Jack Kirby Collector #46 by TwoMorrows Publishing

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR FORTY-SIX IN THE US

$995

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. $9 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 #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 #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

TJKC #42: (84 pgs.) TABLOID! Spotlights Kirby at ‘70s DC Comics, from Jimmy Olsen to Spirit World! Huge Kirby pencil art gallery, covers inked by KEVIN NOWLAN & MURPHY ANDERSON! $13 US

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

TJKC #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 #43: (84 pgs.) TABLOID! Kirby Award winners STEVE & GARY SHERMAN intv., 1966 KIRBY intv., Kirby pencils vs. Sinnott inks from TALES OF SUSPENSE #93, Kirby cover inked by SINNOTT! $13 US

TJKC #36: (84 pgs.) TABLOID ALL-THOR issue! MARK EVANIER column, SINNOTT & ROMITA JR. interviews, unseen KIRBY INTV., ART GALLERY, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, more! $13 US

TJKC #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. $9 US

SUBSCRIBE: 4 tabloid issues: $40 Standard, $56 First Class (Canada: $64, Elsewhere: $68 Surface, $84 Airmail).

VOLUME 1 (240-page Trade Paperback, reprinting #1-9) $29 US

TJKC #26: (72 pgs.) GODS! COLOR NEW GODS concept drawings, KIRBY & WALTER SIMONSON interviews, FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, BIBLE INFLUENCES, THOR, MR. MIRACLE, more! $9 US

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION (160 pgs.) Kirby’s sixissue “Visual Novel” for Pacific Comics is reproduced from his powerful, uninked pencil art! Includes Kirby’s illustrated movie screenplay, never-seen sketches, pin-ups, and more from his final great comics series! $24 US

TJKC #25: (100 pgs.) SIMON & KIRBY! KIRBY, SIMON, & JOHN SEVERIN interviews, CAPTAIN AMERICA pencils, unused BOY EXPLORERS story, history of MAINLINE COMICS, more! $9 US

KIRBY UNLEASHED: (60 pgs.) New, completely remastered and updated version of the scarce 1971 portfolio/biography, with 8 extra black-and-white and 8 extra color pages, including Jack’s color GODS posters, plus other art not seen in the 1971 version. $24 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! $9 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! $9 US

The KIRBY COLLECTOR (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life & career of the “King” of comics through interviews with Kirby & his contemporaries, feature articles, & rare & unseen Kirby art. Now in tabloid format, with Kirby’s art at even larger size.

TJKC #44: (84 pgs.) TABLOID MYTHS & LEGENDS issue! MARK EVANIER column, unseen KIRBY interview, ART GALLERY with DEMON, THOR, ATLAS, Kirby cover inked by MATT WAGNER! $13 US

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

TJKC #30: (68 pgs.) ‘80s WORK! Interviews with ALAN MOORE & Kirby Estate’s ROBERT KATZ, HUNGER DOGS, SUPER POWERS, SILVER STAR, ANIMATION work, more! $9 US

VOLUME 4 (240-page Trade Paperback, reprinting #16-19) $29 US

VOLUME 2 (160-page Trade Paperback, reprinting #10-12) $22 US

TJKC #45: (84 pgs.) TABLOID TIME MACHINE! EVANIER column, intv. with son NEAL KIRBY, two complete ‘50s stories, PAST and FUTURE art galleries, Tribute Panel, 3-D KIRBY COVER! $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 #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

NEW! VOLUME 5 (224-page Trade Paperback, reprinting #20-22) $29 US

VOLUME 3 (176-page Trade Paperback, reprinting #13-15) $24 US

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOLS. 1-5

These TRADE PAPERBACKS reprint the first 22 sold-out issues of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR! Each volume includes OVER 30 EXTRA pieces of unpublished Kirby art!

BEST OF DRAW, VOL. 2 (JULY)

One of the finest draftsmen in comics, and a perennial fan favorite, spotlighted with a COMPREHENSIVE CAREERSPANNING INTERVIEW, rare and UNSEEN WORK, and an extensive GALLERY OF EYE-POPPING ART! (128-page trade paperback) $19 US

(100-page magazine) $9 US

(84-page magazine) $9 US

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Four issues US: $40 Standard, $56 First Class (Canada: $64, Elsewhere: $68 Surface, $84 Airmail). BACK ISSUE!: Six issues US: $36 Standard, $54 First Class (Canada: $66, Elsewhere: $72 Surface, $96 Airmail). DRAW!, WRITE NOW!, ROUGH STUFF: Four issues US: $24 Standard, $36 First Class (Canada: $44, Elsewhere: $48 Surface, $64 Airmail). ALTER EGO: Twelve issues US: $72 Standard, $108 First Class (Canada: $132, Elsewhere: $144 Surface, $192 Airmail). FOR A SIX-ISSUE ALTER EGO SUBSCRIPTION, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW! #8 / DRAW! #9 crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH & MIKE MANLEY show step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and roughs to pencils, inks, colors, lettering—it even guides you through printing and distribution, & the finished 8-page color comic is included, so you can see their end result! PLUS: over 30 pages of ALL-NEW material, including “full” and “Marvelstyle” scripts, a critique of their new character and comic from an editor’s point of view, new tips on coloring, new expanded writing lessons, and more! (108-page trade paperback) $18 US

HOW TO CREATE COMICS, FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT TPB (JULY)

Special issue on Batman & Superman in the Golden & Silver Ages, ARTHUR SUYDAM interview, NEAL ADAMS on 1960s/70s DC, SHELLY MOLDOFF, AL PLASTINO, Golden Age artist FRAN (Doll Man) MATERA interviewed, SIEGEL & SHUSTER, FCA, MR. MONSTER, SUYDAM cover, & more ! Edited by ROY THOMAS.

X-MEN 3 screenwriter SIMON KINBERG interviewed, DENNIS O’NEIL on translating BATMAN BEGINS into a novel, Central Park Media’s STEPHEN PAKULA discusses manga writing, KURT BUSIEK on breaking into comics, MIKE FRIEDRICH on writers’ agents, script samples, new LIM/MILGROM cover, and more! Edited by DANNY FINGEROTH.

ROUGH STUFF #1 COMIC BOOK NERD (NOW!) #1 (NOW!)

Features an EXTENSIVE, CAREERSPANNING INTERVIEW lavishly illustrated with rare art from Walter’s files, plus an ENORMOUS SKETCHBOOK SECTION of some of Walter’s finest work, including UNSEEN AND UNUSED ART! (128-page trade paperback) $19 US

ALTER EGO #59 (NOW!)

WRITE NOW! #13 (JULY)

Unlocks the secrets of Superman’s Compiles material from issues #3 Spotlights UNPUBLISHED penciled PETE VON SHOLLY’s side-splitting and #4 of DRAW!, including Silver and Bronze Ages, when parody of the fan press, including pages, preliminary sketches, kryptonite came in multiple colors tutorials by, and interviews with, detailed layouts, and unused inked such publications as WHIZZER, ERIK LARSEN (savage penciling), and super-pets flew the skies! versions from artists throughout the COMICS URINAL, ULTRA DICK GIORDANO (inking Features all-new interviews with comics history. #1 features ALAN EGO, COMICS BUYER’S GUISE, techniques), BRET BLEVINS ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, DAVIS, GEORGE PÉREZ, KEVIN BAGGED ISSUE!, SCRAWL!, (drawing the figure in action, and NOWLAN, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍAGARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, , COMIC BOOK ARTISTE, and figure composition), KEVIN MOONEY, O’NEIL, OKSNER, more, as we unabashedly poke LÓPEZ, ARTHUR ADAMS, JOHN PASKO, ROZAKIS, SHOOTER, NOWLAN (penciling and inking), fun at ourselves, our competitors, BYRNE, WALTER SIMONSON, MIKE MANLEY (how-to demo on WEIN, WOLFMAN, and others, and you, our loyal readers! Go to and BRUCE TIMM! Includes plus tons of rare and unseen art! Web Comics), DAVE COOPER www.twomorrows.com for a commentary on the art, backBy BACK ISSUE’S Michael Eury! (digital coloring tutorial), and ground information, plus before sneak preview in March! more! Cover by KEVIN NOWLAN. and after comparisons from some (224-page trade paperback) (64-page COLOR of your favorite series of all time! (156-page trade paperback with $29 US one-shot magazine) color section) $22 US $11 US (100-page magazine) $9 US SUBSCRIPTIONS:

THE KRYPTON COMPANION (JULY)

(100-page magazine) $9 US

HORLEY (Heavy Metal, Vertigo, DC, Wizards of the Coast), plus interviews and demos by Banana Sundays’ COLLEEN COOVER, Pigtale’s OVI NEDELCU, behindthe-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS, MIKE MANLEY, links, color section & more! HORLEY cover! Edited by MIKE MANLEY.

DRAW! #13 (AUG.) MODERN MASTERS MODERN MASTERS VOL. 7: JOHN VOL. 8: WALTER Step-by-step demo of painting BYRNE (NOW!) SIMONSON (JULY) methods by cover artist ALEX

COMING SOON FROM TWOMORROWS!

Contents

THE NEW

Kirby’s FOURTH WORLD! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 (he’s got the whole world in his hands)

ISSUE #46, SUMMER 2006

INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (part 2 of Ray Wyman’s conversations with Jack and Roz Kirby) AT THE CORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 (the source of the Source, of course, of course...) BEFORE & AFTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 (classic pencils vs. inks of an old god) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 (Mark Evanier adds some ’60s Marvel tidbits to this very DC-centric issue) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . .23 (a miraculous mister’s wardrobe) BRIGHT SPOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 (a child of light in a time of darkness) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 (Barry Forshaw remembers his first time...) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 (Jack’s young gods take the spotlight) APOKOLIPS NOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 (the major production behind Hunger Dogs) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 (old gods made new again) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 (two complete 1950s sorta-Fourth World stories, restored by Chris Fama) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 (Adam McGovern sez “oui!”) MUSEUM PAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 (more www.kirbymuseum.org news) GALLERY 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 (“new” New Gods covers) FIFTH WORLD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 (post-Kirby Fourth World stories, featuring a cavalcade of comics’ best discussing Jack) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . . .78 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (let’s make a pact to examine this) Front cover inks: MIKE ROYER Back cover inks: JOHN BYRNE Cover colors: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: Avengers, Captain America, Devil Dinosaur, Fantastic Four, Hawkeye, Hulk, Journey Into Mystery, Love Romances, Princess Python, Quicksilver, Silver Surfer, Thor, X-Men TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Black Hole TM & ©2006 Walt Disney Productions, Inc. • Bekka, Big Barda, Billion-Dollar Bates, Black Racer, Darkseid, Deadman, Deep Six, Desaad, Elongated Man, Esak, Fastbak, Flash, Forager, Forever People, Green Lantern, Heggra, Highfather, Himon, House of Mystery, Hunger Dogs, Infinity Man, Jimmy Olsen, Kalibak, Lightray, Losers, Mantis, Metron, Mr. Miracle, New Gods, Oberon, Orion, Parademon, Showcase, Steppenwolf, Superman, Terrible Turpin, Tigra, Wonder Woman TM & ©2006 DC Comics. • Faces of Evil, Galactic Bounty Hunters, Interpretations of God, Kirby Unleashed art TM & ©2006 Jack Kirby Estate. • Donnegan's Daffy Chair, Hole In The Wall, Stuntman TM & ©2006 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estate. • Capt. Nice TM & ©2006 respective owner.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 13, No. 46, Summer 2006. Published quarterly by & ©2006 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 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $40.00 US, $64.00 Canada, $68.00 elsewhere. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is ©2006 Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2006 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Opening Shot (below) Something old, and something new. The “new” is Marvel Comics’ six-issue Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters series. Shown here is the cover art to the first two issues, with inks by Karl Kesel. (bottom) The “old” is FF Masterworks 10, reprinting Fantastic Four #94-104, plus a feature on the original version of FF #102, by that odd looking fellow pictured at bottom right. Galactic Bounty Hunters TM & ©2006 Jack Kirby Estate. Fantastic Four TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

rs: a e Y y B r e e Kirby’s Car

(misc.) 1938-40 comics) andos, /Marvel ly e im (T oy Comm rs) B , n a 1941 m and othe ith Summer already here, and the one-hour documentary Jack Kirby: (DC on S ter, and 1942-46 Legion, Manhun Storyteller (originally scheduled to be on the December DVD release of last y Newsbo rrow, summer’s big-budget Fantastic 4 movie, then rescheduled for a “special (misc.) , Green A s k o o b 1947-56 ystery , etc.) edition” of the DVD in Spring 2006) nowhere in sight, it’s looking like we won’t be (DC on m wn 1957-59 rs of the Unkno e g seeing it anytime soon. Perhaps we can hold out hope that Fox will add it to the n Challe Olsen, (Marvel) DVD release of the film’s sequel, scheduled for June 2007 (by all accounts, the sequel , Jimmy an, s d 1960-70 o G w e ndm (DC on N looks to be bigger and better than the original). Folks, this documentary really exists; mon, Sa 1971-75 Mr. Miracle, De i, I’ve seen the rough cut (as have most of the other people who appeared in it), and it’s Kamand .) etc Losers, really quite good. So don’t count it out yet! (Marvel) 1976-78 I’d hoped to announce another exciting Kirby project this issue, to be released at er (misc.) ale, Sup this summer’s Comicon International: San Diego, but a last-minute copyright snag 1981-83 Gods fin w e N n (DC o would’ve gutted the project considerably, so I chose to hold out and hope we can get the 1984-86 nd others) a , rs e Pow difficulties resolved. Hopefully we can still produce this big surprise; stay tuned!

In the course of trying to iron out those copyright concerns, I had to sit down and figure out what percentage of years Kirby did work for three groups: Marvel Comics (including Timely and Atlas), DC Comics, and for all the other companies he worked for combined. Like me, I bet you think you know which group he worked the most years for; Marvel wins hands-down, right? Think again! Jack began working in comics in 1938, and was active in comics for 47 years (based on the timeline in Ray Wyman’s book The Art of Jack Kirby—this doesn’t include 1979-1980 when he was out of comics in the animation field, or the few things he did after 1986). When I divided up the 47 years, here’s how his career breaks out by company:

Kirby Is Where?!

34% DC Comics (16 years)

32% Marvel Comics (15 years)

34% All Others (16 years)

So Marvel, the company where he was arguably the most influential, comes in dead last! Sure, there’s a couple of years where he changed companies midstream, so I went with whoever he was with the longest. And during the War Years, he wasn’t actually creating new material, but inventory material was being published by DC, so I counted those. But however you decide to add it up, at worst, it’s still works out to be a pretty even three-way split, with DC conceivably coming out on top. I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me, considering how much I love Jack’s 1970s DC work in particular. He poured his heart and soul into his New Gods saga, and produced a wealth of other interesting—if not as epic— characters and concepts during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’70s at DC, and even got to revisit many of them in the 1980s before retiring from comics. This issue focuses on my personal favorite Kirby work, the Fourth World, including lots of art from the Forever People, and Jack’s return to his characters in the final decade of his career. And while you’re (I hope!) enjoying this issue, don’t think for a minute that a couple of stalled projects means there’s no other Kirby out there to be had. There’s plenty to look out for, coming from Marvel Comics, interestingly enough. Perhaps most exciting is Marvel’s six-issue Galactic Bounty Hunters series, debuting in July under their ICON imprint. It features original concepts and artwork created by Jack before his death, and fully realized by his daughter Lisa, Rick French, Mike Thibodeaux, and Steve Robertson of Genesis West. Galactic Bounty Hunters was originally pitched as an animated series (we did a feature on it a few issues ago), but when the project evolved into a comics mini-series, the team shopped it around and it found a home at the House That Jack Built. There is some original Kirby artwork throughout the series; some drawn specifically for the project, and some other previously unpublished Kirby illos that are being incorporated with Mike Thibodeaux’s own work. Captain Victory makes a guest appearance in the series, and Marvel will be putting their own touch to it, involving top talents like inker Karl Kesel to give it a Marvel feel, so be sure to support this project. In the meantime, Marvel’s new Fantastic Four Masterworks 10 volume reprints Kirby’s final issues on the series, plus new essays by Roy Thomas, Dick Ayers, and Joe Sinnott. There’s also a feature on FF #108’s heavily altered story (which was originally supposed to be #102). Editor Tom Brevoort commissioned yours truly to do an updated version of the article we ran back in TJKC #9, reassembling the original story back into the version Kirby submitted, and it includes all the unpublished Kirby pencils that ended up on the Bullpen floor when it was finally published in #108. (I’m pleased to say the Kirby Estate will be receiving a small payment for Jack’s unused pencil art in the new article, even though Marvel’s not paying any royalties on the reprinted FF stories.) And their upcoming Captain America Masterworks, reprinting Cap #101-113 (with numerous stories by Jack), will feature an introduction penned by me as well. The 1970s DC ads and covers proclaimed, “Kirby Is Here!” While he may not be physically with us any longer, the man and his work live on over a decade after his passing—and with your support, it’ll continue indefinitely. ★ 2

Under The Covers

ur front cover this issue is an inked version of one of the coolest Darkseid drawings Jack ever did! We first ran the pencils below back in TJKC #22, and ever since, I’ve been waiting for the perfect chance (and inker) to present it as a full-blown cover. So with this issue’s Fourth World theme, the time was perfect—but it didn’t make much sense to have anyone but Mike Royer ink it, since he was the inker for Jack’s Fourth World books. Mike put on his 1972 chops, and turned in an amazing job, as usual. Then Tom Ziuko went nuts applying those funky, Kirbyesque colors that Jack loved to paint on his personal projects, to create an end result that’s at once powerful, ominous, and a little bit creepy—just the way Darkseid would’ve wanted it. Our back cover started life as the final page pencil drawing from the original 1971 version of the Kirby Unleashed portfolio. As a teenager, I’d always loved that drawing, thinking it was probably one of the coolest, most vital renditions ever of those characters. The only thing missing was the other coolest (and most underused) aspect of the Forever People, Infinity Man! Since the pencil art was in a roughly square format, we decided to make it fit our cover by adding a early 1970s era I-Man pencil panel from Forever People #11 to the background (courtesy of the photocopies Jack made of his pencils back then). To make the package complete, we asked John Byrne to ink it for us, and he happily obliged. Mr. Byrne has just wrapped up his 18-issue run on DC’s Blood of the Demon series (starring Etrigan, another of Jack’s 1970s DC creations), and is the subject of our latest Modern Masters volume (cover shown below, and on sale now!). John’s also known for his own spin on Jack’s Fourth World characters in various comics, and you can read an interview with him about it on page 70 of this issue. While he put “traced by John Byrne” as his signature on the inks, a quick comparison of these pencils to the finished art shows he certainly did more than just copy in ink what Jack put

down, and added a lot of panache and vitality of his own to the piece. Tom Ziuko took it from there, adding colorful hues to complete the cover, and helping make it one of the most unforgettable ones we’ve ever published. Thanks to all these fine gents for their contributions! ★ Darkseid, Forever People TM & ©2006 DC Comics. Fantastic Four TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

INNERVIEW (below) PFC Kirby in 1945 at Brighton Beach, NY, just after his return from WWII service. (bottom) Joe Simon’s Sentinels of Liberty house ad from a 1941 issue of Captain America Comics. Captain America TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(next page, top) The good times; June 1949, and S&K hit it big with romance comics. (next page, bottom) Not everything was a hit; unused final “Jungle Lord” page meant for Stuntman #3 (1946). Stuntman TM & ©2006 Simon & Kirby.

Conversations With Jack by Ray Wyman (This installment continues from where Part I, published in TJKC #29, leaves off; Roz and Jack are filling me in with their recollections of Jack’s career and family life. These interviews took place in August 1989, October 5 1989, and June 1992. Just a reminder, I have edited these interviews together so they read as one long interview. Most of the edits reduced or eliminated my contribution to the conversation where possible, but I have also reordered the dialog for clarity—there were quite a few jumps and doglegs. I hope readers appreciate the few poignant moments when the true nature of Roz and Jack’s relationship bubbles up—these were times when I was happy to shut up and let the tape roll.) RAY WYMAN: So, now Jack. At the end of the war, you came back. When did you start working again? ROZ KIRBY: He started working right away. RAY: Where was Joe? JACK KIRBY: He was busy with other things. I went back to DC—I picked up quite a lot of work there. ROZ: He did a lot of stuff by himself. Even when we were in the service, down in… JACK: Yeah, I did a couple of covers in Atlanta. ROZ: Yeah, you sent them covers. He had me do covers and I would ship them in, and we always made a little extra money that way. But that was before he left for overseas. When he came back he started work right away. JACK: In fact, I did a couple at the Service Club. ROZ: Yeah, that’s where he used to do them, at the Service Club. JACK: That is the only time I had. But, you would have to fit things in so crazily that I stopped doing that, until they sent me overseas. When I came back, the same thing happened. I slowly recovered and I began to get back into the field. RAY: Roz, where did you go during this time? ROZ: Well, we were living with my folks, for a couple of years. Susan was about two years old when we finally moved out. I remember we started looking for houses about the time Joe got married. So we went all over together, looking for houses together. Joe and Harriet [Joe’s wife] and we went out to the island one day, and they were putting up these

new homes. Twelve thousand dollar homes on Long Island. JACK: Yes, they put up a mess of them. ROZ: So we got the Veterans loan and put down payments on one; Joe and Harriet got a house right across the street. We lived right across the street from each other. Our children were brought up together. We were very close at that time. JACK: In fact, they had a big snowstorm in ’48 and we were caught in Joe’s house. We were having a social evening. ROZ: No, no. I was home and you were doing some work with Joe up in the attic. He had the attic studio. JACK: Oh yes, yes. I was stuck there and I had to practically dig a tunnel to get home. Just to get across the street! The snow was up to our necks, over our heads! ROZ: That’s where they did a lot of the work, in Joe’s studio up in the house. RAY: How long did you guys live in Long Island? ROZ: We lived in Minneola, Long Island (where our first house was) for about 21⁄2 years, which was actually about 2 blocks from where our second house was. We saw this large, big brick house going up and Jack fell in love with it. And I said, “We can’t afford it.” It was $22,000. I said, “You are out of your mind. It is too expensive for us.” But we had Neal by then (1948), so anyway, we sold the other house and we bought this one. And we had to put every cent we had into it. In fact, the first week we were so broke, I borrowed $50 from my mother for food money until Jack’s next paycheck. JACK: We were very fortunate, because after the war, a lot of GIs came back and they didn’t have any work at all. There was a small depression that followed the war. But, I could get work any time. Work was very steady for me. ROZ: Well, his kind of profession was so different than the average man. JACK: That’s not the point. We were in the situation where Joe and I had to create the work for yourselves. We had to create the work to survive. Joe handled the business side and I handled the creative. We worked very well together as a team. RAY: So, you got back in ’43, you two lived at Roz’s folk’s house. Then Joe and you started working on something, or was there a break? JACK: I don’t remember. ROZ: It took a little while to get things going again. I don’t remember how long, but I remember that his drawing board was in our bedroom; he was working right out of the bedroom. I forgot what he was doing at that time. That was the period, in my mother’s house, when I was helping him ink, in the bedroom.

& Roz, Part II JACK: After the war? ROZ: Yes, when I moved back with my mother. When you came back from the service, we didn’t have our apartment anymore. JACK: Right. ROZ: That’s when I was doing the Green whatever-it-is and the Challengers. JACK: Green Hornet. ROZ: It was Green Arrow. JACK: Yeah, but I worked on both stories. ROZ: That is when he was doing his own inking at that time. I still had that steady hand, so he would do the outlining and I would fill in the blacks for him, so he would be able to get through with it. By that time Neal was born (1948). Then you and Joe worked on Black Magic. JACK: Mainline was our own company. ROZ: Mainline was Joe and Jack. They had Foxhole, [Justice Traps the] Guilty, and things like that. RAY: Before that… Crestwood? JACK: Right, right. Crestwood. ROZ: It’s all a mishmash. They were doing work for everybody back then. RAY: Were you always involved with what Jack did? JACK: She was always involved. ROZ: I took an interest in it. Even to this day, there are very few wives who will go to conventions; I am one of the very few that you will see there. So I inked, helped where I could. We talked about some of the stories. But I never stuck my nose out wherever I wanted…. Mainly, I kept tabs on the business, especially when it came to home. JACK: Roz is the only one who knows what’s going on around here. She keeps track of the bills, the bank account. Without her I’d be lost. ROZ: I’m the glue. RAY: You guys did a lot of contract work. I noticed books for Harvey and other shops. You guys must have been pretty busy. JACK: That period is nebulous to me. I think Boys’ Ranch, Boy Commandos. No, Boy Commandos was before the war; they were the forerunners of the war strips. In fact, we were the first ones to do a romance book, Joe and I. We were walking down the street and we saw romance magazines, and said what the hell? We haven’t got those in comics! And they sold out. Everybody was buying them. If a book didn’t sell out, we used to cry. ROZ: That was a good time. RAY: What was good about it? JACK: It was good in every way you can imagine. We had control of what we did and we did everything extremely well. There was never an end to the work and everybody had great respect for what we did. I think that we did a very good job of planning and executing titles. And we proved ourselves through our product, which at the time was the very best in the industry. We were innovative. ROZ: Everybody was trying to outdo each other with the next new idea that would sell more comic books. JACK: Oh yes. ROZ: The work was more original back then. People weren’t doing the same thing over 5

and over again. There was romance, war, cowboys, detectives, everything you can imagine. Of course, people copied what they thought was a good idea, but there was more variety. JACK: Everything was possible. Still is. RAY: What role did Joe Simon play in keeping you guys busy? JACK: How much did a kid from the East Side know about business? I didn’t know anything about business. I didn’t know anything about lawyers. All I knew was that I got a job, I got paid well for it. Joe was a businessman from the start. He became very good friends with the Goodmans and with just about everybody else in town. He knew everybody and he was very good getting regular work. That helped our situation more than once. I can say that without Joe things never would have worked out at all. RAY: Meanwhile, Roz, what was family life like? You moved into the brick house on Long Island... ROZ: Yeah, we lived there for 20 years. That is the house we stayed in until we came to California. Until 1968. But still, when you think about it, we have been out in this house now for 17 1⁄2 years. RAY: And Lisa was born...

ROZ: Lisa was born back in New York. She was 8 years old when we moved here. Now we have been living in this house for 17 1⁄2 years. So, it is amazing when I think about it; we are in this house almost as long as the house on the Island. JACK: Yeah, that’s true. In fact, this isn’t the first house we bought out here. ROZ: We lived in Irvine for about a year. We rented a house for a year there while we were looking around to see where we wanted to settle down. RAY: Why Irvine in the ’60s? ROZ: Well, my sister-in-law’s sister lived there, and she said, “Come on out, and I’ll show you around” because we didn’t know anyone out here. So I flew out, that was Thanksgiving, I flew out with Lisa because she was very ill, and we looked around, but

it was impossible to find a place in two weeks, so we rented a place down where they were because they were the only ones we knew. We started looking around, and then I found out that I had a cousin living here in Thousand Oaks. It was cousin Myrna, and I hadn’t seen her since I was 5 years old, so we took a ride and came up to visit her, and that’s how we found Thousand Oaks. But our first house wasn’t this house. We had another house on the other side which we built. We bought land and we built a house. RAY: Why didn’t you stay there? ROZ: Well, that’s another story. JACK: That’s another story. That’s a motorcycle story. ROZ: Oh, I’ll have to show you the pictures of that too. It was a beautiful home. We had a 3,000 square foot Spanish house. JACK: Oh, this was some house. ROZ: And we lived over what

is called the “barranca.” Do you know what a barranca is? JACK: A barranca is a depression; like a little valley. ROZ: And, on the other side of it, all the sheep were grazing on the hills, and they had this beautiful stream down there. JACK: It was a beautiful pastoral setting. ROZ: But, the motorcycles found it. The way our house was is like it is here—like a funnel, and the noise would come up and drive you crazy. JACK: Six hours a day. ROZ: And he was working at home. And they didn’t want to put the mufflers on them. JACK: I’m not talking 5 or 6 motorcycles. I’m talking a whole army of them. ROZ: Every weekend we would have the police out there. They would come out with helicopters; they

would send the police down to chase the kids out. We even sued MGM because they owned the property. And they said there was nothing they could do about it because they would break up the locks and they would break their way in. JACK: We lived with the cops. The cops had coffee in the house. They had tea in the house. And, suddenly these guys come in on their motorcycles, and the cops would leave the house, thank us for the coffee, and take off after the guys. ROZ: But there was nothing they could do, so finally we said… it got to be too much, and he was getting very nervous about it. JACK: I couldn’t work. ROZ: The house was beautiful, but what good is it if

you can’t enjoy it? So we put it up for sale. And then we moved here. And we like our view. This was about 4 years old when we bought it. At one point, they even had the newspapers out there and they had Jack pointing at them [the motorcyclists] and the caption said, “Even Superman can’t get rid of them.” JACK: That was a big headline in the Thousand Oaks paper. And they had this big picture with me pointing down and there were the cyclists and everything. ROZ: It was heartbreaking to have to sell it. JACK: It was a lovely place. It was a big house. That was a lot of footage. ROZ: But we like our house here. RAY: Roz, did you ever miss the East Coast? ROZ: The first year when we lived in Irvine, I cried every night. I was very close to my folks and my family, the cousins, and we always used to get together and I was very lonely. I really cried. I wanted to go back. I was miserable. Finally, after a

year, we went back to visit and then I saw the change, and I realized that you can’t go back. So then when I came back again to California, I really saw that it was my place. I was glad to get back, because I saw the change in everything and I realized that I really didn’t miss it that much. I figured then, with the planes, that I could always hop a plane and see the folks and telephone to keep in touch. But I had to go back to convince myself, that it was okay. RAY: So let’s go back to Long Island for a bit. After Mainline, Jack goes to Timely—starts working with Stan Lee. What was that like? ROZ: Well, most of the time, when we lived in East Williston, Jack had his studio in the basement. We had a finished basement and he had his own little room in the back where he had his bookcases and tables. We called it “the dungeon” because

the room had one little window. He always worked at home. Once in a while he would go into the city, but most of the time he would get on the phone with Stan and say, “I’m doing this and this” and Stan would say, “Great.” Then Jack would go in to the city once every two weeks, maybe, to bring finished work to Stan. Then Stan would put in the blurbs. RAY: The bubbles. ROZ: Right, that was Stan’s job. But Jack didn’t work there in their studio or anything. He was never over there. He always worked at home. JACK: It became increasingly difficult, really, to deal with the kind of situation that developed there. We were like, well, property. We never got credit for the work we did. It is hard to keep working under conditions like that and that’s why I eventually left Timely. Well, he would always put created by— everything was created by Stan Lee. And finally we started arguing about it, and then they finally put on “Produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby”, but then he wouldn’t continue doing it; he would change it again to “written by” instead of saying “produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby” on every one. He would do it for a couple of months and then he would go back to the old way again. Then he would say a Lee/Kirby creation. ROZ: He’d smile and tell us everything was just fine, but then he would do these things that were… I think it hurt me more than it hurt Jack. Because I saw the way that he did the work. And I would see how much work he would put into it and what he would send to Stan. You have the Fantastic Four, right? Those characters are already there, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. But then you get all these pages coming to Stan Lee. Now he didn’t know what the story was going to be about until he got them. Did he know there was going to be a Galactus? Did he know there was going to be a Silver Surfer? Did he know there was going to be a Dr. Doom? He didn’t know any of these characters until he saw them on the paper. So how could he say he created them? Do you follow me? JACK: Well, first of all, Stan had an editorial job there. He never knew what the story was going to be like until he saw the final product. I don’t know whether he wrote the dialogue balloons or not. I never knew what the heck went on in the office. But he knew damn well where the story came from. And where the drawings came from. ROZ: And then there’s such a backlog of so many hundreds of characters that all they had to do was have Jack say, “Well, I’m doing a story on Dr. Doom”, “I’m doing a story on

(this spread) What was hanging on Jack and Roz’s walls? It changed over the years, but this photo, taken around 1991, shows the happy couple in their living room, surrounded by a small portion of the Kirby art that decorated their Thousand Oaks, CA home then. (top) Jack’s three “Interpretations of God”, inked by Mike Royer, circa 1970, and later used for the 1990s Dark Horse Comics Kirby Portfolio. (bottom left) “Faces of Evil”, a 1969 painting/collage combination, which was sitting on an easel during the editor’s first visit to the Kirby home in 1995. (bottom right) The painting that became the cover of the Kirby Unleashed portfolio. Time and light have faded the colors of this amazing piece, but we used an original 1970s transparency of it for our 2005 remastered edition of Kirby Unleashed, restoring it to its original brilliance. All art/characters TM & ©2006 Jack Kirby Estate.

(above) The 11th Black Hole Sunday strip (published 11/11/79) in finished form. Jack was working from specific layouts supplied by Disney, such as the one for this strip, shown on the next page. Inker Mike Royer, who was on staff at Disney at the time, would true-up some of the likenesses to match the look of the actors and sets. And yes, Roz is correct in this interview; Jack did this strip in 1979, long after they moved to California. Black Hole TM & ©2006 Walt Disney Productions.

Galactus,” and Stan would say “great.” And, that was it, you know, what was his big problem? He didn’t have anything to think about. All he had to do was put in a lousy blurb and he was finished. ROZ: So I was not surprised when Jack finally said, “Let’s get the heck out of here.” I knew he was unhappy with the situation. JACK: Well, it is a humiliating position to put someone in. In my estimation, it wasn’t hard for Stan to be that way. ROZ: Well, the reason we came to California wasn’t because of Stan. We came become Lisa was ill. Lisa was very ill as a young girl—asthma. And it finally got to a time where I said, “Who needs this? Let’s get out of this cold.” I am sure that it won’t make any difference where you work; you can send the work. And that wasn’t any problem with Marvel; it was fine with them. That’s why we decided to come out here, to get in the better climate. JACK: In fact, we were the first of the New York artists to come out here. ROZ: And he wasn’t even going to leave Marvel. He wasn’t even thinking of leaving Marvel, until Carmine Infantino came out and made him a proposition. RAY: Infantino made a proposition? JACK: Yes. He was promoted. He became the editor of DC. I mean, the publisher. RAY: That’s when you started working on the Jimmy Olsen stuff.

JACK: Yeah, I began working on Jimmy Olsen. In fact, I said, “What’s your magazine that is selling the least?” And he told me, “Jimmy Olsen.” And I said, “Alright, give me Jimmy Olsen.” And I built up Jimmy Olsen to where it became a saleable magazine. ROZ: Well, that is when you had the trilogy. You had the New Gods, Forever People, Mr. Miracle and Jimmy Olsen. RAY: You were doing all four... JACK: Yes, I was doing all four. RAY: From your studio in California. JACK: In my own studio. I was the first artist that they let do that. ROZ: In fact, they were all kind of intermingled, the stories were, and I would say to him when he was doing a book a week practically, “How do you remember where one story leaves off and the other one begins?” and he said, “I just know.” He always did it that way. JACK: I just instinctively knew because they were people to me, and I knew what they would do. RAY: When did you start working on the cartoons? ROZ: Oh, the animation stuff? The animation he did... he worked for Ruby-Spears for about 6 years. JACK: More than that. ROZ: You worked for Filmation for about a year, on the Fantastic Four. When Joe came out one day.

JACK: Then I worked for Disney for about a year on a comic strip for The Black Hole. ROZ: That came later. JACK: When Disney did The Black Hole? ROZ: That came later. JACK: No, it didn’t because we were in New York when I did The Black Hole. ROZ: Honey, take my word for it. JACK: Alright, okay. ROZ: We came out here. You worked for Filmation; you did the Fantastic Four. In fact, it was so good, it was too good. Everybody was copying it and making books out of them. They were copying his work. Then from Filmation, you went to Ruby-Spears and you worked for Ruby-Spears for 6 or 7 years. In between that time, you did the Sunday strip for Disney... JACK: It ran in the Sunday Tribune, I think. ROZ: Then he worked for Hanna-Barbera doing consulting, then he went to Ruby-Spears. JACK: Well, with Filmation and Ruby-Spears, I was always in a consulting capacity. ROZ: You actually did the storyboards. JACK: Oh, yes.

ROZ: Hanna-Barbera, you worked with Joe Barbera on doing different ideas and consulting. And RubySpears, the same way. RAY: Roz, you’re really Jack’s business partner, aren’t you? ROZ: I fill many hats. Yes. RAY: Some fans have even called you the Queen of Comics? What do you think about that? ROZ: I never thought that much of it, really. I could never really realize why they were always making such a fuss about him. I knew he was creative and everything, and they started calling him King and I was the Queen, and to me it was funny. A few years back, we had this tremendous van come up to the house. A family from the Midwest with three kids in the car. It was a hot day, 90 in the summer. They said, “Is this Jack Kirby’s residence?” I said, “Yes.” “Could we meet him? We are big fans of his.” So I said, “Sure, come on in.” They didn’t call or anything first. So I took them out in the back and I brought them cold drinks. In fact, I even let the kids go in for a swim. And we were sitting there and talking, and they were asking Jack a million questions, and when they were leaving, she said, “You know, I can’t believe it. You are regular people.” They were expecting to see like movie stars, very high-class. And I didn’t know what people really expected from us, and we’ve always been this way. JACK: Well, they called me on the telephone before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went up into space. They called me on the phone from NASA. ROZ: But he was asking me about how I felt being married to you. And even his own children, to them it was just a job. RAY: Lisa said that the other day. She said, “To me, it was just always ‘Dad’s work’. If he was a mechanic, he would have been a mechanic. He just happened to be a cartoonist.” ROZ: I think it is the grandchildren that are really enjoying it more. Because, Neal always took an interest too, but he had his own life. But now little Jeremy can tell his friends who his grandfather is and they all want to get to meet him and do things with him, and now he is saving the comic books, and he is taking an interest. I mean, he looks at Jack’s name on the books and everything, so I think he is the one who is more excited about it. RAY: And the conventions? ROZ: Well, when we lived back in New York, we didn’t have conventions. The first large convention we ever went to was when we first came here and a crowd of the boys from San Diego came up to see us. And then we went to their first convention. But that is when it really started to build up. JACK: I have a good time, actually. The young people there knew me and I used to have lunch with them and we used to talk a lot, and they seemed to enjoy it, so it was a great time for me. Speaking for myself, I had a good time.

ROZ: But everyone has always known his name. They wouldn’t recognize him, of course, on the street, but if you mention Jack Kirby, they know they have heard that name some place before. RAY: But some people recognize him… ROZ: At Disneyland, we were waiting for the kids and this man was supposed to be helping everyone off the boat, but he was staring at Jack, and he says, “Are you Jack Kirby? Jack Kirby who created all that.” That also happened not too long ago at Universal. JACK: There they were, snapping me with Kodaks and all that bit. It is a lot of fun, really. We had a good time with the kids, and that is what counts. ROZ: The girls never liked the conventions. They never wanted to go. JACK: I have always paid close attention to the kids. Comics pleases me, and making them grow has pleased me. And I do anything I can to increase interest in comics. It is a constant effort. If they want to talk to me for inspiration then that’s what I’ll do. I would tell them that if a ball of dust in the corner of the room is what interests them, then write about it and make it interesting. Kids have the kind of durable imagination that can work out anything. And I am happy to help out in any way that I can. RAY: Roz, I’m just guessing, but I’ll bet Jack was pretty interesting to watch when he was writing and creating. What did you see? ROZ: I remember when he used to draw the Hulk, he would have the expressions on his face. Or the Thing, as he was drawing, he would act out, the expressions all came out on his face, he was acting them out while he was drawing. But I always felt he was the Hulk anyway, because he would sometimes be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He could be very sweet and then he would lose his temper and break a couple of walls. That is the way he would get his frustrations out. Jack has very strong hands, and especially back in New York, he would take his fists and knock it into the wall. RAY: Whoa, Jack, did you actually punch holes into walls? JACK: Well… ROZ: If you see pictures a foot off the floor, you knew I was covering up a hole. JACK: That’s right. She would cover up all the holes with pictures. ROZ: That’s how he would take out his frustrations. He would break my walls. JACK: Yes, I was a very volatile guy, and I would build up these frustrations during my time in the

industry, and then I would come home and… ROZ: I should have bought you a boxing glove and a bag. JACK: I would put my fist through a wall. And when I say put it through, I mean put it through. It would go right through the wall. ROZ: I had a lot of patching up to do. JACK: It’s the way I have always been. It is the eternal mistake to make with me, even during the street fights. I was always a little guy. The big guy would end up on the floor. It has been that way

since childhood. It has been that way since the war. The Germans were very arrogant. The Nazis, you know. I remember one lieutenant tell me, “You look like garbage. Look at you. There’s mud on your helmet.” ROZ: You already told him that story. JACK: Did I? RAY: Uh-huh. JACK: Well, okay. ROZ: But he was very strong. I remember he had a steel bar and he actually bent the steel bar with his hands. RAY: You mentioned that. What was this all about? JACK: I just got mad. ROZ: I don’t remember what he was holding. It was a poker or something, and he got off the phone once and he was very aggravated and he just took it... and I said, “Don’t you bang my walls,” and he just took it and he bent it like that. JACK: It was kind of a steel bar. I can’t remember exactly... something laying around the house, something that I was holding. I don’t know why. ROZ: But that was like being the Hulk and he didn’t know his own strength. And he just bent the bar. JACK: I don’t look like the kind of a guy who could do it. But I have ripped doors off walls. ROZ: Neal will tell you. JACK: Yeah, I ripped a door right off the wall once. I would get mad, but I would regain my composure. Essentially, underneath, the East Side comes out. That’s the way it is. RAY: Of all your characters, Mr. Miracle seems the most unusual. JACK: Mr. Miracle is an excellent strip. RAY: Why an escape artist? JACK: First of all, there had never been a book done on an escape artist although the profession has always been popular. ROZ: You have heard of Jim Steranko. Well, he was a good friend but he was an amateur magician. When he used to come to the house, he used to do magic tricks for the kids. He mentioned in his books that Mr. Miracle is him. JACK: Well, he claims that I took his personality and made a comic character out of it. But, with Mr. Miracle, what I did was take some of Steranko’s abilities and “superized” them. In other

words, I gave him tricks that no man could do unless he was a super-hero. I gave him stories which forced him into situations where he could do miraculous things. RAY: But an escape artist is so subtle, where a character like Orion… JACK: There was nothing subtle about Orion. You slap a 5 ton hunk of steel on Orion’s hands and he’ll rip it apart like it was paper. Yes, that’s because that was Orion’s personality. There were never half-truths; these characters were always larger than anything around them and in certain circumstances they would do incredible things. And, let’s face it, Mr. Miracle was more of a thinker than a fighter. He would get into more subtle situations and find the joints to this thing to snap it open. That’s the difference. RAY: Did you always use these extreme personalities in your characters? JACK: Well, the point is that the story has to be largerthan-life to reach out to the reader. In other words, between the monster and the angel you are going to find combinations; and these combinations may reflect things in real life, real situations, and real people. That’s what makes a story interesting. When I did the New Gods, that’s the track I took. I had developed a story of extremes—extreme personalities, extreme situations, extreme relationships. The real elements were found deep in the personalities of each character and how they related to each other. RAY: And people will be surprised to find out that you tried to focus on writing. ROZ: Well, when you asked what else he did, I tried to remember different things. In fact, Jack wanted to write a play called Us Guys. I have the beginning of that, someplace around here. [Roz is shuffling through a stack of manuscripts and treatments; I was reading the titles as she handed them to me.] RAY: Us Guys? JACK: It was all about the comic field and the artists. ROZ: Based on Jack’s life. I haven’t read that in years. RAY: Silver Star. JACK: Yeah, Silver Star. He is a mutant. ROZ: That was originally supposed to be for a movie, too. Or for TV. That’s how he wrote it at the beginning. RAY: And there was a Silver Star comic book too. JACK: Yes, there is. I published it. I am glad Roz brought these out because it is important for you to know that I do write, and that I have always written. Whatever I have written about has a basis in life and in fact, and my speculations are serious speculations. They are not trifling kind of horsing around or anything humorous. The main point in showing you this material and talking about writing is the fact that I have always written. I would work throughout almost the entire day drawing and writing. It is a natural part of my progress in doing comics. RAY: More? Oh, oh, Roz. What a goldmine! What is this? Stop the Panzers? JACK: Yeah, now I remember it. That’s a war story. RAY: The Horde? ROZ: He talked about this for years, even when we were living back in New York. But he never sat down to do it until we moved out here. So he started back in the other house. It was 1970 when he started to write it. RAY: More than 20 years ago… JACK: When I started writing it, I noticed... parallels to what I saw in the news. In a way, I found that I was predicting the movement of history itself. RAY: Synopses... characters… you developed the whole concept…

ROZ: More things that we never followed through on. RAY: Angel Face. ROZ: That’s a western. The kid who has an angel face… JACK: But he is a dead shot. ROZ: Maybe someday somebody will do something with all this stuff. RAY: Think back now for a moment; think of the distance you have come since 1942 to the present... what is the first thing that comes to mind? ROZ: Time going by too quickly. JACK: Like a flash. RAY: At the speed of a Silver Surfer? JACK: You could say that. Whatever it was, it was extremely fast. ROZ: When I look back, I don’t realize how much has really happened in our lifetime, especially as we get older. Days go by more quickly and I see my granddaughter who is 17; my grandson is 11. Where the heck has it all gone to? Jack can’t believe that he is 72. JACK: Yeah, I can’t believe it because I always look ahead. I never look behind. I am always looking into tomorrow; I am always looking ahead 30 years maybe. ROZ: Well, I always thought he was born before his time. JACK: I have always been “on the nickel.” It is a cliche at best, but I have always looked ahead and I think that kind of thing helped me in comics. When I was younger, I would always look ahead. I would always see the future one way and I would see it in a realistic way. I never saw it in a fantastic way. The future to me was very real. But it held mysteries; things that we didn’t have at that time or understand, and I would dig out those mysteries in a realistic way and would make contact with people who would understand that this was the future. It was their future. There isn’t anything in the future that you cannot reach out and touch in some way. I believed that was part of my popularity, the fact that I could make contact with the ordinary guy who I knew

very well, because I was no different and I would say, this is your future; this is what it is going to be like, what you are going to do about it? I don’t know, but it is great to look at. The best they can do is try to see themselves in that future. I remember some times they did some futuristic motion pictures and the best they could do with it, they used to make bridges between New York skyscrapers with people walking across, and, of course, that is too damn easy to do now but back then, in the movies, it was sensational. RAY: Regrets, Roz? ROZ: Not many. We have a roof over our heads, we have food on the table, we have friends—there’s a lot to be thankful for. RAY: You have each other… ROZ: This lug? [laughs] JACK: I love her. ROZ: Aww. Now you got him mushy. [pause] RAY: But if you had to… ROZ: I can point to a few decisions, a few things that I wish we had done better. But how could we know? It’s easy to say, “If only we knew.” But that’s hindsight. JACK: There are a million things you can see in hindsight. RAY: And if you could see them all with foresight? JACK: You would be dangerous. [laughs] ROZ: Okay, you guys. That’s enough. I’m hungry. RAY: Well Jack, I guess that’s it for today. JACK: Alright. RAY: We covered a lot of ground, didn’t we? JACK: It sounds like we did. I can still hear all the words. ★

AT THE CORE (below) The Source resonates from every aspect of New Genesis. Here are Jack’s pencils from DC’s Who’s Who #16 (June 1986). (next page) Orion’s true face shocks his half-brother Kalibak (who’s no beauty queen himself) in New Gods #8 (April 1972). (page 14) Page 1 pencils to Forever People #7 (Feb. 1972). All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

The Fourth World’s Source

by Kevin Ainsworth “There came a time when the old gods died.” hat a fantastic opening sentence for a new series. The death of the old and birth of the new. Over the years, the Fourth World series has rightly gained a reputation for brilliance as well as being Jack Kirby’s most personal work, but where did the ideas come from? What was “The Source”? Most of the ideas, concepts and characters were originated while Jack still worked at Marvel. Throughout the letters pages of Marvel’s Thor in the late 1960s, a debate had been running about the origins of the gods and also about who the gods might worship. Odin was allegedly the all-powerful, but how did this fit in with the other pantheons such as the Greek gods? And if Odin and Zeus were counterparts and each claimed to be allpowerful, then surely there must be something above them? But, whatever it was, it was missing. Jack Kirby would probably have been aware of this debate

and, even if he did not read the letters pages, if others had spotted this flaw, he would have as well. Another weakness in the Thor series was the lack of balance in good versus evil. The main villain was Loki, Thor’s stepbrother. Yet they were not equals and opposites nor were they really related by blood. For them to fight, Odin had to turn a blind eye (a bit tricky for an omnipotent, all-seeing sky god!) and even when he did find out, Loki was usually able to blame Thor, and Odin would fall for it. There were times when it was really stretching things with the punishments Odin inflicted on Thor for minor transgressions. These were things that needed fixing, but they could not be fixed in Thor. A whole new series with brand new characters would have to be created to fix these flaws. (Even now, some thirty years after Jack left the series, have there really been any changes in storyline and character dynamics?) Out of his desire to improve things came The New Gods and the Fourth World. The protagonists would now be equal and opposites

(Highfather and Darkseid, New Genesis and Apokolips) and there would be a genuine blood relationship between the protagonists (Orion and Darkseid, Orion and Kalibak), thus giving the conflict a far more dramatic and tragic resonance. After all, who fights more often than siblings? A rivalry for parental love and approval is a mighty motivation and can wreck a living room; now imagine that living room as New York and we can see the reality of it all. The old gods fought in the heavens while the new ones do it on our doorstep. An interesting and intriguing aspect to this triangle and rivalry is that Kalibak is the child of Darkseid’s true love while Orion is the child of his arranged marriage. Surely Darkseid’s feelings and favoritism should be for Kalibak? Kirby was not doing the obvious but there was a truth in there, obvious to Kirby; we can only wonder and speculate where he would have taken this. And that is the great strength of the Fourth World—it is founded on truths we can instinctively recognize and relate to in varying degrees. The reason so many people can react to so many different things is that there are so many truths in there. But back to the Source. What other influences are there? One of the most obvious, to me, is the divide between Apokolips and New Genesis. Apokolips is New York while New Genesis is California. Kirby was a child of the city and we can only begin to imagine the effect of moving from New York to California (Big Barda’s view of Earth and the joys of having a bath give a clue!). And not just to California, but the California of the Summer of Love and beyond. It must have been a revelation to him. There was another way. Things could be different. Kirby has often stated that the future belongs to the young, and no more so than that period of time in California. He had gone from the city where corporate greed ruled (Darkseid)

and it had been a fight to survive, to California where there was something fresh and new and exciting in the air. Is it a coincidence that New Genesis is countryside unsullied by city life? Even the city of the gods floats serenely overhead, not touching or disturbing the tranquility and beauty. And what of Apokolips? It is one giant city, or ghetto, with no sign of countryside or beauty.

There are two pivotal stories in the Fourth World canon, which Kirby often claimed as his favorites. The first is New Gods #7, “The Pact.” It depicts a time when there was little difference between the gods of New Genesis and Apokolips. Both are warrior races. When they go to war, it is to win. The initial skirmishes are on their own territories, but then they move out into the universe and the weapons of destruction get bigger and more powerful—and

other way—Kirby the warrior becomes Kirby the Highfather and peacemaker. How many other elderly gods do we see featured in New Genesis apart from Highfather? He is the wise elder imparting his wisdom and experience to the young and guiding them—perhaps a role Kirby saw for himself in his comics? What of the other pivotal story: Mister Miracle #9 (“Himon”)? The escape of Scott Free; Scott Free is also Jack Kirby, the Jack Kirby who grew up in the city but refused to be broken by it or conform to what he should have become in those surroundings. A Jack Kirby who dreamt of escape and yearned to be free. A Jack Kirby whose Mother Box and means of escape was his fertile imagination and his gift for art. A Jack Kirby who, once he started to earn his living with his art, began the Scott Free journey of discovering himself. A Jack Kirby that could not have done so without the aid of his own Big Barda/Roz, or Himon. Ah, Himon, the visionary and dreamer who taught Scott Free his tricks. Himon, who always came back no matter how many times he was killed. In the midst of despair he gave people hope. The dreams had kept the young Kirby going with his art

We interrupt this article about “new” gods with Chris Fama’s “Before & After” comparison of Kirby’s pencils from page 11 of Thor #145 (Oct. 1967), to the reconstructed Vince Colletta inks shown on the following spread. Flip and compare!

BEFORE & AFTER

innocents suffer. Kirby was a World War II veteran. He had seen such a thing firsthand. The battles had been fought in countries that had not instigated the war and innocent civilians were caught up in a war not of their making. He would have seen the way the weapons improved and became more destructive, culminating in the Atom Bomb. He would also have seen how this had not finished wars but transformed them. For New Genesis and Apokolips read America and Russia. For the planets read Korea, Vietnam and any other country where Communism was trying to gain a foothold. Where once war involved hand-to-hand combat and could be idealized into a form of nobility, it now removed all trace of that as the weapons got more powerful and destructive. Perhaps the images of napalm bombing in Vietnam were fresh in his mind? Witness Izaya’s pain as the effects of the war ate away at his soul. The Old Gods destroyed themselves while the New destroyed the universe. He had played the game Darkseid’s way but there had to be another way. And in California perhaps he found that

(previous spread) Highfather worries about the fate of the young, in these splash page pencils from Forever People #7 (Feb. 1972).

until he could use it to escape the ghetto and life he had grown up in. Yet how many others were there who were equally talented, but did not make it? Are they in Mister Miracle #9 as those disciples of Himon crushed by the ghetto? Both Highfather and his son cry out at pivotal points of both stories. Both want the same thing, they each want to find themselves—perhaps something that Kirby himself had been through at various times? It is interesting to see that each of the four books had a different emphasis. Jimmy Olsen dealt with the human reaction to the war (even if the realization that there is a war, and they are in it, is a slow burning fuse for most of the characters). Mister Miracle dealt with one man’s journey to escape the war and find himself—

even if his past does not want to let him go. (It is interesting to note that, although he is Highfather’s son, he has no special powers and does not appear to be any more than just a man, but survives using his own natural talents for creativity.) The New Gods dealt with the war between the gods, and it is here that it would seem most logical to place Darkseid. But, apart from fleeting glimpses and his presence, it is in Forever People that we see Darkseid in action. This is no coincidence. The Forever People is the most overtly hippy and “Love” of the books. They are the young who embrace and live the new philosophy. They are not ex-warriors like Highfather but genuine lovers of peace and harmony—the fruit of Highfather’s dream. How would they deal with, and survive, the war by living out their ideals? It was a battle of ideologies, and who better to be the main antagonist than Darkseid himself? It was also far more than that—it was a battle against the temptations of materialism and the world. What other team has had to fight against a theme park? On the surface, theme parks are benign and fun, but you need money to get in and you need to work to earn that money. And to what extent will you sell and compromise yourself to earn that money? One man’s pleasure is built on another man’s pain. When first introduced, the Forever People do not fight. Instead they join together to become The Infinity Man. They can achieve far more as one than they can as individuals—an example of the power of people acting together as one. But there is a weakness in The Infinity Man, which Darkseid discovers and exploits in issue #3. The weakness is in the individuals who make up the unity. By splitting them apart, they are defeated. The Forever People’s greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. Another interesting aspect of the book is that in other comics of the period, hippies appear and talk the philosophy of love and peace, and these comics look dated now, whereas the Forever People live that philosophy in an action comic. In doing so, those eleven issues capture a spirit and a philosophy like nothing else—and amazingly, it has not dated. It’s a fantastic feat when you think about it. It is a supergroup comic like no other before or since. Do we actually see The Forever People in a fight like the X-Men (apart from issues #9 and #10)? Big Bear defends himself, but it is more comedy than serious action. It is issue #8 before we find out that Mark Moonrider has a megaton blast. Apart from protecting himself with a cosmic cartridge (which also gives the ultimate high without taking drugs!), what else has Serifan got? Beautiful Dreamer’s

name sums her power up, but what of Vykin the Black? He is oblivious to the greed of the Spaniards or the danger he is in from them and is only saved by the actions of Highfather, and never knows how close he was to death. Only much later does he show a power. It is almost as if the powers are incidental and an afterthought; a concession to the demands of a more conventional super-hero team. Had they shown those powers earlier, they would have used them to escape from Desaad’s trap. It is a convention that captured super-heroes will escape using their ingenuity, but not in this case. In several issues of Fantastic Four, when captured the heroes are put in traps designed to negate their powers. Not so the Forever People. When captured by Desaad, they do not free themselves by their own ingenuity or powers. It takes Sonny Sumo and the Mother Box to do that, and even then it is passive resistance using the power of Anti-Life. When they are lost in time, it takes Highfather’s Alpha Bullets to undo Darkseid’s Omega Effect. Mark Moonrider and Vykin, at least, could easily have escaped using the powers that Kirby later gives them. His purpose here was not to create a super-powered group, but to tell a story and capture a philosophy in action. What of Glorious Godfrey—mind control through indoctrination and people following the crowd? For Glorious Godfrey read Hitler and Nazi Germany (or any number of cult groups where man picks on man). Having lived throughout the War, Kirby must have wondered how men could do such inhuman things to each other. The bullies at the top may decide to annihilate the Jews, but why do normal people follow them and carry out those orders? Why do bullies exist? Why do people gang together to pick on others? The Justifiers give an answer to this. As far as being a “Source” we must not forget the backdrop of the Vietnam War—real life justifying what was happening, and real life slogans coming from the authorities (not just on Apokolips!). Young people really were applying passive resistance. The war with Apokolips was a hidden war which would not have affected the everyday lives of most people in Kirby’s comics unless it touched their lives in some personal way. How different was this to the effect the war in far off Vietnam had on most people’s everyday lives? But eleven issues of a bi-monthly comic covers a long time. 1968 gives way to 1972-73 and the times they are a’ changing. What happened to that generation of hippies that so inspired Kirby? Within a short span of time they had grown up and gotten jobs within corporate America. They were earning their money to buy their houses and go to the theme parks to relax for five minutes. In real life, Darkseid was winning and seducing them. In the comics there was pressure to conform and make the Forever People a typical super-hero group like the X-Men or Teen Titans. Issues #9 and #10 show this change, and it was not one that fit the dream. After all, how could Kirby keep pursuing the philosophy when that philosophy was old news, and a fresh generation was interested in other things? Perhaps Kirby realized that there was only one place for them to go—one place where they would not be seduced. That was to take them away from the conflict and war and temptations and place them in an ideal land

where they could forever be the Forever People. Another character in the Fourth World who is intensely personal to Kirby is Orion. If Scott Free is Kirby the dreamer trying to survive and escape the city, then Orion is Kirby, the adult child of Darkseid carrying around his anger and scars beneath the mask. Orion did not fit naturally into New Genesis although he agreed with its aims and ideologies and it gave him a home. Perhaps Kirby saw himself in that way. On moving to California he found a way of life and philosophy that he had always dreamed of, but it belonged to the young—the young who were fresh and unsullied by the world; a way of life which he, perhaps, wished he had found while young. As Scott Free he saw himself as a child of that world given as a hostage to Apokolips and the city. As Orion he was the adult who carried around the scars of the conflicts he had seen in World War II and beyond. He also carried around the anger and rage built up over time. He recognized that he was a child of Darkseid, a child of corporate America who had worked hard to fit in and earn money to pay the bills and look after his family. Perhaps there was an anger and rage in the position he found himself in, and what he had had to put up with to stay there and survive. Suddenly, like Orion, he found himself in New Genesis/ California. He found himself with the seeming freedom from corporate America by being his own editor and in charge of his own creations for the first time. He was in a position to fight back and lead the charge for the new philosophy of love. But he recognized the fact that beneath it all he still carried the scars and anger and they could only ever be papered over and never removed. Unfortunately, corporate America had the final word—it cancelled his books! It is interesting to speculate how the Fourth World would have continued. It is easy to look back now and see eleven issues of New Gods, eleven of The Forever People, eighteen of Mister Miracle and fifteen of Jimmy Olsen and say that it was cut short. But if we count up all the short stories, Jack Kirby produced well over 50 stories. It is also easy to forget that those books spanned four years and the world was constantly changing around Kirby (how would the Fourth World, for example, have adapted to Watergate?). When the books were cancelled, it was a different world from that which gave him his inspiration. When he returned to the New Gods in 1983, that world was long gone and it would have been pointless and impossible for Kirby to have returned to it for inspiration. Instead, he looked to the future. It is easy to feel disappointed with the Hunger Dogs because we probably all had our own ideas of how the New Gods saga would finish (and let’s face it, it probably included a rootin’tootin’ 20-page knock-’em-up Kirby battle between Orion and Darkseid). But if we look beyond that, we see the visionary at work. For Darkseid and Armagetto, read any of the East European dictators and the Iron Curtain just six years later. As Kirby saw the Berlin Wall being torn down by the masses, did he have a sense of satisfaction? Other comics of the late 1960s which had tried to be contemporary now look hopelessly dated, but Kirby looked beyond the obvious and looked at what was behind it all. He captured an essence with his books which we all latched on to. Even now I find the Fourth World books remarkably evocative of that time while remaining timeless. The Hunger Dogs was the culmination of his ideas of finding another way. The enemy is not overthrown from without, but from within. We were all expecting a sequel to New Gods #11 but Kirby gave us one to Mister Miracle #9 instead. How much satisfaction must he have felt from the fact that the Iron Curtain was brought down not by the war and conflict of New Gods #7 but by a peaceful revolution: The ultimate example of the philosophy behind the Forever People, as the masses unite as one to form one unstoppable Infinity Man? “The Source” from which Kirby drew his ideas became reality. ★

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier f all goes well—and how often does that happen in this world?—my next column for this magazine will be about how I’ve decided, for whatever it’s worth, that the first two issues of Fantastic Four were inked by George Klein. This has long been a mystery among Kirby fans and a lot of us have had other answers to the question, including a gent named Christopher Rule. I used to say it was probably Rule, perhaps assisted by Klein. Now I think it’s just Klein and next issue, I’ll tell you why I think that. For now, let’s get on to other mysteries, starting with this one from Jeff Pearson about another Kirby inker...

I (center) Chic Stone during his Marvel Bullpen years in the 1960s.

In a recent issue, you mentioned my favorite Jack Kirby inker, Chic Stone. Could you tell me a little more about him? Why did he stop inking Jack’s work? The more interesting question about Stone is why he started inking Jack’s work. Chic was a longtime comic artist who was in the field almost from Day One. In later years, he recalled his first job as a strip called “Booby Sox” that was done for the Jacquet shop in 1939. There are even earlier comics that just might be his work, including some from the Eisner-Iger shop. His first identifiable art for Timely/Marvel seems to have been a 1943 strip called “Eustace Hayseed and Choo Choo” that ran in Joker Comics. But doing work for Jacquet and Funnies, Inc. as he did, he was probably in some comic published by Martin Goodman even before that. He worked for Fawcett on Captain Marvel and for Fiction House before settling in as a Marvel staff artist in the late Forties. For a time in the office, he had the drawing table next to Mike Sekowsky’s—a location coveted by those who enjoyed Mike’s caustic humor and shunned by those who became the target of his intermittent anger. Stone considered Mike a good friend and mentor. And Stone considered himself an artist, not an inker. He did ink (mostly) during this stint at Marvel, in part because they were short on inkers and in part because he felt intimidated by the pencilers working there then, especially Sekowsky and Syd Shores. In the Fifties, he was like a lot of comic artists, in and out of

comics. There were periods when there wasn’t enough work and he found jobs in the art departments of various non-comic magazines. He also tried publishing one called Boy Illustrated, which lasted all of two issues. When it flopped, there was an extended period when the only work he could find was for Charlton... which considering their pay rates at the time, paid about as well as being unemployed. In the Sixties, he was working for the American Comics Group and Dell when he heard Stan Lee was hiring and decided to see if there was work available there. He went up to the office around the middle of 1963. In later interviews, he remembered it as 1964 but he was off by a year. He walked in to find Stan going over the pages Kirby had penciled for the Thor story in Journey Into Mystery #102. The story had come back from the letterer and was ready for the inker. As Stone later recalled, “When I saw Jack’s pages, my jaw dropped. I knew Kirby’s work was great from the printed comics but I don’t believe I’d ever seen his pencils before that day.” Lee let Stone study the pages while he put in a call to the inker—probably George Roussos—to tell him to come pick them up. Apparently, the inker had a conflict because when Stan got off the phone, he said to Stone, “Chic, would you like to ink this job?” “Well, my knees turned to Jell-o,” Stone later explained. “That’s how intimidating it was. I never in a million years would have gone in there and said, ‘How’s about letting me ink Kirby?’ But I left there with the pages, very much afraid I would not do justice to this man’s magnificent artwork. I hope I did.” Many fans thought so. Though some faulted Stone’s bold, forceful brushwork for lacking sensitive detail, most felt he brought forth all the energy of the pencil work... or at least as much as anyone ever managed. Kirby liked it just fine and he personally hired Stone several times during this period when in need of an inker for an outside project—the poster for the Captain Nice TV show and a short comic story for Esquire Magazine, to name two. Stone embellished a number of other stories for Stan during this period over Don Heck, Dick Ayers and others, but he never really enjoyed inking someone else’s work, eventually even Jack’s. “I learned a lot inking Jack,” he told me. “But it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.” Alas, he was unable to get Stan to give him penciling work. Which brings me to one of my own mysteries... namely, why not? As I’ve mentioned here before, Stan was short a couple of pencilers during the 1964-1965 period. Once he’d gotten as much as possible out of Kirby, Ditko, Heck, and Ayers, there were still comics to be drawn and the others he tried—Bill Everett, Joe Orlando, Bob Powell, and a few others—just didn’t work out. They generally either couldn’t work from a plot outline and/or couldn’t deliver the kind of dynamic art he wanted in order to set his books apart from the DC product. So how come he didn’t give Chic Stone a try? Years ago, I had a theory that Stan had Paul Reinman inking Kirby on X-Men and Stone inking him on other strips as a way of breaking them in to pencil for Marvel. That would have been consistent with Stan’s modus operandi and it would have been a 19

and was told to emulate his look. I interviewed him by phone one final time about a month before he passed away in 2000. He was nearly blind by then but he told me he’d managed to read a few sentences in a fanzine article someone had sent him about his work. He said he’d been able to make out the phrase, “The poor man’s Jack Kirby” and he said he did not consider it an insult. Our next question is from Patrick Cooper, who sent us most of last issue’s questions, too. Patrick wants to know... You wrote some issues ago about the odd pairing of Alex Toth working over Kirby layouts on X-Men. I thought an even odder pairing was when Werner Roth replaced Toth and finished the art over Kirby layouts. What did you think of that? What artists do you think did the best job finishing Kirby layouts?

(above and below) Kirby handled the layouts for Werner Roth on X-Men #17 (Feb. 1966), and you can still see his margin notes on these examples. (next page, center) Avengers #18 (July 1965) isn’t credited as having Kirby layouts, just a Kirby cover. But Jack was the “go-to” guy for keeping the Bullpen artists on top of their game, as evidenced by Stan’s note up the side of these Don Heck pencils: “Sol—stat Cap’s head—I’ll give to Jack & ask Jack tomorrow, to show Don how it should look in that position—a position which Don often draws.” But if Jack didn’t work on this issue, why are there several of these tattered stats from it in his files? (next page, bottom) Sol Brodsky in the 1960s. Avengers, X-Men TM and ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

more logical usage of Stone and Reinman, neither of whom had done much inking of other artists. My assumption was that each had tried to pencil something that had failed to please him (to the point it was never printed) and that was why they’d gone elsewhere. In the Seventies, I laid this theory on Sol Brodsky, who’d been Stan’s Production Manager in the Sixties. He remembered that happening several times—Stan commissioning pages from a “new” penciler and then scrapping the work—but he did not remember it happening specifically with Reinman or Stone. I asked Stan and he didn’t remember either, what a surprise. Never got to ask Reinman about it but when I mentioned it to Stone, he said, “No, I begged Stan to let me pencil and he never would. That’s why I left.” Stone had begun to get penciling work from DC. He drew a few Superboy stories and became “Bob Kane” for a time, ghosting on Batman. He also was drawing Nemesis, a new super-hero from ACG and would soon be working for Tower on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. It seemed like a good time to give up inking others, though he told me he never quite left Kirby behind: “...most of the work I got [after inking Kirby], I got because someone really wanted Kirby. When I penciled, editors would tell me to emphasize the things I’d learned inking Jack. They really wanted Jack but they couldn’t get Jack so they had to settle for me. When I inked, no matter who it was, they’d say, ‘Put some of that Kirby feel into it. Make it look more like Marvel.’” Stone returned briefly to Marvel a few times later—mainly to inking or finishing breakdowns, usually on a strip where they wanted a Kirby feel. He also penciled occasionally for DC in the Seventies, including a stint on Kamandi where he followed Jack

Roth over Kirby was very odd indeed but before I discuss that, I want to keep going on the above thread for a second. You’ll see where this is heading... In that interview I did with Brodsky, he told me something that always intrigued me. This is about the period I described when Stan was trying to find more artists who could give him what Kirby and Ditko could give him. As I mentioned, Brodsky told me Stan had sometimes triedout a new penciler, looked at the first few pages the guy produced, and called the whole thing off. Sol remembered this happening with “a couple of guys who’d been doing a lot of work for DC” but he could only remember one name... and Stan, God love him, is no help. So who were they? I don’t know. The only two DC artists I know Stan coveted during this period were Irv Novick and Carmine Infantino. Stan called Novick at least once about working for Marvel but Novick was perfectly happy with DC and saw no reason to leave, especially since Marvel would not match his DC page rate. Infantino reportedly had a few conversations and an offer to jump ship but opted to stay at DC where he was getting the opportunity to move into management. (And no, I don’t know what they’d have done for Marvel... probably everything, eventually.) The one name Brodsky mentioned was Bill Draut, a onetime workhorse of the Simon-Kirby studio and to my mind, one of the great underrated artists. DC in the Sixties was overloaded with artists and Draut was only able to get occasional work from the company and only on their romance books. It’s amazing DC didn’t think he fit better into their books because according to Sol, he was one of the ones Stan rejected as “too DC.” Brodsky said he was always amazed that after rejecting so many artists because their work was “too sedate” and “too DC,” Stan had hired Werner Roth for X-Men. Here’s an excerpt from that interview: “This was during the time Stan was only coming into the office two or three day a week. The rest of the time, he’d stay home with Joan and work on scripts. I ran the office when he was out. Werner Roth came in one day. I knew him, of course. He’d worked for Stan years earlier. He’d worked for me on some projects. A very nice man. A very good artist. “He was looking for work. He had some samples, romance stuff he’d done for DC. I didn’t think there was a chance. It was exactly the kind of work Stan said he didn’t want at Marvel. He wanted everyone to be Kirby with exaggeration and figures leaping out. Werner drew people with normal proportions. I’d seen Stan turn down guys like

that or he’d flip through a DC book and point to some artist and say, ‘See? That’s what we shouldn’t be doing.’ “Stan was out that day. I didn’t have the heart to turn Werner down. I figured that was Stan’s job but I cautioned him that we were full up. We weren’t really but I wanted to let him down easy. I told him he should come back the next day when Stan would be in. I just knew Stan was going to turn him down. “He came back the next day and walked out with a book to do. X-Men, I guess. I couldn’t believe it. Stan had him working over Jack’s breakdowns. He said, ‘Maybe he’ll pick up Jack’s flair that way.’ I don’t believe he thought that. That wasn’t the kind of artist Werner was. I think Stan just didn’t have the heart to say no to him.” Stan Lee’s knack for the incredible was never more apparent than when he thought—if he thought— that if Roth worked over Kirby layouts long enough, he might pick up Jack’s way of plotting a story, staging action and drawing dynamic figures. As with a lot of artists who were miscast drawing super-heroes, the Kirby sensibilities were alien to Roth. He was, in a way, the unKirby. Jack was fast and hated to ink his own pencils. Roth was a slow penciler and an even slower inker, which explains why he did almost no inking for Marvel and why X-Men during his run had fill-ins and back-up stories. It was a shame because he was at his best when he inked his own work—as he did occasionally for DC and Gold Key. He could not, like Kirby, pencil an entire issue from a brief plot... or no plot at all. This is why when Jack stopped doing layouts for X-Men, Stan turned the writing chores over to Roy Thomas. Kirby’s layouts for those issues were very strong, and he occasionally did some actual tight pencil penciling for the first page and even for some key panels. He also drew the covers and designed some of the new characters. This was the custom on other comics he laid out. For instance, on the “Sleeper” sequence in Tales of Suspense #72-74—layouts by Kirby, finishes by George Tuska—there are a few panels and one splash page penciled in full by Jack. When Roth had to solo on X-Men, his work got quieter and you can see that he had less idea of how to tell a story. There were many panels where he doesn’t seem to have been sure what had to be established in dialogue so he’d draw all the X-Men in poses that suggested they were all talking. This forced Roy when he scripted the work to give everyone a word balloon and made some of the pages quite talky. Kirby did not know Werner Roth well. The one time I recall his name coming up in a conversation, Jack remembered “that Western he did” and didn’t recall that Roth had worked on X-Men at all. (The Western was probably The Apache Kid, a comic Roth drew for Marvel/Atlas in 1955 and ’56.) As for other artists working over Kirby layouts, it’s interesting. You’d think John Severin with his stiff and more realistic style wouldn’t mesh well with Kirby, but I thought the tales of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. that Jack laid-out and Severin finished were sensational. I also really liked the Hulk stories finished by

Bill Everett and the Captain America stories with Tuska. In some cases though, I think you can see the finish artists working against Kirby’s style—Toth on X-Men, for instance. Or the Nick Fury stories done over Jack’s layouts by Howard Purcell and the one by Ogden Whitney. The main idea behind having Jack do layouts was to get his plot input and storytelling into more books... and that always worked fine. There were some very fine stories produced that way, even if Jack ultimately decided he didn’t like how little he was paid for it, especially given how important he felt his contribution was to the material. But the secondary reason was to try and educate the artists to the kind of storytelling Stan wanted in his books, and that had mixed results. One match-up we missed: Wally Wood told me that at one point, he was going to take over doing X-Men over Kirby layouts. He didn’t recall why that hadn’t happened but I think it would have been a fine parlay. Marc Fein sends in our final question this month... Every year at the Kirby Tribute Panel in San Diego, I hear you ask the panelists to name the first Kirby work they remember, and sometimes also the one that’s their favorite. But I don’t recall you ever answering the question. Would you be so kind? Since I am so very kind, I’ll not only answer but I’ll ramble and tell you some other things about Kirby. I keep remembering things that no one’s asked me about so I have to shoehorn them into other replies. Maybe the reason I haven’t answered the first part of Marc’s query is that I’m not sure. I began reading comic books about the time I began reading anything, which was around Nursery School age. These were all of the Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse variety. I was born in ’52, by the way. The first super-hero comic I read was Action Comics #250, cover-dated March of 1959—two issues before Supergirl made her debut in that comic. But I didn’t buy the comic off the newsstand. I got it from a second-hand bookstore, probably a year or more after it came out. I then began buying more superhero and adventure comics at such shops at the exorbitant price of a nickel each, six for a quarter. I bought tons of then-recent DC books including Adventure Comics, World’s Finest Comics and Challengers of the Unknown... so the first time I laid eyes on Jack Kirby art was probably either a Challengers or Green Arrow story. I wish I could say that my world changed... that I felt charged with electricity and vowed, “Some day, I will write that man’s letter columns.” But the truth is that I don’t recall being particularly dazzled. Batman stories by “Bob Kane” probably had a more profound impact on me. (A year or two later, it would be the way Jim Mooney drew Supergirl...) Favorite Kirby work? Hard to say, though I know it’s changed from time to time... and will probably change again. When asked that question, I usually rule out the Fourth World books. I’m just too close to them to have any sense of perspective. I really cared about Fantastic Four, especially from about half-past the first appearance 21

of the Red Ghost through around the period when Dr. Doom trapped them in a village not unlike the one from the Prisoner TV show. All of Jack’s work for Marvel during that period was quite outstanding. One of my favorite stories—and this may be more childhood nostalgia than critical assessment—is the aforementioned “Sleeper” story that ran in Tales of Suspense #72-74. Jack laid it out and the art was finished by George Tuska with a few pages inked, sans credit, by Wally Wood. Still, the storytelling and pace and energy all feel like Jack Kirby to me and I think of it as his work. Other older faves? Boys’ Ranch. Fighting American. Bullseye. Boy Commandos. When you start naming great Simon-Kirby comics, it’s hard to know where to stop. For reasons I’ve explained here before, at the time Jack did his post-Fourth World books (Kamandi, The Demon, his return to Marvel, et al) I was not a huge fan. I later changed my mind but in the Seventies, they felt forced and bloodless to me. My favorite work from this period was his run on The Losers in Our Fighting Forces. Only there did I sense his passion when the comics were first coming out. Jack loved telling tales of his days in World War II— sometimes to the chagrin of fans who wanted to hear him talk of comics instead. I know I’ve said some of this here before but I wanted to mention the following. I think people who have written about Jack, myself included, have sometimes forgotten the extent to which he was a product of his time. Jack was shaped by the Great Depression, by World War II, by the Korean War and the McCarthy era, etc. Sometimes we forget because Jack was usually very good about hiding things. His work had so much life in it because Jack put his own life into it, finding autobiographical handles for almost everything he did. The references are often way too obscure for us mere mortals to discern but they’re in there. Jack had to care about a story in order to draw it and the way he cared about it was to make it be about something he cared about—even if the connection was visible only to him. One time, we got to talking about the assassination of President Kennedy. That event had an impact on everyone who was around at the time, at least on their personal life, so I was not surprised to hear Jack say that it had a profound effect on him. My little eyebrows shot up, however, when he said that it had a major impact on his work. That, I had never sensed... and I still am not sure what he meant by that. He was unable to cite an example. He was definitely not referring to the one short story he did for Esquire years later chronicling the events in the life of Jack Ruby after Kennedy was shot. With that in mind, I went back one time and reread everything Kirby had done around the time of the Kennedy assassination. The work that would have been on his drawing table around or after 11/22/63 included the Thing-Hulk battle in Fantastic Four #25-26 and the issues soon after, the coming of The Cobra and Mr. Hyde to the Thor strip, X-Men #5 or 6 and The Avengers #5 or 6. Can you see anything in those stories to suggest one of the creators was deeply moved by the murder of John F. Kennedy? I can’t. Even reading forward a year or two, I don’t get a sense of the turmoil it brought to this nation. There are no storylines 22

dwelling on the kind of upheaval. In Fantastic Four, Stan and Jack did a tale called “Death of a Hero” in which the father of Sue Storm was killed. It was a moving story but you’d have to stretch farther than Mr. Fantastic to connect it to the death of J.F.K. in any way. And yet, Kirby said what he said and his grief at the death of our 35th president is undeniable. I’m sure he must have put it somewhere into his work. I just can’t figure out where. If I ever do, that may turn out to be my favorite Jack Kirby work. Next question? ★ Mark Evanier often writes of Kirby over at his daily weblog, www.newsfromme.com and his not-daily weblog, www.POVonline.com. He welcomes your Kirby Queries at either address. And if you can’t get enough of Mark’s work (and who can?), be sure to pick up TwoMorrows’ three collections of his acclaimed POV columns (shown at right). For a limited time, when you purchase two for the regular price of $34 US Postpaid, you get the third one FREE! Check the TwoMorrows house ad this issue to order by mail, or go to www.twomorrows.com

MARK EVANIER “POV” BUNDLE (BUY 2, GET 1 FREE!)

HE STAYED

MUCH THE SAME!

Incidental Iconography An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld y father was probably one of the first comic book fans to know about Jim Steranko. He wasn’t particularly in the right circles of comic book fanatics or anything, he just also happened to be a magician and knew of Steranko from his days as an escape artist. Later, as I discovered Steranko the comic book artist, my father relayed tales of how the magician would perform great illusions at New York nightclubs, play in the jazz band until the wee hours of the morning, and get thrown out after a bar brawl... only to head home at 4:00 in the morning to start drawing comic books better than anyone else in the business—and then do it all again the following weekend. I’ve never asked how much of that obvious hyperbole was my father’s own and how much may have been Steranko’s, but that was the image I held of him for many years. It should come as no surprise, then, that when I discovered Mister Miracle, it was easy for me to see where Jack Kirby got his ideas from. Even Mister Miracle’s Mother Box is a Kirbified expansion of Steranko’s own tools. Ah, but Steranko usually wore a tuxedo during his performances, and this column discusses the visual appearances of characters. Indeed, the type of costume Mister Miracle wears would in fact be somewhat detrimental to a real escape artist; Steranko himself has attested to this in preparation of this article. The question naturally arises: where did the Mister Miracle outfit come from? For those of you who don’t know, Jack designed much of the cast of his Fourth World series in 1967 while he was still working at Marvel. At the time, Jack was still bitter about the New York Herald-Tribune article that appeared the year before and he squirreled away a lot of his more grand ideas for a time and a place where he might get greater creative freedom to express himself—and get the proper credit for it as well. But the character designs themselves were generally just ideas that flowed out of Jack’s head and onto his paper, at the time with probably only vague notions as to what he might do with these characters. A few years passed and Jack jumped over to DC, at which time he pulled out his old sketches and began working up what would become the Fourth World titles in earnest. Looking at Mister Miracle in particular, we see that, despite a surprisingly dramatic difference in tone, there are very few changes between the original character design and what ultimately made it onto the printed page. I think this showcases a lot of the freedom DC gave Jack initially. Of the three changes made, I believe only one of them to have been an editorial “suggestion.” The suggestion seems rather innocuous anyway: Removing the scallops from Mister Miracle’s cape. The TV show Batman was still on the air in 1967 and likely influenced Jack’s inclusion of the scallops on the original sketch, but I expect DC did not want to dilute the iconographic feel Neal Adams had given to Batman’s cape a few years earlier. This strikes me as a detail Jack wouldn’t have cared about and he likely let it drop in a heartbeat. The next noticeable change is the absence of a gun. Here, I feel, Jack’s sense of storytelling came into play.

In the few years since Jack first designed the character, I expect he realized that an escape artist would really have no reason to carry a weapon. An escapist is in the business of avoiding danger, not inviting it. Interestingly, this makes the overall character more in line with Batman, as he too carried a gun in his earliest incarnations, only to drop its use soon afterwards. Interestingly, Steranko, too, had something of a gun collection in his younger days. The last change can actually be attributed to fellow TJKC columnist Mark Evanier, who was working with Jack at the time, and it is one of the very few pieces of the Fourth World he’s taken credit for—namely, Mister Miracle’s color palette. Mark has plenty of his own deadlines, and I haven’t been able to chat with him about the reasoning specifically, but I will note that his color scheme would certainly be much easier to print than Jack’s grey and pale yellow version, given the technology DC was using in 1970, and Mark’s scheme also makes the character look somewhat more heroic, possibly (above) Jack’s original MM drawing, pulling the and (left) splash from issue #1 (Mar. 1971). character (top) Mr. Miracle #6 cover (Jan. 1972), visually more in and Jack’s final work on the character, from line with Jack’s DC’s Who’s Who #15 (May 1986). Mr. Miracle TM & ©2006 DC Comics. then-current intentions. The only other two “changes” one might notice in Jack’s version of the character is the occasional absence of the eye outlines and the somewhat more frequent suggestion of a nose. These two details seem to be based, at least in part, on how much of a close-up Jack choose to give the character, and neither strike me as particularly significant in the character’s overall visual appearance. I suspect Jack felt the same way and unintentionally omitted them from time to time. And, thus, much like his Galactus design we covered in TJKC #42, we have a character who has remained mostly intact visually throughout the years. Comic creators have been largely quite respectful of Kirby’s Fourth World character designs. Even under the auspices of Marshall Rogers, Joe Phillips, Steve Rude, Steve Crespo, Bruce Timm, or Pasqual Ferry we see that nearly all of Jack’s iconography remains in place and, naturally, the influence of Steranko continues to be the root source of the character himself. I will, however, leave the deeper impact of Steranko’s influence for an article outside the confines of this column. ★ (Visit Sean’s website at www.FFPlaza.com) 23

Bright Spots

Ch i l d Of Light

In A Time Of Darkness Lightray’s involvement in Darkseid’s war, by Jerry Boyd “When (Operation) Barbarrossa commences, the world will hold its breath... and make no comment.” Adolf Hitler to his commanders on the eve of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Stalin’s Soviet Russia - June, 1941 “Yesterday... December 7, 1941... a date that will live in infamy. United States ground and naval forces were suddenly and deliberately attacked by air forces from the Empire in Japan.” Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt addressing Congress following the assault on Pearl Harbor - Dec. 8, 1941 “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic... an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the Continent (of Europe). Behind that line lie all the ancient capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all those famous cities and their populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high, and in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.” Sir Winston Churchill, speaking to a Fulton, MO audience and Pres. Truman on the beginnings of the Cold War - 1946 hen great conflicts are about to begin, they are sometimes marked with stirring comments by the warriors Providence has placed and matured within that particular time frame. When Jack Kirby’s final, terrible war of new age celestials began in 1970, this master storyteller had been quietly attuning this most personal work for a few years, but nevertheless knew the sweeping pronouncements of his gods should be as moving as the

oratory of his earlier deity-laden assignments with co-creators Joe Simon (Mercury) and Stan Lee (Thor, Hercules). So when Lightray (“a child of light” as he referred to himself once) took up arms against the menace of Darkseid’s brutish elite, his words were also memorable. ORION: So the smiling lamb decided to try his hand among the wolves after all!! Yours is a sorry welcome to Earth, Lightray!! I see that your first brush with war—and the Deep Six—has been little short of disastrous!! LIGHTRAY: True, Orion! But though war is the game of tragedy, I shall live to give it greater meaning!! New Gods #6 Lightray’s time as a warrior has begun. According to some, the meek shall inherit the Earth, but they will be tested first. Lightray has broken his promise to the paternal Highfather (perhaps still inwardly distraught by the loss of Avia and his son and seeking to protect other children from the horrors of war) and entered the war of the gods. In addition, he’s been beaten and humbled, but not broken or destroyed by the more battlehardened Deep Six. (New Gods #6, again.) Those of us who glommed onto the Fourth World series when it first appeared will remember letters column enthusiasts praising the fierce antagonist Orion (a Kirby “original” that was an immediate summation of mythological warrior gods Tyr, Thor, Ares, and Hercules). The fans also wanted as much page space as possible for the aloof Metron and the gentle, carefree Lightray. Kirby placated the readers by making Metron a part of the Mr. Miracle book, and positioning Lightray alongside Orion until the title’s cancellation. The fans were satisfied for the most part.

(previous page) 1970s pencil sketch of Lightray; an inked version of this piece appeared in the fanzine All-Slug Comics #5 (1976).

(above) Lightray didn’t fare too well during his first outing the in Godwar, in New Gods #6 (Dec. 1971), but he managed to save the day against Mantis in New Gods #10 (August 1972, last-page pencils shown on next page). Characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

Within a few pages (keep that New Gods #6 handy!), the novice Lightray (mentally unscarred by his near brush with death, befitting his “ultimate” status), is now directing traffic. Putting his unique powers of light into play, he changes the rules of the game and uses his intellect to reshape his foes’ “organic director” into an untainted ally of New Genesis. LIGHTRAY: Light! Light! Not to glisten on swordblades! But light at play with atoms—to make them sing in other ways! The maturing of Lightray the warrior has begun... slowly. Orion goes along with this tactic, but later berates his friend when events seem to conspire against them and their human charges. ORION: You fight battles like a planner instead of a warrior! The enemy—myself—this dead boy—and, his father—we’re all your pawns! However, if the master of light’s stratagems (unfortunately

and unintentionally) sacrifice Richard, it spares Richard’s father, creates time for Lynn to escape, destroys the remaining Deep Four, and preserves his life and Orion’s. Not too shabby for a first few days on the battlelines. In a true masterpiece, many aspects of the final work can be applauded and examined over and over again. So it is with the Fourth World. In earlier issues of the New Gods, Metron cautioned Orion to use his wits against Darkseid. Early on, the Hunter did just that—fighting his purest nature to not engage parademons and Kalibak in protracted slugfests (New Gods #1). In the next three issues, Orion uses his intellect in moving carefully against Desaad and InterGang, while promoting friendships with determined Darkseid-fighting humans and working successfully undercover with them. However, Kalibak’s invasion of Metropolis (New Gods #8) brings out something of the greatest ferociousness (and hatred) in our hero, and Kirby lets them have it out (Thing-Hulk, Thor-Ulik style) in a manner that places the cerebral Lightray into a role of little more than a spectator. Interestingly however, it’s Lightray (keeping eyes on the outer and inner conflicts that rule Turpin, Kalibak, and his fierce friend) that saves Orion from meeting Kalibak’s fate. Lightray whisks his ally away from the Earthmen’s retaliation. (Jack may have commented that teamwork wins battles... and creates survivors.) Kalibak came to Earth alone. As Orion gives vent to his desire of coming to grips with Apokolips’ leader in final, decisive combat, it’s Lightray who reminds him that the master of the holocaust is planning, not shouting (New Gods #9). In addition, it’s Lightray’s agile mind that enlists the weapon that defeats Mantis and his swarm of “bugs” in New Gods #10. Jack’s thinking may have been that technological advances can triumph over great numbers. On the other hand, Lightray isn’t perfect as a think-tank. The child of light hits Kalibak with a heck of a lot in New Gods #11, but Desaad’s gone past the mano-a-mano eighth issue and cheats on behalf of his world’s champion, channeling new powers to him. In this second and final conflict, only Orion’s fierceness and sheer power can prevail. “To fight Kalibak, one needs but power!” Orion stated this in the title’s first issue, and in the final analysis, the eternal warrior was correct. The King’s outlook here may have been, “To beat your enemy, you have to know your enemy.” Lightray’s machinations don’t always work, but for the most part he was a stunning success. He later confounded Scott Free’s enemies in Mister Miracle #18 with light flashes and he reprogrammed and destroyed a number of Darkseid’s mechanized horrors in The Hunger Dogs. Just before he did the latter, he rushed boldly into the spatial divide between the warring planets. He didn’t confer with Highfather this time. By now he is confident, practiced in his abilities, and he (like Orion, Himon, Lonar, the lowlies of Armagetto, and Izaya) perseveres, refusing to kneel to the pressures brought on by Micro-Mark and its ilk. If Orion’s presence can be likened to the Russian juggernaut that pulverized Hitler’s forces in Eastern Europe and eventually took the Nazi capital at the war’s end, then Lightray is an equivalent to the Anglo-American powerhouse that came toward the fascists

Battleground: Earth! (The King’s links past wars to his godwar, by Jerry Boyd, based on recollections by Scott Fresina) It was a little amusing to me, as a pre-teen comics fan in the early ’70s, that the Fourth World titles were listed in DC’s double-page subscription ad as superhero books. Certainly that was the most apropos description, but Kirby masterpieces could’ve fit into the realms of horror/mystery (you tell the Forever People that Happyland wasn’t a horror!), sciencefiction, or war. The final category mentioned was especially accurate. Orion, Lightray, Seagrin, and Forager stood or fell against the warrior elite of Brola, The Deep Six, Kalibak, and Mantis. Both factions depended heavily on skillful use of their Mother Box components to maneuver the enemy into positions to their liking. Kirby’s tetralogy was wonderfully layered in its construction—it depicted all types of warriors in his ultimate war between the ultimate warriors and the ultimate war machines. From warlike aggressors, (Orion, and well... everybody from Apokolips!) to gentle warriors (the fallen Seagrin, the Forever People, Lightray, etc.) to displaced “war orphans” (Scott Free and Forager) to bloodthirsty noncombatants (Glorious Godfrey) to “foreign interventionists” (Infinity Man,

Superman, and Sonny Sumo), the King covered all types! There were more. There was the “home guard” (Fastbak, Magnar, Kanto, The Monitors of New Genesis, and the parademons of Apokolips’ dangerfilled skies) and the soldier elite (the Special Powers divisions like the Female Furies trained and nurtured by Granny Goodness). Past wars were obvious influences on Jack as he layered and structured his writing. After the murder of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and his allies stood against the conspirators Brutus, Cassius, and their men. These were incredible times during the Roman Empire. Jack took a note from Shakespeare’s magnificent play to depict Orion in uniform. MARC ANTONY: And Caesar’s spirit, raging for revenge, With Até by his side come hot from hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice Cry “Havoc,” and let slip the dogs of war,... The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Act III, Scene I, lines 270-273 So how does Orion meet up with the Bard? Kirby family friend Scott Fresina once queried Jack about Orion’s helmet. Scott recalls, “I don’t understand the shape of those things on the sides of Orion’s headpiece. It’s like a flap, or—? “They’re dog ears,” Jack answered. “He’s a dog

from the West. The young gods of are on the offensive now, breaching Apokolips’ defenses with ease. (On that western front, I wouldn’t have minded seeing some cameos of Magnar, from Jimmy Olsen #147, and Fastbak doing their share in fighting you-know-who.) Still, Lightray’s sly and coolheaded destruction of a group of robotic patrollers earns him praises from his fellow soldier.

of war.” As war raged in Southeast Asia in the ’60s and early ’70s, Kirby’s work denoted the parallels between the East and West and New Genesis and Apokolips. Jack told Scott (in the ’80s) that most Earth residents didn’t know or care about the gods using their planet as a theater of war because “...it’s like Vietnam. This guy (a Vietnamese man) just wants to live and grow his rice... What does he care about this war between giants?” Another time Kirby said that, “Vietnam’s not even the first. We had something similar to that in Korea... where the people whose homes are being used as battleground don’t have a real stake in the outcome.” Scott explains that Jack’s group of humans that aided Orion—Dave Lincoln, Claudia Shane, Victor Lanza, and Harvey Lockman— were the types of enraged citizens that pay attention to events around them, recognize that they have a big stake in the eventual outcome of the war, and who inevitably take action against the aggressors. Kirby was quick to point out, Scott recalls, that he didn’t mean that as a putdown to the ordinary citizen of those lands. He knew that a lack of free-flowing information in a society limited knowledge of events. And of course, the four humans allied with Orion (and later, Lightray) knew firsthand of the terrors that awaited mankind from the master of the holocaust and his minions!

And Jack Kirby saluted the maturation of one of his gentlest but most capable warriors by the title of... Lightray, the Planner. ★

ORION: Damn me for a flea-bitten war hound, if Darkseid himself can match your insidious talent for scheming! The Hunger Dogs At this point, Lightray has proven himself to be a valuable asset to the cause of New Genesis, a necessary contrast to Orion’s impetuosity, and one of the King’s most fascinating characters who actually evolves during the course of the war. Some men are made by their successes in war and acquire new names or titles by their battlefield accomplishments. General Thomas Jonathan Jackson became “Stonewall” Jackson at First Manassas (or First Bull Run to the Civil War Yankees). Alexander the Great speaks for itself. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel gained the sobriquet of “The Desert Fox” in WWII North Africa. 27

Obscura

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

o you remember the first piece of Jack Kirby art that really impressed you? Like many a British comics fan growing up in the Beatles era of the 1960s, my first encounters with The King were in the wonderful bumpersized black-&-white reprints of DC and Marvel material put out by such British companies as Thorpe & Porter. These distributors would import stats from the US (not the plates or original US artwork) and reprint (in monochrome) some priceless Silver Age material sandwiched between full covers in chunky (and now highly collectable) anthologies. The first half of the book would be a reprint of (for instance) DC’s Blackhawk, The Flash or Mystery in Space, while the backup material (equally cherished by Brit comic fans hungry for all American material—we were all Americaphiles!) would be from other DC books such as House of Mystery. The existence of the latter book, of course, was completely unknown to British readers—there was no British edition, and the covers to all this backup material were invariably dropped when it was shoehorned into the back of the 68-pagers. Only when American comics began to be imported directly to the UK in the early- tomid-’60s did we realize that there was a far greater

Showcase #6 has been reprinted numerous times, most recently in DC’s Archives series. But neither House of Mystery #76 nor Journey Into Mystery #55 has been reprinted.

universe of full-color comics out there. We knew, of course, the American readers had the inestimable pleasure of reading these books in color, as the occasional American book found its way to the shores—in Liverpool, where I grew up, many comics arrived as ballast in the ships, as the city’s days as one of the greatest ports in the world (the Titanic set out from Liverpool!) were not that distant. Famous Liverpudlian Paul McCartney was a great comics fan—as both his songs and a recent TV interview demonstrate. Those school friends lucky enough to have brothers or other relatives working in the ships could really establish playground supremacy by brandishing the much-desired original American comics they’d been able to get hold of. So it was that one cold morning in a Liverpool school playground did I first become aware of the terrible, aching tug of envy. A boy I’d never liked swaggered over to me, holding something behind his back. This same boy had taunted me with a British reprint of Tales from the Crypt (which I had persuaded him to sell to me—not that difficult a task, as he wasn’t really a comics fan). But it was clear from his vindictive grin that I was in for a tough time. “You know all those black-&-white comics you collect, Forshaw?” he taunted. “They’re nothing— absolutely nothing—compared to the Yank originals in color! My brother’s just brought this comic from the docks which is the greatest thing you’ll ever see—and don’t even ask whether I want to sell it—you’ll never get your hands on this!” From behind his back, he produced something that (to my immense frustration) proved every word he said was true. The comic was open to a page that showed 20th-century men in purple jumpsuits being forced to work on the pyramids in ancient Egypt. The color, the astonishing dynamism of the figures and the richness of the detail took my breath away (as it does to this day). Then, keeping the comic at arm’s length to maximize my sense that this was something that I’d never have, he turned to another splash page in which the jumpsuited heroes were now standing on the threshold of the most amazing futuristic city I’d ever seen rendered in comics. Clearly, this was a Wellsian time travel story, and the adventurers didn’t appear to be super-heroes (after all, the outfits were not skin tight). To rub in the envy factor, my playground acquaintance (he certainly wasn’t a friend!) flicked through the pages of this amazing book, and finally showed me the cover. The time travel story appeared to be called “The Wizard of Time”, and the book itself was called Challengers of the Unknown (#4—there had apparently been at least three other issues of this wonder!). With a flourish, he folded the book in two (something I’d never do—I already treated my collection with much more respect than this!) and strode away from me with a smirk. Burning with a passionate desire to own this comic, I little realized that I’d just witnessed the first Jack Kirby/Wally Wood artwork in color that I’d ever encountered, and that I wouldn’t own the book until I found it as a 24-year-old in a San Francisco comics shop. What I also didn’t know was that I would, in fact, soon possess the story “Wizard of Time”—albeit in black-&-white. I started this column by talking about the black-&-white bumper British reprints (which usually bore the legend: “Big 68 pages! Don’t take less!”). Shortly after this encounter, the distributors Thorpe & Porter added to their list of reprints, a new title: Yes, nothing less than Challengers of the Unknown. And in the third issue (the penultimate UK issue), which had a Bob Brown cover and stories from the post-Kirby era, there, as backup, was the breathtaking “Wizard of Time.” Kirby’s original cover had vanished, of course, but despite the lack of color, it was possible to appreciate that astonishing artwork in the crisp, beautifully printed reproductions (later shilling books by successors to Thorpe & Porter such as Alan Class used paper of much inferior quality which did great disservice to the original works). Interestingly, as these Challengers of the Unknown books bore no credits, we Brits had no idea that the anonymous Jack Kirby was the begetter of this wonderful book. Ironically, many of us were more familiar with the work of Wally Wood through the Mad EC reprints that had appeared in import from Ballantine books, and we assumed that Challengers of the Unknown was his work. Ironically, this could be construed as a criticism of Wood as a Kirby inker (a topic hotly debated within the pages of

The Jack Kirby Collector!), but this writer is firmly of the opinion that the marriage of Kirby and Wood as artist/inker was a match made in heaven, and that Wood’s graceful yet forceful inking (with its beautifully rendered detail) was the perfect complement to the power and drama of Kirby’s pencils.

And if you’re looking for controversial statements, here’s one: The work that Kirby and Wood created jointly on their spell on Challs was the best work of both men’s careers, and one of the great glories of comic book art of any era. Disagree with that, I challenge you! Now all of the above would have led you to think that this column is essentially a discussion of Challengers of the Unknown #4, right? Wrong! In our trawl through Kirby Obscura, we have now come to a book which can’t (if the truth be told) really be called obscure. Yes, we’re beginning with the very first appearance of Challengers of the Unknown in DC’s tryout magazine, Showcase #6. The Challs are often cited as a Kirby precursor to the Fantastic Four: It’s four heroes, after all, who have a life-changing experience in an airflight that alters their destinies (they become men living “on borrowed time”, tackling world-threatening menaces). And although some of these tales had been reprinted by DC over the years, it is only recently that two unmissable DC Archive Editions collected Jack Kirby’s complete run on the title before Bob Brown took over for a much longer spell. So how does that very first Challengers appearance read today? The book-length “Secrets of the Sorcerer’s Box” (nominally written by Dave Wood, but with clear and strong input from Kirby) is a wonderfully dynamic example of Kirby’s glorious period at DC in the ’50s. The sympathetic inking by the Missus, Roz Kirby (and Marvin Stein) is perfect at capturing the flowing grace of Kirby’s pencils, even though the Olympian collaboration with Wally Wood was to take the characters to heights merely hinted at in this book (and we’ll get ’round to discussing the towering achievement of the Kirby/Wood stint some time). After the quartet of heroes (Rocky Davis, Prof Haley, Red Ryan and Ace Morgan) miraculously survive their near-fatal plane crash and decide to unite as a professional team, they are hired by a robed sorcerer, who commissions them to open

a series of ancient boxes containing threatening menaces from the past (his agenda is, of course, a sinister one: Nothing less than world domination). And as the Challs encounter a menacing giant figure with a helmet rather like a Roman legionary, a being that is nothing less than a living sun (a sun, however, that freezes rather than heats), we are given examples of Kirby’s epic work that was to find real fruition in his later Marvel period with Stan Lee (the striding colossus of the Dragon Seed chapter—note that Kirby motif here!—is a precursor of many a destructive monolith in the later monster books, while the freezing sun chapter has some of the King’s strangest science-fiction imagery). Of course what the Challs lack (and what Kirby and Lee were to supply with such generosity in the Fantastic Four) is any real characterization—a little of that was to come with the quartet later, but the DC SF books of this period were mainly concerned with jaw-dropping plotting and awesome imagery, and those qualities the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown supply in no uncertain measure. Moving to Marvel (or Atlas, as it still was): There’s something about Journey into Mystery #55 (1959) that makes it really interesting and unusual—even though, frankly, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy in the issue, even from the Twin Titans Kirby and Ditko. But what makes it unusual? Firstly, it’s Atlas/Marvel just before the Big Monster period—though there is a big monster in the book (ironically, drawn by Don Heck, who Stan Lee subsequently moved away from this territory). And Stan hadn’t yet decided on Kirby as his permanent curtain opener, with Steve Ditko as the Big Finale. Though Jack provides an eye-catching cover (“I Found the Giant in the Sky!”), with a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk scenario—a massive hand reaches down from above a sky-climbing vine to grab the hapless hero—it’s Steve D. who gets the lead story. Ditko’s version of the same scene for this story’s splash panel gives an intriguing opportunity to compare Marvel’s two greatest talents—Kirby more dynamic, Ditko more baroque. The tale is nicely drawn, but unremarkable, as is Joe Sinnott’s “I Was a Prisoner of the Ape Creatures” (Stan claims here that this sequel to a tale in the previous issue is a result of “many letters”—readers back then would not have known that this was a logistical impossibility!). A workaday John Forte piece follows, then (before Don Heck’s stylishly-drawn closer, which is Heck before his finely-honed work

became so slapdash), we have The King’s contribution: “My Neighbor’s Secret.” This isn’t a Big Monster tale— Kirby was given a wider rage of subjects in this era— but the revelation here is that the tale is easily the most jaw-droppingly obvious in the whole canon of Marvel fantasy books (and that’s saying something!). I usually warn about spoilers in this column—so here goes. Spoiler coming. However, it will take the most brain-dead of TJKC readers—and we have no braindead readers—not to guess the O’Henry twist in the tale from the boat-building old man in the splash panel—even before you read the tale. Yes... it’s Noah! Wow! Old man builds a boat, everybody laughs—it starts to rain... and rain... get it? Stan subsequently used the strapline: “The Magazine That Respects Your Intelligence”—not in Journey into Mystery #55 he didn’t! The tale, however, has all the customary Kirby elegance of design, and (carping aside), this is most definitely a collectable book. Despite the low esteem in which the period is held, DC’s Jack Schiff-edited SF/fantasy titles in the 1950s and ’60s often have some cherishable gems nestling among the more mundane material (and, God knows, there was all too much of the latter). Needless to say, it was very often the Jack Kirby story that lifted a DC title of this period out of the rut, and it’s the unblushing agenda of this column to guide TJKC readers towards these truffles. But sometimes, tracking down such a book offers other rewards than just encountering some finely honed atomic era material by the King. Case in point? House of Mystery #76 (July 1958). How about this, to whet your appetite? First of all, a Kirby cover: “The Artificial Twin” has a bearded scientist operating a very Kirbyesque machine which is throwing out a sickly green ray, and creating an exact duplicate of the alarmed heroine (“She— she’s just like me in every detail!”). And if this wasn’t enough to set adolescent pulses of the time racing, the very first story shows a wonderful splash panel (continued on page 59)

Gallery 1

Kirby’s YOUNG GODS

by Shane Foley

“First we bow to the young,” said Highfather in New Gods #1. Youth was to continue to be a key element in Kirby’s Fourth World war. Here are a few more such times. (page 22) Forever People #6, page 10: Big Bear was young and a pacifist. But (as well shown in the con-current New Gods #6, “The Glory Boat”) there were times when a pacifist felt he had to act. Here was one such moment for Big Bear. (page 23) Forever People #6, Page 16: As often as not though, the Forever People tried to simply run away. (pages 24-27) Forever People #6, “Raid from Apokolips” back-up: Reason and discussion before force, then minimal force when there is no other choice. A great short sequence showing the outcome of underestimating these youngsters. (page 28) Forever People #7, page 4: A superbly scripted page by Kirby— with Biblical overtones of God’s hand willingly swayed by innocent but certain faith. The optimism and courage of Esak seem to be hallmarks of youth that Kirby cherished.

(page 30) Forever People #8, page 23: Here the young Gods have quietly averted a total victory by Darkseid—they have stopped him acquiring the ‘Anti-Life Equation’ possessed by Billion Dollar Bates. Now, as they stand face-to-face with Darkseid, the one who is the antithesis of all they believe in, their courage to debate and resist him are intact—but in doing so they give the respect due to him as one in authority. Layers of thought and understanding went into this brilliant scene by Kirby. ★

(page 29) New Gods #8, “Beat the Black Racer” page 3. Esak again—and this time he’s in trouble, desperately needing saving by another young god, Fastbak. Despite the many times that Esak appeared in the Fourth World series, it still took many readers by surprise—and delight—to see his pivotal role in Kirby’s later quasiconclusion to the series, The Hunger Dogs.

APOKOLIPS NOW (right) One of many pasteup stats from the new story in New Gods reprint #6 (Nov. 1984). (bottom) Pages 1-3 of Jack’s original New Gods #12 story. All 25 pages shown from this story are inked by Mike Royer. Although we’re only showing inks here, Mike was very faithful to Jack’s pencils, while truing-up some of the distortions that cropped up in Jack’s work of this period. The dialogue on these inked pages is identical to Jack’s pencils, but be sure to get out your copy of Hunger Dogs and compare; you’ll see a lot of dialogue changes once these pages were published in the Graphic Novel. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

A Major Production

A look inside DC Comic’s production of the Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel, compiled by John Morrow (Back in TJKC #6, we did a feature on Kirby’s 1984 Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel. To recap: DC President Paul Levitz worked out a deal for Jack to redesign some of his New Gods characters to be used as part of the Super Powers toy line, which would in turn allow Jack to receive royalties on his new work on the characters for DC in the 1980s. Part of that work was a new sequel to the New Gods, which was billed as the conclusion readers never got to see during the Fourth World’s original run. DC was reprinting the original eleven issues of New Gods in their Baxter Paper reprint series—two comics reprinted per issue—and the wrap-up was to appear in the final reprint issue, as New Gods #12. The reprint project began under Dick Giordano’s editorial oversight, and each of the first five issues had 48 pages of story content. The final issue would contain the 22-page New Gods #11, plus 25 new pages DC contracted Jack to produce to wrap-up the saga; it was a pretty low page count for such an epic conclusion, but Jack gave it his best shot. However, the new story that Kirby turned in didn’t actually end the New Gods saga; instead, it served more as just another installment in the series, taking place ten years later, and ending with both Orion and Darkseid surviving, never having had their “final battle.” With both Orion and Darkseid appearing in the upcoming Super Powers toy line, perhaps Jack was too hamstrung to be able to present a to-the-death clash between father and son, so instead gave us more of a look into how both characters—and young Esak—had changed in the decade since he worked on the strip. When Jack turned in the new #12 story, it led to an unfortunate disagreement between Giordano and Kirby. As Dick recalls, “I called him and said the story he was doing was not the story we advertised and solicited, and we didn’t want to lie to our readers. My innocent remark caused an immediate and unexpected angry reaction from Jack who evidently thought I was calling him a liar, and communications between us came to a halt.” Kirby and Giordano were eventually able to iron out the misunderstanding, but at the point of the disagreement, the project moved over to the late Joe Orlando, who was spearheading the editing of DC’s new Graphic Novel line. Joe’s assistant editor on the line was Nick Cuti, longtime comics writer, and co-creator of E-Man. Nick remembers, “We drafted a letter to Jack and, I believe, it was Len [Wein] who suggested that Jack use what he had turned in as the centerpiece of the story, but write another story which would encompass his present story and make it more complete. Jack was not happy, and I know this because he told me so, but being the gentleman he was, he agreed to do it.” And so, the decision was made to take Jack’s 25-page New Gods #12 story (presented below and throughout this article as Kirby submitted it)

and turn it into the 64-page Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel. DC expanded the final New Gods reprint issue (#6) to give Jack 48 additional new pages to create a lead-in story to the Graphic Novel. D. Bruce Berry was chosen to ink the new pages; Mike Royer had inked the New Gods #12 story, but says he was never asked to ink the new material. Greg Theakston, who was concurrently inking Jack’s new work on the Super Powers

comic book mini-series, re-inked the faces and select parts of the original Royer- and Berry-inked pages, adding a third inking style to the mix. And DC’s production department got into the act, pasting in changes, and expanding the inked art to better fit the new, full-bleed format of their reprint and Graphic Novel pages—something necessary either because Jack neglected to follow DC’s instructions, or DC neglected to inform Jack of the new format. What follows is a firsthand recounting by Mark “Alex” Alexander of the inner workings of the DC Comics Production Department during the time of Kirby’s Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel. Mark served in the production room first at DC Comics in the 1980s, and later at Marvel Comics. It should be noted that this is a different “Mark Alexander” than the one who’s written several articles for this magazine in past issues.) trangely for DC, lines of authority were pretty blurry on the Hunger Dogs project. When I worked in DC’s production room as a paste-up droid in the ’80s, what I liked about it was how clear-cut and straight-up the place was; everybody knew what their job was, and who they were to report to while doing it. This was especially true of DC’s production room itself; Bob Rozakis ran it as his own little fiefdom, his own little satrapy. And ran it well, I might add. It was his kingdom, we were his serfs, and they were his pages. That was the way it was, and that was the way it had to be if the system wasn’t going to collapse under its own weight in a day. Even the proofreader could only make very cursory changes and only those related to punctuation and spelling. Very rarely, the proofreader would ask for an art change on continuity grounds, but I can think of only one time that happened the whole time I was there. So generally speaking, being a paste-up droid at DC was a pretty straight-up job. And a good thing, too, since when I started out in 1984, I was really, really wretched at it. But I got better; it is my proudest boast that when I started I was awful, and when I was fired I was mediocre. And this was possible because— in part—lines of authority were pretty clearly drawn, and pretty clearly understood, at DC. Until... Hunger Dogs; which of course was a pretty peculiar project from the start (wherever you consider its start to be). As everyone knows (or you wouldn’t be reading this) a decision had been made to reprint the New Gods in what was then called the Baxter Format (or sometimes the Mando Paper Format). And the six-issues of the reprint run would be capped off by the Graphic Novel Hunger Dogs. It’s been so long since I looked at any of that stuff. I think Marv Wolfman may have summed it up for me when he looked at the pages for the Super Powers mini-series (which Jack was doing at roughly the same time Hunger Dogs came through), and said, “That’s not how I remember Jack.” Politely, I like to think of the Super Powers books—and a couple of other Jack projects from the ’80s—as a retirement plan for

Jack from Paul Levitz. And that’s the only way I like to think of them. But if the toy tie-ins were Paul’s way of giving Jack and Roz a little something to retire on (remember, this is both before Jack got his Marvel pages back, and before he got sick), then God bless him. The toy tie-in angle may have been why I remember talking to Joe Orlando during the Hunger Dogs meshuginah; he handled the licensing. Though I don’t recall offhand if there was anything directly tied to Hunger Dogs that, say, Mattel was doing, if you know exactly where to look, there is still the tiniest fragment surviving of some Hunger Dogs artwork extension begun by Joe, and finished by me, many hours later. That was sort of my specialty at DC’s production room: I could art-extend anybody. It was either Joe’s decision to change the artwork, or it might have been a guy whose first name I remember was Barry, who like Joe was more on the business side of things. [Editor’s Note: Mark may be thinking of Marketing Director Bruce Bristow here.] As I recall (it’s been a long time), if you walked into DC then, you knew you were walking into a business office. No two ways about it; it was just like tens of thousands of other business offices in midtown Manhattan. Marvel, I later discovered, was quite different. So if you were a $7/hour production droid who got the dental plan after one year, that was how it was, working on the Hunger Dogs pages. You found yourself bouncing back and forth between offices you might never have been in before; I found it vaguely disquieting. Rozakis was god, and that’s the way production ran; that’s he way it had to run. Bob Rozakis was the guy who spoke to the printer and color separator virtually every day; in fact, the arrival of the messenger to pick up stuff for the color separator was the nightmare moment each and every day in Production—the Ultimate Nullifier of deadlines. Saying “Eddie’s here” when he wasn’t, to somebody who was working against Eddie’s arrival, was a real good way to make an enemy for life. (Conversely, I discovered later at Marvel that things were much different—they had no idea who Eddie was, even though he made the trip to Marvel every day he made the trip to DC. Marvel was so thoroughly disorganized relative to DC that the arrival of the seps guy to pick something up was blissfully insignificant.) Bob had organized DC’s production room to function on the Japanese system, the just-in-time system; no big inventory of stuff waiting to be done, no big inventory of stuff waiting to be picked up. Everything was done right where and when it needed to be done; not a day earlier, not a day later. It made Bob’s job a cruel bottleneck, because in effect he had to be three or four guys in one: Traffic manager, goods handler, editor-schmoozer, print-run specialist, stock clerk. The pages flowed through him, and it had to be that way. Who haven’t we mentioned so far at DC? Oh. Greg Theakston. Now, I have nothing against Greg; quite the contrary. I owe him a million favors; anytime I have run into him, he has reached into his shoulder bag and pulled out a copy of Buried Treasure or whatever, and given it to me, without the slightest prompting. I was nothing in the comic book business, and he knew that, and anytime I’ve ever bumped into him, he couldn’t have been nicer. And of course, you bumped into him a lot, circa the Hunger Dogs. Anything Kirby-related was ipso facto Theakston-related; he handled a huge amount of business for Jack, in a huge number of ways, both in the de jour sense and in the de facto sense... ...like when he decided the faces from the original pages needed to be re-inked. Re-done, if you will. Now, I have nothing against Greg as a person. Like Paul, he was probably instrumental in getting Jack some real paydays in the ’80s. And I got to paste-in the faces. On the, ah, face of it, I couldn’t see any difference at all between the old faces and the new ones I was pasting in. Joe and Barry and quite possibly some others had decided that a scene with Orion had to be juiced up; hence Joe’s minor and beginning changes to the artwork, that later became very major. The scene had to be larger, more important; it’s where Orion dies, face-changes, comes back to life, buys a Metrocard.

(previous page) Metron appears in Super Powers (series 1) #5 (Nov. 1984), released the same month as New Gods reprint #6. Jack’s dialogue was heavily altered for publication. (this page) Paste-up panels from the pivotal scene in New Gods reprint #6. At left, the gray area is the original drawing, and the black area is Mark “Alex” Alexander’s art extension. But the question remains; did Jack draw these panels? (bottom) Pages 6-15 of Jack’s original New Gods #12 story. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

They said it had to be changed—and so it was. No biggie in the world of funnybook production, believe me. Such editorial decisions happened all the time; this one was not particularly drastic as such things go. It happened more often at Marvel, I found, than at DC, but the difference was quantitative, not qualitative. Sometimes art changes—such as on the nice-paper reprints—were an inevitability; or, at least, seen as such. The printed comic page in Jack’s day was bordered by white, always. Bleeding the art—running it to the edge of the paper—was either technically impossible in Jack’s day, or strongly discouraged by hidebound publishers, hidebound printers, and hidebound unions. When Jack’s most important 1970s work was reprinted in 1984, technical standards had changed. The big change artists saw—if they were lucky enough to be assigned to a title that was prestigious enough to be drawn on Baxter board—was that you now had the option of bleeding the art. Pale blue lines that didn’t print were pre-printed on the board itself, to give the artist an idea of what the new dimensions were; he now had a slightly bigger and better sandbox to play in. But to this day, I wonder what Jack made of Baxter board. He was surely given it for the new pages in New Gods reprint #6; did he understand— really understand—what it was, or what the options were? Was any of it used for the trade paperback pages? I just remember it being a nightmare, all the way around, but primarily on the reprint #6 book. What happened was, Jack didn’t use the bleed-the-art option on the pages he drew for #6, and a decision was made to help him along a little. What’s a polite word? A decision was made to “adapt” Jack’s pages. The peculiar part was, no such decision had been made with the first five reprint issues; the option was there, of course (at some great expenditure in the time and effort on the Production Room’s part) to adapt the reprinted pages to take advantage of the new options. But this wasn’t done.

It’s been a long time, and I have no clear memory of it, but I don’t think any of Jack’s pages for #6 took advantage of the Baxter options (meaning, bleeding the art). Looking at some stats and xeroxes I saved from the trash, I get the strong impression that Jack just kept right on laying out the pages the way he was used to. It’d be interesting to know—and of course, impossible to know this many years later—what their reaction was when Jack’s new pages came in. Was production work already well along on the reprint series? I wouldn’t have had a clue then—certainly I have no memory of it one way or the other now. All I do seem to remember is, lots of little yellow sticky pad notes, saying, “Change this, change that.” Might have been from Barry, but I wouldn’t swear to it. You never knew how the old guys in comics would react to new technologies. I mean, if you have a panel where the Black Racer is coming straight at you, wouldn’t you bleed the art? It was pretty labor intensive on the production end; I can tell you that much. For reprints, you were given the little 6" x 9" stats from DC’s record room, which stored such things in negative, and then you had to mount them on board. I’m not even talking about the art changes; you came up against a lot of mathematical/proportion wheel problems that I was singularly ill-equipped to deal with. Thank God for Shelley Eiber, then Mistress of the Darkroom Supreme; with her patience and experience, I actually started to get a handle on the reprint #6/Hunger Dogs thing. I persevered. Knowing Jack’s work as well as I did, I was reassured by one thing: He had been to color holds and surprints what Springsteen had been to video (i.e. the last holdout). You look at his Sixties Marvel work—which I know like I know my name—and there’s literally one panel in a decade where he uses an effect of any kind, and it’s a dot pattern. It’s in a panel of the FF Annual where Psycho Man is observing the larger world through his enlargo-view screen, and there’s a dot pattern on the screen. In the biz, that kind of pattern was pretty much universally referred to as “zip,” after the Zipatone company that manufactured a great many different dot and line patterns. I fully realize, of course, that using the term “zip” is dating me terribly, like a T-Rex in plaid cuffed bell bottoms. The Zipatone company doesn’t even exist anymore; computers killed it. It’s a moot point now; overlays, surprints, zip, pasting in logos, proportion wheels—all that stuff is deader than disco. Digital done killed it; it’s the industry norm now. If I

were to go up to the production room today, I would not have the slightest inkling of an idea what they were doing. Jack’s fate, in a sense, had been sealed many years earlier, when the smaller original art board came in. All funnybook art had been twice-up since, like, the Pleistocene; since Ankylosaurs listened to Deep Purple on 8-track cassettes. John Romita once told me that when the smaller board happened, he felt like he was drawing with his arm in a cast. Obviously, Jack had to go on working, smaller page size or no, and thanks to Paul, Greg, some guys at Topps, and some guys at Image, he—occasionally—had the paydays he always should have. And if he didn’t, there was always Ruby-Spears. So, to make a long story short, when the reprint #6 pages and Hunger Dogs pages landed on my desk, it was more an operational/office politics kinda thing to me, than anything else. Put another way, it was the typical production droid conundrum: How much can I decide to do on my own without asking anybody, and get away with it? I won’t name him, except to say he is somebody whom I revere, and whom anybody even remotely connected with comics reveres (and rightly so, for the body of work he did and its extraordinarily high quality), and when I was faced with a particularly intractable decision to make in production, I always used his words as a guide: “They don’t want it good; they want it on time.” Cynical and kinda creepy, I agree, and you can imagine

(previous page) Page 43 pencils of the new story in New Gods reprint #6, showing the promised confrontation between Orion and Darkseid. (above) The unaltered D. Bruce Berry inks from a climactic page in Hunger Dogs. (bottom) Pages 16-22 of Jack’s original New Gods #12 story. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

what I thought when I heard those words. But I was an idiot—a kid—when I first heard those words; I had learned a few things in the twenty months in DC’s production room. Among other things, I had learned there was a certain rough wisdom in those words. I looked over the Kirby pages when they landed on my desk, and did the best I could. They created a potential political problem almost immediately for me, ’cause somewhere along the line, Greg had made some caustic comments about the quality of the photostats involved, and I was heavily dependent on Shelly in the darkroom; extremely dependent. Unless you’ve done that kind of work, you can’t possibly imagine. She had seen Greg’s comments about the quality of the stats. Andy Helfer was dealing with Jack fairly often at this point, and not getting along too well with either him or Roz. And for purely personal venal purposes, I was affected by this, because I intended to finish my run of Atari Force (García-López is god), and Andy was the editor of Atari Force. And the production room became even more claustrophobic itself when DC finally realized how desperately they needed to beef up their design and art direction.

And the designers had their claws in Hunger Dogs too; they had to, to do the house ads and the title page (which I must say looked quite nice). I was far and away the lowest person on the totem pole, which in some ways just made it more imperative for me to grok the quickest and most painless way to get it done. I had to make it good and make it fast. People with a bazillion more problems than I had were depending on it. A pro sports referee or umpire once wrote a book about his career, which I believe was called Silence Is The Highest Accolade. That could very easily apply to production work: if nobody notices, if nobody says a word about the work you’ve done, that’s the highest accolade. And I was starting to get better at what I did; the mere fact I was getting asked to do stuff like the Deadman reprints was proof that somebody had faith in me. (I think I knew I had arrived as a production droid when the pages for ’Mazing Man landed on my desk. Remember who wrote that? Bob Rozakis.) So for Barry, Joe, Andy, the colorist, Shelly in the darkroom, for the Fed-Ex guy, the token clerk, Jubal Harshaw, Abe Lincoln, poor Joey Ramone, the Statue of Liberty, and whoever: I tried to do the best I could... ...and, for Jack, of course. ★

Kirby’s ’80s DC Timeline Summer 1982: Jack begins a story arc in Captain Victory #7, wherein he alludes to a future for the Fourth World characters where Darkseid (here called Blackmass) survives only as a disembodied voice, and Captain Victory is Orion’s son. Fall 1982: DC Comics contacts Kirby about concluding the New Gods series. DC arranges for Kirby to redesign some of the key characters for the Super Powers toy line, so that Kirby can receive royalties on his creations. Dec. 1982: Kirby draws revised concepts for the Super Powers toy line. Spring 1983: Kirby draws New Gods #12, the 25-page conclusion to the New Gods series, on DC art board dated 1/83. Mike Royer inks the story at night and on weekends while employed full-time for Disney. DC finds the story to not be an adequate conclusion, and commissions Kirby to turn the story into the 62-page Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel, and create a new 48-page story as a bridge between the final New Gods reprint issue, and the Graphic Novel. Summer-Fall 1983: Kirby draws new covers for the New Gods reprint series and the first Super Powers series on DC art board dated 7/83. Royer inks cover of #2-4 in Fall 1983. Nov. 3, 1983: DC issues a press release on Jack’s return to DC, mentioning his new work for the New Gods reprint series (“new covers, pin-ups, and back-ups as needed”), and a completely new sequel (“Hunger Dogs, which he will write, draw, and edit”). The press release also states that Jack will help plot and draw the fifth issue of a mini-series featuring the Justice League of America and Darkseid, and then work on a subsequent maxi-series as well. Feb. 1984: New Gods reprint #1 and Super Powers (series 1) #1 go on sale, featuring new Kirby covers. Kirby plots all five Super Powers issues, draws all five covers, and draws the 23page issue #5. Royer inks first two Super Powers covers, plus Kirby house ad in #1, which was also turned into a poster for stores. Feb. 6, 1985: DC issues Press Release on the publication of Hunger Dogs, promoting it as a sequel to the New Gods. Includes inked selfportrait that appeared in the Graphic Novel. Spring 1985: Hunger Dogs, previously announced for Fall 1984, is released. Spring-Summer 1985: Kirby pencils a series of pin-ups for Who’s Who. Aug. 1985 cover date: DC Comics Presents #84 features a Kirby-drawn Superman/ Challengers team-up. Originally a 16-page story, DC had Alex Toth draw additional pages to expand it to fit DC’s new larger page count.

(top) An almost full-page paste-up stat done for the published version of the New Gods reprint #6 new story. We’re unsure if Jack really drew it, and it was statted for repositioning, or if someone in DC’s production department actually drew it. (previous page) Pencils to the 23rd page of the original New Gods #12 story, planned for New Gods reprint #6. You can see that the lower caption on this page has been erased and re-lettered. This makes us think Kirby’s story, as originally submitted, was 23 pages, and the original caption ended the story—leaving two pages for a text piece (and in fact, Jack included a text feature in reprint #6). Curiously, there are copies of the first 23 pencil pages in Jack’s files, but none of pages 24 and 25, leading us to further believe pages 24 and 25 (shown above) were drawn later. We envision this scenario happened: 1) Jack submits the 23-pager, before any discussion of a Graphic Novel. 2) Giordano’s comment causes a rift, so the project is passed to Joe Orlando, who decides a Graphic Novel follow-up might solve the problem. 3) Jack changes the caption on page 23 to reflect the impending Graphic Novel, and adds the last two pages to make a better stopping place, before the decision was made to convert this story into Hunger Dogs. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

Sept. 1985-Feb. 1986 cover dates: Super Powers (series 2) #1-6. Kirby draws all six issues, but doesn’t write it. 1986 cover date: DC’s Heroes Against Hunger benefit comic features a two-page Kirby sequence. Oct. 1987 cover date: Kirby draws half of the cover for Secret Origins #19. Feb. 1989 cover date: Kirby draws the cover for Action Comics #638. 47

Gallery 2

OLD GODS, New Again

Special thanks to Jason Geyer for the photos of the toys. Find out more about the Super Powers toy line at his website at www.toyotter.com/sp/ n 1984, DC Comics commissioned Jack Kirby to revise some of his Fourth World characters for use as action figures in the new Super Powers toy line, which would tie-in to the comics mini-series of the same name. Jack went to town coming up with some elaborate, very cool ideas for ways to re-envision his creations in 3-D. Most of Jack’s

suggestions weren’t used for the toy line, perhaps being too elaborate for toy manufacturers to replicate economically. But the new look for characters such as Mantis and the Parademons did make it into the Super Powers mini-series. And it sure was cool in the 1980s to see Darkseid and Co. on toy store shelves!

Foundations

Of Mobius Chairs & Boom Tubes

Art restoration by Christopher Fama

his issue’s Fourth World focus left us with an interesting quandary: What earlier Kirby work could we present that could be seen as a precursor to the New Gods? One answer might be “Donegan’s Daffy Chair” from Harvey’s Alarming Tales #1 (Sept. 1957), which certainly seems to fit, with its early version of Metron’s Mobius Chair. Our other choice was “The Hole In The Wall” from Alarming Tales #2 (Nov. 1957), which features an inter-dimensional doorway (can you say Boom Tube?), and an other-dimensional utopian city, not unlike New Genesis. Was Jack thinking back to these stories when he conceived the Fourth World series? Well, probably not, considering he grew up with pulp sci-fi stories of interdimensional transportation. But it’s at least interesting to see that he’d gotten his feet wet with these concepts before turning them into his magnum opus.

(“Kirby Obscura,” continued from page 29) by Nick Cardy for “Prisoners of the Tiny Universe”, with a thief being chased by a cop, both men falling into an artificially created tiny solar system, while horrified scientists look on through portholes. The whole tale, while absurd, has some wonderfully dynamic art by Cardy, with his balance of elements within the panel being quite the equal of the Kirby tale that will wind up the issue. Before the second (more pedestrian) Bill Ely piece, a full-page ad demonstrates what other delights were available to comics readers of the late ’50s: A marvellous Gil Kane cover for Strange Adventures, in which a spaceman applies a stethoscope to a giant metal heart suspended in space (there’s also an ad for Sgt. Bilko’s Private Doberman, reminding us that not everything issued in that era was SF and fantasy!). The third piece is by the underrated and highly eccentric Lou Cameron, “Invaders of the Dark.” The splash panel has the hero being threatened by fist-brandishing people, glowing in the dark, who are shouting at him, “You did this to us! You changed all of us into phosphorescent people!” This weird piece, while demonstrating (as usual) Cameron’s shaky grasp of anatomy, still has that totally individual vision of his. For British comics readers of the time (such as this writer) our first acquaintance with this tale—and all the others in the issue, sans the cover—will have been (as previously mentioned) as backup features in one of the British Thorpe & Porter bumper shilling editions, and we lost all the blue and green faces of the protagonists of Cameron’s piece in the glorious black-&-white reprint (the most famous example of British readers being cheated this way was the reprint of Bob Powell’s horror piece for Harvey, “Colorama”, in which the color—so essential to the tale of a man either seeing anything in outrageous colors or in black-&-white—was sorely missed). And speaking of those British reprints where people like myself first discovered Kirby SF and fantasy tales, I can still remember the thrill of first encountering “The Artificial Twin”, with its striking splash panel (actually better than the cover illustration), in which the two utterly identical figures of the heroine dressed in scarlet ball gown with arm-length gloves, confront the bewildered hero. The clean lines of the piece are elegant, even by Kirby’s impeccable standards, and the incidental details that surround the unlikely tale of human duplication add to the pleasure (the rich heroine’s mansion sports a sculpture of battling gladiators, and a moonlit drawing room with suits of armor demonstrates the prodigal imagination of Kirby in what might be called “production design” if this were a movie; in fact, it’s a shame that Kirby’s work in animated media was one of the few occasions he broke out of comics, as he might have made a film production designer to rival the Bond films’ Ken Adam). My own copy of this treasured comic is battered and crumbling; every reading of it showers more and more fragments onto the floor, and if you manage to track it down (which you certainly should), I wish you luck in finding a slightly more durable copy! ★ (Barry Forshaw edits the magazine Crime Time and lives in London.)

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

KIRBY, MON AMOUR merica and France are like the dysfunctional married couple of great nations—trading ridiculous stereotypes while gobbling up each other’s culture, and carrying on political feuds inbetween saving each other’s butts in historic wars. But at least there are some at both ends of the Atlantic who see French creators and our own comics King as a match made in heaven. Surely there have been few finer moments for Kirby’s prized creation the Silver Surfer than the graphic novel that France’s international comics icon Moebius did with Stan Lee in the late 1980s (Parable), and some of the most eccentric and interesting graphic novels of recent French vintage have been by the Kirby-influenced visionary Jean-Marie Arnon. Arnon has been brought to this magazine’s attention in past articles by his countryman, accomplished creator and critic Jean Depelley. Arnon and Depelley, respectively a woodcarver and a science teacher by trade in addition to their impressive credits in French comics and performing arts, have collaborated (with gifted colorist Reed Man, whose animation work we’ll see next issue) on two Kirby-licious proposals sadly rejected by Marvel, and a fine-art project linking the primal energy and futuristic imagination of the King. Time-warping between the two outer edges of most Kirby fans’ sublimeto-ridiculous spectrum, the pair proposed both a Silver Surfer graphic novel and a Devil Dinosaur series. Marvel got the Surfer very right with the moody, meaningful maxi-series by Dan Chariton and Stacy Weiss earlier this decade, but Depelley and Arnon’s conception grandly goes for a pop-art period piece that captures the character’s founding era of sleek optimism and operatic risk. Their Devil Dinosaur series ambitiously links the confused archaeology of that concept with the calculated mythos of Kirby’s Eternals and the reallife disaster drama of the meteor crash that killed the dinosaurs, for a work of wild imagination and unlikely logic. Arnon is most at home in stone-age settings (as graphic novel titles like Shaman Blues and Neanderthal Bikini attest), so he came naturally to a cycle of Neolithic wood sculptures, rock paintings and illustrations, matched by fables from Depelley and published as Totems: Forgotten Idols From Xaintrie in 2005. The Kirby influence is explicit in some instances, while most of these exciting faux fossils are related to Arnon’s hero more by a common attention to the essentials of visceral expression.

TJKC talked with the two Jeans about loving Kirby from afar: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Is there a particular “cult” around Devil Dinosaur among comics fans in France, or is it just Arnon’s affinity for things prehistoric that makes this his favorite? JEAN DEPELLEY: Devil Dinosaur was published as cheap pocket-sized digests in France in 1980 that came out rather unnoticed—except by the three of us! This series clearly shows Kirby’s incredible idiosyncrasy and may be enjoyed—or hated—for that very reason; there are no realistic characters you feel concerned for to hide Kirby’s style. It’s Kirby at the peak of his abstraction. It was quasi-automatic writing.

is close to the primitive arts, with its degree of abstraction. The idea prevails over artistic perfection. He is close to our 20th century abstract painters. But Kirby was humble and didn’t consider himself that way. His futuristic visions— especially the complicated machines—have become his trademark. But it doesn’t interfere at all with his primitive, abstract style. I started sculpting because I wanted to capture that sort of timeless dynamics myself. The fact I was a woodcutter at one point in my life certainly brought me a natural sense for textures, close to Kirby’s. TJKC: Has France any other stylistic Kirby disciples like Jean-Marie and Reed, or are those two valiantly doing the work of Italy or America’s many “Kirby Klones”?

JEANMARIE ARNON: Actually, I discovered Devil Dinosaur a few years after its publication, directly through U.S. imports. A few years ago, a friend of mine said, “What?! You say Devil Dinosaur has influenced you?! It must be Kirby’s worst comic!” We nearly had a fight. [laughs ] I could write a book about Kirby’s work and there would be two to three chapters about Devil Dinosaur in it. To cut it short, there’s no super-hero in that series, which to my point of view makes it a more mature comic in a funny way. There’s a whole ecosystem with Paleolithic tribes, giant animal forms and even extraterrestrial creatures! Boy! I’d love to live in such a world, with a bone through my nostrils, riding a dinosaur! Moreover, Kirby’s art is fantastic (and credit must be paid to Mike Royer’s fabulous inking)—when a dinosaur walks, you can feel the earth shake.

ARNON: As far as I know, it’s just us, like a sect, with Reed and I as officiants, and Jean being the High Priest!

and art in French taste when it comes to comics? Over here the blur between “high” and “low” culture is still in its early stages; fans of, say, Moebius might still look down on fans of Kirby, though obviously Moebius himself was a Kirby fan and saw nothing strange in this—then again, European artists often value American pop forms more than Americans themselves (i.e., Sergio Leone and the Western movie), so where does Kirby fit in the pantheon of taste among French fans (and indeed non-fans)? ARNON: Comics are a narrative form of art, unlike anything else in plastic arts. Therefore, it’s difficult to compare. To me, Kirby represents the ultimate expression of dynamism, strength and velocity, which are the trademarks of American artistry. The American aesthetic is more straightforward than our European one. We French people are in awe of your capacity to capture that energy. But we certainly have the hindsight to recognize talent; Kirby is a perfect example of that tendency in comics, along with Chuck Berry for rock ’n’ roll and John Ford for Westerns. Kirby’s art is stripped of useless ornaments, especially what he produced after his WWII experience. It is powerful: each picture must work before being beautiful. To this end, his style

DEPELLEY: In the past few years, a few advertising campaigns promoting supermarkets or whatever have used super-heroes on giant posters and it was clearly Kirby style—which means that Kirby’s art has already affected our collective unconscious, the same way Disney has with his cartoons. The new exposure to his work thanks to the Marvel Essential reprints could prove influential on the next generation of artists. I hope so! ★

(Adam McGovern lives in Mt. Tabor, NJ, and although he’s decidedly Anglo, he will unclog his nose in your general direction.)

TJKC: How would you define the balance between pop 61

www.kirbymuseum.org Join The Kirby Museum Internet Conversation! BLOGS Jack Kirby Comics Weblog Kirby Museum member Bob Heer has been a champion of Jack Kirby on the Internet for a long time. For almost ten years, he has been regularly updating internet newsgroups like rec.arts.misc.comics and alt.comic.jack-kirby with the latest Jack Kirby publishing news. On an almost daily basis for a few years, he has been going through his Kirby comic collection, posting a scan, a description, and replying to comments on his Jack Kirby Comics Weblog. We’re pleased to announce that Bob has agreed to have the Museum host his blog going forward. Bob’s also compiled a comprehensive web-based Jack Kirby bookstore. Right now Bob’s store is available through pages on his blog, with 100% of the Amazon Associate commissions going directly to the Kirby Museum. He’s been helping the Museum integrate the store across the rest of the Museum’s web site, as well. http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/

Newsletter TJKC Edition Spring 2006 The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center is organized exclusively for educational purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby by: • illustrating the scope of Kirby’s multifaceted career, • communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby, • celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations, and • building understanding of comicbooks and comicbook creators. To this end, the Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study, teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays, publications and cinematic, theatrical or multimedia productions.

Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center PO Box 5236 Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA Telephone: (201) 963-4383

Board of Trustees Randolph Hoppe rhoppe@kirbymuseum.org Lisa Kirby lkirby@kirbymuseum.org John Morrow twomorrow@aol.com

Simon & Kirby Blog Harry Mendryk has been posting to the Kirby-L, the Jack Kirby discussion group, for a few years. He has a keen eye for artistic styles, and studies and writes on Simon & Kirby history. Harry recently started a Simon & Kirby blog filled with his insightful analysis, excellent artwork restorations, and of course, replies to visitors’ comments. We’re pleased that Harry has agreed to have the Museum host his blog, as well. http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/ simonandkirby/ Kirby-L: The Jack Kirby Discussion Group (and more!) Museum trustee Randolph Hoppe has been operating the discussion groups devoted to Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Jean “Moebius” Giraud currently on Yahoo Groups for almost ten years now and felt the Museum would be a perfect host or sponsor for these discussions. Additionally, we’ve started a Kirby Museum “Café” group, for more general discussions that don’t fall within the confines of the other groups. These groups are open to the general public, so please join us! http://kirbymuseum.org/groups.html Ten Years of Kirby Conversation There has been an e-mail-based Jack Kirby discussion group of one kind or another for 10 years now. Ten-year discussion group member (and Museum member) Gary Picariello wanted to honor that anniversary with a book that compiles memories, discussion excerpts, artwork and more. It seemed such a compelling study of Kirby and Internet culture, that the Museum is going to publish this book itself. We don’t have a name for the book yet, but stay tuned! *Please add $10 for memberships outside the US, to cover additional postage costs. Posters come “as-is” and may not be in mint condition.

Membership News The Museum welcomes these new members: Kasra Ghanbari, Shane Foley, Antonio Iriarte, Steve Robertson, Jean Depelley, Tom Morehouse, Reed Man/Organic Comix, Rob Steibel, Jim McPherson, Ferran Delgado, Frank McGinn, Peter Sullivan, Richard Lemon, Jeffrey Wilkie, Allan Harvey, John Coyne, Nick Caputo, David Mazzucchelli, Will “Taliesin” Jarvis and Daniel Tesmoingt. Questions about membership? New Address? E-mail us at: membership@kirbymuseum.org

Thanks for Your Support! We’d like to thank Museum member Reed Man for donating a page in his French publication of Mike Allred’s The Atomics #4 to the Museum. When you pick up a copy of Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters in July, you’ll see a full page devoted to the Museum. Arranged by Lisa Kirby & Tom Brevoort, this donation coming through Marvel Comics’ Icon imprint is especially heartwarming. Thanks also to TwoMorrows for providing this page in The Jack Kirby Collector, and the revenue sharing of the Silver Star: Graphite Edition.

Join us! We accept PayPal! Checks and money orders can still be made out and mailed to Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, Inc.. Please include your e-mail address, phone number and poster choice in your correspondence or on the memo line of your check. Our mailing address is below. We offer an Academic Membership at half-price, too—please contact us if you’re a student, teacher or scholar and would like to take advantage of that discount. http://kirbymuseum.org/membership.jkm

Annual Membership with one of these posters: $40*

Captain America—23” x 29” 1941 Captain America—14” x 23”

Strange Tales—23” x 29” Super Powers—17” x 22” color

Annual Membership with one of these posters: $50*

Marvel—14” x 23”

Galactic Head—18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation—24” x 18” color

ack’s initial return to his Fourth World characters came in doing new front and back covers for the 1980s New Gods reprint series. Presented here are his pencils for the new covers to issues #2-5, featuring re-envisioned scenes from that classic run.

Gallery 3

“

New New Gods Covers ”

f note are these pencils from the fourth issue of the reprint series, which reprinted New Gods #7 and #8. Jack apparently felt that #7’s “The Pact” was the more pivotal story of the two, and opted to use it as the front cover of the reprint book, leaving space for the logo. Someone at DC, perhaps wisely, saw the value of putting the more recognizable characters of Orion and Kalibak on the front cover, and had them switched. We’ve presented them here as they were published, but a lot of the bottom of the Orion/Kalibak art got cropped off in the published version.

Fifth World

Post-Kirby KIRBY by Douglas Toole (Jack Kirby’s New Gods series lasted 11 bi-monthly issues, from early 1971 through late 1972. Since then, New Gods characters have appeared— sometimes in a supporting role, sometimes prominently—in mini-series and in storylines of other series such as Lois Lane, Justice League and the Legion of Super-Heroes. There have been five regular series intended to continue the story of the New Gods. Gerry Conway wrote a First Issue Special [#13] in April, 1976 heralding the Return of the New Gods, and then wrote eight issues of a New Gods series starting a year after that, wrapping up the story in Adventure Comics #459-460. Ten years later, Mark Evanier wrote a New Gods series that lasted for 28 issues. A third New Gods series was launched in 1995, written by Rachel Pollack. John Byrne took over the writing of that series after 11 issues, and continued it for four more issues. Byrne stayed on as writer for all 20 issues of the 1997 follow-up series, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. Most recently, Walter Simonson wrote 25 issues of a series called Orion, which ended in 2002. Here, the writers of those five series reminisce about their experiences with the New Gods, and offer their perspectives on Kirby’s Fourth World.) erry Conway is a former writer and editor of comics who now writes

is a former writer and editor of comics who now writes GerryandandConway producestelevision televisionshows. shows.This Thisinterview interviewwas wasconducted conductedbyby Gtelephone produces on March 17, 2005, and was copy-edited by Mr. Conway.

telephone on March 17, 2005, and was copy-edited by Mr. Conway. TJKC: What was your first exposure to Kirby’s Fourth World? CONWAY: I read the books when they first came out.

TJKC: Which title appealed to you the most? CONWAY: I preferred the New Gods. I thought the others weren’t as welldeveloped.

(above) Middle 1970s Kirby sketch of Darkseid, done around the time many other creators were first beginning to work on his Fourth World characters. (below) Covers from Gerry Conway’s run on New Gods. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

TJKC: How did you get the assignment for First Issue Special and the New Gods series? CONWAY: I think it was more my idea than anything else. I was looking for projects at DC that I could be enthusiastic about, and the New Gods was one of them. TJKC: What were your goals for the series? CONWAY: I believe that at the time, my thinking was that the storyline had been left up in the air and open, and I liked to tie things up. This was a series already in existence. I would not have to carry a lot of water to make it interesting—it already was. I could draw on the mythology that was already there. But they had been pretty much left fallow after Kirby left those books. Carmine [Infantino, thenpublisher of DC] and DC did not have much interest in carrying them forward, so it seemed like a natural fit. TJKC: Was there a lot of editorial oversight for the book? CONWAY: It was pretty much totally me. At that period, I had just left Marvel Comics for DC and I was pretty much the fair-haired boy. Carmine felt it was a coup getting this hot Marvel writer to come over to his company. So I just ran with that, and did pretty much whatever I wanted to do. He didn’t really ask me to give him much prior input. He had his thoughts and his ideas, but felt “Gerry is bringing the Marvel style to DC, so let’s let him do what he wants to do.” 67

wasn’t an attempt to bring it all into one world until the Crisis On Infinite Earths series [in 1985] and the editorial policies that followed it. It wasn’t like the Marvel Universe where there was a lot of cross-pollination between the different stories and the different books. It was more of a strange amalgam of storylines.

TJKC: How much lead time did you get before the series ended? CONWAY: Probably none. [laughs] As these things tended to go, when they decided to cancel a book, they just told you there wouldn’t be a next issue. I might have known an issue in advance, but I doubt it. There were a lot of titles stopping and starting around that time. I had books literally canceled in mid-storyline, where you told readers “to be continued next month,” and there was no next month. TJKC: What do you think was your best impact on the New Gods epic? CONWAY: Honestly, I think there was really only one New Gods—the series that Jack did. Everything that followed was a pale imitation of that—including my own stuff. Unlike, for example, Fantastic Four or Amazing SpiderMan, which were series that were strong enough to withstand the loss of an individual creator or artistic vision, the New Gods really doesn’t stand on its own without Jack. While it is interesting, and has a certain cache, it was never that successful. What it is, is Jack Kirby’s last great creation. So, in that sense, it had a purpose. Without Jack, there is no reason to read New Gods or do anything with the New Gods characters. It exists because Jack did it, and we’re all huge fans of his, and we all would have loved to see him finish it.

(below) Issues #1 and #28 of Mark Evanier’s stint as writer on New Gods. (next page) Covers from the fourth New Gods series. Rachel Pollock started the writing, to be taken over by John Byrne with issue #12. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

TJKC: Was it different writing the New Gods series, as opposed to others you had written? CONWAY: I had great respect for the original source material. But I could tell just by re-reading it, that, despite whatever Jack might have said about his grand plans for the series, that he really didn’t have any. Jack was a great starter of things, but he never really developed anything. He would come up with a bunch of ideas, throw them out there, and then move on to something else. And that’s great. That’s terrific for someone like me, who’s coming along afterwards and looking for some potential storylines to play with. I don’t think he had any notion of how to tie up this series. But I did respect what he had set up, and took it to what seemed like its logical conclusion. TJKC: Do you think the New Gods characters work better incorporated into the DC Universe, or off playing in their own little corner? CONWAY: Well, they were always incorporated into the DC Universe—they were brought in with Jimmy Olsen. But at that period, there wasn’t a coherent DC Universe. If you think about it, at least until the late-1970s or so, you had a series of DC universes. You had the Julie Schwartz DC universe, you had the Mort Weisinger DC universe, you had the Murray Boltinoff DC universe, and each of these little entities kind of existed in their own space-time bubble. And there was the Jack Kirby DC universe. There really

TJKC: Any closing comments? CONWAY: What I would like to see DC do is to put out a really special edition of Jack’s DC work—the New Gods stories, the Jimmy Olsen stories, the Kamandi stories, the Demon stories. In my mind, there’s no point in doing anything other than that with it. The proper revival of the New Gods would be a repackaging of Jack’s original material. arkEvanier, Evanier,aafriend friendand andassistant assistanttotoJack JackKirby, Kirby,isisaawriter writerof ark of comic books, TV shows, cartoons essays. comic books, TV shows, cartoons andand essays. ThisThis interview interview was conducted by telephone on April 27, 2005 and was conducted by telephone on April 27, 2005 and was copywas copy-edited by Mr. Evanier. edited by Mr. Evanier.

TJKC: What was your first exposure to the Fourth World material? EVANIER: Actually, I saw the evolution of the Fourth World from a bunch of sketches Jack had the second time I visited him— around November, 1969. He showed me the drawings of a lot of new characters, some of whom wound up in the New Gods series. And when he made his deal with DC, that was one of the enticements, when they saw all those drawings for new characters. TJKC: How did you get the assignment for the New Gods series in 1989? It came out on the heels of the heels of the Cosmic Odyssey mini-series [by Jim Starlin and Mike Mignola]. Was it planned? EVANIER: I think I walked under a ladder and had some bad luck. [laughs] At some point—I don’t remember when—Jack had read a Fourth World story that had been written by someone else, and he was bothered by it. It wasn’t so much that he was offended by it as that he didn’t recognize the characters that were being passed off as his. So he and I talked about it, and he knew that I had turned down a previous opportunity to write a New Gods series, and he said, “Listen, if they ask you to do it again, I’d be much more comfortable with you doing it as someone else.” And I probably should have said, “Thanks, but I don’t want to do it,” but if Jack had asked me to tap-dance across Ventura Freeway, I probably would have done it. So, DC published the Cosmic Odyssey mini-series, and the idea was to spin a new New Gods book off of it. Starlin and DC parted ways and [DC editor] Mike Carlin phoned me and asked if I would like to do the book. I read what Starlin had done, and while I respect him tremendously, nothing he was doing corresponded to any vision I had of those

characters. And yet I was supposed to pick up the threads of his issues and even incorporate what he’d written into my continuity, and I was very busy with other projects at the time. It was obvious to me that I couldn’t possibly do it, yet for some idiotic reason I said yes. I still regret saying “yes” to it. TJKC: Was there a lot of editorial oversight for your series? EVANIER: I had free rein, which is not to say that I got to do what I wanted. The artist assigned to the book was a very talented gentleman named Paris Cullins. I liked Paris’ work. Unfortunately, Paris was behind almost from the day he started the book. It wasn’t really his fault—DC kept yanking him off to do other projects. The book ran late every single month. The book was going to press so late that people were buying it and getting wet ink on their fingers. We were working Marvel Method, which means that I would write a plot and ship it off to the editor, who would then hurriedly send it off to Paris because the book was late. Paris had a lot of good ideas, and I had urged him to add to the plots or change sequences because he was and is a very creative individual. And if we had had some lead time, it would have been a good situation. Unfortunately, the book was running so late throughout its entire existence that DC management would say to Paris, “Quick! Send in some pages!” So he would send in whatever pages he had done at the time, and sometimes they weren’t sequential pages. If he had been following the plots exactly, I could have guessed what was happening in the intervening pages, but instead I would write the dialogue for page 11, ship it off to be inked and lettered, and then the next week I would get page 10 and something I had not expected would happen and suddenly what I had written for page 11 didn’t fit anymore. So that’s how we did the book. I’m not blaming anyone else. I was very busy at the time with other projects. I contented myself with the thought that I was being a hero just getting the damn book done every month. There are times in this industry when you work in such adverse situations that you feel that way, that it’s an achievement that the book just gets to press on time—forget the fact that it doesn’t make any sense. I blame myself for this. I was not new to the business. I had written and edited comics for years, but somehow I didn’t have the sense to jump on top of someone’s desk and say, “Stop! This is madness! I can’t write this book like this.” Near the end, Paris moved on to other projects and other artists came onto the book. The other artists worked better at delivering pages in sequence, but by that point we were running really far behind and I was completely lost in what I wanted to do in the book. I just kept doing it because I’d agreed to do it and I didn’t want to admit defeat. It’s probably my least-favorite thing I’ve done in comics. TJKC: Did you ever talk to Kirby about the series when you were working on it? EVANIER: Not really. I told Jack not to read it, but it wasn’t necessary because Jack usually didn’t like to read other people’s versions of his work. He did it occasionally as a favor, but he had very little interest in a comic when he wasn’t doing it. He very rarely read other people’s work at all, unless it was necessary for some assignment of his. In his entire life, I don’t think he ever read a Captain America story, for example, that he didn’t work on. TJKC: Any closing thoughts? EVANIER: I think that, for Jack, once the original run of the series was torpedoed, it was creatively over for him. It’s nice that people remember the material. It’s nice that people buy the reprints. It’s nice that new readers still discover it. I just don’t feel that the Fourth World material has lent itself to 35 years of good comics. To me, all the good stories were done early on, and if they’ve been done by others, I haven’t seen them. I don’t mean to put down anyone else’s work—I just don’t seek out other people’s versions of the Fourth World material. I’m glad other people use those characters, because I like to see them live and thrive and keep people interested in what Jack made. But to me, the New Gods without Jack Kirby is like The Dick Van Dyke Show without Dick Van Dyke. A critical element is missing.

TJKC: What was your first exposure to the Fourth World material? POLLACK: I was a very enthusiastic fan of the comics when they first came out in the early 1970s. I thought they were quite amazing, actually. It seemed weird to me that Kirby was coming to DC to do Jimmy Olsen. But I got the first comic and thought it was incredible—just phenomenal. I remember thinking, “This is in Jimmy Olsen?” TJKC: How did you get the New Gods assignment when you worked for DC in the mid-1990s? POLLACK: It was Tom Peyer, my editor on the Doom Patrol, who got the assignment first, and he brought me over with him. Tom and I co-wrote some of the early issues of the New Gods series but then he dropped out and I took over the writing. TJKC: What were your goals for the series when you started? POLLACK: I had some conceptual goals for it. I wanted the characters to be seen as gods, not super-heroes. I wanted their storylines to deal with larger, archetypal issues. I wanted to explore who the characters were, and what conflicts they had within themselves. Tom had the initial idea of going beyond the Anti-Life Equation that Kirby had put so much emphasis on and instead having Darkseid attack The Source itself. From there, I came up with the idea of having Darkseid lure his son into killing him within The Source because patricide would be such a heinous crime that it would poison The Source. We were working on a more mythological level than on a super-hero level because they are gods, not just humans with special abilities. TJKC: It seems like New Gods is always the story of Orion and Darkseid. Did you enjoy writing for the supporting cast? POLLACK: Yes, I enjoyed writing Lightray and having him go bad. [laughs] He became like a Joker character, so he was a lot of fun to do. Peyer and I had this idea that Darkseid and Highfather would at some point both give up their thrones, and Orion would become the ruler of both worlds because of his dual nature. I even toyed with the idea of Orion bringing Two-Face to New Genesis and Apokolips with him to act as his chief advisor. Both characters share the quality of having a human face and an ugly face. But the other character I really enjoyed working with was Highfather. I gave him a much darker side, having him finally become overcome with guilt for having given up his son to be tortured in Apokolips for the sake of a political deal—although supposedly for a noble purpose. And that was very interesting to do. It was a very enjoyable process. TJKC: Your comic-book writing always seemed very character-driven, and in this series you focused on the family dynamics of the New Gods—how Orion dealt with Highfather and Darkseid. POLLACK: Yes, that was a significant part of the story to me. Again, family conflicts are one of the primary qualities of myth—the “Dysfunctional Families of the Gods,” so to speak. I’ve recently been reading some Egyptian myths and they deal with brothers killing brothers, as well. It’s all about family conflicts, and the universe suffering because of them. That’s one of the insights of myth, I suppose, that dysfunctional families affect those around them. The neighbors suffer, the schools suffer, the whole town can be affected. In myth, when the gods have a family conflict, the whole universe suffers. TJKC: Towards the end of your run, the series seemed to change artists frequently. POLLACK: Yes, that was a problem. To be honest, I had a lot of problems with the art in general. There was a disparity between what I was envisioning and what I was getting from the artists DC was hiring. The only artist I had who was really great was Keith Giffen, who was only there for one issue. He really got into the Kirby style and the power and he contributed great ideas.

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POLLACK: Oh, yes. I had lots of ideas. Putting Orion in charge of the worlds would have been one direction to take. I also would have liked to have written more Desaad and Granny Goodness, because they are such great, great characters. Kirby created such a great field there, with such energy, that there is so much more that can be done with it. It’s an almost inexhaustible story. TJKC: Were you happy with the stories you got to write? POLLACK: Yes. You are always going to be unhappy with the things you could have done better, but I think we told some interesting stories, and that’s the most important thing. ohn Byrne is an extremely

ohn Byrne is an extremely prolific comics comics writer writer and and Jartist, prolific having worked on

artist, having worked on many ofof the the books books published pubmany lished by Marvel by Marvel and DC.and Mr.DC. Byrne Mr. Byrne was interviewed was interviewed by e-mail in by e-mail May, 2005.in May, 2005. TJKC: What was your first exposure to the New Gods? BYRNE: I had not yet fully returned to reading comics, after a hiatus that began when I was about 14, so I missed the first run of Kirby’s DC stuff. Luckily, a little while later— while Mister Miracle was still being published, in fact—I visited a second-hand bookstore that was one of my regular haunts and scored all the issues of New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle that I had missed. TJKC: How did you get the New Gods assignment in 1996? BYRNE: I had always made it known that I was a big fan of the Fourth World stuff. DC offered me the job at a time when I did not already have my plate filled with other work.

TJKC: Had you planned to write the series for just one year? POLLACK: No. It’s almost a funny story. I was unhappy with one of the artists assigned to the book later in my run. The editor called and told me he had good news—DC was moving the artist off the book. Then the editor called back a day or two later and said he had some bad news—I was being moved off the book, too. [laughs] Basically, John Byrne wanted to take over the series, and DC wasn’t about to turn down such a superstar in the comic-book field. The series wasn’t selling substantially under me and the artists we had, so I understand the decision. But we weren’t given much time to wrap up our story and lead into what Byrne wanted to do, and that was a real constraint. TJKC: Your final issue [#11] did bring your story arc to a conclusion, but you could have gone on with new storylines for the series? 70

TJKC: What were your goals for the series? BYRNE: Several less-than-stellar post-Kirby interpretations of the characters and concepts had severely tarnished the Fourth World mythos in the minds and hearts of fans—I recall Wizard [Magazine] actively campaigning against anything related to the Fourth World at that time—and so I saw my primary job to be doing everything I could to polish it up again, and to get people paying attention. In that I think I was successful, for the most part. TJKC: Which supporting characters were especially fun to write? BYRNE: Metron is the most fun. There is so much to him that Kirby barely hinted at. I was amazed, for instance, reading over the Kirby stuff in order to start my series, when I noticed a line that referred to Metron as being “of neither Apokolips or New Genesis,” but “something else.” I’d completely missed that the many other times I had read the books. That informed my portrayal of Metron a

lot! I also found the Forever People—who, despite having their own title, never really rose above “supporting” roles in the whole scheme of things—a lot of fun to play with. TJKC: What was the thinking behind restarting the series as Jack Kirby’s Fourth World? BYRNE: Mostly it was the stigmas that had attached themselves to the New Gods on the minds of so many fans. (Although I think there has also been a bit of nervousness on DC’s part, to have a book with “Gods” in the title, as the nation has swung more and more to the Right.)

alter Simonson is a longtime comic book writer and artist alter a longtime bookwas writer and artistby still Simonson working inisthe field. Thiscomic interview conducted working in the field. This interview was conducted still telephone on March 21, 2005 and was copy-edited by Mr.by telephone Simonson.on March 21, 2005 and was copy-edited by Mr. Simonson. TJKC: What was your first exposure to Kirby’s Fourth World? SIMONSON: I picked up his first issue of Jimmy Olsen [#133] in 1970—the first Kirby DC book in a long time. I was a big Jack Kirby fan because I’d read his stuff at Marvel, and I knew he was going over to DC to do his own material. I was ready for it, and when the first Kirby Jimmy Olsen came out, I eagerly grabbed it off the stands. It really blew me away.

TJKC: Which of the Fourth World books did you prefer? SIMONSON: I liked them all. That’s because I thought that Jack was doing something that I hadn’t seen anyone else do before or since on that scale: he created a tapestry of stories that wove together and revealed a larger picture over the run of the individual books. The way I always saw it, Jack told the developing story of a great cosmic struggle. New Gods focused on the war at the level of the powerful warriors who were fighting it. Forever People focused on the children of those warriors, who were caught up in

(previous page) Infinity Man is summoned one last time, in these Kirby pencils from Forever People #11 (Oct. 1972). (left) After taking over the fourth New Gods series, John Byrne morphed it into Jack Kirby’s Fourth World for a lengthy run. Shown are covers from issues #1 and #20. (below) Byrne’s always had an affinity for Kirby’s Fourth Worlders, in particular Darkseid. Here are his pencils from the final page of Superman #3, capturing the villain’s powerful, evil demeanor as few other artists have been able to. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

TJKC: Did you end your run on the series with stories left untold, or had you had time to tell them already? BYRNE: I could have cheerfully stayed on JK4W for the rest of my career but—now it can be told! Paul Kupperberg was planning on leaving his editorial position around the same time my JK4W contract was running out. I was leery about signing on for another year when I was not sure who the editor might be, so I wrapped up as much as I could of what I had set in motion, and stepped aside. TJKC: What do you think your best impact on the New Gods canon was? BYRNE: Probably the “origin” of Darkseid. At least, most people I have talked to seemed unaware that the whole Drax/Uxas/Infinity Pit storyline was entirely my invention, and not merely retelling something Kirby set up. TJKC: Do you think the New Gods characters works best in their own pocket of the DC Universe, or incorporated into it? BYRNE: That depends on the “creative minds” working at DC at any given time. If the books (all of them) are allowed to operate largely by their own sets of internal rules, then the New Gods work just fine. If, on the other hand, everything has to be interwoven and basically incestuous, they work less well. People then start asking (and worse, trying to answer!) questions like “If they’re ‘gods,’ then who worships them?” TJKC: How happy are you with the results of your run on the series? BYRNE: Except for wishing it had been much longer, I’m mostly happy with the run. TJKC: Where should the Fourth World characters go from here? BYRNE: Tough call. Unless they are handed off to someone who really understands what to do with them— who understands that the key job is preserving Kirby’s legacy and not using his characters and concepts to make a name for himself—I would almost rather see them lay fallow for a while. 71

SIMONSON: I had a lot of editorial freedom. And I did really terrible things to Orion. I blinded him, I rendered him catatonic, I gave him the Anti-Life Equation, and Joey didn’t bat an eye. [laughs] TJKC: Did you go into the assignment with any particular goals? SIMONSON: I had story goals, certainly. I wanted to focus on Orion— my favorite New Gods character—and tell a story of his temptation, fall and redemption. I had not written out all the details in the beginning. I just knew generally how it was going to go. I used the first few issues to come out of John’s stories, to get the characters where I wanted them in order to do an Orion-Darkseid showdown in issue #5. I was guided there because Jack had set up the prophecy of the father-son battle in New Gods. Jack never finished that story, so that story will always be redone the way that in Thor, people will always do Ragnarok. Ragnarok’s such a great story. And the unfinished potential of the Darkseid-Orion fight will always exist as well. But I wanted to do that and get it over with and then go somewhere else. I did not want it looming over the series. And with the fight out of the way, I thought I could take the character of Orion somewhere unexpected. I wanted to create a series of stories where the reader would not know what would happen next. That’s what cool stories ought to be. TJKC: Do you think the Fourth World characters work better incorporated in the DC Universe, or operating in their own little corner of it? SIMONSON: I don’t think the Fourth World characters have been integrated very convincingly into the DC Universe. I also think that a lot of the people who read the DC Universe books aren’t big fans of the Fourth World material. It’s pure Jack Kirby, and different from the classic DC books. Mostly there’s sort of an uncomfortable marriage between the Fourth World material and the rest of the DC Universe. That’s the impression I have. The Fourth World has its adherents. It has people who love it; it has people who don’t like it. But for me, it’s the best stuff of Jack’s that I ever read, his most personal work. It might have been scripted to make it more generally accessible for a broader audience, but if that had happened, I believe the work wouldn’t be as memorable. People say, “Well, if only Marvel had done it, it would have worked better.” I’m trying to think of how the Fourth World would have fit in with Thor, Iron Man and Captain America. I don’t know. Maybe it would have been a little more at home, because the Marvel Universe had so much of Jack’s sensibilities in it already, but it probably would have been just one more pantheon of gods off in the corner somewhere. As it is, it kind of stands by itself as a testament to one man’s genius.

the war, but who saw it as adventure. I thought of Mister Miracle as a conscientious objector to the war, who wanted to opt out of it, but was not permitted to by events. And Jimmy Olsen examined the war at the level of mortals—its lowest level. There were some echoes in the titles of what was happening in the United States with the Vietnam War at the time. I thought the act of creating this braided storyline was really brilliant, and ambitious beyond the range of anyone else in comics at the time. TJKC: Moving ahead, to when you started the Orion book, how did you get the assignment? SIMONSON: I grabbed one of the DC editors and throttled him until he said “yes.” [laughs] John Byrne had asked me if I would do the covers to his New Gods books. Because of that, I knew in advance when John would be getting off the book, so I talked with Paul Kupperberg, the book’s editor at that time, and said I wanted to pick up the book. He gave me the assignment. In the end, the book shifted editorially over to Joey Cavalieri before I did my first issue. TJKC: Were you able to do what you wanted with the characters? 72

TJKC: What do you think was your greatest impact on the New Gods epic? SIMONSON: I just tried to tell some good stories. I told some stories that I thought had not been told before with those characters, and I think that’s the best that can be said about any series. Generally, I was pleased with the whole run. (The Forever People was the first of Kirby’s three Fourth World series to hit the newsstands—preceding The New Gods by three weeks and Mister Miracle by a full month. The series opened with Big Bear, Mark Moonrider, Serifan and Vykin the Black traveling from Supertown to Earth to rescue Beautiful Dreamer, continued with their adventures on Earth, and ended with the five characters stranded on an idyllic world far away. Over the course of the series’ 11 bi-monthly issues, major Fourth World characters such as Desaad and Glorious Godfrey were introduced, and both Superman and Deadman made guest-appearances. Since their initial cancellations, the New Gods and Mister Miracle series have been revived numerous times, and Mister Miracle, Big Barda, Oberon, Orion and Lightray have joined the ranks of the Justice League. In comparison, the Forever People have made only cameo appearances over the past 35 years, most often in the revival books of their Fourth World companions. The one exception to this was a six-issue 1988 Forever People mini-series written by J. M. DeMatteis.)

.M. DeMatteis, an Eisner award-winning writer for DC, Marvel, comics companies, television and Mr. .M.independent DeMatteis, an Eisner award-winning writer formovies. DC, Marvel, DeMatteis’ children’s book series, Abadazad, will be released independent comics companies, television and movies. Mr. through Disney’s Books For Children imprint starting this DeMatteis’ chilen’sHyperion book series, Abadazad, will be released through summer. The following interview was conducted by e-mail with Disney’s Hyperion Books For Children imprint starting this summer. Mr.following DeMatteisinterview in January, The was2006. conducted by e-mail with Mr. DeMatteis

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in January, 2006.

TJKC: What were some of your favorite comics as a kid? DeMATTEIS: I pretty much loved all comics when I was a kid. You name it, I read it. Super-heroes, funny animals, Archie, Casper, Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope. Of the super-hero material, my special favorites were probably DC’s Justice League and Green Lantern. And, of course, I adored Superman and Batman. In the seventh grade I had a religious conversion to Marvel Comics. This was l966, I think. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and John Romita and Gene Colan and all the rest were at their peak... and I just absorbed all that work into the very depths of my soul. TJKC: Were you a fan of Kirby’s work at Marvel? DeMATTEIS: Fan is too small a word! Lee and Kirby were the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of comics. From my twelve-year-old perspective, they had revolutionized the entire field, done things I’d never seen before. Kirby’s art was intimate, emotional... and jaw-droppingly cosmic. He did action better than anybody... and, most important, his storytelling was impeccable. He truly was the master of the mainstream super-hero comic book. Nobody has ever done it better. Under Lee and Kirby, Fantastic Four really was “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.” It’s not that they were the greatest characters. Spider-Man is a far more interesting and layered character than any of the Four (although the Thing certainly comes close), but the stories, the concepts, the scale, the constant creative breakthroughs all combined to make Fantastic Four the comic book to read in the 1960s. Each new storyline was like a new Beatles album: “What are they gonna do next?” You were always surprised. At least through l968 or so. Thor was very similar in that I would never say that Thor is one of my favorite characters—in fact, he’s not—but the stories, especially during that run that gave us the Greek gods and the High Evolutionary and the Colonizers and Ego, the Living Planet, were every bit as mind-blowing, and as creatively groundbreaking, as what we were seeing in FF. TJKC: What was your first exposure to the Fourth World material? DeMATTEIS: I remember checking out the first issue of New Gods and thinking, “Huh? A Thor rip-off?” I still loved Kirby’s art, and there seemed to be some cool concepts, but I found his writing off-putting. But, being a huge fan, I kept coming back. It didn’t take long for the Fourth World to win me over. Those books now stand along with the first six issues of Stan Lee and John Buscema’s Silver Surfer run as my Favorite Comics of All Time. I still think Kirby’s writing—or, more specifically, his wordsmithing—was often incredibly awkward and sometimes quite bizarre. And yet, in a way, it had to be. The work was so unique, so specific, so intensely personal, that the very things that were awkward also added to the power and charm of those comics. The Fourth World was Kirby stripped raw... creativity pouring out of him, from the center of his soul. To keep the Beatles analogy going, I liken the Fourth World books to Lennon’s first official post-Beatles album, Plastic Ono Band, where he threw off the studio slickness of the Beatles and revealed his artistic heart to the world in a way few artists ever have. Kirby did something very similar: He threw away the veneer of the Marvel style and put himself out there in an extraordinarily honest way. Those comic books—and I include Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen in this— were astonishing. Still are. TJKC: Did you prefer one series over the others? DeMATTEIS: I loved New Gods, certainly. It was the flagship, the same way FF was the flagship at Marvel. But my personal favorite was The Forever People. There was something about that idealistic group of super-hippies (and that’s what they were, as much a product of the flower power era as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band) that really appealed to me. TJKC: Moving ahead to your 1988 Forever People mini-series, did you pitch the idea to DC, or was management looking for a Forever People series? DeMATTEIS: My recollection—and keep in mind that this was a long time ago—is that I pitched it to Karen Berger and she pitched it to Dick Giordano. We were approved... and then we

were off and running. TJKC: Was it coincidental that your mini-series and the Cosmic Odyssey mini-series featuring the New Gods characters came out at roughly the same time? DeMATTEIS: Completely. TJKC: By the end of the mini-series, the Forever People are freed from the limbo they were stranded in at the end of the original series. Was that one of your goals? DeMATTEIS: Yes. I wanted to get them off that planet and back into the mainstream of the DC Universe. TJKC: Over the course of the mini-series, you made some changes to the characters, such as making Big Bear and Beautiful Dreamer a couple, revealing the Forever People to be human, and bringing back Infinity Man. Was DC management okay with those decisions, or did a lot of details have to be cleared through your editor beforehand? DeMATTEIS: As I recall, there was no problem whatsoever with the changes. One of the fun things about working in comics in the late 1980s was that things were creatively wide open. Marvel and DC were willing to experiment and play in a way that they are not today. I was doing Moonshadow and Blood at Epic, Kraven’s Last Hunt in the mainstream Marvel books, the Justice League with Keith Giffen and a number of other things at DC. It was just a fun time to be working in the business. TJKC: What kind of feedback did you receive about the Forever People series? DeMATTEIS: Honestly... I don’t remember! I do recall that we didn’t set the world on fire... and there was no great clamor to bring the characters back in a regular series. TJKC: Looking back, what is your impression of the series? DeMATTEIS: My idea going in was to update the characters... and yet remain true to their essence. The Forever People, as I’ve noted, were very much a product of the 1960s: super-powered flower children. And, by extension, they were symbols of the innocence, energy and naivete of all youth. I wanted to move them into the 1980s and to use the series as an examination of the way that generation had changed since the days of the Counter Culture. My feeling was that the ideals of that 1960s generation—the ideals of all youth, really—were extremely naive and untested. It’s easy to sing “All You Need Is Love,” but how do you live that? The 1970s and 1980s hurled people, with headsmashing impact, into the wall of the so-called Adult World, where many of those ideals exploded on impact. The challenge for the Forever People (and for all of us as we go through life, regardless of the era we grew up in) was to have their youthful ideals burned in the fires of practicality and responsibility, disappointment and despair—all the pain and the struggles of that Adult World—and then see which of those ideals survived. I believe it’s not about giving up on your ideals. I think one of the biggest problems with our culture is that people all-too-easily throw away the insights, dreams and ideals of their youth, when in fact people should test them and live them more deeply, more passionately, more powerfully. That’s the journey on which I

(previous page) Walter Simonson’s cover pencils for Orion #11. Shown at bottom are the covers to the first, and final, issues of this remarkable series. (above) 1970s quick convention sketch of Orion by Kirby. (below) First and last issues of J.M. DeMatteis’ Forever People mini-series. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

Certainly wasn’t the greatest project I’d ever done... but it struck some worthy themes and, I think, presented the characters in a new and challenging light, while keeping to the spirit of the original series. TJKC: Did you expect the Forever People to get their own series back after the mini-series? DeMATTEIS: I’m sure that was somewhere in the back of my head, but I think the main goal was just to come out the other end of the series with the Forever People back in the heart of the DC Universe where anyone could play with them. TJKC: Why do you think there have been no other revivals of the Forever People series? DeMATTEIS: I don’t know. They are fantastic characters. The embodiment of youth and energy and friendship and imagination... all the things that mainstream super-heroes are, or at least should be, about. I’m sure that when the time is right, the right creators will come along and resurrect them. And, with luck, they’ll be a smash. They certainly deserve to be! TJKC: Do you think the Fourth World characters work better incorporated into the DC Universe, or off playing in their own corner of it? DeMATTEIS: In some ways, they work better on their own. If Kirby had done those books in a different era, DC might have decided to let him create his own separate universe, populate it with his own creations, and just build and build with no constraints. But then we would have missed out on those wild Jimmy Olsen comics! (above) Infinity Man bites the dust in Forever People #11 (Oct. 1972), stranding the young gods in limbo until J.M. DeMatteis rescued them years later. (next page) John Byrne Forever People drawing. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

sent the Forever People. Whether the series was a success or failure I can’t say. I’m sure that some Kirby Purists hated it. Who knows? I might have felt the same way as a reader. Kirby—especially the Kirby of the Fourth World books—is such a singular force that most interpretations are going to pale in comparison to the originals. Even with guys like John Byrne and Walt Simonson, who have done fantastic jobs building on what Kirby did, there’s something missing. And that something is Jack himself. All I really remember is that I had fun doing Forever People.

TJKC: In your opinion, what should the future hold for the Fourth World characters? DeMATTEIS: These characters are some of the greatest ever to spring from Jack Kirby’s imagination. I hope that they live on and enjoy great success. Even if they don’t make it as revivals, I hope the original Kirby comics stay in print for a very, very long time. They’re really a high point in the history of comic books. ★

Other Non-Kirby Fourth World Appearances

the only thing missing is the Female Furies. Oh, well, at least we get Steve Rude’s Big Barda. Woof! Mark Evanier scripts, and Mike Royer inks.

Concurrent Crossovers

Swamp Thing #62 (1987): As Metron looks among the Promethean Giants, he discovers a Mother Box as well as Swamp Thing. Eventually they come across Darkseid. This story is more about Metron and his relationship with Darkseid than it is about Swamp Thing. Script and art by Rick Veitch.

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #111, 115, 118, & 119 (1971-72): These issues weren’t written or drawn by Kirby, but did appear and tie into Kirby’s Fourth World stories. Issue #111’s connection is rather tenuous, but here goes: The JLA is attacked via Lois Lane by a miniature, evil JLA created from tissue samples stolen by Simyan and Mokkari, agents of Darkseid. In issue #115, Lois comes into the possession of the typewriter of Apokolips as part of a scheme to destroy Superman. All it really ends up doing is keeping the Black Racer busy. In issue #118-119, the real Morgan Edge is on the loose and going mad. He fails to convince Superman and Lois that there are two Edges and goes on the lam. The real Edge is taken in by Yango and the Outsiders while his evil clone futilely tries to get him before Darkseid finds out he’s still alive. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #150 & 152 (1972): While not New Gods, Jimmy Olsen and the Newsboy Legion became entangled in the Fourth World saga and these stories, though not written or drawn by Kirby, did appear concurrent to Kirby’s tales. In issue #150, the Legion tries to capture Angry Charlie, an escaped creature from Kirby’s run. Hilarity ensues. In issue #152, Darkseid punishes the Morgan Edge clone for its failure to kill the real thing, and eventually the clone is destroyed and everything goes back to pre-Kirby normality.

Pre-Crisis First Issue Special #13 (1976): Picking up where Kirby left off, it’s Orion vs. Kalibak not once, not twice, but three times! (Big surprise, Orion wins all three.) Orion is on his way to kill Darkseid, but is stopped by Highfather and Metron who have been told by the Source Wall that if Orion does so, the Earth will perish. Mister Miracle #19-25 (1977-78): As this fantastic series opens we join Scott Free and Barda on their honeymoon as if very little time had passed since Kirby’s wedding day tale in issue #18. The honeymoon is quickly interrupted by an Apokolips raiding party consisting of Granny Goodness, Kanto, Vermin Vundabar, and Dr. Bedlam and Barda is kidnapped. Scott returns to Earth and Oberon to begin the search for his new bride. After escaping two separate death traps, Scott finally rescues a brainwashed Barda after defeating her in combat. Issue #21 reveals that though rescued, Barda is dying. Scott seeks Himon’s help as he prepares to go to Apokolips in an attempt to save her life. Along the way he decides to kill Darkseid while he’s at it. Well, one out of two ain’t bad. In issue #23 Scott experiences a revelation and a new insight into the eternal conflict between Apokolips and New Genesis as he speaks with The Source. He returns to Earth to become a “free agent” and preach his message of freedom to mankind. Just as the messiah storyline becomes interesting, the series ends in the DC Implosion. Steve Englehart scripts, with awesome Marshall Rogers and Michael Golden art. Marvel and DC Present the Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans #1 (1982): Through Raven’s dreams, the Titans become aware of the threat of the Phoenix. Meanwhile, Darkseid has his own plans for Phoenix. Alliances are formed, a fight ensues, and Darkseid and Phoenix end up as one with The Source. Chris Claremont script, with amazing Walter Simonson art.

Cosmic Odyssey #1-4 (1988): Darkseid and Highfather form a temporary alliance in order to deal with a threat unwittingly unleashed by Metron... the Anti-Life Entity. They call a group of Earth’s super-heroes in order to prevent the Milky Way galaxy from being destroyed. Though remembered mostly as a pivotal point in the life of Green Lantern John Stewart, this fantastic series also features Orion, Lightray, Metron, and—though not a New God, still a Kirby creation—the Demon. Oh, and Forager sacrifices his life to save the universe. Jim Starlin script, and gorgeous Mike Mignola art. Mister Miracle #1-28 (1989-91): Scott, Barda, and Oberon move to the quaint town of Bailey, NH where Scott starts up a fix-it shop, much to Oberon’s chagrin. Of course, it doesn’t stay quiet for long. First Dr. Bedlam ruins dinner, then Highfather moves in and The Forever People crash a party just in time for a rematch with The Dark. Beautiful Dreamer has another baby who they name Maya. Later on, Scott gets suckered into doing an intergalactic tour of his act and Barda goes to jail. Eventually Scott ends up on Apokolips. In issue #17 the Female Furies show up with their new leader, Bernadeth. Darkseid brings Lashina back from oblivion—she was killed in a Suicide Squad story—and makes her serve under Bernadeth. They then capture Scott—he escapes. In issue #21... the return of Shilo Norman. Scott wants to retire and he wants Shilo to replace him as Mr. Miracle. He even gives Shilo his own Mother Box. Shilo’s first challenge—The Lump. Oh, and Big Barda becomes a Bad and Beautiful Babe of Wrestling while Highfather becomes addicted to pizza. In the final issue Barda is united with her mother, Big Breeda, and she, Scott, and Breeda return with Highfather to New Genesis leaving Shilo as Mr. Miracle. Legion of Super-Heroes #21-24 (1991): A follow-up of sorts to The Great Darkness Saga, this story is named ...The Quiet Darkness. It’s eleven years later, Darkseid is back again and he’s found The Life Equation Matrix. This time all his plans come to fruition. Darkseid wins. What he wins is the quiet darkness... his own death. More from Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen. Darkseid Vs. Galactus: The Hunger (1995): Galactus sets his sights (and appetite) on Apokolips. There’s a big fight with Orion, Silver Surfer, and company only for Galactus to find out that Apokolips has no life force on which to feed. Shouldn’t the Surfer have been able to tell? Outstanding John Byrne script and art. Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle (2005): Writer Grant Morrison included Mr. Miracle as part of his Seven Soldiers maxi-crossover series, and the book is nearing the end of its four-issue run as this is written, so check it out for more details. But take note: The new Mr. Miracle is Shilo Norman, Scott Free's apprentice from Kirby’s 1970s run on the strip. ★

Legion of Super-Heroes #287, 290-294, Annual #3 (1982-84): It’s the 30th Century and guess who’s back in town? The story is “The Great Darkness Saga” and the villain is Darkseid. He’s after a child, though he’s not entirely sure why until it is revealed that the child is Izaya, the Highfather, reincarnated. To achieve this end he has a group of five powerful creatures to do his bidding. These include a distorted clone of Superman, as well as a reincarnated Kalibak and a twisted “mockery” of Orion. Highfather returns Orion to close to his old self, but Darkseid easily destroys him before falling to the Legion. Paul Levitz scripts, with Keith Giffen art.

Post-Crisis Mister Miracle Special #1 (1987): Scott Free reenters the escape business against the wishes of his better half. Mayhem ensues. Kalibak, Granny Goodness, Darkseid, Funky Flashman and, of course, death traps galore— 75

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ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

Issue-by-issue index of Timely/Atlas GERRY CONWAY & ROY THOMAS NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews super-hero stories by MICHELLE on their ’80s “X-Men Movie That with Superman creators SIEGEL & NOLAN, art by SIMON & KIRBY, Never Was!” with art by ADAMS, SHUSTER, Golden/Silver Age DC EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, COCKRUM, BUSCEMA, BYRNE, production guru JACK ADLER, AYERS, HEATH, SEKOWSKY, KANE, KIRBY, HECK, & LIEBER, NEAL ADAMS & TV iconoclast (& Atlas artist VIC CARRABOTTA comics fan) HOWARD STERN on SHORES, SCHOMBURG, MANEELY, Adler, art by CURT SWAN, WAYNE & SEVERIN, GENE COLAN & ALLEN interview, ALLEN BELLMAN on ’40s Timely, FCA, 1966 panel on EC BORING, AL PLASTINO, plus FCA, BELLMAN on 1940s Timely heroes, FCA, MR. MONSTER, & BILL Comics, & MR. MONSTER! Edited MR. MONSTER, & more! Edited by SCHELLY! KIRBY & VON SHOLLY by ROY THOMAS. ROY THOMAS. cover! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #56

Golden Age Batman artist/Bob JOE GIELLA on the Silver Age at Interview with CARL BURGOS’ ROY THOMAS covers his 40-YEAR daughter! Unused 1941 cover laycareer in comics, with ADAMS, Kane ghost LEW SAYRE DC, the Golden Age at Marvel, and outs by BURGOS and other Timely BUSCEMA, COLAN, DITKO, GIL SCHWARTZ interviewed, the JULIE SCHWARTZ, with rare art by titans! The 1957 Atlas Implosion, KANE, KIRBY, STAN LEE, ORDWAY, Golden & Silver Ages of INFANTINO, GIL KANE, MANNY STALLMAN, and the BLUE PÉREZ, ROMITA, and many others! AUSTRALIAN SUPER-HEROES, SEKOWSKY, SWAN, DILLIN, FLAME! Also, FCA, MICHAEL T. Also, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT Mad artist DAVE BERG interviewed, MOLDOFF, GIACOIA, SCHAFFENand MR. MONSTER and more! GILBERT and MR. MONSTER and FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on BERGER, and others, JAY SCOTT more! WILL EISNER, ALEX TOTH and PIKE on STAN LEE, MARTIN (100-page magazine) $9 US more! THALL, and more! (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #49

Flip covers by TUSKA and JSA/All-Star Squadron/Infinity Inc. Interviews with Golden Age The VERY BEST of the 1960s-70s special! Interviews with JOE STEVENS, yuletide art by SINNOTT, Sandman artist CREIG FLESSEL and ALTER EGO! EVERETT/SEVERIN KUBERT, IRWIN HASEN, MURPHY 1940s creator BERT CHRISTMAN, BRUNNER, CARDY, TOTH, cover, classic 1969 BILL EVERETT ANDERSON, JERRY ORDWAY, NODELL, and others, interviews MICHAEL CHABON on researching interview, art by BURGOS, GUS1940s Atom writer ARTHUR with Golden Age artists TOM GILL his Pulitzer-winning novel Kavalier TAVSON, SIMON & KIRBY, and (Lone Ranger) and MORRIS WEISS, ADLER, art by TOTH, SEKOWSKY, & Clay, art by EISNER, KANE, KIRBY, others, 1960s gems by DITKO & E. HASEN, MACHLAN, OKSNER, exploring 1960s Mexican comics, & AYERS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, NELSON BRIDWELL, FCA, TOTH, FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, INFANTINO, FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, & more! & more! ORDWAY cover, more! & more! (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (108-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #43

NOTE: IF YOU PREFER A SIX-ISSUE SUB, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

SUBSCRIBE! Twelve Issues in the US: $72 Standard, $108 First Class (Canada: $132, Elsewhere: $144 Surface, $192 Airmail).

ALTER EGO #54

ALTER EGO #53

(100-page magazine) $9 US

The late WILL EISNER discusses ’40s Quality Comics with art by FINE, CRANDALL, COLE, & CARDY! EISNER tributes by STAN LEE, GENE COLAN, & others! ’40s Quality artist VERN HENKEL interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER, TOTH, & more!

MATT BAKER, Golden Age cheesecake artist of PHANTOM LADY, plus art from AL FELDSTEIN, VINCE COLLETTA, ARTHUR PEDDY, JACK KAMEN & others, FCA, BILL SCHELLY talks to BUD PLANT, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #48

(108-page magazine) $9 US

Covers by FASTNER & LARSON and ERNIE SCHROEDER, a celebration of DON HECK, WERNER ROTH, and PAUL REINMAN, rare art by KIRBY, DITKO, AYERS, Hillman & Ziff-Davis remembered by SCHROEDER, HERB ROGOFF, and WALTER LITTMAN, FCA, ALEX TOTH, & more!

ALTER EGO #42

ALTER EGO #47

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, Mr. Monster, and more!

Edited by ROY THOMAS

Prices include US Postage. Outside the US, ADD PER ITEM: Magazines & DVDs, $2 ($7 Airmail)

#13: STATON, CARDY, EISNER, ROMITA! CARDY interview, ENGLEHART and MOENCH on kung-fu comics, “Pro2Pro” with STATON and CUTI on Charlton’s E-Man, pencil art gallery featuring MILLER, KUBERT, GIORDANO, SWAN, GIL KANE, COLAN, COCKRUM, and others, EISNER’s A Contract with God; “The Death of Romance (Comics)” (with art by ROMITA, SR. and TOTH), & more!

#12: GIBBONS, BYRNE, MILLER, FRENZ! ’70s and ’80s character revamps with DAVE GIBBONS, ROY THOMAS & KURT BUSIEK, TOM DeFALCO & RON FRENZ on Spider-Man’s 1980s “black” costume change, DENNY O’NEIL on Superman’s 1970 revamp, JOHN BYRNE’s aborted SHAZAM! series detailed, pencil art gallery with FRANK MILLER, LEE WEEKS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, CHARLES VESS, and more!

DAVE COCKRUM and MIKE GRELL go “Pro2Pro” on the Legion, pencil art gallery by BUSCEMA, BYRNE, MILLER, STARLIN, McFARLANE, ROMITA JR., SIENKIEWICZ, looks at Hercules Unbound, Hex, Killraven, Kamandi, MARS, Planet of the Apes, art & interviews with GARCÍALÓPEZ, KIRBY, WILLIAMSON, and more! New MIKE GRELL/BOB McLEOD cover!

#14: GRELL, COCKRUM, GARCÍALÓPEZ, KIRBY!

DENNY O’NEIL & Justice League Unlimited voice actor PHIL LaMARR discuss GL JOHN STEWART, NEW X-MEN pencil art by NEAL ADAMS, ARTHUR ADAMS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, ALAN DAVIS, JIM LEE, ADAM HUGHES, STORM’s 30-year history, animated TV’s black heroes (with TOTH art), TONY ISABELLA and TREVOR VON EEDEN on BLACK LIGHTNING, & more!

#8: ADAMS, VON EEDEN, & ’70s BLACK HEROES!

“PRO2PRO” between ADAM HUGHES & MIKE W. BARR (with UNSEEN HUGHES ART) and MATT WAGNER and DIANA SCHUTZ, “ROUGH STUFF” HUGHES PENCIL ART, STEVE RUDE’s unseen SPACE GHOST/ HERCULOIDS team-up, Bruce Jones’ ALIEN WORLDS & TWISTED TALES, an “OFF MY CHEST” editorial by MIKE W. BARR on the DC IMPLOSION, & more!

#2: HUGHES, RUDE, WAGNER, JONES, STEVENS!

“Weird Heroes” of the 1970s and ’80s!MIKE PLOOG discusses Ghost Rider, MATT WAGNER revisits The Demon, JOE KUBERT dusts off Ragman, GENE COLAN “Rough Stuff” pencil gallery, GARCÍALÓPEZ recalls Deadman, DC’s unpublished Gorilla Grodd series, PERLIN, CONWAY, & MOENCH on Werewolf by Night, & more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

#15: PLOOG, COLAN, WAGNER, KUBERT!

MIKE BARON and STEVE RUDE on NEXUS past and present, a colossal GIL KANE pencil art gallery, a look at Marvel’s STAR WARS comics, secrets of DC’s unseen CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS SEQUEL, TIM TRUMAN on his GRIMJACK SERIES, MIKE GOLD editorial, THANOS history, TIME WARP revisited, an allnew STEVE RUDE COVER, & more!

#9: RUDE, TRUMAN, GIL KANE & COSMIC HEROES!

“PRO2PRO” between KEITH GIFFEN, J.M. DeMATTEIS and KEVIN MAGUIRE on their JLA WORK, “ROUGH STUFF” PENCIL ART by ARAGONÉS, HERNANDEZ BROS., MIGNOLA, BYRNE, KIRBY, HUGHES, two unknown PLASTIC MAN movies, a look at the Joker’s history with O’NEIL, ADAMS, ENGLEHART, ROGERS & BOLLAND, an editorial by MARK EVANIER, & more!

#3: EVANIER, GIFFEN, MAGUIRE, BOLLAND!

“Toy Stories!” Behind the Scenes of Marvel’s G.I. JOE™ and TRANSFORMERS, “Rough Stuff” MIKE ZECK pencil gallery, ARTHUR ADAMS on Gumby, HE-MAN, ROM, MICRONAUTS, SUPER POWERS, SUPER-HERO CARS, art by HAMA, SAL BUSCEMA, GUICE, GOLDEN, KIRBY, TRIMPE, & new ZECK sketch cover!

#16: ZECK, ARTHUR ADAMS, GUICE, GOLDEN, KIRBY!

NEAL ADAMS and DENNY O’NEIL on RA’S AL GHUL’s history (with Adams art), O’Neil and MICHAEL KALUTA on THE SHADOW, MIKE GRELL on JON SABLE FREELANCE, HOWIE CHAYKIN interview, DOC SAVAGE in comics, BATMAN ART GALLERY by SIENKIEWICZ, SIMONSON, PAUL SMITH, BOLLAND, HANNIGAN, MAZZUCCHELLI, and others, and a new cover by ADAMS!

#10: ADAMS, GRELL, KALUTA, CHAYKIN!

“PRO2PRO” between JOHN BYRNE and CHRIS CLAREMONT on their X-MEN WORK and WALT SIMONSON and JOE CASEY on Walter’s THOR WORK, WOLVERINE PENCIL ART by BUSCEMA, LEE, COCKRUM, BYRNE, & GIL KANE, LEN WEIN’S TEEN WOLVERINE, PUNISHER’S 30TH & SECRET WARS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARIES (with UNSEEN ZECK ART), & more!

#4: BYRNE, CLAREMONT, CASEY, SIMONSON!

“Super Girls!” Supergirl retrospective with art by STELFREEZE, HAMNER, & others, Spider-Woman, Flare, Tigra, DC’s unused Double Comics with unseen BARRETTO and INFANTINO art, WOLFMAN and JIMENEZ on Donna Troy, Female comics pros Roundtable, Animated Super Chicks, art by SEKOWSKY, OKSNER, PÉREZ, HUGHES, GIORDANO, plus an 8-page COLOR ART GALLERY and COVER by BRUCE TIMM!

#17: TIMM, HAMNER, INFANTINO, HUGHES!

ROY THOMAS, KURT BUSIEK, and JOE JUSKO on CONAN (with art by JOHN BUSCEMA, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, NEAL ADAMS, JUSKO, & others), SERGIO ARAGONÉS & MARK EVANIER on GROO, DC’s never-published KING ARTHUR, pencil art gallery by KIRBY, PÉREZ, MOEBIUS, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, BOLLAND, & others, and a new BUSCEMA/JUSKO Conan cover!

#11: BUSCEMA, JUSKO, BOLLAND, ARAGONÉS!

Covers by ALEX ROSS & ADAM HUGHES, Wonder Woman TV series in-depth, LYNDA CARTER INTERVIEW, WONDER WOMAN TV ART GALLERY, Marvel’s TV Hulk, SpiderMan, Captain America, & Dr. Strange, LOU FERRIGNO INTERVIEW, super-hero cartoons you didn’t see, pencil gallery by JERRY ORDWAY, STAR TREK in comics, & JOHN ROMITA SR. editorial on Marvel’s movies!

#5: ROSS, HUGHES, LYNDA CARTER, LOU FERRIGNO!

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom.

SWAN/ANDERSON cover, history of BRAVE AND THE BOLD, JIM APARO interview, tribute to BOB HANEY, FANTASTIC FOUR ROUNDTABLE with STAN LEE, MARK WAID, and others, EVANIER & MEUGNIOT on DNAgents, pencil art by ROSS, TOTH, COCKRUM, HECK, ROBBINS, NEWTON, and BYRNE, DENNY O’NEIL editorial, a tour of METROPOLIS, IL, & more!

#7: APARO, BYRNE, LEE, EVANIER, & MORE!

TOMB OF DRACULA revealed with GENE COLAN and MARV WOLFMAN, LEN WEIN & BERNIE WRIGHTSON on Swamp Thing’s roots, STEVE BISSETTE and RICK VEITCH on their Swamp work, pencil art by SMITH, BRUNNER, PLOOG, BISSETTE, COLAN, & WRIGHTSON, editorial by ROY THOMAS, GODZILLA comics (with TRIMPE art), CHARLTON horror, PREZ, and more!

#6: WRIGHTSON, COLAN, THOMAS, GODZILLA!

“PRO2PRO” interview between GEORGE PÉREZ and MARV WOLFMAN (with UNSEEN PÉREZ ART), “ROUGH STUFF” featuring JACK KIRBY’s PENCIL ART, “GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD” on the first JLA/AVENGERS, “BEYOND CAPES” on DC and Marvel’s TARZAN (with KUBERT & BUSCEMA ART), “OFF MY CHEST” editorial by INFANTINO, & more!

#1: PÉREZ, KIRBY, BUSCEMA, INFANTINO, KUBERT!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, ’80s, and today through recurring (& rotating) departments. 100 PAGES, $9 US. 6-ISSUE SUBS: $36 Standard, $54 First Class (Canada: $66, Elsewhere: $72 Surface, $96 Airmail).

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

Collector

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Send letters to: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR c/o TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com There came a time when the old gods died... and readers sent their letters to TJKC, where they were often edited for space and content.

(We weren’t able to catch up with Kirby Award winner Marty Lasick this ish, but we’ll shoot for next time. Now on to comments:) After reading JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #45, I sat there and said to myself, there is always something to learn from this fabulous magazine. I did not have an inkling of an idea that Jack Kirby did a cameo as a police sketch artist in THE INCREDIBLE HULK TV series. Now, I will go out of my mind, in looking for this episode and hopefully I will be able to tape it from the Sci Fi Channel. I was amazed at the Jack Kirby CHARLIE CHAN sketches, especially the parting shot with a CHARLIE CHAN cover; that was very impressive and I am glad you keep Jack’s memory alive by displaying his sketches that you have gathered from his estate! Paul Dale Roberts, Elk Grove, CA Another way Jack was way ahead of his time? His creation of the “Reptar” dinosaur, as seen on page 37 of TJKC #45. The Nickelodeon kid’s show, RUGRATS features a recurring character called Reptar, a children’s adventure show dinosaur! I imagine Jack’s version came ten years earlier? RUGRATS debuted sometime in the early ’90s. Al Bigley, Monroe, NC (Yep, Jack’s Reptar would’ve been in the late 1970s. I think it may have been for the unrealized Kirby Comics line, which financing fell through for. The line seems to have had a couple of concepts that would’ve mimicked Jack’s Marvel stuff, perhaps in an intentional attempt to capitalize. Reptar was Devil Dinosaur; there was also Raam the Man Mountain, which was very Hulk-like, and possibly others.) A few months ago, Marvel found some old romance pages of Jack’s and decided to use them, along with other artists, and publish a new “Marvel Romance” trade paperback. The originals were returned to the Kirbys, and I found something on one of the pages I thought you’d appreciate. In LOVE ROMANCES #103 [shown at right], which had a cover date of January, 1963, there were two stories that Jack drew that were inked by Al Hartley. When Stan Lee sent the pages to Al Hartley, he wrote a note in the margin of the second page of the first story. He wrote, “Al— Sometimes, as in this panel, Kirby makes gals too old-looking—she should be about 17.” During the rest of the story, while the material clearly shows Jack’s work, the faces of the people have been somewhat softened to look younger. Take a look at the last panel on page 2 and you’ll see what I mean. Also, you’ll notice that the woman in the story originally had long hair, and for some reason they decided to make it short hair, 78

which is why there’s white-out throughout the story whenever we see her face and her hair. David Schwartz, Agoura Hills, CA (Original art from this period is hard to come by, so it’s really cool to see this piece, art corrections and all. Thanks for taking time to scan it, David!) I have a confession to make. Although I’m a huge Kirby collector I stopped reading the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. Oh, I still buy it! Religiously. But I don’t actually read it anymore since you went to the tabloid format. I like the fact that the art is reproduced nice and big. It’s just too hard to read without damaging the issue. So, each time a new JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR is published I put it right into a plastic bag and store it away unread, where it will be safe. I’m not happy about this. There are two solutions to this that I can think of. One would be for me to buy two copies of each issue (believe me, I’ve considered it). I’d have one to read and one to store in mint condition. Or, I can continue to buy The COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR and catch up on the issues I’ve missed.

I’m writing to encourage you to keep publishing THE COLLECTED... and to do so more often. When you get around to reprinting the tabloid-sized issues, print them in an easyto-read size like the earlier material. That way, I can have my cake and eat it too. Dave Burd via e-mail (Dave, as flattered as I am that you value this publication so highly, it’s really meant to be read, not collected. Store, bag, and slab the actual Kirby comics we discuss in TJKC—Jack’s work is worth it—but not the mag itself. We’re here to honor Jack’s memory, and putting TJKC on the shelf unread really doesn’t do that very well. But we did just release our fifth COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR volume, and all five are available, which reprint issues #1-22, plus new material. Will there be a sixth, and even later, volumes? It’ll depend on whether the individual issues continue to sell out. But even if we did one a year, it’d still be several years before we even got to the tabloid-size issues, and those are currently in no danger of selling out.) You know I am a big fan of your choice to reprint older Kirby comic stories in their entirety, so I was most pleased to see two more this issue. I must contest your claim though, that one was inked by Al Williamson. There’s simply no sign of Williamson whatsoever in that story! He certainly did ink some Kirby stories for Harvey, but not that one. This, to me, looks like a cross between Bill Ely or perhaps Bruno Premiani as inker(s).

I also must congratulate you for the 3-D back cover by Jack, Bill Black and Ray Zone. This is truly a fanboy dream come true for this died-in-the-wool CAPTAIN 3-D fan, and it was perfectly accomplished! Bravo! And to think someone actually owns the original pencil art to that famous unpublished comic book... wow! Thanks for sharing this! Jeff Gelb, Redondo Beach, CA (Yeah, we blew that one pretty well, and we heard from a lot of Al Williamson fans who pointed it out to us. Sorry, gang!) On Thursday, March 16, 2006 Neal Adams was a guest on the COAST TO COAST AM radio show, a program that deals with UFOs and other paranormal topics. Adams was discussing his new theory of “planetary growth,” but of course his career in comics was also touched upon. At one point during the show, a call came in from fringe-science maven Richard C. Hoagland, the great proponent of extraterrestrial archeology. It was Hoagland who made famous the alleged “Face on Mars” seen in NASA photos. Hoagland called to ask Adams about Jack Kirby—specifically, how could Kirby have known about the Face way back in 1958, when a Kirby story appeared in Harvey’s RACE FOR THE MOON #2 that seems to reference the supposed monument. The story is actually called “The Face on Mars!” The ultimate conspiracy-buff, Hoagland wonders if Kirby had inside information from government sources, and has even devoted space to the “Kirby connection” on his website: www.enterprisemission.com/forbiddenplanet.htm I started thinking about other instances of Kirby’s foresight. During the first Gulf War, I finally completed my collection of OMAC. If you recall, there was much talk of “smart bombs” in the war reportage at the time, and I was startled to see the concept and even the phrase used by Kirby back in the ’70s, when smart weapons were in their infancy. Karl Roulston via e-mail (We learned from Neal Kirby’s interview last issue, that Jack had fans at the forerunner to NASA, who’d send him classified items from time to time while he was working on the SKY MASTERS strip. Since the strip was running around the time of “The Face On Mars!”, it’s conceivable he knew about it.) I recently spoke with Larry Lieber, and asked him about those three Kirby HULK pages you ran a few issues back. Larry tells me he rescued them from a Marvel wastepaper basket at the time. As a great admirer of Kirby’s work, he wanted to study them for technique. Although Larry didn’t see Jack Kirby dispose of them, he surmises that Kirby was unhappy with those pages for some reason. All three pages were torn in half. From this we can infer that there may not be other pages that go with these three, and thus no lost Hulk story. Possibly this was a sequence from HULK #3 that Lee rejected, as I theorized earlier. It’s known when Lee rejected pages, artists were not paid for the rejected material. Since three pages represented an average day’s work to Kirby, he may have summarily disposed of them in disgust. Never dreaming of their future value, of course. We can all be grateful to Larry Lieber for salvaging those three pages from oblivion.

And I can only wonder what other Kirby sequences might have been lost to the Marvel trash barrel.... Will Murray, Quincy, MA (Let’s see what someone else has to say about those HULK pages—this time, someone who worked in the Bullpen in the 1970s:) The HULK pages brought back memories and as I understood it (although my memory fades), they were part of the original ending of the first story in issue #4. The bandaged head comes from Rick trying to use the Gamma equipment, and causing him (Hulk) injury, although the exact events of which I am uncertain. Angel Gabriele, Wabash, IN Here’s a scan of Horan’s CONFEDERATE AGENT page 214 [above]. The text that surrounds it tells the story of the Confederate attempt to incite riots by burning NYC which Jack illustrated on pages 77-84 of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED SPECIAL #162a. Tom Morehouse, Hawthorne, NJ (I should’ve known Tom M. would be the one to come through with the scan of the page Jack drew from! Thanks, Tom. Those are great likenesses, don’tcha think?) Now I know that the photograph of Dr. Mark Miller and the Kirbys (TJKC #45) is from the ’80s and Jack’s uninked pencils to the splash from JIMMY OLSEN #147 (TJKC #7) are from the ’70s, but maybe, just maybe, do you think Jack used himself as a model for Jimmy sitting in bed with his arms crossed? Hmmm? Even the pose is reversed, suggesting Jack looked in a mirror! Bruce Hannum, St. Paul, MN (Looks like it to us, Bruce!)

Thanks to Neal Kirby and to you, for sharing Jillian Kirby’s writing about her grandfather. The piece was incredibly moving, and I don’t mind telling you that it had me crying as I read it. The work you are doing is so valuable to me and countless others. Gregg Bendian, Fair Lawn, NJ composer, “Requiem for Jack Kirby” Back in TJKC #40, you showed an unused KAMANDI page—depicting Kamandi and Ben under attack by “unidentified fishy objects”— and speculated it was from issue #23 (one of the dolphin civilization issues). Shane Foley guessed it was from issue #33 (the UFO in the desert issue). You’re both wrong! Check out issue #25, where Kamandi, Ben and company face a variety of mutated sea life. The unused art numbered page 11 fits perfectly in between pages 10 and 11 of the published story, leading me to believe Jack simply removed it from the story to make room for an additional page later. And returning once again to the topic of Jack’s possible inspirations, has anyone ever commented on the similarity of the “Ocean Stealer” story in OMAC #7 and #8 to a 1964 episode of the UNDERDOG cartoon, where mad scientist Simon Bar Sinister creates a machine that compresses entire oceans into tiny jars? Craig McNamara, Shoreview, MN Once again, a fabulous issue covering some pretty cool and obscure Kirbyana (a new collector’s term I’ve coined) and, of course, some amazing pencil art. However, the real reason I’m writing is because I haven’t seen much in TJKC about MARVEL MASTERWORKS editions, and their ongoing effort to reproduce the classic early Marvel Age material in as close to original form as possible. I have recently been in touch with Mark Beazley, Associate Editor in charge of Special Projects, and he mentioned that they are currently working on a collection of early TALES OF SUSPENSE

monster/sci-fi tales. In addition, all the Masterworks volumes are being re-released in new hardcover editions that faithfully collect all stories and art in proper chronological order, including pinup pages and annuals. I recently acquired the Captain America volume, reprinting TOS #59-81, the Ant-Man/Giant-Man volume reprinting TALES TO ASTONISH 27 and #35-52, and the Sgt. Fury volume reprinting HOWLING COMMANDOS #1-13, which includes the Captain America cross-over appearance. All of these have tons of great Kirby art on covers and stories, and the reproduction is high quality, full color on glossy paper. There are many more volumes available, and the purchase price is far less than you’d pay for most of the original single issues they reproduce. Of course, it’s great to have some original issues, but this is an inexpensive way to get entire story runs for a decent price in a format you can read without diminishing the value. Most volumes are available at a discount rate through on-line sources. One of the best I’ve found is called Tales of Wonder, www.talesofwonder.com, which carries the full line of Masterworks in both the new and earlier editions, DC ARCHIVES with Kamandi, Challengers and Fourth World collections, as well as many other graphic novels, collections and books about comics. Bruce Younger, Rochester, NY (Yes, Tales of Wonder is a great retailer, and one who supports the TwoMorrows line as well. Now if we could just convince Marvel to pay the Kirby family royalties on reprints of Jack’s work...)

#46 Credits: John Morrow, Editor/Designer Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington, Production Assistant Proofreader Design/Layout assist Rand Hoppe, Webmaster Tom Ziuko, Colorist Chris Fama, Art Restoration SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Kevin Ainsworth Mark “Alex” Alexander Jean-Marie Arnon • Jerry Boyd John Byrne • Gerry Conway Nick Cuti • J.M. DeMatteis Jean Depelley • Mark Evanier Chris Fama • Shane Foley Barry Forshaw • Scott Fresina Mike Gartland • Jason Geyer Dick Giordano • David Hamilton Heritage Auctions Lisa Kirby • Neal Kirby Sean Kleefeld • Peter Koch Paul Levitz Nadia Mannarino Adam McGovern Al Milgrom Eric Nolen-Weathington Rachel Pollack Werner Rosenauer Mike Royer • David Schwartz Walter Simonson Jim Steranko Mike Thibodeaux Douglas Toole Ray Wyman • Tom Ziuko 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! KIRBYTECH! (#48) Jack’s the father of invention, so we’ll dissect his knack for creating high-tech gizmos and gadgets, from Iron Man’s armor to Machine Man and beyond! And wait’ll you see our cover inks by Terry Austin and Tom Scioli!

NEXT ISSUE: We explore Jack’s group mentality in JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #47, as we focus on Kirby’s SUPER TEAMS, from kid gangs and the Challengers of the Unknown, to big guns like the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers, and even Super Powers! Also included is a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, two pencil art galleries, a complete never-reprinted 1950s story, an interview with “The Disappointment Artist” author JONATHAN LETHEM about Kirby’s influence on him, a 1960s Marvel front cover inked by Kirby himself, a SUPER POWERS back cover inked by ROYER, and more! It ships in October, and the submission deadline is 8/1/06.

WARRIORS! (#49) Get fightin’ mad as we examine the numerous knights the King sent out to do battle throughout history. Plus: what Jack really went through on the battlefields of WWII, in his own words. Also: an amazing wraparound Thor cover inked by Jerry Ordway! ??? (#50) SEND US GUESSES! 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 unused page from New Gods #7 (Feb. 1972) shows a young Izaya confronting Darkseid, staff in hand, much as Moses confronts Pharaoh in The Ten Commandments. As is, this page doesn’t seem to fit “The Pact”, so we can assume it was the beginning of an idea for a sequence Jack abandoned.

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality!

CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

DICK GIORDANO

THE LEGION COMPANION

WALLY WOOD & JACK KIRBY CHECKLISTS

(160-page trade paperback) $22 US

Collects the best material from the hardto-find LEGION OUTPOST 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!

Reprinting the Eisner Award-winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7 and #8 (‘70s Marvel and ‘80s independents), featuring a new MICHAEL T. GILBERT cover, plus interviews with GILBERT, RUDE, GULACY, GERBER, DON SIMPSON, CHAYKIN, SCOTT McCLOUD, BUCKLER, BYRNE, DENIS KITCHEN, plus a NEW SECTION featuring over 30 pages of previouslyEach lists PUBLISHED COMICS WORK in unseen stuff! Edited by JON B. COOKE. detail, plus ILLOS, UNPUBLISHED WORK, and more. Filled with rare and unseen art! (224-page trade paperback) $29 US (68/100 Pages) $8 US EACH

COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOL. 3

(224-page Trade Paperback) $29 US

• 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!

BEST OF THE LEGION OUTPOST

(160-Page Trade Paperback) $24 US

• 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

An unprecedented assembly of talent drawing NEW autobiographical stories:

TOP ARTISTS DRAWING STORIES OF THEIR LIVES

STREETWISE

(192-page trade paperback) $29 US

The definitive book on WALLACE WOOD’s super-team of the 1960s, featuring interviews with Woody and other creators involved in the T-Agents over the years, plus rare and unseen art, including a rare 28-page story drawn by PAUL GULACY, UNPUBLISHED STORIES by GULACY, PARIS CULLINS, and others, and a JERRY ORDWAY cover. Edited by CBA’s JON B. COOKE.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS COMPANION

(208-page Trade Paperback) $26 US

• 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!!

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

ALL-STAR COMPANION VOL. 1

(200-page trade paperback) $26 US

Compiles material from the first two soldout issues of DRAW!, the “How-To” magazine on comics and cartooning! Tutorials by, and interviews with: 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 TARTA-KOVSKY (on animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more!

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US

A comprehensive look at Tuska’s personal and professional life, including early work with Eisner-Iger, crime comics of the 1950s, and his tenure with Marvel and DC Comics, as well as independent publishers. The book includes extensive coverage of his 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 and a thorough index of his work are included, plus original artwork, photos, sketches, previously unpublished art, interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus George’s own words!

ART OF GEORGE TUSKA

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US

A comprehensive history of the NEW TEEN TITANS, with interviews and rare art by MARV WOLFMAN, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, LEN WEIN, & others, a Silver Age section with NEAL ADAMS, NICK CARDY, DICK GIORDANO, & more, plus CHRIS CLAREMONT and WALTER SIMONSON on the X-MEN/ TEEN TITANS crossover, TOM GRUMMETT, PHIL JIMENEZ & TERRY DODSON on their ‘90s Titans work, a new cover by JIMENEZ, & intro by GEOFF JOHNS! Written by GLEN CADIGAN.

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1 TITANS COMPANION

Prices include US Postage. Outside the US, ADD PER ITEM: Magazines & DVDs, $2 ($7 Airmail) • Softcover books, $3 ($10 Airmail) • Hardcover books, $6 ($15 Airmail)

(128-page Trade Paperback) $19 US

• 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!

MARK VOGER’s biography of the artist of LOIS LANE & CAPTAIN MARVEL!

THE LIFE & ART OF KURT SCHAFFENBERGER

HERO GETS GIRL!

(176-pg. Paperback) $24 US

• 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!

Top creators discuss all aspects of the DESIGN OF COMICS:

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

OUT! SOLD

NNER! RD WI A W A EISNER

THE TWOMORROWS LIBRARY

THE

• DAVE MCKEAN • KEVIN O’NEILL • BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH and other gents!

• LOUISE SIMONSON • DAVE DORMAN • GREG RUCKA & MORE!

(168-page trade paperback) $24 US

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $19 US

VOL. 5: GARCÍA-LÓPEZ

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

VOL. 2: GEORGE PÉREZ

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $19 US

VOL. 6: ARTHUR ADAMS

VOL. 3: BRUCE TIMM

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

(120-minute DVD) $35 US

This DVD companion to the Modern Masters book series gives you a personal tour of George Pérez’s studio, and lets you watch step-bystep as the fan-favorite artist illustrates a special issue of Top Cow’s Witchblade! Also, see George as he sketches for fans at conventions, and hear his peers and colleagues—including Marv Wolfman and Ron Marz—share their anecdotes and personal insights along the way!

MODERN MASTERS: IN THE STUDIO WITH GEORGE PÉREZ DVD

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

VOL. 4: KEVIN NOWLAN

VOL. 1: ALAN DAVIS

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

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!

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON

(200-page Trade Paperbacks) $17 US EACH ALL THREE BOOKS: $34 US

Each collects MARK EVANIER’S best essays and commentaries, plus new essays and illustrations by SERGIO ARAGONÉS!

THE DARK AGE Documents the ‘80s and ‘90s era of comics, from THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN to the “polybagged premium” craze, the DEATH OF SUPERMAN, renegade superheroes SPAWN, PITT, BLOODSHOT, CYBERFORCE, & more! Interviews with TODD McFARLANE, DAVE GIBBONS, JIM LEE, KEVIN SMITH, ALEX ROSS, MIKE MIGNOLA, ERIK LARSEN, J. O’BARR, DAVID LAPHAM, JOE QUESADA, MIKE ALLRED and others, plus a color section! Written by MARK VOGER, with photos by KATHY VOGLESONG.

MODERN MASTERS SERIES

(168-page Trade Paperback) $24 US

• BRUCE TIMM • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • ADAM HUGHES

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:

COMIC BOOKS & OTHER NECESSITIES OF LIFE WERTHAM WAS RIGHT! SUPERHEROES IN MY PANTS!

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom.

(204-page Trade Paperback with COLOR SECTION) $26 US

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

A celebration of the rich history of British Comics Artists and their influence on the US with in-depth interviews and art by:

CALL OR WRITE FOR OUR NEW 2006 FULLCOLOR CATALOG, OR DOWNLOAD IT NOW AT www.twomorrows.com

(336-Page Trade Paperback) $44 US

The definitive biographical memoir on one of comics’ finest artists, 20 years in the making! Former associate BHOB STEWART traces Wood’s life and career, with contributions from many artists and writers who knew Wood personally, making this a remarkable compendium of art, insights and critical commentary! From childhood drawings & early samples to nearly endless comics pages (many unpublished), this is the most stunning display of Wood art ever assembled! BILL PEARSON, executor of the Wood Estate, contributed rare drawings from Wood’s own files, while art collector ROGER HILL provides a wealth of obscure, previously unpublished Wood drawings and paintings.

WALLACE WOOD

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US

TRUE BRIT

(168-page softcover) $26 US (192-page trade hardcover) $49 US

CELEBRATING GREAT COMIC BOOK ARTISTS OF THE UK

The ultimate retrospective on COLAN, with rare drawings, photos, and art from his nearly 60-year career, plus a comprehensive overview of Gene’s glory days at Marvel Comics! MARV WOLFMAN, DON MCGREGOR and other writers share script samples and anecdotes of their Colan collaborations, while TOM PALMER, STEVE LEIALOHA and others show how they approached the daunting task of inking Colan’s famously nuanced penciled pages! Plus there’s a NEW PORTFOLIO of neverbefore-seen collaborations between Gene and such masters as JOHN BYRNE, MICHAEL KALUTA and GEORGE PÉREZ, and all-new artwork created specifically for this book by Gene! Available in Softcover and Deluxe Hardcover (limited to 1000 copies, with 16 extra black-and-white pages and 8 extra color pages)!

A comprehensive examination of the Silver Age JLA written by MICHAEL EURY (author of the critically acclaimed CAPTAIN ACTION and co-author of THE SUPERHERO BOOK). It traces the JLA’s development, history, imitators, and early fandom through vintage and all-new interviews with the series’ creators, an issue-byissue index of the JLA’s 1960-1972 adventures, classic and never-before-published artwork, and other fun and fascinating features. Contributors include DENNY O’NEIL, MURPHY ANDERSON, JOE GIELLA, MIKE FRIEDRICH, NEAL ADAMS, ALEX ROSS, CARMINE INFANTINO, NICK CARDY, and many, many others. Plus: An exclusive interview with STAN LEE, who answers the question, “Did the JLA really inspire the creation of Marvel’s Fantastic Four?” With an all-new cover by BRUCE TIMM (TV’s Justice League Unlimited)!

AGAINST THE GRAIN: MAD ARTIST

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: GENE COLAN

JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION VOL. 1

SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

COMICS ABOVE GROUND