Jack Kirby Collector #41 by TwoMorrows Publishing

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR FORTY-ONE

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

OUT! T SOLD S O M AL PANEL DISCUSSIONS

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS Top creators discuss all aspects of the DESIGN OF COMICS:

DICK GIORDANO

CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality!

• Covers his career as illustrator, inker, and • WILL EISNER • SCOTT HAMPTON editor, peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL • MIKE WIERINGO • WALTER SIMONSON REFLECTIONS on his career milestones! • MIKE MIGNOLA • MARK SCHULTZ • DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI • MIKE CARLIN • Lavishly illustrated with RARE AND NEVER SEEN comics, merchandising, and • DICK GIORDANO • BRIAN STELFREEZE advertising art (includes a color section)! • CHRIS MOELLER • MARK CHIARELLO • Extensive index of his published work! If you’re serious about creating effective, • Comments & tributes by NEAL ADAMS, innovative comics, or just enjoying them DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL from the creator’s perspective, this guide is LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS must-reading! SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO & others! (208-Page Trade Paperback) $26 US • With a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS and Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

STREETWISE

TOP ARTISTS DRAWING STORIES OF THEIR LIVES An unprecedented assembly of talent drawing NEW autobiographical stories: • Barry WINDSOR-SMITH • C.C. BECK • Sergio ARAGONÉS • Walter SIMONSON • 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

CAPTAIN ACTION

CAPTAIN ACTION debuted in the wake of the ’60s Batman TV show, and could become 13 different super-heroes. With over 200 toy photos, this trade paperback chronicles his history (including comic book appearances), with historical anecdotes by the late GIL KANE, JIM SHOOTER, STAN WESTON (co-creator of GI Joe, Captain Action, and Mego’s World’s Greatest Super-Heroes), and others, plus never-seen artwork by GIL KANE, JOE STATON, CARMINE INFANTINO, JERRY ORDWAY, and MURPHY ANDERSON! Includes a color section! Written by MICHAEL EURY! (176-Page Trade Paperback) $20 US

(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

ALL-STAR COMPANION VOL. 1

MURPHY ANDERSON

ROY THOMAS has assembled the most thorough look ever taken at All-Star Comics:

R.C. HARVEY’s lavishly illustrated autobiographical memoir of the man whose style defined the DC look for a generation!!

• Covers by MURPHY ANDERSON! • Issue-by-issue coverage of ALL–STAR COMICS #1–57, the original JLA–JSA teamups, & the ’70s ALL–STAR REVIVAL! • Art from an unpublished 1945 JSA story! • Looks at FOUR “LOST” ALL–STAR issues! • Rare art by BURNLEY, DILLIN, KIRBY, INFANTINO, KANE, KUBERT, ORDWAY, ROSS, WOOD and more!!

• 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

(208-page Trade Paperback) $26 US

REVISED EDITION! NOW SHIPPING!

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

CELEBRATING GREAT COMIC BOOK ARTISTS OF ENGLAND A celebration of the rich history of British Comics Artists and their influence on the US with in-depth interviews and art by:

ACTING WITH A PENCIL EFFECTIVE DRAWING FOR COMICS AND ANIMATION

Make your drawings come alive with this ALL-NEW indispensible guide to creating animation and comic book art. Cartooning and lively figure drawing are explained in clear, easily understood prose and demonstrated by HUNDREDS OF DRAWINGS created especially for this book by two Emmy Award-winning masters of the subject: Mike Manley and Bret Blevins of DRAW! magazine!

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, neverbefore-seen art, and interviews! Featuring:

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!

• DAVE MCKEAN • KEVIN O’NEILL al version • BRUCE TIMM • LOUISE SIMONSON it ig d • BARRY a g in • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • DAVE DORMAN (136-pg. Paperback) $14 US WINDSOR-SMITH view d e EISNER a e u’r• WILL r • ADAM HUGHES • GREG RUCKA & MORE! E yoMOORE S If•• ALAN A and other gents! E L P , n STAN LEE • GENE COLAN blicatio (168-page Trade Paperback) $24 US (204-page Trade Paperback with u pROMITA is r! Trade Paperback) $24 US JOE • JOHN e(160-page th f KUBERT o•• HARVEY b COLOR SECTION) $26 US lish u p e KURTZMAN • DAVE SIM h t SHIPS MARCH ’05 a from • HOWARD is • DAN leDeCARLO CALL OR WRITE FOR OUR NEW h CRUSEandp tCOOPER • DAVE many more! FOR FREE

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THE LEGION 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!

“I HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS GUY!”

THE ORIGINAL SUPERHERO ACTION FIGURE

(176-pg. Paperback) $24 US

THE LIFE & ART OF

TRUE BRIT

MR. MONSTER, HIS BOOKS OF FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE,

HERO GETS GIRL!

THE LIFE & ART OF KURT SCHAFFENBERGER MARK VOGER’s biography of the artist of LOIS LANE & CAPTAIN MARVEL! • Covers KURT’S LIFE AND CAREER from the 1940s to his passing in 2002! • Features NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS & ILLUSTRATIONS from his files! • Includes recollections by ANDERSON, EISNER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, ALEX ROSS, MORT WALKER and others! (128-page Trade Paperback) $19 US

• BRIAN BOLLAND • ALAN DAVIS • DAVE GIBBONS • BRYAN HITCH • DAVID LLOYD

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 CATALOG, OR DOWNLOAD IT NOW AT INTENDED u paid which is NOT bscriber, or yo MATERIAL, su D www.twomorrows.com int TE pr a GH re RI re u’ ce RE. If yo his is COPY ve our sin NG ANYWHE website, you ha e this one. DOWNLOADI arge to download it at our cations lik bli pu ch ing we uc e od rrent, the modest fe s us to keep pr m some other website or to support allow e fro MODERN MASTERS SERIES CONSENT, fre r R fo it OU thanks—your d UT de ITHO downloa Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON 0% DONE W GHTED MATERIAL. If If instead you absolutely 10 s RI wa PY it CO at R th OU OF G IN please know ST ILLEGAL PO : and it was an you should do ink. , here’s what e what you th that’s the case ISSUE, and se G and purchase a L TA GI DI IS IN TH TH D T A r E RIGH and RE ep it, DO TH 1) Go ahead int edition at ou it enough to ke website, or purchase the pr UT! at your local r 2) If you enjoy or ou e) m fre r fro it fo n of OLD O d itio the Digital Ed legal downloa ader.MOST S re to u id yo pa les lar tit gu a re h en ALNOT SHARE website (whic to have you as TER and DO op. We’d love YOUR COMPU . comic book sh OM FR IT TE RE DELE LLY, WHEGRAIN: AGAINST IT ANYTHE ST IAL ILLEGA 3) Otherwise, IENDS OR PO MAD ARTIST OUR MATER r free downloadIT WITH FR NLOADING fo W s ine DO az EP ag m KE r to WALLACEouWOOD N’T u want EGO: ALTER yo te issue of all 4) Finally, DO u to decide if for yoon fer one comple definitive g biographical fficient memoir loadin THE CBA COLLECTION be su down for free. We of , which shThe ep ouofldcomics' ke to gh ou one finest artists, 20 years in en ite ns FAWCETT COMPANION blicatio e.ALTER EGO flip-sides from the ing at our webs our puFormer Reprints the produc the making! associate aterial we out-of-print If you enjoy e mBHOB for thlife THEpuEXTRAORDINARY THE BEST OF FCA COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1-5, yingWood's rchase others. STEWART and career, by patraces ny pa e m es co th r rb plus 30 NEWso PAGES of features & art: WORKS OFt ou with contributions from many artists and , suppor them Presenting the best of the FAWCETT ets, and can ab ck po ep ns de ze th writers who knew Wood personally, makdo th cover by JOE KUBERT! Special color —wi ation wi COLLECTORS OF AMERICA newsletter! ALAN MOORE rpor p” sh•op e giant coing this a remarkable compendium art, om and ofpo ek• All-new wepreviously-unpublished a “m on and e’re not som d rare rally —liteand • New JERRY ORDWAY cover! The reclusiveW British author tells HIS OWN insights critical commentary! From mpany and nightartan y co da all by JACK KIRBY, GIL KANE, JOE ay sm a e aw e g lov vin & early samples to this work. We We’r series of interviews!e crechildhood • Index of ALL FAWCETT COMICS! STORY inse ans. extensive drawings los ators, sla KUBERT, WALLY WOOD, all e forunpubom(many ly on FRANK • Looks inside the FAWCETT OFFICES! endless pages orking freelanc mnearly of inc r, reADAMS, rd-w ountcomics owne ROBBINS, NEAL and others! of haRARE al am • Spotlights STRIPS, SCRIPTS, mini lished), comofic shop ty al • Interviews, features, and rare and previet this is the most stunning display loc all pr a ur sm e e yo ak d th m • STEVE DITKO of on the creation of toPHOTOGRAPHS s, an ARTWORK of the rob us ends,and authartorever ously unpublished artwork by C.C. assembled! s. PEARSON, ase don’t SPIDER-MAN, our editors,Wood y ROYan THOMAS on THE es BILLPle author, most neverdo published , but before! sinEstate, bu t be n’ in y wo at we executor of the Wood contributed BECK, MARC SWAYZE, KURT SCHAFe sta wh er to th n re X-MEN, AVENGERS/KREE-SKRULL ensu • Features comic storiesmabout publiby:catio rare drawings. Do willfiles, so own thisMoore Wood's FENBERGER, MAC RABOY, DAVE BERG, fro GIBBONS, ive froming omeDAVE rece WAR, THE INVADERS, and more! NEIL inc GAIMAN, SAM ion wewhile at ns art collector ROGER HILL provides a pe ALEX TOTH, BOB OKSNER, GEORGE m co of BRIAN d. KIETH,am KEVIN O’NEILL, ount wnloa wealth of obscure, previously unpublished (160-page Trade Paperback) $20 US EVANS, ALEX ROSS, Foreword by MARC e this to do BOLLAND, RICK oductsandlikothers, d at re prVEITCH, de tu Wood drawings and paintings. oa fu SWAYZE, and more! nl w plus an artistic tribute by ALEX ROSS, be do should only and a new cover by DAVE MCKEAN!s public(336-Page ationsTrade (160-page Trade Paperback) $20 US R! Paperback) $44 US w ro or oM STORIES • Includes the RARE TwMOORE VEMBE (208-Page Trade Paperback) $24 US

orrows.com www.twomWALLACE

“Pictopia,” “Lust,” his unseen work on JUDGE DREDD, and more! (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! (NOW SHIPPING!)

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

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WOOD CHECKLIST

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

CRAZY HIP GROOVY GO-GO WAY-OUT MONSTERS #29 & #32

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 EACH US

SPECIAL! GET BOTH ISSUES FOR $12 US POSTPAID

NO SHIPS

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

VOL. 3: BRUCE TIMM

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

VOL. 2: GEORGE PÉREZ

VOL. 4: KEVIN NOWLAN

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

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

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Contents

THE NEW

OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . .2 (Kirby’s Unleashed all over again) UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . .4 (extensive looks at our cover images) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . .10 (Mark Evanier on Jack’s views of penciling and writing for Marvel)

ISSUE #41, FALL 2004

NEW GENESIS . . . . . . . . . .16 (a new Dark Horse comic with Kirby art!) CRAFTINESS . . . . . . . . . . . .19 (a lettering machine named “Royer”) PAPER TRAIL . . . . . . . . . . .20 (a tale of two Kirby contracts) ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 (Jack didn’t follow the equation for success at 1970s Marvel) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . .25 (from Paste-Pot Pete to the Trapster) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . .26 (Barry Forshaw digs up more obscure Kirby gems) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 (covering 1970s Marvel) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . .40 (Adam McGovern on what might have been)

Unused splash page, meant for Fantastic Four #102 (Sept. 1970). The issue was shelved when Jack left Marvel for DC, and later chopped up to make issue #108 (March 1971), but this splash was discarded. Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

ANIMATTERS . . . . . . . . . . .42 (the man behind the 1966 Kirby-inspired (swiped?) Marvel Super-Heroes ’toons) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 (a smattering of the best of Kirby’s ’70s Marvel work) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 (the 2004 Kirby Tribute Panel, with Mark Evanier, Steve Rude, Paul Ryan, Walter Simonson, Mike Royer, and Dave Gibbons) UNEARTHED . . . . . . . . . . . .71 (a most amazing find: 1962 Kirby Hulk pencils!) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . .78 (missives on Kamandi and OMAC) PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . .80 (some nut on a surfboard) Front cover inks: DICK GIORDANO Back cover inks: MARK SCHULTZ Cover colors: TOM ZIUKO Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils from published comics are reproduced courtesy of the Kirby Estate, which has our thanks for their continued support. COPYRIGHTS: 2001 Characters, Angel, Avengers, Beast, Black Goliath, Black Panther, Black Widow, Bucky, Captain America, Champions, Devil Dinosaur, Dr. Doom, Dr. Droom/Druid, Eternals, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Grey Gargoyle, Hellcat, Hercules, Hulk, Hulk, Human Torch, Iceman, Ikaris, Invaders, Invisible Girl, Iron Fist, Iron Man, Ivan the Terrible, Kro, Liberty Legion, Loki, Machine Man, Makarri, Medusa, Modok, Moonboy, Mr. Fantastic, Night Flyer, Nova, Paste-Pot Pete, Red Skull, Rick Jones, Scarlet Witch, Sif, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Squadron Supreme, Stiltman, Sub-Mariner, Ten-For, Thena, Thing, Thor, Tigra, Toro, Trapster, Union Jack, Vision, Warriors Three, Wasp, Watcher, Wizard, Yellowjacket TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Arna, Batman, Big Barda, Darkseid, Demon, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Lightray, Metron, Mr. Miracle, New Gods, Orion, Superman, Watchmen, Wonder Woman TM & ©2004 DC Comics. • Galaxy Green, Kirby Unleashed art, Sky Masters, True Divorce Cases TM & ©2004 Jack Kirby Estate. • Galactic Bounty Hunters TM & ©2004 Jack Kirby Estate and Genesis West. • Glom TM & ©2004 Wallace Wood Estate.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 11, No. 41, Fall 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 (right) Wraparound cover for the remastered Kirby Unleashed portfolio, available shortly after you read this. Actually, calling it a portfolio is sort of misleading, since it’s a tabloid, staple-bound book like TJKC. But it’s chock full of great Kirby art, much in full-color, and only $24 postpaid in the US. (below) Centerspread from Kirby Unleashed; it’s been recolored from the original guides for this new edition. Artwork ©2004 Jack Kirby Estate.

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

egular readers of this magazine (is it still a magazine? fanzine? journal? honkin’-big portfolio?) know that we’ve embarked on the ridiculously time-consuming and fun task of scanning and archiving 5000+ pages of xeroxes Jack Kirby had in his files of his uninked pencil pages from the mid-1960s-on. To recap: They were mostly copied using outdated

Get Unleashed All Over Again! (next page) Cover for the 1972 GODS poster set, which contained the four illos at far right—all of which are reproduced in full-color in our new edition of Kirby Unleashed. Artwork ©2004 Jack Kirby Estate.

“thermal fax” technology (the best available at the time), and the pages are slowly (and some not so slowly) fading out of existence over time. At this writing, we’re about halfway done. I’d hoped we’d be finished by the end of 2004 (and we may still make it), but our Captain Victory Graphite Edition (printing Jack’s original Captain Victory graphic novel in its original, unaltered, and uninked form) was produced to help subsidize the cost of paying someone to knock out all

those scans for us. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell quite as well as we’d hoped (but copies are still available, so do your part and order one!), so we’re still having to do the scanning in-house, paying our production assistant Eric Nolen-Weathington to do it during business hours. One way or the other, we’ll get it done, even if TwoMorrows has to foot the bill for the whole thing. So, there I was at this year’s Comicon International in San Diego, having just finished a rollicking interview with former Kirby assistant Steve Sherman and his brother Gary (which you’ll read in issue #43), and Steve says to me, “Have you ever thought about reprinting Kirby Unleashed?” Longtime Kirby fans remember this hard-to-find portfolio (it’s the basis for the current tabloid format of TJKC) as a remarkable collection of rare and amazing Kirby art published in 1971, which included the first in-depth biography of The King. It was assembled by Steve and Jack’s other assistant at the time, some guy name Evanier. My tattered copy is one of my prized possessions, and this puppy goes for $100 and up on eBay. So I say to Steve, “Sure Steve, I’ve always thought about it, but I’d want it to look as good or better than the first printing, and the main problem is tracking down the original art— particularly the cover image,” an amazing ink & watercolor painting of Kirby warriors that’s surely long ago been sold to who knows who. Steve then floors me. “I’ve still got the original transparency we shot to print the cover from, and if Mark doesn’t

Unless you’ve been in a cave the last six months, you probably know the new, big-budget Fantastic Four movie is currently filming in Canada. It stars (shown at right) Ioan Gruffudd as Mr. Fantastic, Chris Evans as The Human Torch, Jessica Alba as The Invisible Woman, and Michael Chiklis (shown in Ben Grimm form at far right) as The Thing. Kirby fan Courtney Booker was walking through downtown Vancouver recently and happened upon this set of a rundown gas station (actually a facade) being used in the filming. Courtney went back a few days later, and the whole thing was gone, replaced by an empty parking lot! (It was only there for about four days.) But if you look closely, the sign says “Kirby Gasoline” and has a drawing of the Thing above it. Why the Thing is in a gas company’s logo in the movie is anyone's guess. We'll just have to wait and see when the movie debuts July 1, 2005! 2

mind, I’m okay with you reprinting it.” Mark Evanier happened to be signing autographs at the TwoMorrows booth a few feet away, and after a quick “yes” from him, and an even quicker “okay” from Lisa Kirby (check out her interview on the new Galactic Bounty Hunters comic this issue), I was off and running trying to track down the rest of the art from Kirby Unleashed. I’m glad to say we’ve found about 90% of the originals to scan from, and we’re close to tracking down the remaining couple of pencil pieces that are missing. Also, we’re judiciously modifying the original layout to include some nice extra art (thanks, Lisa Kirby!), to make the final product even better than the original.

Oh, did I mention? In addition to doing a reprint of Kirby Unleashed, the new printing will include eight extra full-color pages: Four of them will be Jack’s “Gods” posters (Heimdall, Honir, Balduur, and Sigurd, released separately in 1972), scanned from the originals, plus four other Kirby color masterworks. Steve has written a new foreword explaining how Kirby Unleashed came to be, and Mark has revised and updated the biography from the original printing. It’s a package that I’m terribly proud to be able to bring to Kirby fans, and proceeds from it will go toward finishing the job of scanning and archiving all those pencil xeroxes. There’s a couple of other Kirby-centric announcements on the horizon that’ll completely blow fans away, and will irrevocably change the whole Kirby collecting experience for generations to come, but it’s still too early to reveal them. Look for more info next issue—which, I’m happy to announce, will be delayed until April 2005. Why, you ask in outrage, am I so happy that the next issue will be so long in coming? Simply because my lovely wife Pam (as anyone who saw her at Comicon knows) and I are expecting our second daughter around New Year’s Day! That means the two of us will be mighty sleepy for the first few months of next year, and I don’t think anyone wants to see what this mag looks like when designed by Rip Van Morrow. The good news is, after 41 issues of doing it all myself, I’ve finally decided to face reality, and hand-off the layout chores on this mag to someone else. Starting next issue, I’ll be sticking to compiling and editing each issue as always, but leaving the computer work to our production assistant (and editor/ designer of our Modern Masters series of books) Eric Nolen-Weathington. Since I’ve already got most of the material for the next four or five issues in-house, we’re going to be ramping up to get this Kirby Koncoction out a lot more frequently. You deserve it, Jack’s memory deserves it, and frankly, I deserve a break! Now get outta here and read the rest of this mag, which as I write this, I still haven’t finished the layout for!

Under The Covers

(above) David Russell at home with Jack, circa 1982.

nker extraordinaire Dick Giordano took a turn at inking Kirby—his first time ever—for this issue’s front cover. The pencils were submitted by David Russell, who had this to say about Jack:

I picked up my first Jack Kirby comic book in 1962. Thereafter I was hooked on the creations of this remarkable man, whose visions continue to enrich my life and stimulate my imagination. I met Jack in 1972 at an LA comic convention. By one of those occasional miracles, this lead to a friendship which continued through the years. His work influenced me profoundly; the privilege of knowing the man had yet another immense impact. Jack’s work speaks forcefully to the common, and the not-so-common man—the idealist, the dreamer, and the selfless warrior. His stories and heroes exemplify the noblest human impulses and ambitions. His message is disarmingly sublime: the best of human nature can, and will, overcome the worst. Jack well understood that the human spirit requires constant regeneration, not degradation. Indeed, you can see the stars from the gutter, but you can’t reach them. This message is lost on a more recent crop of storytellers, who tend to wallow in depression and defeatism; and here I might well cite the works of Tim Burton and Chris Carter. After twenty years in the film industry, I can certainly say that many, many directors, writers and designers have been deeply influenced by Jack’s remarkable body of work. In my own case, Jack’s dynamic approach to storytelling was there to guide me on numerous occasions: in creating effects boards for space battle scenes and the final lightsaber battle in Return of the Jedi; in the conceptual designs for Batman; in storyboarding the OK Corral fight for Tombstone, battle scenes of The Thin Red Line, and the madcap dramatics of Moulin Rouge. On many other films and in many ways, Jack’s inspiration and influence is apparent. One other point should be made: Jack, amongst his other talents, was the most accomplished master of the art of composition of the 20th century. How often have I watched filmmakers struggle to compose a dynamic shot! Inspired compositions flowed from Jack’s incisive mind like water. In this most critical area, where almost every artist exhibits weakness, Jack excels. The noted illustrator Leo Pando has perhaps best summed up Jack Kirby: He was more than an artist; he was a force of nature. His work continues to inspire and exalt, and to summon the hero in everyone. David Russell • ozmaproductions@yahoo.com • www.storyboardart.com

(below) Still available from TwoMorrows is Michael Eury’s biography, Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day At A Time. It’s chock full of luscious Giordano art, plus a compelling story of a life spent in all aspects of the comics industry.

(right) We racked our brains to think of a time Dick illo’d some of Kirby’s signature characters. The one we finally came up with was this cover from DC’s First Issue Special #13 (April 1976). New Gods TM & ©2004 DC Comics.

Dick Giordano Covers Kirby Conducted by John Morrow (If you don’t know who Dick Giordano is, you’ve probably not been reading comics from the 1950s till now. He’s a gifted penciler, a superb inker—particularly over Neal Adams, his partner at Continuity Studios in the 1970s—had pivotal terms as editor at Charlton Comics, and as Vice President of DC Comics. This interview was conducted by e-mail in September 2004.)

you think Ditko, he was working for Charlton first and it was natural for him to come back after he had a falling out with Marvel. Money never meant a lot to Steve, anyway. It was the work that interested him. TJKC: Did you look at the Simon & Kirby romance books in creating

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Was Kirby an influence on you? When did you first discover his work? DICK GIORDANO: Actually, I first discovered Jack’s work when I was a young comic reader. I didn’t know who Simon & Kirby were or who did what, I just knew that their work was a cut above the rest. Jack wasn’t a big influence on my approach to comic art because as I entered the comics field, I was attracted to the illustrative approach of Alex Raymond or Hal Foster. This, of course, before the resurgence of the super-hero titles that dominate the field today! TJKC: When did you first meet Jack? Did you get to know each other well at all? DICK: I really met Jack when I was the editor-inchief at DC. I’m sure we were in the same places on occasions before that and that Jack and I were introduced, but when he worked on the Fourth World stuff at DC in the ’70s, I was no longer at DC and Jack was already living on the West Coast. We never knew each other well. TJKC: When you were editor at Charlton, did you ever consider approaching Kirby about doing work for the company? Or did you just consider him to be out of Charlton’s price range? DICK: Completely out of Charlton’s price range! And although I admired his work enormously, I would not even think of asking him to work for our rates. If 5

DICK: I think conceptually it was mindboggling! I think, though, that Jack’s dialogue was somewhat daunting (to my knowledge, this was the first time Jack wrote his own stuff entirely alone and unedited), occasionally stiff and may have prevented some readers from seeing the concepts that drove it. TJKC: Did you ever work on any Kirby characters? I didn’t notice any in Michael Eury’s book on your career. DICK: Can’t recall that I ever did. But I must have inked one or more of Jack’s characters in one DC story or another. None stand out, though. TJKC: Were you involved in the editorial or business decisions made in getting Jack to return to wrap-up his New Gods epic in the 1984 Hunger Dogs graphic novel? Were you involved in getting the Kirbys a royalty on the Super Powers use of the Fourth World characters? DICK: Yes. I believe it was Paul’s [Levitz’s] idea to get some closure to the original New Gods storyline and the editorial responsibility was mine. At one point, I said something to Jack on the phone that he completely misunderstood and, if not for Roz’s intervention, might have gotten ugly. We had advertised the GN as a final episode in the New Gods saga and Jack’s script was veering dangerously away from that idea, and I cautioned him that we shouldn’t lie to our readers. Jack, I think, viewed this as my calling him a liar, which of course wasn’t my intent! Thank God for Roz! If not for her, we would not have been able to get together for dinner with Jack and her at each of the subsequent San Diego cons while Jack was still alive. After his passing, Roz would always greet me with a hug and a kiss when we met. TJKC: Tell me how you approached inking the Black Panther piece on this issue’s cover. You mentioned this is the only time you’ve ever inked Kirby; were there any other opportunities you had to ink Kirby that never panned out? DICK: Just one. I was supposed to ink some New Gods style guide stuff. I don’t recall what prevented it from happening, but I was always sorry that the opportunity was gone. As far as the Black Panther piece, I taped a piece of vellum to the scan you sent and started inking with my favorite tool, a brush. (above) Jack’s unused cover for Jungle Action #18, done several months before the series was cancelled to make way for Kirby’s solo Black Panther book. Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

your own approach to the romance comics you worked on? DICK: Well, it would be hard not to. They invented the genre! Of course, I always wanted to be, at least, a tad different then the other guys... but the influence was there. TJKC: Did Jack’s work influence you in developing Charlton’s Action Hero line? DICK: No, not really. The Charlton Action Hero line was influenced by its creators... who, of course, may have been influenced by Jack! If you mean was I, personally, motivated to develop the Charlton line as a result of Jack’s work, of course! Marvel was the leader and Marvel was Stan Lee and Kirby! TJKC: As an editor, how did you feel about Kirby’s Fourth World material? Did you view it as successful creatively (if not financially), or was it too different from what was coming out at the time?

TJKC: To me, the top penciler/inker combos of all-time are Kirby/Sinnott, Adams/Giordano, and Sekowsky/ Giordano (you made two out of three!). How does inking Kirby differ from inking someone like Neal, or even Sekowsky (who, on the surface at least, would seem to share some of the Kirby “chunkiness” if not the power)? DICK: This may sound a bit presumptuous but I tried to approach each penciler that I worked with by “walking in his moccasins for a mile.” I never wanted to stray from what the penciler had to say and insert my own frame of reference. And I rarely looked towards other pencilers that I may have worked with for inspiration. I feel that my best work was with Sekowsky... only because it took more effort to discern what he was trying “to say.” Neal was an easier read. TJKC: Please tell me a little about what you’re working on now (particularly the Dracula book you’re doing/finishing with Roy

Thomas for Marvel). DICK: I recently finished Drawing Comics Step-by-Step with Dick Giordano, a howto book for beginners published by F+W Pubs.—128 pages of drawing instructions for the budding comic artist. I penciled around 50 pages of a graphic novel for Metron Press, the publishing arm for the American Bible Society. Terry Austin inks, Brian Augustyn writes. And, of course, Dracula, which Roy and I started 30 years ago for Marvel (who says you can’t go back home?). Marvel called us and asked if we’d like to finish it. I think they were attracted to the bookstore poten-

tial of a classic horror novel. It will begin with the 76 original pages, to which we’ll be adding 100 new pages. They will be published in four 48-page issues, the first of which is available now. I’m about three-fifths of the way through issue #3, with #4 to be finished at the end of January. Our editor is Mark Beazley and so far both he and Marvel have been a pleasure to work for. Closure, at last! Of course, I’ve been working 70 hour weeks with all this stuff, but my head is bloody but unbowed! ★

Cadillacs & Devil Dinosaurs (Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales (sometimes printed under the title, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) is a lushly illustrated, imaginative reminder of the EC days when Al Williamson and Wally Wood pitted their diminutive space/time travelers from Earth against lumbering TRexes, and when Gold Key’s Mighty Samson saved his weaker charges from swooping pterodactyls, and Kirby’s Kamandi and Moon Boy explored the large, mysteryladen caverns of their monster-filled planets. Mark’s post-apocalyptic world was full of surprises for his protagonists, Jack Tenrec and Hannah, and happily for his readers as well. In the early ’90s, the artist/writer’s hard work was rewarded in another medium when his comic concepts became an animated cartoon series and he’s since put his unique stamp on REH’s preeminent warrior by illustrating new editions of Conan the Barbarian. He’s done outstanding covers for Tarzan collections of glorious Russ Manning stories and other covers. Mr. Schultz was interviewed by e-mail on August 9, 2004.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What were some of your artistic influences growing up? What were some of the first comics that you remember seeing? MARK SCHULTZ: The first comics that made a distinct impression on me were the Metal Men’s debut in DC’s Showcase, and Kubert’s redo of Hawkman in Brave and the Bold. I’ve always tended to lean more toward science-fiction/science-fantasy as opposed to straight super-hero vs. super-villain stories, even from the beginning. But to be honest, I really didn’t differentiate between artists and technique until I discovered the Fantastic Four in about 1964, and Spider-Man about that same time. Kirby and Ditko, and shortly thereafter Wood and Steranko became the first comics artists I recognized, idolized, and attempted to emulate. A few years after that I discovered Williamson and Frazetta, and my interests and drawing endeavors veered off in a different direction, one influenced more by the naturalistic illustrators of the early 20th century. And that’s the

Mark Schultz interviewed by Jerry Boyd

path I more or less follow to this day. TJKC: What books of Kirby’s did you find the most interesting? MARK: The FF was the first (that I specifically recognized as Kirby anyway) and Kirby’s long run on that consistently and extraordinarily imaginative book will always be my favorite. The raw imaginative power—the astonishing number of intriguing fantasy concepts Kirby and Lee explored in the framework of a monthly 20-page funny book has never quite been duplicated, in my opinion. TJKC: I have to agree. I was a big fan of Kitchen Sink’s Death Rattle in the ’80s and the eighth issue showcased your first installment of “Xenozoic Tales.” Not long after, you got your own book from them. What was that time period like for you? MARK: It was quite a ride. I entered comics without any previous experience within the field. I’m still amazed that Denis Kitchen elected to give me such an immediate opportunity to showcase my work. For the first couple of years doing Xenozoic Tales, I was constantly trying to keep the book on a regular schedule—I could never put in those hours again. TJKC: There were obvious nods to Wood, Williamson, and Frazetta in the early stories. Now, it’s all glorious, inventive stuff by Schultz! Were there any Kirby influences, conceptually or artistically, in Xenozoic Tales? MARK: Hmmm... good question. I guess that while there are no direct stylistic influences in my Xenozoic art (I find Kirby’s expressionistic style, while perfect for high-tech science fiction and superheroics, heavy-handed when it comes to romantic adventure), I will always be striving to capture some of the immediacy and power he concentrated into his stories. And Kirby had a wonderful talent for gripping drama that he could ratchet up to the final panel of a story. I admire his sense of storytelling rhythm so much. TJKC: Like Frazetta, Bill Stout, and others, you have an affinity for dinosaurs. Where did that come from? Did you ever read Jack’s Devil Dinosaur and if so, what did you think of it? MARK: That’s been there as long as I remember. As a kid, some of my earliest pop culture memories are of seeing comics with dinosaurs in them, lurid newspaper advertisements for the film Gorgo (all right, a dinosaur by movie standards only...), and catching King Kong (the one, the only, the original) on TV. I have no idea why these extinct creatures become so meaningful, but the phenomenon seems to happen to a lot of people. Animal lovers all, I suspect. I did not read Devil Dinosaur when it came out. To my discredit, I could not see beyond the wonky concept and Kirby’s somewhat deteriorating graphic skills. Having read all of the issues recently, I was amazed at how much I enjoyed the 7

storytelling—very strong, even at that late point in his career. TJKC: Kirby was moving himself out of comics around the time you were gaining prominence. Did you two ever cross paths? MARK: I was introduced to Kirby once, at my first San Diego Con in 1990. He and Roz were very pleasant, but I was so overwhelmed that I acted the total sheepish fanboy. Couldn’t take advantage of my opportunity for my inability to hold an intelligent conversation. I did get to see him graciously and tolerantly gyrate for a few seconds with a pushy belly dancer, though. TJKC: What’s next on the horizon for Xenozoic Tales a.k.a. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs? MARK: Getting my baby up and running again is still my ultimate goal. As it takes a lot of time cranking out even one issue, however, it is tough to figure out how to make it work financially. I’m always trying to figure out a workable angle. TJKC: You’ve done some superb work on Howard’s Conan, also. Are you ever tempted to contact Dark Horse Comics and/or Kurt Busiek to do a special segment of their new series? MARK: The new series editor, Scott Allie, has contacted me about the possibility of scripting a Conan mini-series, and maybe even doing covers for it, at some unspecified future time. A lot depends on me coming up with a proposal he thinks would be worth doing. Obviously, I’d love the chance to do more Howard-related work.

TJKC: You graciously inked a Devil Dinosaur cover for this issue and you have our thanks for doing such a wonderful job! How did it feel to ink Jack’s work? MARK: It was a challenge—but a very enjoyable challenge. Kirby’s very expressionistic, very graphic style calls for inks a good deal different from what I do over my own work. I had to flex technical muscles I don’t normally use in order to keep true to his spirit. It was a great learning experience. I hope people think I’ve done the King good. TJKC: Any other thoughts about Jack, his work, and his place in comics history? MARK: He is irreplaceable. Along with Eisner, Kurtzman, Barks, and Wood, he defined comic book art and storytelling. I don’t think we’ll ever again see such a long term burst of consistently imaginative power. ★ (Special thanks to John Fleskes for research and interviewing assistance.)

(above) Jack’s two-page spread from Devil Dinosaur #5 (August 1978). Inks by Mike Royer. 9

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier (below) Joe Sinnott’s masterful Fantastic Four inks (this from issue #91, Oct. 1969), showing his handling of the Thing’s rocky epidermis.

(next page) Frank Giacoia inked this cover art for Fantasy Masterpieces #4 (August 1966), which reprinted “Ivan The Terrible” from Captain America Comics #4 (June 1941). Look how well Jack captured Ivan’s likeness from 25 years earlier (inset). All characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

ur first question this month comes from Arthur Garcia, who describes himself as “a 40 year old Brazilian artist who learned almost everything he knows from American movies and comic books.” (There’s a frightening concept. Hope it wasn’t any that I wrote.) He asks...

Being a big Kirby fan, I have noted how tight his pencils were in the middle Sixties when compared to his early ’60s Marvel works. Was it just a matter of Jack being given a more human work load or there was another reason? A friend of mine said something about Stan Lee trying to reproduce the artwork from the pencils. Did it happen and did it have any influence on the way Jack penciled his pages? No to that last part. For a long time in comics, printing from the pencils was a pipe dream that some publisher or budgetconscious editor had every year or so... but not for long. They’d experiment a bit and invariably decide it was neither practical nor cost-efficient. Even the tightest of

pencilers left stray construction lines on their pages and most would freehand straight lines and circles, figuring the inker owned a ruler and a compass. So if they could somehow have solved the technical problems of photographing art, sans inking, that would have meant having the top artists work tighter and cleaner. This would have meant they’d have produced less and had to be paid more per page. (The whole idea of having one artist ink another was to have the top artists output more work.) On top of that, you’d have to handle the pages with greater care and also pay someone to go in for touch-ups, whiting out stray lines and smudges and tidying up after the letterer erased chunks of art to rule in his guidelines and ink in the copy. Since the inkers were not highly compensated, eliminating them did not seem like it would save mucho dinero. Still, it was tried now and then. I believe Neal Adams did at least one mystery comic job for DC in pencil, though that was for creative effect, not because anyone thought it would become standard practice. Also, portions of one Barry Smith Conan were reproduced—not too well, as I recall— from his pencil art. I never heard of anyone thinking it might be done with Jack’s art. Stan Lee certainly would not have wanted Jack to pencil tighter and produce less. By way of history: Around 1974, someone in the Marvel production office had an idea for a print-from-pencils process. It was decided that they’d look over their current crop of illustrators, select the guy who did the cleanest, tightest pencil art, and try it with his work. At that moment, the honor seemed to belong to George Tuska and one of his jobs was given the treatment. The test got as far as some preliminary proofs before someone (Stan, I was told) declared it a disaster. By the time the story in question was published, it had been inked in the normal manner. Today, with computers, it’s possible to scan pencil art and then true it up in Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw or some other program. Many artists are doing this, in whole or part with their work and in some cases, they job out the “clean-up” tasks to others. As I write this, there are rumors that one or more of the major companies may contract with a company overseas to take the pencil art generated here, scan it and then render it for publication. I have no idea how well this might work... but among my many fantasy-regrets is that this technology was not around when Jack was doing his best drawing. Not that what Mssrs. Sinnott, Royer, Giacoia, et al, did was not superb but Jack’s inkers would have been the first to tell you that even the best embellishment of his pencils lost something. I think that’s true of most of comics’ great artists when their work was handed to someone else to finish. It would have been interesting to see what you would have gained by printing from Jack’s pencils and what you would have lost without the contributions of the inkers. Note that I’m saying it would have been interesting, not that it would have been better.

Getting to the first part of your question: As the Sixties progressed and Marvel’s sales went up, Jack’s page rate went up. It didn’t go up commensurate with those sales. I believe he was always grossly underpaid, given the value of his work to the company, then and in subsequent years. But from time to time, the money did increase a bit and when it did, he insisted on slowing from 4-5 comics per month to a little over three. His work got tighter as a result of that slowdown, and also as a result of the shift in 1967 to a smaller original art size throughout the industry. (A page went from 12" by 18" to 10" by 15". Jack hated the change at first and was never truly happy with it.) So there are two factors—better pay and smaller originals—that impacted the tightness of Jack’s work as the Sixties progressed. I can suggest two others. One is not the potential absence of inkers but their presence. Jack rarely looked at his work after it left him. He almost never saw the inked pages before publication and paid scant attention to the printed books. By the time a comic was printed, its contents were ancient history to the forward-looking Kirby. And as has been mentioned elsewhere, he did not then care very much how his work was inked. Still, I believe the contribution of his best inkers had an effect on how Jack drew his pages. Joe Sinnott’s influence is most evident in the way Jack penciled the character of The Thing in Fantastic Four. The inker, who arguably had more control of lineweights than any of his predecessors, developed a unique texture in how he rendered Ben Grimm’s craggy epidermis, and also in how he dropped in black areas. Jack seems to have seen what Sinnott was doing and, perhaps subconsciously, incorporated it into his penciling. The same is true, I think, of the way Jack penciled outer space and “cosmic” energy. It just looked more effective in the printed comics after Sinnott got through with it, and I think Jack noticed that and figured it into his technique. There are other little traces of Sinnott creeping back into the pencils. Jack saw he was getting tighter, more precise inking and I think that affected how he approached his pages. In the same sense, I believe the inking of Frank Giacoia on the Captain America stories in Tales of Suspense had its influence on how Jack drew. He admired the way Giacoia kept the figures in action scenes without losing their sense of motion, and I think it encouraged Jack to be more powerful and fluid in how he posed his heroes. Later, the knowledge that Mike Royer would be finishing a page freed Jack from fretting that the inker might be unable to interpret what he was doing. It enabled him to draw bolder and to just be Jack Kirby. Lastly, I would suggest that Jack concentrated more effort on his penciling as he became increasingly certain that the work would have a long life, being reprinted again and again—and with better

reproduction and paper than comics had ever had. This he told me when I first met him in 1969 and while it wasn’t exactly an inconceivable prospect at the time, it also didn’t sound like something we were likely to see as soon as we did. Still, Jack was sure of it by the late Sixties, and I believe some extra attention was paid to artistic detail because of that. (It was another in the long list of reasons he got rid of Vince Colletta at DC.) Happily, Jack did live to see some of that deluxe reprinting take place. He wasn’t happy with some of the reproduction, done as it often has been from very bad photostats or heavily-reconstructed pages, and he was extremely unhappy with some of the niggardly or non-existent reprint fees. Proudly though, he saw his faith in the basic material justified. It really did deserve hard covers and better paper. Moving on to the next question: In an earlier column, I wrote that Jack did not seem able to separate the writing of a comic from the act of drawing it. This brought a query from Randall Codge... I was intrigued by your comparison of Kirby writing and drawing a comic to Irving Berlin writing music and lyrics to a song. Do you think this is the best possible analogy? I always thought of Kirby as someone more like D.W. Griffith or Orson Welles put together, both inventing and reinventing the form. In some future column, I hope you can address this and expand on it. Most analogies are like the girls I dated in high school: They only go so far. In my view, what Jack did in comics does not correspond precisely to the accomplishments of anyone else in any medium. If you want to compare him to someone in the movie business, it would have to be someone who was

simultaneously a director, a writer, a producer, an art director, a special effects designer, a choreographer, a costume designer and even an actor. Few people have been all that and none of them have “led the way” in movies to the extent Kirby did in comics. Some might wonder about my inclusion of “actor” in that list. I tend to think that one of the things Jack brought to his work was the same personal sensibility that most great thespians bring to theirs. Years ago, I sat in on a number of acting classes— just to observe, because I’ve always known I belong on a stage the way a giraffe belongs on a Segway. But the process has always fascinated me and one night, sitting on the floor of a basement classroom in West Hollywood, I heard a teacher tell the following anecdote... An actress was hired for the smallest of parts in a horror movie. There weren’t even any lines. She had to walk out of a building, spot the monster coming towards her and scream. It was maybe a ten-second scene, and there was no monster on the set. The special effects crew was creating said creature and would add it to the film in post-production. The associate director began working with her, blocking where she’d stand and such. She asked him, “Where am I coming from? What happened in this building that I’m exiting?” The A.D. said, “Who cares? You’re just coming out a building.” The actress asked, “Who am I playing? Is this woman smart or stupid or rich or what?” The A.D. said, “Doesn’t matter. She’s just a woman who sees the monster coming and screams.” The actress asked, “How do I feel about this 11

(above) Reader David C. Zimmerman recently picked up this 1972 edition of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds because he’s certain the foreground figure is a direct Kirby swipe. Anybody recognize it? ©1972 Berkley Highland Books.

(below) Draw like Jack, step by step! Jack participates in the Quickdraw Competition at an early 1970s San Diego Comicon. What do you suppose was his backstory for this scene? Photos courtesy of & ©Shel Dorf.

monster? Am I afraid he’s going to kill me? Am I merely shocked at how ugly he is? Am I startled by him or do I see him coming?” The A.D. said, “Will you stop with the stupid questions? A scream is a scream. Just walk out of the building, act like you spot him off-camera and scream your head off.” A wizened old pro was standing with a friend, watching all this from the sidelines. The friend said, “That woman’s a prima donna. She has no future in this business.” The wizened pro turned to him and said, “That woman is going to be a first-rate actress... but that associate director will never become a good director.” I don’t know if that story is true but I think the moral is. Not every actor needs that kind of information but an awful lot of the good ones do, and it was malpractice for that A.D. not to provide it to her. Acting is not only about saying the lines or performing the physical actions or even screaming at the monster. It’s about creating a moment in time, and that moment cannot exist without a Before and After, because people do not exist only in the moment. What a real actor brings to a part is a sense of the continuity of life. We don’t always have to know who the character is but we need to know he’s somebody; that he came from somewhere and has some sort of thought process and motivation beyond that which is expressed in his on-screen actions and dialogue. If I had to single out the vital trait that all my favorite comic artists share, it would be the ability to create believable, breathing people. (And come to think of it, they don’t even have to be people. Carl Barks did just fine with ducks.) For all the cosmic wonderment Kirby created on paper, I think my favorite moments are just about people relating to one another in the ways we all relate to those around us. And I believe he approached such scenes in a manner not unlike the actress in the above anecdote. If so, it would make him roughly the equivalent of what acting coaches sometimes call a “subtext actor.” That’s a performer who works by recalling personal experiences and using them to underscore a performance. You flesh out a character, many actors believe, by looking into yourself and finding analogous situations. Confronted with a scene in which you play a character who gets irate, you tap into your own life for moments of anger you have experienced or observed. In playing the scene, you may utter the words of the script but you arrive at your delivery of them by re-creating the rage you had or even witnessed about something else entirely. (Quick Disclaimer: Those who teach this kind of acting would probably appreciate me pointing out here that I am drastically oversimplifying a much more complex process.)

I have long felt that Jack did all this—and probably subconsciously—in his work. Jack was a man who was less interested in drawing pictures than he was in drawing stories. Even when he drew a comic from someone else’s script or worked from someone else’s plot, Jack infused his contribution— art, pacing, character design, staging, story embellishments, whatever—with autobiographical moments and references. When Captain America punched the Red Skull, that was Jack Kirby punching someone he’d punched or, more likely, wanted to punch. Depictions of fear are based on real fears Jack had experienced or witnessed. I believe that in his mind, there was a lot of “backstory” that was never intended to make it onto paper; merely to make the characters more real in Jack’s super-charged imagination. This sense of subtext contributed, I believe, that vital energy in Kirby artwork. It’s why some of us “connect” so readily with what he did; because we sense that the emotions depicted are real ones. As such, they led a great many readers to feel a personal connection to the man who drew the work. From the time I met him, I sensed that Jack never really did a drawing without some smidgen of storyline, if only for his own, unspoken information. That is, if he drew a pin-up of Kamandi running somewhere, Jack had to decide—just for himself— where Kamandi was running and why. In the same way that that bit-part actress had to have a full understanding of the situation in order to scream at the monster, Jack (I believe) had to have a context in which to draw Kamandi running. Even if it wasn’t mentioned or explicitly referenced in the finished drawing. I really began to believe all this about Jack when I was researching and studying the history of the “Marvel method” of writing a comic—i.e., the artist working from a synopsis or discussion, with the dialogue composed later. This is a method that obviously worked well for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for a time, and for other couplings of writer and artist. But it’s also a method that didn’t work—or didn’t work as well—for some very fine creative talents. Some artists, to put it simply, need everything spelled out for them. It also stopped working for some artists who had successfully worked that way, including Kirby and perhaps Steve Ditko. Which is as good a place as any to stop answering Randall’s question and to resume in response to this one from Gerry Schneider... I read someplace that Jack did not like doing comics Marvel method, drawing from a plot. I find this hard to believe as it seems that the method was created for him. Can you clarify? I can try. First off, the method was not exactly created for Kirby. There are reports of others working that way before him. Stan Goldberg, for instance, says he did Millie the Model with Stan Lee that way, some time before Lee tried it with Kirby. Robert Kanigher used to claim he did comics that way in the Forties, especially working with Irv Novick. Still, it clearly caught

on when Lee tried it with Kirby, Ditko and a few others in the late Fifties/ early Sixties. There are two related reasons why some artists did not like working from a plot outline, as opposed to a full script—one creative, one financial. The financial one was that some (most vocally, Wally Wood and Kirby) felt that it led to them making contributions to the writing that were uncredited and for which they were not compensated. Let’s leave that one aside for this column. Kirby, even when someone else was writing, never viewed himself as just the artist. Even at DC in the midFifties, just before going back to Marvel, Jack sometimes wrote his own scripts—a rarity, then—and when he didn’t, he often plotted and/or rewrote those scripted by others. Some of this was probably due to his own, insuppressible inventiveness; some to all those years in the SimonKirby shop where, as one of the bosses, he routinely co-plotted and rewrote scripts. The shop letterer, Ben Oda, told me that Kirby once drew a script by someone else and changed it so much that Joe Simon was able to then reassign the original script to another artist and run it a few issues later. (Simon doesn’t recall this but Oda seemed certain.) Rewriting worked well for Jack when he co-owned the place but at DC, it led to quarrels with the editorial staffers like Mort Weisinger, who felt that writers should write, artists should draw the scripts that were handed to them, and never the ’twain should meet. When Carmine Infantino ascended into Management at the company in the late Sixties, one of the main changes he instituted was to get certain artists involved in the writing and to even move some into editorial positions. Inspiring that revolution, obviously, was the success Stan Lee had enjoyed

It all explains at least one of the reasons that Jack made as an unwritten condition of his 1970 DC deal that he would not work “Marvel method” with another writer. If they wanted him to draw stories by someone else, that someone else would have to write a full script. Kirby did not actively expect that to happen— DC wanted his story ideas as much as his art—and it didn’t until late in his tour of duty there. But he set the rule and made few exceptions for the rest of his life because the breakdown of labor no longer worked for him. Our last question was sent in by... well, a lot of people. Four or five times a week, I get an e-mail asking me my opinion of Tales to Astonish, a recently-issued biography of Jack Kirby by “Ronin Ro.” I’ve avoided answering because I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to phrase my response, and because every so often, I pick up my copy, re-read a section and find myself more conflicted. There is no doubt in my mind that the book has an awful lot of inaccuracies and that the over-all portrait it draws of Jack is not the Jack I knew... and you’d think that since I feel that way, reviewing it oughta be easy. But I also think its author is undeserving of that kind of curt dismissal because, first of all, he did uncover a lot of facts about Jack’s life that have previously gone unreported. Also, a few of his errors come from believing things Jack himself was quoted as saying. Kirby had many talents but giving clear, accurate interviews was not among them. It wasn’t so much that he got things wrong but that he got them confused and a diligent researcher needs to look at certain statements and say, “Oh, I get it... here where Jack was talking about Captain America, he actually meant Captain Marvel. Then it makes perfect

when he’d wisely given Jack, Steve Ditko and others great freedom to suggest and even (sometimes) control storylines. In Jack’s case, it was especially wise because he was so wonderfully ingenious in this area... and also because he probably would have done it anyway. Ultimately, however, he came to dislike it on many levels. So did Bill Everett. When I interviewed him in 1970, he told me he’d had great trouble working from a plot; that when he did, he pretty much had to write out a script of sorts, even to the extent of figuring out rough dialogue which would then be discarded. If the synopsis said, “Sub-Mariner and the villain fight for a page or so,” some other artists could just draw six panels of the two characters duking it out with perhaps a vague suggestion of what each panel was intended to convey. (“In the first panel, the villain belts Subby. In the second, he thinks he’s beaten him. In the third, the Sub-Mariner says, ‘No, you haven’t.’ In the fourth, the Sub-Mariner tackles the bad guy... ”) They could then leave it to the scripter to figure out what the characters were saying and to add greater depth to the story via captions and balloons. But Everett, just so he could figure out his staging, said he couldn’t think that way. Which is one of the reasons why, after his first few jobs working “Marvel method” in the Sixties, he was moved from penciling to inking. Later, when he resumed penciling, he was often the writer, as well. I suspect the artists who were happiest working “Marvel method” were those who had some story sense but not enough that they fancied themselves writers or wrote all the dialogue in their heads as they drew a story. John Romita co-plotted loads of comic book stories but to my knowledge, he never really wrote a comic book story, dialogue and all, by himself. Neither did John Buscema. For the most part, neither have Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe and many others who worked that way, most contentedly. Kirby, Ditko and Wally Wood all wanted to write as well as draw, and did so whenever possible after they stopped drawing for Marvel in the Sixties. (Ditko didn’t want to write so much as control the ethical underpinnings of the tales the drew, but the effect was the same: He couldn’t bring himself to “half-write” the story, giving final say to someone else regarding the characters’ motives and morals.) You have perhaps seen old interviews where Jack says he “wrote” all those comics that were officially credited to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Several of his friends urged him not to say that, or at least not to say it that way. The one large fight Jack and I ever had—one that ruptured our friendship for a brief time—was over this matter. When he said it, I think he meant it in two senses, one being that he felt all the important story contributions were his. It is not that unprecedented for one or more collaborators in a creative project to each be quite certain they’re doing most of the heavy lifting. Secondly, I think Jack meant that he “wrote” all those comics in the sense that he did all that unbilled work, if only for himself. This occurred even if the plot came in whole or part from Stan, even if Stan wrote every word of the captions and dialogue and even if—as sometimes happened—Stan’s copy altered many of Jack’s story intentions. Kirby still had to approach his portion of the assembly line as a writer-artist. Just as that bit part actress had to know exactly what she was screaming at in order to scream, Jack had to decide exactly what Reed Richards was saying before he could draw Reed Richards. This information might or might not have been conveyed to Stan via Jack’s marginal notes, which readers of this magazine have glimpsed on many penciled pages... and, as noted, Stan didn’t always follow what Jack suggested. But from Jack’s point-of-view, he sat there and tapped all the same crevices of his brain he tapped when he authored a story, sans Stan. When he said, “I wrote those stories,” that’s a lot of what he was thinking... and it’s why, I think, he could not do it forever. He could not keep suppressing his writer side or allow Stan to keep overruling it. (And of course, there were matters of pay and credit, but we’re not going into those now.)

(previous page, top) A Wally Wood preliminary sketch of his creation Glomb (neé Glom), an early Thing-like character. Wood, like Kirby, was not just an artist, but a prolific creator and writer in his own right. ©2004 Wallace Wood Estate.

(these two pages) Pencils and inks from the splash page of Kamandi #39. This was one of the rare examples of Jack working from someone else’s script after leaving Marvel in 1970. All characters TM & ©2004 DC Comics.

sense.” Having struggled with this problem myself for decades, I cannot bring myself to fault “Ronin Ro” too much for taking some statements at face value. Or for not knowing a lot of things about Jack that have simply never been recounted anywhere. I was interviewed for the book by a gent who (I guess) is the person who wrote it under the pen name. The interview, done by phone with some e-mail follow-ups, surprised me in its brevity. If I’d been him and I had a chance to ask me questions, I’d have posed a lot more than he did. As I page through the finished volume, I find myself impressed by him knowing a couple of things that I know I didn’t tell him... but also annoyed about a number of things that I could have corrected if he’d run them by me. So here is my problem and why I’ve declined several offers to do formal reviews. I don’t want to dump on the book because I think the author made a sincere effort and because I think he did a better job than I’d have imagined from a guy who was so far removed from Jack. At the same time, I don’t want to endorse everything in it, nor do I want to go page by page and cite things that I think are wrong... and I mean “wrong” either on a factual basis or just in conveying the sense of what was transpiring at a given time. I also believe that in the latter category—the interpretation of Jack and his life as opposed to the cold, hard data—there’s room for other views than mine... and I do agree with a number of Ro’s conclusions. I finally decided just to say I have mixed feelings about Tales to Astonish and that I don’t discourage anyone from purchasing it. I’d just discourage them from, if they do read it, believing everything they read. This is not a bad approach to take towards any book, including mine. Which reminds me: Those who write to ask me what I think of this book also ask me how my biography of Kirby is coming. Answer: It’s coming. I’ve written over 250,000 words (the chapter on Sky Masters alone is 23,000 of them) and I haven’t even put in any storylines. Like, I write about the creation of the Fantastic Four and then I insert a little note to myself that says “insert plot

of FF #1 here” because I can go back and do that later, after I finish the stuff that involves interviews and plowing through crates of files and Kirby’s personal papers and such. Over the next year, I hope to fill in those notes and to circulate a draft manuscript to a couple of already-selected (please don’t volunteer) Kirby friends and historians for comments. I also still have at least a dozen folks on my “to be interviewed” list. So the book will come out. I just don’t know when. I just know that once it is published, everyone will understand why it took so long. Next question? ★ (Mark Evanier welcomes your questions, which are best submitted at his website, www.POVonline.com. You can also send them when you visit his daily weblog, www.newsfromme.com. Both are fine places to learn about a great many vital topics, Kirby among them. And he probably should plug his three books from TwoMorrows but he’s way too humble, especially when writing these paragraphs in the third person. So he’ll just trust that John will stick an ad somewhere close by.)

New Genesis

Once And Future King

Kirby collaborates across time and space on the all-new Galactic Bounty Hunters. By Adam McGovern

(right) Cover of issue #5 of Galactic Bounty Hunters.

(below) Several members of the creative team at Comicon International 2004 (left to right): Mike Thibodeaux, Lisa Kirby, inker Marty Lasick, Steve Robertson, and Rick French.

(Probably the biggest Kirby news of the coming year is Galactic Bounty Hunters, a posthumous collaboration between the King (represented by some never-published presentation art and character concepts), his daughter Lisa (on scripts) and some of his most prominent supporters (like Mikes Thibodeaux on pencils and Royer on inks). Coming from Dark Horse Comics in 2005, the book follows famous fantasy author Jack Birky as a dangerous emergency calls him from a quiet family life to the former career as a space-swashbuckler on which his supposedly fanciful tales turn out to be based. Played for good-natured laughs like the TV cartoon series one could easily see it succeeding as, the title encounters a bit of space-turbulence in the early stages of setting up its story, with some hit-and-miss humor and unevenly paced thrills. But the ride is worth sticking with—the Kirby spreads incorporated by Thibodeaux are suitably dazzling and matched well by Thibodeaux’s own art throughout, and by issue #4 (of a projected eight-part introductory cycle) we’re in full-blown Kirby Komedy of Errors mode, with peeks into the cranky retirement of galactic saviors, the disastrous overconfidence of their blockbusterheaded successors, the hilariously hellish attractions of an orbiting theme park for supercriminals, the deadly domesticity of alien incarceree “Martian Stewhurt,” and even a farcical yet emotionally revealing comeback cameo by Kirby’s straightlaced master of the universe, Captain Victory. The Jack Kirby Collector intercepted several of GBH’s creators (Lisa Kirby, Mike Thibodeaux, co-scripter Steve Robertson and editor/colorist Richard French) for some advance insights into the latest “new” Kirby comic.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: I know the Kirby Estate and various creative collaborators have plans for Kirby-owned properties in all media. How did this particular project come about, and at any point have there been plans for it in other forms—cartoons, toys, etc.? LISA KIRBY: After the passing of my mother Rosalind, I had the arduous task of taking inventory of my father’s artwork. As usual, Mike Thibodeaux came to my rescue and helped me through the inventory process. During this time we came across various sketches my father had drawn but never used. Mike had mentioned that he would work that way sometimes, drawing out characters and writing concepts to be used for future projects. I really felt drawn to [one] particular group of characters. They seemed to jump off the page at me. These four characters turned out to be used for Galactic Bounty Hunters. Mike suggested I try my hand at developing the story concept further, and see if I would enjoy the writing process. With the help of some concept notes that my father left behind, the story just grew and took on a life all its own. We added other characters that my father had not used, to further enhance the story. We used as much of his original art as possible. STEVE ROBERTSON: At first, we put together a package to present this story as an animated television series. As we realized that we were coming up on the tenth anniversary of Jack’s death, we decided that we should [also] work up a comic book series to commemorate him. TJKC: How much guidance did Jack leave behind as to his thought processes and plans, and how much of the book is stuff the new team just ran with and built on? MIKE THIBODEAUX: Jack left us a one-page synopsis on the characters, several conceptual drawings and about 15 pages of story art (half of which were quite rough). Most the art will be seen in later issues since we built this [whole] story 16

around Jack’s original opening sequence! We also found four rough pages to a completely different story and worked them into this [one]. And we still have several loose pages we were unable to work into the story. Of the conceptual drawings, we were able to use four of them as covers—including one of Jack himself, drawn as a cigar-chompin’ monster at a drawing table with his heroes jumping out at you! From issue #4 on it’s all us except for a few pages of Jack’s we were able to work in. RICK FRENCH: Which, by the way, were inked by Mike Royer. MIKE: Yeah, Royer worked on issue #3, 7 and 8—thanks Mike! LISA: Mike [Thibodeaux] penciled everything else to finish up the story—I think my dad would have liked it; I’m proud of what we accomplished. RICK: I think Lisa’s dad would have been exceptionally proud. Lisa not only fell in love with this concept of Jack’s, but got behind it to try and bring it to life. She’s constantly coming up with ideas to improve the story, and continuously works on dialogue. She’s also bought a set of ink pens and brushes, and helped on the artwork. And with the high cost of coloring, Lisa’s just purchased a new computer to begin coloring herself!

anything about these relationships in the real Kirby family that’s autobiographical? LISA: At first I did not see the connection, but during one of our story meetings I suddenly blurted out, “Oh my, I’m Garrett!” [Birky’s son.] Everyone got a good laugh. It had just dawned on me that I acted the same way when I was a teenager. I remember rolling my eyes at some of the stories he used to tell. Even though I would drop into the studio from time to time during the day, it was really just to spend time with him. He worked many hours so it gave us some time to chat and he would tell me about his latest project he was working on. I really just thought of it as my dad’s job. As an adult I appreciate the scope of my father’s genius and what he had accomplished. I wish I could turn back time to soak in some of those precious moments and really listen to what he had to teach me. TJKC: There seem to be some subtle comments about the evolution of the comics industry and other adventure media in this book. Garrett, who looks down on his dad’s fantasies as quaint, speaks for the school of thought that bigger and bigger pyrotechnics are always better, and one character’s robot companion mopes about how his successor models have had their emotion circuitry replaced with weapons. Are you partially on a mission to bring back a certain charm and humanity to this type of fiction? MIKE: Comics have become quite dark and sinister in the super-hero genre, [and] there are a lot of gray areas in the moralities of mankind today—[but] we’re not here to tackle those issues! We’re here to extol the virtues of family, some-

LISA: I just hope it’s worth it... RICK: It will be—if each of you fans will support us by purchasing ten copies each! [laughs evilly] TJKC: The book brings together a heroic team behind the scenes as well as in the story; will the credits of each issue specifically list who did what on which page? MIKE: We’ll definitely list Jack’s contributions in each issue, along with writers, inkers, letterers, etc. TJKC: In the early issues Jack Birky has a teen son who’s a bit embarrassed by his dad’s occupation and a younger daughter who’s enchanted by it—was there ever

thing Jack believed very strongly in. We’ve also designed this story so that it can be enjoyed by young readers as well as adults. STEVE: We weren’t trying to make any comments about the work of others in the field of fantasy. We are striving to present this story in a manner that we see as being consistent with Kirby’s efforts in graphic storytelling, and consistent with what we see as being the apex of comic book storytelling in general—[having] 17

enough sophistication to entertain the older reader, [but] without losing sight of what is appropriate and compelling for the younger reader.

the way to emulate him was to do their own thing, but here your mission is to honor him by capturing and filling in the flavor of his work itself. How do you strike the balance?

TJKC: There’s a bit of a paradox to a book like this: Jack Kirby was known for telling people

LISA: I felt that I wanted to stay true to my father’s style to honor his memory. Of course no one can fill his shoes; it would be silly for me to even think that was possible. He would have also encouraged me to add my own spin to the story and make it my own. Mike Thibodeaux is a wonderful artist and knows my father’s technique better than anyone, but it is also important that he add his own style and flavor to the book. TJKC: With concepts like this one and Satan’s Six, it seems that, the more the comics industry caused Jack disappointment in his personal life, the more he turned to comedy in his creations. Do you agree with this, and if so what does it say about his spirit? MIKE: I don’t necessarily agree; Jack used humor throughout his career. The more the comics industry caused Jack disappointment, the less willing he was to create characters and concepts to be owned by others. LISA: I would have to disagree [too]. My father had a wonderful sense of humor and wit, but I don’t necessarily feel that the industry had any effect on how his storyline would go. I felt he had a balance of drama and comedy to his work. TJKC: It almost seems like Jack came full-circle with this concept, going back to the science-opera of some of the earliest strips he worked on, like Blue Bolt. Did you feel a certain historical continuity to this material? STEVE: Yes. Jack always had a fondness for science-fiction, and the space-opera excesses of the old pulp writers in particular! ★

(left) The program book for the 2004 Comicon International: San Diego sported this Kirby/Thibodeaux cover in honor of the con’s celebration of Jack’s legacy. Characters TM & ©2004 their respective owners.

Ma chine Lettering

CRAFTINESS

Thanks to David Schwartz and Tom Kraft

n the 1970s, Mike Royer was a lettering machine! He was as skillful a letterer as he was an inker, adding a lot of style and panache to the pages he inked over the years, particularly in his title lettering. If you look at the published splash page to Machine Man #9, you’ll see the title of the issue was “In Final Battle.” Since it was Jack’s last issue of Machine Man, it’s a very appropriate title—but it’s not lettered by Mike Royer. On the back of the art of the splash page is the original story title, “Into the Fire.” Mike lettered it when he initially inked the book, so it was likely altered in the Marvel offices—perhaps at the last minute after Jack decided to leave Marvel, in an effort to make it into something more “final.” Also, below you’ll see Jack’s lettering guide to Mike, for the two-page spread in Devil Dinosaur #4. I guess Jack was extremely proud of this pencil spread (and rightfully so), and instead of indicating the copy directly on the pencils themselves, he chose to jot instructions down on a piece of sketchpad paper, indicating to Mike where the dialogue should go. ★

04 Marvel TM & ©20 Characters

, Inc. Characters

Paper Trail

A Tale Of Two Contracts

or, “Why you should always get it in writing,” by John Morrow

Once upon a time, there were two young men (let’s call them Joe and Jack) who created an nationally known and very popular patriotic super-hero during a time of war. They produced the first ten issues for a very timely company as freelancers, but were cheated out of their share of the profits, and went to work for the competition, where they found even greater success. And they lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, Simon & Kirby’s tortured history with Captain America can’t really be summed up as simply as that, as you’re about to see. After creating the character in 1941, they were verbally promised a 50% share of the profits from the million-selling super-patriot. Martin Goodman, head of Timely Comics, failed to come through with the agreed upon amount, so Joe and Jack secretly sought work from DC Comics (then National Periodical Publications), and when folks at Timely got wind of the deception, they fired them on the spot (allegedly saying they must leave, “..as soon as you finish this issue of Captain America!”). The pair went on to great success at DC and other companies, before a disastrous period of selfpublishing their own Mainline Comics in the late 1950s. The dissolution of their company brought

ASSIGNMENT This is an assignment between Jack Kirby, a citizen and resident of California, and Magazine Management Co., Inc., a corporation of the State of Delaware, having its principal place of business at 625 Madison Avenue, New York, New York. For and in consideration of the covenants and agreements herein contained and the sum of One Dollar ($1), the receipt of which Simon hereby acknowledges, IT IS HEREBY AGREED as follows: 1 A. Kirby shall and hereby does assign to Magazine Management Co., Inc. any and all right, title and interest he may have or control or which he has had or controlled in and to the following (without warranty that he has had or controlled any such right, title or interest): (1) Any and all MATERIALS, including any and all ideas, names, characters, symbols, designs, likenesses, visual representations, stories, episodes, literary property, etc., which have been in whole or in part acquired, published, merchandised, advertised and/or licensed in any form, field, or media by the Goodmans, their affiliates, and/or their predecessors or successors in interest (which shall be understood broadly and to include their licensees and all who derive any interest from the Goodmans), or any of them, and (2) Any and all RIGHTS, including any and all copyrights, trademarks, statutory rights, common law rights, goodwill, and any other rights whatsoever relating to the MATERIALS in any and all media and/or fields including any and all rights to renewal or extension of copyright, to recover for past infringement and to make application or institute suit therefor, and including by way of example and without limitation Kirby claim to renewal copyright in Volume 2, Nos. 1-10 of the work entitled “Captain America Comics,” these being evidenced by Registration Nos. R 429502, R 446534, R 446535, R 446536, R 446537, R 446538, R 446539, R 446540, R 446541 and R 448324 in the United States Copyright Office, all hereinafter referred to as MATERIALS and RIGHTS, including, without limitation and as just an example, all the MATERIALS listed in Schedules 1, 2 and 3, as amended, attached hereto. 1 B. Everything relating in any way to any MATERIALS and RIGHTS and any papers evidencing an ownership claim in any MATERIALS and RIGHTS shall be physically transferred or surrendered to the Goodmans or their designees. 1 C. It is the intention of the parties that by this assignment Kirby is transferring to Magazine Management Co., Inc. any and all MATERIALS and RIGHTS he may claim, have or control or has claimed, had or controlled in the past in any way whatsoever concerning or relating to Captain America and any other of the aforesaid MATERIALS and RIGHTS, and that KIRBY shall have no further claim of any kind arising out of or relating to any past business relationship with the Goodmans, their affiliates, or predecessors or successors in interest. 2. Kirby hereby warrants that he has not assigned, licensed, or pledged and has not attempted or purported to assign license, or pledge any of the MATERIALS and RIGHTS to anyone other than the Goodmans, their affiliates, predecessors or successors in interest, and/or their designees and that he will not do so in the future. 3. KIRBY shall execute or cause to be executed upon request by the Goodmans, their affiliates or successors in interest and/or designees, any and all additional applications, assignments, statements, pleadings, or other papers which are deemed by them to be necessary or appropriate for effecting the transfer of rights herein recited or for securing the benefit and exclusive enjoyment thereof to the Goodmans, their affiliates, successors in interest, and/or designees. 4. KIRBY agrees not to contest either directly or indirectly the full and complete ownership by the Goodmans, their affiliates, designees, or successors in interest, of all right, title and interest in and to the MATERIALS and RIGHTS or the validity to the RIGHTS, which may be conferred on Magazine Management Co., Inc. by this Agreement, or to assist others in so doing. Examples of such prohibited contestation would be, without limitation, applying for copyright, renewal copyright, trademarks, patents, etc. for the MATERIALS and RIGHTS herein specified or the publication by KIRBY or his assigns or agents of literary property which would infringe upon, violate or be confusingly similar to such MATERIALS and RIGHTS. 5. KIRBY acknowledges and agrees that all his work on the MATERIALS, and all his work which created or related to the RIGHTS, was done as an employee for hire of the Goodmans. 6. This Agreement shall be binding upon the parties hereto, their affiliates and subsidiaries, legal representatives, successors and predecessors in interest, and assigns. 7. The invalidity of any provision or part hereof or obligation hereunder, or the contravention thereby of any law, rule or regulation of any State, The Federal Government or any agency, shall not relieve any party from its obligation under, nor deprive any party of the advantages of, any other provision or part of this Agreement.

Photo courtesy of & ©Shel Dorf.

WRITERS AND ARTISTS AGREEMENT AGREEMENT dated March 24, 1975 between, MARVEL COMICS GROUP (hereinafter called “Marvel”), and Jack Kirby (hereinafter called the “Writer”/”Artist”). WHEREAS the Writer/Artist is prominent in the field and both writes the text of comic book stories and draws complete through the pencil stage the art work for comic books Marvel is desirous of retaining Writer/Artist as a writer and artist for its magazines and writer/artist is willing to render such services on the terms and conditions hereinafter set forth. NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the premises and of the mutual promises and undertakings herein contained, and for other good and valuable considerations, the parties agree as follows: 1. ENGAGEMENT. Marvel hereby employs WRITER/ARTIST and WRITER/ARTIST hereby agrees to render services to Marvel, as a writer/artist for magazines heretofore and hereinafter published by Marvel. 2. TERM. (a) Initial Term. The term of the Agreement shall be for three years commencing May 1, 1975 and ending April 30, 1978 (sometimes referred to as the engagement year). (b) Renewal Terms. In the absence of notice to the contrary given by either party to the other not less than sixty (60) days prior to the expiration of the Initial Term hereof, this Agreement shall be automatically renewed for another three years on the same terms and conditions as those herein set forth. 3. COMPENSATION. (a) Basic Compensation. For all services to be performed for and provided to Marvel hereunder, Marvel shall pay WRITER/ARTIST on a biweekly basis, a weekly salary of $1,100. For purposes of this Agreement, WRITER/ARTIST shall deliver to Marvel during the term of this Agreement thirteen (13) pages per week consisting of the written text and the finished penciled drawings. In this respect WRITER/ARTIST will make all changes and rewrite/redraw all Material as reasonably required by the Publisher of Marvel without charge (that is, rewrites/redrawings and changes shall not constitute pages for purposes of computing re fee payable hereunder. (b) Additional Compensation. In the event that it is mutually agreed to do additional pages beyond those stipulated in the proceeding paragraph the text and finished penciled drawings shall be paid for at the rate of $85.00 per page. Additional compensation shall be paid to WRITER/ARTIST forty-five (45) days after submission and acceptance of such material by Marvel. (c) Benefits. WRITER/ARTIST shall be eligible for all coverage or benefits under any plan or plans of health, hospitalization, life or other insurance available to other [employees crossed out and something handwritten in] of Marvel who are paid on a similar basis and who have a similar position. Furthermore, writer/artist shall be entitled to two (2) weeks paid vacation per annum. 4. (a) Conflict. During the period of this Agreement, WRITER/ARTIST will not engage directly or indirectly in any capacity in any business or activity which is competitive with Marvel, which could be detrimental to Marvel, or which may conflict with WRITER/ARTIST duties hereunder. (b) Editorial Stipulations. Selection as to the magazines or features written/drawn WRITER/ARTIST for Marvel, shall be determined by Marvel. (c) Extent of Service. WRITER/ARTIST agrees not to write and/or edit/draw any comic book or magazine material for anyone other than Marvel during the term of this Agreement without the prior written approval of Marvel. (d) Credits. WRITER/ARTIST shall be given credit, where appropriate in comics in which he is the sole writer/artist. 5. Publisher. In performing all services required hereunder, WRITER/ARTIST shall act under the direction of the Publisher of Marvel. WRITER/ARTIST shall consult with him on all matters touching upon editorial policies, in order to assure the efficiency and harmonious operation of Marvel and to meet with the Publisher of Marvel at regular intervals at Publisher’s request at Marvel’s offices in New York, New York. WRITER/ARTIST shall accept assignments from the Publisher of Marvel to write, edit, and/or draw all magazines presently published or hereafter published by Marvel and further agrees that he will make no commitments whatsoever (whether financial or otherwise) on behalf of Marvel without the prior written consent of the Publisher of Marvel. It is understood the writer/artist lives in California and, therefore, one trip per year will be at the writer/artist’s expense and all other trips when requested by Marvel shall be at its expense. 6. Termination. Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent Marvel from terminating WRITER’S/ARTISTS ‘S engagement hereunder at any time (a) because of his fraud, misappropriation, embezzlement, or the like, or (b) if he has become so disabled as to preclude him from render-ing satisfactory services, or (c) if he shall have violated any provision of this Agreement, or (d) if WRITER/ARTIST is unavailable, for whatever cause, for a continuous period of more than two months, or (e) if his work has not met the performance standards required by Marvel from other persons performing similar services for Marvel. In such event(s), except as provided in (b) above, all obligations of Marvel hereunder shall cease and WRITER/ARTIST shall be liable to Marvel for breach of this Agreement. 7. Rights to Material. WRITER/ARTIST grants to Marvel the sole and exclusive right to all Material delivered to Marvel hereunder including, but not limited to, (a) the exclusive right to secure copyright(s) in the Material in the United States, Canada, and throughout the world, (b) the magazine rights therein of every kind, (c) all film and dramatic rights of every kind, (d) all anthology, advertising and promotion rights therein, and (e) all reprint rights. The exclusive rights herein granted shall be Marvel’s property for the period of the copyright and any renewals thereof. 8. Originality of Material. WRITER/ARTIST represents that the Material written/drawn by him will be original and not heretofore published and that it will not infringe upon any statutory copyright, common law copyright or any other proprietary right. 9. Use of Name. Marvel shall at all times have the right to use WRITER’S/ARTIST’S name and likeness in connection with the sale, promotion and distribution of any magazines which include Material delivered to Marvel. 10. Series and Ideas. If any Material delivered hereunder is part of a series, the idea and the character or characters used therein shall constitute Marvel’s exclusive property for all times. 11. Additional Documents. WRITERS/ARTISTS shall, at Marvel’s expense, take such steps and execute and deliver such further documents from time to time as Marvel may request for the purpose of confirming the rights herein granted to Marvel. 12. Notices. Any notices required or permitted to be given under this Agreement shall be sufficient if in writing, and if sent by registered mail to his residence in the case of WRITER/ARTIST, or to Publisher, Marvel Comics Group at its principal office in the case of Marvel (with a copy to Secretary and Counsel, Cadence Industries Corporation, 21 Henderson Drive, West Caldwell, New Jersey 07006). _ 13. Waiver of Breach. The waiver by Marvel of a breach of any provision of this Agreement by the WRITER/ARTIST shall not operate or be construed as a waiver of any subsequent breach by the WRiTER/ARTIST. The waiver by the WRITER/ARTIST of a breach of any provisions of this Agreement by Marvel shall not operate or be construed as a waiver of any subsequent breach by Marvel. 14. Covenants. WRITER/ARTIST agrees that he shall not make and/or sign any other contract or agreement, written or oral, which shall be in conflict with the terms of this Agreement or prevent or hinder his performance hereunder for the length of this Agreement or any extension or renewal thereof, and further agrees that he has the full and unrestricted right to enter into this Agreement and deliver the Material hereunder. 15. Assignment. The rights and obligations of Marvel under this Agreement shall inure to the benefit of and shall be binding upon the successors and assigns of Marvel. 16. Entire Agreement. This instrument contains the entire Agreement of the parties. It may not be changed orally but only by an agreement in writing signed by the party against whom enforcement of any waiver, change, modification, extension, or discharge is sought. 17. Arbitration. Any claim, dispute or controversy arising out of or in connection with this Agreement or the breach thereof will be submitted by either party to arbitration in New York City before three arbitrators appointed by the American Arbitration Association. The arbitration will proceed under the rules of the Association then obtaining. The award of the arbitrators will be binding and conclusive on both parties, and will be rendered in such form that a judgement may be entered thereon in the highest court of any forum having jurisdiction. 18. Taxes. All taxes will be taken out of the writer/artist’s salary check by Marvel and paid to the government.

about the defacto end to the Simon & Kirby team, as Joe went off to work for advertising agencies, Archie Comics and Sick Magazine, and Jack floundered about looking for comics work, ending up back at Timely (then Atlas, and soon to be Marvel Comics). The need for income during a slump in the comics industry apparently gave Jack the incentive to eat crow and return to Martin Goodman’s company, despite his earlier shabby treatment. Without any form of written contract, Jack went on to co-create most of what Marvel’s famous for today,

Kirby an amount equal to the smaller portion of the final settlement, less the $1000 (plus interest) Jack still owed Marvel on his moving loan. Jack received his settlement in two payments, one on April 7, 1972, and the second on June 20, 1972. (Goodman did eventually sell the company, but wanted his son Chip put in charge after he left. He

a letter agreeing to have Jack sign the same Artwork Release form other artists signed to get their art back, along with an additional document reaffirming what the two earlier contracts had stated. On October 16, 1986, Marvel sent Jack’s lawyer a copy of the inventory list showing what Kirby art they had in the files to return to him. Jack got a small percentage back of the art he’d drawn for Marvel in the 1960s, most of which he sold over the years to leave an inheritance for his children. Joe Simon recently sued Marvel again for ownership of Captain America, and just this year reached an out-of-court settlement that finally puts a Simon & Kirby creator credit on the book. That’s as close to a happy ending as this tale can have. ★

Warehouse Of Doom?

irby

fan sket ch o f Dr.

m. Doo

and Captain America is still a headliner over sixty years after his debut. But Marvel dropped the ball in 1968, forgetting to renew the 27-year copyright term on Captain America, and Joe Simon swooped in to file for the copyrights on the first ten issues. A flurry of legal activities ensued, since Goodman was considering selling his company, and such a dispute could nix any deal. For his part, Jack was stuck between loyalty to his old partner (whom he’d apparently had little contact with since their breakup) and his current employer. Goodman told Jack that Simon would gain full ownership, cutting Jack out of the loop, unless Jack sided with Marvel to say that the pair had created Cap as employees of Marvel. As compensation, Goodman promised to pay Jack a sum equivalent to whatever Simon would be paid in any out-of-court settlement. A short time earlier, Jack had decided to move his family from New York to California, to ease his daughter Lisa’s asthma with a more conducive climate. With four kids to support, and a lifetime of often living paycheck-to-paycheck in the topsy-turvy world of comics, he had little in the bank, so he asked for and received a $2000 loan from Marvel on May 22, 1968 to help with his moving expenses. Jack repaid half of it on August 31, 1968, but the balance of the loan was payable on-demand, which undoubtedly became a factor in Jack’s decision to side with Goodman against Simon. So he eventually signed the Assignment (shown at the beginning of this article, which was drafted in July 1970, but not finally signed by Jack until May 30, 1972), relinquishing all claim to ownership of Captain America and any other characters he worked on in a freelance capacity for Timely/Atlas/Marvel Comics. Needless to say, this wasn’t the smartest business decision Jack made in his life, but for various reasons, he felt compelled to sign. Simon had signed a similar agreement on November 5, 1969, and Goodman, always the shrewd businessman, arranged to only pay Simon a small portion of the money owed directly—$3750—and paid Simon’s lawyer the much larger balance, to be transferred to Simon later. In this way, Goodman only had to pay

eventually started Atlas/Seaboard Publications when Stan Lee was made Publisher of Marvel instead of Chip, hoping to compete with the House of Ideas. It failed miserably.) By the time Kirby finally signed the 1972 Captain America Assignment, he was firmly entrenched at DC Comics doing his Fourth World series, and probably felt his future was secure at DC. So it must have been even more galling to head back to Marvel for a third and final time in 1975, following a mixed-bag of successes and failures at DC, to begin work again on Captain America. But in that ’70s era of dwindling comics sales, DC and Marvel were the only real choices, and Goodman was no longer in charge. So Jack signed yet another contract (shown here) dated March 24, 1975, which outlined his responsibilities at Marvel in the postGoodman era, paying him $85 per page, and requiring him to produce 13 pages a week (a staggering total for nearly anyone except the everspeedy Kirby). When his contract at Marvel expired on April 30, 1978, he didn’t renew it, and instead went on to a successful career in animation, and with independent comics publishers like Pacific and Eclipse. But both contracts would come back to haunt him in the 1980s, as he battled with Marvel over ownership of his original art from the 1960s. Part of the problem was Jack’s later discovery of Goodman’s deceptive payment on the Captain America settlement to Simon. Apparently in Jack’s mind, that technically voided the agreement, and as things heated up in his artwork battle, he felt he was free to use the implied threat of copyright ownership as leverage to get his art back. (According to Marvel’s lawyers, Jack’s attorney raised the issue of copyrights for Spider-Man, Hulk, and the Fantastic Four in a letter dated April 15, 1985.) While Jack’s 1975 contract stated that he relinquished all rights to characters created from that time-on, it wasn’t until Marvel finally found a copy of the earlier Captain America agreement on August 21, 1985 that movement was made on getting Jack his art back. (Supposedly, the 1972 contract was mistakenly filed with papers for Jack’s Silver Surfer Graphic Novel, which is why it wasn’t found sooner.) On March 13, 1986, secure in their legal paper trail proving company ownership, Marvel’s lawyers sent

Marvel Comics editor Mike Higgins related to us a tale of “Bernie,” Marvel’s office manager in the 1970s. At an early 1980s Christmas party, Mike remembers talking to several people who worked in the warehouse where Marvel stored artwork. According to Mike, most of the people who worked in Marvel’s warehouse were comics fans. Bernie had no interest in comics, and held comics fans in contempt. So new hires were put through a sort of “initiation” by Bernie, wherein they had to destroy pieces of original comic book art to prove their loyalty. Mike remembers two stories in particular. One was of an employee who was forced to burn pages of original art. Among them were pages of the Galactus Trilogy. The employee burned some of the other pages, but managed to slip the Galactus pages out before they could be set afire. Another story has an employee forced to rip pages of Fantastic Four #5 in half. (We at TJKC were also contacted by another former Marvel warehouse employee—who wishes to remain anonymous—who on at least one occasion saw people destroying Kirby pages.) Mike Higgins recalls (and so do we) reading somewhere that, when Jack’s pages were finally returned, some of them had been ripped in half. Can anyone track this down? And if anyone out there was a former employee at Marvel’s art warehouse, please get in contact with us if you can shed any light on the goings-on there. ★

The Equation For Success

Analysis

Economics Vs. Creativity during Jack’s second tenure at Marvel, by Gary Picariello (below) A fan commission featuring the FF duking it out with the Eternals! Now that would’ve been a big selling issue! The copy of these pencils in Jack’s files is unfortunately truncated, so the bottom area is missing. Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

’ve admired Jack’s work for years. As a young lad in the ’60s, Kirby’s Marvelous imagination took me places I could hardly fathom! During the early ’70s—when Jack jumped ship to DC—his ideas and approach to the medium continued to broaden my horizons. His work on the Fourth World series made me realize the as-yet untapped potential in comics. But by the mid ’70s—during Jack’s second tenure at Marvel—my own maturity brought on a healthy critique of Jack’s work. I was still thoroughly entertained by his wild concepts and pulse-pounding pencils, but I started to notice, question and even agree with the ever-increasing criticism heaped on Jack’s writing and his

reluctance to form any type of continuity with the Marvel Universe. Now in the present, I can afford to step back and try to put this type of “conflict” into some sort of perspective, as I wonder why Jack couldn’t balance his own creativity with the demands of earning a living in an environment whose very existence depended on the “bottom line.” A simple equation of “economics vs. creativity” is in order here: “Person A” produces something. “Person B” enjoys it, and buys it. And “B” will continue to purchase what “A” produces as longs as “A” meets the standards which “B” has formally or informally enforced through his/her buying habits. It’s an equation that can be applied to almost anything. Yet for reasons that escape me, Jack lost sight of this and would not or could not perform this. With regards to this “equation,” the Marvel readership (during the mid-’70s) was practically demanding that Jack integrate his books into the Marvel Universe. Almost immediately with Captain America. Later on it was the Eternals and Black Panther and Machine Man. Jack didn’t comply and as a result these books were canceled and Jack himself left Marvel shortly after. My logic—simple that it may be—wonders why Jack couldn’t find a solution to this problem within the context of his work. Much has been made about Jack’s desire to be left alone to create and write what he wanted. That’s all well and good, but if I’m Jack Kirby and I’m seeing a trend where all my books get cancelled (and this started within two years of Jack’s arrival at DC), I might at least consider to meet my employers halfway. And by “halfway” I mean more than an occasional reference to S.H.I.E.L.D. or a guest-stint by a robotic Hulk! Jack stated in more interviews than I can remember how important it was for his books to make money, as well as the precious link that existed between the success of his books and his ability to support a family. So what was the problem? It’s something I shall refer to as the “Kirby Survival Attitude.” It’s an “attitude” that was the product of surviving a rough and tumble childhood and supporting a family, but also the product of finding 23

and maintaining success in a career field that he practically created from scratch. That same Kirby instinct that enabled Jack to last so long in a such a crazy career may have also led to his downfall. And yet it didn’t have to be that way. How difficult would it have been for Jack to alternate his “weird science” storylines in Captain America with more conventional ones with the characters he helped create? How difficult would it have been to actually see Nick Fury instead if just hear about him? Likewise, the inclusion of Galactus and the Silver Surfer would have made one heck of a storyline in the Eternals! And the Fantastic Four in Black Panther! I think the fans would have fallen all over themselves! I think it would have put Jack right back on top of the charts! How is it, that Jack could draw countless covers during the mid-’70s full of Marvel characters (even some he didn’t create) yet he couldn’t stick them in his books? I can almost feel the hail of stones, but just because you’re Jack Kirby, that doesn’t

put you head and shoulders above your employers or your audience! Mark Evanier once posted on the Internet excerpts from an Archie Goodwin interview which painted a scenario that Jack was happy to return to Marvel and do “just about anything” to help, except use any of his old characters. ARCHIE: “...We felt or maybe Stan felt it [Captain America] should have been connecting more with other books. We wanted Jack to use some of the villains that were current in other books so the kids reading this book would read Avengers, and the kids reading Avengers would read this book. Make them closer connected in other words. I guess we figured it could only help sales. But Jack said he didn’t want to do it. He was willing to be very cooperative and do what he could to boost sales, but he felt he couldn’t work like that....” Again—what compelled Jack to do this? It’s been presented in other articles that Jack didn’t want to compete with himself; didn’t want to go backwards to the ’60s. And I realize Marvel was probably just glad to get Jack back regardless of what he was doing. But we’re not talking rocket science here— why the heck couldn’t Marvel be a little more specific with its wants from Jack Kirby before he

returned? For example, “Jack , you can write/draw/ edit three books a month, but they have to interact with the established Marvel Universe; now sign on the dotted line.” And why didn’t Jack take a little more time and spell out his desires from Marvel before returning? For example, “I’ll do whatever you want but don’t ask me to draw any old characters of mine.” From a business standpoint alone it just baffles me how both parties could have dropped the ball on what to me is a pretty fundamental issue concerning a contract! The fact that Jack was able to return to Marvel with such a degree of creative autonomy is reason enough for him to have hit his knees and give thanks for a second chance! Time has shed new light on the New Gods trilogy but at the time it was nothing more than a noble idea that had failed. And unfortunately —with the possible exception of Kamandi—everything Jack produced at DC got cancelled (and even that tanked, thanks the DC Implosion). True, lots of comics during these years were getting cancelled, not just Jack’s. Was it right to hold Jack to a higher standard? As the creator of the Marvel Universe he had a lot to live up to. Again, he could have delivered the “goods.” In an interview Jack gave with Comics Scene (CS #2, 1980) Jack states: “...I was taking them [his Marvel books] places you couldn’t imagine! But they were never given a chance...” I beg to differ with this. I think Jack was given a “chance”; a chance to at least meet his readership halfway. Integrate his books with other characters. He unfortunately did not... and his standing in the industry suffered because of it. It’s admirable that Jack had the intestinal fortitude to want to do things “his way.” Certainly he earned the right. He was light-years ahead of the comics industry (in fact the industry is still catching up). And it’s nice that both Marvel and DC allowed Jack the relative freedom to be writer/editor/ artist. But I can’t help but wonder how different things might have been (at least during Jack’s second return to Marvel) if Jack had put aside that attitude and tried to be a little bit more of a businessman with an eye towards giving the customer/employer what it wanted. As a result we all suffered—Jack the most of all. ★

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 ast issue, we examined how Jack Kirby developed the look of the Wizard, using his own visual shorthand to identify key aspects of the character for the sake of his own memory. This time, we continue by examining the Wizard’s occasional partner: PastePot Pete, and how he was developed into the Trapster. Like many characters in the Marvel mythos, the Trapster began his life rather humbly, in the pages of Strange Tales #104 as a petty crook named Paste-Pot Pete. His original design by Jack seems to resemble an artist’s coveralls, but the over-sized bow tie gave him the air of a clown, despite the evil sneer and goatee. The design was not one of Jack’s better ones and Dick Ayers’ rendering in the character’s second appearance only helps to encourage his clownish presentation. Stan Lee, as Marvel’s art director at the time, evidently ordered a costume change in Strange Tales #124 for Pete’s fourth appearance. The coveralls were Strange Tales #104 (Kirby/Ay discarded for a more utilitarian design, where Pete’s ers). cumbersome bucket o’ paste is swapped for a “bullet-proof paste-filled vest.” The costume, presumably designed by Dick, also bears an unusual zig-zag design across the middle. This author can detect no meaning in the design and it appears to only be something to provide some visual interest to an otherwise unremarkable costume. Jack then got his chance to redesign the character. Fantastic Four #36 marks the first appearance of an evil FF: the Frightful Four. Stan brought back the Wizard and Paste(Ayers art). Strange Tales #124 Pot Pete—who had already teamed up against the Human Torch in Strange Tales— and allied them with the Sandman, who had also fought the Torch in Amazing Spider-Man. It is interesting to note that Medusa is clearly a new, Kirby-designed character and the Wizard and Paste-Pot Pete were redesigns of Kirby-created characters that had already been re-worked by Dick Ayers. The Sandman, however, stands out as the only one who did not undergo a radical change, seemingly in deference to his visual creator: Steve Ditko. Early in the story, the Sandman and Paste-Pot Pete meet the Wizard—all appearing as they were seen in their previous appearance. When we next see them, however, the Wizard has already changed and we actually see Pete discarding his old outfit and suiting up in one with a more flexible design. The headpiece from the Ayers design remained, but the vest design is redone with a series of boxes that appear to be nothing more than stylized suspenders. Jack also heightened the boots to fold over ks). ic Stone in h (C 6 on themselves in the mid-thigh. 3 # r Fou Fantastic Paste-Pot Pete, and the rest of the Frightful Four, disappear for an issue and return in Fantastic Four #38. Interestingly, Paste-Pot Pete now changes his identity to the Trapster and has a wealth of new

gadgets at his disposal. Although the exact reasons for the change are elusive, one can guess from the letters written about #36. One fan compares Pete to Bill Cosby and another cites that the changes are already “improved a hundredfold” from Pete’s days in Strange Tales. Stan’s dialogue in #38 reflects the new direction Pete is taking: “So, from now on, I’ll be known as the Trapster! That’s a name with dignity... with drama to it!” It would seem that Stan was intent on making the Trapster a considerably more formidable foe than Paste-Pot Pete. With this new drama comes another costume change, although this time, it is much more subtle. The tall boots are replaced with shorter ones to allow for pockets running down the length of the Trapster’s legs. Gloves with additional pockets are added. s). Even more pouches are now on nott ink (Joe Sin 4 9 his boots and sleeves, and the # r u c Fo Fantasti box-design suspenders become a series of pockets as well—all of which evidently contain a host of new weapons and traps. It seems that when Stan suggested the new identity for Paste-Pot Pete, Jack made some fairly minimal costume alterations to reflect the new tactics the character would likely employ. What is striking throughout most of these changes, though, is that the Trapster’s helmet is not modified at all from Dick’s design, and the paste-gun remains fairly consistent (for Jack) with its first appearance back in Strange Tales #104. It would seem that Jack felt those two visual characteristics were the visual keys to the character. Indeed, looking at the finished artwork in #41 and #42, variations of the costume from panel to panel are easily identified. Although some might argue this was some rushed work of inker Vince Colletta, it could well be a more accurate reflection of Jack’s pencils—things that a Chic Stone or Joe Sinnott would have embellished further for consistency. However, the paste-gun even loses much of its significance a few years later when, in Captain America #108, it resembles an automatic pistol. The thigh-high boots return, the pockets disappear and readers are left with only the helmet. The Trapster has since undergone an inordinate number of costume changes, while most of his contemporaries—the Wizard, Medusa, and Sandman—have not. It is perhaps in part because Jack was unwilling or unable to simplify Pete’s costume so that artists could remember and replicate it easily. The Wizard, as Captain America noted last #108 (Syd Shor es inks). issue, had a handful of distinguishing elements that easily combined into a recognizable uniform. The Trapster’s complex costume had only one memorable trait, which gave tacit permission for later artists to modify at will. ★ (See Sean’s website at www.FFPlaza.com) Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Obscura

Barry Forshaw

Get your checkbook out: This issue’s selections have never been reprinted, so if you want to see more of them, you’ll have to buy for the original issues! Tales of the Unexpected TM & ©2004 DC Comics. Race for the Moon TM & ©2004 Harvey Comics

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

ven the most devoted Kirbyite has (occasionally) to tire of the granitemuscled super-heroes that the uninitiated regard as the sum total of the Kirby style. Admittedly, there’s a wealth of imagination and dazzling graphic style in the King’s FF/Thor/ Captain America work, but the most concentrated example of his skills unquestionably lies in his neglected ’50s work, with nary a bulging bicep in sight. Why? Think about it—when dealing with an SF, fantasy or horror tale, Kirby cannot rely on impressively rendered musculature to rock us on our heels: SF requires fantastic machinery and futuristic societies; fantasy needs quirkilyrendered mood; and horror (even the rather restrained variety Kirby traded in) demands above all the conjuring of grim mood and atmosphere. And the man was, of course, a master in all those territories, with composition always at the service of the basic theme of the tale. Also, deprived of Captain America’s panelspanning leaps, Kirby

had to work harder at every panel of his non-seriescharacter tales, often spinning out a wealth of imagination that would (in lesser hands) serve for an entire comic; there’s a page in BlastOff/The Three Rocketeers (to be discussed at a future date in this column) that has so much bizarre imagination crammed into just the six panels of one page that it makes the surrealist palette of a painter such as Dali look impoverished. And if you want proof of this thesis, pick up a copy of DC’s Tales of the Unexpected #18 (1957). Before their spat over rights, editor Jack Schiff commissioned some sterling work from Kirby, as this very collectable comic proves. The cover instantly grabs the viewer, quite as eye-catching as Gil Kane’s work for DC’s two flagship SF titles, Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures (it’s a shame that Kirby only contributed one reprint filler to Julie Schwartz’s books, but perhaps working with the more workaday Schiff allowed him to blossom). The cover, illustrating Kirby’s interior tale, “The Man Who Collected Worlds” (or “Planets,” as the splash says) has it all: A bizarre alien (humanoid in form but composed of glowing energy), a detailed spaceship interior with eye-boggling machines, the menaced planet Earth visible through a porthole (Kane & Schwartz’s patented trademark), a crouching scientist hero, and (most intriguing of all) three planets reduced in size and trapped in glass containers. Yes, it’s the Brainiac/Kandor shrunken cities concept from the Weisinger-era Superman tales, given the Kirby spin. The tale itself more than lives up to the cover—and coming last in the issue, it’s salutary to compare Kirby with his artist bedfellows in the issue: The tale by the reliable (if uninspired) Jim Mooney also has aliens, spacecraft and the usual paraphernalia, but, boy, does it seem unimaginative set against Kirby’s entry! Kirby’s splash panel—with the sinister energy alien about to suck the oxygen from the glass dome containing a miniaturized Earth—sets the high-concept tone (our planet is helpfully labeled “Earth”—why does the alien write in English? And why is a crucial setting on a piece of energy-wielding machinery listed as “42-6”? Schwartz would have found a way around this!). The astronomer hero (who has a floppy, Hugh Grant-style hairstyle untypical of the Fifties) and the alien are virtually the only two characters, but Kirby’s panel compositions have a liveliness and innovation that fill 26

every page with interest. A passable Mort Meskin piece and a stronglydrawn Nick Cardy outing complete the issue, but it’s Kirby’s cover and story that make Tales of the Unexpected #18 one for the hardcore Kirby collector. Ah, the short, glorious life of Race for the Moon! This Harvey SF title— which only stretched to a pitiful three issues—is one of the true glories of the Simon/Kirby duo’s ’50s reign, and the third and final issue (with a striking rover showing a red-and-orange-suited spaceman claiming the moon for the US as heavies draw a bead on him) deserves particular distinction: Possibly the finest collection of individual splash panels in one comic in (possibly) the whole S&K oeuvre—matched by a group of stories that displays the team in optimum form (not to mention some exquisite inking by EC great Al Williamson, yoked in to ensure that no collector can ignore this title— although at the time it was probably just another job for him). But before you pick up this issue (and its two equally cherishable predecessors), a warning: You’ll want more, I promise you. In the UK, readers in the early 1960s thought they had more— the bumper 68-page one shilling reprints continued the title beyond issue #3 (with contents drawn from a variety of disparate sources) long after it had bitten the dust in the US. Kirby enthusiasts (such as this writer) kept wondering when the good artist—as we identified the then-anonymous Kirby—would return, but his reappearances in the British Race for

the Moon came in the form of less impressive Stan Lee Marvel SF tales—excellent, but not as distinctive as the original three issues of Harvey-derived stories. In fact, more was to come; material designed for Race for the Moon featuring The Three Rocketeers (a typical Kirby team of the era—Brain, Brawn and Command) was collected in BlastOff (see the first paragraph of this piece), but one can only wish that S&K had turned out acres more material such as the first tale in Race for the Moon #3, in which a Capone-like “Big Shot” suffers poetic justice courtesy of a longhaul rocket trip. Delights here include that always-unique Kirby spacesuit design—the “well-dressed Starman” panel throws away in a few shots what a dozen lesser illustrators would struggle for months to create. “Saucer Man,” the next tale, is (if anything) even better— not least because of the impeccably smooth Al Williamson inks that enhance the King’s pencils. How do you make Kirby’s space hardware look even better? Turn one of the masters of EC SF delineation loose with a brush—and boy, does it pay off here. This is another sharply turned tale of an alien encounter (with an initially menacing space creature who turns out to be merely in trouble—ET territory in embryo); the piece has a

slew of wonderful touches—a nifty space hopper that looks like a dry run for the Fantastic Four’s Fantasticar, while the space-suited alien itself is a wonderfully weird creation (we never see the creature, only its protective garb), pumping gas from a hose (that is not what it seems). And the panel of two space-cycles carrying the inert form of the alien over a rocky landscape is another piece of throwaway Kirby brilliance. If the penultimate tale is the least impressive of the quartet in the book, it’s still streets ahead of all but EC’s SF at its most sophisticated. And a case could be made that (like all the Simon & Kirby books for Harvey) the effect of the tale is cumulative; this minor piece is an opportunity for a pause for breath before the all-stops-out finale. But “Space Garbage” is still essential for Kirbyites: An amazing splash panel sets things up; a space-suited heavy is strapped to an asteroid as a small ship approaches him, with the logo of the tale embossed on one of the chunks of floating debris. Another story of an unpleasant future criminal getting his just deserts, the piece sports some knockout panels, such as an impressive portable laboratory being set up on an asteroid by yellowgarbed astronauts, as the scowling heavy looks on under guard, and the chase over the asteroid surface is as kinetic a piece of panel orchestration as you’ll find in Kirby. But then we have the wind-up—and “Garden of Eden,” another Kirby vision of space arcadia, is delineated again by the master of all such SF exotica, Al Williamson, the perfect renderer for The King’s pencil concepts (and there’s a futuristic house here that shows Kirby could profitably have taken the Frank Lloyd Wright route, his architectural imagination being another part of his protean talent). Like “The Face on Mars” in an earlier Race for the Moon, this is a deceptive picture of an idyllic society, an Eden in space that has a dark secret (it would hardly be dramatic if all was sweetness and light, would it?). The splash panel, with a nattily dressed astronaut (note the pistol attached to his left breast—another Kirby design felicity) being led through a sumptuous otherworld garden by a truly exotic and beautiful non-human woman. The tendrils that wave from her hair are an example of another trademark of The King: A woman’s hairstyle becomes a visually defining element. If at the end of the piece, you’re left with a feeling of sadness, it’s only because (the BlastOff mop-up issue aside) this is the end of the brief, glorious, three-issue run of Race for the Moon. Requiescat in pace. ★ (Barry Forshaw is editor of Crime Time magazine.)

Gallery 1

Covering The ’70S

hough Jack didn’t utilize his 1960s Marvel characters in his 1970s Marvel stories, he sure drew a plethora of them on 1970s covers—including a wealth of characters he had no involvement in the creation of at all. So here we present a big batch of 1970s Marvel Kirby covers, still in pencil. This page: Jack gave Iron Man a little too much facial detail on this cover to Avengers #151 (Sept. 1976). Page 29: Invaders #5 (March 1976). A scene of classic Golden Age characters, in a WWII street scene Jack likely experienced firsthand (minus the superbeings, of course). Page 30: Invaders #8 (Sept. 1976). One of Jack’s most iconic covers of the 1970s.

Page 32: Marvel TwoIn-One #25 (March 1977). Probably the only time Jack ever drew Iron Fist. Note his comment, “Can’t make out detail of this weapon,” indicating he was working from someone else’s layout (probably Marie Severin’s), as he would likely do on most of these 1970s covers.

Page 31: Marvel TwoIn-One #19 (Sept. 1976). Jack may have gotten this job because the Thing was cover-featured, but he did a bang-up job on Tigra.

This page: Another cover tailor-made for Jack, from Marvel Premiere #29 (April 1976), featuring Bucky and the Liberty Legion. Page 34: Thor #258 (April 1977). This cover is Jack’s last work on Thor, and harks back to his earlier Thor days with the Grey Gargoyle as the villain. Page 35: Nova #7 (March 1977). Just a really nice cover composition!

Page 38: Avengers #148 (June 1976). From looking at the ease with which Jack drew them, you’d think the Squadron Supreme had been created by Jack. Page 39: Champions #6 (June 1976). Kirby gets to draw a few of his classic characters: Hercules, Iceman, and Angel. But Jack apparently used old reference for his depiction of Angel, putting him in his original X-Men uniform, which was modified at the inking stage to his then-current red and yellow uniform.

Page 36: Cover pencils for Weird Wonder Tales #18 (Oct. 1976). This issue reprinted “I Created Krang,” an Atlas monster from Tales To Astonish #14 (Dec. 1960). Most of these 1970s monster reprint comics simply reused the original covers, but Marvel had Jack create a new cover featuring the giant ant-monster.

Page 37: Weird Wonder Tales #20 (Jan. 1977). Kirby’s first Marvel hero, Dr. Droom, returns (renamed Dr. Druid to avoid confusion with Dr. Doom) in this allreprint book sporting a new Kirby cover.

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

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN his issue we consider creators who are adding to the Kirby legacy more literally than many—with period-style monster stories, a counterfeit final issue of one of his unfinished favorites, and a “lost” story from an obscure (not to mention nonexistent) publisher, all of which could have been by the King himself. So travel with us now through the rich past that lies ahead of him…

Monster Hit Kirby’s mature style was so joyously unrestrained that one of the hardest things for a disciple to do is go back to his less certain but still fertile formative periods. But writer/artist Chris Wisnia manages it in a series of tributes to the King’s notorious 1950s giant-monster stories—inked by a still very real Dick Ayers! These appear in Wisnia’s ambitious and handsomely presented indie Tabloia, a graphic homage to the true-crime and supernatural-phenomena pulps and digests that have stalked newsstands and supermarket checkouts for as long as there’s been cheap paper and cheaper publishers. Wisnia’s prolific work has a formative feel itself, giving a sense of the early stages of a very special talent. The pace can slacken and the humor can be hit-and-miss, but there is a dreamlike logic and infectious self-assurance to the whole that keeps you reading. (A faith which is borne out by some of the advance stories Wisnia furnished for this column—in particular “When Plopsplu Collides With the Honking Thing!”, seeing print sometime next spring, is an absurdist classic.) There’s greatness bubbling under the surface here like a Creature That Burst From a Volcano, and when it walks the earth, watch out! [www.tabloia.com]

The World That Came Back OMAC #9, a labor of love by British writer/inker David Morris and artist Dek Baker, is a marvel to compare with the technological wonders of Kirby’s underrated scifi supersoldier saga. But “Dek ’n’ Dave” aren’t dealing with the future so much as unfinished history, providing a satisfying conclusion to the storyline abruptly truncated with Kirby’s departure at the end of issue #8. Since we still haven’t seen the flying cars and life-extending body trade-ins of Kirby’s “World That’s Coming,” waiting 30 years for this finale is nothing—and the creative team makes it feel like not more than a month has passed since the thrills Kirby delivered in an early-’70s childhood. Morris has an uncanny instinct for the tight pacing and telegraphic copy Kirby honed his storytelling to as the end of his DC contract neared, and the outpouring of fresh ideas that also fluidly tie in to the pre-established plot is true to both Kirby’s traditions and his unpredictability. In 22 short pages we go from outer space to the depths of Buddy Blank’s psyche in a smart, frothy yarn that acknowledges the eccentricities of Kirby’s epic while fulfilling its possibilities. Baker’s design sense equals Kirby’s imagination, and his rendering evokes Kirby’s close enough (surpassing him in facial expressiveness if sometimes falling short in credible perspective and physical grace). Kirby’s own late-career work on DC’s Super Powers was less of a tribute to his prime, so DC should accept Dek ’n’ Dave’s effort as the official ending to any OMAC collection they might be considering (right now the team’s avoiding copyright wrath by just giving it out free). In any case, the pun is unavoidable: These are two creators with a real future. [For $2.00 postage & packaging (U.S.) or £1.00 (U.K.) copies are still available from: David Morris, 235 Sturminster Road, Stockwood, Bristol BS14 8EW U.K.]

Medium Barda One of the main Comics You Should Be Reading is Dark Horse’s The Escapist, which takes off from the comic-within-a-novel in Michael Chabon’s 40

masterful Pulitzer Prize winner The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and has quickly moved to the top ranks of the Moore-ish meta-retro genre. Among its period pastiches by star creators, of special note to Kirby fans was the third issue’s feature-lengther on the character Luna Moth, written by regular scripter Kevin McCarthy (who serves as the kind of brilliant house band to the symphony of guest-star talent Chabon and editor Diana Schutz orchestrate) and drawn by Dean Haspiel, one of contemporary comics’ hippest pop artists, here masquerading as the pseudonym of a moonlighting mid-’60s Jack Kirby working for the fictional Fab Comics. The story exhibits the Luna Moth series’ usual deft semi-seriousness and clever ambiguities between what’s experienced and what’s imagined, while McCarthy and Haspiel capture the headlong pace and blockbuster composition of vintage Marvelism astutely. Haspiel’s own poppy personality takes precedence, but then that’s how Kirby would’ve wanted it, and the splash page reproduced here sets the mood in (note-perfect) style.

Kirby as a Reference You’re missing comics history being both honored and made if you’re not picking up Darwyn Cooke (writer/artist) and Dave Stewart (colorist)’s The New Frontier, an epic chronicle of DC’s Silver Age and America’s turbulent transition to a superpower of another sort. Cooke has a novelist’s ear for the texture of a time; his dynamic, deceptively simple style makes him unsurpassed among contemporary comics artists for a rare blend of thrills and charm; and Stewart’s rich, nuanced colors mark him as comics’ leading cinematographer. Notwithstanding the occasional verbal anachronism (a common occupational hazard of period comics) and a few shakily handled text interludes, no one has imagined a super-hero saga of such dimension and meaning since Watchmen. Kirby is a clear influence, and is slyly credited in a passing mention at the beginning of “Book Five,” when the Challengers of the Unknown’s spectacular hideout architecture is attributed to “this reclusive genius named Kurtzburg”—one letter away from the King’s old-country surname. A fittingly onthe-fly acknowledgement of where comics’ vast possibilities come from, given by a creator in the midst of showing how far they can go. ★ (Adam McGovern lives in Mt. Tabor, NJ, where he had nothing better to do with his time than write three separate articles for this issue, for which we’re very thankful.)

New Frontier TM

Comics.

ANIMATTERS

Marvel Man

An animated talk with a father of the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons

Article by Adam McGovern Interview with Robert Lawrence conducted September 20, 2004 by Arlen Schumer, Adam McGovern and Steve Lawrence; transcribed by Steven Tice. o pop nostalgists of a certain age (or several, thanks to syndication and home-video), there are few touchstones as major as the 1966 Marvel Super-Heroes series, a single season’s worth of daily animated adventures with five of the then-upstart company’s most popular characters. Shown one hero a day, the cartoons brought to life Captain America (often with a number of Avengers guest-stars), the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Sub-Mariner, courtesy of the production team Grantray-Lawrence (named for its principals Grant Simmons, Ray Patterson and Robert Lawrence). The company would later carve itself into pop-culture history by launching the 1967-70 SpiderMan cartoon (their one season being the best capturing of that character’s flavor until the 2004 Spider-Man 2 film), but the Marvel Super-Heroes show holds a special place in enthusiasts’ hearts. This may be partly because its very rarity makes it a special treasure, and partly because of timing; with the show always scheduled when young children were most likely

to be watching, more than one generation has discovered the Marvel characters by way of the cartoons before they were even old enough to read a comic. This spins a spell of fond memory that some fans manage to break; many deride the ultra-limited animation as laughably cheap. But many others see beyond this to the reluctantly budget-conscious producers’ admirable resourcefulness, and their clear reverence for the material: Shot directly from the comic art by Kirby (Cap, Hulk, Thor), Ditko (Hulk), Colan (Iron Man, Subby), and Heck (Iron Man, Cap), with minimal hand, eye and mouth motion and some panning across scenes and tracking of still figures across backgrounds Terry Gilliam-style, the shows were like a talking gallery of classic Marvel art, a kind of SuperpowerPoint prized by kitsch and culture connoisseurs alike. (The same can be said for a feature perhaps even more well-remembered than the shows themselves: their theme songs, legendarily goofy jingles with one foot in the Tin Pan Alley of Steve Rogers’ time and one in the hip-

ster lounge of Tony Stark’s.) Seeming virtually filmed on newsprint by creators with fourcolor ink in their veins, the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons are a one-of-a-kind pop artifact. In the late summer of 2004 the proprietor of another great figurative gallery of super-hero art, designer Arlen Schumer (whose coffee-table history The Silver Age of Comic Book Art has created a culture-wide stir), introduced TJKC columnist Adam McGovern to

Robert Lawrence, creative force behind these classic cartoons. Bob was eager to speak for the historical record about the pop-art icon he helped create, and doing so while in a real-life battle with a serious illness testified to both his enthusiasm and graciousness. Though, to his regret, he never met Kirby and thus couldn’t bring his gift for anecdote to this magazine’s namesake, few people have been as responsible as Bob was for exposing the Kirby canon to America’s mainstream households and impressionable minds, making his insights as interesting to the Kirby specialist as they are to comics fans of all tastes. With lively accounts of heady times, we learned that all these years later Robert Lawrence still had intriguing tales to tell… ADAM MCGOVERN: Could you first explain for us how you came to do these cartoons? Did you approach Marvel or did they approach you?

BOB LAWRENCE: I was associated with a fascinating group of animators in Hollywood. Some of the best ones [were] Ray Patterson [and] Grant Simmons, and we were doing animation work; programs and commercials as well. And the comic books intrigued me. I’m not a comic book reader per se, but the artwork to me was absolutely alluring. We decided to see if we could animate a book. Now, if you recall, at that particular period, the business was in a slump, and [Marvel publishers] the Goodmans, papa and son, were fighting to stay alive. And fortuitously, I was able to make contact with them. I fought hard for a contract, and we wrote an unbelievable contract with the Goodmans, because they didn’t know what they had and where to go. Believe it or not, in this contract I was able to obtain participation in the merchandising rights, and continuing interest in it. And we proceeded to run some tests to

(above, and previous page) This promotional booklet was sent out to help syndicate the show to local television stations across the U.S. (center) Animation cel art, before coloring. All characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

see how this would work. And the tests were fantastic. Now, one of the great positive elements of it is that we had Stan Lee, who is absolutely brilliant, as you know. And I did a pilot— ARLEN SCHUMER: A tape of Stan Lee hosting? BOB: Presenting this concept. And that is what really sold the concept. So then, when we saw what we had here, the next step was to try to finance doing this thing. It’s such a complicated story. But in any event, what happened was we made a deal to produce 65 half-hours. ADAM: You said that you had not been a comic reader. How had these comics first come to your attention? BOB: Just [through] observation. I always looked at various things, I traveled a lot in Europe, here, wherever, and I admired the art. It was the art that caught my attention, and I thought something could be done with it. ARLEN: What’s amazing is that most people of your stature at that time weren’t aware of comics. The fact that you were aware enough to be inspired by them, and then to want to actually put your time and resources into them, that made you very unique. Because at the time, the average Hollywood person, until the Batman TV show, could care less about comics. So what made you lock into these new Marvel comics? Because Superman and Batman, all the rest, they’d been around. Nobody was doing animations of them at the time.

ARLEN: At the time, were you aware of what Roy Liechtenstein and Andy Warhol were doing? BOB: Absolutely.

BOB: It’s my own innate curiosity. I loved the artwork, and I had a wonderful

ARLEN: Because they were taking the actual comic book panels and painting them. In a way, what you did was the animation/television equivalent of that, by taking the actual comic art. BOB: They were the stimulators. They saw it, too, in another light, and they presented it in a very attractive way. So that even added to the interest on my part, because these were phenomenal people. ARLEN: You were aware of them first, before the Marvel comics themselves? Because I’m curious to know how you actually picked up a Marvel comic and became enthralled by the art. Did you see them on your own at the newsstand? Did somebody say, “Hey, Bob, take a look at these”? BOB: I saw them on newsstands and I was intrigued. But Liechtenstein and Andy Warhol intrigued me as well, and it all goes together in your head and [you think] “My God, why don’t we do something like that?” So we went ahead and did it, and fortuitously I had people who were willing to work with me on it.

team in Hollywood, and they were willing to do it. Y’know, doing that sort of work is extremely exciting. It’s all-encompassing. It’s 24 hours a day turning this stuff out. And I enjoyed it. I always look for something new and different to do.

1. Technician Mike Arens adds background to original art work panel. He checks comic book so his additions will be in keeping with the drawings and story treatment.

ARLEN: Do you remember the artist Jack Kirby? Did that art stand out? BOB: Isn’t that terrible, I never met Jack Kirby. I never met some of the other artists, either. ADAM: You mentioned Stan Lee being involved, though. What was the extent of

2. Next, the artwork is placed into a frame by Robert “Tiger” West and photographed by a specially-designed Xerox camera. The camera plate is then placed into an oven.

3. In the oven the image is transferred by Xerography to a transparent cel. Multiple copies are made and movement is added by shifting the mouth, arms, legs, etc.

his work on the series? BOB: Stan Lee lived out in Hewlett [Harbor], on [Long] Island. I rented a penthouse apartment for him in New York City to keep him near us so that we could work with him on a daily basis. You have no idea. This man could work 24 hours a day. Absolutely writes dialogue that makes all kinds of sense. So we had that ability. And I had this great team in Hollywood that Ray Patterson put together, and we started to animate out there to do the series. Originally, my concept was to use the original art and try to utilize that as the basis for the production, but it proved to be too costly and too complicated. [But] we learned that Disney had acquired a machine where you can copy [animation] cels, and if we’d all been smart, we would have bought stock in that company—that was the

beginning of Xerox. They had it locked up in a room, in Disney’s facility. But Hollywood is like a sieve—so we got one. And we locked ours up in a room. [laughter] And it made all the difference in the world. It was really a lifesaver. ADAM: So Stan Lee worked directly on the cartoons? BOB: In many cases he’d write dialogue for us. Ray Patterson’s wife June was brilliant as an editor, and we would create storylines from the comic books. And Stan would [then] edit [those]. And that man could edit all night, and he would correct and change the words. Dialogue, scripts, ideas, concepts. ADAM: And did any of the artists from the comic books ever do direct work on the cartoons?

(previous page, top) More finished cel art before coloring. (previous page, middle) Stan Lee interjects dialogue changes to improve the show. (bottom) Photos from a 1966 article, outlining the production process. (left) First page of a shooting script, including the names of the voice talent.

BOB: No. ADAM: You said you never had a chance to meet Jack Kirby. Did you ever meet with any of the other artists? BOB: [John] Romita [Sr.] [Probably through the later Spider-Man cartoon –AM] I’m trying to think, but I wasn’t that conversant with who they really were. Don’t forget, gentlemen, this was an arduous task, turning out all this material. It just went on and on

4. On an opaque background, all the color is added. Artist Curt Perkins checks this step of the process by comparing the cel on the background with the original comic book art.

5. Movement is added by artist Janine Patterson. On separate cels she draws in the movements of the mouth, synchronizing them with the dialogue which is added later.

6. Cel background and overlay are photographed on animation stand by Vic Shank Jr. Following a carefully laid out plan, cels are added, shifted, and photographed.

“Oh, well, these are the ones we don’t have [separate] deals on,” that kind of thing? BOB: No, I specifically wanted those five. ADAM: What led to there just being a single season of the first five heroes? BOB: Come on. It would be insane to try it again! [laughter]

and on. Just to keep up with it was insane. ADAM: What led to your choice of those particular five characters? Were those the ones you particularly wanted, or [just the ones you were offered]? BOB: After scanning what they had, those appeared to be the most appealing characters at that time. ARLEN: Why not Spider-Man? BOB: That was a separate deal with ABC. That was a network show.

ADAM: It’s been remarked how forward-thinking you and your partners were in getting this stuff out before things like the Batman TV show hit. Were you aware of the hipness of these comics on college campuses? BOB: Absolutely. Stan Lee and I traveled to college campuses, and the kids were unbelievable. I think we spent three days at [UNC] Chapel Hill with them. They’d stay up all night drinking beers, speaking to Stan Lee. Stan Lee is a charismatic individual, and they had such great admiration for him. And he knew how to sell his concepts. I think we went to Rochester, we went to Duke. I forget where else. But making those tours is not easy, either. ADAM: You did these tours after the show was on? BOB: After the show was on. ADAM: So when you first did these cartoons, did you envision them being liked by just little kids, by just college kids, or potentially by anybody? BOB: It was focused on younger people, it wasn’t focused on college kids, but the college kids took to it.

ARLEN: Also my question is, since the Fantastic Four were the very first Marvel super-hero comic, how come they weren’t one of the original five if they were the flagship title? BOB: Just happenstance. ARLEN: Maybe [it was] easier to choose single characters versus a group?

ADAM: Okay. Now, maybe you can resolve a controversy that I’ve seen in different sources. Who were the authors of those great theme songs on these cartoons? I’ve heard it said Stan Lee wrote the lyrics, but I think you’ve quoted to Arlen a different composer’s name. ARLEN: On the [promotional] record a composer is credited named Jack Urbont. But did Stan Lee write the lyrics and Jack write the music?

ADAM: Well, of course, they actually had a lot of Avengers characters in some of the Thor and Captain America episodes. So you’re saying that it was your choice or Marvel’s choice or maybe a mixture of the two as to which heroes you chose as those first five? Was it strictly the ones you were most enthusiastic about, or was it the ones that they thought,

(this page) Step-by-step animation, from (top) original comic panel from Tales of Suspense #73 (Jan. 1966, which Kirby did layouts on), to (middle) storyboard, to (bottom) finished animation cel. (next page, bottom) An example of Stan Lee’s rewriting of dialogue for a Captain America episode. Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

BOB: Paul Francis Webster. He’s a famous, Academy Award-winning composer who was a friend, and I got him to write the lyrics. ARLEN: So he wrote the lyrics and Jack Urbont wrote the music. BOB: Right. [Though Webster is well documented as theme-song lyricist for the original Spider-Man show, that show’s sheet music (above) credits a Bob Harris as the music-writer, and the jury (including Bob’s son and Google) seems to still be out as to who helped Urbont with the other cartoons’ words—any ideas, readers?–AM] ADAM: Was there any particular guidance you gave to the people who wrote the theme songs, about how to do it? Because it’s a very interesting mix, the kind of jazzy Iron Man song and things like that. BOB: Jack Urbont was pretty smart and I just left it to him. ADAM: He could just get a feel for the characters. BOB: Right. ADAM: Were you involved with all the later repackagings of the show? I remember that around 1978 it started to show up under the title The Marvel Men in the New York area. I don’t know how many times it’s been repackaged for TV, but it seems like it’s been running for decades in one market or another. Were you involved with it after the initial sale of it? BOB: I had nothing to do with that. As a matter of fact, I think what happened was [Bob’s estranged former partner Steve] Krantz got a hold of the cels or something and did some more programs on his own, and I think some other people pirated things and were selling it. And there wasn’t much you

could do about it. I didn’t participate in any of that profit in any way whatsoever. STEVEN LAWRENCE: Did you think that the original Marvel Super-Heroes series using the comic book art alone—well, principally—was more effective, artistically, than the more traditional animation that was done for Spider-Man? Do you have a feeling about that? BOB: [pause] I don’t know how to answer that. ADAM: Well, do you remember what was responsible for the transition from the kind of animation you used on the Marvel Super-Heroes to the fuller animation that you used on Spider-Man? Did you just get a bigger budget? BOB: Well, it was a network program, so we had to put more production into it. ARLEN: But you’re saying that the Marvel cartoons were very expensive to produce. Are you saying that the Spider-Man cartoon, because it was a network show— BOB: It was more expensive. ARLEN: It was more expensive, but you had more money— BOB: No, we did not have that much more money. It squeezed the hell out of us. ARLEN: But you had enough to produce them, to not do them the way the Marvel cartoons were done? BOB: Right. ADAM: There were just certain standards you felt you had to aim it toward, I guess. BOB: Right. ADAM: Do you have a particular favorite among the various projects you’ve worked on? BOB: I would say Spider-Man is the more interesting one. ADAM: What about it do you prefer? BOB: Well, I loved the design and I liked the dialogue, I liked the action. Y’know, don’t forget, Captain America was old-fashioned after a while, Sub-Mariner was not really considered a top product. But Spider-Man had a [certain] element. And I predicted with the lawyers one day, “This thing is going to be tremendously successful.” And they said, “Bob, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” And if I had those lawyers in front of me, I’d beat ’em up right now. [laughter] ARLEN: It [all] shows that you were always aware of pop culture. You didn’t have your nose in the air, you were immersed in it. Being involved in television, that was the number one pop culture. And [having been involved in] advertising, you were very in touch with what people wanted, and you didn’t have this elevated view of high culture; you were immersed in very American culture, so it’s no wonder that comic books would appeal to you, and for you to put your efforts into them. BOB: [pause] Okay. [laughter] ★ (Special thanks to Vince Oliva—current owner of Bob Lawrence’s archives—for supplying art from the original 1960s Marvel cartoons. You can reach him at boliva1@tampabay.rr.com)

Robert Lawrence (1919-2004) It is with sadness that The Jack Kirby Collector and the pop culture community note the passing of Bob Lawrence on September 23 of this year. A generous spirit and energetic intellect to the end, he left us just days after I had had the blessing of making his acquaintance for this article. Born in 1919 to Charles and Rae Leventhal and a West Point graduate who served in the Second World War, Bob went on to prove himself as a member of American mass-media’s Greatest Generation. If today it is commonplace to find foreign art films at your local theater, you have Bob in part to thank, since he was the first promoter to bring the work of acclaimed Italian director Roberto Rossellini to the U.S., after the two met during the war. Though comic fans might be most aware of Bob for having overseen the pop-art landmark of the Marvel SuperHeroes cartoons a year before the live-action Batman show sparked a nationwide craze for comics-themed TV, the Rossellini relationship is one powerful reminder of Bob’s lifelong eye for innovation. He also was a pioneer of television advertising and produced the first TV commercial ever made for a presidential candidate (for perennial Republican challenger Harold Stassen in 1948), and in 196970 developed the first home shopping channel, Monitel (though its funder, the Reader’s Digest Corporation, could not see as far into the future as Bob and mothballed the project despite keen industry interest). Robert Lawrence was refreshingly ahead of his time but endearingly of it as well, a classic, gentlemanly mover and shaker who was both grand and gracious. One of a kind, but, as I have seen from the care and camaraderie of his family toward loved one and newcomer alike, not the last of this kind. Robert Lawrence is survived by his wife Marjorie; his sons Peter and Steven; his grandchildren John and Vanessa; his brother Howard; and an indelible achievement. –AM

Kirby Pro & Con To fill out our understanding of how Kirby felt about the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons, we turned to his biographer, TJKC’s own Mark Evanier. A staunch defender of creators’ rights whose extensive Hollywood experience has exposed him to a world with a quite different equation of credit and compensation than classic comics creators knew, Mark has a view which, while not negating fans’ enjoyment of super-hero lore, gives them an important perspective on the side they don’t see. “It was a case of Jack waking up one morning and discovering that he had plotted and drawn a cartoon show without any compensation,” Evanier said. “All of a sudden there were his drawings being animated and it was like, ‘If I’d known they were gonna do that with it I would’ve demanded to be paid a lot more.’ And he went to [publisher] Martin Goodman and complained, and Goodman said, ‘Well, I didn’t make any money off the show.’ Which apparently is true; Goodman did it as a loss-leader, because he was trying to enhance the value of his company for selling it; trying to enhance the merchandising of his characters and their profile.” As to the cartoons’ producer never meeting Kirby or the other artists, Evanier wasn’t surprised. “He wouldn’t have met the artists, because Marvel would not have wanted him to. [The animators] were paid an awful lot more for [using Kirby’s art] than Jack had been paid for doing the comics in the first place. If Marvel had taken Gene Colan or Jack Kirby over to the cartoon studio and said, ‘Here’s these guys who are doing our comics,’ the studio would’ve said, ‘Oh, hey, we could use those guys; we’ll pay ’em more!’ So Jack was not happy with it. “Though there is a qualification,” Evanier continued. “Jack had always maintained that what he was doing in comics was the blueprint for a movie; [that] a producer could take any given four-issue arc in Thor or Fantastic Four and just shoot it, and not only already have the movie plotted, but storyboarded and designed, and this [cartoon] was the first proof Jack had that his belief was correct. But the few times we talked about them he just kinda grumbled. Still, Jack was a very polite man, and he never liked to [dampen] people’s enthusiasm. So I’m sure if you dug around someplace you’d find some interview where Jack says those were great cartoons!” [laughter] –AM

A Minute Of Stan’s Time “There are two obstacles in our way,” Marvel Age co-founder Stan Lee told me: “One, I have the world’s worst memory; Two, I have very little time.” Still, this master of the pithy phrase was able to shed some light on the brief, shining moment of the Marvel Super-Heroes: “As far as I know, the deal was made between Martin Goodman and Grantray-Lawrence. I’m sure it was Bob who decided which characters to use. I was thrilled to have Bob rent a small penthouse on Madison Ave. for me (30 East 60th street, as I recall), so my wife and I could stay in New York while I worked on the show. You see, we had been living in Hewlett Harbor, Long Island, at the time and commuting to the city where I worked at the Marvel offices three days a week, spending the rest of my time at home, writing. I really don’t remember any reaction from the Marvel artists involved. I wish I could claim to have written [the theme song] lyrics because I think they’re brilliant, but alas, I didn’t.” And finally, “I thought those cartoons were great. The animation was incredibly limited, but that primitive look actually gave them a lot of their appeal. The best thing about them was that they were taken from actual Marvel stories, so they were totally authentic and the fans loved them.” The last word, though, was one of fond friendship, for which Stan could always find time: “Bob and I were in touch until his passing, and he was one of the finest gentlemen anyone could ever know.” –AM 47

A look at some of the high points of Jack Kirby’s ’70s Marvel work, by Shane Foley hile it’s certainly true that there are a good number of readers who love Jack’s ’70s output at Marvel as his best, it would seem a larger number would contend that it was far from his best work; that it showed he was growing tired and frustrated and that he was increasingly out of step with the readership of the decade. Sales of his books would seem to reflect the latter view. Nevertheless, I feel that some of the perceived shortcomings of this ’70s Marvel work blind many to see some of the gems that are contained there. I firmly believe that there were many moments in Jack Kirby’s work in the ’70s at Marvel that were every bit as powerful and creative as those best remembered from his earlier work. In my article in TJKC #29 called “Where Have All the Villains Gone?” I mentioned what I felt was Jack’s ‘middle period’ at Marvel in the ’70s, where colorful, wellcrafted villains again populated his titles. Some of those I feel were written into superlative and inspired sequences, filled with suspense and drama. Some of these are briefly looked at here.

(this page) Cover pencils to Black Panther #10 (July 1978). (next page) Pencils from Black Panther #8, page 4 (March 1978).

The

Return of the King

The pacing and scripting that Jack created for the Jakarra episodes in Black Panther #6-10 show he was the master of building suspense. Jakarra, T’Challa’s bitter half-brother, was developed in several tension-building episodes. In #6, while the Panther seeks the Cup of Youth (in a story I found extremely dull) he is revealed to have exposed himself to raw vibranium. Its mutative effect clearly hinted at in #6 begins in earnest in #7. Great Kirby lines appear such as “Yours is the sickness of the small!” uttered by N’Gassi. Then comes the beating of the drums—an ominous sign of an ancient evil that has returned. (A potentially great sequence that I’m sure sounded terrific in Kirby’s head but which needed more pages to get the effect onto a soundless page).

The Jakarra Sequence

Issue #8 begins strongly with a flashback to T’Challa’s rise to be king, followed by a sequence with the Jakarra mutation being wild and ravenous before the mind and ambitions of Jakarra the man take control. At this point, to my mind, the story pace falters with the unnecessary diversions of T’Challa delayed by Mafia agents, a Star Wars movie set disaster and from the Royal Family becoming the uninspiring Black Musketeers. Two issues worth that could easily have been one. But then, from page 15 in #9 (numbered as page 27) Jack gets the pacing right again and the tension resumes. The monster undergoes his final mutation and begins his death march toward the vibranium mound. Then in #10, it’s all action as Jack wraps it all up nicely. Some great stuff.

Gallery 2

The Thing From The Black Hole Star Interdimensional and space villains seemed to plague Cap during Kirby’s ’70s stint, but of all of them, I think Captain America Annual #3 was the best. The beginning is weak. Cap happening to be nearby on a talk show just when a UFO lands is the sort of thing that Stan Lee used to be able to pull of with his tongue-in-cheek scripting, but which I feel Jack couldn’t do effectively. (And I don’t think Stan or anyone could have salvaged Annual #4’s opening, with both Cap and Magneto

answering a newspaper ad for a home for mutants! That one was just too much!) But after the beginning, the story is chock full of Stalkers, Combatrons, Magnoids and misunderstandings over an alien fugitive of the worst kind, with Cap being firmly on the wrong side. Kirby creativity seemed to be in top gear in this one. Then unlike many Kirby endings that are too quick, this one has a nice denouement where Cap is subjected to a deliberate government cover-up.

(this page) Cover pencils to Captain America Annual #3 (1976).

(next page) Page 24 pencils from Captain America Annual #3.

The Night Flyer Story “Only Marvel would dare it!” screams the cover copy of Cap #213. Whether Kirby wrote this or whether it was altered by a cover editor, here was the sort of stuff that Kirby not only dared but loved, as the hero, blinded from his climactic battle in the last issue (and a great issue it was too) must face almost overwhelming odds. The villain—the Night Flyer—is prime Kirby. Well designed, looking every inch the villain he is intended to be, he is “a cultist, a mystic, a ritualist, dedicated to the art of killing.” Gang Boss Kligger, aware of this, adds “I know all that! However, it’s the other stories about about him that bother me.” What stories? Wondrous Kirby mystery and depth here! The staging of the combat between the Falcon, SHIELD agents and the still blind Cap

against the supremely confident, athletic Night Flyer is great, heightened further by the cold, enigmatic character that Kirby gave the Flyer. He had a real sense of menace that gave the story a hard edge. Both Cap and the Falcon would have been beaten had it not been for the SHIELD brains who saved the day by finding and destroying the Night Flyer’s flying power source. Why is this guy less dramatic or memorable than the Adaptoid or Batroc or a host of ’60s villains? To my mind he isn’t at all and would have been a welcome returning character had Kirby continued. Give me this guy’s design and character over the Grey Gargoyle or Diablo or Molecule Man any day. (Sure he ‘died’ at the end, but Kirby villains never let a little thing like that stop them! Whether any other writer did return him in later Marvel stories, I don’t know.)

(this spread) Pencils from Captain America #214 (Oct. 1977), Kirby’s final issue.

The Ten-For Sequence

in the room. Machine Man is increasingly suspicious of the alien as he realizes they were meant to exchange places with it and die in his place, but he alters the machine sufficiently so that this doesn’t happen. The alien slowly materializes and Machine Man’s worst fears are confirmed. Jack took ten pages, with another three Army action pages interspersed, to introduce Ten-For. This is a superb sequence, every bit as dramatic and atmospheric as classics like Fantastic Four #62. Much of the rest of the Ten-For story is also top quality stuff. A nice story element was that the means of defeating Ten-For was written into the story very early (“The dimension principle is now part of my own body structure” says Machine Man, “I can do the job I have to.”— #3, page 14), then in the next issue Ten-For gives machine Man a plausible reason why he can’t use that power. Nice, tight plotting by Kirby. In that issue (#4) Machine Man goes through one of his periods of self-doubt (“It’s human to wear a mask— to live with fear and hate”) while in a scene that has echoes from some of Jack’s ’60s Marvel episodes, TenFor simply wanders the streets amongst the people.

(this spread) Cover and interior page pencils from Machine Man #4 (July 1978).

In #5 Ten-For shows some unexpected character as he plays the threatened innocent when the Army appears. It’s hilarious scripting by Kirby and it nearly makes up for the horrendously dated “costume party” later in the issue. Issue #6 finds Machine Man in one of those great Kirby conversations, here with a cabbie—your everyday man who has his own troubles yet realizes all have their part to play. It’s old territory for Marvel Comics but done as well here as it ever was. Machine Man’s resolve is rekindled and in another of Kirby’s all-too-quick endings, he defeats Ten-For and the invading armada. An extra page showing Machine Man’s relief and a bit of the fallout in the city would have been nice, but overall it was a gloriously conceived conflict between two well conceived characters.

Had Jack written this sequence from Machine Man #36 ten years earlier, I’m convinced Ten-For would be one of Marvel’s big-time baddies—nasty, well-designed and with potential for a truck-load of stories. Ten-For arrives in what is almost a horror story. A psychiatric patient lies bed-ridden screaming out a strange and desperate message. Machine Man is on hand and realizes the man is actually receiving transmissions in his brain from an alien source. But the alien is doomed— about to plunge into the sun. Kirby’s two-page spread for #3 where MM projects the image of this doomed alien ship is a masterpiece. Then comes further eerie communication as Machine Man is given instructions on how to build a “transference device.” Even at this early stage of contact with the alien, Machine Man knows something is wrong. His humane concern however, one of Jack’s main themes for this book, drives him to help anyway. The transdimensional gateway opens unexpectedly, and in typical Kirby fashion, no-one stands around watching. The portal opens and suction, akin to that in the breakup of a pressurized aircraft, causes havoc

Into the City of Toads (this spread) Eternals #8 (Feb. 1977) pencils.

retort (which boils down to “Don’t judge until you know what you are talking about”) was absolutely brilliant. The theme of who is the real “good” character and who is the “monster” continued with the introduction of the ugly Karkas and the handsome killer called the Reject. Whether Kirby fumbled the ball at the end of the issue (where Thena regards the Reject as someone of value purely because of his looks) or whether he was trying to allude to her own bias is hard to say. Nevertheless, it is a powerful issue of compassion in the midst of violence and horror.

As Eternals #8 opens, Kirby’s introduction to the world of the Eternals was over and now he gets down to business. The City of Toads, just one chapter in a longer story, is Kirby at his writing best. Very real human dilemmas dramatized beautifully in the conundrum of the Deviants’ condition. Kirby was in top philosophical form but rather than this interrupting the story flow it was an integral part of it and thrust the story and its motivations forward. This was thinking stuff. The paradox and difficulty of Kro and Thena’s relationship, her criticism of Lemuria’s “Purity Time” and Kro’s

And Then There’s 2001 #6 so death comes. If one takes the time to get immersed in this little episode, it really takes you away to that strange, cold and very frightening unknown. And there are lots more. Was Jack’s ’70s Marvel work of lesser quality than at other times? Some say yes, some say no. All I know is, with story sequences like these being turned out at the rate of fifteen pages a week, the man was a genius! ★ (below) 2001 #6 (May 1977) splash page pencils.

This is a little episode without much plot per se but just a concentration on one event— the rescue of an alien by a very average man. There is no conversation with the alien (because that’s how it would be if we were with one) and there is no explanation of what we are seeing (’cause that’s how it would be if we were suddenly light years from home). There is just a mad, wild chase through a strange and terrible space that only Kirby could visualize. Since there are no super-heroes here, death for the hero is the most likely outcome. And

Tribute

2004 Kirby Tribute Panel Held July 23, 2004 at Comicon International: San Diego, featuring (clockwise from top) Moderator Mark Evanier, Steve Rude, Paul Ryan, Walter Simonson, Mike Royer, and Dave Gibbons. Edited by Mark Evanier, transcribed by Steven Tice.

Other photos courtesy of Chris Ng.

MARK EVANIER: This is the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, which means I must be Mark Evanier. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since we lost him. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been longer. Jack was such a ubiquitous presence in my life. Every day, one of two things happens, sometimes both. Someone asks me a question about Jack, or something happens in my life which causes me to think about Jack. And it isn’t always a matter of advice he gave me about comic books or storytelling. More and more, as I get older, the things that I recall about Jack are things about life and about people. More and more of what Jack said to me makes sense. He had a way of meeting someone and making a judgment about them. Not a cruel judgment, just an assessment of the person and he’d say something about what made them tick, and what they were all about. At that age—I met Jack when I was seventeen—I often didn’t see whatever he saw but as I get older, I start realizing that Jack’s assessments were correct, and frequently deeper than I was able to appreciate at that time. I was looking at skin level, and Jack was twelve levels under the epidermis, understanding people. Now, when I’m looking at old Kirby work, or have the joy occasionally finding a Kirby story that I didn’t read back then, I see more and more of the humanity. I’m more and more impressed with—not the cosmic stuff, the things that

(Editor’s Note: This year’s Kirby Tribute Panel included a Jack Kirby Awards ceremony, presented by the Kirby family to individuals for their dedication to the Kirby legacy. We’ve omitted the ceremony from this transcript, and are saving it for TJKC #43, where we’ll be devoting the entire issue to new interviews with the recipients of the Awards, and their personal recollections of Jack and Roz Kirby.)

leap out at you, the giant muscles when the characters have their legs spread in different time zones as they throw a punch. I’m impressed by the humanity in his work. I’m impressed with the color in Jack’s dialogue when he was able to do it himself, and yes, it was sometimes operatic but opera is a form of expression and another way to try and understand the world. The same way Jack made the visuals in his world larger than life, so did he make the motivations of the people. And I just see more and more of Jack. There’s a Fantastic Four cover, I think it’s #7; somebody pointed out to me one day it has a drawing of Reed Richards on it that looks like Jack. I’d looked at this cover for years and years and years. I got it when it first came out, and I never realized how much of Jack was in that cover. Every time I look at it, I go, “How did I not see Jack staring out at me when I looked at this cover before?” It’s really an amazing thing. We have a number of people here who were influenced by Jack in different ways. We have a number of people in the audience who worked with Jack. We have some of his family members here. Where’s Lisa? There she is! Say hello to Lisa Kirby. [applause] And say hello to Tracy Kirby, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Let me also introduce you to my partner at the time I knew Jack. Y’know, you didn’t just work with Jack. When people say you were an assistant to Jack or worked for Jack, no, we became like family members. We were adopted. It was an amazing relationship. 59

Say hello to Steve Sherman, who’s sitting out there. [applause] And that’s Steve’s brother Gary, who was also with us a lot at that time. [applause] And another member of this extended family was Jack’s final main inker, who was about as devoted a friend of the Kirby family as they ever had: Mike Thibodeaux. [applause] There’s another person involved in Jack’s legacy and helping spread the word about who he was and what he did. You are all purchasers of The Jack Kirby Collector. Mr. John Morrow is here. [applause] Let me introduce our dais. A few other people will be joining us as we go along here, I believe. I am told Walt Simonson is having an eye problem and is off to the doctor. On my right is a friend of mine. I touched on this the other day during a panel. If I had worked with Jack long enough, and some magical genie had enabled me to leave our relationship able to draw exactly like Jack, he would consider me the biggest failure in the world. He was not a big fan of people drawing like him or imitating the way he drew. He didn’t understand why a creative individual would want to do that. He didn’t even understand why a creative individual, apart from obvious monetary reasons, would want to draw somebody else’s characters. One of the artists who impressed him the most was the gentleman here to my right, who took the essence of Kirby, learned a lot from him, then applied it to his own work. He came out with a style that in no way, shape, or form can you mistake for a Jack Kirby tracing or swipe in any way, but he carries on the energy and the storytelling abilities and the dynamics. He’s someone who understands how Jack looked at the world, and then distilled that and made it into something which he could turn around and put on paper as completely unique. That was what Jack always said, “Put something unique on paper.” And nobody does it better. Mr. Steve Rude, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Skipping down to the far end is a gentleman who I invited to be up here, because I don’t read an awful lot of comics that Jack did as handled by other people. I discovered at some point, people keep saying, “You need to go see the Spider-Man movie.” And I haven’t seen either of them, because I decided that I really wasn’t a fan of Spider-Man. I was a fan of Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, or Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita. And to me, just seeing SpiderMan is like saying you want to see James Bond, no matter who’s playing him. I don’t want to see James Bond, no matter who’s playing him. But I read the Fantastic Four for an extended period, and I was just amazed at how there was an artist there who was doing the same thing I just described with Steve... who was taking what Jack had brought to comics, taking the general energy and the thinking and the concepts, and applying it to produce work which was not imitative of Jack in any way other than the basic thought process of doing something innovative and exciting. I went to a convention and told him this and we became good friends. Mr. Paul Ryan, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Slipping up onto the dais now is another gentleman about whom all that kind of stuff can be said. The theme, Walt, is “people who took what Jack did and brought Jack Kirby energy to their pages without imitating Jack Kirby.” Another person who did a wonderful job, not just when he did Thor and New Gods, in all the fine work that he’s done over the years: Mr. Walt Simonson. [applause] I’ll stop and ask, how are you? Are you all right? (this spread) Jack’s 1960s art for the Marvelmania membership card. Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

WALTER SIMONSON: Yes, I’m just fine. I had a potential eye problem. I had some symptoms that might have been a really bad eye problem. After eight hours in the hospital yesterday, they discovered, no, no, it’s no problem. I’m fine, I’m cool, thank you. [applause] EVANIER: There were beginning artists out here who were hoping they could move up a notch. [laughter] SIMONSON: I’m old, you may still have a chance! [laughter] EVANIER: This next gentleman I met in the waiting room of Marvel Comics. This was in 1975, I think. DAVE GIBBONS: Earlier than that. EVANIER: Earlier than that. This is a true story. He was sitting out there with his samples. I think they kept him waiting for like two days, and he had these wonderful art samples. And finally he got in to see Johnny Romita, who was the art director. And it went like this, I am told: [opens portfolio, looks at it for three seconds] “You’re hired.” [laughter] GIBBONS: I wish. EVANIER: It was darn close to that. He’s another person who over the years, as I keep saying, has learned from Jack without ever drawing like Jack, without ever imitating the surface elements. Over the years, this man has become one of the top stylists and innovators of our business. Welcome Mr. Dave Gibbons, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Lastly for now, I’ve known this man since 1968, and yesterday you heard us tell the bizarre story of how we met, and how over the years we’ve kind of ended the comic book business as we know it, and destroyed it by our very presence. [laughter] I say this every year because I don’t believe you can drive this point home hard enough. To ink all of Jack Kirby’s

work at all, to just produce anything, was a major achievement. We put down Vince Colletta sometimes, but he was able to ink as fast as Jack was able to pencil, which is not easy. In Mike’s case, to be able to ink it all, to letter it all, which nobody else ever tried to do, and to produce quality work, and to be so faithful to the pencils, and which captured the full essence of Kirby, was just amazing. When you saw a Kirby/Royer comic, you saw real Kirby art. And we thank him for that and for all his service. This is Mr. Mike Royer, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] A couple of announcements before we go on here. I just finished the foreword for the second volume of Jimmy Olsen reprints that DC is bringing out [shown below, and now shipping!]. It’s a wonderful collection of stories, even if it doesn’t have any Don Rickles in it. [laughter] That is, at the moment, the last reprint project that DC has on their schedule of Kirby stuff. I think they’re going to schedule some more very soon. I suspect there will be a reprint volume of the Forties “Sandman,” and probably Kamandi. However, it would not hurt if, when you went past the DC booth, you grabbed somebody by the lapels and said, “More Kirby! More Kirby!” Marvel’s about to bring out a collection of Jack’s work called Marvel Visionaries. And again, if that sells at all, I think we’ll probably see quite a few more of those things. At the moment, I don’t know of too many other Kirby reprint projects that are looming out there, but I think there’ll be some very soon. I’ve been asked 84 times today so far about the Kirby biography that I’m working on. This thing is so large it’s going to have to be continued in three volumes or something. I am not finishing it quite yet because there are some legal matters looming, and also I just keep finding new things to write about Jack. But I’m hoping over the next year or so to kind of beta-test it, pass copies to various people to critique and fact-check and such. And I promise you that when it comes out, you’ll understand why it’s taken so long. I’ve got 35 pages just explaining the back-and-forth Lee and Kirby had on one issue of Fantastic Four. Stan was changing Jack’s plot, and it’s very complicated. It goes to the heart of their relationship and it tries to paint a portrait of Jack, creatively, to the best of my ability. Any other questions about stuff like that? AUDIENCE MEMBER: The Kirby Jimmy Olsen volume; color? EVANIER: Color. AUDIENCE MEMBER: All right! [applause] EVANIER: It’s all of the remaining stories that Jack did of Jimmy Olsen, two of which Mike inked. They also have some penciled pages reproduced to see how Superman should have looked. [applause] They’re also printing a story that Jack didn’t do. An issue of two after Jack left Jimmy Olsen, there was a short story of the Newsboy Legion, that Nelson Bridwell used to tie up some dangling plot threads. That’s in there. I hear early sales are very strong on it, so that will probably lead to more Kirby books. I think DC is committed to getting them all in print very soon. Anyway, let me talk to these gentlemen here, if I may, about Jack Kirby. And I’d like to go back to this theme that I was harping on earlier. It’s true of all of these people; I asked people to be here who fall in that category— taking what Jack did and kind of running with it, and not imitating it. I’d like to ask each person on the dais to just briefly tell us, what was the first comic of Jack’s that you were conscious of? And then, if it’s not the same thing, what was your favorite Kirby work? Anybody what to field that first? Walt, do you want to start? SIMONSON: Sure. The first Kirby work I actually saw was in the mid-Fifties. You would know which issue it is; I don’t remember. It was one of the Atlas monsters. It was the one where the guy paints a giant statue full of mud and he comes alive, and it turned out he was an alien, and the mud was some kind of life-giving stuff, and then eventually he destroys the monster by covering it with turpentine, and the paint washes off. It was this old Lee/Kirby thing in one of the monster books. I didn’t know Kirby at the time; I never saw the Atlas stuff. AUDIENCE MEMBER: That was my first Kirby, also. Journey Into Mystery #72. SIMONSON: The first time I actually saw Kirby’s stuff where I had any clue, I was in college, I was a freshman, I was in a friend’s room. I’d never seen Marvel comics by then. This is about ’64 or ’65. They weren’t distributed where I lived. Until I discovered that, I got my parents to drive me five miles to the drugstore. There they had Marvel comics, but nobody else had them, locally. And it was a copy of Journey into Mystery. Again, you’ll have to supply the number, I don’t know which one it was. But it opens up with this great shot of a flying Viking ship with Thor and Odin. They’re going off to battle the giants. They’re sort of standing on the bow, and there’s a little line, and then they have a couple of pages where the giants and the Vikings or the gods beat each other up, and the good guys win. And it goes on with the story. And what it said, one of the captions was, “We promised old Jack Kirby we’d do some fight stuff for him, so here it is!” Then there was like two or three pages of fighting. And then, “Now we’ll do the rest of the story?” [laughter] And then the story goes on. And it was about a year before I realized that Jack Kirby was the guy that had drawn it, not like maybe some fan they promised that they would do the fight sequence for. “We promised fan Jack Kirby we’d do a fight sequence!” [laughter] I wasn’t used to seeing credits in comics anyway at that 61

point. So it was about a year before I discovered, when I went back and looked and, “Oh, now I know who Jack Kirby is.” And that’s got to be #109, 110, somewhere in there, where I discovered his name. And it wasn’t until about a year later I discovered what that meant and what he’d actually done to comics. Then I saw the Marvels from then on, and after that I knew exactly who he was. EVANIER: Okay, Paul, do you want to take the mic?

(above) A recent Thor sketch by Walter Simonson. (below) A Kirby/Wood original from Sky Masters, which was a big influence on more than one of the panelists. Thor TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. Sky Masters TM & ©2004 Jack Kirby Estate.

PAUL RYAN: Yeah. The first time I saw Jack’s work, it was something called The Double Life of Private Strong. Anybody remember that? [scattered applause, then laughter] I was very young, and a neighbor had these comic books. I was a real Superman fan at the time. I grew up on the Wayne Boring stuff, the Batman stuff of Dick Sprang. That’s the kind of illustration I was accustomed to seeing in comics. And this neighbor gave me this comic book, it was The Double Life of Private Strong. It was the first time I had ever heard of a character called The Shield. I didn’t know about the one from the Forties. I looked at the artwork and I was just knocked over. The figures were real, the action was dynamic. These people didn’t have standard poses. It was like watching real people moving on a page. It was just incredible. I’ve never forgotten those images. And I found that comic again, like, ten years ago in Philadelphia. And I looked through it, and it was exactly as I’d remembered it. Certain images just didn’t go away. EVANIER: Paul, when you were doing Fantastic Four, did you keep a Kirby comic around? RYAN: Around? Like taped to my forehead, maybe? [laughter] Yes, when I took over Fantastic Four it was very exciting and very daunting. It was a very nervous situation for me because I was, well, continuing a legend, basically, and I didn’t want to screw it up. So I always kept looking back, “What did Jack do here? What did Jack do there? What’s his take on the characters? What was the body language he used for each one?” Because when he did the four members of the Fantastic Four, they each had their own distinctive designed look, by the way they moved on the page. EVANIER: Jack changed those characters a lot. Did you find that the earlier issues or the later issues registered? RYAN: For me it was the first twelve issues, because I actually bought those when they came out. I kept them until my mother gave them away. [laughter] Actually, she forbid me to read comic

books when I was very young, so I had to sneak them into the house. So if anybody needs any tips on sneaking comics into the house, meet me after the panel. [laughter] EVANIER: Dave? Same question. GIBBONS: The first Kirby stuff that I saw was in England, and it wasn’t the American published comic books, it was reprints, mainly in black-&-white. But at that age, I must have been about eight years old, I couldn’t figure out quite who Kirby was. Because there were things that were obviously American, like Race for the Moon, which was probably the first one I saw. But at the same time, there was a Kirby thing called Sky Masters, which appeared in a homegrown English comic. Of course, now I realize that these were reprints of the Sunday pages in full-color. But all I knew was that I loved space, I loved science-fiction. He was my favorite science-fiction artist. One of my very early memories of drawing anything at all—it must have been, again, when I was eight years old—and the schoolteacher in art said, “Okay, class, today you can do anything you like.” I’ve got a memory of this school easel, with that kind of sugar paper on it, and those mixed-up paints that you mix up out of powder, and I drew a guy in a spacesuit manacled to an asteroid. [much laughter, scattered applause] It was the only swipe I’ve ever done in my life. [laughter and applause] SIMONSON: If you’re only going to do it once, you may as well do it right. [laughter] RYAN: It was a short story called “Space Jump.” Now I’ve got the American versions of those Race for the Moon comics. I’ve still got the originals, I’ve still kept those. They’ve kind of fallen to pieces. One of the few regrets I have about Kirby collecting is that I was at one of these shows maybe ten years ago, and at that time there were a few things that I’d done that had made a nice bit of money, and I had the chance to buy one of those Race for the Moon jobs, about somebody being an exile on a starship as a prison sentence. And it was $6000 for this eight-page

was a cowboy, with the bow and arrow—? EVANIER: Bullseye. ROYER: Bullseye. Those are my first memories of Jack Kirby. And earlier, everyone was introduced talking about how they were influenced by Jack, but they did not ape Jack. It was the methodology, the thinking, the dynamics of their approach to the pages, and believe it or not, some of the best intricately involved Winnie the Pooh pieces that I’ve done were directly influenced by what Jack did, what I learned from Jack. And I think the best pieces of Pooh art that I’ve ever done were because I was thinking, “This is a blank sheet of paper. Don’t be afraid of it. What would Jack do?” And I just started it, and when I finished it, I was like, “Holy cow, did I do this?” [pause, then applause] EVANIER: Steve says he has nothing to add. I doubt that, but I will respect his wishes. [laughter] All right, then I’ll ask you my next question, Steve. You did a Captain America series, and a Thor series, and we did Mister Miracle together and a lot of things like that. How do you feel when they hand you a Jack Kirby project to do? Do you feel intimidated by it? Do you feel inspired by it? And, parenthetically, how do you feel about the way—not mentioning any names—the way some other people have drawn the characters that you’ve seen? I know one time you said to me, “Gee, I think I’m going to have to rescue this character from the people who are drawing it.” Can you talk a little about that?

(left) A Mike Royer-inked splash from Jimmy Olsen #147 (March 1972).

STEVE RUDE: Yeah, sure. One of the things I recall when I had my tenure, as I called it, at Marvel Comics, in the last five years was, one of the editors

story, and I passed on it. And I really think that would have been the best $6000 that I’d ever spent. But I didn’t. EVANIER: Mike? MIKE ROYER: I guess I’m the old codger on the panel. My memories of Kirby art, although I probably wasn’t smart enough to read any credits if there were some on Simon & Kirby books, but for some reason I remember things like Boys’ Ranch. I have this thing about cowboys. [laughter] And when I put aside my love of cowboy comics, and fell in love with movies and became a front-row, Saturday-night-matinee kid, I returned to comics when the big paper in Portland, Oregon, carried Sky Masters. I recognized the style, even though it was rendered in a distinctly Wally Wood style, but I recognized this artwork, the dynamics. And also, one of the lead characters was named Dr. Royer. [scattered laughter] So actually, the memories that I have of childhood and comics are not super-heroes. I was never a fan of Superman. I liked Captain Marvel. There were so many things that for some reason I missed. Either our market didn’t carry the books, but they did carry the adventure titles and the cowboy titles. And Mark, who remembers everything more than I do—I’m having a senior moment—who

passed us some comments they were making about what I was doing on the various projects that I was doing for Marvel. They started with Hulk/Superman, and then it went on to the X-Men, and then it went on to Spider-Man and Thor and Captain America. I’d been waiting a long time to do my versions of those characters. And one of the things I heard from the editors was, I think the editor-in-chief was talking with another editor of some kind, and they said, “Why does Rude do that? He can obviously draw in his own, why is he trying to make it look 63

look bad. [laughter and applause] EVANIER: Walt, you did two tours of duty on Thor, [applause] and it struck me that on the first one, you were doing a more conventional version. You were following John Buscema, who followed Jack and you were trying to do the same Thor, but taken to another level. When you returned to the book later, when you were in more control of the entire package, you said, “Okay, I’m going to do Thor my way.” Talk a little bit, if you would, about those two periods, and how you approached them differently.

(above) A Steve Rude commissioned drawing showing how faithful he is to Kirby in his work, without copying.

(next page) A sample of Joe Sinnott’s solo work, and a photo of Jack and Joe meeting in 1972 at a New York comicon—despite previous reports (including in this magazine!), this is probably the first time they met. All characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

like Kirby?” And I get that, and I’m stuck in a different world than the people that think like that, because when I saw my first Captain America comic or my first Thor comic, I imprinted myself with that image. So, in order for me to draw these characters, in order for them to be real to me, the only version I think I can do is the one that I saw the first time that I looked at it, and that was the Jack Kirby version. So that’s why I did those books in a style that would make the characters real to me. What was the question? EVANIER: Well, how do you feel when you see somebody doing a Kirby character who’s not doing a faithful job? RUDE: It bothers me. [laughter] It’s funny how virtually everybody you talk to in the business says, “I was influenced by Jack Kirby,” and I obviously can’t see where the influence is coming in. The trick is never to outright copy or steal from other artists. We’ve got our own brains, we have our own abilities that we’ve worked hard to develop. [pause] They just look terrible to me, they just

SIMONSON: Well, a couple of things. One of them is simply that, the first time I did Thor, I did it for a year. Len Wein wrote it. I did twelve issues (plus an Annual that Roy Thomas wrote), from ’77 to ’78. At that time I was just doing the layouts. I wasn’t actually doing full pencils. Tony DeZuniga was doing finishes, I was giving him the layouts to do finishes on. Part of the reason for that was that I had reached a point in my own drawing where I felt I wasn’t drawing fast enough, or solving problems fast. It wasn’t that I wanted to draw 85 pages a minute. Jack had that covered. I had no illusions about trying to beat Jack Kirby. But I just felt in my own stuff, I wasn’t solving storytelling problems fast enough. So I did a couple of years just doing layouts, layouts for the black-andwhite Hulk magazine, on Thor, and some other stuff, so I could just concentrate on the storytelling problems. Here’s your story, here’s the blank page—what panels are you going to use to make this work?—and make those decisions. So the first time around, I was coming after John Buscema did the book for a long time, of course Jack before that, so, to me, that was kind of Thor. I kind of agree with Steve, and I also disagree with him. My early stuff, when I first looked at comics and loved them as a college student, if I was drawing Thor, I was drawing a Thor as if Jack had drawn it and Vinnie Colletta inked it. If I was doing the Hulk, it was a Bill Everett Hulk, because those were the Hulks I first saw, those really bizarre Bill Everett Hulks that were going on. Whatever character I was doing, a Gene Colan Iron Man, that’s what the characters looked like to me. As I went along, and I did Thor this first time, I really tried to use Kirby’s visual language for the way he presented Thor. Thor always kind of looks like that kind of sort of roundfaced guy that Jack drew. That’s the Thor I love, I still kind of go for that when I draw Thor. But I was drawing his Asgard, I was drawing giant towers and ramps and science-fiction things and huge statuary; I was not trying to be Jack, I tried to use his visual vocabulary, really, for those stories, and solve the layout problems. When I came back to Thor, five years later in ’83, I had done, or I felt I had done, the Jack Kirby Thor. I had done it for a year, plus this Annual. I don’t know if I was more confident in my abilities, but I just, maybe I had more of a voice, especially because I was doing complete pencils, and the inks, and the writing. It wasn’t so much a question of trying to look like Jack as maybe to stand on Stan and Jack’s shoulders. The work they had done, the Thor run from Journey into Mystery #114, #115, on through about #139, is some of my all-time favorite work by anybody in comics, that run of Thor. With Hercules, the Destroyer, the Trial of the Gods, and Oracle, all that stuff. I couldn’t quote every issue now, but that’s the stuff I loved. But I didn’t think I should redo that, because I didn’t want to go back and—because Jack did that stuff. We have a fabulous Jack Kirby. If I’m just trying to be Jack Kirby, all I’m going to be is a second- or third-rate Jack Kirby. But I can be a really good Walt Simonson. I may not be as good as Jack Kirby, but I’ll be better at being Walt Simonson than Jack Kirby, or that Jack would of being me. So when I came back to Thor the second

time, I felt I kind of had the freedom, maybe because I’d done it for a year already, to go in other directions. So when I did Asgard, I didn’t do giant statues, I didn’t do flying ramps and metal gleaming buildings, I went back to Norwegian stave churches. There’s no Viking architecture that exists anymore, but the stave churches are from right after the Viking period, when the Christians came in, bringing Christianity to Scandinavia. And so they would have, I’m hoping, kind of a flavor of Scandinavia, maybe what the Vikings had, with dragon heads and stuff like that. And so I felt I had the freedom to go in and add, put that stuff in, so it gave—I tried to create the feeling in the Thors that I had read and loved when I was a reader, without just doing that same stuff. I was hoping that by maybe standing on the shoulders of these guys, who’d done such a fabulous job, I would be able to maybe see a little different direction, but still capture some of that feeling without just trying to be Jack. And that’s where the work came from. EVANIER: Let’s go to Paul next. I’d like to ask you about the influence of Jack on you when you’re not drawing a Kirby character. Over the years, you’ve drawn Superman and many other books. Is there anything that you learned from Jack’s stuff that you find you can apply to a character he never drew, or is not supposed to have any of him in it? Is this an all-day kind of question to you? [laughter] RYAN: I’m still trying to digest what he just said. [laughter] I’m trying to instill, again, a humanity in them. Jack did great super-heroes. He did a great everyman-on-the-street, too. He did great backgrounds. I remember an issue of Fantastic Four where they went broke on the stock market, they went out to California to film a movie, and you see characters walking through this movie lot, and there’s Jackie Gleason talking to James Arness, and there’s other background people in there. And Jack was just great doing real people. And he’d give a humanity to his characters. And I try to give it to my own work, whether the character is big and strong and he’s going to help you out, or he’s just... you. Or you. I try to make all background people individuals. EVANIER: Leaving aside people in this room, who’s your favorite Jack Kirby inker? [pause, then laughter] RYAN: Joe Sinnott. [applause] I actually worked with Joe on the Spider-Man Sunday strip for about three years, and finally got to meet him last month for the first time. We’d spoken many times on the phone when we worked together. Just one of the sweetest guys. Humble, easygoing. And he always told me don’t work too hard. Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses. He told me how Stan would give him so much work, and he didn’t have time for his family, and he finally had to put a stop to it. He didn’t have

any time for living. EVANIER: There are artists who, when they knew their work was going to be inked by Joe Sinnott, said, “Oh boy, I can slop it out. He can fix it. I can leave out backgrounds. He’ll put them in. I don’t have to make my vanishing points exactly right. He’ll true them up.” Or they said, “This is going to Joe Sinnott. I’d better do a better job. It had better be very special, because Joe Sinnott deserves the best possible pencils I can give him.” I would guess you were in the latter category. RYAN: You could say that. [scattered laughter] Joe thanked me for the work I did on Spider-Man because he said everything was there, right down to the shadows and the textures. It was right there on the page. I actually create a perspective grid in three dimensions so that when the inker wants to add something, they have lines to go by. SIMONSON: I really like Paul’s stuff, because I’ve seen his pencils drawing Superman, and it was not

just that everything was there for Joe Sinnott, it was perspective of the childhood Kent kitchen, with Ma Kent or somebody standing on a stool, and Clark was in another room. It was a simple shot, and it just blew me away. And it wasn’t just because Joe was inking, it’s just what Paul does. [applause] EVANIER: Dave, I was always very impressed that your style didn’t seem derivative of anyone at all. From the start—maybe you were inspired by artists I’m not familiar with, but the work seemed so coherent and together and well-thought-out, without us looking at it and going, “Oh, yeah, he likes Gil Kane,” or without, let’s say, “Oh, this guy is doing Will Eisner.” And it just, over the years, got more and more distinctive. And, like Jack’s work, you always felt you were in the hands of an artist who really thought out what he was doing, who was doing a coherent universe. Is there a point in Watchmen where you were conscious of Jack looking over your shoulder, or some panel, some place where you said, “Oh! Kirby taught me how to do this”? 65

4" drawing, and it was Jack’s later work. And it’s a very powerful drawing. It actually was a rather heavily-done drawing, which, given his age at that time, I’m sure my drawing will be even heavier when I get to that age. But the first thing I did in order to ink it—and I was very intimidated, but I was determined that I was going to actually ink the pencils, not ink it on vellum, not ink a copy of it. So I got a putty eraser and rolled it over it to lift some of the graphite off. And I saw that while these lines looked superficially heavy, they still had modulation. They still had the touch of a master artist. They still had intent. Maybe a little bit clouded by age, but he was still there, and you could never take that away from anything that Kirby did. I also found when I had to ink it, that you could only attempt to ink it with the same clarity. You couldn’t move it around, you had to draw it like Jack had drawn it. You just had to make your mind up what you were going to do, and do it. Which is why I’ve got tremendous admiration for somebody like Mike, who really did capture that clarity and certainty of line which I think is one of Kirby’s hallmarks. EVANIER: Again, the same question as earlier. Leaving aside people in this room, who’d you like inking Jack? GIBBONS: Well, actually, I suppose it’s because I was imprinted with the Race for the Moon stuff I saw, and I actually love Al Williamson on Jack, because I thought he gave a lot of grace to the power. EVANIER: Mike, yesterday I asked you every question I could possibly think of to ask you. When you started inking Jack, I remember I actually handed you your first issue of New Gods. You came out to my house to pick it up, and Jack had asked me, he told me, “Go over it with him.” And I didn’t know what that meant, so I just kind of went through the book with you and I kept saying, “Well, try to make this bold, and try to make this exciting.” I gave you these very lame comments and suggestions. And you went home and did what I thought was an absolute perfect job on that first story, and you never looked back. I know Joe Sinnott was a bit of a role model for you. Who else? Who else did you look at, as good or bad examples? You didn’t want to do what some people had done. ROYER: Well, in the early Marvel books, in Fantastic Four, weren’t there some issues inked by George Roussos? EVANIER: There were some inked by George Roussos.

GIBBONS: Well, I think it’s impossible to draw any kind of superhero book without somewhere finding Jack Kirby, because he touched so much. But I think the thing that I appreciate in his work, and the thing that you maybe see in mine—and what I took from Kirby, I think—is his sense of abstraction. The way that what he draws, above and beyond being pictures of people in general, regular people in the street, it’s got an abstract look to it, a design quality to it, which powers his storytelling, powers what he draws, even when what he draws is very simple. If I try to do anything, I try to reduce my work, now, to the essentials. I think that’s what I learned from Kirby. I had a bit of an epiphany when I was in Madrid and I was in the Prado, which is a big art gallery where they’ve got Picasso’s Guernica, which is a huge, wall-sized monochrome painting inspired by the Civil War. And on the wall opposite are these little pencil drawings. And I looked at the drawings and thought, “I’ve seen Guernica, I’ve never seen these, but they remind me of something.” And what it was, they were pencil drawings that had the absolute certainty, intent, and beautiful design that Kirby’s pencils had. Each line exactly where the artist intended it to be. Each line being exactly the right curve. And I came across this later—the one piece of Kirby that I ever inked was a Topps trading card, which was a tiny little 6" x

ROYER: And I liked the bold, wet #4 Windsor-Newton strokes and things like that. I had seen very few pages of Jack’s pencils because there weren’t many of them appearing in fanzines in the mid-to-late Sixties. And I was looking at these pencils, and my feeling was nobody was inking Jack. Even though my favorite inker was Joe Sinnott, he made it so beautiful and graceful. But I had this enormous opinion that I wanted to have a chance and do exactly what I thought was pure Kirby. That first book just blew me away, and it was incredibly intimidating to finally get to ink Jack, other than some Marvelmania material. And what was so powerful about Jack, in that first one—it was New Gods #5—Orion has his left leg caught in this huge clam. And the next panel, it is his right leg. [scatted laughter] However, it didn’t make any difference, because it was so right, so powerful, so strong, and Jack was telling a story, and it really didn’t make any difference. And firsthand I got to experience this power and then, my God, take a brush and a pen to it. Jack had paper that he’d sought out that was perfect for working with his HB or 2HB Ticonderoga. It was perfect paper for him to pencil on. He could do things with a pencil that nobody else could do. But once he had finished, the fiber from that paper was so worn that the only way I could keep brushstrokes and pen lines from bleeding was

to take an iron and iron the pages. I think I ruined at least three irons in those early months. But I didn’t want this stuff not showing up in reproduction. I wanted it to be perfect. I don’t think I ever did a perfect job. I still, when people ask me, “Who is your favorite inker?”, I say Joe Sinnott. And then I say, “But I must say, I think I was the truest to Jack, for whatever that’s worth.” [applause] EVANIER: Steve, you inked a couple of Kirby drawings. [applause] When you’re inking a Jack Kirby drawing, do you have to do it Jack’s way, or can you inject more of yourself into it as an artist?

good intentions. There was a period shortly after the big artwork brouhaha, when everybody was drawing Jack into their comics as a tribute to him. And, the truth of the matter is that deep down—I think, this is my opinion—that Jack would have very much preferred not to have been a character in those books. He knew that was intended as an honor, and you’d meant it as an honor, and he would accept it on that basis. He would never have faulted someone for trying to honor him, because he knew it was meant out of respect and love and only good intentions. So I

(below) Restoration of this Captain America #101 cover May 1968) revealed a lot of detail was whited-out and redrawn before publication. Shown at right is the original, unaltered version, with inks by Syd Shores. Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

RUDE: My opinion about inking the work of Jack was to not literally copy. That was my philosophy when I went to inking some of the work, because I think the best period that Jack ever had was probably the mid1960s, like ’66. When I ink his work, I try to make it look like that period. Like I would ignore a lot of the squiggles and stuff, it didn’t make any graphic sense to me. So I take a lot of license with Jack’s stuff, for better or worse. EVANIER: Let me throw this open to questions from the audience. Anything at all you want to know or you want to ask these gentlemen? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Recently in the pages of the Fantastic Four, the team went to Heaven, and when it came time and they were trying to get back home, they were called for, and they had an audience with God. And they open it up and there’s Jack Kirby sitting at his table, writing the world. And he was on the phone and talking, “No, no, no, we can’t do this, we can’t do this. All right, seeya. ’Nuff said.” And then he hung up. Was there any type of pre-planning with that? Did you know about that? EVANIER: Did the Estate get a call? I’ll bet they didn’t. No—. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Did I get somebody in trouble? [some laughter] EVANIER: Well, there’s a strange thing with Jack. Jack was a very—probably a third or a half of this audience got to meet Jack at various times, and Jack was enormously polite to people. He had a tendency to kind of swallow things that bothered him because he wanted to be polite to people who had 67

don’t know how—I don’t know how I feel about that, at times, because I knew Jack was of two minds on it. And I didn’t see that Fantastic Four scene until someone told me about it. I thought to myself, “Y’know, I don’t know what Jack would have thought of this.” Lisa, do you have any comment on this? LISA KIRBY: My version—I know this of my father, that he would probably take it as a compliment and as an honor and that type of thing. And then, like you said, there was the other version, as well. He may not come out and say that, but I think outwardly he would take that as a compliment, as an honor. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, in effect, though, who else would better be portrayed as the All-Father of the Fantastic Four? I mean, he is the maker of their world. ROYER: The current issue of The Jack Kirby Collector [#40], which is available in the dealer’s room, is the first, I think, public announcement of Radioactive Man #9, which is the book that covers the Seventies and some of Jack’s creations. And, since I signed an agreement saying that I wouldn’t say anything about it, since it is now public, in the “O’Brien and the New Guards” story, the Highfather character will be very familiar to you with his ever-present cigar. [laughter] GIBBONS: I must also plead guilty, myself. I wrote a little series of Captain America recently for Marvel. It was drawn be Lee Weeks, he’s another great artist [applause] and it’s basically this alternate universe thing where the USA’s under the Nazi jackboots. And as they lead Captain America through the streets, one person in the crowd shouts at him, “We’re with you, Cap!” And it’s this little guy with spiky hair and a cigar. [some laughter] EVANIER: Yeah, he loved tributes. I think that what hovers over this issue for me, and it’s just a personal thing, I always remember—as Mike can tell you, I can remember everything I’ve ever heard. [laughs] And I always remember a couple of times when someone would honor Jack with a big drawing or something like that, and Roz would say, “Oh, good. Another tribute. No money.” [laughter] And I always think of that at times—you know, if somebody puts Jack into a panel or something, that’s fine and terrific and wonderful. I think there have been tributes which would have been bigger honors to him if the person doing the tribute hadn’t been making such a substantial profit on 68

the tribute. [laughs] AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a technical question, Mark. All these years, I’ve wondered on the characters that Jack created, like Fighting American or even any of the Marvel characters, who did the color schemes on the costumes? EVANIER: Jack did color schemes on costumes. That’s something he did with Joe Simon. They had a crew of guys there. Joe was a demon with designs. One of the highest compliments I’ve ever known Jack to pay another artist was to talk about Joe’s design sense. Joe’s doing the layout of a cover, of a logo, and the design—he was taking the color into account with that. He had enormous respect for Joe in that capacity. Jack actually designed a number of color schemes for characters. Steve and I did the color scheme on Mister Miracle. This color scheme here. After someone at DC had decided that Mister Miracle should be purple, Jack reacted as you would expect. [laughs] AUDIENCE MEMBER: One of the things that was a change that you could really see over the years with Kirby was the way he did the Thing, and I was wondering if some of the gentlemen, especially some of the gentlemen who have done inking, have any comments as to how the Thing changed over the years. EVANIER: Paul, what era of Thing were you drawing? You mentioned earlier that the early issues influenced you, but as I recall, you were drawing a much later version Thing. RYAN: Well, it was the rocky Thing. When he first started out, he was like a mass of clay, and he evolved into the rock-like creature we know now. But as I understand, it was Joe Sinnott who actually came up with that look, the rocks and the spotting the blacks on the rocks. So I guess the period I was looking at was

around the time that they introduced the Inhumans. EVANIER: About issue #46 or thereabouts. I always felt that even though Jack rarely looked at the comics, he was influenced by Joe Sinnott’s inking to the point where he began to pencil some things the way he had seen Joe ink them, including the shading on the Thing’s skin. AUDIENCE MEMBER: My favorite elements in Kirby’s art is his what I would call special effects. Did Kirby invent that style, with all the Kosmic Krackle and stuff? EVANIER: Anyone want to field that? ROYER: I don’t think Jack Kirby worked in a vacuum. He did look at other things, at other people’s work. Sometimes he may not have paid that close attention to those books when they were printed, because he made his statement, and then he went on to a new statement. But sometimes I think he would look at what was done, from a technical standpoint. And I think that Jack evolved. He never stood still. And there are people who have their own special periods that they prefer over others. But I think that Jack was influenced by Joe Sinnott. I think we’ve done long articles about the Kirby squiggles and things of that nature. I think that what Joe brought to the Thing defined the character from a drawing standpoint, and then, it was an opportunity for Jack to add more character, more expression, because you had the distinct rocks and shapes rather than an undefined blob of clay. And all of this was part of the evolution of Jack Kirby, the—I always referred to him as the impressionist bordering on an expressionist. But he did not work in a vacuum. I’ve been on many panels over the year with Jack, and I think Jack had a very unassuming ego. He felt that what he was doing was the best way to do it, but he didn’t want other people to do it that way. And one of the most entertaining lunches I ever had was a ninetyminute lunch with Burne Hogarth, Jack Kirby, and Roz. And Roz and I sat there for ninety minutes and just winked and smiled at each other, because these two men argued for ninety minutes. [laughter and scattered applause] But why we smiled is because they were saying the same thing. It was

Jack Kirby the street fighter, and Burne Hogarth, who came from the mean streets but adopted the world of academia and the onehundred-dollar words, and for them to argue for ninety minutes about philosophy, and both say the same thing, was extremely entertaining. [laughter and applause]

(previous page, bottom) A photo of Mike Royer with Burne Hogarth from the early 1970s.

EVANIER: Burne used to live near me and I used to see him walking down the street, all by himself, arguing. [laughter] I would like to add, by the way, that I also think Mike Royer had an enormous effect on Jack’s work, not just because of Jack looking at what Mike did, but just the sheer liberation of not having to worry about what someone was going to do to his pencils. The trust he had in Mike freed Jack to be Jack Kirby. He didn’t have to worry about people leaving out backgrounds, people trying

(far left) Kirby’s cover to Black Goliath #4 (Aug. 1976). Inks by Joe Sinnott.

to change what he did. He knew that Mike would render what he did faithfully, and catch some of the other mistakes, as well. We are just about out of time. I want to ask, Mike, can you tell us what you were talking about in the dealer’s room?

(right) This drawing was used for the Loki pin-up in Journey Into Mystery #111. Inks by Dick Ayers.

(below) Mike Royer inked (with assists by Bill Wray) this reunion of the original Marvel Bullpen—as the Fantastic Four, with Jack as the Thing—in What If? #11 (Oct. 1978). Characters TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

ROYER: Oh, please come by table 4501, which is on the Mexican border. [much laughter] If anybody remembers me in comicdom, it’s for that decade with Jack, but for 25 years since then I’ve done Disney character art product merchandising. I was on staff for fourteen years, then I went freelance, and for a wonderful seven-year period, the Disney Store said, “Don’t even come in, we don’t want you off the board.” And using Jack kind of over my shoulder, and how would Jack do this, I produced some artwork that I was able to retain my originals on, and since I don’t collect me, I have them spread all over the table. And if you’d like to see what Mike Royer did outside of Jack Kirby, come to table 4501. SIMONSON: You won’t believe it’s the same guy. EVANIER: Does anybody else on the panel have something they want to plug? All right, Steve? [laughter] RUDE: I completely forgot to mention this. I had the great honor of being inked by Mike Royer on almost all of my Marvel stuff, and I can’t thank him enough for it. [applause] EVANIER: I would like to thank the Kirby family for being with us. And I’d like to thank all of you for being here for the ninth Jack Kirby tribute panel. We had to skip one year for very dubious reasons. Please join us here for the tenth Jack Kirby panel next year. ★

An ULTRARare Find From 1962!

KIRBY’S GAMMA RAYS: ALPHA TO OMEGA!

Unearthed

by John Morrow magine my shock, as I’m shooting the breeze with an original art dealer at Comicon International: San Diego this summer, and he casually says, “By the way, I’ve got some ’60s Kirby Hulk pencils to send you for the magazine.” Kirby Hulk pencils? Those are nearly as rare as hen’s teeth, considering he only drew five issues in 1962, plus a smattering of Avengers and Tales to Astonish issues (the latter mostly layouts) with the Green Goliath in them. Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued! (This kind of thing is why I go to the San Diego Con every Summer!) “They’re from Hulk #6,” the dealer continued. “Can’t be,” said I, immediately remembering that Steve Ditko, not Jack Kirby, penciled that final issue of the Hulk’s initial run. “No, no, these were in Larry Lieber’s closet all these years, and were supposed to be for issue #6,” the dealer opined. “I’ll mail ’em to you when I get back home.” You wouldn’t believe how quickly I pulled out a business card with our new mailing address on it!

(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

bandaged from some kind of battle. There’s no evidence of such a battle in any of the published Kirby issues (#1-5). Also, the pages show Rick Jones engaged in a basketball game with a gang of thugs disguised as teenaged opponents. When the gangsters start playing dirty, Rick uses his mental link with the Hulk to summon ol’ Greenskin to save the day and put the punks in their place. There’s no evidence of any basketball game, or the mustachioed lead villain, in any of the published issues, so this must be from an unpublished story (probably meant for #6), right? Yes, except for one detail: Rick’s mental link with the Hulk. He gained the link in Hulk #3, and lost it in #4, never to return during the Hulk’s original six-issue run. So either (a) Stan and/or Jack decided to give him back the mental link in #6, (b) Stan or Jack simply forgot the link was gone and put it in by mistake (and maybe that’s why these pages were discarded), or (c) these are pages intended for an earlier issue. If you look back at Hulk #3, there’s a weird transition between stories. Pages 1215 are an oddly-inserted three-page recap of the Hulk’s origin, followed by a splash page for the Ringmaster story that fills the second half of the issue. However, the pages are numbered continuously, not starting over with a new Page 1 for the Ringmaster splash page (as would happen in issues #4 and 5, which both contain two separately numbered stories). Even more telltale is the first story in #3, which starts with a big “Part 1” on the splash page; but “Part 2” never appears! Are these actually pages from a discarded sequence in #3? Did Stan eliminate this sequence to make room for an origin recap, to get new readers up to speed on the Hulk’s beginnings? Or is this truly from an unseen Kirby-drawn issue #6? Perhaps the only way we’ll know for sure is if other pages ever turn up. If you spot any clues that I missed, be sure to write and let me know. But regardless, this is a remarkable find, and a great opportunity to see Jack’s first generation of pencils on a character he co-created. (continued on page 75)

A few weeks later, a package arrived with the dealer’s return address, and I ripped it open. There inside is the kind of thing that makes doing this magazine so worthwhile: Three pages of heretofore unknown Kirby Hulk pencil pages, sans dialogue. As you can see here, they’re pages 1113 of an early 1960s Hulk story. But were they really meant for issue #6 of the Hulk’s mag? Larry Lieber’s alleged recollections aside, the answer’s not 100% certain.

The Case For & Against Issue #6 The pages show a sequence where the Hulk is hospitalized, with his head 71

By way of contrast, take a look at Jack’s final shot at a Hulk story, from Eternals #16 (above). The legend goes, Jack was encouraged (some same forced) by Marvel to add classic Lee/Kirby characters to the series to boost sales. Jack didn’t want to

tie the Eternals series directly to the Marvel Universe, so as a compromise, he had them battle a cosmic-powered Hulk robot (Jack’s premise being that college students built a robot based on their favorite comic book character, never explicitly

stating that there was a “real” Hulk in the Eternals’ continuity). Some people loved it, lots hated it, but it gave us one last chance to see Jack handle the Hulk in a story, and the pencils here show how far his style had evolved in fifteen years. ★ 75

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COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. THREE: (176 pgs.) Reprints TJKC #1315, plus over 30 pieces of never before published Kirby art! $24 US

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. FOUR: (240 pgs.) Reprints TJKC #1619, 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

CBA is the 2000-2003 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICSRELATED MAG! Edited by Jon B. Cooke, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art. Back issues are ONLY AVAILABLE FROM TWOMORROWS!

CBA #9: (116 pgs.) CHARL- CBA #10: (116 pgs.) WALTER CBA #11: (116 pgs.) ALEX TON COMICS: PART ONE! SIMONSON, plus WOMEN OF TOTH & SHELDON MAYER! DICK GIORDANO, PETER THE COMICS! RAMONA TOTH interviews, unseen art, MORISI, JIM APARO, JOE FRADON, MARIE SEVERIN, appreciations, checklist, & GILL, MCLAUGHLIN, GLANZ- TRINA ROBBINS, JOHN more. Also, SHELLY MAYER’s MAN, new GIORDANO cover, WORKMAN, new SIMONSON kids, the real life SUGAR & more! $9 US SPIKE! $9 US cover, & more! $9 US

WARREN COMPANION 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!

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST (100 pgs.) Lists all of Jack Kirby’s published comics in detail, plus Portfolios, unpublished work; even cross-references reprints! Filled with rare Kirby artwork! $7 US

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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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

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

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

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 #41: (84 pgs.) TABLOID! 1970s MARVEL, including Jack’s last year on FF, EVANIER column, GIORDANO interview, tribute panel with GIBBONS, RUDE, SIMONSON, RYAN, ART GALLERY, more! $13 US

KIRBY COLLECTOR SUBSCRIPTIONS! 4 tabloid issues: $36 Standard, $52 First Class (Canada: $60, Elsewhere: $64 Surface, $80 Airmail).

CBA #12: (116 pgs.) CHARL- CBA #13: (116 pgs.) MARVEL CBA #14: (116 pgs.) TOWER CBA #15: (116 pgs.) LOVE & TON COMICS OF THE 1970s! HORROR OF THE 1970s! Art/ COMICS! Art by & intvs. with ROCKETEERS! Art by & intvs. Rare art/intvs. with STATON, interviews with WOLFMAN, WALLY WOOD, DAN ADKINS, with DAVE STEVENS, LOS BYRNE, NEWTON, SUTTON, COLAN, PALMER, THOMAS, LEN BROWN, STEVE BROS. HERNANDEZ, MATT ZECK, NICK CUTI, a NEW E- ISABELLA, PERLIN, TRIMPE, SKEATES, GEORGE TUSKA, WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, MAN strip, new STATON MARCOS, a new COLAN/ new WOOD & ADKINS covers, new STEVENS/HERNANDEZ cover, more! $9 US PALMER cover, more! $9 US more! $9 US cover, more! $9 US

(288-page unsigned Hardcover) $44 US NOTE: These unsigned hardcovers have all the contents of the signed version, except for the signed Wrightson plate. Please call for availability of the signed version. Sorry, the softcover is sold out.

THE COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOL. TWO Second volume in the series, reprinting the Eisner Award-winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST #5-6 (spotlighting 1970s DC and Marvel comics), plus over 50 NEW PAGES of features and art: • New interviews with MARSHALL ROGERS, STEVE ENGLEHART, & TERRY AUSTIN on their highly-acclaimed 1970s Batman work! • An extensive look at perhaps the rarest 1970s comic of all, DC’s CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE, showcasing unused stories from that decade! (208-page Trade Paperback) $24 US

CBA #16: (132 pgs.) ’70s CBA #17: (116 pgs.) ARTHUR CBA #18: (116 pgs.) COSMIC CBA #19: (116 pgs.) HARVEY CBA #20: (116 pgs.) FATHERS CBA #21: (116 pgs.) THE ART CBA #22: (116 pgs.) GOLD ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS! ADAMS & CO.! ART ADAMS COMICS OF THE ’70s! Art by COMICS! Art by & intvs. with & SONS! Art by & intvs. with OF ADAM HUGHES! Art, inter- KEY COMICS! Art by & intvs. Art by & interviews with interview & gallery, remem- & intvs. with JIM STARLIN, SIMON & KIRBY, WALLY the top father/son teams in view & checklist with HUGH- with RUSS MANNING, WALLY ERNIE CÓLON, CHAYKIN, bering GRAY MORROW, ALAN WEISS, ENGLEHART, WOOD, AL WILLIAMSON, GIL comics: ADAM, ANDY, & JOE ES, plus a day in the life of WOOD, JESSE SANTOS, ROVIN, AMENDOLA, HAMA, GEORGE ROUSSOS, GEORGE AL MILGROM, LEIALOHA, KANE, SID JACOBSON, FRED KUBERT & JOHN ROMITA SR. ALEX ROSS, JOHN BUSCEMA MARK EVANIER, DON GLUT, new CÓLON & KUPPERBERG EVANS, new ART ADAMS ’60s Bullpen reunion, new RHOADES, MITCH O’CONNELL & JR., new ROMITA & tribute, new HUGHES cover, new BRUCE TIMM cover, cover, more! $9 US covers, more! $9 US STARLIN cover, more! $9 US cover, more! $9 US KUBERT covers, more! $9 US more! $9 US more! $9 US

CBA #23: (116 pgs.) MIKE CBA #24: (116 pgs.) COMICS CBA #25: (116 pgs.) ALAN MIGNOLA SPOTLIGHT, plus OF NATIONAL LAMPOON with MOORE’S ABC COMICS with JILL THOMPSON: Sandman to GAHAN WILSON, BODÉ, NEAL MOORE, KEVIN NOWLAN, Scary Godmother! Mignola ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, GENE HA, RICK VEITCH, J.H. INTERVIEW & ART GALLERY, ALAN KUPPERBERG, BOBBY WILLIAMS, SCOTT DUNBIER, extensive CHECKLIST, new LONDON, MICHAEL GROSS, JIM BAIKIE, and NOWLAN & cover, & more! $9 US WILLIAMS covers! $9 US more! $9 US

COMICOLOGY (edited by BRIAN SANER LAMKEN), the highlyacclaimed magazine about modern comics, recently ended its four-issue run, but back issues are available, featuring never-seen CC #2: (100 pgs.) MIKE CC #3: (100 pgs.) CARLOS CC #4: (116 pgs., final issue) art & interviews. ALLRED interview & portfolio, PACHECO interview & portfolio, ALL-BRIAN ISSUE! Interviews

COMING SOON! COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION VOL. 3 (REPRINTING CBA #7-8 PLUS NEW MATERIAL!)

60 years of THE SPIRIT, 25 ANDI WATSON interview, a look with BRIAN AZZARELLO, years of the X-MEN, PAUL at what comics predicted the BRIAN CLOPPER, BRIAN GRIST interview, FORTY future would be like, new color MICHAEL BENDIS, BRIAN WINKS, new color ALLRED & PACHECO & WATSON covers, BOLLAND, huge BOLLAND GRIST covers, & more! $8 US & more! $8 US portfolio, & more! $8 US

BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE! Twelve Issues in the US: $60 Standard, $96 First Class (Canada: $120, Elsewhere: $132 Surface, $180 Airmail). NOTE: IF YOU PREFER A SIX-ISSUE SUB, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

COOL NEW STUFF FROM TWOMORROWS!

Edited by ROY THOMAS The greatest ’zine of the ’60s is back, all-new, and focused on Golden & Silver Age comics and creators with articles, interviews, unseen art, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Michael T. Gilbert’s Mr. Monster, and more!

AE #2: (100 pgs.) All-new! EISNER “SPIRIT” story, KANE, FOX & SCHWARTZ on The Atom, L. LIEBER & JACK BURNLEY intvs., KANIGHER, FCA, new color BURNLEY & KANE covers, more! $8 US

AE #3: (100 pgs.) ALEX ROSS cover & interview, JERRY ORDWAY, BILL EVERETT, CARL BURGOS, Giant FAWCETT (FCA) section with C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, & more! $8 US

AE #4: (100 pgs.) 60 years of HAWKMAN & FLASH! ROY THOMAS remembers GIL KANE, intvs. with KUBERT, MOLDOFF, LAMPERT, FOX, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, KUBERT covers, more! $8 US

AE #5: (100 pgs.) JSA issue! Intvs. with SHELLY MAYER, GIL KANE, MART NODELL, GEORGE ROUSSOS, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, NEW INFANTINO / ORDWAY wraparound cover, more! $8 US

AE #6: (100 pgs.) GENE COLAN intv., how-to books by STAN LEE & KANIGHER, ALLSTAR SQUADRON, MAC RABOY section, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, COLAN & RABOY covers, more! $8 US

AE #7: (100 pgs.) Companion issue to the ALL-STAR COMPANION! J. SCHWARTZ intv., JLA-JSA teamups, MAC RABOY, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, BUCKLER & BECK covers, more! $8 US

AE #8: (100 pgs.) Bio of WALLY WOOD, ADKINS & PEARSON intvs., KUBERT intv., FCA w/ BECK, SWAYZE, & ORDWAY, MR. MONSTER, WOOD & KUBERT covers, more! $8 US

AE #9: (100 pgs.) JOHN ROMITA intv. & gallery, plus ROY THOMAS’ dream projects! FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, & TUSKA, MR. MONSTER, ROMITA & DICK GIORDANO covers! $8 US

AE #10: (100 pgs) CARMINE INFANTINO intv. & art, neverseen FLASH story, VIN SULLIVAN & MAGAZINE ENTERPRISES, FRED GUARDINEER, AYERS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, more! $8 US

AE #11: (100 pgs) Interviews with SYD SHORES, MICKEY SPILLANE, VINCE FAGO, MAGAZINE ENTERPRISES Part Two, FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, DON NEWTON, MR. MONSTER, more! $8 US

AE #12: (100 pgs) GILL FOX on QUALITY COMICS, neverseen PAUL REINMAN Green Lantern art, origins of ALLSTAR SQUADRON, FCA, MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD, more! $8 US

AE #13 (100 pgs.) TITANS OF TIMELY/MARVEL Part Two! JOE SIMON & MURPHY ANDERSON covers, Silver Age AVENGERS section (with BUSCEMA, HECK, TUSKA, & THOMAS) & more! $8 US

AE #14 (100 pgs.) JSA FROM THE ’40s TO THE ’80s! MIKE NASSER & MICHAEL T. GILBERT covers, intvs. with ORDWAY & LEE ELIAS, neverseen 1940s JSA pgs., ’70s JSA, & more! $8 US

AE #15 (108 pgs.) JOHN BUSCEMA TRIBUTE ISSUE! BUSCEMA covers & interview, unseen art, ROY THOMAS on their collaborations, plus salute to KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, & more! $8 US

AE #16: (108 pgs.) COLAN, BUSCEMA, ROMITA, SEVERIN interviews, ALEX ROSS on Shazam!, OTTO & JACK BINDER, KURTZMAN, new ROSS & FRADON/SEVERIN covers, more! $8 US

AE #17: (108 pgs.) LOU FINE overview & art, ARNOLD DRAKE & MURPHY ANDERSON interviews, plus EISNER, CRANDALL, DAVIS & EVANS’ non-EC action comics, FCA, LOU FINE cover, more! $8 US

AE #18: (108 pgs.) STAN GOLDBERG interview & art, plus KIRBY, DITKO, HECK, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, EVERETT, WALLY WOOD’S Flash Gordon, FCA, KIRBY & SWAYZE covers, more! $8 US

AE #19: (108 pgs.) DICK SPRANG interview & art, JERRY ROBINSON on FRED RAY, BOB KANE, CARMINE INFANTINO, ALEX TOTH, WALLY WOOD, FCA, SPRANG & RAY covers, more! $8 US

AE #20: (108 pgs.) TIMELY/ MARVEL focus, INVADERS overview with KIRBY, KANE, ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS intv., panel with FINGER, BINDER, FOX, & WEISINGER, FCA, rare art, more! $8 US

AE #21: (108 pgs.) IGER STUDIO with art by EISNER, FINE, MESKIN, ANDERSON, CRANDALL, CARDY, EVANS, “SHEENA” section, THOMAS on the JSA, FCA, DAVE STEVENS cover, more! $8 US

AE #22: (108 pgs.) EVERETT & KUBERT interviewed by GIL KANE & NEAL ADAMS, ROY THOMAS on Sub-Mariner, COLAN, BUSCEMA, SEVERIN, WOOD, FCA, BECK & EVERETT covers, more! $8 US

AE #23: (108 pgs.) Two unseen Golden Age WONDER WOMAN stories examined, BOB FUJITANI intv. Archie/ MLJ’s JOHN ROSENBERGER & VICTOR GORELICK intv., FCA, rare art, more! $8 US

AE #24: (108 pgs.) NEW X-MEN intvs. with STAN LEE, COCKRUM, CLAREMONT, WEIN, DRAKE, SHOOTER, THOMAS, MORT MESKIN profiled, FCA, covers by COCKRUM & MESKIN! $8 US

AE #25: (108 pgs.) JACK COLE & PLASTIC MAN! Brother DICK COLE interviewed, Cole celebrated by ALEX TOTH, THOMAS on All-Star Squadron #1, JERRY BAILS tribute, FCA, cover by TOTH! $8 US

AE #26: (108 pgs.) JOE SINNOTT interview, KIRBY and BUSCEMA art, IRWIN DONENFELD, Superman art by SHUSTER, BORING, SWAN, FCA, Mr. MONSTER, covers by SINNOTT & BORING! $8 US

#20:(108 (108pgs.) pgs.) AE #27: VINTIMELY/ SULLIMARVEL focus,“Lost” INVADERS VAN interview, KIRBY overview with KIRBY, KANE, HULK covers, the 1948 NY ROBBINS, DESCHAMPS CON, “GreatBOB Unknown” artists, intv., panel FCA, withALEX FINGER, KURTZMAN, TOTH, BINDER, FOX, & WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, covers by FCA, rare art, more! $8 $8 US US BURNLEY & KIRBY!

AE #28: (108 pgs.) JOE MANEELY spotlight, scarce Marvel art by EVERETT, SEVERIN, DITKO, ROMITA, extra-size FCA, LEE AMES intv., covers by MANEELY & DON NEWTON! $8 US

AE #29: (108 pgs.) FRANK BRUNNER intv., EVERETT’s Venus, Classics Illustrated adapting Lovecraft, LEE/KIRBY/ DITKO prototypes, ALEX TOTH, FCA with GENE COLAN, BRUNNER cover! $8 US

AE #30: (108 pgs.) SILVER AGE JLA special, ALEX ROSS on the JLA, MIKE SEKOWSKY, DICK DILLIN, GOLDEN AGE SIMON & KIRBY scripters speak, FRENCH HEROES, ROSS & RUDE covers! $8 US

AE #31: (108 pgs.) DICK AYERS intv., HARLAN ELLISON’S Marvel work (with Bullpen artists), LEE/KIRBY/ DITKO prototypes, Christmas cards from cartoonists, AYERS & RAY covers! $8 US

AE #32: (108 pgs.) Golden Age TIMELY ARTISTS intv., MART NODELL, MIKE GOLD on the Silver Age, art by SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, INFANTINO, KANE, GIORDANO & GIL KANE covers! $8 US

AE #33: (108 pgs.) MIKE SEKOWSKY tribute, intvs. with wife PAT SEKOWSKY and Golden Age inker VALERIE BARCLAY, art by ANDERSON, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, INFANTINO, FRENZ covers! $8 US

AE #34: (108 pgs.) QUALITY COMICS, intvs. with ALEX KOTZKY, CHUCK CUIDERA, DICK ARNOLD, TOTH, KURTZMAN, art by FINE, EISNER, COLE, CRANDALL and NICHOLAS covers! $8 US

AE #35: #20: (108 (108pgs.) pgs.)STAN TIMELY/ LEE, MARVEL focus,DICK INVADERS JOHN ROMITA, AYERS, overview with KIRBY, KANE, ROY THOMAS, & AL JAFFEE ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS on the 1940s & 1950s Golden intv., FINGER, Age at panel Timely/with Marvel, FCA, BINDER, FOX, & ROMITA WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, and FCA, rarecovers! art, more! $8 US JAFFEE $8 US

AE #36: (108 pgs.) JOE SIMON intv. & cover, GOLDEN AGE HEROES of Canada, ELMER WEXLER, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on MR. MONSTER’S ORIGINS, FCA, ALEX TOTH, and more! $8 US

AE #37: (108 pgs.) BECK & BORING covers, SY BARRY intv., Superman’s “K-Metal” story, FCA with C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, DON NEWTON, and Shazam!/Isis!, MR. MONSTER, and more! $8 US

AE #38: (108 pgs.) JULIUS SCHWARTZ tribute & interviews, art by INFANTINO, ANDERSON, KUBERT, KANE, TOTH, SWAN, SEKOWSKY, FCA section, INFANTINO and HASEN covers, more!! $8 US

AE #39: (108 pgs.) Full issue spotlight on JERRY ROBINSON, with comprehensive interview and unseen Batman art, AL FELDSTEIN on EC, GIL FOX, MESKIN, ROUSSOS, & ROBINSON covers! $8 US

AE #40: (108 pgs.) JULIUS SCHWARTZ memorial issue with tributes by pros, GIL KANE interview, comprehensive interview and unseen art by RUSS HEATH, GIL KANE and HEATH covers! $8 US

AE #41: (108 pgs.) FRANKENSTEIN issue with BERNIE WRIGHTSON interview, DICK BRIEFER, 100th issue of FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, EMILIO SQUEGLIO intv., WRIGHTSON and SWAYZE covers! $8 US

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME FOUR: KEVIN NOWLAN (NOV.) KEVIN NOWLAN is an artist’s artist. Cover artist, penciler, inker, letterer, colorist—even writer—he has done it all, and done it masterfully. Kevin’s work on comic-book icons Batman and Superman ranks among the best in those characters’ rich histories! His humorous “Jack B. Quick” feature—cocreated with industry legend ALAN MOORE—not only allowed him to explore his Mid-Western roots, but won him an Eisner Award along the way! This volume features an IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW with Nowlan, fully illustrated with RARE AND NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED ARTWORK, as well as a GALLERY SECTION of sketches and finished pieces. It’s the ultimate look at a true Modern Master! (128-page trade paperback) $19 US

WRITE NOW! #9 (JAN.)

ALTER EGO #42 (NOW!)

ALTER EGO #43 (DEC.)

DRAW! #10 (FEB.)

You know him as one of the most important comics artists of all time, but NEAL ADAMS also plots and scripts with the best of them! In an exclusive interview, Neal talks about all facets of comics writing, and gives us a look at how he does it! (This issue is filled with lots of NUTS & BOLTS examples of Neal’s writing and art!) Plus, interviews with: Red-hot GEOFF JOHNS (Flash, JSA, Teen Titans)! Hate’s PETER BAGGE! Wolff & Byrd’s BATTON LASH! More writing lessons from DENNIS O’NEIL! More NUTS & BOLTS tips on writing from top comics pros! And much more, including an all-new cover by NEAL ADAMS! Edited by Danny Fingeroth. (80-page magazine) $8 US

MARVEL’S FORGOTTEN SILVER AGE ARTISTS, THE GOLDEN AGE OF ZIFFDAVIS, HILLMAN, & THE HEAP! Neverseen covers by FASTNER & LARSON, and Heap artist ERNIE SCHROEDER! A celebration of DON HECK, WERNER ROTH, and PAUL REINMAN, plus rare art by JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, DICK AYERS, et al.! Then, from Hillman to Ziff-Davis, two Golden Age comics companies and their creators remembered by Heap/Airboy artist ERNIE SCHROEDER, editor HERB ROGOFF, and cartoonist WALTER LITTMAN—interviewed by JIM AMASH! Plus scarce Hillman & Ziff-Davis art by ANDERSON, INFANTINO, LEAV, KIDA, KRIEGSTEIN, & many others! Also: FCA, ALEX TOTH, & more!! (108-page magazine) $8 US

CHRISTMAS—NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE BORDER! Behind flip covers by GEORGE TUSKA and DAVE STEVENS— Yuletide art by WALLY WOOD, JOE SINNOTT, FRANK BRUNNER, NICK CARDY, ALEX TOTH, MART NODELL, ESTEBAN MAROTO, and others! Interviews with Golden Age artists TOM GILL (Lone Ranger) and MORRIS WEISS of the Timely/Marvel Bullpen! “The Silver Age of Mexican Comics” by historian FRED PATTEN, exploring 1960s Mexican comics (with a cornucopia of rarely-seen comic art)! Plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, et al.—BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom—MICHAEL T. GILBERT’s Comic Crypt—and more! Edited by Roy Thomas. (108-page magazine) $8 US

Artist RON GARNEY gives us a candid interview on his career, and a STEP-BYSTEP on how he works (plus a new Superman cover)! GRAHAM NOLAN, artist on Batman and two of the classic newspaper strips (THE PHANTOM and REX MORGAN, MD), shows us how he keeps up the pace producing two strips. ALSO: DRAW! editor MIKE MANLEY peels back the mystery on Adult Swim’s new hit cartoon THE VENTURE BROTHERS with its creator JACKSON PUBLIC and NYC’s Noodle Soup Studio, and uncovers plenty of production art, storyboards and more! PLUS: Regular DRAW! instructor BRET BLEVINS on Dynamic Drapery (Part 2), ALBERTO RUIZ (a.k.a. Dr. Cyberfunken) with great Adobe Illustrator tricks and tips, and more! (88-page magazine with COLOR) $8 US

KIRBY UNLEASHED (DEC.)

BACK ISSUE #7 (NOW!)

BEST OF DRAW! (DEC.)

“Super Teams” issue! The history of The Brave & The Bold, including a JIM APARO interview and a tribute to writer BOB HANEY! Fantastic Four contributors from STAN LEE to MARK WAID share their insights into Marvel’s fab four! MARK EVANIER and WILL MEUGNIOT discuss their ’80s DNAGENTS series! GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: DC’s TEEN TITANS SWINGIN’ ELSEWORDS and SUPERSONS, and Marvel’s SANTA CLAUS, with art by JAY STEPHENS, NICK CARDY, KIERON DWYER, and JOHN ROMITA, SR.! “Rough Stuff” pencil pages by ALEX ROSS, ALEX TOTH, RICK LEONARDI, DAVE COCKRUM, DON HECK, FRANK ROBBINS, DON NEWTON, CARMINE INFANTINO, and JOHN BYRNE (his FF tryout)! PLUS: DENNY O’NEIL’s editorial on super teams, art by DICK GIORDANO, RAMONA FRADON, NEAL ADAMS, NICK CARDY, WALT SIMONSON, TERRY AUSTIN, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, STEVE RUDE, MOEBIUS, GEORGE PÉREZ, and more! With a Superman/Batman cover penciled by CURT SWAN and inked by MURPHY ANDERSON! Edited by Michael Eury. (100-page magazine) $8 US

Compiles material from the first two soldout issues of DRAW!, the “How-To” magazine on comics and cartooning! Presented here are a wealth of tutorials by, and interviews with, the top professionals in the industry! Featured are demonstrations by: DAVE GIBBONS (layout and drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (drawing lovely women, painting from life, and creating figures that “feel”), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN (inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on animation and Samuria Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Each artist presents their work STEP-BY-STEP, so you can learn valuable tips and tricks along the way, as editor MIKE MANLEY assembles this wealth of information for both beginning and experienced artists! Cover by BRET BLEVINS! (200-page trade paperback) $26 US

BEST OF THE LEGION OUTPOST (NOW!)

THE ART OF GEORGE TUSKA (FEB. 2005)

Originally published in 1972 as the official newsletter of the Legion Fan Club, the LEGION OUTPOST featured contributions by fans, pros, and soon-to-be pros. Launched at a time when the future of the Legion of Super-Heroes was in doubt, the OUTPOST was at the center of fan-based efforts to revive the title, and was largely responsible for its rescue from obscurity! This trade paperback collects the best material from the hard-to-find fanzine, including rare interviews and articles from creators such as DAVE COCKRUM, CARY BATES, and JIM SHOOTER, plus neverbefore-seen artwork by COCKRUM, MIKE GRELL, JIMMY JANES and others! It also features a previously unpublished interview with KEITH GIFFEN originally intended for the never-published LEGION OUTPOST #11, plus other new material! And it sports a rarely-seen classic 1970s cover by Legion fan favorite artist DAVE COCKRUM! (160-page trade paperback) $22 US

GEORGE TUSKA’s career spans over fifty years, and THE ART OF GEORGE TUSKA is a comprehensive look at his personal and professional life, including his early work with the Eisner-Iger studio, his involvement with the controversial crime comics of the 1950s, and his tenure with both Marvel and DC Comics, as well as each of the independent publishers Tuska worked with. The book includes extensive coverage of his definitive work on IRON MAN, X-MEN, HULK, JUSTICE LEAGUE, TEEN TITANS, BATMAN, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, and many more. A gallery of commission artwork by George and a thorough index of his extensive body of work are also included, and each section is filled with original artwork, photos, sketches, and previously unpublished art. Interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus George’s own words, make this book a testament to the tremendous influence Tuska has had on the industry! (128-page trade paperback) $19 US

To celebrate our tenth year in publishing, TwoMorrows is re-releasing the fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED portfolio, COMPLETELY REMASTERED! This scarce collectible spotlights some of JACK “KING” KIRBY’S finest art from all eras of his career, including 1930s pencil work, unused strips, illustrated World War II letters, 1950s pages, unpublished 1960s MARVEL PENCIL PAGES AND SKETCHES, and FOURTH WORLD PENCIL ART (done expressly for this portfolio in 1970)! We’ve gone back to the original art to ensure the best reproduction possible, and Kirby’s assistants at the time—MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN—have updated the extensive Kirby biography from the original printing, and added a NEW FOREWORD explaining how this portfolio came to be! PLUS: We’ve recolored the original color plates, and added EIGHT NEW COLOR PAGES, including Jack’s four GODS POSTERS (released separately in 1972), and FOUR ADDITIONAL KIRBY COLOR PIECES! It’s all presented at the KIRBY COLLECTOR tabloid size, and proceeds go toward scanning and archiving the 5000+ page Kirby pencil archives. (48-page Tabloid) $24 US

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

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Send letters to: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR c/o TwoMorrows • NEW ADDRESS! 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com All letters will be considered for publication. And unlike a certain 1970s comics publisher, we won’t make any attempt to stack this column with negative ones.

(I knew our Kamandi issue was going to be a big hit with readers—they’ve literally been clamoring for one since we started TJKC ten years ago. Here’s some comments on #40:) Has it really been thirty-two years since Kamandi rowed his raft through a devastated New York City, met Ben Boxer, and confronted man-size rats? Has it really been thirty-one years since Kamandi met Tuftan, Prince of Tigers, attempted to tame the wild Kliklak so he could ride the creature to victory in Sacker’s sweepstakes, and discovered the Watergate secrets? Has it really been thirty years since Kamandi visited a Chicago gone automated, witnessed the tragic death of his dolphin friend Teela, and vowed to take down the dreaded “Red Baron”? Thirty years since Buddy Blank realized the true condition of his friend Lila, and began his destiny as OMAC? (And isn’t it amazing how the “Red Baron” saga in KAMANDI #21-23 just keeps getting better and better as the years go by?) Has it really been twenty-nine years since Kamandi rode inside the UFO and traveled into interplanetary space? Twenty-nine years since OMAC battled Professor Skuba? Has it really been twenty-eight years since Kamandi contracted some sort of funky fever and went wild and started fights with virtually everyone he came across? Has it really been twenty-seven years since Kamandi learned he had a “son,” and dealt with a group of stoned cats? Has it really been twenty-six years since Kamandi witnessed Evermore and came upon the awesome power of the Vortex? Yes, sigh, it has been all those years. Some days it even feels like them. Today, all those thrilling memories of KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH and OMAC: ONE MAN ARMY CORPS came back, in one magical moment outside of time. Thank you for THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #40. Jim Kingman, Editor, COMIC EFFECT (And thank you, Jim, for your excellent issue of COMIC EFFECT that featured Kamandi. It was an invaluable reference piece for me in putting the issue together. If you’re not getting CE, you’re missing a great ’zine in the tradition of the best ever done. Find out more at www.comiceffect.com.) TOTALLY a guess here...but in regards to the picture or Simon & Kirby at the bottom of page 54 of your latest issue of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, your editor comments, “But we’ve always wondered; why is there an illo of Superman on the wall of the Simon & Kirby studio?” NOT knowing when the picture was taken—but guessing post-war—I have a theory: Perhaps it was used as a guide for BOY COMMANDOS #24. The last story in the issue revolves around Brooklyn wearing a Superman costume, and is also featured on the cover of that issue. Brian Barratt, Omaha, NE 78

Hey! How does that punk Kamandi rate both covers on issue #40?! Perhaps you are preparing the “All-OMAC” issue and didn’t want to utilize one of the two cool OMAC covers you’re going to use on that issue. Kris Brownlow, Tarpon Springs, FL (Frankly, we didn’t have any cool OMAC pencils to have someone ink, so we opted for a double-shot of Kamandi.) Regarding the unused KAMANDI page on page 3: Wouldn’t it be more likely to be a discarded page from KAMANDI #30 rather than 23? The setting is all wrong for page 11 of #23 (or #22) and at no time is there just Kamandi and Ben together. On the other hand, for #30, the two of them are together in a sandy, arid junkyard that looks about right. As well, Kamandi makes a reference to a ‘UFO’—the correct topic.

The unused page shown on page 15 is harder. The fact that Ben, et al have their radiation suits on shows the page comes from the first dozen issues. I think it comes from a discarded sequence from #4 or #5. The main identifying clue here is the Tigers’ buggy. Rarely does Jack duplicate designs—here we have the same design as used on page 11 of KAMANDI #5. Even the two tigers driving are the same. Looking further, there is room for such an unused sequence as this. In #4, Ben and Renzi are captured but not seen again until #8, when their escape is referred to in passing only. So it seems to me that Jack originally had a sequence dealing with their fate but then decided against it. The only problem is that the discarded page seems to have Steve present as well. The new column by Sean Kleefeld is off to a great start. His observations about Kirby’s misunderstanding with the Wizard’s antigrav disc was fascinating. Equally fascinating is constantly discovering just how many of us there are who are so interested in such world shattering subjects that we are willing to spend time researching them. In this case, Sean’s deductions seem spot-on to me. I really must edit my own material more

carefully before I send it off to you. In my letter that you published, point 4 has a line omitted that muddles the meaning. All reference to the coming BABY seems to have disappeared. The sentence beginning with ‘Maybe’ should have read: “Maybe this is why Jack had Reed and Sue have a special dinner together in #65—to celebrate the coming of the baby which Jack had just announced in the ANNUAL he’d just drawn. But because the ANNUAL hadn’t been released yet, Stan didn’t script it that way.” Love both the GRAPHITE CAPT. VICTORY and the COLLECTED VOL. 4! And very pleased to hear about KIRBY UNLEASHED later this year! Thanks for all the hard work John. It is REALLY appreciated by us all. Shane Foley, AUSTRALIA The KAMANDI and OMAC issue was excellent. Charles Hatfield’s opinion on the Last Boy on Earth was fascinating. Indeed, the KAMANDI run was intriguing as long as the hero’s attitude about his weird environment was naive and fresh, making a connection with the readers—a point the latter writers unfortunately missed. The KIRBY OBSCURA column was great, much more informative than before. Those sci-fi shorts from the late Fifties (from both Harvey and DC) are really worth the read. I don’t know what to think about the San Diego Kirby Panel. Despite interesting personal insights from Wendy Pini and others, the talk was not as informative as before. Larry Lieber didn’t talk about his collaboration with both Kirby and Lee on his early Marvel scripts. How did they work together? Did he first write a script for Kirby who paced it and lettered it completely, including caption boxes and balloons, with Stan editing the result (as was discussed earlier in a Gartland article)? I was also somewhat annoyed by Stan Lee’s attitude. Though I consider his presence in this panel as a very positive attempt of reconciliation with Kirby fans, his derision was out of place. We all read about the Man’s lack of memory. It was confirmed here. Moreover, he constantly tried to put himself in Evanier’s shoes as the panel’s host, which was somehow disturbing. Stan is an excellent showman when promoting Marvel, but not a good panel participant. Nevertheless the DD layouts were really appreciated. We could compare them with Romita’s pencils. Your CANCELLED KIRBY CAVALCADE was to me the most interesting article of the issue, as it clearly showed the connection between KAMANDI and OMAC, as well as it gave info on the never printed episodes. Another great issue! Thanks! Jean Depelley, FRANCE KAMANDI was something of a pivotal book for me too in my appreciation of Kirby. I had seen some of the Kirby books earlier and liked them (I recall getting an issue of MISTER MIRACLE on a family road trip), but it was around the time he was doing KAMANDI that Kirby really registered in a concrete way on my consciousness. Some of the specific stories discussed in your latest issue were definite highlights of Kirby’s KAMANDI (I’m a big fan of “The Legend” too). But I’m more than a little surprised that nobody wrote about “The Gift!” You’re the only one to say anything about it, when you captioned that photocopy from

chapter three of the story. Like you, I feel this is an important story that stands on a level with “The Pact” or “Himon.” The device of using the journal writing in captions, playing point or counterpoint to the visuals of the panels, strikes me as an Eisneresque touch. Jack used it to powerful effect in this story. It’s odd to me that nobody chose to write about it. I don’t know if you made it to the Bruce Timm Spotlight panel they had at Comic-Con two or three years back now. One of the dream projects he talked about was that he had been trying to convince the WB or Cartoon Network (or somebody) to let him do a KAMANDI cartoon. The idea would be to not do what people have come to think of as the “Bruce Timm” style, but to try to translate Kirby’s art as much as possible directly onto the screen, and to do those stories straight from the comics. Unfortunately, he found there was too much of an inclination on the part of others to want to tinker with the cast and scenario. So it seemed unlikely it would ever happen. Though I did hear a rumor recently that Kamandi may pop up in an episode of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED this season. We’ll see what happens. Mark Lewis, Burbank, CA I stumbled across a Kirby Konnection I thought might be interesting to pass along. My wife and I watched the PBS program AMERICAN MASTERS: HANK WILLIAMS on Wednesday, June 23. One section of the biography that caught my attention showed some romance comic book covers (TRUE ROMANCE I believe, but I just had a brief glance) followed by several interior panels. A former band member then told of the time he asked Hank why he was “readin’ all them sissy books.” Hank replied it was where he got his ideas for songs. So, thank you Simon & Kirby for bringing the romance comic genre to market and providing inspiration for one of the true “American Masters” of American music. Randall D. Williams, Sioux City, IA Despite what Jack is quoted as saying in Jerry Boyd’s fine piece in TJKC #38, I think he did create Irish heroes. I’d always assumed that Dum-Dum Dugan, Red Ryan, and Dan (Terrible) Turpin were (at least) of Irish descent, and that’s just off the top of my head. I never felt Irish people were under-represented in Jack’s work (“Happy” Hogan!) and loved (Hank McCoy!) that Orion’s pseudonym was “O’Ryan.” I guess Jack’s memory led him on that occasion to give himself less credit than he was due. As ever, I continue to enjoy the high quality magazine you produce. Thank you and your contributors for your hard work and generosity. David Morris, Stockwood, Bristol, UK Congratulations on another very entertaining edition. I have always loved Jack’s work for DC in the ’70s and so thoroughly enjoyed the issue. Seeing the pencils to KAMANDI really brought over how much Jack invested the power of his art into the various animals. They each had a personality and individual body language and a physical strength and power. They were not just a line of identical Lions or Tigers, etc. It was also obvious that the cartoonist in him had a great deal of fun

with the various faces and expressions. Then I looked at the OMAC art and another thought suddenly struck me for the first time. Jack was famous for his super-heroes. We talk about the dynamics of his art for super-hero movement and actions. But look at their faces. They are almost stereotypes. Why? I wonder if a clue is in the OMAC art. On one hand Jack obviously took the idea of faceless spies and law officers to a logical conclusion. (And can anybody else see the influence of this on MEN IN BLACK?). But I wonder if he is also saying that he saw the super-hero in the same light. If we take the faces of his super-heroes one step further we get the faceless officers. It is like Jack is saying “Okay, I draw super-heroes for a living but as an artist and cartoonist it is not where my interests lie.” Why do I say this? Because I could suddenly see, through your reproduction of Jack’s pencil art, just how much work he had put into some secondary or incidental characters. Logically we could assume that he would be concentrating on the main characters and giving little time to the secondaries, but that is not the case. I know that Jack has sometimes been criticized for his blond aryan types of super-heroes and there is a similarity between what his heroes look like (long, blond flowing hair anyone?), but maybe that is because he just gave what he perceived people wanted in a hero and that an ugly hero would not sell? Look at the Fantastic Four. Three good-looking stereotypes and the Thing. But where does Jack spend the most time? Anyway, my thought is why not do an issue devoted to the most visually interesting of Jack’s secondary characters, whether supporting or villain or even a throwaway character? You have the art and can surely see that there must be some fascinating examples. And as a lover of Jack’s art I would love to see more of the pencil art for where Jack’s interests really seemed to lie. It was interesting reading your article on what happened to KAMANDI after Jack left and how they later tied OMAC into it. That started me thinking. Jack grew up and worked for many years in an era of comics where each story was self-contained. The only continuity he had to worry about was the internal continuity of the story. He did not even have to worry about continuity between different issues where a villain could return with never a mention of previous appearances. Even his work on the monster mags at Marvel were self-contained. It was not an Earth with lots of strangenamed monsters appearing one after the other. It was an Earth where only one strange-named monster appeared and only during that story. He would have been working the same way on KAMANDI. I would think that the last thing on his mind would be to try and find a link between KAMANDI and OMAC. To him it would have been the equivalent difference between two of his monster stories. Both on Earth, but the Earth of his imagination for that character and not linked to the other Earth. But he was trying to work in a changing field where new people coming through were being “creative” not by making stories around new worlds and characters but by linking existing worlds and characters together. It may seem like a clever idea to do but I personally think it is very limiting and constraining and a creative straightjacket. KAMANDI was a good seller for DC but we are unlikely ever to see it resurrected as it no longer fits into the Post-CRISIS continuity of one universe (the logical conclusion of the linking and the biggest creative straightjacket ever, in my opinion. It took real imagination, the type Jack had, out of comics). Anyway, coming back to creativity and KAMANDI. I enjoyed the article on the “Superman” issue. This is one of my favorite comics as it inspired my imagination at the

time. Jack realized the strength of a mystery to inspire people to think creatively. (This was the age of Von Daniken and his very “creative” thinking about various ancient stone carvings, etc.) I always loved the way we never find out what the disaster was or what happened to Superman and why his costume was there, but I think the story is stronger for it. I could use my imagination to fill in the gaps. The other item I found very interesting was the one mentioning the NEW GODS revival. Over here in England I had always assumed that Jack had left DC and then they decided to resurrect the NEW GODS. I had often wondered how he must have felt when he found out. It is intriguing to realize that the revival was decided while Jack was still at DC and he must have known about it. It is all the more interesting because in the letters page of KAMANDI #34 (if memory serves me right) there were letters about Jack leaving and that he would be doing KAMANDI until issue #40. The questions asked were if Jack would use his final issues to tie in the Great Disaster to the NEW GODS and thus finally finish that saga. The replies seemed to confirm that this was a definite possibility. I would love to know more about this. Did Jack decide to leave before the NEW GODS revival was decided and so was he serious about finishing it in KAMANDI? Did the powersthat-be at DC read this or realize what Jack was planning and so decided on their own NEW GODS revival to stop him? Did the marketing people have anything to do with this? I ask because the revival included two characters Jack had already disposed of irrevocably (Desaad and Kalibak) who were just back with no explanations whatsoever. (The only new character, Jezebel, is long forgotten.) Or was the revival discussed with Jack before he made his decision to leave? Your article seems to imply that it was. In which case surely it would have been a dream come true for him to continue his magnum opus. And, don’t forget that it was not just NEW GODS that was revived but MISTER MIRACLE as well (including Big Barda, a character Jack obviously loved). Was it a case that what he was offered was creatively unacceptable as he would have no control over the story (bring back Desaad and Kalibak, invent a few others, and DON’T kill off any characters or change things irrevocably)? Whatever it was, was it the thing that finally decided Jack that he could no longer do business with DC and had to leave? (It is interesting to note that when he returned to do a “NEW GODS #12” followed by HUNGER DOGS, those were exactly the conditions he seemed to work under. But at least he brought back Desaad and Kalibak on his terms and in his way and left them less than they were before as a result of what had happened to them.) As I have said before, one of the great things about your magazine is that it makes us think and ask questions. And long may it continue. Kevin Ainsworth, UK (This is one of the most thought-provoking letters we’ve ever received, and you hit on some very interesting points. First, I like the idea of an issue on Jack’s most visually inspired creations, so readers, let me know who you think should be represented! Secondly, about Jack’s super-heroes all having very similar faces and bodies, this is a dead-on observation in my mind. While he may have used such art conventions so he could speedily convey action and drama, you’re right that he seemed to really enjoy the non-super characters a lot. I’ve always been amazed at how comfortable Jack was at working in the romance, western, mystery, even humor genres—admittedly not my favorites to read—when his major claim to fame is super-heroes. I think you pegged it. I disagree that Jack wouldn’t have spent time thinking about a connection between Kamandi

and OMAC, though. The man thought in universes from the 1960s on, and if for no other reason than sales, I think his mind was geared toward tying books together, a lá the Fourth World. He even tied Captain Victory to the New Gods, ten years after the fact. Lastly, as near as Steve Sherman could remember, DC announced the NEW GODS revival just before Jack had notified DC he was leaving. KAMANDI was a monthly, so Jack was working three or four issues ahead of publication—#3437—when he told DC he was quitting, so those stories were already scripted. DC immediately put Gerry Conway on as KAMANDI’S new writer with #38 to ease the transition after Jack left, so there wouldn’t have been an opportunity for a NEW GODS tie-in unless Conway wanted it.) In TJKC #39 (in the 2002 tribute panel), Mark Evanier said: “Jack ALWAYS knew what was going to happen—his ability to see the future and perceive it... it was amazing....” Mark Evanier was right!!!

As we can see in this “GALAXY GREEN” panel (in which Kirby employed a MASTERFUL use of perspective), Jack foresaw the coming of THONG UNDERWEAR—20 years before the fact! (He was, however, wrong about it being worn on the OUTSIDE.) Regardless, Kirby was TRULY a visionary! Nick Alexander, Decatur, IL

NEXT ISSUE: After a brief hiatus for the birth of our daughter, we’re back with issue #42— our “Hip” issue, spotlighting all the funky, clunky stuff Kirby did at 1970s DC Comics! From JIMMY OLSEN and DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET, to KUNG-FU FIGHTER and SOUL LOVE, we’re gonna get up and boogie like a Hairie at Habitat! The issue features Kirby covers inked by KEVIN NOWLAN (Guardian and the Newsboy Legion) and MURPHY ANDERSON (if you ever wondered what JIMMY OLSEN would’ve looked like if Murphy had inked the whole book—and not just the Jimmy and Superman heads—you’ll find out as he inks the unused Kirby cover from JIMMY OLSEN #147!)! There’s a never-published interview with KIRBY himself, plus our usual columnists and features, and a colossal Gallery of Jack’s finest pencil work! It ships in April, and the submission deadline is 2/1/05. In the meantime, don’t forget to order our remastered version of KIRBY UNLEASHED, featuring eight extra color pages, and shipping in December!

Classifieds

41 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: Courtney Booker • Jerry Boyd Shel Dorf • Tom Doyle Mark Evanier • Shane Foley Barry Forshaw • Rick French Dave Gibbons • Dick Giordano Glen Gold • David Hamilton Mike Higgins • Mitch Itkowitz Lisa Kirby • Sean Kleefeld Hans Kosenkranius Tom Kraft • Marty Lasick Robert Lawrence Steven Lawrence Adam McGovern • Albert Moy Mark Muller • Chris Ng Vince Oliva • Gary Picariello Steve Robertson • Mike Royer Steve Rude • David Russell Paul Ryan • Mark Schultz Arlen Schumer • David Schwartz Tom Scioli • Jim Shooter Walter Simonson Joe Sinnott • Rob Steibel Lance Suarez • Mike Thibodeaux Steven Tice • Wayne A. Wong David Zimmerman and of course The Kirby Estate If we’ve forgotten anyone, please let us know!

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! FAMILY AFFAIR! (#43) We feature the recipients of the Jack Kirby Awards and their relationships with Jack and Roz! MYTHS & LEGENDS! (#44) Jack’s use of legendary figures in comics, including the Demon! KIRBY TIME MACHINE! (#45) Justice Inc., WWII, Losers, In The Days of the Mob, Simon & Kirby, and some prehistoric strips! FOURTH WORLD ISSUE! (#46) A split look at New Gods and Forever People in-depth!

(10¢/word, $1 minimum) FOR SALE: Gods Portfolio, Heroes and Villains S/N edition, Kirby Unleashed, Kirby Masterworks, Art of Jack Kirby by Ray Wyman, Comics Journal book on Kirby, CBG Kirby tribute issue, TJKC #115. Contact: Phil Fried, 216-267-0713, e-mail: fried@core.com 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

KIRBY’S SUPER TEAMS! (#47) 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! ALL LEADING UP TO OUR SURPRISE 50TH ISSUE!! 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

This celebration of Kirby’s ’70s Marvel work wouldn’t be complete without at least one page from the Silver Surfer Graphic Novel. This quiet moment after the Surfer’s fall from grace screams for some powerful, philosophical dialogue. Stan Lee’s take on the character never quite caught on; it’s a shame that Jack never got a chance to try giving the Surfer his own distinctive “voice.” Silver Surfer TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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#1: DC VS. MARVEL! GEORGE PÉREZ COVER! • 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! • 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: Guest editorial by former DC editorial director CARMINE INFANTINO, recalling DC’s 1970s’ battle plan to challenge Marvel’s market dominance!

#2: TOTALLY ’80S! ADAM 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!

DRAW #3: (80 pgs.) “How-To” demos & interviews with DICK GIORDANO, “Action” by BRET BLEVINS, CHRIS BAILEY, MIKE MANLEY, new column by PAUL RIVOCHE, reviews of art supplies, more! $8 US

DRAW #4: (92 pgs.) “How-To” demos & interviews with ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN NOWLAN, DAVE COOPER, “Figure Composition” by BRET BLEVINS, PAUL RIVOCHE, color section, more! $8 US

DRAW #5: (88 pgs.) “How-To” demos/intvs. with BENDIS & OEMING, MIKE WIERINGO, MARK McKENNA, “Hands” by BRET BLEVINS, PAUL RIVOCHE, color section, product reviews, more! $8 US

DRAW #6: (96 pgs.) “How-To” demos & interviews with BILL WRAY, STEPHEN DeSTEFANO, CELIA CALLE, MIKE MANLEY, “Light & Shadow” by BRET BLEVINS, ANDE PARKS, color section, and more! $8 US

DRAW #7: (96 pgs.) “How-To” demos & interviews with DAN BRERETON, PAUL RIVOCHE, ZACH TRENHOLM, MIKE MANLEY, “Sketching” by BRET BLEVINS, color section, product reviews, more! $8 US

DRAW #8: (96 pgs.) “How-To” demos & interviews with MATT HALEY, ALBERTO RUIZ, TOM BANCROFT, ROB CORLEY, “Drapery” by BRET BLEVINS, color section, product reviews, more! $8 US

4 issues: $20 Standard, $32 First Class (Canada: $40, Elsewhere: $44 Surface, $60 Airmail). (DRAW! #1 and #2 are now SOLD OUT, but look for THE BEST OF DRAW! VOL. ONE— reprinting both issues— in December!)

WRITE NOW! (edited by DANNY FINGEROTH), the mag for writers of comics, animation, & sci-fi, puts you in the minds of today’s top writers and editors. Each issue features writing tips from pros on both sides of the desk, interviews, sample scripts, reviews, and more.

#3: LAUGHING MATTERS! BRIAN BOLLAND COVER! • 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 never-seen 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! • OFF MY CHEST: MARK EVANIER on why writing “funny” books is harder than it looks!

#4: MARVEL MILESTONES! JOHN BYRNE COVER! • PRO2PRO INTERVIEWS: BYRNE and 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: Spotlights on the PUNISHER’s 30th birthday and the 20th anniversary of SECRET WARS!

WN #1: (88 pgs.) MARK BAGLEY cover & interview, BRIAN BENDIS & STAN LEE interviews, JOE QUESADA on what editors really want, TOM DeFALCO, J.M. DeMATTEIS, more! $8 US

WN #2: (96 pgs.) ERIK LARSEN cover & interview, STAN BERKOWITZ on the Justice League cartoon, TODD ALCOTT on Samurai Jack, LEE NORDLING, ANNE D. BERNSTEIN, & more! $8 US

WN #3: (80 pgs.) DEODATO JR. Hulk cover, intvs. & articles by BRUCE JONES, AXEL ALONSO, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, KURT BUSIEK, FABIAN NICIEZA, STEVEN GRANT, DENNY O’NEIL, more! $8 US

WN #4: (80 pgs.) Interviews and lessons with WARREN ELLIS, HOWARD CHAYKIN, PAUL DINI, BOB SCHRECK, DIANA SCHUTZ, JOEY CAVALIERI, STEVEN GRANT, DENNY O’NEIL, more! $8 US

WN #5: (80 pgs.) Interviews and lessons by WILL EISNER, J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI, BOB SCHRECK, FABIAN NICIEZA, PAUL DINI, JOEY CAVALIERI, DIANA SCHUTZ, DENNY O’NEIL, more! $8 US

WN #6: (80 pgs.) Interviews and lessons with BENDIS and OEMING on POWERS, MARK WAID on FANTASTIC FOUR, BOB SCHRECK continues, DIANA SCHUTZ, SCOTT M. ROSENBERG, more! $8 US

WN #7: (80 pgs.) Interviews and lessons by JEPH LOEB & TIM SALE, JIM LEE, CHUCK DIXON, JOHN JACKSON MILLER, MARK WHEATLEY, DENNY O’NEIL, YVETTE KAPLAN, more! $8 US

#5: HOLLYWOOD ISSUE! ALEX ROSS COVER!

#6: HALLOWEEN ISSUE! GENE COLAN COVER!

It starts in WRITE NOW! #8, when comics industry pros DANNY FINGEROTH and MIKE MANLEY document the steps they take to create an all-new comic, as ideas are proposed, tried out, and modified, until a character’s look and origins are arrived at! Then in DRAW! #9, the creative process continues, as storylines are ironed out and Mike and Danny produce an adventure starring their new creation! The result of their labors is a pullout, full-color, printed comic inserted into DRAW! #9! PLUS: Mike and Danny show you how it’s done in the feature-filled How To Draw Comics, From Script To Print DVD! See a new character created from scratch, and watch a story drawn from roughs, to pencils, inks, and coloring—even lettering! It’s 120 minutes of “how-to” tips, tricks, and tools of the pros, plus Bonus Features! MAGAZINES: $8 EACH US • COMPANION DVD: $34 US

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BI-MONTHLY! 100 PAGES! SINGLE ISSUES: $8 POSTPAID US

Get the GROUNDBREAKING CROSSOVER in WRITE NOW! #8 and DRAW! #9, and the COMPANION DVD!

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SUBSCRIPTIONS!

6 issues: $30 Standard, $48 First Class (Canada: $60, Elsewhere: $66 Surface, $90 Airmail).

• BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: We dig up the dirt on Marvel’s ground- (and grave) breaking Tomb of Dracula series, with insider commentary and artwork from MARV WOLFMAN and GENE COLAN—also featuring Colan’s ultra-rare Dracula audition piece, and a new cover! • 2 PRO2PRO INTERVIEWS: Swamp Thing creators LEN WEIN and BERNIE WRIGHTSON discuss the character’s roots, while STEVE BISSETTE and RICK VEITCH spill their guts over their 1980s’ work on the series. Art by Wrightson and Bissette! • GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: “Swamp Thing and Man-Thing: Who the Muck Came First?” Interviews with and/or art by Wein, Wrightson, GERRY CONWAY, ROY THOMAS, VAL MAYERICK, and JOHN BYRNE! • ROUGH STUFF: Creepy pencil artwork from a cadre of killer artists, including FRANK BRUNNER, PAUL SMITH, CARL POTTS, MIKE PLOOG, and DAVID ROSS, plus Bissette, Wrightson, and Colan! • OFF MY CHEST: Guest editorialist ROY THOMAS reveals what drove the stake through the heart of his Dracula adaptation at Marvel, with rare DICK GIORDANO artwork and a surprise announcement! • BEYOND CAPES (x2): A look at Marvel’s Godzilla series, with HERB TRIMPE artwork, and a behind-the-scenes study of Charlton Comics’ 1970s horror line, with rare art by STEVE DITKO, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, JOE STATON, and DON NEWTON! • PLUS: Go on the presidential campaign trail with HOWARD THE DUCK, PREZ, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and others!

• WONDER WOMAN: In-depth look at the Wonder Woman TV series, with a new LYNDA CARTER interview and 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 Spider-Man, Captain America, and Dr. Strange, including an all-new interview with TVHulk 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!