHY ANDERSON! a ad you downloa lutely 100% DONE WITHO ATERIAL. If If inste color section! Written by MICHAEL EURY! s abso RIGHTED M

COMING IN JULY!

R COPY ow that it wa STING OF OU ILLEGAL PO ould do: sh and it was an u yo at wh think. , here’s see what you that’s the case L ISSUE, and ING and purchase a TA GI DI IS r and READ TH ep it, DO THE RIGHT TH 1) Go ahead int edition at ou it enough to ke website, or purchase the pr local ur yo at r 2) If you enjoy or ou e) d of it from Edition for fre er. legal downloa to the Digital gular paid read h entitles you T SHARE ve you as a re ha website (whic to e lov R and DO NO e’d TE W . PU op M sh CO ok UR YO comic bo OM FR Y, HERE. DELETE IT ST IT ANYW R MATERIAL ILLEGALL 3) Otherwise, IENDS OR PO NG OU wnloadDI do e OA fre IT WITH FR r NL fo W s N’T KEEP DO te issue of all our magazine cide if you want to 4) Finally, DO for you to de fer one comple downloading for free. We of , which should be sufficient enough to keep uce. ite bs ns we tio r blica pu r ing at ou od ou pr joy we en e material rs. If you purchase othe r company by paying for th ou absorb these d canGRAIN: AGAINST them, support ALTER EGO: ckets, anTHE ep po ns MAD ARTIST oration with de and po op—with doze THE CBA COLLECTION rp sh co THE EXTRAORDINARY p” nt gia e om ek “m we a on lly d ra We’re not som WORKS WALLACE WOOD an —lite nyOF Reprints the ALTER EGO flip-sides from the day and night a small compa g away . Weonlove out-of-print COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1-5, losses. We’re Theedefinitive memoir creators, slavin this work ALAN for allbiographical elance MOORE fre on om g ly inc kin re or of r, -w nt ne one of comics' finest artists, 20 years in rd ou ow plus 30 NEW PAGES of features & art: amHIS OWN op of ha maltells mini The British author local comic sh all pretty HERO GETS GIRL! e areclusive ors, and yourthe making! ds, to makSTORY b us of the sm • Special color cover by JOE KUBERT! th ro enOF t au n’ in an extensive series of interviews! rs, do ito e ed as r THE LIFE & ART s. Ple associate BHOB STEWART but ou any • All-new rare and previously-unpublished traces won’t be stay in busines• Former what we do•, Spotlights therewith re career, tion to KURT SCHAFFENBERGER SCRIPTS, blicaSTRIPS, will enlifesuand contribuart by JACK KIRBY, GIL KANE, JOE this puRARE Doing so Wood's income fromARTWORK and PHOTOGRAPHS receiveof. the tions from many artists and writers who KUBERT, WALLY WOOD, FRANK MARK VOGER’s biography of the artist of of compensation we author, most never published load. knew Wood personally, making this a amount wnbefore! ROBBINS, NEAL ADAMS, and others! do LOIS LANE & CAPTAIN MARVEL! to is th e lik comic stories about Moore by: •uc Features ts od at remarkable compendium of art, insights pr d re • STEVE DITKO on the creation of de futu from downloa NEIL GAIMAN, DAVE GIBBONS, SAM • Covers KURT’S LIFE AND CAREER ly be and critical commentary! on SPIDER-MAN, ROY THOMAS on THE ld ou sh ns KIETH, KEVIN O’NEILL, BRIAN io the 1940s to his passing in 2002! at ic • From childhood drawings & early bl pu X-MEN, AVENGERS/KREE-SKRULL s VEITCH, and others, orrowRICK BOLLAND, • Features NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS & TwoM samples to nearly endless comics pages WAR, THE INVADERS, and more!

The ultimate guide to Warren Publishing, the publisher of such mags as CREEPY, EERIE, VAMPIRELLA, BLAZING COMBAT, and others. Reprints COMIC BOOK ARTIST #4 (completely reformatted), plus nearly 200 new pages: • New painted cover by ALEX HORLEY! • A definitive WARREN CHECKLIST! • Dozens of NEW FEATURES on CORBEN, FRAZETTA, DITKO and others, and interviews with WRIGHTSON, WARREN, EISNER, ADAMS, COLAN & many more! (272-page Trade Paperback) $35 US (288-page Limited Edition Hardcover, limited to 1000 copies, signed by JIM WARREN, with custom endleaves, 16 extra pages, plus a WRIGHTSON plate) $57 US

s.com ow orr(many unpublished), this is the most www.twom stunning display of Wood art ever

ILLUSTRATIONS from his files! • Includes recollections by ANDERSON, EISNER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, ALEX ROSS, MORT WALKER and others!

plus an artistic tribute by ALEX ROSS, and a new cover by DAVE MCKEAN! • Includes the RARE MOORE STORIES “Pictopia,” “Lust,” his unseen work on JUDGE DREDD, and more!

(128-page Trade Paperback) $19 US

(208-Page Trade Paperback) $29 US

COMIC BOOKS & OTHER NECESSITIES OF LIFE

First collection includes some of his best essays and commentaries, plus new ones on the state of the art form (as only Mark conveys it), the industry’s leading practitioners (including JACK KIRBY and CARL BARKS), convention-goingm and Mark’s old comic book club (with unforgettable anecdotes)!

WERTHAM WAS RIGHT!

Second collection features many never-before published columns on comic book history, creation, and appreciation, including Mark’s diatribe on comic book numbering, and an essay on comics greatest villain, DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM!

SUPERHEROES IN MY PANTS! (SHIPS IN MAY!)

NEW THIRD COLLECTION about the people who create comics, the people who read them, and why they do these strange things!

READ EXCERPTS & ORDER AT: www.twomorrows.com

(160-page Trade Paperback) $20 US

assembled! • BILL PEARSON, executor of the Wood Estate, has contributed rare drawings directly from Wood's own files, while noted art collector ROGER HILL provides a wealth of obscure, previously unpublished Wood drawings and paintings. • Available in SOFTCOVER or LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER with 16 extra full-color pages, plus bonus B&W plates! (336-Page Trade Paperback) $44 US (352-Page Limited Hardcover) $64 US

Lists Wood’s PUBLISHED COMICS WORK in detail, plus FANZINE ART, ADVERTISING ILLUSTRATIONS, UNPUBLISHED WORK, and more. Illustrated with rare and unseen Wood artwork! (68 Pages) $7 US

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST

Lists all of Jack Kirby’s PUBLISHED COMICS in detail, plus PORTFOLIOS, UNPUBLISHED WORK; even cross-references reprints! Filled with rare Kirby artwork!

• ADAM HUGHES • LOUISE SIMONSON • DAVE DORMAN • GREG RUCKA & MORE! (160-page Trade Paperback) $24 US

G-FORCE: ANIMATED

THE OFFICIAL BATTLE OF THE PLANETS GUIDEBOOK The official compendium to the Japanese animated TV program that revolutionized anime across the globe! Featuring plenty of unseen artwork and designs from the wondrous world of G-FORCE (a.k.a. Science Ninja Team Gatchaman), it presents interviews and behind-the-scenes stories of the pop culture phenomenon that captured the hearts and imagination of Generation X, and spawned the new hit comic series! Cowritten by JASON HOFIUS and GEORGE KHOURY, this FULL-COLOR account is highlighted by a NEW PAINTED COVER from master artist ALEX ROSS! (96-Page Trade Paperback) $20 US

(100 Pages) $7 US

MODERN MASTERS SERIES

please kn (176-Page Trade Paperback) $20 US

(176-pg. Paperback) $24 US

THE LEGION COMPANION

CAPTAIN ACTION

THE ORIGINAL SUPERHERO ACTION FIGURE

WALLACE WOOD CHECKLIST

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON

FAWCETT COMPANION THE BEST OF FCA Presenting the best of the FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA newsletter! • New JERRY ORDWAY cover! • Index of ALL FAWCETT COMICS! • Looks inside the FAWCETT OFFICES! • Interviews, features, and rare and previously unpublished artwork by C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, MAC RABOY, DAVE BERG, ALEX TOTH, BOB OKSNER, GEORGE EVANS, ALEX ROSS, Foreword by MARC SWAYZE, and more!

A new series of trade paperbacks devoted to the BEST OF TODAY'S COMICS ARTISTS! Each volume contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artist’s files, plus a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW (including influences and their views on graphic storytelling), DELUXE SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more!

VOL. 1: ALAN DAVIS

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

VOL. 2: GEORGE PÉREZ

(160-page Trade Paperback) $20 US

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

CRAZY HIP GROOVY GOGO WAY-OUT MONSTERS

PETE VON SHOLLY’s spoof of monster mags will have you laughing your pants off—right after you soil them from sheer terror! (48 Pages) $8 US

VOL. 3: BRUCE TIMM

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $19 US

MR. MONSTER, VOLUME ZERO • 12 Tales of Mr. Monster, with 30 ALL-NEW pages by MICHAEL T. GILBERT! • Collects hard-to-find stories & the lost NEWSPAPER STRIP! • New 8-page FULL-COLOR STORY by KEITH GIFFEN & MICHAEL T. GILBERT! (136-pg. Paperback) $14 US

N O UROTE A DD N EW BELORESS W!

Prices Include US Postage. Outside the US, Add $2 Per Item Canada, $3 Per Item Surface, $7 Per Item Airmail

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Dr. • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919/449-0344 • FAX 919/449-0327 • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

Contents

THE NEW

OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . .2 (the last ’zine standing) KIRBY NEWS! . . . . . . . . . . . .2 UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . .5 (bi-i-i-i-i-gggg monkeys!) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (Mark Evanier discusses Kamandi’s origins)

#40, SUMMER 2004

INTERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 (P. Craig Russell wrestles with Kirby) INFLUENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 (Poet Jarret Keene on Artist Jack Kirby) RETROSPECTIVES . . . . . . .17 (a host of articles on Kirby’s Kamandi) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . .28 (Barry Forshaw digs up some more rare gems) GALLERY 1 (KAMANDI) . . .30 KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . .44 (Adam McGovern alerts the media) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . .46 (a new column analyzing Jack’s visual shorthand) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 (the 2003 Kirby Tribute Panel, with Mark Evanier, Michael Chabon, Sal Buscema, Larry Lieber, Stan Goldberg, Wendy Pini, Mike Royer, and a special mystery guest!) GALLERY 2 (OMAC) . . . . . .60 VISIONARY . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 (is OMAC’s world here now?) EPILOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 (so, whatever did happen to OMAC?) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . .78 (fan favorite letters) PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . .80 (the one that almost got away) Front cover inks: ERIK LARSEN Front cover colors: TOM ZIUKO Back cover inks/colors: REEDMAN Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils from published comics are reproduced here courtesy of the Kirby Estate, which has our thanks for their continued support. COPYRIGHTS: Ben Boxer, Big Barda, Brother Eye, Brute, Buddy Blank, Demon, Dr. Canus, Dr. Skuba, Flower, Glob, Justice League and all related characters, Kamandi, Klarion, Misfit, Mister Miracle, Mr. Big, New Gods, Oberon, OMAC, Pyra, Sacker, Sandman, Spirit, Teekl, Tuftan TM & ©2004 DC Comics • Black Panther, Bucky, Captain America, Dakota Kid, Daredevil, Devil Dinosaur, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Ka-Zar, Killraven, Mr. Fantastic, Rawhide Kid, Sif, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Vision, Wizard, Yellowjacket TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Black Hole TM & ©2004 Walt Disney Productions, Inc. • Escapist TM & ©2004 Michael Chabon • Kamandi of the Caves, Silver Star TM & ©2004 Jack Kirby Estate • Elfquest TM & ©2004 WaRP Graphics • Savage Dragon TM & ©2004 Erik Larsen • Ms. M’Eyes, the Shadow King and Thunk are TM & ©2004 Jack C. Harris and Dick Ayers.

PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW ADDRESS: TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Dr. • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 • FAX 919-449-0327 The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 11, No. 40, Summer 2004. Published quarterly by & ©2004 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. 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 ©2004 Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2004 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Opening Shot

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

his issue’s been a long time coming, folks! I’m not specifically talking about how long it’s been since last issue—although that’s quite a story in and of itself. Our move to a new location this Spring, mixed with family commitments, and keeping our line of magazines and books (plus our ad agency work) coming out, meant basically no time to work on our not-for-profit publication, as much fun as it is for me to produce. (Alas, we’ve gotta put the paying work first.) To give you an idea of how crazy things are at TwoMorrows these days, I’m writing these words as I start work on this issue, on Memorial Day 2004. I wrapped up last issue and sent it to press last fall, and literally haven’t had a day to work on TJKC until now. And I’ve got roughly three weeks to get this one to press, if it’s going to be out in time for the San Diego Con in July (where there’ll be a big to-do over Kirby, so I’ve absolutely got to get it done). So while you were (hopefully) sunning at the beach over the

T (background) Kamandi was a big hit over in Italy, as evidenced by these mid-1970s Italian Kamandi covers (published after Jack had left the series). The issues also featured reprints of other Kirby stories from his 1970s DC run. Characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics

read the little four-color monstrosity. At first I couldn’t get past how much I hated all the square fingers and squiggly knees, and I genuinely believed this guy “Kirby” couldn’t draw his way out of a paper bag. But after reading only a few pages, I was so engrossed in the comic that I forgot all about Jack’s anatomy (or lack thereof ), and fell prey to the intense power of Kirby’s work. (See this issue’s “Parting Shot” on page 80 for an example of what I’m talking about.) Don’t forget, folks, this wasn’t a book written by Stan Lee. In fact, not being raised on the Lee/Kirby collaborations, it was some time before I could appreciate the earlier FFs, Thors, and other Marvel masterpieces. No, this was pure Kirby, warts and all, and after a couple of re-readings, I was hooked. I ran out and tracked down every issue of Kamandi I could find, hunted back issue ads in The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom for more, and so began my lifelong quest for the ultimate Kirby fix. Kamandi was a supremely simple, powerful, kid-friendly comic that totally blew me away. It didn’t take itself too seriously in those 1970s days of relevancy in comics. It simply whisked you away to a cockamamie place of action and adventure with

The Last Fanzine On Earth! (this page) Detail of Jack’s pencils from page 18 of OMAC #6 (July 1975). (next page) Near as we can figure, this is an unused page from Kamandi #23 (Nov. 1974). Characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics

long holiday weekend, I was glued to my computer, clicking away. But don’t feel too bad for me; this issue’s really near and dear to my heart, and it’s one I (and many of our readers) have longed to see since... well, since TJKC #1 (which, coincidentally, I began work on exactly 10 years ago to this day, in 1994). I’ve got a stack of Kamandi-related articles dating back literally to 1994, but we simply never had what I felt was an adequate supply of art to make an interesting issue—until now. Kamandi has a lot of loyal fans out there, and it’s the comic that introduced me to Jack Kirby’s work. As kids, my buddy Matt Turner and I were working out a trade of comics one Saturday, and he threw a copy of Kamandi #12 into the deal. I said, “No thanks, the art’s too ugly,” but somehow I ended up with it. After poring over the others, I got bored and decided to actually sit down and

Kirby News!

ITEM! Back in print are COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. 1-3, reprinting TJKC #1-9, 10-12, and 1315, respectively! And by the time you read this, a new VOLUME 4 will be out, reprinting TJKC #16-19! Each volume contains over 30 pages of Kirby art never before published in TJKC, so don’t miss your chance to complete your TJKC collection (#20-up are still available as back issues, except for that pesky #28, which just sold out)! VOLUME 1 & 4 are $29 US postpaid each, VOLUME 2 is $22, and VOLUME 3 is $24.

ITEM! Get your copy of CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION before it sells out! This all-pencil version of Jack’s original Captain Victory graphic novel (in its original form, before being split up at Pacific Comics) is only $8 US postpaid, and all proceeds go toward the scanning and archiving of the 5000+ page Kirby pencil xerox files. ITEM! Joe Simon has reached a settlement with Marvel Comics on the copyright for Captain America! Terms are confidential, but part of the agreement requires Marvel to include the Simon & Kirby byline on all Cap books. Great work,

Joe! (You too, Marvel!) ITEM! In cooperation with the Jack Kirby estate, master sculptor Randy Bowen has sculpted a 5" tall likeness of Jack Kirby, and Bowen D e s i g n s began offering this piece to the public in December 2003 for $45.00 (plus shipping). All proceeds from this project are being donated to the Children’s Miracle Network in Jack’s

a lead character I could identify with, and a seemingly never-ending host of animal adversaries. Jack followed up with OMAC, which I consider to be the Kirby series with the most untapped potential. (And am I the only one who views it as Jack’s updated version of Captain Marvel? I mean, Buddy Blank is Billy Batson, Brother Eye stands in for the old wizard Shazam, and of course OMAC is the Big Red Cheese.) But for me personally, once Jack left DC, nothing he did ever had quite the same magic again. Maybe I just got older and more discriminating. Or maybe Jack got older and more disinterested. Either way, something changed. Jack didn’t seem to be looking to the future anymore; his subsequent series were mostly either set in the here and now, or the past, and I wonder if that is a reflection of his mindset after things didn’t work out quite as planned at DC. In any case, here we are with an entire issue devoted to Kamandi and OMAC. Our recent acquisition of Kirby pencil copies (see issue #37 and #38) means for the first time, we have ample Kamandi and OMAC art to put this baby together, and I couldn’t be happier to finally get it in print. With the long lag between the last two TJKC issues, a lot of readers may be wondering what the future holds for this magazine. I’m getting older, and raising a soon-to-be three-year-old on top of everything else that’s going on often intrudes on the other things that bring me joy. But rest assured; I’m as committed to this publication as ever. I have the best of intentions to get it out sooner rather than later, but regardless, I’m here for the long run. We’ve got lots of Kirby territory left to cover, and gobs of unseen art to show. So when all the other magazines and fanzines out there have crumbled to dust, you’ll still see this one standing in the rubble of the industry, emerging from my figurative “Command D,” ready to lay claim to the title “Last Fanzine On Earth.” I hope you’ll be with me for the ride! Long live the King!

honor, so for more info or ordering, call 503-786-0542 or email sales@bowendesigns.com. ITEM! Speaking of likenesses, sculptor Andrew Wiernicki has made a masterful likeness of everybody’s favorite Last Boy On Earth (right)! For more info, call 508-823-1846 or go to www.nohtv.com/aw. ITEM! MoCCA (The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) in New York City needs help with two of its upcoming exhibitions. MoCCA will open its new 1,800-square foot gallery space in SoHo on Oct. 6 with a major new exhibition entitled Toon Town: Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City, and would love to have New York native Jack Kirby represented. If you have any Kirby pieces depicting any part of New York City or NYC-like themes (such as the “Suicide Slum” of Newsboy Legion) and would be interested in lending them for the show, contact show curator Fred Van Lente, at fvanlente@moccany.org for more details. Of

particular interest would be pages from the Marvel super-hero era or any NYCset romance comic work, but any of the King’s many other genres (crime, romance, kid gang, even science fiction) would be appreciated. (All artwork will be treated with the utmost care and security.) Also, MoCCA wants to mount a major retrospective of Kirby’s work in 2005, and collectors interested in participating in that show should email Mr. Van Lente at the address above for more details. To learn more about MoCCA, please visit www.moccany.org. 3

Under The Covers

rik “Savage Dragon” Larsen returns for a second outing at Kirby cover inks, this time with a Kamandi piece from the fabled sketchbook Jack did as a Valentine’s Day present for Roz (see the pencils below). Erik’s first shot at a TJKC cover (#33) garnered rave reviews, as have his Kirby-inspired covers on his Savage Dragon comic for Image. Below is an example of one of his homages to Jack, and the Kamandi cover it pays tribute to. Lest we forget, Tom Ziuko lovingly added the colors and textures to our front cover, making an already remarkable piece a real standout. At left is the same drawing, this time inked by Richard Howell. Longtime TJKC readers will remember Richard as our proofreader from early-on, and Richard’s also had a distinguished career as an artist for DC and Marvel Comics, and currently for Claypool Comics. On the previous page are Jack’s pencils for an unused Kamandi cover. European superstar Reedman has a long history of paying tribute to Jack in his work, so when he sent this piece in fully inked and colored, we couldn’t resist showing it off. It’s a shining example of how Kirby, and Kamandi, are immensely popular overseas. ★

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier (this page and next) The original concept drawings for the Kamandi cast. Notice how many of the early series plot twists were already conceived at this developmental stage. All characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics

can tell you exactly how Kamandi, the Last Boy of Earth, came to be. And while we’re at it, you’re going to have to hear about The Demon and a little about my relationship with Jack Kirby since it’s all one story. It began around September of 1971. Jack was writing and drawing New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle for DC and they’d been coming out for almost a year. He was working ahead of schedule so he was finishing the eighth or ninth issues around this time. They were all bi-monthly books so they didn’t fully consume his quota, which called for a minimum of fifteen pages a week. Previously, the overage was occupied by Jimmy Olsen and by the black-and-white magazines (In the Day of the Mob, Spirit World and the ones that never even made it that

Initially, Jack had not expected New Gods and its allied titles to become his main project at DC. When he realized that it was becoming that, he threw himself fully into the endeavor, determined to fashion some kind of masterpiece. But the original idea, at least from his end, was that he’d launch the three comics, then hand them off to others. He had talked of trying to get Wally Wood to draw New Gods, Don Heck or John Romita to draw Forever People and Steve Ditko to draw Mr. Miracle. Steve and I would probably have written some of them under his tutelage and supervision. He also had in mind that the Fourth World would expand into more titles. “You can do a whole book about any of these characters,” he said on several occasions. Actually, Jack thought you could do a whole book about almost any character he’d ever drawn. If you’d pointed to some nameless person he drew once in a crowd scene and asked, “How about a book starring him?,” Jack would have said, “Sure. I could do an epic about that guy.” Given Jack’s endless imagination, I wouldn’t have bet he couldn’t. One of the reasons the Fourth World seemed so crammed full of supporting players in its early issues was that Jack was trying to set up new titles and spin-offs, preferably to be done by others. He wanted to devote his writing/drawing time to new ideas, few of which would have resembled any past Kirby creation... or comic books as we then knew them. Right then, alas, Jack’s ideas for bigger, upscale projects did not fit into DC’s game plan. Around this time, DC Publisher Carmine Infantino was a guest at a Los Angeles comic convention, and a meeting was planned to discuss what would be added to Kirby’s roster of projects. Jack asked Steve and me to sit in on this conference and we did... saying, as I recall, absolutely nothing. No final decision was made but the prevailing idea seemed to be to do at least two of the following three things...

(next page, bottom) One of the few Kamandi of the Caves newspaper strip pencil samples Jack did in the 1950s before abandoning the idea. Other than the name, the two Kamandis share little in common. Kamandi of the Caves TM & ©2004 Jack Kirby Estate.

far) but no longer. To Jack’s general displeasure, the magazine endeavor had been quickly aborted. Then again, to his general pleasure, he no longer had to write and draw the Olsen book. He and DC were trying to decide what he’d add to his workload. Steve Sherman and I were Kirby’s occasional assistants. I say “occasional” because there was never all that much for us to do. Jack was keeping us around partly because he liked the company— we saw him once a week or so—and partly because he was still hoping to change his job description a bit, drawing fewer pages a week and doing some editing of comics he would neither draw nor write. Neither Steve nor I ever counted on this happening but we did want to see Jack get what he wanted. What he wanted, by and large, was to get away from drawing conventional comic books.

1. Up one or two of the ongoing Fourth World books to monthly. New Gods was the keystone book and it seemed to need more room to showcase its hefty cast. Then again, Mister Miracle seemed to be selling a bit better. 2. Add a new book called something like Big Barda and Her Female Furies, based around those characters. 3. Add a new book called Lonar, featuring a new hero who’d appeared in a few back-up stories. This was the idea Jack was pushing for but, as he kept saying over and over, any player in the New Genesis-Apokolips War was worthy of his own comic. Jack asked about the idea of handing some of these titles off to other writers and artists once he had other projects to fill out his quota. Infantino said he was against it at that time. The Fourth World books were Kirby books, and he wasn’t certain how the readers would react to anyone else. He suggested that it would be easier to have Jack edit a book he didn’t write and draw

if it was something new, something outside of the Fourth World mythos. A week or two later, Infantino was back in New York and speaking to Jack on the phone. They got to talking about the movie, The Planet of the Apes, which had come out a few years earlier and had spawned numerous sequels (including a current hit) and quite a merchandising bonanza. As Jack explained it to us a few days after the conversation, Carmine said he’d inquired about doing a comic book based on the property and found the rights either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. There was at the time, a feeling around DC that perhaps super-heroes were on the way out again. Ghost and mystery comics like House of Mystery and Phantom Stranger seemed to be selling, and some felt the next trend was what Joe Orlando, who edited most of them, dubbed “weird adventure” comics. The company had recently launched a comic called Weird War Tales, and was about to introduce a brutal character named Jonah Hex into All-Star Western and rename the book Weird Western Tales. Two comics featuring gothic romance material were also being launched, DC was acquiring Tarzan and Burroughs properties like John Carter of Mars, plus Swamp Thing was beginning to climb out of the ooze and into a regular comic. According to Jack, Infantino thought the time might be right for something like Planet of the Apes, and asked Jack if he could come up with an idea similar enough to attract the Ape fans but not so similar as to attract lawyers. Jack, of course, said yes. One of the great things about Kirby was his unshakeable belief in his own ability to create on any playing field. If you asked him if he could whip up a new western or a new war comic or just about anything, he always said “Sure” and plunged into the task with gusto. I seem to recall that Jack had not then seen any of the Planet of the Apes movies though he certainly knew the premise and he may have read the novel on which the first film had been based. As a starting point for the new comic book feature, he dug into an old art portfolio in the closet where he kept unsold, unused materials. There, he found about a half-dozen samples for an idea he’d once had for a newspaper strip entitled “Kamandi of the Caves.” The concept had been abandoned in the pencil stage but, Jack said, its time had come. He then began to describe the strip he had in mind, incorporating a few ideas that Infantino had said he’d like to see included. I recall thinking that apart from the name, what he was creating had very

little to do with the strip he’d just shown us. As it evolved later, it would move even farther from that premise. Jack may not have recalled it at the time, and I

was unfamiliar with it then, but he had done a story that was not dissimilar from his new idea. It was “Logan’s Next Life,” a short fantasy tale he’d done in 1957 for Harvey’s Amazing Tales comic book, edited by Joe Simon. (Oddly, Kirby’s other stories in that issue all foreshadow later work. “The Cadmus Seed” presents an early version of the cloning factories Jack later depicted in “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and Jimmy Olsen, “The Fourth Dimension is a Many Splattered Thing” antedates the Negative Zone from many issues of Fantastic Four, and the cover story—“Donnegan’s Daffy Chair”—suggests a prototype for the Mobius Chair, an 7

(below) The original presentation art for Sultin, when he was still called “Warhead the Mighty.” A revised version of this piece (with the name “Sultin” substituted) ran in TJKC #17.

inter-dimensional conveyance used by Metron in New Gods.) Jack decided that I would eventually be the writer of Kamandi, which he subtitled “The Last Boy on Earth.” I might not do the first few issues, he told me, because DC would insist he launch the title. But somewhere down the line, he wanted to hand the writing off to me and to have the book drawn by an artist other than himself. And it is here that, if you’ll forgive me, I have to write a little about myself and what was going on in my life at the time... I was not particularly thrilled with my role in Jack’s plan. For one thing, the strip Jack was describing didn’t particularly grab me. That it might make a successful comic book, especially with Kirby at the helm, I didn’t doubt. But the idea of a young boy traversing a post-apocalyptic Earth and meeting up with mutated animal people didn’t feel like something I’d enjoy writing... or even reading. For another, I was up to my clavicle in other assignments. I was still attending U.C.L.A. and also writing for Gold Key Comics and a few other firms. My editor at Gold Key had promised me all the work I could handle, and I already lacked the time to do as much as I would have wished. As I found myself functioning on a full professional basis, I began to see that I was nearing the end of my days as a “Jack Kirby assistant.” While I loved and respected the man, his dream of editing comics by others seemed unlikely to materialize... and even if it did, it didn’t necessarily represent the proper course for my career. You can only go so far and do

so much when you’re perceived as someone’s assistant. There was also another thing bothering me. As I mentioned, Jack assigned Steve and me to write things, paid us out of his own pocket... and then used very little of what we’d written, even when we were essentially taking dictation. That was making me very uncomfortable. I’ve never liked accepting money in such a situation and I especially didn’t like accepting Jack’s. A few months earlier, Infantino had asked Jack if he had any ideas that could bolster the sales on Joe Orlando’s ghost/mystery comics. Jack mentioned that he and Joe Simon had done some terrific stories in that genre for their comic, Black Magic. He suggested that some of the plots from that comic could be adapted and updated, providing a different kind of story from what Orlando was then running. It was agreed that he’d put Steve and myself to the task. Jack picked out two of his favorite Black Magic stories and he gave one to Steve and one to me, telling us to rewrite and modernize them as per his instructions. We each batted out a script and handed them in to Jack, who paid us for them, did a bit of editing, then sent them off to New York. Joe Orlando, it turned out, didn’t think much of either of them. Steve’s, as far as I know, was never drawn. Mine was sent back to Kirby with notes for extensive revision. Jack disagreed completely with the notes. He believed the idea here had been to generate some scripts that didn’t read like the kind of thing Orlando was already buying... and the editor’s comments essentially said, “Here’s how to change this to the kind of story we do in my books.” Eager to put the whole matter behind him and being too nice to dump the whole thing in my lap, Jack did a fast rewrite to address Orlando’s notes, then shipped it off with the request that I receive sole credit. When I saw the final script, I called my friend Mark Hanerfeld, who was then working as Orlando’s assistant, and asked that it run without any writer credit, and it did. I actually didn’t think it was a bad story but it really wasn’t my work, since both Orlando and Kirby had revised it, and it wasn’t even my plot to begin with. (Should anyone wish to track it down: The DC story was called “After I Die...”. Presumably by coincidence, it was drawn by Bill Draut, who’d worked in the SimonKirby studio on the original Black Magic books... though not, I believe, on the story I adapted. The DC version ran in House of Secrets #92, immediately following the first “Swamp Thing” story by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson.) It was not, obviously, a happy experience. The only good that came out of it was that Hanerfeld found a pile of extra copies of that issue up in the office and shipped them to me. Later, when Swamp Thing became a smash hit and fans went scurrying to locate the first appearance, guess who had around thirty mint condition copies to sell? Despite that perk, I decided that I didn’t want to work for DC through Jack. Actually, I wasn’t that interested in working for DC at all just then, but I especially didn’t want to be in a situation where I was getting paid and Jack was rewriting my scripts. I was uneasy enough when he’d hire Steve and me to write something for him and then ignore what we gave him. (I did not consider that an insult by the way; at least, no necessarily. Jack rarely followed anyone else’s scripts.) Nevertheless, he was so enthusiastic about Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth that I chickened out on telling him I didn’t want to do it. So one afternoon, Jack spitballed ideas for the strip and talked through an entire introductory plot which I hurriedly scribbled down into a notebook. That night at home, I typed up a detailed outline for a first issue. The next trip out to Jack’s, he read the outline and said it was terrific. Since just about

every idea in it was his, I was neither surprised nor flattered by this. Before he sent it off to Carmine, he said, he wanted to have a name in mind—that of some artist who could take over the book as soon as DC would allow. I suggested a longtime comic book artist named Dan Spiegle who, I’d heard, lived only about 30 miles north of the Kirby home. I had not then met Dan Spiegle. A few months after the events I’m describing here, my editor at Gold Key assigned me to write a comic he was drawing. Dan and I met and became good friends, and we proceeded to collaborate on a wide array of comics for around 25 years. But at the time, Spiegle was just an artist whose work I’d admired. When I showed Jack some of that work, Jack said, “I’d like to meet him.” Mike Royer had Spiegle’s number and I obtained it for Kirby. Now, this next part of the story is something Dan does not remember at all. Ask him and he’ll tell you he has no recollection of it... but he’ll also admit that I have a much better memory than he does, so he assumes I’m right. Jack called Dan, who brought samples of his artwork down to show him... as it turned out, on a day when Steve and I weren’t around. Jack liked what he saw and sent some of Spiegle’s comics to Infantino, saying, “This is the guy I want to have draw Kamandi.” The response was positive to the premise, negative to the suggestion of Spiegle or several alternates Jack proposed. “Carmine said he was going to give me a Filipino,” Kirby reported to us a day or so later. Steve and I were more than a little baffled at the comment, as was Jack. “I don’t know what he meant,” Kirby continued. “All I know is that I told him I wanted someone else to draw this new book and Carmine said, ‘I have a bunch of Filipinos and I’ll give you one.’” It sounded like DC was involved in some sort of slave trade. Only weeks later did we learn that Infantino had been quietly making arrangements with a community of excellent (but, by American standards, low-paid) comic artists in the Philippines. That same day, Kirby told us that Carmine had asked him to come up with another new comic—something in the monster vein. Jack decided to come up with a scary title and later that evening over dinner at a Howard Johnson’s, he did. Jack, Roz, daughters Lisa and Barbara, Steve and I sat around the table, talking about everything except comics. At some point, Kirby grew strangely quiet and just as our orders were delivered, he suddenly announced he had the new comic all figured out. As the rest of us worked our way through hot turkey sandwiches, Jack poured out a fully-formed storyline for a new strip called The Demon. Though he would later find new avenues to explore within his premise, the concept, characters and origin story all came to Jack at that restaurant, between the time we ordered and the arrival of our entrees. Had it been anyone else describing a new project in such detail, you would have assumed he’d been working on it for weeks. Once home, Jack pulled out a pile of books that reprinted Prince Valiant, the classic newspaper strip by Hal Foster. He paged through them until he found a sequence he recalled, wherein Valiant disguised himself by stretching a goose skin over his head, thereby creating a grotesque mask—a memorable visual that Jack (and many readers of the strip) had recalled for decades. Jack thought it would serve as an inside joke for readers who recognized the source if he patterned the look of his new character after that mask. He moved immediately to his drawing board and sketched out the first image of The Demon. The final version was almost identical to that first drawing. Before the evening was out, he’d added enough sketches and a few paragraphs to form an exciting presentation. It all met with great interest at DC, along with the promise of another Filipino. But first, Infantino asked Kirby to write and draw a first issue to set the direction, which he did. Royer lettered and inked the story and it was shipped off to the DC offices. A few weeks later, Jack was asked for a second issue of The Demon and a pilot issue for Kamandi—the latter done using much of the outline I had prepared. The verdict from New York was that both books were “sure winners” and

would be scheduled a.s.a.p. Jack was almost embarrassed when he reported to Steve and myself, “Carmine says they have too much potential to be entrusted to anyone else. He wants me to do the first few issues of each.” But of course, as we all knew, if the books fared poorly, they’d be immediately dropped and if they did well, DC would probably insist Jack continue on with them. I do not believe Jack was particularly enamored of either new book, at least not at first. In both cases, he was giving DC what he believed they wanted, as opposed to what he longed to do... or even what he thought might sell well. Still, he had a solid work ethic that dictated that you give a job your all, even if it’s not your first choice project. What you do then is to take it as a personal challenge and to look for the things that do interest you. The idea of doing a comic set on the Earth after a nuclear holocaust is not something that would have occurred naturally to Kirby, especially in 1971. At the time, like so many Americans, he was concerned about the Vietnam War and he was hearing the argument, voiced by many, that we had to stop Communism there or face an inevitable nuclear war with Russia and/or Red China. Jack did not believe war was ever unavoidable, and he decried any defeatist attitude in this regard. Around this time, Infantino had sent Jack a pile of recent issues and cover proof sheets of upcoming issues, just to solicit Jack’s reactions to them. One was 100-Page Super Spectacular #6 with a cover by Neal Adams showing a group shot of several dozen DC heroes. Infantino thought it was “the greatest cover ever done on a comic book”—a view held by many in his office and also throughout 9

fandom—and he wanted to see if Jack agreed. Jack didn’t. “These are all action heroes,” Kirby told what was probably a stunned publisher, “and you have them all standing around, doing nothing. They should all be flying and leaping and charging into battle. Furthermore, they’re all in the same pose and they all have same physiques and the same expressions. You’re telling the world that all your characters are the same.” In the same package was a copy of Strange Adventures #226, which had come out some months before. A Joe Kubert cover depicted a hydrogen bomb destroying our planet. Accompanying this was the blurb, “Who will trigger World War 3?” and the blast was surrounded by faces depicting the leaders of the United States, China, England, France, Israel, Russia, Africa and the Arab Republic. Jack liked this cover even less than the group shot. He felt that DC books then had too much death and defeat on their covers, and that the H-Bomb cover was overly negative. It was also needlessly misleading about the story within, which did not address the question. Someone at DC—probably not Infantino—had sent the issue out, figuring that its cover image (which they liked) would inspire Jack in fashioning the afterthe-bomb comic he was doing. And it did inspire Jack, though perhaps not in the way its sender intended. Kirby resigned himself to the idea that his assignment was to do a comic set on Earth after the destruction of our civilization, but he was determined to not replicate and extend the negativity he perceived in the Strange Adventures cover and a few others from around that period. “This must be a comic about fighting to survive,” he told me when he thought I’d someday be writing Kamandi. He said 10

similar things about The Demon. The milieus did not intrigue him but sometimes, he said, you affirm life by facing death and refusing to accept. Later on, I saw him do this again when DC assigned him to take over a strip called “The Losers” in Our Fighting Forces. Jack did not like the characters in the strip, which was a jury-rigged assemblage of characters from various cancelled DC combat titles. He didn’t like the idea. He didn’t like taking over a comic created by Robert Kanigher, a man who not long before had stopped him in the DC halls to inform him that every single comic published by Marvel, as well as every book Kirby had done before and after, was irredeemable garbage. (Kanigher actually used a stronger word than “garbage.”) Jack especially did not like the title of the strip, “The Losers,” being the last thing he would have called a band of Americans fighting in World War II. But it was his job to make something of it and he took an essentially negative premise and infused it with optimism and heroism and personal experiences about which he could write with true passion. The result was probably my favorite post-Fourth World work by Jack. He did the same thing with Kamandi and The Demon, bringing light to what in other hands could have been (and sometimes since, have been) very dark premises, unsuited for Kirby sensibilities. But to a great extent, this is a viewpoint I came to much later. When I read the first issue of Kamandi in the pencil stage, I didn’t like it very much. I didn’t tell Jack this but it felt bloodless to me... a perfectly fine story but lacking the extra human energy and passion that was present in most of his work. Jack informed me that he was going to add my name to the first page with some credit like “Plot Assist.” It wasn’t so much that he thought I deserved it—the plot was 95% his—as that he was hoping to ease me into writing the book. I told him that wasn’t necessary and that he ought to get full credit, it being a first issue and all. I believe Jack intended to put my name on anyway and then forgot, which was fine with me. Shortly after this, he got word that New Gods and Forever People were being “temporarily suspended,” which of course almost always means, “cancelled, probably forever.” Jack was devastated by the decision on any number

Because of that experience, I gave The Demon a fighting chance and also enjoyed it, though perhaps not as much. As I worked my way through the run, I kept imagining Jack as a master chef who, though given the wrong ingredients, didn’t let that stop him from whipping up something very tasty. And I sensed that along the way, in both books, he found ways to summon his muse and to make them into personal works that mattered to him. That is a rare ability for a creative person and it is one of the things that made his lifetime output so grand in size of levels. From that point on, Kamandi and The Demon became his main assignments from DC and there was no more talk about handing them off to others, not even to one of those Filipinos. (I have a bizarre, wholly unprovable theory that The Demon would have sold better if Jack had only written it and someone like Alfredo Alcala or Tony DeZuniga had drawn it; not that they were better artists than Jack, but that for commercial reasons, the material needed a darker, grimier look. Kirby, especially inked by Royer, was almost too slick and colorful, given what was then expected by fans of macabre comics.) Within a few months, I quietly absented myself from working for Jack. Oddly enough, we never discussed my departure. We both just realized there was really nothing for me to do there and that I needed to devote myself to my own work. Later on, his wife Roz thanked me for just withdrawing and not putting Jack on the spot to say something. It was not the last time someone would thank me for going away. I did not read Kamandi and The Demon after those first issues. I bought them but could never summon up the interest to read them. Jack, for some reason, put a credit for Steve and myself on either Kamandi #2 or #3—I forget which. I not only didn’t contribute anything to that issue, I didn’t even read it until 1983. The occasion then was that Julius Schwartz tricked me (I believe that is an appropriate word in this case) into writing a Superman-Kamandi team-up for DC Comics Presents. Once I’d agreed, I had to haul out all my unread issues of Kamandi and turn them into read issues. I was delightfully surprised to find that the Kirby passion was there, after all. If you had it in your head that Jack Kirby belonged doing the Fourth World books— or even Fantastic Four and Thor—I’m not sure you could get into them. But by ’83, with Jack’s main comic book production behind him, any new Kirby was enough of a delight to triumph over preconceived notions of where he belonged. So I found myself enjoying the ingenuity of Kamandi very much. The premise still didn’t grab me but it was wonderful seeing Jack build so much out of the wreckage.

and fascinating in content. I now think they are very good comics, Kamandi especially. And someone out in the buying audience must have agreed at the time or Kamandi would not have lasted as long as it did during a period when most new comics were five or six issues, then out. And as with so much of Jack’s work, every time I read them, I sense a little more of Jack’s voice, Jack’s morals, Jack’s determinations and— best of all—Jack’s sense of humor. And I become even happier that I never got stuck writing it because, I guarantee you, it would have been gone and forgotten in under a year. Jack’s version, they’ll be reading when it’s whatever year it’s supposed to be in the comic. Next issue, I’ll return to answering your questions about Jack. In the meantime, visit my dueling websites—www.POVonline.com and www.newsfromme.com. Jack is mentioned often on both, and you can send me questions about him from either site. The folks at TwoMorrows might also like me to mention that they’ve published a new collection of my silly columns. This one is entitled Superheroes in My Pants. If didn’t enjoy the last two collections, no point in buying this one. But if you did, then do. We have crates of them to sell. ★

(previous page, bottom) An unused page from Demon #1, still in pencil form.

Who wouldn’t want one (or more) of Mark’s collections of POV columns, featuring many new ones, and new illos by Sergio Aragonés? There’s Comic Books & Other Necessities of Life, Wertham Was Right!, and now shipping is Superheroes In My Pants! Order directly from TwoMorrows for $17 each postpaid in the US (add $2 each for Canada, or elsewhere $3 each for Surface Mail, or $7 each for Airmail).

INTERVIEW

Russell Wrestles With Kirby Conducted by Eric Nolen-Weathington

(P. Craig Russell started as an assistant to Dan Adkins, and quickly blossomed into one of the industry’s top artistic talents, with acclaimed work on such characters as Killraven, Elric, and Dr. Strange. This interview was conducted by phone in October 2003.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: When did you first develop an interest in comics? P. CRAIG RUSSELL: My first memory of comics... well, we always had comics around. A little table between our twin beds—my brother and I—and there was always a little stack of comic books there, mostly Walt Disney and Harvey and some of his Roy Rogers comics. He was four years older than me and really into the Saturday morning westerns—Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger. We always had those comic books around. So they were just always there and I think I finally took more of an interest in them than he did, or any other kid in the neighborhood. I started mostly with Carl Barks’ Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories. Then I followed the same trajectory as anybody else, I guess. A little bit after that I got a little bit older and it was Archie comics, and then a little bit older and it was Marvel comics. TJKC: How old were you when you first saw the Marvel comics?

RUSSELL: I was probably around 12 or 13, I guess, just when the Marvel Age was starting or the first year after. It was around ’63, ’64. I was at a friend’s house and they had issues #3-14 of the Fantastic Four. I picked that up and I was just completely hooked—lost right away. I had to read all of them and then went to the newsstand where it was up to around—I can’t believe I remember these numbers— #29 of Fantastic Four was out. So then it was Spider-Man and everything else, and then becoming a collector and having to get everything that was published before I started buying them— which at that point it was only a few dozen, I guess. TJKC: Was Kirby one of your favorites at the time or was he just “one of the Marvel artists”? RUSSELL: Oh, no. He was the fountainhead. He was the King. It was immediately obvious, as young as I was, who had the chops and who didn’t. It was Kirby and Ditko. TJKC: Did you have a particular issue or series by Kirby that was your favorite? RUSSELL: Oh, Fantastic Four was always my favorite. When they said “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine,” to me it was just like, “Well, duh.” [laughter] TJKC: I would be very surprised if you didn’t like the “Tales of Asgard” back-ups. RUSSELL: I liked that, too. I liked ’em all. I mean, I was a True Believer. I even got Kid Colt, Outlaw and Millie the Model. [laughter] I bought absolutely everything and read it all. I was not too discerning about what wasn’t good. I knew what was the best, and then there was everything else, and I enjoyed that, too. Anything Kirby did. Early on I started getting wise to the ways of inkers, and that made a big difference. To me Sinnott was the final word and everything else was judged against that. I was quite hardline about it. Of course, now I can see the relative merits of other people. Giacoia’s inks were always wonderful, but I knew right from the beginning that Colletta sucked. [laughter] TJKC: Did you follow Kirby when he went to DC? It sounds like you were strictly a Marvel kind of guy. RUSSELL: Oh, no. I also became a fanatic comic person and I bought everything. Although I started with the Archies and Marvels, then I moved over to DC and it became an art thing. Anything Joe Kubert did, that pulled me into it. And I remember, actually, my first DC comic was Superman #153 or #154—the death of Kal-El, I think it was. He was in this glass box on the cover, dying of some mysterious illness. Again, it was at the friend’s house that had the Fantastic Fours, and I read that. And of course, when you’re a kid, you don’t realize that no one is ever really going to die in a comic book, so it was like reading King Lear. [laughter] So I was into the DC books, too. Kubert’s war books and then all the stuff that Gil Kane was doing over there. And then when he made a jump over to Marvel, that was really exciting to me. TJKC: When Kirby went over and started the New Gods, did you like that as much as his Marvel stuff?

RUSSELL: Not quite as much. I know there’s two schools of thought on this: Some people believe that Kirby’s best work was in the mid-’60s at Marvel and others believe his ultimate work was the New Gods and the Fourth World over at DC. My problem is, as much as I like story, I’m an art guy, and I think Kirby was starting to spin a bit out of his own control by that point. The drawing wasn’t done with such finesse as it was in the mid-’60s at Marvel. I think as an artist that was his best time. He had the early lyricism of his work with those long, graceful figures that he did in the ’40s and ’50s, and at the same time he had this incredible power that he was able to put into his work. And they just seemed to be in perfect equilibrium in those issues from around #45-75 of Fantastic Four. Just absolutely everything he did was top of the line. I thought, later on, he started losing some of that lyricism and a bit of grace in his work and it got a little bit more brutal. And towards the end I thought it got flat-out vulgar. But, you know, Kirby’s vulgar, the majority of people should aspire to. TJKC: At the start of “Tales of Asgard” he was adapting the Norse tales fairly straightforwardly. Do you see any parallels between what he was doing there with what you’re doing with The Ring of the Nibelüng and so on? RUSSELL: I suppose you could say parallels insofar as we’re both working with Norse mythology and being faithful to our source. Now my source was Wagner’s own reinterpretation and take on Norse mythology. He was taking that and refashioning it and adding his own sensibility to it and making something entirely new. More like what Kirby did later with mythology as he moved away from having a more literal interpretation of mythology and was turning it into the Kirby mythos. That’s sort of what Wagner did. So I was being faithful to what Wagner was reshaping and reforming. TJKC: Let’s talk about the Hulk piece you inked [see TJKC #39’s back cover]. Normally you ink almost strictly with pen, correct? RUSSELL: Right. TJKC: In inking Kirby did you use a brush at all? RUSSELL: No, no, I used the same materials I always do. TJKC: How did you approach inking Kirby as opposed to someone like Ditko, who you’ve also inked. RUSSELL: The problem with inking anybody, I find, is that if I’m inking a story it takes maybe several pages to sort of get the feel for it—to feel like I’m working with the same voice as the penciler. It’s a bit of flailing away until you click into it, and then you feel very comfortable. The problem with doing a single piece of Kirby was it was all flailing. So you end up spending a lot more time on the piece. If I was doing a Kirby story, I think I might get a more natural feel for it. He’s such a unique penciler. All the stuff makes perfect sense when you’re looking at it, but when you start inking it, it can be a different thing. There are two ways to go at it. One is to try to realize Kirby’s intentions. The other is to use it as a jumping-off point for your own style. If you look at John Severin’s inks on several Kirby stories he did in the mid-’60s, they, of course, look like John Severin with these incredibly powerful figures underneath. He has a style that is applied to the work. I try to realize what the artist is doing. I try to ink it in the same style that they would ink it, I guess is what I’m trying to say, if they were inking their own work. That’s ultimately impossible because you’re not that artist, but I’m trying to remain true to the spirit of their work. It was interesting doing Kirby, because that style of drawing is not the style that I use. I did three pieces: a Hulk piece, a Fantastic Four piece [above], and then a Karnilla in the Jack Kirby’s Heroes and Villains sketchbook. That was a lot more successful, because it had elements that I work with like long, flowing hair and dragons and scales. There was just something about that subject matter that I was able to identify with more. I just think that was more successful. It’s hard for me to tell with the Hulk or the FF if it’s successful or not, because... I just don’t know. TJKC: Were you looking back at how he drew those figures in the past or were you just trying to do your own thing? RUSSELL: I was just looking at the piece itself and trying to understand the structure underneath. Because there is a real powerful structure there and if you just go for gesture and just apply ink over those lines without understanding what they’re doing to make structure, I think the whole piece can fall apart. That’s the problem with Kirby: You have to understand that there’s structure underneath all

that gesture or it will simply fall apart. No one can ink a Kirby rock like Joe Sinnott could. Somehow it felt absolutely three-dimensional and still preserved the feel of Kirby. I’m being unfair—there are other inkers who could do it. But if you look at that Kirby sketchbook, you see a lot of rocks that seem to be big, jagged piles of ink, and they don’t have structure. It’s hard to do. I find him a very difficult artist to ink. TJKC: If there was one specific Kirby story you could have inked, which would it have been? RUSSELL: Wow.... Well, you know, I would like to get the original pencils to one of those Thor stories. I wish we had the original pencils to all those Thor stories and would find decent inkers to do it. I remember Dan Adkins telling me that he was living in New York and working for Marvel at that time and he would see the original pencils come in. He believed that more than anything else Kirby ever did that that was the highwater mark of his career, based on the pencils he did for that. TJKC: So what are you working on now? The Ring Cycle is done now? RUSSELL: The Ring Cycle was finished a couple of years ago. That’s out in a couple of volumes from Dark Horse. I have a story coming up in the Endless Nights anthology for Vertigo and a haunted house story for Hauntings from Dark Horse. Another Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales book is coming out. TJKC: Is that volume 3 or 4? RUSSELL: Volume 4. And I’m inking 6 issues of Jerry Ordway’s Wonder Woman, and I did layouts for and am inking a Fables annual that Craig Hamilton is doing the pencils for, so there’s a lot on the board right now. ★ 13

INFLUENCE

The Mythic & Deranged: A Kirby Conducted by Charles Hatfield

(Jarret Keene’s recent collection of poems, Monster Fashion (Manic D Press, 2002), has got to be read to be believed. And even close reading won’t domesticate this fierce, free-ranging sampler of verse: extravagant, sometimes fearsome, often darkly comic poems, full of Pop and fizz, personal and yet never merely autobiographical. Hugely imaginative stuff that occasionally, knowingly, edges toward self-parody, but never, ever smirks. From Janet Leigh in Psycho (“Shower”), to Mad magazine (“The Love Song of Alfred E. Neuman”), to the work of Jack Kirby (“Mother Delilah” and our sidebar poem, “Captain America at Home”), Keene plunders widely, recklessly, from a plethora of sources. But his thefts are marked by deep understanding. Often he gets disarmingly close to the source of a work’s appeal, unearthing in it something startling but absolutely right. The cover of Monster Fashion bears an image that will be familiar to the Kirby Collector faithful: the Barda-esque female warrior from the cover of TJKC #20, inked and painted by Ken Steacy. The following interview will tell you why this image is perfect for the cover of Keene’s book. It will also show you why Keene—a Kirby devotee, and a sometime contributor to the Collector—regards the connection between Kirby and poetry as perfectly natural.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Jarret, have you ever done any comics, or cartooning? If so, has that experience shaped your work as a poet? JARRET KEENE: As a child, I drew constantly, mostly copying Kirby fight scenes out of Marvel’s Greatest Superhero Battles. At nine, I attended a “comic book signing” at a specialty shop in Tampa, Florida, where Pat Broderick (who was drawing Firestorm at the time) and Mike Zeck (who was drawing Captain America then) glanced at my “comics” and said I had a little talent. I still have those early drawings, and looking at them today, I see them as pretty talentless. When I turned eleven, my parents enrolled me in a private school and that was the end of my drawing career. It was a very strict Episcopalian day school, and I had no time for anything but homework. I tell people this all the time, and they think I’m joking. I mean, this school had barbed wire and video cameras and caning. We were forced to write in italics with calligraphy pens. It was like out of some Black Magic comic book. Anyway, at twelve, I was reading and writing essays in school on The Iliad and Macbeth, and these were hardly different from my Kirby comics. So in a way, my private schooling was just getting me primed for a later and more informed reintroduction to Kirby’s genius. I think if it wasn’t for my bizarre schooling, I’d just be one of these guys who love Kirby because he used to draw the Fantastic Four. If I’d kept drawing, maybe today I’d be another comic-book artist grossly indebted to Kirby, rehashing and recycling the King’s layouts and ideas and characters and plotlines. Fortunately, that’s not the case. TJKC: So, your schooling made you look at Kirby in a new way? KEENE: Studying all that classical stuff opened my eyes to Kirby’s place in a larger tradition of storytelling. I’m not joking when I say Kirby’s rivals are Homer and Shakespeare. And I’m able to assimilate a lot of his influence into a different medium. I want my poems to read like Kirby comics.

e song and on as , y r t e TJKC: Many people assume that poetry and graphic art draw on different kinds of as po hen I w as well this song w ida with ic creativity, that they demand different kinds of discipline. Of course some artists are s u te tm lor urns a says, “I wro f Orlando, F omic book t n e inspired by poetry, and vice versa, but there still seems to be this general view that k ta c e so ne has mandi. Keen offeehouse my favorite exclue e K t the two disciplines are diametrically different. What do you think? c g to n Ka Jarre ing the rs. A tribute r buy the so ed by iz ir r p o s r r in e o KEENE: Well, economically speaking, the most obvious comparison between drawing was and t out monste n preview rs old b a 03 3 comics and writing poems is that these are difficult arenas to make money in. In 1 20 yea folk songs a irby.” You c : = id K to e song& = y b strang And to Jack com. Log on terms of creativity, I see them as being very much the same, because it seems you h c ear . id. php?s . ll u as a k rough Mperia f y have to write a lot of bad poems before you can write a good one. Likewise, I la th m/disp o c . sively ia r imagine you have to draw a bunch of crap before you can draw something good. pe S: LyrIC www.m http:// Then again, I guess that goes for any creative endeavor, really. h t th Ear oy on efore my bir ntrol B t Also, there’s something about the way comics and poetry are both outdated s a L b o di, the s destroyed now have c n a m a mediums. And the way in which they both momentarily stop or “freeze” time: I am K he world wa nd animals l u a t o s e s comics halt the action within panels, and poems halt the action within stanzas. ’Caus run in herd em each a s th n a n e e m c iv u n g a H s TJKC: How does visual thinking (imaging, or visual memory, or observation) ce last ch e ion ha kind’s t first glanc r rightful pla Radiat n a m a u m feed into your poetic practice? o r a a d I n le a nd nc andi, a ight seem u former glory m a KEENE: Poetic practice? Well, comic books—especially Kirby’s—totally K r m I am ission pecies to ou grace m y shaped my creative thinking. I like mythic and deranged stories and m s y dis But eturn m as created a r t s u images, which is to me what Kirby is all about, what Monster Fashion Im re h wn r Natu ide do s p strives to be: mythic and deranged. There’s not much “visual thinking” u Mothe d e d en turn e me aroun e b e n going on when I compose a poem, although clearly imagery is crucial s e a e tK lse lik os hing h 4 Jarre ©200 Everyt e’s no one e es and in zo gh to certain poems. Rather, sound is everything. I follow Edgar Allen g er ou And th re kept in ca n race is thr Poe’s dictum: Make it sound good, and the meaning will follow. a a People s if the hum a s TJKC: How do you go about making things sound good? It look KEENE: I do what I did when I was a child: I imitate in the crudest possible terms. I grab a copy of something like T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land or Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, and then I smash it up against something like Boy Commandos. I study these documents for things like language, rhythm, line breaks, until they eventually inspire me to write something crazy of my own. Sometimes it works. Sound was important to Kirby, too. Sure, a lot of his dialogue—when you break it down—doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But it sounds great. Check out the dialogue in a story like “The Glory Boat.” It’s almost as explosive as the illustrations. It fits perfectly. And that line from Kamandi? “The apes have learned to kill by sound!” That’s me—I’m one of those apes!

TJKC: Turning the question to comics, is there anything about the art or craft of comics that has been an inspiration, a kick in the slats, for 14

centric Interview With Jarret Keene, Poet TJKC: Would you say alternative comix have shaped your approach? KEENE: Although I adore today’s alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware, they don’t impact my writing, because they borrow heavily from the literary realm to tell their stories. I’m going the opposite way. I steal from comics in order to compose a poem.

you as a poet? KEENE: I know very little of the craft and production of comics, but the impulse—at least in the superhero genre—to cram as much action and suspense and imagery into a panel is certainly something I aspire to. I try to pack as much insanity as I can into each stanza. Lots of older, more established, more highbrow poets think I’m juvenile in this impulse, I’m sure. But younger poets totally understand what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Poetry shouldn’t be boring, but over the years it’s become calcified, because everyone wants to be “serious” all the time. Which is fine, except that merely writing about nature and art and beauty and “lovers of loving love”

doesn’t automatically make you a serious poet. You need to “do” something in a poem. You need to have action and suspense and mayhem and death and all that good stuff. That’s what Homer did. And Kirby. You have to have subject matter that matters, and my preferred subject is popular culture. For instance, the idea of Captain America, of superpatriotism, is pretty serious to me, given the current political climate of this country. For the time being, nature and art and beauty-magical-love have taken a back seat in my aesthetic approach. Pop culture and its influence, good and bad, is my foremost concern right now.

TJKC: How about if we turn the question specifically to Kirby’s craft—not his particular stories, but qualities of his artwork, design sense, or artistic sensibility? How do you think those have influenced your work as a poet, or your interest in poetry? KEENE: What did Gil Kane say about Kirby’s art in general? To paraphrase: “In every panel, there’s a nuclear situation going on.” That’s Kirby’s sensibility for sure. He had an apocalyptic imagination, as did Kurt Cobain and so many other great artists. That impulse to go for broke in every panel, in every story, in every issue, in every title, is just amazing to me. Even when he loses interest in a title, he’s utterly fascinating. He does really strange things to bring about a resolution. No one ever rides off into the sunset. They’re either killed or mutilated or stranded or rendered insane. By the end of my poems, I like to leave the narrators or pop-cultural figures in a similar state. What else? His tough-as-nails women! Yeah, I know this is gonna sound weird, but Kirby totally shaped my sexual tastes. Too much information, I know, but I’m drawn to women who can kick my ass, physically and intellectually. A lot of guys say Kirby drew masculine women, and I just don’t see that at all. They were a little Reubenesque, sure. But masculine? No way. To me Big Barda is the ideal woman. She’s voluptuous, and if you cross her, she’ll redesign your face. There’s something terrifically sexy about that. That’s why I married my wife, who’s a university professor and doesn’t put up with any nonsense. That’s why I’m always writing about women like Ava Gardner and Janet Leigh, because they’re dangerous and infinitely fascinating—just like Big Barda. She rocks! TJKC: You once told me that you weren’t even sure if you “liked” Kirby’s work—then you launched into an admiring monologue about Machine Man and how scary you thought it was! Does Kirby’s work frighten you? KEENE: What I meant was that Kirby’s work is not 15

something I can merely “like.” Or even “love,” really. It’s way too powerful for that. Kirby’s work awes me and, yes, terrifies me. About Machine Man: As I wrote in the essay “The Man Beyond the Machine,” which was published many years ago in TJKC [see issue #15], the first six issues of Machine Man are about a purple robot who confronts a serious philosophical question: Aside from the physical form, what does it mean to be human? Kirby’s answer is self-sacrifice, which is a scary proposal to consider when you’re a 10-year-old reading some third-hand comic book you bought for 30 cents at Mary’s Book Exchange in downtown Tampa, Florida, during the early years of Reagan’s presidency. The character of Machine Man equates mechanization with a loss of individuality, which is why he at first despises his robot aspects and clings to his “human” mask. Gradually, he learns that to be human is about action, not appearance. This isn’t a profoundly original lesson, but it is a profound one, especially given Machine Man’s decision to sacrifice himself for a humanity that loathes him. Obviously, the story taps into the Jesus myth, which offers its own truth and horror, but Kirby complicates the retelling of Jesus’ sacrifice by making Machine Man distinctly non-human. In fact, Machine Man is a weapon designed by the U.S. military! The horrible irony is that he ends up doing exactly what he’s programmed to do. However, his decision to act is made after reaching an understanding of what it means to be human. I don’t know, Charles, is this scary to you? It scares the hell out of me. As does most of Kirby’s return-to-Marvel output, which I feel is his best work, and I’m writing a book that makes this case. TJKC: Let’s talk about a poem you’ve already alluded to, “Captain America at Home.” It shows knowledge, not only of Kirby’s Cap, but of the Captain America mythos in general. Tell us about this

poem as a reading of Captain America comics. Can you say how it came about? KEENE: Well, the poem is another example of the deconstructive impulse that Kirby taught me. Kirby was always building up and breaking down myths to see what makes them tick (as in Machine Man, where Kirby asks, “Would the story of Jesus work if Jesus wasn’t at all human?”). I mean, I didn’t learn about the literary or academic theory of deconstruction via Derrida. Rather, Kirby and Harvey Kurtzman (Mad) were my teachers. I wrote the poem after reading Kirby’s last run on Captain America. Of course, “Captain America at Home” is not a story Kirby would’ve ever written, because there are no alien invasions or world-domination plots or dystopic cataclysms. The conflict here is entirely an inner one. Kirby did much to illuminate Cap’s inner life in his run on the character in the late ’70s, but I wanted to explore his notion of the lonely patriot (as opposed to the mob patriot) even further. I think I did that, and the poem speaks for 16

itself really. It’s just an evocation of Cap in between battles, stitching his mask, polishing his shield, contemplating his awesome responsibilities. I guess what I mean to say is that Kirby was terrified of mobs and hordes and armies. He saw group hysteria as a dangerous thing. He believed patriotism to be an existential but necessary endeavor. You should love your country, but quietly. Not with fireworks and bumper stickers and T-shirts and Super Bowl bull and calling for war, but with mature and independent-minded conviction. You should work toward your patriotism, undergo a personal journey, without shouting “Osama, yo mama!” Indeed, patriotism is not about planting a flag in your front yard.

Captain America at Home for Jack Kirby After a long day of cracking Red Skull’s skull, he is sofa-bound, polishing the starspangled shield that protects him from the transforming powers of the Cosmic Cube, the swarming gadgetry of Baron Zemo, the deadly karate chops of the Super-Adaptoids. For now, he is happy. The TV is on, background noise he needs to drown his fears and concentrate; the gauntlets, literally, are off. Tonight he will shine his shield, stitch his winged mask, and catch a few sound bites on Headline News. That’s the plan. But then the unthinkable occurs: he sees that the white star of his jersey contains a bloodstain in the shape of his country’s mainland, forty-eight states, all of which he’s saved more than once from mindcontrol, mass murder, General Mayhem. He ponders the magnitude of his job, the awesome responsibility of defending not only the land of freedom but also the free world. It seems too much, really, for one man alone. Which is how he feels most of the time, isolated from the citizenry he has sworn to protect. For a moment,

TJKC: Has your understanding of this poem changed in light of recent politics, I mean in the post-9/11 atmosphere? KEENE: My understanding of the poem hasn’t changed. The poem, if anything, was specially formulated for 9-11. I just didn’t know it at the time. In fact, all the poems from my book make better sense now then they ever did. The cover to my book—Kirby’s armor-plated woman pointing a gun he ponders life without a country, at a monster—makes better sense, a nomadic existence, a self-imposed exile, too. Kirby’s work is more imporallowing his lungs to swell proudly, tant now than ever. like birthday balloons. To inhale clean air, This is what I think: If you feel air minus the taint of patriotism, Puritanism, your poetry (or your comic book) “mobocracy.” To talk with people as if they were real, not just some glorified has to change in response to 9-11, abstraction. But enough! He shakes himself then maybe you were writing the like a wet dog, gets up to toss the soiled wrong kind of poems (and comic jersey into the washer. Meanwhile, the bald books) all along. Maybe you need eagle statuette that squats atop his mantlepiece to sit down and reconsider what it squints fiercely and prepares for flight. is you want to accomplish in your ©2004 Jarret Keene work. I know what my job is: to illuminate the strange and beautiful and terrifying aspects of our popular imagination. That’s what I do. If you feel you need to stop writing navel-gazing poems or scripting puerile super-hero comics because the world sent you a wake-up call, then you’re right. Too bad it took 9-11 to teach you that. Too bad in the wake of 9-11 the mainstream comics industry is still ripping off and regurgitating Kirby’s ideas and characters and stories and making a mess of everything. Make it new or get the hell out of the way! TJKC: Okay. Here comes the inevitable goofball question: Who’s stronger, Wallace Stevens or William Carlos Williams? (If they got in a fight, who’d win?) KEENE: A physical fight or a poetic battle? Well, in terms of poetry, I’d go with Stevens. If it’s about the poet’s impulse to capture the essence of something with a metaphor, his poem “The Motive for Metaphor” makes me think of Thor bringing down his hammer: The motive for metaphor, shrinking from The weight of primary noon, The ABC of being. The ruddy temper, the hammer Of red and blue, the hard sound—Steel against intimation—the sharp flash,The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X. ★

Retrospective

EArTh A.D.

Kirby’s Playground of Imagination by Charles Hatfield

(above) Cover pencils from Kamandi #32 (August 1975), the double-size issue featuring a reprint of Kamandi #1. (next four pages) Pencils from the first issue of Kamandi. Characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics

(Most of the following essay appeared over ten years ago, in the second issue of Jim Kingman’s mail-order ’zine Comic Effect (Summer 1993). In the years since I have often revisited Kamandi, rereading and reconsidering it; in fact some five years ago I read Kirby’s entire run to my eldest son, then age ten. At that time my thinking about Kamandi began to change, and I began to rediscover things my memory had blurred. For example, I realized that the Kamandi I had remembered as an idealized storybook “boy” was often angry, pugnacious, even ferocious; I realized too that the series was terrifically violent, with an at-times brutal edge. This didn’t bother me— the series is still my favorite of Kirby’s, and I find its violence bracing— but I began to want to write about the series again, hopefully from a new, less purely nostalgic perspective. I still want to do that—I’m not done with Kamandi by any means—but in the following I have resisted the urge to make drastic changes, preserving the shape and flavor of the original essay with only minor editorial changes. Some of my more recent musings on the series are appended in a sidebar, as a sort of update from work-in-progress.) can’t remember the first comic I ever read, but I’m almost certain that the first I bought myself, new, from the stands, was issue #32 of Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth (August 1975). Issue #32 was a double-sized issue, including a

new, full-length Kirby story as well as a reprint of Kamandi’s first issue, a map of Kamandi’s world, and a four-page text feature on Kirby (“A Man with a Pencil”) by Steve Sherman. I had seen Kamandi before—I think—because a schoolmate, before moving away, had bequeathed to me a stack of comics, among them Kamandi #22-24. I believe this must have happened not long before #32 hit the stands. In hindsight I suppose those few issues whetted my interest, priming me to buy the next issue I saw—that would be #32, which, as it happened, was an excellent introduction to Kamandi’s world, and to Kirby’s solo work in general. It fired my imagination and provoked a comic-buying habit that lasted several years, exhausting my allowance and setting me up for my second plunge into comics, almost a decade later. Jack Kirby became my favorite comics artist, the center of my ragtag collection, the one artist I followed faithfully—and this devotion crystallized with Kamandi #32. It confirmed me, not only as a Kirby fan, but as a comics fan. I came too late for Kirby’s acclaimed “Fourth World” books, and certainly too late to read his groundbreaking work on The Fantastic Four and Thor when it was new (I did see reprints). Kamandi was my point of entry into Kirby’s enormous body of work—Kamandi, and then OMAC and The Eternals. My passion for Kirby was based largely on this mid-’70s work, stuff often dismissed by collectors and fans as anti-climactic. For me, the 17

world he created in Kamandi was magic: enough like our own to invite recognition, yet populated with talking animals, bizarre natural phenomena and enough unsolved mysteries to inspire endless speculation. Ironically, I came onboard just as Kirby was getting ready to pull out—he was on the verge of returning to Marvel for one last tenure. Kamandi #30-36 made up Kirby’s last arc. (He ceded the editorship to DC’s Gerry Conway with #34, the writing with #38, and finally bowed out altogether after issue #40, having penciled three Conway-written issues.) Issue #32 was a pivotal chapter in this final arc, as it formally introduced a new character while bringing together many of Kamandi’s already large supporting cast. Issue #32’s lead story involves the collision of two distinct plotlines: Kamandi’s encounter with an extraterrestrial (first glimpsed in #30), and an escalating military confrontation between (yow!) tigers and gorillas. The alien, having already transformed Kamandi’s mutant friend, Ben Boxer, into a rampaging giant (#31), seems to be a threat, though no one knows exactly what it is. Issue #32 begins with Kamandi leading the tiger prince Tuftan to the island to find both the E.T. and Dr. Canus, the curious canine genius who has gone to study the creature. Dr. Canus, a step ahead of everyone, has learned to communicate with the alien—a floating ball of energy who proves peaceful, if unpredictable. In fact the extraterrestrial comes to the aid of Kamandi and friends by routing a band of “gorilla commandos,” ape pirates led by one Ramjam, a typically gruff, cigar-smoking heavy of the Kirby school. (Ramjam is introduced in an unforgettable splash: a fierce ape with a Nick Fury-ish eyepatch and, of course, a smoldering, Kirbyesque stogie.) At the story’s climax, the alien assumes physical form to repel Ramjam and his commandos. Sinking into the beach, the E.T. takes on a gigantic body of sand, then advances on the gorillas in a memorable 2/3-page splash, firing gouts of sand at the panic-stricken apes. Thus the alien’s benevolent character is established beyond doubt, and Kamandi’s antagonists are put to flight, at least for a while. The episode ends with Dr. Canus hinting that the alien will soon take a permanent physical body. Issue #32’s lead story spilled over into several months’ worth of new adventures, as Kirby balanced two contrasting plots: The doctor’s efforts to assist the alien’s transformation, and an ongoing naval battle between Tuftan’s tigers and the piratical gorillas. In these issues—which I was buying fresh off the stands, breath bated—scenes of nautical action alternate with scenes of Kamandi, Dr. Canus and the extraterrestrial. It becomes a she—namely, Pyra, a sleek, red-skinned female—in issue #34, just in time for Kamandi to commandeer her spaceship for a desperate attack on the gorillas. Then things start to get complicated.... The lead story in Kamandi #32 will probably not be remembered as one of Kirby’s best. Yet, characteristically, it bristles with energy, and includes several 18

memorable scenes: Panels and pages full of character and oomph. The opening splash, with Kamandi and Prince Tuftan racing toward the island in a speedboat, has stayed with me ever since; likewise the sight of the alien, a coruscating globe of Kirby-fizz. When I close my eyes I can see these images inside my head. Ah, but it was #32’s reprint of Kamandi #1 that fully snared me. It left a cluster of vivid impressions that have permanently taken up residence in some foyer of my mind: That fantastic spread of Kamandi paddling through a half-submerged New York skyline, like a scene out of When Worlds Collide; Kamandi’s sudden meeting with a talking, gun-wielding wolf, frightfully rendered in a half-page panel; a cavalry charge by armored tigers on horseback, “Great Caesar” in the lead; and the final, spirit-boosting

meeting of Kamandi and newfound friend Ben Boxer, just as things seem hopeless. Despite obvious nods to other stories, other sources, the first Kamandi strikes me now, as it did then, as a remarkably rich and original comic, crazy, headlong, breathtaking, packed with spectacle and danger. The map included in #32 (superceding a smaller map from way back in #1) promised more of the same: Further travels, further adventures. Poring over said map, I realized that Kirby had a whole world to play with, and, man, was I hooked. I suspect I wasn’t the only one so affected. Kamandi seems to have been a popular book, one that snared a lot of future Kirby enthusiasts. Consider: It was the only book from Kirby’s early’70s tenure at DC to last beyond Kirby’s departure.

The book hung on after Kirby left, despite an immediate, evident lapse in quality (both story- and artwise). It survived numerous writers and artists, some not at all comfortable with it, until the DC purge of mid-’78. So there must have been something in Kirby’s original that merited DC’s efforts to keep the book afloat. Issue #32, with its reprint of #1, seems to have been a bid to confirm new readers, and to satisfy old ones who did not have that first issue. Such a move testifies to the popularity, or at least the perceived potential, of the series. In fact, though it is too often dismissed as another late-term failure, Kamandi was probably one of Kirby’s most successful ventures in the ’70s. It lasted over five years, longer than most comic series can boast. What might account for Kamandi’s long run?

Kirby has long been acknowledged as the visual architect of Silver Age super-hero comics, yet throughout much of the ’70s and ’80s his gifts as a writer were undersold, if not simply overlooked. When I reentered comic book reading in the mid-’80s, Kirby was looked upon as a god of style, but not a maker of coherent stories. Graphically, he had been canonized as the grandmaster of mainstream comics, but the extent of his responsibility for storytelling— plotting, staging, laying out, scripting his comics— had been underestimated. His writing, at least the best of his writing, was, is, underrated. Though almost every Kirby project of the ’70s has been revived at least once in the years since—because Kirby’s characters are beautifully designed and his ideas irresistibly provocative—his characters have

never succeeded so well in other hands as they did in his own. As a review of Kamandi amply demonstrates, Kirby was in fact a strong writer who understood how to write for Kirby the artist. As in his other series, Kirby liked to tackle big themes in Kamandi: The relationship between humans and beasts; the tension between youth and experience; the shock of first contact; and, a particular favorite, competition, or the survival of the fittest (as in “The Hotel” of issue #36, in which guests have to battle each other for accommodations). While the scripts in Kamandi are not as blatantly allegorical as those in Kirby’s Fourth World, they are clearly the work of someone interested in ideas. An ambitious, largely self-taught writer, Kirby represented these ideas simply, emblematically, boldly. Though this quality of his work did not leap out at me when I was ten years old—how could it?—it probably accounted for that sense of engagement, that sense of Kirby’s absolute commitment, which first attracted me to the series. It is one of the qualities that strikes me, over and over again, whenever I review Kirby’s ’70s work. Kirby was a restless writer, magnetically drawn to novel ideas. Kamandi allowed Kirby to roam free over a vast range of issues; indeed, his run on the series is remarkable for its conceptual variety. Yet the success of the series lay, not just in Kirby’s visionary ideas, but in something more complicated: The confrontation between the relatively innocent Kamandi and his strange world. Subsequent writers almost immediately forgot that what made Kirby’s imaginary world work was its simple, boy hero—Kamandi himself. Kirby’s scripting displayed a genuine feeling for his youthful protagonist: Kamandi was thoughtful, yet active; gentle, yet capable of furious anger—and quick to defend himself and his friends. He was humane and courageous. In all, he was humankind’s last best representative, Kirby’s model of ideal humanity. Repeatedly, Kirby showed Kamandi assuming risks for his friends’ sake; repeatedly, Kamandi tried to help the last surviving remnants of humanity, and stuck his neck out for them, despite their fallen, feral state. Skeptics might object that Kamandi was a static, idealized character, not changing, never developing in response to his harsh environment. (This begs the question of whether characters ever really change in ongoing comic-book series.) Actually, Kirby did deal with the boy’s emotions, and with the brutalizing effects of his life in the post-apocalyptic world. In the first issue, Kamandi, suicidally desperate, tries to blow himself and Great Caesar’s capitol sky-high. He recovers from his desperate loneliness only after meeting Ben Boxer, the “atomic mutant” who will become his friend and mentor. Several issues later (#5), Kirby introduces Flower, a female companion for Kamandi, but she is abruptly killed (#6), once again leaving the boy alone. Issue #7 begins with Flower’s funeral, Kamandi mourning her death. Repeatedly, Kirby explored Kamandi’s losses, shocks and disappointments with 19

dramatic honesty. Throughout Kirby’s run on the series, Kamandi’s essential aloneness was emphasized; but conversely, so was his loyalty to his friends, both humanoid and animal. Issue #32 begins with Kamandi standing up for his friend Ben Boxer, warning Prince Tuftan: “Don’t you dare harm him. He’s my friend.” This kind of simple loyalty was a hallmark of the character—a quality that remained constant in all of Kirby’s stories. In this sense, Kamandi was idealized, but also appealing. Again, he was Kirby’s ideal human, balancing a capacity for action with a childlike sensitivity, loyalty and openness to experience. Despite the frequent violence of his adventures, Kamandi remained an ingenuous man-child, too capable to be destroyed, too wonderful to be quite corrupted by his brutal surroundings. He has literary cousins in Kipling’s Kim and in Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island—and close kin in Simon & Kirby’s own Boy Explorers. Kirby’s successors on the series quickly undermined this ideal character, and, in so doing, inadvertently compromised the series’ basic premise. Think about it: Kamandi’s world would not have worked with another kind of protagonist. The key was the interaction of Kamandi and his environment. My point is simple— Kamandi was a boy, of a vintage, storybook type, and Kirby understood that. Once Kamandi was corrupted by rage, by a thirst for vengeance, by a clichéd, thinly motivated invocation of sex—a bald caricature of adolescence, in other words—the appeal of the series evaporated. Kamandi simply could not survive being treated like another angst-ridden super-hero book. The series was delightful precisely because it was far removed from the urban sensibility reflected by Marvel’s super-hero books and the wellscrubbed, suburban milieu of DC’s. Kamandi was not about defending the status quo, but about discovering a new world. As that map in #32 suggested, Kamandi offered a world of exploration, an ideal playground for Kirby’s far-ranging imagination. This may help to explain why Kirby was able to sustain his enthusiasm for the series over a long run. Kamandi’s premise was sufficiently malleable to allow Kirby almost unlimited freedom; the new world, “Earth A.D.” (After Disaster), was flexible enough to admit almost anything he could dream up. Whereas some of Kirby’s early- to mid-’70s series lost steam as Kirby became committed, and thus confined, to a particular premise (OMAC, for instance, or his frustrating return to Captain America), Kamandi continued to yield exciting, multi-issue arcs in which each improbable climax only provoked another, more improbable surprise: The three-part dolphin/killer whale storyline (#21-23), for instance, or the extended “Pyra” story of which #32 is just a part. 20

Kamandi had no all-consuming mission, no alter-ego or civilian identity, no fixed home base, to rein in Kirby’s antic inventiveness. What could not work in, say, the Marvel Universe (in Captain America, or The Black Panther) was believable and exciting in Kamandi, where a new world was just waiting to be discovered—a world big enough for Kirby and his readers. Jack Kirby created a world “after disaster” which was everything I wished, but dared not hope, a post-apocalyptic world could be: Fun. Such audacity! And the art! Simple yet full of movement, always conveying a sense of energy, of direction, of action and possibility. Eyepopping two-page spreads, brisk fight scenes, perfect clarity of storytelling. Kirby was, and remains, the visual master of juvenile comic book adventure. While some readers dismiss Kirby’s art from this period as relatively crude, alongside, say, the Kirby/ Sinnott slickness of The Fantastic Four at its height, I’ve always reveled in the quirky individuality of this “late” work, and am grateful for the faithful inks of Mike Royer, even for the less felicitous D. Bruce Berry [below]—finishers who preserved the distinctive strangeness of Kirby’s style (that sharp, angular look; those clotted shadows, metallic highlights, and dense clouds of dots). Simply put, I liked Kirby because there was no mistaking his stuff. Paradoxically, his style seemed both eccentric and perfectly natural, as if years of practice had simultaneously perfected his storytelling (his sense of space, time and kinetic action) and refined his drawing to the point where it became very stylized, personal, almost abstract. His drawings were brutally simple, but that’s what made them beautiful. There’s a quality to his work that can’t be faked, or even imitated, though so many have tried. Kamandi, because it persuaded me of the beauty of Kirby, opened up a world of possibilities for me. It had as dramatic an effect on me at age ten as Jaime Hernandez’s “Mechanics” had on me at age twenty-one, or as works by, say, Justin Green or Jim Woodring have had on me since—more dramatic, in fact. Had I not run across Kamandi, I would surely not have become the student of comics that I am today. For the kid I was then, Kirby’s influence was explosive, and even now I recognize the imprint of his work on my thinking— I like to think BIG, to treat ideas in broad strokes, and that must stem partly from the violent, unpredictable, yet delightful world that Kamandi ushered me into. (above) D. Bruce Berry. Photo by Robert Davis.

SIDEBAR: Kamandi’s Sources The name “Kamandi” dates at least to the 1950s and Kirby’s notional comic strip, Kamandi of the Caves, though it isn’t clear whether this neverrealized strip would have much resembled the Kamandi we know. More interesting to me is the series’ not-quite-accurate subtitle, “The Last Boy on Earth,” and what it suggests. “Boy” is a privileged word for Kirby: It cuts through his life and work, from his formative spell in the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic to the rousing kid gang strips he did with Joe Simon (Newsboy Legion, Boy Commandos, Boy Explorers, Boys Ranch), to his later revivals of such (the new Newsboy Legion in Jimmy Olsen, the Forever People; hell, even the Dingbats of Danger Street). This sort of boy, the adventurous orphan boy, is one of Kirby’s enduring types—a splendid invention, a fantasy really, distilling ideas about youthfulness, energy, recklessness and self-determination. The type is familiar from folktale and children’s literature—how many children’s stories are rigged to put children on their mettle, without adult aid?—and Kirby seems to have run with it. Kamandi is one of these boy types, but alone, gang-less. (Loneliness is one of the abiding themes in Kamandi that sticks with me.) Most often depicted as a bare-chested, unkempt adolescent with a shoulder-length mane of hair, Kamandi is visually kin both to Simon & Kirby’s Angel (from Boys Ranch) and to Kirby’s late-period near-hippies, the Hairies (Jimmy Olsen) and the Forever People. He harks back to those half-feral man-children of the classics, Kipling’s Mowgli and Burroughs’ Tarzan. Yet Kirby turns this familiar type, the Wild Child, inside-out, making Kamandi the sole surviving example of speaking, reasoning, independent humanity in a world where humans have otherwise declined to the condition of herd animals or property (pets, draft animals, curiosities). Kamandi is not feral; the rest of humankind is. Kamandi has not been raised by animals, but rather by a human grandfather, from whose protective reach he is hurled into an upside-down world of speaking and reasoning, though often warlike and brutal, animals. Kamandi may look the part of the feral child—splendidly free, like nature unchecked—but he has been cultivated by his grandfather, and clings to the idea of his humanity. Much has been said about Kamandi’s obvious debt to the then-popular Planet of the Apes film franchise, and this should be conceded. Though upside-down stories with animals reigning over humans are age-old, Kirby’s particular version gets very close to Apes in setting and premise, and probably owed its launch to the films’ popularity. Also obvious are Kamandi’s various thefts from other sources, including films and stories such as King Kong, Westworld, The Day of the Dolphin, The Exorcist, Gunga Din and the popular UFO/Bermuda Triangle mythology of the day. Kirby, after all, was a

sponge, soaking up notions from popular stories left and right. He used these notions frankly, shamelessly, with a newshound’s instincts for the au courant, the trendy, the free-floating Pop obsessions of the moment. These fashionable liftings rub elbows with old, familiar elements, presumably from Kirby’s boyhood reading, a stock of nineteenthand twentieth-century classics and pulp. This same sort of avid thieving happens elsewhere in Kirby (take The Demon for example), but in Kamandi he was especially free to indulge. In fact the series allowed Kirby to play to the hilt the role of postmodern mixmaster. Kirby himself would not have used this phrasing (hell no), but Kamandi does exhibit a happily postmodern appetite for retellings and reworkings. Cue here some remarks about intertextuality, “appropriation,” pastiche—Kirby

was pirating throughout Kamandi, though in ways that injected new life into the borrowed ideas. In essence, Earth A.D. was a frenetic remix of hundreds of old, familiar bits. In some ways, Kamandi leans rather heavily on old and fuzzy ideas about the world, and about the various races and cultures within it. Those ideas are largely Euro- and USA-centric, and many are evidently colonialist in origin, as revealed in that enticing map of Kamandi’s world. Here the British are recast as (quite literally) bulldogs, while certain parts of Europe include animal cultures named for human leaders, such as the “Wolf Garibaldeks” (in what was Italy) and the “Wolf Napoleoneks” (France). What we think of as Third World areas are populated by smaller or less “noble” animals; either that, or civilizations based on stereotypic characteristics

(sun worshipping, death worshipping, surfing, etc.). Much of South America appears to be pitted with craters, while Canada is simply erased (in its place is a radioactive wasteland rife with mutations, known as “the Dominion of the Devils”). These brusque changes reflect not so much an animus against these places as, perhaps, a simple lack of curiosity or lack of knowledge about them: whereas the areas based on the continental United States are more fully fleshed out, the areas north and south of the border have been emptied out with broad, sweeping strokes. Kamandi’s bold new world, then, is cognate to the old, and reflects stereotypes, specifically American and European stereotypes, about the primacy of Western civilization, here distilled and parodied via Kirby’s anthropomorphic animal cultures. This is not to condemn Kirby—he was simply ringing changes on what he knew—but to understand the history, and widely-shared prejudices, behind the vision. In any case, Kirby’s changes were often surprising, even a bit unnerving. Kamandi’s America, ironically, becomes the setting for a bizarre pastiche of colonial adventure fiction: In Kirby’s whacked-out recreation of the USA, Kamandi repeatedly discovers the kind of “exotic” settings once reserved for foreign (i.e., non-USA, nonEurocentric) locales. The series recreates, in its reinvention of America, the kind of exoticism once cultivated in “foreign” locales, and many of the animal cultures seen in it seem to parody American civilization. Just so, the portrayal of indigenous non-European cultures in adventure fiction sometimes stresses the way these cultures imitate or parody civilization, but with an interweaving of so-called savage or “Oriental” mystery and superstition to undercut their civilized pretensions. Kamandi partakes of this: here animal savagery has assumed the forms and ceremonies of human civilization, but with a curious admixture of feudal ignorance and low-tech (i.e., raw, premodern) violence. The effect is similar to that in the first Planet of the Apes film (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968). That film, departing from its source novel, Pierre Boulle’s La Planète des Singes (1963), depicts ape civilization as an odd mix of the primitive—those rough, adobe-like buildings, full of squat round forms and arches—and the high-tech: rifles, cameras, etc. Whereas Boulle depicted his anthropomorphic apes living in a thoroughly modernized, high-tech, metropolitan world much like our own, the Apes filmmakers depicted apes living closer to the raw, material facts of the land, in a less insulated, less 22

urbanized environment, but with a civilization otherwise mockingly close to our own (cue the various satirical lunges in Rod Serling and Michael Wilson’s script). In Kamandi, as in the cinematic Planet of the Apes, animal civilizations are incomplete parodies of proper human civilization, and their air of exoticism, mystery and danger is shot through with flashes of ironic wit: witness, for example, the Westworld-style riff on gangland Chicago in issues #19-20, the gorilla civilization that idolizes Superman in #29; or, perhaps drollest of all, the riff on the Watergate tapes in #15. These stories are actually pretty funny, though at times (as in the malfunctioning gangland of #20) creepy too.

Kamandi’s upside-down, beast-ruled world, then, allowed Kirby to take a lot of received stuff and put a startling, sometimes humorous, sometimes dire, spin on it. The animal premise gave him license for the bald-faced appropriation and twisting of familiar material (think for instance of #7’s sad and funny reworking of Kong). Somehow the series seems all the more beguiling because of this: for all that Kamandi seems to have been cobbled together from many obvious sources, the end result strikes me, still, as fairly hypnotic. ★ (above) Kamandi learns the truth about Chicago in #20. Characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics

Kirby’s Kreative Karicature

by Shane Foley

To me, Kamandi is a fascinating glimpse into the fertile mind of the King. Producing an even 40 issues, the series was the only real commercial success the King had in comics after leaving Marvel in 1970—(although, judging by the reactivation of New Gods and Mister Miracle in 1975, it seems they too were more successful than first acknowledged. I believe that Machine Man at Marvel may also have had a longer life, had Kirby stayed). I find this success—and my fascination with the book— intriguing, because in no way was Kamandi as well executed as many of Jack’s other works. After the first year or so of the book’s life, many of the issues lacked his normal polish— both artwise and in his plotting and scripting. A similar phenomenon had been seen before—in the plotting and to a lesser degree, the penciling in some of Jack’s ’60s Captain Americas, Thors and a few FFs when he was clearly uninterested, and it would be seen again in the later ’70s—but now it was as if Jack’s disappointment with his DC deal was finally starting to be felt. To me, it showed mainly in the plotting and scripting. He seemed to be writing in shorthand. The emphasis on action increased. Forays into Kamandi’s feelings grew sketchier and sketchier as the series progressed and characters such as Spirit and Flower were no longer present. There was less and less care in character development. It was as if the King was saying, “DC management wants straightforward action—as opposed to the more ‘complicated’ epic action of the Fourth World—I’ll give it to ’em!” And though his layouts and pacing were as great as ever, the art didn’t look as good either— though whether this was down to Jack or D. Bruce Berry’s inks is often hard to tell. (I often wonder why there is so much more comment on the merits of Vince Colletta than Bruce Berry—to my mind, Berry was a very poor interpreter of Jack’s pencils, even though “in spirit,” he was more like Mike Royer and clearly, Jack himself must have been happy with him.) Whatever Jack’s reasons for this, his fertile, unfettered imagination continued to shine. If you wanted character development or mythic subtext, Kamandi was not the place. But if you wanted Kirby creativity, it abounded. What was held in awe from the FF, Thor and New Gods was, at times, positively running wild in Kamandi. And to me, it is here that the strip shines as brightly as any other. The best example of Kirby’s creativity of wild concepts was probably “Tracking Site” in issues #9 and 10. Jack was giving his all here and had all the ingredients (it seems to me) of a setting that he had previously thought through 23

at length. The “Laseron”, the splashdown procedure, the Serviteks, the cartridges feeding the “Nasa-mind”— all provided a fabulous backdrop for the Mordicoccus Germ story. In fact, there were no talking animals in the story at all, and it makes me wonder if this story wasn’t a revamped and modified version of a Fourth World concept Jack had. The Misfit and mutant bats could easily have been Apokoliptian creations, and Tracking Site itself could well have been an extension of the DNA Project. But this is only guessing. The point is the whole story—a mere two issues— had years worth of potential in it and is a classic. Sometimes, the strength of Kamandi as a vehicle for the King’s creativity lay in the format itself of the strip—that is, its world was like one, big caricature. Here, a snakey business man could be just that—a snake. A bulldoggish British military man could literally be a bulldog. A racehorse that could outleap others like a giant grasshopper could literally be a giant grasshopper. Nothing had to be taylored to fit alongside Jimmy Olsen’s Metropolis or the FF’s New York—it could be as outlandish as Jack’s imagination wanted. (Not that he usually cared about ‘harmonizing’ stories into existing worlds—but here, he could be even less restrained than normal.) The best of these “caricature type” stories, to my mind, would be the three-part “Mad Marine” story from issues #26-28. As Kamandi reencounters the ruthless hirelings of Mr. Sacker—a very nasty profiteering businessman/snake—we are treated to a story involving the Alliance of Nations of the Atlantic Testament Orders (NATO!) with the Brittaneks, Germaneks and Napoleoneks (Bulldogs, Gorillas and Wolves, each with their over-the-top British, German and French army slang accents) which was both action-packed and hilarious at the same time. Only the King wrote like this. (Even in his “shorthand.”) The best synthesis of Jack’s ability to do both wild concepts and wild caricatures was, I felt, the three-part “Red Baron” story (#21-23). The art wasn’t a patch on “Tracking Site” (again, I really feel it was the light-on inking, showing the difference between just inking line for line as opposed to Royer’s brilliant interpretations) and the script was little more than the bare bones required (totally unlike what Jack would produce a few years later on the Eternals) but the whole thing was still pure Jack magic. Who but King Kirby invents an entire oriental looking submersible for a mere few pages? Who but the King thinks of the “traveller roots” for a panel, then moves on? Who but the King would have a detective dolphin, living in a water-filled capsule strapped to a warrior’s back? The creativity on one page dwarfs whole books by many others. It continues with half-buried warships, the 24

dolphins’ information center (“Seaway”), the weird Red Baron himself, the “squire” program of the dolphins and so on. It was all at 100 mph with the only “human touch” in dialogue between Kamandi and Teela, the young lady dolphin. Even the slower moments when Kamandi is reacquainted with Ben and his friends contains no soul-searching or introspective interplay. Instead, we are treated to Jack’s creative approach to eating, enhanced sleep and decontamination. (There’s absolutely nothing anywhere like the quiet moments Jack used to make room for in, say, the FF—such as issue #51, 68 or 90.) Then he’s at it again. Who but King Kirby casually creates such great ideas as the duel between the “Red Baron” and a uniformed Kamandi riding between two dolphins, then just as casually leaves the idea behind for something new? A bare moment to show the detective dolphin’s grief over the death of his “squire”, then it’s on to the final battle with a Killer Whale—the King’s caricatured

Gangland Boss or local tyrant—being made aware that both sides lose when animosity, hate and old scores are kept alive. It was a quick ending—written sketchily—but nicely plotted. A further issue showing the outcome of the war on Seaway would have been nice, but Jack seemed determined to avoid such moments and was already launching into his next idea. His imagination just never stopped. I love the Kamandi strip—so thoroughly and completely Kirby, yet so different from anything else he did. His variety in story ideas amazes me. His ability to move in unexpected directions delights me. His character concepts—even when he fails to develop them—fascinate me. And his creativeness just blows me away. I wonder where he would have taken Kamandi next? ★ (above) Splash page from Kamandi #28 (April 1975).

Last

Man Standing

The Man of Tomorrow in Kamandi’s future, by Jerry Boyd

For the uninitiated, they were called “imaginary stories,” and in them, Superman could and did die. However, these alternative histories pumped new life into Batman, Robin, and Superman. “What If...?” (to cop a Marvel-ized wording of the yarn improbable) Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were raised as brothers by the Kents? What if Superman had married Lois Lane? Or Lana Lang? In one instance, Dick Grayson grew up and became Batman II with Bruce and Kathy (Batwoman) Kane’s son filling in as Robin II. Mighty Marvel wasn’t in the habit of “dreaming up” separate realities. Kirby and Lee were interested in infusing as much realism into their characters as they could. Many of them fought momentous battles in Central Park, on the Statue of Liberty, around Times Square, and the George Washington Bridge. Spider-Man even slugged it out with Kraven the Hunter at the N.Y. World’s Fair in his first Annual. Tony Stark, Henry Pym, and Reed Richards were “cold warriors,” leading the way in their inventiveness and heroism against Communism. Kirby never seemed interested in “dream situations” that allowed his creations a freedom neither he nor Stan could give them. Captain America dreamed as Kirby did, reliving the nightmares of the battlefield. When Steve Rogers awoke, Bucky Barnes was still gone and the Star-spangled Avenger still had to face reality in an unfamiliar, modernized atomic age. Thor’s “dream world” was in reality his home. Lastly, no sequences were arranged that saw the Thing unconsciously witnessing the marriage of the sightless Alicia to his human form. “I tell things the way they are... and the way I see them,” the King told a bunch of conventioneers in 1977. I enjoyed the “final” Batman cases and the “last” Superman

Retrospective

(below) Unused twopage spread from Kamandi #29. Jack replaced this with a two-pager detailing Superman’s efforts in the last days before the Great Disaster, but apparently liked the piece well enough to get Mike Royer to ink it later. Characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics. The “Superman” logo is a registered trademark of DC Comics.

uring the early years of the House of Ideas (or in Stan Lee’s wonderful verbiage, “when Marvel was in flower...”), DC Comics was enjoying its place at the top of the heap. Julius Schwartz, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Infantino, Anderson, Swan, and others had successfully retooled the old JSA members into JLA members and their team tussles and individual titles were igniting the hopes and dreams of fandom. Moreover, Superman and Batman (and Action and Detective) were nearing 30 continuous years of publication. This was quite an accomplishment in the world of comic magazines. National’s icons had withstood the Depression years, WWII, new genres (love comics, crime, horror, war, satire, and sci-fi) and fickle tastes, Senate investigations on the “evil influences” of the medium, and more. The World’s Finest heroes were here, it seemed, to stay. However, as the new decade began, the Dynamic Duo had definitely lost their way. Excellent detective stories by Finger, Sprang, Moldoff, Mooney, and Paris had given way to “alien Batmans” on futuristic and forbidden worlds, sending readers away in droves. Talk began circulating that the masked manhunters’ books might not make it to 1969 with Batman and Robin in them. The Superman family of books were more solvent, and Supes was right at home on other worlds, making his transition into the science-fiction realm (which moviegoers were feasting on) much easier. Still, the Man of Tomorrow and the Dark Knight were “long in the tooth,” so while Kirby and Lee were trying out the possibilities for their new heroes, DC’s creators were contemplating stories that could be their characters’ final cases.

adventures for what they were worth, but one of the best jobs concerning a final look at Krypton’s last son was surprisingly done by Jack Kirby in Kamandi #29. This unsung masterpiece was aptly entitled “The Legend.” When that issue hit the stands in ’75, it wasn’t promoted with any fanfare out of the norm. No one who bought it expected a tour de force on the level of “The Pact!” or “Himon!” It came off as a simple salute to the Man of Steel, and on face value, just another episode in the adventures of the last boy on earth. Even the King, in later times, would never point to it as one of his all-time best efforts. Still, “The Legend” was a standout exercise in comic book excellence. In “The World that’s coming,” Ben Boxer and Kamandi witness a flying figure hurtling across rugged terrain. Kamandi exclaims, “That’s not a bird or a plane, Ben... but it’s flying!!” Kirby beautifully plays on well-known phrases from the world of Superman and takes them into the last boy’s future. The “Tablet of Revelation” is quickly discovered by the pair. This tablet, actually a sequential art mosaic, shows the final feats of the “Mighty One” as the quaking death throes of a crumbing Earth rushed into the “Great Disaster.” It seemed the “Mighty One” emerged out of Kla-Kent (Clark Kent) but so gigantic was this battle that even he “saw the face of death.” A new land was formed by his stopping of the many raging fires and splitting grounds at the time. Jack wisely saw to it that Kal-El was somewhat successful even as he himself came to a seeming end. I liked this “revelation,” vague as it was, much better than other creators’ needs to trash the Man of Tomorrow in their one-shots and mini-series since. Jack Kirby respected Siegel and Shuster’s creation, its status in the industry, and the fact that Superman’s success directly and indirectly kept a lot of people working over the decades. The King also shows his respect for the storytelling medium at which he was so adept. His tablet presents a large bas-relief of the missing hero and six crude panels bracketed by his last struggles (in words and pictures) to control the cataclysm. Intentionally crude and primitive, the tablet is nevertheless effective. A group of talking apes led by an elder with a staff (a prophet/herald of the returning Kryptonian “messiah,” perhaps?) hails Ben Boxer as their returned champion. Zuma, mightiest of their clan, denounces the whole thing and attacks Ben, crying, “He tumbles easily! I don’t need ‘Kryptonite’ to flatten him!!” (Legends and their artifacts die hard. Mort Weisinger and his staff would’ve been proud.) The apes, including Zuma, are eager to settle this competition (which Ben isn’t sure he wants to be in) at a place called “Nashnil” (National), and Kamandi’s second-hand knowledge of the missing hero impresses the beasts as a “sign.” Kamandi and Ben are led to an area where the “cult-worshiping apes” (as Boxer labels them) try to prove that they are the reincarnated hero by staying in flight (!) after being catapulted through the air. This competition between fervent devotees of “Mighty One” shocks and repels the two outsiders, but it cleverly exposes what absurdities can come from fanaticism. (This tale came only a few years before the tragedy of Jim Jones and his self-destructive followers in Guyana.) Ben and Kamandi listen to the elder explain, “Many claimants are killed and injured... but they must prove they can fly higher than the tallest building!” Before the onlookers, the just26

catapulted gorilla shouts out, “Up, up and away!” Kamandi’s natural aversion to the beasts makes him speak out on Ben’s behalf as a possible claimant. Boxer has a “secret identity,” declares the boy, and can turn his body into steel! In a legend distorted by time, a mammoth, rounded boulder named “the Daily Planet” can only be moved by the true hero. The King nicely links this task to Alexander’s trial with the Gordian Knot and Arthur’s drawing of the sword in the stone in the new chapter’s introduction. Zuma fails to budge it but Boxer’s steel foot creates a small hollow in the ground and the “Planet” is moved. Some of the apes are now convinced. Others want still more proof. Ben’s next trial is to survive murderous machine-gun fire and because of his steel covering, he does. He is led in triumph to his prize, the “super-suit.” Zuma gets to it first, hotly pursued by Kamandi (who perhaps longs in his heart for the missing Superman to set the twisted developments of his time to rights). Zuma and the boy fight over custody of the costume. Enraged when the ape accidentally steps on it, Kamandi whips the famous uniform out from under the gorilla’s feet, sending him into the blazing pits surrounding them (a hellish end for one pretending to be a savior—like the Book of

Revelation’s Anti-Christ). The shaken lad tells Ben, “I had to save the suit. I know who owns it! I know that somewhere he’s still alive!” Ben Boxer never wanted the mantle of the “Mighty One.” Kamandi’s impassioned words help him form his own admonition to the old one as he hands over the famous suit and pronounces, “He shall appear as his true self... and claim it. It is never to be touched until then.” Boxer is a mutant with a cyclotronic heart that reaches critical mass with a pressing. This touch makes him a “man of steel” but he instinctively knows (like Kamandi) that he’s a lesser superman than the one of legend. Kamandi stands in for Jimmy Olsen. The last boy on Earth is a fan of the first and last great hero. His words sum up the day’s meaning. “Not even the Great Disaster could conquer ‘him’!” Here, Jack uses “him” to denote an almost godly reverence. The blue tights, red cape, and boots endure at the story’s end surrounded by a Kirby burst of power (see TJKC #38). The King hasn’t closed the door on the Man of Tomorrow. “Other comics guys may want to take a shot at Superman’s last days,” Kirby may have thought. So, the hope that Kamandi has still endures, as does Superman, along with the ever-enduring quality of Jack Kirby’s style of graphic storytelling. ★

Retrospective

One Brief, Shining Flower

by Jim Kingman

ack Kirby’s imagination and art have inspired and mesmerized. He has created glorious worlds and complex mythologies. He has earned praise the world over, and truly deserves the title “The King” of comics. Once, in the pages of a single comic book, he did something to me that only a handful of writers—that includes authors of poetry, screenplays and novels—has ever done. In Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #6 (June 1973), Kirby broke my heart. In Earth’s future, a great natural disaster has violently wrested man’s fate from his hands. The human race has been reduced to grunting wild men and women. Animals are now the intelligent creatures (they talk and think as humans do; rather, did).

Kamandi is “the last reasoning boy on Earth.” He is mankind’s last hope. Kamandi and his new-found companion, the beautiful, dark-haired Flower, have just set out on their own after an epic adventure involving royal tigers and militaristic gorillas. The two are driving across the Nevada desert in a dune wagon. Kamandi hears the sounds of motors behind him (which the simple Flower mistakes for the buzzing of bees), and suddenly the two are surrounded by large, uniformed figures riding colossal three-wheel dune cycles. Both parties are startled to have almost collided into one another. Kamandi fires at them with his rifle. The cyclists double back to capture Kamandi and Flower. The cyclists’ leader takes down Kamandi with a well hurled device called a “tosstruncheon.” The dune wagon crashes. Kamandi and Flower are found unconscious. The relieved cyclists take off their helmets and are revealed as lions (“bleeding heart” lions, as they will later be called by their enemies). Their leader, Sultin, orders Kamandi’s rifle taken from him. He then has the Last Boy on Earth, Flower and the damaged dune wagon placed in a controlled “Wild Life Sanctuary.” The lions then continue their hunt for “poachers.” Kamandi and Flower wake to find themselves in the midst of a beautiful valley. They explore the area and come across a group of wild men, who immediately attack the disoriented pair. Kamandi must fight to fend them off. The wild men scatter as the enraged Kamandi hurls rocks at them. Flower laughs and tells Kamandi that he has become their leader. Kamandi is not impressed. He’d rather find the cyclists. The two discover an open space with many houses (a fallen sign in one panel states, “Sunny Hills—Estates”). As they work their way around the structures, the reader’s attention is shifted to one of the house’s interiors, where two pumas wait to strike. These are the poachers the lions hope to catch, and their intent is to capture and haul away as many of the protected “animals” as they can. The pumas decide not to attack Kamandi and Flower until the rest of the “herd” joins them. The wild men quietly come up to Kamandi to make him their leader. Suddenly, the pumas attack, and Kamandi is almost stabbed in the neck. Fortunately, Flower cries out and Kamandi wrestles with his attackers. Flower enters the fray, startling the pumas more than they already are, and Kamandi is able to grab one of their rifles. Kamandi fires over the pumas’ heads and the now embarrassed pair dash into the forest. On a nearby hill, Sultin and his troop are watching. When the pumas return—and Sultin is certain of this—the lions will capture them. As night approaches, Kamandi prepares a fire outside of one of the houses (this full-page panel is beautifully inked by Mike Royer; the dominance of inks to create a richly shadowed tone across the front of Kamandi’s body is perfect). Flower calls him inside. She shows him that the electricity is working. Kamandi is startled to find that the food is fresh and the oven also works. He can understand why the houses haven’t rotted away (it being a 27

Obscura

Barry Forshaw

This issue’s selections have never been reprinted; sorry, Kirby fans, looks like you’ll have to spring for the original editions! House of Secrets TM & ©2004 DC Comics. Race for the Moon and Black Cat Mystic TM & ©2004 Harvey Comics

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

here is a mental laziness that afflicts many comic aficionados, particularly when discussing titles issued in the mid-’50s and early ’60s. You’ve all heard it: “DC Comics was dead on its feet until Stan Lee and Marvel saved the industry in the early ’60s,” and (another version of this) “All the DC post-code mystery and SF books are formulaic and dull, with indifferent artwork.” As with most clichés, there is some truth in this, and if you have no interest in digging beneath the surface, perhaps you will be one those people happy to live with this blanket dismissal of a whole period and a whole company’s output. But the intellectually curious collector (and certainly the hardcore Jack Kirby collector) would be doing themselves a great favor by investigating the DC books of this period. Apart from some superb art work by such greats as Russ Heath, Nick Cardy and the underrated Lou Cameron, DC’s mystery books My Greatest Adventure and

(continued from previous page) dry climate), but he can’t put a finger on why there is fresh milk and clean blankets. The rain begins to fall. He builds a fire in the fireplace and tells Flower to get some sleep. Though watchful of the pumas, Kamandi is alone with his thoughts, and the realization eventually dawns on him that he is in a “zoo” prepared by his captors. Meanwhile, the pumas have come in through the back of the house. They stealthily sneak up behind

House of Mystery usually come across with at least one superb item per issue, even if house plots (such as the supernatural/SF mystery which turns out to have a boringly rational explanation) usually hold sway. And every reader of this magazine should seek out House of Secrets #12 which (as well as sporting a gem of a Kirby entry) boasts artwork by three of the most talented practitioners of the period: Bernard Bailey (“Three Doors to Doom”), Bill Ely (“The Spirit Sculptor”) and Lou Cameron (“The Man with the Magic Touch”). All of these tales are lively and inventive, with splendid artwork (although the Cameron suffers from his customarily suspect anatomy), but the best is undoubtedly saved for last. The cover story is Kirby’s “The Hole in the Sky” (and to make the book even more cherishable, Kirby himself provided the cover). It’s a simple enough tale of aliens utilizing human greed to pull hapless victims into their inter-dimensional craft. But what artwork! After a striking splash page, the second panel shows Kirby’s brilliant sense of design, as the hero stands outside his tent shielding his eyes from a mysterious glare.

Flower. One puma grabs her while the other fires at Kamandi. The shot is wild. Kamandi whirls and prepares to take down the pumas. But they have Flower in their clutches, and threaten to kill her if Kamandi does not put down his rifle. Flower is able to kick free of the puma and rushes to Kamandi. The other puma fires his rifle and Flower is mortally wounded. She falls into the arms of the shocked teen. The armed puma is set to kill Kamandi when the lions rush in and arrest the poachers. A devas-

tated Kamandi gently carries Flower over to the sofa and grieves at her side. The lions are deeply moved. They realize Kamandi is an intelligent creature, and he has been deeply hurt. Sultin picks up the red flower that Flower wore in her hair and brings it to his nose. “Too bad,” he says, taking the flower’s scent. “She was a pretty thing... for an animal.” Flower had been introduced in issue #5. When she joined Kamandi in the dune wagon at that story’s end, I assumed that she would become Kamandi’s sidekick during his latest round of adventures, maybe even a love interest. She was clearly more intelligent than the other humans introduced in the series. Her amusement and awe at many of Kamandi’s actions brought a delicate levity to the storyline that had not been seen in the previous four issues. Her death was shocking, senseless, and beautifully handled. No matter how many times I read this story, when I get to page 17 and see Kamandi standing outside the house telling Flower to stay inside, I keep hoping the lions will make it down the hill, in time this time. Flower’s death brought home in a brutal instant the harsh realities in Kamandi’s world. Death was everywhere, and the once mighty human race had been reduced to mere cattle and/or slaves. Their lives meant nothing to the now intelligent yet dangerous types like rats and pumas. Flower’s future held promise in Kamandi’s care. Her sudden passing broke my heart. I’ve never forgiven Jack Kirby for this. I do know, however, that this is one of the most powerful comics Kirby ever wrote. He brought Flower to gorgeous life, then added more depth to Kamandi’s character by her death. At the time of its publication, angry readers wrote in criticizing Jack’s killing her off. But no one denied the story’s power. It remains poignant; a unique, often neglected jewel in the King’s crown. ★

The elements of this frame are almost abstract (rather like Bernard Krigstein in his EC period), so perfectly are they judged. And as the hero grabs a huge diamond which pulls him into another dimension, we’re treated to a page of Kirby’s most elegant figure drawing. But it’s the two-panels-in-one of the alien society (with its splendidly designed futuristic machines and dwarfish, spindly aliens) that acts as a salutary reminder how much better Kirby was at this sort of thing than anyone else. It’s often been remarked how the King was so prodigal with his designs for costumes, that he would create one and discard it in the next panel, only to come up with something even better. That certainly was the case with his extraterrestrial life forms (look at his amazing creature in Journey into Mystery’s “The Martian who Stole My Body”) and the aliens here are unlike anything else in his extensive oeuvre, particularly the creatures operating giant screens as the hero is pulled past them; and for collectors of such things, there’s one of those imposing full-panel close-ups of a redpupilled, grinning alien face. Kirby even manages to top his nonpareil sometime-inker Wally Wood in the creation of alien machinery: Woody often repeated himself (however splendidly) in the basic machine concepts, but all of the futuristic furniture of the other-dimensional setting here has something new in each panel. If there’s a reservation, it’s exactly the same one that applies to all Kirby’s work for DC in this period: it’s too short. Too damn short! Six pages are simply not enough, and the act of reading the piece is rather like consuming some small but tempting piece of candy: over all too quickly. But perhaps it’s the very demands of the format that forced the man to do such exemplary work: as even the most ardent Kirby enthusiast must admit, his imagination had a tendency to sprawl when given free rein. We can all vividly remember the experience of reading crucial comics in our youth. To this day, I recall being so impatient to consume the bulky British shilling edition of Simon & Kirby’s Race for the Moon #2 (which was the US comic in black-andwhite, bulked out to 68 pages with other Harvey comics reprints such as Bob Powell’s quirky Man in Black) that I couldn’t resist avidly reading it walking beside a railway track next to the towering walls of Walton Jail in Liverpool. Whenever I return from London to the town of my youth, and take a nostalgic walk along that track (now covered with weeds and graffiti), I can never do so without remembering myself as a boy first encountering one of Simon & Kirby’s greatest glories—well before I knew who the hell Simon & Kirby were. Race for the Moon was an all-too-brief attempt by Harvey Comics to cash in on the space exploration boom that coincided with the Russians’ launch of the satellite Sputnik. The truly memorable second issue of the book (the first allKirby issue after its all-Bob Powell predecessor) is a

true gem, particularly in the full-color American edition that was denied me as a child. What makes this particular title so impressive is some of the most sympathetic inking that Kirby ever received. Marvin Stein (who did sterling work with Simon & Kirby on their Black Magic horror comic) inks the splendid first page (a typical Harvey taster for all the tales in the issue) and the great Al Williamson provides wonderful work on the later “Island in the Sky” (the splash page of which is reproduced as the cover: A man dressed only in shorts and encased in a clear plastic container is being drawn by force beam into the giant red eye of the planet Jupiter). The first story, “The Thing on Sputnik 4,” is one of Kirby’s most impressive SF tales; a scientifically grounded vision of extra-terrestrial encounters on a space station orbiting the Earth. The splash panel, smoothly inked by Marvin Stein, shows an orange-suited spaceman (attached to the nearby space station by a long cable) gazing in shock at a bizarre multi-legged creature clinging to a transparent space satellite. But the tale proves what a roll Kirby was on in the ’50s, with every panel full of wonderful detail (take the shot of the strange organic pyramid that the walnutshaped alien life form travels in). And in just five pages, the sheer economy and precision of the storytelling is nonpareil. The next piece is a one-pager (drawn in typically indifferent fashion by Paul Reinman) called “The Golden Rocket” and it’s interesting for English readers to encounter this tale in the original American book. The re-photographing of the black-andwhite plates for reproduction in the British editions sometimes cut off crucial elements at the bottom of the original art— often ruinously. The final words of this piece were lost, and a Kirby/Lee tale reproduced as a back up in English editions, “I Laughed at the Great God Pan,” particularly suffered from the cropping: The tufted goat feet of a museum guide (identifying him as the God Pan) were virtually missing in the British edition! The second story in Race for the Moon #2 features some splendid Williamson inking and more examples of Kirby’s prodigal imagination: His dark-hued space suit designs in this tale of Cold War clashes on the moon are unlike anything else he designed. The next piece, “Island in the Sky,” is another burst of superlative SF writing and illustration, more sophisticated and intelligent than much written SF of the period. But the true glory of the issue is the last tale, “The Face on Mars.” This is the one that features the famous splash panel of astronauts crawling over a massive, impassive stone face, and this page was inked by the great EC artist Reed Crandall (unlike the rest of the tale, brilliantly handled by Al Williamson). The astronaut who discovers a strange, Arcadian society when falling through the hollow eye of the giant Martian statue takes the reader on a time-andspace journey through some of Kirby’s most magical and evocative alien scenes; every panel is alive with imaginative design and innovative concept. Reading this issue makes one wish (as on so many short-run Kirby titles) that he’d stayed on the book and produced

acres more work as impressive as this—such was The King’s skill at this period, he would have had no problem sustaining such a level of inspiration. Do I seem to be overselling this issue? All I can say is that you should pick up Race for the Moon #2 (it still can be obtained without paying a king’s ransom) and judge for yourself. If this issue doesn’t do it for you, you shouldn’t be reading a magazine devoted the work of Jack Kirby. Black Cat was a title which underwent more seismic changes than most. This mainstay of the Harvey line initially showcased the athletic super-heroine then transmogrified into one of the stars of Harvey’s horror line (with some excellent work by Bob Powell), and, after the code, had a brief period under the Simon & Kirby aegis—the period, of course, which concerns us now. Black Cat Mystic #58 is not one of the team’s best efforts for the company, but is still streets ahead of most other ’50s fantasy work. A workaday cover (with a spectral, bearded old man talking to some entranced children) illustrates the equally workaday first story, “Mr. Zimmer,” which seems more kiddie-oriented than most Simon & Kirby fare of the period. And the second tale, “Mystery Vision,” is also unexceptional, but the Kirby touch comes to triumphant life in the third piece, “Gismo,” in which a young boy encounters a casually destructive alien. In some ways, “Gismo” is a dry run for the for the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee monster tales in the Marvel pre-super-hero era, and proves how fully-formed such concepts were in Kirby’s mind even before working with Lee. The alien creature design in “Gismo” is both like and unlike other Kirby creations in the field, and while the twist ending may be conventional enough, it’s a solid clincher to a good piece. The whole issue is wall-to-wall Simon & Kirby, with no other artists making a showing, and the fourth tale, “Help!,” has a striking, moody splash panel image: Hulking, dark figures are picked out from a purple nightscape by the glow of their torches. This is even better than the preceding tale, and it’s noticeable that the issue gets better in quality from tale to tale, suggesting Simon & Kirby may sometimes have needed a warm-up to get to their best form. “Help!” is another alien encounter tale, and it’s dispatched with imagination and skill. But it’s important not to make too strong a case for this issue of Black Cat Mystic, as it is by no means the finest work that Jack Kirby did in the ’50s. Nevertheless, it’s salutary to note how (as so often before) even the shavings from Kirby’s workbench are cherishable, and true Kirby aficionados should add this to their collection. After all, Kirby did (comparatively) little work for Harvey in the period, it’s relatively easy to track it all down. But start with Race for the Moon! ★ (Barry Forshaw, editor of Crime Time magazine, lives near London, England.) 29

Gallery 1

Second Bananas

pes ran rampant in Kamandi’s world, and so did Kirby’s splash pages. While these bold, full-page images are meant to lure readers into buying a comic by looking at its first page, Jack took them a step further, burying some of his finest full-pagers later in the book. So this issue’s Gallery looks at some of the “second banana” splashes that may not be quite as well remembered, but are certainly deserving of our attention.

Page 30: This page literally laid the road map for Jack’s Kamandi run. This simple one-pager contained an entire series’ worth of story ideas. From Kamandi #1 (Nov. 1972). Page 31: Kamandi #6, page 17 (June 1973). Note the heavy spotting of blacks on Kamandi’s figure, foreshadowing Flower’s eventual fate. Page 32: Kamandi #7, page 14 (July 1973). Jack’s love of old movies shines through in this homage to King Kong.

Page 34: Kamandi #10, page 6 (Oct. 1973). Compare these pencils to ones from earlier issues; the loose, fluid penciling conveys swift motion, even on a still page. But while it’s solid draftsmanship, the level of detail from the first few issues is beginning to fade.

Page 33: Kamandi #9, page 11 (Sept. 1973). The Misfit is just one in a long line of Kirby’s “big-head” characters.

This page: Unused page from, we’re assuming, Kamandi #11 (Nov. 1973). Might’ve made a great cover too, but the page number box in the corner rules that out.

chores next issue. It’s interesting to note how Kirby’s pencils simplified as the less fluid Berry came on board. Did Jack intentionally pencil to his inkers’ strengths, or was it simply Jack’s waning interest in the strip, and in working for DC?

Page 36: Kamandi #12, page 10 (Dec. 1973). Flower’s “spirit” returns as her twin sister appears.

Page 40: Kamandi #16, page 11 (April 1974). Two great splashes from the same issue! In many ways, this issue was Kamandi’s “The Pact” or “Himon”, revealing many of the secrets that readers had puzzled over since the first issue. Jack turned in a superb job on this pivotal issue.

Page 37: Kamandi #13, page 5 (Jan. 1974). A day at the races nearly turns deadly, and Jack focuses us head-on toward the action. Page 38: Kamandi #15, page 14 (March 1974). Jack’s fascination with politics (particularly Richard Nixon) resulted in this Watergate take-off, and you can tell Kirby was having a great time with this story. The level of detail is high, and this stands as one of the best issues of Kamandi he did. Page 39: Kamandi #16, page 5 (April 1974). The secret of how animals gained human abilities was finally revealed in this issue, which also bid a fond farewell to Mike Royer as inker until he returned near the end of Jack’s run. D. Bruce Berry assisted Royer on inks, perhaps as a warm-up to his taking over the full

Page 41: Kamandi #19, page 6 (July 1974). Kamandi takes a trip back to the Days of the Mob, an era Jack lived through and conveyed in books dating back to the 1940s. This two-parter was a fun romp, as Jack had hit his stride on the book. Page 42: Kamandi #20, page 5 (Aug. 1974). The second part of the Chicagoland story marks, for this magazine’s editor, the turning point in the series. As Jack entered the second half of his Kamandi run, the stories seemed to veer away from the more personal tales and toward more run-of-the-mill adventures encountering strange creatures. Characterization eventually becomes all but forgotten, and the dialogue eventually gets downright odd in spots. But the first twenty issues (and occasional ones thereafter) stand as some of Kirby’s finest work of the 1970s. Page 43: Kamandi #25, page 5 (Jan. 1975). As Jack’s discontentment at DC grows, the detail in his Kamandi work has turned into an abbreviated shorthand. The remainder of Jack’s run on the series still featured some compelling images, but as you can see here, the art looks simpler, more rushed, and lacking background elements that made the early issues so interesting.

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

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

KING OF ALL MEDIA e all know that Kirby was the King of Comics—but as we’ve seen in past issues and again in this one, his ever-extending influence has established widespread embassies, this time in the worlds of animation, journalism—and espionage?!

(above) As the JL animated series enters its third season, it’s being retooled as Justice League Unlimited, promising to include a host of DC Universe guest-stars. Rumor has it Kamandi (shown here by Timm) may show up... All characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics Justice League Unlimited ©Warner Bros.

Going For The Silver Kirby & others are awarded a major anthology tribute • Review by Adam McGovern Once in a generation, a book on comics comes along that fans can cherish almost as much as the comics themselves. In the 1960s it was Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes; in the 1970s, Jim Steranko’s History of Comics. It’s been a long time since another could take its place among them, but Arlen Schumer’s The Silver Age of Comic Book Art is such a volume. This inventive comic coffee-table book is a large, lush affair, arranging its images like an adrenalized museum catalogue. Much has already been made of Schumer the designer’s pop-art approach to the reproductions, blowing up comic panels to gallery-art proportions with ben-day dots fully, epically visible. Given that good eye, Schumer the critic does a skillful job of connecting the cultural dots between the American visual landscape overall and the way that comic artists reflected it, from “the early 1960s futuristic idealism of artists Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane” to “the pop explosion of Jack Kirby” and “the late 1960s psychedelia of Jim Steranko and 44

the photorealism of Neal Adams.” This interpretation aptly evokes an era of popular artists whose attention to the evolving events and tastes around them ranged as widely as a flight through space or between dimensions, rather than keeping as narrow as a reach across the room for the nearest videogame package design or anime cassette (though today’s comics have widened the lens again through the eclectic, eccentric vision of Mike Allred, Duncan Fegredo, Darwyn Cooke, Amanda Conner, J.H. Williams III, John Cassaday, Alex Ross, Kyle Baker, Jae Lee, Mike Mignola, Danijel Zezelj, John Paul Leon and more—but that’s another article, or a future Schumer book). The Silver Age’s extensive quotations from the artists themselves, usually placed artfully within the captions and word-balloons of illustrative panels and pages, open a valuable window on their thought processes and creative results. These also provide as many perspectives on the same event as the best-paced action sequence would; contrasting recollections and rationales are boldly selected by Schumer in ways that enrich rather than confuse the historical record. Of greatest interest to readers of this magazine, of course, is the chapter on Jack Kirby, who receives the same lavish treatment as Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Steve

Re-animator Many readers of this magazine will be familiar with the Cartoon Network’s Justice League. It’s a series which not only shows producer Bruce Timm’s astute eye for both integrating and influencing the pop-art aesthetic of the moment and his dynamic yet tasteful sense of spectacle, but also draws well on contemporary comics for its characterization, resulting in, if not “real” people, then at least satisfyingly three-dimensional ones (J’onn J’onzz and Hawkgirl’s kindred alienness, Batman and Superman’s strangely complementary conflict as the ultimate cynical loner and the ultimate optimistic joiner, etc.). Of special note was an epic two-parter (first airing July 5, 2003) focused on Kirby’s Fourth World (and following up the tastes given in Timm’s earlier Superman series), though based as much on Starlin and Mignola’s Cosmic Odyssey as on Kirby’s original mythos. With a storyline concerning uneasy alliances and intricate betrayals between Darkseid and the JL, what was most notable for Kirby fans was seeing the Apokolips and New Genesis locales and cast of characters come to life so lovingly—and even if many of them were just seen in cameos, it was something every Kirbyphile could be happy they lived to see. Also making it to video last year was an adaptation of the long-ago Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story “The King,” in an episode of the terrapin titans’ current cartoon series (first airing May 31, 2003) which, while losing some of the poignancy of the original, stood as more of a monument to Kirby’s creativity than an elegy for his lost battles for credit and creative control, replacing the comic-book version’s memorial tone with a fevered legion of archetypes from the King’s god and super-hero repertoires. This tale of a mysterious downstairs border with a mystical knack for drawings that take on a life of their own is worth seeking out in either of its incarnations.

They Did It Their Way While we’re on the subject of ’70s secret-history hysteria, we should note the latest incarnation of Kirby’s above-mentioned Eternals series, which in its first form capitalized on a craze of speculation that the gods of human myth and even current religion were actually dimly remembered alien visitors from antiquity. Flinging Kirby’s wholesome version to the other end of the Marvel Universe in the adults-only MAX line, the recent reinvention The Eternal seemed modeled just as much on Marvel’s other disco-era deities-from-space story, “Man-Gods From Beyond the Stars,” by Doug Moench and Alex Niño (from the black-and-white tryout book Marvel Preview’s first issue). In the newest series, a dystopian Genesis story of alien colonization at the dawn of time, the military efficiency and smol-

Life in Apokolips Okay, somehow the conversation has veered back to comic books, but fate will keep a focus on our thematic thread somehow: After the current comic version of a film that doesn’t exist, Radioactive Man: The Movie, Bongo Comics’ hilarious send-up of all we hold dear will get to the adaptation we’re really waiting for: Radioactive Man’s Fourth World, from a supposed 1971 issue of this long-running imaginary classic. We’ve been lucky enough to see advance pencils by the witty Mike DeCarlo, but only lucky enough to know that he’ll be matched by another Mike on inks—Royer, that is, Kirby’s definitive darkener—when the book comes out. Seeing Bart Simpson’s favorite hero barrel into DeCarlo’s Kirby-worthy stage sets conjures some good-natured satire not only of the King’s Fourth World but Bruce Timm’s Fourth-and-a-Half, with all those New Gods smuggled onto the WB and Cartoon Networks on Superman’s and the JL’s

Comics, In c.

And speaking of cinematic adaptations and second lives, it’s only fitting that one of the most farfetched examples of Kirby’s long reach should involve a movie—sort of. Issue #20 of Steamshovel Press (“All Conspiracy. No theory.”), an independent journal compiling real-life X-Files-style intrigues with an open mind and tongue not far from cheek, features the possiblytrue saga of how Kirby’s breathtaking designs for the never-filmed adaptation of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light were used in a fake-film scam to smuggle some American diplomats out of late-1970s Iran disguised as the movie’s creative team. The issue comes wrapped in one of those awe-inspiring, Eternals-meets-theBhagavad-gita illustrations (see previous page); to learn more about the magazine and experience some sleepless nights either from reading it cover-to-cover or contemplating its ominous content, visit www.steamshovelpress.com.

dering hauteur of Chuck Austen’s dialogue was a seminar on how to convey lofty otherness without resorting to sub-Shakespearian bombast, and his characters’ shades of motivation and gray-scale of morality amplified rather than contradicted the borderline heresy of Kirby’s anxious views on godhood and hierarchy. The slashing brevity and moody atmospherics of Kev Walker’s art split the difference between Niño’s intricacy and Kirby’s grand scale nicely. As it wore on, the series at times became a bit too reminiscent of the NC17 excesses of another ’70s icon, Warren Comics, but by and large this was one of the few Kirby redos worth the hardcore fan’s attention. The hardcore Kirby fan, I mean…

TM & ©20 04 Bongo

Hollywood Ending

Ditko, Joe Kubert, Gene Colan, Steranko and Neal Adams (and those who carp at the exclusion of Wally Wood, John Buscema, John Romita or Barry Windsor-Smith can publish their own tour de force). As with his contemporaries, Kirby’s work is arranged on dynamic spreads like the major cycles or periods of a famous painter: signature characters (Captain America, Silver Surfer, the Inhumans); themes (technology, super-gods); stylistic elements (Kirby Krackle and Karnage through the ages); and techniques (if you’ve ever envisioned a wall-full of Kirby’s hallucinatory photo-collages immersively pieced together in one place, your good trip begins here). Suggesting the awe he both inspired and felt at the kind of spectacle he communicated, the Kirby quotes in this section give a good sense of the almost mythic merging with his spacey subject-matter that fans perceive him achieving: “I tried to give technology the touch of legend”; “I know the names of the stars… how near or far the heavenly bodies are from our own… I know our own place in the universe. I can feel the vastness of it inside myself.” Schumer’s prose can sometimes be as overheated and grammatically heedless as his pulpy sources, and not all of his points are as well-taken as his admirations are

cape-tails; enjoy the imagery now and look forward to writer Batton Lash’s laugh-riot story later this year.

Kirby as an Extra We can’t leave the world of comics without mentioning the latest sighting of those effigies of the King that have become a subgenre of the one this column commemorates. Most recently he’s been seen as a scrappy bystander egging on Captain America when the latter is

unfrozen in a Nazi-controlled parallel New York for issue #17 of the character’s current Marvel Knights series (a four-issue return to good old-fashioned Hitlerpunching amidst the regularly-scheduled psychodramas of ambivalent patriotism that have become more common for the book). I didn’t stick with this surprisingly trite fill-in long enough to find out how the former Jacob Kurtzberg managed to stay in existence through two decades of global Nazi rule (or one panel after his outburst), but still it’s a touching tribute to Kirby’s contribution, not to mention his tenacity.

Cracking the Vault of Euphemisms A recognizable ritual of this column is our tracking of the King’s almost-credit for his creations, amongst the outright anonymity with which they have traditionally been presented. Circling back to the movies, New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell did his best to remedy unwritten history with an 8/27/03 article crediting Kirby not only for some of the most groundbreaking creations in comics, but the best-known ones in cinema as well, particularly the oedipal dynamic that Luke and Darth seem to have lifted from Orion and Darkseid. And if he refers to the Fourth World as the “New Universe,” well, think of it as continuing the grand Kirby tradition of mixed-up imaginings that reveal a higher truth. Though the process leading to it can not be revealed on pain of further litigation, one truth is being told on the title pages of several Marvel comics, as Captain America, Captain America and the Falcon, and The Ultimates (but for some reason not The Avengers) have begun carrying a Cap credit line for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. A victory for Joe, for Jack’s estate, and for the company itself in terms of the dignity and professionalism it conveys on its creators and its own medium. Now if only it won’t take more court cases for the trend to spread… ★ [Thanks to John Morrow for clipping search and to Tom Doyle for video surveillance.]

well-placed, particularly in the case of exalted claims for comic artists that actually diminish them by comparison: There is a rich and valid tradition of vernacular culture from the epic folksongs of ancient Africa to the independent cinema of today, and Kirby is not, as Schumer has said to interviewers, America’s Michelangelo; he’s our Kirby, and the logical conclusion of Schumer’s own scholarship is that this should be enough. But just like the featured comics’ sometimes rough but often visionary pop-culture innovations and artistic statements, a few flaws don’t mar the preciousness of the whole. This book may be focused on a Silver Age, but it’s worth its weight in gold. ★ [Collectors Press, Inc., P.O. Box 230986, Portland, OR 97281; 1-800-423-1848; www.collectorspress.com.] 45

FROM THIS:

TO THIS!

Incidental Iconography An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld ack Kirby was a man whose imagination flew faster than he himself could record. While drawing any given comic book page, he likely was laying out the next several in his head, changing plotlines and story directions a million times before he finished the page he was still working on. And because he was such a “high thinker” he often skimmed over details. This is perhaps the primary reason why he needed a strong editor. But in the process of banging out story after story, Jack inadvertently created a visual shorthand for himself. He designed characters that could be visually described very quickly and easily. Details he put in the initial design were interesting to him only at the time he happened to be drawing that image. His preferences might change from issue to issue, from page to page, and sometimes even from panel to panel! “Incidental Iconography” is a new column that seeks to examine some of Jack’s character designs and determine their origins. Why does Giant-Man have a large, black circle in the middle of his chest? When did Captain America’s shield become a concave disc instead of a flat circle? And what the heck was going on with Iron Man’s armor?! With this first installment, though, we will start with the character whose design was the impetus for this column:

should-pads and a collar-symbol that bears a close resemblance to a classic Soviet sickle. Needless to say, Johnny and his teammates are able to turn the tables on the Wizard, but in the end, he’s able to escape using a miniaturized anti-grav disc. What is striking in the escape, though, is the close-up shot of the Wizard turning the disc up to full power. The Wizard’s fingers cover both of the side wings of his device as well as one of the control knobs, and the tailfin is rendered entirely in silhouette. It’s worth noting, too, that the perspective and focus of the panel make the disc look unusually large compared to its other appearances throughout the story. So, by casually glancing through the Wizard’s previous appearance, it’s fairly easy to see where Jack got some of the design concepts for the Wizard’s “new” costume. The rakish facial hair and flared shoulders translated Fantastic Four nearly verbatim, and the one close-up of the anti-grav #42 disc was misinterpreted slightly into a disc with a small, triangular chunk removed from it (see FF #42 example). Indeed, the first appearances of the Wizard’s “new” costume still show Jack including the ventilation and the single control knob seen in Dick’s detail panel. One of the Wizard’s appearances prior to this was in Strange Tales #110, also The Wizard’s costume design has long struck me as odd. The oversized drawn by Dick Ayers. In this story, the Wizard dons a head-to-toe suit, covering his helmet perpetually felt like it wanted to knock him off-balance, and his flying discs entire person, except his face. Here we find a number of poses where the suit’s seemed better suited to a maze-based video game. To top that off, the original wrinkles run horizontally across his stomach and chest. It’s also worth noting Kirby designs for the Wizard over in Strange Tales didn’t have a costume at all, so that the entire outfit is colored a solid shade of purple. Although a farther where in his imagination did Jack manage to find this get-up? stretch, certainly, I have to wonder if Jack looked at this appearance of the The Wizard was introduced in Strange Tales #102 Wizard as well for inspiration for the Wizard’s banded chest piece and (top left) as a scientist who wanted to become famous over-sized helmet. It’s not too hard to see a relationship between the by upstaging the Human Torch. It’s a fairly unassuming Wizard’s “new” costume (as in FF #42) and the unitard he wears here. tale and Jack provides a design for the Wizard which is I suspect that Stan Lee wanted to continue using the Wizard and little more than coveralls. The most interesting visual Paste-Pot Pete as villains after Strange Tales became a vehicle for Nick element of the Wizard at this point is a severely elongated Fury, and felt that the two simply could not convincingly become a face, with his eyes placed unusually high on his head. threat against all four members of the Fantastic Four. He developed Dick Ayers soon took over the character, portraying the concept of the Frightful Four, pulling Sandman from his duties him more as a debonair, techno-elitist than Kirby’s longover in Amazing Spiderfaced, mad scientist. But there were few design elements Man, and creating to change. The coveralls and goatee remained, but there was Medusa to duplicate the rs) little else to visually distinguish the Wizard from the likes of ick Aye D y gender ratio of the original (b 0 11 any other prison inmate. He could just as easily have fallen to Tales # FF. In giving the characters to Jack, he Strange the wayside along with the Rabble Rouser and the Acrobat. must have handed over some copies of But, suddenly, in Fantastic Four #36 (top right), the Wizard Strange Tales and Spider-Man for returns to exact revenge, this time accompanied by three accomplices. The team design reference, which Jack used to itself was not terribly surprising, as the Wizard create the “new” Wizard and Paste-Pot had teamed-up with Paste-Pot Pete before and Pete. Glancing through the books the Sandman had already fought the Human quickly, his eye caught what he Torch alongside Spider-Man. What was perhaps considered the highlights and went most striking was the Wizard’s new outfit: he on to do his own thing, creating was fitted with an over-sized helmet and a something that appeared entirely jumpsuit with a Pac-Man-shaped anti-gravity new, although it was in fact based disc affixed to his chest. But, while the design on somewhat mis-remembered is most assuredly Kirby’s, it appears that he Fantastic Four #4 existing material. (I suspect that 2 took some heavy cues from the Wizard’s preSteve Ditko’s Sandman design remained more intact vious illustrator: Dick Ayers. because of its simplicity, rather than any deference Jack may have had for Steve.) Let’s look at the Wizard’s previous s) er Ay I think the Wizard typifies the exemplary talent that was Jack Kirby. By using ck Di y (b 18 appearance in Strange Tales #118. He Strange Tales #1 his own visual shorthand to make the character stand out, he was able to turn an escapes from prison on page 2, using his new “anti-gravity power unit,” otherwise unremarkable villain into one of the Fantastic Four’s stalwart foes. the design of which is merely a disc with two wings, a rectangular ventilation panel In the next installment of Incidental Iconography, I will continue investigating and two, small control knobs. By page three, it seems to have developed a tailfin as the Frightful Four as Paste-Pot Pete becomes the Trapster. ★ well. Once free, the Wizard poses as the Human Torch to set a trap for him, returning to his hideout and donning, for the first time, a new jumpsuit that has flared (See Sean’s website at www.FFPlaza.com)

The Wizard

Tribute

(right) A dashing shot of Jack at the 1988 San Diego Comicon.

2003 Kirby Tribute Panel (Held July 18, 2003 at Comicon International: San Diego, featuring (below, left to right): Michael Chabon, a surprise mystery guest, Sal Buscema, Larry Lieber, Stan Goldberg, Mark Evanier, (bottom row) Wendy Pini, and Mike Royer. The panel was moderated by Mark Evanier, and transcribed by Brian K. Morris.) MARK EVANIER: Jack was so much a part of our lives, and his work is still with us. I never get through a day without, at some point, either being asked about Jack or seeing something where I think, “Oh, Jack told me that. I’m using his advice,” and not always advice related to comics. I’m amazed as I get older and older how much of things that Jack told me in 1971 suddenly apply to my life. I was thinking of a comment somebody made earlier today: One of the reasons I think Jack, sometimes, had enormous problems dealing with the business end of things with people—you all know, he did not get as good as he gave—was that Jack was quickly out of sync with the present day. When he talked to someone, he was always seeing a bigger picture. If he negotiated with somebody about a business deal, they were always looking at how much money this thing was going to make next Tuesday and Jack, in 1963 or ’64, was envisioning the Hulk movie. He knew there was going to be a Hulk movie. He’d knew there would be a multihundred million, whatever it is, dollar thing, and he was negotiating from that standpoint. So he was kind of out of sync with the language of people he was talking to. And in the same way, when he gave advice about life, and relationships, and getting along in the world, even political commentary—you should have heard Jack talk about Richard Nixon. [chuckles] It was

an amazing experience. And the more I read about Nixon, the more I see how right Jack was, and the more I realized where Darkseid’s dialogue came from. [laughs] So we’re going to talk about Jack for a while here. We’ve invited some people who either worked with Jack or, in one case, never met him, but who obviously carried on his tradition greatly. Let me start at the far end here and introduce to you a lady who has a wonderful story to tell, and I’m going to say this as accurately as I can. Every single person who ever went to Jack and showed him the artwork they were doing, got encouragement. You could have done the worst drawing in the world and taken it to Jack and he would have said, “That’s great! Keep at it, work hard,” because he loved the enthusiasm of people that wanted to create. Privately, though, there were a few select people who came to him, who he indicated—if not to them, at least to me—he thought they were a class above the norm of people who came to him with their artwork. And this lady became one of the outstanding illustrators of her time, for her strip Elfquest. This is Wendy Pini, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Next to Wendy is a gentleman I’ve known since 1969. When I met him, he was inking Russ Manning and Disney comics, and such. Shortly after that, he became, I think, one of Jack’s two greatest inkers of all time. Over the years—I’ve said this before, I’m going to keep saying it every time he talks on one of these panels—I don’t think people realize how hard he worked to be faithful to the pencils. He could have done a lot less and probably collected the same rotten money, but he had a work ethic and a devotion to do the job right that shows in every page of New Gods, and Forever People, Kamandi, and all those books. Those of you who loved those comics, you should be real grateful to Mr. Mike Royer. [applause] I don’t have to tell you about the book this man wrote because probably everyone here has read it, or owns a copy of it and is saving it for that right moment to read. This book kind of took the industry by storm a couple of years ago. Is it two years ago now, or ...? MICHAEL CHABON: Yeah.

EVANIER: People I know who don’t read comics, who don’t go to these conventions, called me up and said, “Have you read this extraordinary book? You must read this book,” and such. It really touched an awful lot of people; and of course I’m talking about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a book which has more than a little to do with Jack Kirby and he’ll tell us a little about that. The award-winning Michael Chabon. [applause] When you look at Marvel comics of the Sixties, you look at wonderful artwork. You’ll also look at this man’s work usually because he colored most of Jack’s work in the Sixties. He was Marvel’s Coloring Department for a long time until he got too busy drawing Millie the Model, and things like that, and had to pass some of that work on other people. But I don’t think Jack’s work was ever colored better than when it was in his hands. He made a lot of key decisions; what color will the Thing be, what color would the Fantastic Four’s uniforms

be? He’s now an outstanding illustrator for the Archie Comics Group. We’re going to talk about his work at Marvel in the Sixties, Mr. Stan Goldberg. [applause] We have here a man who never met Jack Kirby, but you wouldn’t know it from his work because he 48

obviously understood what Jack did. He drew every Marvel Comic at one time or another anyway, but drew every book that Jack did at one point. If there was anyone out there who managed to consistently capture what Jack invented in terms of storytelling, and putting energy on the page, and making characters dynamic and interesting—and also having a Kirbyesque work output—it’s this gentleman, Mr. Sal Buscema, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] And now, let me talk about Larry Lieber, the man who wrote “Fin Fang Foom.” [laughs] The man who wrote all those early Marvel monsters—people think Stan wrote all those early Marvel monster comics, out of which the Marvel super-heroes evolved. Actually, Larry wrote them. Larry wrote the first couple of Thor stories, the first couple of Iron Man stories, the first couple of Human Torch stories in Strange Tales; the other writer Jack worked with in this seminal period of Marvel. He later segued over to drawing more, and unfortunately, we lost him to super-hero books for a long time when he was doing westerns and The Rawhide Kid. But he segued back to become the longestrunning Spider-Man artist in the history of mankind, drawing the most widely circulated appearance of Spider-Man, and he’s a hell of a nice guy, Mr. Larry Lieber. [applause] I’d also like to briefly introduce a couple of people in the audience who are with us today. As most of you know, Jack, over the years, had a lot of legal problems. He had a lot of fights with different people. Fortunately, his affairs are now watched over by a couple of people who handle the Jack Kirby Estate, and do a wonderful job of watching out for Jack’s and Roz’s posthumous interests, protecting copyrights and names, and making sure that the Kirby name is kept in front of the world. The gentleman who’s the—is “administrator” the proper title? Whatever it is, when they say the “Kirby Estate,” they mean this gentleman: Roz and Jack’s nephew, Mr. Robert Katz, ladies and gentlemen. [applause]

Another one of Jack’s wonderful inkers, and an enormous friend of the Kirby family who helped with everything, Mr. Mike Thibodeaux, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] You would think with all he did for the family, he’d get a better seat at this panel. [laughs] Also, I’d like to lastly introduce—the Kirby tradition, the Kirby name is carried on by a wonderful publication. The publisher/editor is here, John Morrow of The Jack Kirby Collector. [applause] Let’s start with Wendy. Wendy and I were having lunch at the Magic Castle a couple of weeks ago and she suggested that she should tell her Jack Kirby story to you all. I give you Wendy Pini. WENDY PINI: [laughs] Thank you so much, Mark. Well, actually, I came prepared to tell two Jack Kirby stories in one because I think that they provide a really interesting insight into the man’s personality. My first story happened when I was eighteen or nineteen years old, which is when I first met Jack. Jack was my first mentor in the comics, although he didn’t set out to be or even know that he was. But I had been reading The Fantastic Four for some years and had received strong influences. Just the power of his artwork helped me to incorporate a bit more solidity and masculinity into my own drawing style, and I wanted to let him know how much I appreciated that. So when I met him, I was then working on a college project which was a short animated film, based on the writings of Michael Moorcock, called Stormbringer. I had many backdrops and character model charts, and so forth, for this film. This was the work that I brought to show Jack. This was all highly rendered work, it wasn’t in comic book-style at all. It was in my style of watercolor paintings and was very highly-detailed. Jack went through this, and I’ve got to tell you something about Jack: Jack was not a misogynist. Anybody who could create Big Barda was not a misogynist. [laughs] However, Jack really did believe that comics was no place for women. He really didn’t think that women, you know, could do the artwork. So he went through my portfolio, and he turned to me, and he said, “Kid, if I ever catch ya in comics, I’m gonna spank ya,” [laughs] in his best Ben Grimm voice. [laughs] Shift the scene to some years later. We’re in Houston, Texas now at a big convention, and I have my table, and Jack’s table is catty-corner to mine, and he’s signing autographs, and talking to kids, and looking at their portfolios. And I keep leaning over to Jack and saying, [sweetly] “Jack, I’m still waiting for my spanking.” [laughs] I don’t know how many of you out there ever actually met the man, but yes, he could blush. [laughs] That’s not the end of it, though. Someone had brought me a large bouquet of carnations while I was doing my autographing. While Jack was busy looking at someone’s portfolio, I took one of the carnations and stuck it behind his ear. Now, Jack Kirby was an intensely focused individual. Once he had his attention on something, everything else went away. So Jack did not notice he had a carnation in his ear for fifteen minutes. People were coming up to get their books signed and have him look at their portfolios, and they were giggling, and were looking at each other and snorking. Jack was looking around like, “What’s the matter with these guys?” Finally, I think my husband Richard, who is right over there

in the audience, had mercy on Jack and just sort of pointed. Jack reached up and felt, and he turned, and he whipped around, and he said in his best Ben Grimm voice, “I’ll kill you!” [laughs] He was so much fun. He was a true mythic visualizer and I truly owe so much to him in my drawing style. If there’s any force, power, masculinity, expression that goes over the top in my work, I owe that to him. [applause] EVANIER: Wendy, not to contradict you, but I was always under the impression that when Jack said, “If I catch you in comics, I’ll spank you,” he wasn’t talking about how women shouldn’t be in comics. I was always under the impression that he meant, “Your artwork was so wonderful, I don’t want to see you try to make it look like Marvel Comics.” PINI: I think he did actually mean that, but I was kind of shy about saying anything. [laughs] No, as a matter of fact, he was impressed with my work and he said some wonderful things about it. He just felt that my art style was more Fine Art, rather than comics. You see, I think Jack just looked at comics as really down-anddirty boys’ stuff, you know? Fine Art was, to him, something that was more refined, and so forth. He didn’t realize that I just wanted to get down-and-dirty too. [laughs] EVANIER: This was like 1970, ’71? PINI: I met him in 1969. EVANIER: ’69. At that point, Jack was pretty down on comics as a way to make a living, and I think he felt that anybody who could work in other media, should. I mean, he was telling me constantly, “Don’t get your life in comics.” I think that’s what he was saying to you. I think he was saying, “You could do much more than trap yourself into working for the people I have to work for.” PINI: Well, God love him. I’m glad I didn’t listen to him. [laughs] I don’t think he ever knew how much of an influence he was, as much as I tried to tell him. He was so bashful, you couldn’t compliment Jack. Have you ever noticed that? He was just so bashful about his own greatness and his own mythic vision. I mean, this man was a mythmaker of Joseph Campbell proportions. It’s like Mark said, he always saw the bigger picture. He was seeing Valhalla while the rest of us were seeing Sunset Boulevard. I mean, he wasn’t quite all here. [laughs] EVANIER: For people who don’t know, tell us how you met Richard. PINI: Well, that involves John Buscema, actually. I don’t think Sal knows this. Richard and I had been comic book fans and at the time, I was seventeen, eighteen years old, and I was currently enjoying The Silver Surfer, which was being illustrated by John Buscema very magnificently. So I wrote a letter in, which apparently, back then, was very unusual for women to do. Back in those days, girls just didn’t read comics. So much to my surprise, they published my letter, along with my address—which they don’t do of course nowadays, but back then, they did. I proceeded to get, hmm, five hundred letters [laughs] from boys all over America

and Canada who wanted to meet a girl who read comic books. [laughs] My parents were quite alarmed, and also interested in this. Every day, my mother would pick me up at high school, and we’d go over to the Post Office to get the mail, and there would be this stack. [laughs] Well, one day, on the top of the stack was a letter whose return address was M.I.T. and my mother’s eyes lit up with dollar signs, [laughs] and she said, “Open that one,” [laughs] and I did, and it happened to be a letter from one Richard Pini. What made this letter so distinctive was that in comparison to all the other letters I got, this one did not tell me what color his eyes were, and how many dimples he had, and what comics he liked to read. This one said, “I really liked what you had to say in your letter in The Silver Surfer. But if you want to know more about me, you have to write to me; and I promise you, surprises await.” [chuckles] Now, that’s how you get a girl interested. [laughs] So I

did, and the rest is a twenty-five year history, which is another panel, tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. [laughs, applause] (above) Original Kirby cover art to the program book for the 1971 Disneyland Convention, where Jack was a guest. (right) The protagonist from Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay novel is the star of a new quarterly anthology currently shipping from Dark Horse Comics: Michael Chabon Presents… The Amazing Adventures of The Escapist. Michael is co-editor of the series. Escapist TM & ©2004 Michael Chabon. Mister Miracle, Oberon TM & ©2004 DC Comics. Dwarf TM & ©2004 Walt Disney Productions.

EVANIER: I’m going to skip over Mr. Royer for a second and go to the other Michael and ask him—I guess the easiest question here to ask you is, where did you first become aware of Jack Kirby, and tell us how it led to the book? MICHAEL CHABON: Okay, I’ll try. I was one of those people who had never heard of Jack Kirby when, across the top of certain DC books in about 1971, ’70, the words “Kirby is Coming!” began to appear. At that time, I suppose I was about seven or eight years old. When you’re seven or eight years old, I think it often seems as if most of the world consists of things you’ve never heard of that everyone else already knows all about; and I assumed that “Kirby” must be one of those things since the words meant nothing to me. Actually, having reached the age of forty, it still feels as if the world is made up of things that everybody knows about, but I’m just finding out about, myself. But at the time, I didn’t know if “Kirby” was a person, I didn’t know if “Kirby” was a character. For all I knew, “Kirby” was some new form of energy, [laughs] which in fact it turned out to be. Then, sometime after, I was lying home, sick in bed, which was one of my favorite times to read comic books. My father was

my provider of comic books, and in a stack of comics he brought me, there was this book called Mister Miracle, which he hadn’t purchased for me previously. I think— someone can help me out—it was the issue where he goes into the Id and there’s The Lump—I’m not sure what number that was, Mister Miracle #8? I had a fever, [audience laughs] a really high fever, and there’s this one panel in the book that had this character, The Lump, and it was like a big wad of bubble gum; think bubble gum, sort of soft and mushy. But then, it could transform itself into other kinds of forms. There’s this one where he has these big bristles, these huge spikes sticking out of his hand, and it was rendered in a way that somehow coincided perfectly with the way I was feeling. I had this fever at the time and that image just penetrated and I realized, “Wait a minute. This must be that ‘Kirby’ they were talking about.” [laughs] And then I realized no, I’d actually seen this guy’s work before and there was a moment for me, maybe a conjunction with being ill, and having that sort of heightened perception you sometimes have when you’re sick. There’s this very disturbing image of this pink thing with spikes, and realizing that it was Kirby, and then realizing that I knew Jack Kirby, I knew this artwork, I had seen it before and it was so recognizable. From that moment on, I began to pay attention to Kirby’s work. And the thing that I remembered, just really blowing the doors open for me was a two-page spread in Mister Miracle #8 that shows the Female Furies, sort of lounging around their quarters and they’re beating each other and slapping each other with big leather thongs, [laughs] and sort of fighting—oh, yeah. Lashina, that’s the one. Yeah, the girl with the big leather straps. It was a combination of the way the women were attired and the fact that it was a two-page spread, it was the first of those two-pagers of his that I ever noticed. From that moment on, he became my favorite. He was my favorite artist, my favorite writer, my favorite conceptualizer. But I think the book I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of days, getting ready to come do this panel, the book of his—and later, I got to know his Fantastic Four stuff, his Thor stuff, all the things he did at Marvel in the Sixties. I really liked The Eternals when he went back to Marvel. I liked pretty much everything that he ever did. But the book that was the most important to me was one I feel that has been somewhat unjustly neglected for years, and that’s Kamandi. [applause] That book was so crucial. You know, partly, I think a lot of people looked at it, and saw the Statue of Liberty on the cover on the first issue, and thought “Aw, this is just a cheap Planet of the Apes knockoff,” or something; talking animals. It started under a cloud because of that, where if anyone who read the book within the first two or three issues, he had just completely went so far beyond anything that anyone who ever had anything to do with the Planet of the Apes ever imagined with sentient animals in a post-apocalyptic world. I think the thing that’s key for me about Kamandi that is key for a lot of things that become the most important to you in literature when you’re a child, is that it was so infinite. Every issue, you went someplace that you had not been before, and in the subsequent issues, you were going to continue to journey. The Fourth World books had sort of an interlinked quality

that made them feel like they were all taking place within the certain prescribed boundaries of storytelling, but with Kamandi, you just never knew. You know, one issue was gorillas, and the next issue it was grasshoppers and the issue after that it was cats or bears. And you just sense that until Jack ran out of animals, [laughs] there would not be an end to this series. Somebody wrote about The Lord of the Rings when the film came out, it was in The New Yorker. It talked about when the map of The Lord of the Rings was printed, that there were these things at the edges of the map that were mentioned: Countries, peoples that actually never appear, really, within The Lord of the Rings. You hear about them, but they play absolutely no role in the story. And yet, there they are on the maps that are published with the book, and that sort of implication, that there’s more here. “I could tell you more, but I’m only telling you this part of the story right now.” That was implicit in Kamandi and that’s the premise that fires a kid’s imagination, that makes a kid feel like there’s room in this world for you because Jack Kirby’s only telling this little part of it. But obviously, there are more stories that can be told and you can participate in a way—that’s what really got me going. When I started writing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, alas, Jack had already been dead for about a year. I think, in part, it was his death—I was living in Los Angeles at the time and I had never realized that Jack Kirby was so physically close to where I was. When I read of his death, I suddenly realized I could have, somehow or other, maybe arranged to have met him. I later discovered he was a very welcoming, hospitable man who liked to meet people and so it would have been the easiest thing in the world. It was in part, I think, that realization that I would never get to do that, that helped propel me towards writing this novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and in the course of which, I did get to meet some guys who are no longer with us like Gil Kane, for example. He sat down with me for three hours and talked from the minute he sat down until the minute his wife came in and told him to stop talking. [laughs]

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.” And I didn’t think about that, I only assumed it was Jack Kirby. And I took the picture home, a little drawing, and kept it. Years and years later, I put it in a frame, I took it out of wherever it was, an envelope, and I put it in a frame, and I still have it on my wall. I still have it in my apartment. LEE: [shouts] Sell it! You’d get a fortune! [laughs] Hard to believe he’s related to me. [laughs]

EVANIER: Michael, I’m going to digress for one second here because I would like to introduce a surprise guest star. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Stan Lee. [applause] STAN LEE: Sorry I couldn’t be here earlier. I had to mess up another panel. [laughs] So, you having a good time? LARRY LIEBER: Oh, yeah! LEE: Even with him? [laughs] EVANIER: Stan can only stay for a few minutes. We’re going to serialize what Michael said. Put a couple of microphones between the two of you. Larry, I was hoping to time this better. I was going to have Larry tell the story about the first time he went to the Timely offices. Larry got what I think is the first fan sketch ever done in the world, which was a sketch of the Simon and Kirby—tell them about it. LIEBER: All right, I was thinking, as people were talking about Jack, I can’t tell that many stories. I really never saw Jack that much in my life. I did see him when he’d come up to the office and I had contact with Jack. I knew him very well through his work. But then I was thinking, I was probably younger than anybody else in the field who met Jack. I was a teenager then when Rob Soloman took me—I don’t know, you may have been away in the service. LEE: I was always away. [laughs] LIEBER: He took me up to the office, and they would take kids around, and we came to Jack Kirby. He was very nice and young— I don’t remember that much, just being there, and he drew a little sketch. And he drew Captain America, a head, and above it was a caption that said, “Hi, Larry!” And it was two heads, Captain America and Bucky. And underneath it, it said, “To my pal Larry,

LIEBER: One of the things about it, it said, “To my pal Larry” As the years went on, I became a little more literate. I thought it should have said, “To our pal Larry.” [chuckles] Then I thought about it some more and I thought, “Well, maybe they were one person, I don’t know.” [laughs] Maybe there was some form of significance to that. But then the worst thing, it was printed in some magazine, in an article. [Editor’s Note: It ran in TJKC #18.] And when it was printed, the people who know more about things than I do because they study it, it’s like DNA, or something, they’ll go through it—it was horrible. They concluded that it was probably drawn by Joe Simon, not Jack Kirby. And I don’t know, I like to think it was Jack Kirby.

(above) In the margin of this page from Thor #139 (April 1967), Stan Lee wrote the following comment to Production Manager Sol Brodsky about Vince Colletta’s inking of the last panel:

EVANIER: I think it was half-andhalf. I think one of them drew Captain America.

(left) Larry Lieber’s childhood drawing of Cap and Bucky, which we showed full-size in TJKC #18 (just reprinted in The Collected Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. Four).

LIEBER: And one drew Bucky? Well, at least I have half. [laughs] [Editor’s Note: In the article in TJKC #18, Will Murray deduced that the Cap head was by Simon, and Bucky was by Kirby. Based on Larry’s description and the differences in handwriting, it would seem likely he first met with Joe Simon, who drew the Captain America head and signed it “ Joe Simon.” Then Jack added the Bucky head and “To my pal Larry”, completing the inscription with “& Jack Kirby.”]

“Sol, V.C. ruined this inking. Jack had much more detail -- the figures were recognizable! Should be like pg. 3/3.”

cute one. I made up that when I did Thor. LEE: The Uru hammer. LIEBER: Right. So I said I wanted something that wasn’t long to letter. And I made up the Uru hammer; it’s easy to write and get it out of the way. [laughs] PINI: Wait a minute. You made up “Uru” and you didn’t know that the Nordic word “urus” means “strength and power”? LIEBER: I had no idea. [laughter] PINI: Are you kidding? [laughs, applause] LIEBER: I barely spoke English! [more laughter and applause] LEE: That’s the difference between us. I would have taken credit, actually. [laughs] LIEBER: The rest of the story is Roy Thomas took over the book. That’s when I moved over to the westerns. And he was writing it, and he read this “Uru hammer,” and he assumed that it was a true thing in legend. LEE: And it was, for me, and is. [laughs] LIEBER: But he was looking in Bullfinch’s Mythology or some book. He couldn’t find it, and came over to me one day, and he said, “Larry, where in the literature did you find it?” I didn’t find it anyplace, I made it up. [laughs] And he couldn’t have that, so he got the real name. I think it was “Mjolnir,” or something. LEE: You didn’t think up “Mjolnir”? LIEBER: No, no. I didn’t think up “Mjolnir.” LEE: Roy made it up? LIEBER: He didn’t make it up. LEE: [incredulous] You mean there is a Mjolnir? [laughs] LIEBER: I make things up. LEE: I’m thinking research. [laughs] You’ve got Mjolnir and—

(above) Concept sketch for the Dakota Kid, whose only appearance was in Marvel’s Nov. 1973 one-shot Western Team-Up #1, alongside the Rawhide Kid (dating this piece around then). A companion piece by Larry, showing numerous name options for the character, would seem to indicate that he wasn’t aware there’d been an earlier Dakota Kid in Marvel’s own QuickTrigger Western #15 (Dec, 1956). Larry’s very Kirbyesque art style, and similar handwriting style to Jack’s, made many people assume this was Kirby art.

LEE: I worked with the two of them for a while and I must tell you, I could not tell the difference. I would look at a drawing and I’d say, “Hey, Joe! You did a great job.” “Jack did that.” “Hey, Jack! I loved that.” “Joe did that.” [laughs] I’m not the greatest, but it was very hard to tell one from the other. I don’t know whether Jack sort of copied Joe’s style, or vise versa, or they were both born with the same style, but man, they drew the same way. LIEBER: That was it. That was how I got the drawing and I’ve kept it all these years because it means something. And later on, when I got into the field—well, I started writing in 1958. I was writing monster stories and science fiction monsters that we were putting out, and Jack was the lead artist on them, and I had to turn out stories. We plotted them and made up the names. LEE: Those names were brilliant! Gorr! Mongoo! LIEBER: Those were yours. I made up other names. [laughs] I may have submitted names. LEE: When I talk, I talk about my names. [laughs] LIEBER: Right, absolutely. I made up, who was it, “Don Blake.” You made up “Thor,” but I had “Don Blake.” [laughs, applause] LEE: Yeah, I should have known you made up “Don Blake” because it isn’t the same first letter as last letter. You blew it! I don’t know how I let that go through. EVANIER: Absolutely, and I used to love the alliterative names. LIEBER: Talk about names, I made up a name—oh, this was a

LIEBER: I like my Uru hammer, but I didn’t know what it meant. I just thought it sounded good. Anyway, I was writing for Jack, those stories, and I was learning to write, really. And Jack, one thing I remember about it is he could draw faster than I could write, which even for a beginner, that’s a little unusual. And Stan, you’d be saying, “Jack needs a story. You’ve gotta have it by Friday.” And I was moving to the city then, and writing in the park up there in Manhattan, New York City. And I remember going to the one post office that was open all night. It was open on Saturday, to get the stories out to Jack. I was very impressed with the speed and I admired his drawing. I got to know Jack, really, through his drawing because later on, I started with The Rawhide Kid, which was a strip that Jack had drawn. So naturally, I looked at his characters. And the more I was drawing, the more I appreciated what Jack did. And as time went on, I felt I got to know him. I wasn’t thinking of knowing him. I wasn’t even conscious of it. But I was getting to know him through his drawing, very much. He had the ability to draw a crowd scene and make every character interesting because no two were in the same pose. If I draw a crowd scene, it would look like this and this and I’d be bored with it—he interrelated that. And I found that if he drew rocks, just rocks, no two rocks were the same. [laughs] LEE: [dramatically] He gave personality to every rock he drew. [laughs] LIEBER: And he gave an interest to it and he made it interesting. You wanted to look at it. If he had Indians, he— LEE: [excited] Hey, did you see Kirby’s latest rock in the new issue? [laughs]

EVANIER: And pretty soon, he made a character called The Thing out of them. Stan, tell us how you decided which strips to do for yourself and which things to give to Larry. LEE: Oh, that was easy. I gave him the tough ones. [laughs] Oh, I can’t remember. I don’t know. Whatever I wasn’t doing, I gave Larry. EVANIER: While you’re here, tell us what you remember of work with Stan Goldberg. LEE: Who? [laughs] Well, first of all, Stan is multitalented. He started out as a colorist, then he became a penciler, and he knew that I liked Dan DeCarlo’s work. So the next thing I knew, he was drawing just like Dan DeCarlo. He was a great colorist. I’ll tell you Stan’s greatest virtue, which very few people know. If you ever want to take a walk with somebody, we used to take walks, Stan and I and Sol Brodsky, you remember? We walked all over town and the beautiful thing about him, he’s a slow walker and you could say, [shouts] “Step it up, you dummy. We’ll be late!” He never got angry. He’d just walk a little faster and he was great.

people listening, and you’re getting testimonials, so it couldn’t have been so bad. [laughs, applauds] And I saw Sal yesterday, wasn’t it? And there were a million people talking and I couldn’t get his name for a second, you know? And he got all angry. [angry] “You don’t remember my name, I’ve known you for a hundred and fifty years.” So I want you to know I recognize Sal Buscema. He’s sitting right there. [laughs] I know you, I’ve always known you, I love you, you’re a great artist, [shouts] and I know your damn name! [laughs, applause] I can’t pronounce it, but I know it. [laughs] SAL BUSCEMA: And you sir, are who? [laughs] LEE: I should have kept my mouth shut. [laughs] BUSCEMA: I know, Stan. I’m just bugging you. LEE: [to Chabon] And that guy sitting over there—

no, right over there, whatever his name is. [laughs] I’ve been name-dropping you all over town, ever since you won that—I don’t know that many Pulitzer Prize winners. And it’ll surprise you, you know, I’m the kind of guy you figure my only friends are Pulitzer Prize winners. [laughs] But Mr. Chabon over there was great on that panel yesterday. I want to tell you, you were the most modest guy. If I had won a Pulitzer Prize, when I meet somebody, “Hi, I’m Stan Lee. I won a Pulitzer Prize.” [laughs] He never said that. I think he’s safe. All right, that’s all. I gotta go. Him, I love. This guy, any time you have a panel, if Mark Evanier isn’t around to be the head of it, don’t have it because it’s a waste of time. [laughs, applause] EVANIER: The other night, Stan and I were e-mailing each other back and forth. I told him, “Jay Leno’s got a joke about you in the monologue tonight.” I

STAN GOLDBERG: He was my boss. I had to. [laughs] I had pains in my shins. [laughs] I’d say, “Please, let’s stop off right now.” [laughs] But he’d never do that. Out walking for an hour and a half, he’s coming back and saying, “Look at the time. We’ve got a lot of things to do.” LEE: No, Stan was the greatest guy to work with and it was a big loss to us when he went over to Archie, and their gain. And I don’t see enough of him, maybe because he lives on this side of the country. But it’s probably just as well. If he was over where I am, I’d be saying, “Step it up, you dummy,” and that’s no good. He’d get mad. GOLDBERG: Any time you got together on a socalled “social” basis, Stan said, “Come up to my room. Come up to my studio,” where he was living in New York. “I’ve got an idea.” I came here to have a nice little dinner, have a drink, to have some talk. He’d have an idea we could both work on together. And it was a Saturday night, or a Friday night, and I’d just put in six to eight hours at my desk. But that’s the work ethic that, kind of, I hated at the beginning. He would drive me home on a Friday night after I’d brought in 35 pages of Millie that day. You’d say to me, “You got enough work to do over the weekend?” I’d said, “I just brought in 35 pages!” Then he took days off. LEE: That was today! [laughs] GOLDBERG: But all of these things, they were great memories. LEE: So maybe that’s why Larry didn’t come to visit me there. [chuckles] I’m always kidding. And I didn’t know what to do with him. He wrote stories, he drew pictures, he did everything, and he did westerns, he did horror stuff, he did super-hero things. And I always wanted to act like I wasn’t showing him any favoritism because he was my brother, so other people wouldn’t get mad at him and say, “Uh, getting all the good assignments.” I gave the poor guy the worst assignments for years and that wasn’t nice, now that I think of it. So I apologize. [laughs] But you got good experience, right? And now you have 53

get back this e-mail: “Quick, tell me what it is.” I don’t remember what the joke was. Somebody told me earlier in the day. I told the joke all wrong back to him and he wrote back, “Oh, thank God they mentioned me.” Oh, he was excited. [laughs] LEE: I keep saying things that are all wrong. [laughs] EVANIER: That’s true. Well, okay. Stan’s going to have to leave in a minute and I’ve been asked to get the group together for a photo-op here before we resume the panel. So if those of you who have cameras could move forward for a second, we’re going to get everyone posed together, and we’ll get back to talking about Jack Kirby after Stan moves on. He’s got to go get a lapdance or something. [laughs, applause] [THE PANEL POSES FOR PHOTOS, THEN RECONVENES AS STAN LEE LEAVES] EVANIER: [after a pause] So Michael, you were saying? [laughs] CHABON: What was I—I don’t even remember what I was— EVANIER: Double-page spread of Female Furies. AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Leather thongs. Kamandi. Gil Kane. CHABON: Well, here’s the thing with Jack Kirby, and the somewhat nebulous connection that I began work with shortly after he died. There’s a picture that’s been reproduced a lot of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon sitting together at a drawing board when they were very young men. They’re both wearing neckties, as seen in this picture, and Joe Simon, at least in the picture, looks taller, and he’s thin, and he’s got kind of an aquiline face, and he’s got curly hair, and it’s all combed and standing up in the back. And then Jack is sitting down and he’s got that John Garfield-kind of pug face, city kid quality to him. And that picture was one of the first images I looked at when I was starting to research. And I just saw these two guys—honestly, I did not draw very much, if at all, of the biographical elements of their story. I didn’t really use Jack Kirby’s life at all, I didn’t use Joe Simon’s life at all. I incorporated bits and pieces from a lot of things a lot of guys told me, but that picture just seems so archetypical to me. It’s just the little guy and the bigger guy, and one of them would sort of refine the picture, and the other one looks kind of tough. And just starting with the idea of a collaborative team of two guys, one of them would be the writer, one of them would be the artist, and one of them would look this way, and one of them would look that way. Visually, I started the book with a picture of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, and it was very important to me to have that picture. I put it up on my bulletin board over my desk and I looked at it all the time. Eventually, I got a picture of John Garfield too because I had read somewhere that Jack, at some point in some fanzine, that he had a resemblance to John Garfield. So I got this eight-by-ten glossy of John Garfield and I used that as a visual reference for Sam Clay too. But as much as anything else, without that picture, I don’t know how I would have started it or where it would have gone. And the idea of having a team and collaborators really

came to me through that image. So that’s it, the most solid kind of thing I can deduce about Jack Kirby’s influence on that book. EVANIER: I want to move on here. Stan, we were talking yesterday about you devising the color schemes. One thing I find very impressive here is that nowadays when they design a new character, they go through dozens and dozens of sketches, and the artist will do color sketches, and in the back room, they’ll go through a hundred of these things. I remember, I think on the New Gods we went through about a dozen sketches for every character’s color scheme. Finally, we came up with one that Jack liked the least. [laughs] But when you worked with Stan, he just gave you the books to color, and you just took them home, or went to a corner of the office and decided to make The Thing orange. GOLDBERG: Well, I was the only eyes, so I did it. It’s funny too. The Fifties, when I was on staff, I don’t remember Jack’s work too much at all. And then, being in charge of thirty to fifty books a month that were coming in and had to be colored and sent and had a lot of pages in them, I was like a machine, going through that stuff, with our staff being about three people. But how I remember Jack; after ’59, everyone was basically on a freelance basis. Then all these things started happening, with all the stuff that Larry was writing and the first story that Jack always drew, one of the Tales To Astonish, and all of the other things, on and on and on. And there it goes, another

monster coming, leaping out of the page, and there it was. Basically, I had more color to work with when the super-heroes came in, and I couldn’t do a monster in blue or red or yellow because those were the colors of the super-heroes. So I had my monsters in burnt umbers and oranges, and maybe a green occasionally. And we were all on a freelance basis, so when I would come in, or Jack would come in, it was more of a good fortune to see each other, and it was like that with a lot of the guys. We were supporting our family, and we were anxious to get in and drop the work off, and go back home and work. There’s two stories that come to mind immediately, which have nothing to do with his art at all. Indirectly, they do now. The first one; occasionally, we would come in after delivering our stuff at noon or so. At that time, a lot of the artists were coming in and out, walking with Stan—it wasn’t just the two of us—Jack would be there, maybe Frank Giacoia would come by. And maybe one would say to the other, “If you’re in no rush to get home, let’s have lunch.” The office was on Madison Avenue, and walking with Frank and Jack, we had to cross over busy streets, and Jack had been doing all that great stuff. So we devised a little thing when we’d cross the streets. Frank would stand on one side of Jack and I would stand on the other side, protecting him from the traffic. [laughs] As we said, if we lose him, we’re all out of work. [laughs] Now, we had a lot of fun with that and those were special times, and those were the times you remember. One other old story, I was in the office again, and Jack brought in forty pages of the most spectacular pencils I’ve ever seen. And before I continue with this story, I’d like to thank John Morrow for putting out this great, great Jack Kirby book. [applause] How he saves all these great pencils, and to have them, and to be finding more and more stuff; that’s a treasure that would’ve been long gone. When I get that book, I stop work for the next day. I put everything aside and just look at that book, it’s just marvelous. Thank you for sending it. I love it. So I’ll mention one other story about our New York offices. Jack brought in a lot of pencil art, and I had a chance to look at it. And he’s not even talking about the work; this was when he lived out on Long Island, and he was telling me about how they were doing a lot of work at his house, decorating, painting the room that he works in, and he had to put his drawing board on top of a banister or someplace, and he worked on the steps, just sitting here. And I don’t know if I said it to him, but I said, “He did this, leaning his probably beaten-up old drawing board on the railing of a staircase going down the steps, or on the banister up on top, and drew these pictures.” You know, that’s how he’s so brilliant. Sure, I admire guys who keep all the reference in front of them, and then they translate it into great pictures. But he had all the reference in his head. I can’t—even if he did see something, he transformed that into something that the guy who invented it originally would never even think of doing. Jack did all these things. One time I was going out for lunch with Stan and Sol Brodsky, who was doing all the production. And all Jack could talk about were new ideas for new books: Divorce western comics, [laughs] divorce cowboys. You know, I’m listening to this and on and on and on. I loved romance stories. I always felt doing the greatest romance stories is probably the hardest to do. Of course, you’re limited on, certainly, sex in the book and the action. There’s great holding, and great kisses, and great movement shots, and great angles, and on and on. And two of the best artists ever to do romance stories are two of the greatest artists ever to do adventure stories: John Buscema and Jack Kirby, bar none. [applause] John’s idol was

Jack, and John was the same way. I got to know John well in the last few years and I saw what he could do with art. I wish I got that close to Jack. The last time I ever did see Jack, Jack had been out in California and it probably was about fifteen years ago, and they’d come to show him the city, and I just happened to be around. He happened to be standing alone, and he saw me in the distance, and a big smile came on his face, and I quickly ran over before anybody else did. And it was just a one-on-one thing for five or ten minutes. We didn’t see each other for many years and it felt so good after walking away. You know, you change a lot if you haven’t seen each other for a while. And if you talk about John Garfield, I remember that big cigar in Jack’s face and he just looked so good. You know, I watched movies all my life. He would have fit in perfectly in the Thirties and Forties and Fifties, like that. But I’m so glad I could be up here with a limited knowledge or connection with Jack.

(these two pages) More unused Kirby layouts for Daredevil #13.

(previous page, bottom) We think this is the photo that Michael Chabon mentions as the impetus for the main characters in his Kavalier and Clay novel. But we’ve always wondered; why is there an illo of Superman on the wall of the Simon & Kirby studio? Daredevil TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

EVANIER: Thank you, Stan. [applause] I don’t think I made it

clear; I think Jack loved, not tolerated, what Stan did on his work, and didn’t like all the coloring that he got over the years. But I don’t think he ever had a problem with anything that Stan did. He liked that the characters, the color was bold and clean, and that Stan seemed to understand what was the important parts of every panel, and punctuate them. GOLDBERG: Well, when you think about it, having Stan—I can say this, now that he left. [laughs] It’s a complimentary thing, but he’ll twist it and turn it any other way. [laughs] But Stan, when I started working for him, was the Art Director, the Editor, all rolled up into one. If anybody knew about an industry and what would sell, and what would not sell, he did. And he taught me how to color the guys, and I learned from that. But he liked to see it a million other ways. When I went over to bring him the cover, coloring the cover, and he said, “Great. I love the cover. Terrific.” But maybe this was on a Monday, and maybe we could make a few changes. “Let me see how it looks this way.” And by Friday, I’d still be working on that one cover. I’d say to everybody else in the department, “I can’t work on it, you’ll have to do this. I’m working on some covers with Stan.” And probably, when Friday rolled around, he initialed one that he said was nice; the first one that I showed him. But he just wanted to see everything else, and I think I would be the same way if I was the boss, really. And he had me. It was fifty bucks a week and that’s that. [laughs] And he could afford me. PINI: Mark, I just heard one more great story about Jack that you need to hear. MIKE ROYER: Oh. Well, I was very lucky. Thanks to Mark Evanier and Alex Toth, I got that phone call from Jack. And the first meeting with Jack was to sit down at his drawing board and ink his bio page for the Marvelmania people. Talk about pressure here, you’re meeting your icon, someone you’ve always wanted to ink, and he said, “Well, just sit down and do it here.” And we got to be friends. My kids, when they were young, swam in his swimming pool when I went out to visit him—which, ultimately, was only sixteen miles away from me. But I would get his pages, a whole book at a time, and I’d open it up, and I was just overwhelmed by the smell of Roy Tan cigars. [laughs] And it was just intoxicating. And this is a long time ago, before I did quit smoking, but I was a cigarette smoker, and I went to the store, and I bought a box of Roy Tan cigars. But I didn’t know how to smoke cigars. I was a cigarette smoker so I’m inhaling six cigars a day. [laughs] And my wife walks into the studio and she says, “How you doing?” I said, [hoarse] “Well, I don’t really know.” [laughs] She says, “Maybe it’s the cigars, hon.” [laughs] It lasted for about a month, though. But I don’t know, it was just like being closer to Jack. [laughs] But I was lucky, and Mike Thibodeaux after me, because we got to see Jack all the time. But that initial meeting was just... how do you stand in the presence of one of your gods? And he said, “Now, this is my wife and this is the kids. You sit in there and do the page. We’ll break for lunch.” We’re standing in the kitchen and eating sandwiches. And it’s like, “This is not happening.” [laughs] EVANIER: This is the house in Irvine? ROYER: Yes, yeah. First at Irvine, and then out to Moore Park, and then back to Thousand Oaks. The thing that I most regret about knowing Jack was in ’94, during the Northridge Earthquake, which devastated our house, and for a week-and-ahalf we slept in a tent in the front yard because it wasn’t safe to go into the house. My wife, who is an avid antiquer, had bought this hundred-year-old fireplace mantle to turn into a headboard in our master bedroom. The antique store called and said, “Come to Thousand Oaks and get this thing. We need to clean up all the rubble.” My son and I drove in my pickup truck to Thousand Oaks. We picked up this huge fireplace mantle. I’m driving by the exit for Janss Road, and I’m saying, “Let’s go see Jack.” And I said, “No, I’ve always believed it’s not nice to drop in unannounced.” And it was like four days before he died. I always regretted that. EVANIER: Sal, we haven’t heard much from you yet. [laughs] Tell me, how intimidating is it to take over a book that Jack Kirby and/or your brother have drawn— 56

Thor, Captain America—for years. Tell us about the influence that Jack had on your work. We talked yesterday about the influence that John had on it. What was it like when they’d say, “Okay, you’re drawing Captain America.” Your first real penciling assignment there was The Avengers. It’s a whole mess of Jack Kirby characters, and you have a pile of Jack Kirby comics there to look at, as reference. Does that make you feel inspired, or inadequate, or what is it? Tell us what that feels like. SAL BUSCEMA: Well, I think the best way you can answer that question—I envy these people who knew Jack so much. And one of the true regrets of my life is that I never got to meet what I understand was a really nice man. But years ago—excuse me for doing this in a roundabout way, Mark, but I wanted to express it—obviously, I don’t have any wonderful personal stories like these folks do. I was a commercial artist for fifteen years before I got into comic books. Comic books were the things that I wanted to do from the time I was just a kid. For that period of time, I was separated from them, didn’t know the people in the industry, I didn’t know about anything. I never looked at comics. I was doing other things. When the industry was making its comeback in the Sixties, and John had met Stan, and Stan talked him into coming back to work at Marvel, my enthusiasm grew and I said, “I’ve got to take a crack at this. It’s something I’ve got to try to do or I will regret it for the rest of my life, if I don’t at least try.” But I had to learn how to do comic books and it took me a whole year, on my own time, just practicing

and looking at these other, wonderful artists. But this one story I want to tell—I talked to John. He was struggling a little bit. This magnificent draftsman was struggling in the beginning because he had to learn the craft all over again, and he was in a new genre: Super-heroes. It’s something he’d not really done before. When I called him and said, “John, I’m going to take a crack at this. What advice can you give me?” I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but in a nutshell, what he said was, “Get some Jack Kirby comic books. This guy is the best in the business.” I can’t say anything else about him at least twenty people haven’t already said. That, to me, just speaks volumes. And I did that. I went out and I bought some Thor comics, I bought some Fantastic Four comics, and I was blown away by them. I had not looked at comics in years and all of a sudden, I’m looking at, in my opinion, the greatest comic book illustrator of all time. His creative genius is legendary. He was a huge influence on me and probably everybody else in the business, living or dead or past or present. Maybe I’m slightly going overboard, but that’s exactly the way I think about Jack. I did not know him. I wish I had, but I feel as though I knew him through the work that he did. And I mentioned at the panel yesterday, Mark, that one of the other regrets of my life is that I never got to ink him. I really wanted to and I was a little timid about calling Stan and saying, “Hey, can I ink Jack Kirby?” Because, well, like this is beyond me. Stan would probably laugh and hang up on me. I don’t know what else I can say but that I was influenced by him from the beginning. John Buscema, who was a giant in his own right, said, “Look at this guy.” He didn’t say, “Look at my work,” or, “Look at somebody else’s work.” He said, “Look at Jack Kirby, the way he tells a story, the way he encompasses so much drama in a single little panel.” He was the best, he was the best. He will be the yardstick by which everyone else is measured. I really feel that way. [applause]

time. But his art was brilliant in the Thirties and Forties. He used to tell great stories when he was only sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old on Sub-Mariner. EVANIER: Another question? In the back? AUDIENCE MEMBER: A question for Michael Chabon. Are there any plans for an Escapist movie? CHABON: Kavalier and Clay, I finished a screenplay. I went through ten drafts of it and they told me I was done. So either that means they liked it or they’re about to hire another writer, I don’t know. [laughs] They’re saying it’s going into production early next year, so we’ll see. There’s no casting, and the director that’s been mentioned most recently is Stephen Daltry, but he hasn’t even signed, so it’s all very tentative. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What would be your favorite Kirby character to either write or draw? PINI: I got to do mine. I started out loving The Inhumans. [applause] Jack knew something about fantasy and he put it into The Inhumans. My favorite Inhuman was Triton. I was always pretty fascinated with mer-people. So years later, I got invited to do a story for a book, which I believe the title was Unexpected Heroes. There were three stories in it, and one of them was a short Triton adventure with probably the worst artwork I’ve

(previous page) 2001 inked version of Jack’s unused Kamandi #1 cover. Mike’s doing wonderful recreations of Kirby pages; see his ad at the end of this article.

(below) Mike Royer’s not the only one doing recreations these days; check out this recent Sal Buscema recreation of one of his classic covers: Avengers #71. Kamandi TM & ©2004 DC Comics. Avengers, Invaders TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

CHABON: [looking for his children] Before we go on, could I just ask, are Sophie and Zeke still over in that corner? [laughs] EVANIER: I think that leaves some time for some questions. I have a few more for these people, but let’s take some questions from the audience out there, for anybody up here, if anyone has anything. Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: One of the people that I really like as an artist, early in the Marvel years, was Bill Everett. He was one of my favorites. I was just wondering, at any time during your career, did you get a chance to work with him, ink him, or maybe have him ink your work, or anything like that? And what was he like to work with? GOLDBERG: I wish I could say yes. No, I never did. I knew Bill Everett quite well in his high moments of his drying out and becoming—how do you kindly say it?— when he stopped drinking. You couldn’t get much work from him while he was drinking. And then he turned the opposite and became a spokesman against alcohol, and you could get less work out of him because he was out making a speech someplace about that. But to me, he was a good guy. When I was six years old, I was reading his Sub-Mariner, and I’ll never forget that. Unfortunately, he died too quickly because I think his stuff was way ahead of its 57

(above) Example of Jack’s pencil work on Disney’s Black Hole newspaper strip adaptation of the film. Disney had Mike Royer make minor modifications (below) to keep the characters “on model.” (next page) Devil Dinosaur may have been one of Mike Royer’s least favorite books, but Jack sure had fun drawing dino-fights! Here are pencils from issue #4. The Black Hole TM & ©2004 Walt Disney Productions. Devil Dinosaur TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. Demon, New Gods TM & ©2004 DC Comics.

ever done in my life. I didn’t try to imitate Jack, and I was so far into Elfquest at the time that Triton came out with a rather large head, and larger pointed ears than he ordinarily had. [laughs] But somehow, Jack was still there. EVANIER: Sal, I would guess your favorite character would be The Hulk. BUSCEMA: Oh, absolutely. He’s my favorite character, yeah. Jack’s Hulk was so different from everyone else’s. But he created it. He started it. And one thing I want to mention too, during the course of my career, I’ve heard statements about Jack from different people. I remember reading a statement by Gil Kane, talking about Jack and saying how he tried to emulate him at times. And he said, “The best advice I can give to any artist in this business is don’t try to emulate Jack Kirby because it’s an impossible task.” Yes, the Hulk, the Thing, wonderful. I’d never draw the Thing like Jack. He’s magnificent. He loved rocks. [laughs] Oh, there’s another statement: Joe Sinnott. I remember talking about Jack’s rocks as we did. And he said, “I think that guy was a frustrated mason. His rocks are magnificent.” [laughs] Exactly. And his Thing was just incomparable, incomparable. EVANIER: Mr. Royer, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you if you ever had a favorite book that you inked of Jack’s. Was there any one book you just enjoyed more than the others? ROYER: I don’t know if I can answer that question. It’d be easier to tell you the book that I enjoyed the least, and that would be Devil Dinosaur. No, no, no, no—Sandman, because Jack didn’t want to do Sandman, and I could tell it on inking the pages that Jack didn’t want to do Sandman. It was a case where I think he had contractual agreements with DC then. He had to do the book. But for some reason, I couldn’t warm up to Devil Dinosaur. I think I shouldn’t admit this, but of all the work, despite your opinions about quality or being a hack, the only work that I ever did on Jack that I feel that I actually did some hack work was on Devil Dinosaur because I actually inked a lot of the forest backgrounds with—horrors—a Niji Stylus,

which, if anyone has those originals, all of those forests have now turned purple. But a favorite book—no, I would open a package, smell the Roy Tan cigars, look at the pencils, and go, “God, I have to letter this first. I just want to get at it.” And I do look back at some of the stuff now, and there are a couple of pages of “Glory Boat” that I would love to possess. I’ve actually recreated my favorite page, but a favorite book? I’ve never really thought about it. It was just the two that I didn’t care much for. But I’ve talked to fans who Devil Dinosaur is the first book they saw, and they are dyed-in-the-wool Kirby fanatics, and it’s because of Devil Dinosaur. So who am I to make any kind of value judgement, you know? It’s just one man’s opinion. EVANIER: Mike, by the way, is doing some lovely re-creations, and I’m sure if you talk to him after the panel or down in the dealer’s room, he will soak you for lots of money for them and you’ll think it’s worth it. [laughs] ROYER: Can I plug a project? Lisa [Kirby] and Mike Thibodeaux are working on a project that will be the first new Kirby since he left us. They have found fragments of stories in development, some pieces that were fully penciled, and they’re putting together a book that will be published by Dark Horse. And bless their hearts, they thought of me, and Lisa called, and I can’t say no to an attractive woman, especially when her name is “Kirby.” So at least, what, thirteen pages of it, I’ll be inking. AUDIENCE: Wow! Great! Cool! Yeah! [applause] EVANIER: We are out of time here. Join me in thanking Wendy Pini, Mike Royer, Michael Chabon, Stan Goldberg, Sal Buscema, Larry Lieber, and thank you, Stan Lee, wherever you are. [applause] ★

RECREATIONS OF Jack Kirby OR YOUR OTHER FAVORITES CONTACT

MIKE ROYER mowkwurst@aol.com SIZES AND PRICES UPON REQUEST INQUIRES WELCOME NO OBLIGATION www.michaelroyer.com

Gallery 2 hen we think of OMAC, we think of all the high concepts of what futuristic life will be like. But despite all the iconic images of the mohawked hero jumping, crouching, bouncing, lifting, and throwing...

...the series showed remarkably little actual violence. Maybe Jack was subscribing to the Global Peace Agency’s credo of non-aggression, but it made for some remarkable, if not exactly actionpacked, “second banana” splash pages, as you’ll see here. Page 60: Pencils from OMAC #1, page 6. Page 61: Pencils from OMAC #2, page 6. Page 62: Pencils from OMAC #2, page 12. Page 63: Pencils from OMAC #3, page 6. Page 64: Pencils from OMAC #3, page 10. Page 65: Pencils from OMAC #4, page 13. Page 66: Pencils from OMAC #5, page 13. Still, with penciling this nice, it hardly put us to sleep.

ONE MAN ART CREATOR

OMAC: The World That’s Here

VISIONARY

by Daniel Murillo

“Reaching utopia has become more random and reasonably monstrous: Exchanging a body for a machine.” Raymundo Mier, Topodrilo #23, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México. ssembled persons, stolen water, atomic bombs, a peace agency, a watchful brother who can see everything, madness and greed, genetic experiments, nuclear war, new bureaucratic forms of life: That’s the world of tomorrow, and the world Jack Kirby created for us, the readers of OMAC, One Man Army (and later) Corps.

But, in fact, the “World That’s Coming” is not a look into the future, but into the present. Section D and the products of “Build a friend” in OMAC #1 are a reflection of reality, the effects of the globalization on the world economy. Here you can build the femme fatale of your dreams, even if in the real world, you cannot even get close to a woman. The segregation of the Other is present in every adventure of OMAC. The Other are the people who pay taxes; the Other are the people who have feelings. Poor Buddy Blank (OMAC’s alter ego) works in a bureaucracy. The boss can order his people to go to the “psychology section” to get rid of pent-up emotions. There they can cry, destroy, withdraw, or whatever they need to do. “People” do not exist in this office. Human feelings and emotions are behind a limited number of doors. Some could consider this “quality” and efficiency in the workplace. Have you heard something like this at your place of business? Could it be an echo of the quality regulations of the modern world?

Individual or Social Identity in the OMAC Series? In the world that’s coming, individuality is present in all its force, and Jack Kirby permits us to see how globalization works. Individuality is important, not social identity. This is a crucial element in Kirby’s OMAC series. Jack (through Mister Big and Professor Skuba) opposes the loss of social identity via the Global Peace Agency, a multinational group of people with identical physical characteristics that acts anonymously. In this case, Kirby contrasts the loss of individual identity with the gain of a social group identity. The establishment in the world that is coming is very interesting. Actually, globalization plays a double game; it can be seen as an opportunity to coalesce all the inhabitants under one, single ideology, but the danger is that not everyone can play the same game. Some authors say the common citizen is “excluded” but Kirby comes closer to the truth when he describes how economic power can do anything. Mr. Big (in OMAC #2) could not be a better example: The multimillionaire has rented a city for a party, but in fact he is trying to find the secret behind project OMAC to destroy it. Again, economic power and a single person (a magnate) are pitted against social identity because project OMAC is the brainchild of the Global Peace Agency. The degree of social identity is present in the person of OMAC. He is Buddy Blank, but he is also OMAC, transformed with an “electronic surgery! ...A computer hormone operation... Done by remote control!!” as Kirby describes on page 15 of OMAC #1. He is connected to Brother Eye, an all-powerful satellite orbiting the Earth. This re-creation of how a social identity could be understood is interesting. The adversary of the great economic power is a fraternal group that creates a man that has not one but three identities. How can we interpret this? 67

The Ocean Stealers and the Battle for Water

The Background in the World of OMAC Jack Kirby is Buddy Blank. Both have the desire to confront the age they are suffering through and both could do something for the world. Much has been written about how Kirby was affected by World War II. In OMAC’s world, a nuclear war looms on the horizon and the Pseudopeople are a form (a very pretty form) of bringing war home, because each pseudoperson is a bomb. We can no longer think of Kirby as simply a denotative artist. He gives another dimension to his work and uses the metaphor, although some may think that these android-bombs are “comic-booky, even funny.” Is the thought of war at your doorstep funny? We Latin-Americans know how easily war can touch home. In OMAC, the meaning of war cannot be ignored. As in Kirby’s other titles, war is the background against which other events occur. In New Gods, the battle between Apokolips and New Genesis; in Kamandi, the multiple battles between tigers and apes, tigers and dogs, lions and apes. Not to mention Captain America, Sgt. Fury, The Losers, the Eternals... War is also a business in the OMAC series. In the so-called First World countries, the same things

happen. Leaders menace the world (again the individual, egocentric figure that can murder, rape, wage war, commit genocide, invade) under the pretext of “saving the people” but when the decisions are made and actions taken, these same people don’t count. Foremost is what the leader thinks is right or is just, and the question is from what perspective and in what context were the concepts of rights and justice created. 68

Another egocentric element is the need to have everything desired. Professor Sandor Skuba and his allies, his daughter Seaweed and Apollo, want to selfishly steal the world’s water. Skuba is obsessed with water; it is his favorite drink, his favorite collection piece. Stealing water is a metaphor for our age. The person who can pay for water can use it. The concept of water as a common good is outdated. It is a natural resource administered by the State or private enterprise. In OMAC, Skuba is managing the water but not in a context of sustainability. Does that sound familiar? The concept of sustainable development is in crisis today. There is currently a debate about sustainability in the context of the world economy. I think that at the core, sustainability is least important here because economic value has taken on greater importance, as we can see in the current political trends. Skuba does not need the water; he merely wants it. He has lost view of the full picture and is concerned only with adding water to his collection, to feed his ego. He has no real need, or use, for the water. Kirby is photographing an era—postmodernism—populated by postmodern characters, Skuba being one of these. In contrast, OMAC and Brother Eye are trying to save the “illustration age,” returning humanity to an ethical environment. Water will be the focal point of our future struggles. Natural resources are a cause of international conflicts now: Water basins shared by two countries and rivers that serve to define borders (the Rio Grande between Mexico and USA) cause conflicts in the definition of supply and use of water for irrigation. The concept that Kirby creates with the ocean stealers is, again, that a very few control water, creating a social conflict. The one group concerned with resolving the conflict is the Global Peace Agency, a small group of people with ethics. Incidentally, social groups do not appear in the OMAC adventures because in this future world, the individual is less important. Economic power and the postmodern age have, shall we say, excluded individuals. The ocean stealers are a metaphor for two political (or economic, I cannot say at this time) entities—two countries competing for possession of

the water. One wants it to form part of a collection while the other seeks to recover its importance as a common good. Being a reductionist, the field for theoretical confrontations between anthropologists Arthur Mass and Karl Wittfogel about water management is open. The former is in favor of water as a common good, with all involved having a voice;

the latter proposes that the authorities should dictate who will receive water, and when.

Mutations and Other Genetic Experiments Seaweed, Skuba’s daughter, in Kirby’s last OMAC adventure, says that she and Apollo were undergoing “atomic manipulation” when Buddy Blank found the chamber of horrors in Skuba’s headquarters, where some monstrosities produced by genetic experiments are hidden away.

In reality, genetic experiments (human cloning, to be exact) were banned until the year 2002. In Kirby’s world, experiments to produce clones are normal. In real life, Dolly, the cloned sheep, was the result of one of the successful experiments. However, Skuba has experimented with monsters and with Apollo and the one that calls herself his daughter. What were they? And why did Skuba transform them? On the other hand, Buddy Blank is a genetic experiment, too. Here another distinction comes to light: Technology isn’t bad or good, it merely serves human beings and can be used in a myriad of forms. Three products of genetic experimentation are brought together in Skuba’s laboratory. We do not know why two of them were created: Apollo and Seaweed. We never know the true story behind them because Kirby kept that part of the story to himself. At that point, the story of OMAC ends abruptly.

The Cancellation of OMAC and the Possible Worlds When OMAC was cancelled, all the storylines in the Skuba adventure (OMAC #7-8) were truncated. We will never know where OMAC would have taken us. Obviously, the story was continued for one or two issues more, but the political problems Jack had with DC cancelled this particular comic that he was developing. The secret of Apollo and Seaweed was never disclosed. Nor was the fate of Brother Eye. If Buddy Blank was to have been retransformed into OMAC, we will never know. What happened to the Global Peace Agency? What was Skuba’s fate? What were the reasons for his obsessions? What was the connection (Steve Sherman knew more than he was willing say in the “Eye in the Sky” column) between the World That’s Coming and Kamandi? The cancellation of OMAC was not only an insult to Kirby’s work, but also to his readers. The rhythm in OMAC was mutilated and the story cut at the climax. Kirby’s speech in the last panel was changed to a dumb finale: Brother Eye destroyed the evil and project OMAC concluded. C’est fini. Was it really that easy? For DC, it was. In one action, the World That’s Coming had arrived. By presenting the maladies of the future world, Jack also showed us the diseases of his editorial house during that period. Along with Mr. Big and Sandor Skuba, Carmine Infantino came to his end. In that last panel of OMAC #8, not only did we see Brother Eye destroy Skuba’s headquarters, we inadvertently saw Jack’s wish to destroy DC’s editorial policy in the mid-Seventies. Jim Starlin, Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, Greg LaRocque and others, including John Byrne, continued imagining OMAC after Kirby. None of them explored the continuity of Jack’s story. Denny O’Neil suggested that Kamandi was OMAC’s grandson. John A. Modica (in Kirby Collector #17) says that “OMAC was a sort of prelude to the Kamandi stories.” And the editor of this publication in the same issue speculated that Apollo could be Kamandi’s father. But, what is the real story? Is there an OMAC #9? Or in Kirby’s notes does OMAC continue to wait for his last adventure? That leaves it up to us. If we accept the connection between OMAC and Kamandi, could it be that Skuba’s experiments transformed humanity into beasts in Kamandi’s world? In Kamandi #16, we see how animals can reason and be trans-

formed into rational beings. Could it be the counterpart to Skuba’s evil work and his mutation experiments? The key lies in the true identity of Apollo and Seaweed, once again. If we continue to use our imagination, we can see that the World That’s Coming has mutated into a beast’s world, where idiotic thoughts are widespread—a barbaric age, the sequel to a postmodern age. The background concepts of Kamandi and OMAC could coincide, but that is another story. If the metaphor in OMAC is our present day, then could the metaphor of Kamandi‘s world be our near future? ★

(previous page) Pencil images from throughout the OMAC series.

EPILOGUE (previous page) Jack’s original, unaltered final page for OMAC #8, the last issue of the series. As you can see, he’d planned to continue the Dr. Skuba story for one more issue, but when he made the decision to leave DC Comics, management must’ve felt the book’s sales didn’t warrant assigning a new creative team as they did with Kamandi, and simply covered over the “next issue” panel with a hastily constructed finale to the series (right). (below) As editor of Kamandi, Gerry Conway modified some of Jack’s dialogue. Check out the before-and-after from issue #34. All characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics.

Cancelled Kirby Cavalcade

The end of the line for Kamandi and OMAC, by John Morrow ith one hastily-lettered WHAROOM!, so ended OMAC, and Jack Kirby’s 1970s stay at DC Comics. Near the end of his time at DC, he had begun to draw scripts written by others, in Sandman (by Michael Fleisher), plus Justice Inc. and a one-shot issue of Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter (both penned by Denny O’Neil). It was a far cry from the situation he’d anticipated when first coming to DC in 1970, spearheading his own West Coast production office, overseeing new characters and kinds of books that others would write and draw. But even if Jack was just filling his page quota, many fans viewed it as a lull until the inevitable return of the Fourth World, or some even greater Kirby epic. Then came the shocker: Kamandi #34 appeared, wrapped in the first non-Kirby cover of the series. Readers who suspected

something was up had to look no further than that issue’s letters page for the big announcement: Kirby was leaving DC Comics. From the Kirby side of things, it all happened quickly. Basically without warning, Jack told assistant Steve Sherman one day, “My contract at DC is done, I’m going back to Marvel.” To Jack it was obvious there was no future for him at DC. They had been taking books away from him, editing him, and other things that made it clear the illusions he had when first coming to DC were just that: Illusions. Sherman says Jack’s attitude for some time had been, “Just pay my rate, and I’ll fill my page quota.” Jack may not have liked writing from others’ scripts, but as a professional, he fulfilled his contract to the best of his abilities. For his part, Sherman wasn’t that upset when his duties handling the Kamandi letter column were yanked back, to be controlled in New York. He continued working with Jack on ideas for one-shots like Kobra and other script ideas; but with Jack returning to Marvel, it was clear there soon wouldn’t be anything for him to do, so he gave up his career in comics, and began working full-time at Filmation animation.

A New Editor Arrives Gerry Conway, a regular fixture at DC at the time, says Kirby seemed somewhat disengaged as his contract was coming to a close, probably knowing he wouldn’t be staying with the company. Conway was the immediate beneficiary of Jack’s departure, being handed the editor’s slot on Kamandi as of #34. Editing, and later writing Kamandi wasn’t something Gerry sought out—he never particularly liked the series that much— but being a longtime Kirby fan, he was intrigued by the opportunity when Carmine Infantino offered it, seeing it as a great chance to work with an artist he admired. And since, like Jack, he had a

page quota to fill, he accepted the position. Whether it was Jack’s or DC’s idea to put Conway on as editor, Jack certainly didn’t fight it. Conway found Kirby to be an extremely pleasant guy to work with, and the collaboration was friendly and fun. (The two would later work together at Ruby-Spears Animation in the 1980s.) Conway was an editor in name mainly at first, since at the time of his appointment, Jack had four issues of Kamandi completed. Indeed, the text feature in Kamandi #34 stated that after four issues with Conway as editor only, he would script three issues for Jack to pencil. So his job on issues #34-37 was mostly proofreading and copyediting, and a comparison of Kirby’s pencil and ink photocopies to the published book shows numerous wording changes—but nothing that fundamentally alters the stories. (It’s a safe assumption that Kamandi was selling pretty well, if DC went to all this trouble to continue it and slowly introduce a new writer and readers to each other. After Jack left the Kamandi book, his immediate artistic replacement was Chic Stone—a longtime Kirby collaborator—and Mike Royer was retained as inker, to hopefully carry over the Kirby feel. None of this effort was used to save OMAC, which was left to quickly die on the vine.) Once Conway took over as editor with issue #34, covers were suddenly by Joe Kubert instead of Kirby. Current DC President Paul Levitz commented that this was normal, since the editors would discuss covers with publisher Carmine Infantino, and often Carmine would work up a cover sketch to send to the artist. In the past, Jack as editor would discuss covers by phone with Carmine, occasionally submitting a cover rough—something that, in those days before fax machines and Federal Express was a very time-consuming proposition. Now with the editing being handled in New York and Jack still in California, it made sense to have a New York artist doing covers, rather than ship things back and forth and risk missing deadlines. Conway confirms that the decision to take Jack off covers was more a question of logistics than a way to ramp up sales; he didn’t feel a Joe Kubert cover would necessarily help or hurt sales compared to a Kirby one. The working process on the final three issues of Kamandi was pretty straightforward; Paul Levitz was, at the time, assistant editor on the book, and would take basic plot ideas from editor Conway and compose a plot breakdown for Jack to draw from. Jack would then send the penciled pages back to New York for Conway to dialogue, much as he’d been doing with other writers on Sandman and Justice Inc. Mike Royer was brought back for the final three Kirby issues, so after scripting, they were sent to him for inking and lettering. Steve Sherman remembers seeing a script for Kamandi on Jack’s drawing table and asking him about it. Kirby just shrugged his shoulders and said that it was fine. “Conway’s a good kid,” Steve remembers him saying. Jack had no roadmap or master plan for Kamandi; he just sat down at the board, grabbed a piece of blank paper and started drawing, basically writing them as he drew them, with no script breakdowns or notes. If someone took over the writing on Kamandi, it wasn’t as if they were destroying Jack’s magnum opus. Sherman says Kirby usually had to go back and see what he had written in the last panel of the previous issue to remember what the next issue was going to be about, so getting the same amount of money without having the responsibility of being editor was probably okay with Kirby. Also, as surprising as it seems for a guy raised in the Lower East Side of New York, Jack wasn’t one for confrontation, according to Sherman. As long as he was working and could do basically what he liked, he was

happy, and all the machinations that DC threw at him didn’t really bother him that much. Still, it was enough to make him not renew his DC contract, so perhaps Kirby was very good at not letting his frustrations show. (Steve remembers Jack’s wife Roz complaining more than Jack—she thought that DC didn’t know what they were doing.) Throughout the DC line, there was a lot of upheaval at the time. Many books weren’t selling very well, prices were changing, and distribution was haywire. Steve Sherman got the sense that DC hadn’t made any extra effort to get Kirby to stay: “They were paying him top dollar at the time and I don’t think that they were happy with the results. So I think that they were just as happy to see him go.” Sherman is certain they didn’t offer him more money to stay, and once Jack had made up his mind to return to Marvel, he doesn’t think that DC could’ve changed his mind anyway. Like Kamandi, OMAC ended its run with a Joe Kubert cover, the only one of the series. But one of the most intriguing elements of OMAC #8 isn’t the story itself, but the letter column. In it, Steve Sherman mentions that it’s the final issue, but also states

“Just before Jack decided to leave, we began to plan a revival of the New Gods, and those plans will still be going ahead. Watch for New Gods #12 at your local newsstand sometime this Winter.” So before Jack announced his departure from DC, management must’ve decided the Fourth World deserved another chance, then chose to continue work on it in spite of Jack’s leaving. That Winter, the final Kirby issue of Scenes from Kamandi #50. It’s official; OMAC was Kamandi’s grandfather. Kamandi (#40) appeared with a cover date of April 1976, and the same month, First Issue Special #13 was released with an updated, non-Kirby version of the New Gods, including a new costume for Orion. Sales must’ve been good, because over a year later, New Gods #12 appeared in July 1977, starting a several issue revival. But by then, Jack was long gone.

and drawn OMAC back-up series linked to Kamandi’s past, and editor/writer Jack C. Harris was embarking on a multi-issue arc that would tie once again to Kirby. Then came a real-life Great Disaster: The “DC Implosion.” In June 1978, DC Comics cancelled 31 titles as a result of a too-rapid expansion in 1977. In making the decision of which books to cut, DC started at the bottom with the lowest sellers, and worked their way up. Kamandi was the last of the books to be cancelled, just missing the cut-off, so it was the “best seller” of the lower-selling books at DC of the period. Material from the cancelled “Implosion” books was culled into a low print run (only 35 xeroxed copies), two-volume set called Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. Two complete Kamandi stories (for issue #60 and #61) and one OMAC back-up are included, and offer insight into where the book would’ve headed, had it avoided the chopping block. At the time of the book’s cancellation, Kamandi was trapped in a Time Vortex that had already brought him in contact with Karate Kid from the 30th Century’s Legion of Super-Heroes. Writer Jack C. Harris revealed to TJKC that the Vortex was part of a pre-history for Kamandi he was working on, where multiple timelines and futures would converge. His theory was that an errant Boom Tube from Apokolips had short-circuited on Earth and caused the Great Disaster, and

Earth A.K. (After Kirby) After Jack’s departure, Kamandi continued on a monthly basis. When Chic Stone didn’t work out, DC turned to another frequent Kirby collaborator, Dick Ayers, for the penciling, but ended up with Alfredo Alcala (and later, Danny Bulanadi) inking Ayers in a style about as far from Kirby as imaginable. (Ironically, Alcala would eventually ink Kirby on the Destroyer Duck series, and at Ruby-Spears Animation in the 1980s.) When issue #50 rolled around, readers found a story where Kamandi was devolving Splash page from Kamandi #60 (printed into OMAC, who in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade). turned out to be Kamandi’s grandfather (a plot thread hinted at in letter columns during Kirby’s run on the book), courtesy of scripter Denny O’Neil. Again, the effort to be true to Kirby’s vision of the series was there, right up until the last published issue, #59. That last issue also contained the first installment of a new Jim Starlin-written 74

Kamandi meets Sandman, from Kamandi #61 (printed in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade). This story would’ve served as a framing sequence to facilitate the publication of Jack’s unused Sandman #7 story.

he would have eventually tied Kamandi to the New Gods and other Kirby creations. The stories planned for issue #60 and #61 continued the Vortex plot, bringing Kamandi in contact with Kirby’s Sandman (the 1970s version). Sandman’s assistants Brute and Glob mistake Kamandi for their young friend Jeb (who it turns out is Kamandi in another reality), and bring him to the Dream Dome to meet Sandman, in a story planned by editor Al Milgrom as a framing sequence to get Kirby’s final, unpublished issue of the 1970s Sandman comic (#7) into print. The entire Kirby Sandman story is included in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade as part of Kamandi #61, and was finally published in Best of DC Digest #22.

(In future issues, Jack C. Harris would have followed Kirby’s earlier maps of Earth A.D., and one of the next planned stories would’ve had Kamandi travel to the land of “The Screamers.” Since Jack hadn’t divulged what Screamers were, Harris was going to make them elephants that had evolved mentally, but not physically. Since they didn’t have human dexterity to go with their brains, it drove them mad, and that’s why they screamed.) Kamandi went on to guest-star with Batman in The Brave & The Bold #157 (in a story that tied-up the Vortex plot threads), and with Superman in a Mark Evanier-scripted issue of DC Comics Presents #64. OMAC continued his back-up status in Warlord for a while. Sometime after Kamandi was cancelled, Jack C. Harris and Dick Ayers made a proposal to DC to do a new series called Kamandi, The Lost Boy From Earth, where he’d be lost in the Vortex, traveling to different realities and picking up a variety of allies along the way. Witchboy from the Demon would’ve played a part, and possibly other Kirby characters. Ayers drew a single

presentation page written by Harris, but it was rejected in favor of the later Crisis On Infinite Earths concept, wherein DC history was rewritten to turn Kamandi into Tommy Tomorrow, thereby nullifying both OMAC’s and Kamandi’s backstory. But don’t count Kamandi out just yet. With the recent slate of Kirby reprint books from DC, it would seem only a matter of time before Kamandi volumes are in the works. And as a new generation of readers discovers the fun and adventure of the pugnacious Last Boy On Earth, the character may yet prove to be as resilient as he was when he encountered all those amazing animal menaces conceived in the mind of Jack Kirby. ★ (Special thanks to Paul Levitz, Gerry Conway, Jack C. Harris, and Steve Sherman for sharing information for this article.)

(above) Jack C. Harris and Dick Ayers’ presentation for Kamandi, The Lost Boy From Earth.

(left) The last word on OMAC might just be this copy of OMAC #9, lovingly produced in 2002 by Kirby fans Dek Baker and David Morris of the UK. For more info, email Dek at: dek-baker@cherokeecomics.freeserve.co.uk OMAC, Sandman, Pyra, Dr. Canus, Brute, Glob, Flower, Ben Boxer, Dr. Skuba, Kamandi, Klarion and Teekl are TM & ©2004 DC Comics. Ms. M'Eyes, the Shadow King and Thunk are TM & ©2004 Jack C. Harris and Dick Ayers.

OMAC’s new look by Jim Starlin, from Kamandi #60. 75

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Comments

All letters will be considered for publication unless they were scrawled by an anthropomorphic ape. Those guys have the worst handwriting...

(The current disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow has gotten great mileage out of an image of the Statue of Liberty submerged under water, similar to the cover of Kamandi #1. Of course, Planet of the Apes used the image before Jack, but it’s interesting to see it being used now in light of this issue [see below]. Now, on to letters on TJKC #39:) What a SUPERB cover!!! Clearly, we could have used Mike Allred back when Jack was still around. THE INHUMANS—I dunno. They seem more like THE MUNSTERS than THE ADDAMS FAMILY to me... • Black Bolt = Herman • Medusa = Lily • Gorgon = Grandpa • Karnak = Eddy • Crystal = Marilyn ...and of course, as you kept pointing out, Triton keeps being forgotten, like he doesn’t belong somehow. Kinda like Flippa-Dippa. So how come nobody mentioned the MEDUSA solo story in MARVEL SUPERHEROES? That was done by Archie Goodwin, Gene Colan & Vince Colletta, and featured the Frightful Four as villains (though without her, they really should have come up with a new name a long time ago). Henry r. Kujawa, Camden, NJ With ’60s Kirby creations turning into 21st century box office gold for Marvel, TJKC #39 was bound to represent somebody’s Fan Favorites: The feature article content this issue is nearly exclusively The Marvel Years. Thankfully Chris Beneke did a superb job of picking the Gallery pages. His selections represent many of my favorites: KAMANDI, OMAC, OFF and the Fourth World. The Favorite Covers feature was a tremendous exercise! I notice yours, John (KAMANDI #12), is up for auction in April at Heritage. Some of my own recently-discovered favorites are from BLACK MAGIC in the early ’50s. Thanks to Mark Alexander for his exposé of the unrealized potential of the Inhumans. I’d just like to take issue with a couple of his statements. First, Mark mentions “Kirby’s lack of finesse as a dialogist...”. My immediate impulse is to point to instances of Kirby’s magnificent (and solo) Fourth World dialogue (see TJKC #35 for some prime examples), but Mark later contradicts himself by saying “Black Bolt’s muteness... mercifully... kept

Lee’s proclivity for over-the-top melodrama at economic levels.” I’ll take Kirby’s “lack of finesse” any day. Second: “Predictably, character-driven dialogue and story nuance lost out to the artist’s forté—rapid-fire action.” Sorry Mark, this little bit of popular mythology was eloquently and thoroughly debunked by one Stan Taylor, in his final “Simply the Best!” column (JK QUARTERLY #12). Jack’s subsequent solo work proves that he had perfected the terrific pacing (i.e. other than nonstop action) developed in his collaborations with Simon and Lee. Mark goes on to make a statement with which I wholeheartedly agree, and which I’d suggest even cancels out (or at least explains) his earlier criticisms: “The artist’s escalating apathy toward this assignment made one thing clear: Jack Kirby was no longer interested in creating Marvel Comics, with or without Stan Lee.” Marvel’s loss was our gain, as Jack came to the (correct) conclusion that his ascent to the pinnacle of comics was better done under his own control. Rex Ferrell’s Silver Surfer GN assessment prompted me to pull out my copy, largely untouched since the first reading, and try again. Alas, the only way I can read it all the way through is by following the art and ignoring the words. What an ideal candidate for the Graphite Edition treatment: the pencils shown are exquisite, and uncluttered by contradictory dialogue. I’d like to thank Adrian Day for his (in my mind unnecessary) apology. His carefullyworded letter points out the one thing about Stan Lee’s “credit sharing” that rubs me the wrong way: Stan’s attitude that it’s only because he’s such a magnanimous guy that sharing credit is even necessary. Mike Hill, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA I read your sidebar on FF ANNUAL #5 and would like to respectfully disagree with you on a few points. While it is possible that those Inhuman pin-ups were drawn earlier, I don’t think they were concept drawings for a number of reasons. At the time the Inhumans first appeared, I doubt Jack had the time to work on concept drawings for the characters, It appears that Jack’s ideas were flying out of his imagination at a rapid rate, and he just put down what was in his head. Also, the costumes depicted in the pin-ups are different from what appeared in the Inhumans first appearances, even Black Bolt’s design on

his chest had less zig-zag lines, and Crystal was without a costume. As far as the inking goes, I’ve got a pretty good eye for inking styles, and I strongly believe that all the pin-ups were inked by Giacoia. The only two that look slightly like Sinnott are Black Bolt and Gorgon, but that may be due to Giacoia trying to maintain the Sinnott look. One sign is the bricks in the background of the Gorgon pin-up—noticeably devoid of the trademark Sinnott “dots” (hey, you can always ask Joe!) And IF Joe did ink any of these drawings, they may have been sent the same time as the double-page pin-up (which Joe did ink). The only pin-up that appears to be lettered by anyone other than Artie Simek is the Maximus pin-up, which appears to be the work of Sam Rosen (Artie almost always makes the first letter bold—don’t ask me how I can tell the differences in lettering, but if I look closely I can tell!). Maximus may well have been drawn later (could this have been drawn after the original art page size changed and the others were done before the changeover)? As far as the Silver Surfer story, I can’t easily discount your theory. It certainly is possible that this was intended as the beginning of a series, although the “continued after next page,” could just have been a mistake. The “FINI” on the last page was lettered by someone other than Artie Simek, although Stan made many last minute changes and perhaps there was no “The End” in the final panel and Stan wanted it clear the story was over. The story WAS 12 pages though, so who knows? Initially I didn’t care for the large size, thinking it would take away from the written content, but if you can keep a balance between strong, meaty articles and great examples of Kirby’s penciled pages (the more by inkers that didn’t follow Kirby so strictly, like Royer and Berry, the more interesting to compare to the printed versions, IMO) as you have done, especially in this issue, then it’s a worthwhile balance. Nick Caputo, Glendale, Ny In “Covering It All,” Jerry Boyd refers to the cover of TOS #71 as being the work of Kirby and Dick Ayers. Surely Wally Wood inked that one? I see no evidence of Ayers in that (beautiful) piece at all, while Wood’s “polish” is plain to see. (To me, anyway). Further on, Mark Alexander lists some of the artists who contributed to the Hulk’s series, including “Scott Edward.” I’ve always believed that “Edward” was a pseudonym for Gil Kane, right from the time I first saw that story. Or am I seeing things? Dale Laine (via the Internet) Another excellent issue. The cover makes me wish that Allred had a chance to ink Kirby on a regular book. The choices for favorite cover were all laudatory. My own would have been JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #11, another “blurbless” cover. Or maybe... The extra large Gallery was terrific. What a pleasure to see these original pencils. The absence of guidelines, sketchlines, and erasures is truly astounding. It’s somewhat understandable on the human characters, as Kirby could probably do them in his sleep. But on a panorama such as the Canadian wilderness scene from KAMANDI, with so many

textures, and separate flora, and fauna to juxtapose, it’s staggering. Pity the poor inker!! Excellent overview of both the Hulk and the Inhumans. With the exception of one minor detail (which I’ll get to) these were wonderfully researched, and expertly illustrated. Loved the 2002 tribute panel transcription. The addition of Paul Levitz added a whole different flavor to the usual lovefest. On page 62, you have the pencils from a CAPTAIN AMERICA story. I think it’s a great example of just how good, and bad a writer Kirby could be, in the same panel! The introduction is poetic, dramatic, and philosophical in a burst of grand eloquence. Then the dialogue for Cap is silly, trite, and in my opinion, out of character. But you gotta love it. The Silver Surfer article was ok, but much like the SS GRAPHIC NOVEL, I found it lacking. I wanted... more... different, perhaps. I tire a little of the quasi-religious overtones that are always added in when the Surfer is discussed. It’s not Rex’s fault, I think I was just hoping for a different take on the character. Perhaps it’s because the Surfer was always my favorite Kirby kreation, and never warmed to Lee’s holier-than-thou pontifications in the Surfer’s solo book. The Joe Sinnott redo on page #71 was fantastic. OK, now for my one little point of contention: On page 17, there is a sidebar to the Hulk overview concerning the debate on creation credits. It’s all well and good until the author gets to the Martin Goodman connection. He wrote: “In the 1990’s, Kirby-biographers Catherine Hohlfeld and Ray Wyman Jr. reported that not long after the introduction of the FANTASTIC FOUR, Marvel’s publisher Martin Goodman, noticed that sales of the plastic Frankenstein model (manufactured by Aurora Hobby Products) were especially brisk. Goodman, who was always looking for the next big trend, told Stan to come up with a character who resembled the monster, but not so as to prompt litigation. So apparently the process boiled down to this: 1) Start with a mandate from Goodman. 2) Pass it on to Lee. 3) Give it to Kirby, let him run with it, and hope to strike gold!” The problem with this scenario is that the HULK hit the newsstands in March of 1962, which meant that the story and art were started in, probably, Dec. 1961. The Aurora Frankie model was not offered for sale until the middle of 1962, so there’s no way that Goodman based the Hulk on the sales of the model. It appears that this is just another bit of Marvel mythology that sounds good, but fails under research. Thanks to Rich Elson, who tracked down the Aurora data. This doesn’t mean that the process (step 1-3) wasn’t as the author stated, but I doubt it. I don’t think Goodman ever got involved in the creative end. I am certain that he never got involved in the design portion of the creations. If you want to see where the Frankenstein fixation came from, it’s just a matter of looking at who used this template prior to the creation of the Hulk. COrrECTIONS ON TJKC #39: We inadvertently omitted Robert Knuist’s credit from Jerry Boyd’s article; our apologies to Robert for the oversight.

In a story titled “The Changeling” from BLACK MAGIC #24 (1953), we see Jack Kirby using a rendition of the Frankenstein monster in a story about transformation. Note also the two bold faced words in the cover dialogue (“Thing” and “Inhuman”). And not long before the Hulk appeared, Kirby did another transformation story in one of the Atlas monster in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #79, just a month before the Hulk story, Kirby illustrated another Jeckyl/Hyde tale, “Midnight Monster.” This one using a serum to activate the personality change into a monster. Note the Hulklike transformation, even down to a gray coloring scheme. So while it’s certainly debatable as to who came up with the concept for the Hulk, I think who came up with the graphic template is not debatable. Stan Taylor, Montverde, FL First, the CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION. Congratulations on this extraordinary piece of work! This very title restarted my interest in Kirby back in the ’80s. At that time, I was fed up with the Marvel Universe. CAPTAIN VICTORY made me realize I wasn’t a Marvel fan but a Kirby fan. The fact that this was your first book with a complete story on Kirby pencils is something special to me. Your edition is perfect, giving the necessary information, and the film synopsis is a very good addition to it. I was afraid Kirby’s handwriting could read badly considering the photostats’ quality, but fortunately I was wrong! I sincerely hope you’ll be successful with it; both for the preservation of the Kirby archives and the coming of new books on the same model (DINGBATS and the other unpublished DC works would do great!). TJKC #39 was excellent! #39’s cover was one of your best yet, with its perfect combination of Pop Art and the arty format of your magazine. Allred’s European style (à la Yves Challand) and the wonderful colors really give something unique to this particular Kirby pencil (much more than that of #28). Very classy! Evanier is always fascinating. It’s a real pleasure to read him in this mag! By the way, an interview with him on Kirby is currently available in France, on a DVD entitled THE ADVENTURE OF SUPER-HEROES, FROM SUPERMAN TO SPIDERMAN. The film is a must, as well as the bonuses (with John Buscema, John Romita Sr., Stan Lee, Neal Adams...), and it has an English version. The articles on Hulk and the Inhumans were great, especially considering the focus on the Kirby runs only. The Marvel Universe’s exponential expansion and its intricate (and sacrosanct to some people) continuity make the reading of a complete series no longer fun nowadays, but instead really hard work with all the crossovers and references. As far as I’m concerned, the HULK film had the same problem. Banner’s father (from the comics’ continuity) and all the correlated events in the film’s script were a real disappointment to the Hulk fan I am. It gives Banner two fathers, with Betty’s sour-tempered General Ross (a perfect specimen of castrating

father). The result is redundant, heavy, and not fun at all. Banner is no longer the adolescent he used to be in Kirby and Lee’s version, having to fight the father to have the girl and become a man himself. He’s no longer afraid of his dark side (his desire for Betty) and of losing his innocence (his virginity). He’s now just a poor soul enjoying his opportunity to show his anger (against his father’s abuse) when becoming the Hulk. No longer fun, but sordid! The Kirby Obscura column is very good, giving the reader the urge to search the books on eBay! Would it be possible to have more detailed analysis for the stories referred to? I was very pleased to know about your meeting with the Kirbys. That sort of real-life article is really appreciated. In that case, considering the fantastic work you do with TJKC, it gives the feeling there is justice in this world after all! About your Art section: I’d really like to see pages of DINGBATS, MOB #2, SOUL LOVE, and TRUE DIVORCE CASES. Jean Depelley, FrANCE (The Collected Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. Four contains a gallery of over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including pages from ALL of the books you mention. It’s now on sale, and reprints TJKC #16-19 as well, for those of you who missed them initially. And if you haven’t gotten a copy of the Captain Victory: Graphite Edition, we still have a few left.) I like this book. (Have I said so before?) Great pencils. Interesting reading. And I continue to love the big size! And not only will this year be your 10th Anniversary but this year will bring TJKC #40—the 10th giant issue. Nice. Mark Alexander has outdone himself on his two articles. A couple of comments on the Inhumans piece. 1) I think Mark is right when he rejects the idea of the “Inhumans Origins” series originally being part of a new book rather than the backups they were. Story-wise, they don’t make it. And I think the presence of “indicia” areas on the splash pages is a red herring that can easily be dismissed. Look at Jack’s Captain America stories from TALES OF SUSPENSE. Never was this strip the lead feature in TOS until the last few issues, yet time and again, Jack leaves room for indicia on the splash page. Most telling of all—the final “Tales of Asgard” chapter (“The End”) in THOR #145 also has space left for indicia. Why? I reckon Jack just got into the habit of leaving that space on the first page of every story he did. 2) Additional “proof” that the splash for the first Inhumans chapter in THOR #146 was a paste-up is the figure of Triton. It comes from that “infamous” FF ANNUAL #5 panel which (gasp) has Crystal deleted from it. (I still think it’s unfair to say Stan “deleted” her from that issue. Far more likely is that Jack simply forgot to include her for the remainder of the tale, so Stan removed her from those first few panels.) 3) When we remember that the dialogue that mentions Black Bolt being Crystal’s “Uncle” was written by the same guy who scripted so quickly he had the Silver Surfer say “That which is reaped must one day be sown” and had Cap say “Only one of us is gonna walk out of here under his own steam.....and it won’t be ME!!”, I think we can easily relegate that “Uncle” bit to the same recycle bin. Although, if we want to be pedantic about trying to validate all this stuff (as a lot of us used to do with our beloved Marvel history), it could easily be said that such taboos may not apply to the Inhumans. Every person on Earth today has glitches in their genes, but if two siblings produce a child, the chance of deformities resulting are greater because the genetic “glitches” are so similar in each and can be compounded rather than “smoothed out.” The Inhumans however, are what they are because of their advanced understanding of and control

over Genetics. Surely it is reasonable to presume that long ago, they would have overcome such problems. Besides, in a population the size of Attilan’s, it would probably be impossible not to marry someone extremely closely related. 4) More minor stuff, but to me it is no “surprise” that Jack remembered Triton suddenly in FF ANNUAL #5. I really think that the ANNUAL was drawn directly after FF #64. Why? As well as the Triton situation (present in #64, arriving with the FF to join the Inhumans in the ANNUAL, then obviously departed from the FF in #65), we see that Jack took a five-month (50-page) break from doing Cap just before this time. What for? Doing this ANNUAL seems the logical reason. All this needs is for Jack to be a couple of months ahead in his schedule to make the timing very close. Maybe this too is why Jack had Reed and Sue have a special dinner together in #65— although since the ANNUAL hadn’t been released yet, Stan didn’t script it that way. Then in #66 and 67, Jack has Sue left behind from the action, but again, it couldn’t be scripted that way because the big announcement didn’t come until the following month. Just a thought. I agree totally with Mark Schultz. FANTASTIC FOUR #62 is THE cover!!!! And just think—it was one of the few that Sinnott didn’t ink. Instead, Frank Giacoia did it. On the subject of covers, I really like that brief period where Jack seemed to like having his characters stride across the cover: SUSPENSE #84, then #86. THOR #132, #137. Wow!! I love seeing pencils like the MACHINE MAN page on page 33—where the bottom left panel is incomplete. These really shows Jack’s basic drawing. Hey—how come the rejected Herb Trimpe HULK cover (page 61) is numbered #119? This cover is from the Ka-Zar/Umbu the Unliving issues, which were #109 and #110. What gives? Shane Foley, Queensland, AUSTrALIA NEXT ISSUE: We look at Jack’s fondlyremembered (and occasionally maligned) 1970s MARVEL WORK! First, there’s a Kirby BLACK PANTHER cover inked by DICK GIORDANO, and a DEVIL DINOSAUR cover inked by MARK “Cadillacs & Dinosaurs” SCHULTZ! MARK EVANIER talks about Kirby at Marvel in the ’70s, plus we’ll examine the deal Jack got to lure him away from DC Comics in 1975! There’s an interview with RALPH MACCHIO about Jack’s tenure there, plus one with DICK GIORDANO about Kirby and comics, and coverage of the King’s work from Captain America to Eternals to Machine Man! Also: The 2004 Kirby Tribute Panel, direct from this summer’s Comicon International: San Diego, tentatively featuring DAVE GIBBONS, ALEX ROSS, and other Kirby collaborators and admirers to be announced! Plus there’s our regular columnists, and a colossal KIRBY ART GALLERY, showing his uninked pencil art at whopping TABLOID SIZE! It ships in October, and the submission deadline is 8/10/04.

Classifieds (10¢/word, $1 minimum) KIRBY SKETCHES WANTED of any Marvel characters. Sketches, convention drawings, anything! Contact: Aaron Sultan, 919-954-7111 or email: spiderboop@aol.com AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Original Art Wanted! Any page, any issue! Romita, Ross Andru, Frenz, Ditko, Mooney, etc. Contact: Aaron Sultan, 919-954-7111 or e-mail: spiderboop@aol.com ORIGINAL ART Marvel/DC Wanted! 1960s-80s, Spider-Man, FF, Green Lantern, Iron Man, etc. Contact: Aaron Sultan, 919-954-7111 or e-mail: spiderboop@aol.com

40 Credits:

John Morrow, Editor Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington, Production Assistant and Proofreader TwoMorrows, Design/Layout Rand Hoppe, Webmaster Tom Ziuko, Colorist SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Bill Alger • Dick Ayers Jerry Boyd • Sal Buscema Michael Chabon • Gerry Conway Jean Depelley • Michael Dunne Mark Evanier • Shane Foley Barry Forshaw • Glen Gold Stan Goldberg • David Hamilton Jack C. Harris • Charles Hatfield Heritage Comics Dash Hobbeheydar Richard Howell • Jarret Keene Jim Kingman • Sean Kleefeld Richard Kyle • Erik Larsen Stan Lee • Paul Levitz Larry Lieber • Adam McGovern Daniel Murillo • Chris Ng Eric Nolen-Weathington Mark Pacella • Wendy Pini Reedman • Mike Royer Steve Rude • P. Craig Russell David Schwartz • Steve Sherman Greg Theakston • Mike Thibodeaux Tom Ziuko • Michael Zuccaro 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 notfor-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 the issue it appears in. Here’s a tentative list of upcoming themes, but we treat these themes very loosely, so anything you write may fit somewhere. So get writing, and send us copies of your Kirby art! GOT A THEME IDEA? PLEASE WRITE US! THE HIP ISSUE! Jimmy Olsen, Kung-Fu Fighter, Dingbats, and other ’70s funk! MYTHS & LEGENDS! Jack’s use of legendary figures in comics, including the Demon! KIRBY TIME MACHINE! Justice Inc., WWII, Losers, In The Days of the Mob, Simon & Kirby, and some prehistoric strips! FOURTH WORLD REPRISED! A split look at New Gods and Forever People in depth! KIRBY’S SUPER TEAMS! We’ll explore Jack’s group mentality, from kid gangs and the Challengers to the big guns like the FF, X-Men, Avengers, Inhumans, even Super Powers! SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Submit artwork as: 1) Color or B&W photocopies. 2) 300ppi TIFF or JPEG scans 3) Originals (insured). Submit articles as: 1) E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com 2) ASCII or RTF text files. 3) Typed or laser printed pages. We’ll pay return postage and insurance for originals—please write or call first. Please include background information whenever possible.

Parting Shot

If Jack had never drawn this cover for Kamandi #12, it’s doubtful you’d be reading TJKC today. This is the one that introduced me to Kirby, and burned an indelible image on my brain. To me, it epitomizes his in-your-face, powerful, dramatic style as well as anything he ever did. Kamandi TM & ©2004 DC Comics

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The KIRBY COLLECTOR (edited by JOHN MORROW) 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.

Edited by MICHAEL EURY (former DC and Dark Horse editor/writer and author of books on CAPTAIN ACTION and DICK GIORDANO), BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments.

BACK ISSUES

Complete your JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR collection with our COLLECTED VOLUMES and BACK ISSUES!

T H E U LT I M AT E C O M I C S E X P E R I E N C E !

#1: DC VS. MARVEL! PÉREZ COVER!

G! HIPPIN NOW S

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. ONE: (240 pgs.) Reprints TJKC #1-9, plus over 30 pieces of never before published Kirby art! $29 US

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. TWO: (160 pgs.) Reprints TJKC #10-12, plus over 30 pieces of never before published Kirby art! $22 US

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. THREE: (176 pgs.) Reprints TJKC #13-15, plus over 30 pieces of never before published Kirby art! $24 US

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. FOUR: (240 pgs.) Reprints TJKC #16-19, plus over 30 pieces of never before published Kirby art! $29 US

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION (52 pgs.) Kirby’s 1975 Graphic Novel in original pencil form. Unseen art, screenplay, more! Proceeds go to preserving the 5000-page Kirby Archives! $8 US

• PRO 2 PRO INTERVIEW: A dialogue between GEORGE PÉREZ and MARV WOLFMAN (moderated by ANDY MANGELS), accompanied by rare Pérez artwork! • GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The original JLA/AVENGERS crossover, with unseen PÉREZ art! • ROUGH STUFF: JACK KIRBY’S ’70s and ’80s DC and Marvel PENCILED artwork, direct from his files! • BEYOND CAPES: An evaluation of DC’s and Marvel’s TARZAN series with artwork by JOE KUBERT and JOHN BUSCEMA, and interviews with KUBERT, CARMINE INFANTINO, and ROY THOMAS! • OFF MY CHEST: Our guest editorial this issue is by former DC editorial director CARMINE INFANTINO, recalling DC’s 1970s’ battle plan to challenge Marvel’s market dominance!

#2: TOTALLY ’80S! HUGHES COVER! • PRO 2 PRO INTERVIEWS: ADAM HUGHES and MIKE BARR, plus MATT WAGNER and DIANA SCHUTZ, with Hughes & Wagner art! • GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: STEVE RUDE’s Space Ghost vs. Herculoids, plus ARTHUR ADAMS art! • BEYOND CAPES: BRUCE JONES’ Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds series, with art by DAVE STEVENS! • OFF MY CHEST: MIKE BARR on the DC Implosion! Art by STEVE DITKO, JIM APARO, & JOE KUBERT! • ROUGH STUFF: Pencil art by ADAM HUGHES!

#3: LAUGHING MATTERS! BOLLAND COVER! THE JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST: (100-Pages) Lists all his published comics in detail, plus portfolios, unpublished work; it even cross-references reprints! A must-have for eBay shoppers! $7 US

TJKC #20: (68 pgs.) KIRBY’S WOMEN! Interviews with KIRBY, DAVE STEVENS, & LISA KIRBY, unused 10-page story, romance comics, Jack’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY screenplay, more! $8 US

TJKC #21: (68 pgs.) KIRBY, GIL KANE, & BRUCE TIMM intvs., FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE (LEE dialogue vs. KIRBY notes), SILVER STAR screenplay, TOPPS COMICS, unpublished art, more! $8 US

TJKC #22: (68 pgs.) VILLAINS! KIRBY, STEVE RUDE, & MIKE MIGNOLA interviews, FF #49 pencils, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, KOBRA, ATLAS MONSTERS! Kirby/ Stevens cover. $8 US

TJKC #23: (68 pgs.) Interviews with KIRBY, DENNY O’NEIL & TRACY KIRBY, more FF #49 pencils, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, unused 10-page SOUL LOVE story, more! $8 US

TJKC #24: (68 pgs.) BATTLES! KIRBY’S original art fight, JIM SHOOTER interview, NEW GODS #6 (“Glory Boat”) pencils, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, more! Kirby/ Mignola cover. $8 US

TJKC #25: (100 pgs.) SIMON & KIRBY! KIRBY, SIMON, & JOHN SEVERIN interviews, CAPTAIN AMERICA pencils, unused BOY EXPLORERS story, history of MAINLINE COMICS, more! $8 US

• BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: The Joker’s history, with DENNY O’NEIL, NEAL ADAMS, STEVE ENGLEHART, MARSHALL ROGERS, JIM STARLIN, & BRIAN BOLLAND! • PRO 2 PRO INTERVIEW: KEITH GIFFEN, J.M. DeMATTEIS, and KEVIN MAGUIRE on their JUSTICE LEAGUE series, with art by Maguire and Giffen! • GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The story behind two neverseen PLASTIC MAN movies, plus Arnold Schwarzenegger as SGT. ROCK! • ROUGH STUFF: Pencil artwork and rare sketches by SERGIO ARAGONÉS, MIKE MANLEY, RAMONA FRADON, SCOTT SHAW!, JACK KIRBY and others—plus a look at KYLE BAKER’s new PLASTIC MAN series! • OFF MY CHEST: MARK EVANIER tells you why writing “funny” books is harder than it looks!

#4: MARVEL MILESTONES! BYRNE COVER!

TJKC #26: (72 pgs.) GODS! COLOR NEW GODS concept drawings, KIRBY & WALTER SIMONSON interviews, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, BIBLE INFLUENCES, THOR, MR. MIRACLE, more! $8 US

TJKC #27: (72 pages) KIRBY INFLUENCE Part One! KIRBY and ALEX ROSS interviews, KIRBY FAMILY Roundtable, all-star lineup of pros discuss Kirby’s influence on them! Kirby / Timm cover. $8 US

TJKC #29: (68 pgs.) ’70s MARVEL! Interviews with KIRBY, KEITH GIFFEN & RICH BUCKLER, ’70s COVER GALLERY in pencil, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, & more! Kirby/Janson cover. $8 US

TJKC #30: (68 pgs.) ’80s WORK! Interviews with ALAN MOORE & Kirby Estate’s ROBERT KATZ, HUNGER DOGS, SUPER POWERS, SILVER STAR, ANIMATION work, more! $8 US

TJKC #31: (84 pgs.) TABLOID FORMAT! Wraparound KIRBY/ ADAMS cover, KURT BUSIEK & LADRONN interviews, new MARK EVANIER column, favorite 2-PAGE SPREADS, 2001 Treasury, more! $13 US

TJKC #32: (84 pgs.) TABLOID! KIRBY interview, new MARK EVANIER column, plus Kirby’s Least Known Work: DAYS OF THE MOB #2, THE HORDE, BLACK HOLE, SOUL LOVE, PRISONER, more! $13 US

TJKC #33: (84 pgs.) TABLOID ALL-FANTASTIC FOUR issue! MARK EVANIER column, miniinterviews with everyone who worked on FF after Kirby, STAN LEE interview, 40 pgs. of FF PENCILS, more! $13 US

• PRO2PRO INTERVIEWS: JOHN BYRNE and CHRIS CLAREMONT on WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN, and WALTER SIMONSON and JOE CASEY on the 20th anniversary of Walter’s run on THOR! • GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Wolverine’s creator LEN WEIN on the TEEN WOLVERINE you never saw! Plus, unseen Wolverine art by DAVE COCKRUM! • ROUGH STUFF: Wolverine’s 30th anniversary is celebrated with pencil artwork by JOHN BUSCEMA, JIM LEE, ADAM HUGHES, ROB LIEFELD, MARC SILVESTRI, & others! • PLUS: Special features highlighting the PUNISHER’s 30th birthday and the 20th anniversary of SECRET WARS!

#5: HOLLYWOOD ISSUE! ALEX ROSS COVER! SHIPS IN JULY!

TJKC #34: (84 pgs.) TABLOID! JOE SIMON & CARMINE INFANTINO interviews, MARK EVANIER column, unknown 1950s concepts, CAPTAIN AMERICA pencils, KIRBY/ TOTH cover, more! $13 US

TJKC #35: (84 pgs.) TABLOID! GREAT ESCAPES with MISTER MIRACLE, comparing KIRBY & HOUDINI, Kirby Tribute Panel with EVANIER, EISNER, BUSCEMA, ROMITA, ROYER, & JOHNNY CARSON! $13 US

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

TJKC #37: (84 pgs.) TABLOID HOW TO DRAW THE KIRBY WAY issue! MARK EVANIER column, MIKE ROYER on inking, KIRBY interview, ART GALLERY, analysis of Kirby’s art techniques, more! $13 US

TJKC #38: (84 pgs.) TABLOID KIRBY: STORYTELLER! MARK EVANIER column, JOE SINNOTT on inking, SWIPES, talks with JACK DAVIS, PAUL GULACY, HERNANDEZ BROS., ART GALLERY, more! $13 US

TJKC #39: (84 pgs.) TABLOID FAN FAVORITES! EVANIER column, INHUMANS, HULK, SILVER SURFER, tribute panel with ROMITA, AYERS, LEVITZ, McFARLANE, TRIMPE, ART GALLERY, more! $13 US

TJKC #40: (84 pgs.) TABLOID “WORLD THAT’S COMING!” EVANIER column, KAMANDI, OMAC, tribute panel with CHABON, PINI, GOLDBERG, BUSCEMA, LIEBER, LEE, ART GALLERY, more! $13 US

• WONDER WOMAN: In-depth look at the Wonder Woman TV series, with a new LYNDA CARTER interview, plus a TV Wonder Woman art gallery by GEORGE PÉREZ, DICK GIORDANO, PHIL JIMENEZ, and others! • MARVEL ON TV: A photo-filled look at Marvel’s TV versions of The Incredible Hulk, The Amazing SpiderMan, Captain America, and Dr. Strange, including an all-new interview with TV-Hulk LOU FERRIGNO! • GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The inside scoop on super-hero cartoons you didn’t see, including THE NEW TEEN TITANS, THE FLASH, METAMORPHO, and more! • ROUGH STUFF: Pencil artwork from the one-and-only JERRY ORDWAY! • BEYOND CAPES: An examination of Marvel’s and DC’s STAR TREK series by writer MIKE W. BARR, with art by DAVE COCKRUM, TOM SUTTON, & others! • OFF MY CHEST: JOHN ROMITA SR. on Marvel’s cinematic adaptations!

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