Jack Kirby Collector #47 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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Step-by-step demo of painting methods by cover artist ALEX “Unsung Heroes!” DON NEWTON HORLEY (Heavy Metal, Vertigo, spotlight, GERBER and COLAN on DC, Wizards of the Coast), plus Howard the Duck, CARLIN and FINGEROTH on Marvel’s Assistant interviews and demos by Banana Sundays’ COLLEEN COOVER, Editors’ Month, the unrealized Unlimited Powers TV show, TONY Pigtale’s OVI NEDELCU, behindthe-scenes on Adult Swim’s ISABELLA’s aborted plans for The Champions, MARK GRUENWALD MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS, MIKE tribute, art by SAL BUSCEMA, MANLEY, links, color section & JOHN BYRNE, unused NEWTON/ more! HORLEY cover! Edited by RUBINSTEIN cover, and more! MIKE MANLEY. Edited by MICHAEL EURY. (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

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pages, sketches, layouts, and Silver and Bronze Ages, when unused inks by P. CRAIG RUSSELL, kryptonite came in multiple colors MIKE ALLRED, YANICK PAQUETTE, and super-pets flew the skies! and LEE WEEKS, who contribute Features all-new interviews with commentaries on the art, plus a ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, retrospective art gallery on the late GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, , JOHN BUSCEMA, a new, profusely MOONEY, O’NEIL, OKSNER, illustrated interview with JOHN PASKO, ROZAKIS, SHOOTER, ROMITA JR., a new ROMITA JR. WEIN, WOLFMAN, and others, cover, and more! Edited by BOB plus tons of rare and unseen art! McLEOD. By BACK ISSUE’S Michael Eury! (100-page magazine) $9 US (240-page trade paperback) $29 US

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Contents

THE NEW

Kirby’s SUPER TEAMS! OPENING SHOT/ UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (let’s give the editor a break) UNCOVERED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 (a never-seen DC team-up plot)

ISSUE #47, FALL 2006

INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (Kirby in Cleveland) UPSTARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (the evolution of Kirby’s teams) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 (super-team pencils!) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 (Mark Evanier may have laid to rest the mystery of FF #1’s inker) REIMAGINEERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 (the Eternal John Romita Jr. speaks) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 (Barry Forshaw claws his way through a monstrously funny look at obscure Kirby work) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 (a complete reprint of the first Boy Explorers story from 1946!) NOVEL APPROACHES . . . . . . . . . . .33 (author Jonathan Lethem has a lot to say about Kirby) MUSEUM PAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 (Adam McGovern gets dramatic...) ORIGINS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 (secrets of the Fantastic Four) ACCOLADES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 (Kirby Award winner Marty Lasick on knowing Jack and Roz) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . .49 (Charlie? Herbie? Z-Z-1-2-3? We’re so confused...) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 (gorgeous storyboards from the 1978 FF animated series) FOURGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 (a very family-friendly look at the FF) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . . .78 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (the fabulous Fifties live again!) Front cover inks: JACK KIRBY Back cover inks: MIKE ROYER Cover colors: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: 3-D Man, Avengers, Captain America, Crystal, Dr. Doom, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Gorilla Man, Hawkeye, Herbie, Hogun, Human Robot, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Janus, Machine Man, Marvel Boy, Mr. Fantastic, Recorder, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Spider-Man, Thing, Thor, Vandral, Venus, Wasp, Watcher, X-Men, Yellow Claw TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Aquaman, Batman, Black Racer, Boy Commandos, Clark Kent, Darkseid, Demon, Devilance, Dingbats, Dr. Fate, Flash, Forever People, Green Lantern, Guardian, Hawkman, Infinity Man, Joker, Lightray, Luthor, Mark Moonrider, Morgan Edge, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Orion, Penguin, Red Tornado, Robin, San Diego FiveString Mob, Super Powers, Superman, Wonder Woman TM & ©2006 DC Comics • 2001: A Space Odyssey is a TM of Turner Entertainment, Inc. • Boy Explorers TM & ©2006 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estate • Roxie's Raiders TM & ©2006 RubySpears Productions • The Avenger TM & ©2006 Condé Nast • Captain Glory TM & ©2006 Jack Kirby Estate

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 13, No. 47, Fall 2006. Published quarterly by & ©2006 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Christopher Irving, 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. ISSN 1932-6912

Opening Shot

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

s 2006 comes to an end, everyone at TwoMorrows is gearing up for a record-breaking ’07, as the House That The Jack Kirby Collector Built is readying a ton of exciting new publications, and reaching out to new customers and markets in an effort to bring new life to comics fandom anywhere we can! I can’t begin to tell you about all the exciting, top secret stuff we’re working on (stay tuned to www.twomorrows.com for announcements), but it’s requiring me to spend a lot more time on boring old “business stuff,” and leaving less time for fun things like TJKC. So as much as I wanted to get issue #50 out in time for next summer’s San Diego Comicon, I’m going to play it smart, and take the rest of 2006 away from TJKC to do such exciting tasks as revamping our online ordering system, upgrading our computers, and just dealing with the day-to-day tasks that are required whenever a business is on a growth spurt like we are. (Hey, I may even find some time to actually take a vacation that doesn’t involve a comic convention... I know: Blasphemy!) But don’t worry; after this short break, come the beginning of January 2007, I’ll get right on issue #48. The end result is a longer than normal space between this issue and next, but it’s needed. So please be patient; I’ve got the next few issues all planned out, and #49 should be shipping just in time for San Diego 2007. Then, with what I’ve got planned for #50, it may take a little extra time to get that one done, too. But be brave, Kirbyites; I promise it’ll be worth the wait(s)! (As I write this, I just got the final cover art for #50 in my e-mail box, and man, it’s a doozy!) In the meantime, there’s so much Kirby stuff out (or about to be) that you won’t be lonely. For starters, get your fix of Kirby pencils art by checking out the pencil archives now available at the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center (www.kirbymuseum.org). Join now! Shane Foley noticed that in the new Essential Thor Vol. 3, they printed the original, uncorrected version of the cover of Thor #148 (and others!). We see why Stan changed it—Kirby’s focus for Thor seemed a little uncharacteristically off. (Regarding uncorrected stuff by Jack, Shane also noted that the original art for the cover of FF #85 was for sale recently. Evidently Kirby’s art had the sleeping Four gritting their teeth, but the published version was changed.) Those of you who think we’ve been too hard on Vince Colletta at times should take a look at the January issue of Back Issue magazine (#20). Longtime comics inker Bob McLeod (who recently took on the job of helming our newest magazine Rough Stuff, which shows layouts, roughs, unused pencils, and inks from top artists throughout comics history), thought it was time for an article on Vinnie, determining whether he really was the worst inker in comics history. To see his findings (including some nice Kirby art), don’t miss it! And lastly, next Spring (coinciding with the release of the Fantastic 4 movie sequel), Marvel will be publishing a special version of the “Lost” Lee/Kirby story that ran in altered form in Fantastic Four #108. This project started when Marvel’s Tom Brevoort asked me to update my article about the story (which ran back in TJKC #9) for FF Masterworks Vol. 10. Since the Kirby family was to receive a payment for use of Jack’s pencil art, I agreed. Since then, Tom thought it’d be cool to get Stan Lee to dialogue the reassembled original version, and we’ve tracked down copies of Jack’s pencils for most of the published pages. So the issue will feature two versions of the story: One modern, with inks by Danny Miki and Richard Isanove, and one classic, with Joe Sinnott inks. This is an inspired project, and the Kirby family will receive what is likely the best page rate for any Kirby story ever published. I encourage you all to go out and buy it when it ships next year. (And best wishes to our pal Joe Sinnott, as he helps wife Betty recover from a recent health problem. All of Kirbydom’s prayers are with you both.) Lest you think I’m letting everyone else do all the Kirby stuff while I’m taking my brief breather, I will hint that I’m in negotiations for a really exciting Kirby-related project that, if it sees the light of day, will be something any reader of this mag will cherish. I can’t say any more yet, for fear of squelching it, but I’ll have a full report here if, and when, I can spill the beans! And just like the theme for issue #50, don’t bother asking me what it is: I ain’t tellin’! Now enjoy this issue, and let me rest! ★

Gimme A Break!

ur front cover this issue is a piece Jack did for the Marvelmania merchandise catalog, circa 1969. It was sent to members of the ill-fated Marvel fan club, and to hear Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman’s comments about the company, not many customers got much more than the catalog! Inks are by Kirby himself, with new colors by Tom Ziuko. Our back cover this issue is art for a poster that DC Comics sent to comics shops to promote the first Super Powers mini-series in 1984. Inks are by Mike Royer, and the original colorist was some guy named Ziuko (weird coincidence, huh?). This is a great rendition that has Jack drawing a lot of DC characters for the first time, and it’s fun to see how they disguised a certain Lord of Apokolips.

Under The Covers

Uncovered

Unseen Team-Up!

by John Morrow hat a cool surprise it was to discover the below, unused (as far as I’ve been able to determine) 4-page plot for some kind of a DC Super-Team project! This was in a batch of Kirby photocopies, and the typewriting looks to be from Jack’s machine. But the question is, what project was this for? At first glance, you’d think it was possibly the original plot for DC’s first Super Powers mini-series, perhaps planned for sixteen parts (or perhaps four issues with four chapters each). However, the word “viewers” in the first sentence makes me think this was more likely meant for the Super Friends cartoon show (or the Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers version of its final seasons). With Jack having worked in animation (and even doing some storyboards for Super Friends), perhaps he was asked to kick out a plot as DC prepared to revamp it to tie-in with the Super Powers mini. But I don’t recall Sivana ever appearing on the cartoon, or in the comics, so it’s a safe bet this was never actually used. If anyone knows different, please write and let us know (like I have to ask!). ★

Segment One “ENTER THE WORLD SHAKER” This sequence introduces both good and evil teams to the viewers. The Justice League finds and attacks the super-villains in the swamp area where their camouflaged base is located. In this initial chapter, the heroes learn about Sivana’s plan to blackmail the world powers. Segment Two “ENEMY FROM SPACE!” Superman and Green Lantern team up to battle Luthor and Captain Cold. the villains are in a UFO which is pursued to an asteroid where the action takes place. Segment Three “BIG CITY BREAKOUT!” By the use of clever tricks, the Joker frees several super-villains from a maximum security installation outside Gotham City. Batman and Robin with the possible assistance of another superhero engage their protagonists in an atmosphere of skyscrapers, heavy traffic, discotheques and warehouses. Segment Four “THE SINISTER CIRCUS!” An electronic part of radical design is the objective when the aforementioned circus arrives in the town where it’s being kept. Wonder Woman and Hawkman are pitted against the Cheetah and Grodd, the Super-Gorilla. There is a bit of action a la King Kong between Grodd and Hawkman on the rooftop of a nuclear project. Segment Five “DEFEAT THE INVINCIBLES!” In this segment, the Justice League dispatches Samurai and Black Vulcan to a secret Institute where recruited mercenaries are being trained, through a

bizarre series of mental and physical treatments into super-assassins. The villains who run this school employ weapons which provide spectacular action. Segment Six “THE DEADLY DEEP!” An undersea drilling operation that effects an entrance to the giant cavern of the crystal mountain spurs a clash between the Justice League and the super-villains. Aquaman would be featured in this sequence with aid from one of his League members. Super-subs and weapons would be heavily stressed. Segment Seven “SAFARI TO NOWHERE!” In order to track down the factory which is producing equipment for the evil “Earthquake Plan”, the super-heroes send a group to Africa to find and attack the source. In addition to jungle adventure, the heroes encounter fierce resistance in the enemy’s hidden lair.

Segment Ten “A JUMP THROUGH TIME!” The super-villains devise a complex back-pack which enables them to literally jump through time like parachutists. Managing to duplicate these packs, members of the Justice League follow their foes to Nazi-occupied Normandy before DDay. The heroes don’t find the “earthquake hammer” being built there, but they do help the Allied forces to a victorious landing. Segment Eleven “THE GREATEST CAPTURE EVER MADE!” Sivana realizes that Superman is the most dangerous threat to his plan. He lures the super-hero into a demonic trap of green Kryptonite which will draw the man of steel into space and bind him like Prometheus to a passing meteor. This will take his enemy on a flight into eternity and rid him of his presence. The Justice League goes into action and battles the villains in space before they effect Superman’s rescue.

Segment Eight “THE SUN GUN” The villains decide upon a countermove to destroy the Justice League and its headquarters. A space weapon which used the power of the sun with laser precision is maneuvered in place to do the job. The super-heroes retaliate in time to avoid their demise.

Segment Twelve “THIS TOWN MUST DIE!” A small western community is picked by the villains for destruction in a test of their earthquake device on a limited scale. As H-hour approaches, the super-heroes are unable to stop the test. But, they do save the townspeople before the entire area is shaken to bits.

Segment Nine “FILL ME WITH FEAR!” Pressure continues to plague the Justice League. This time it comes in the form of fear-waves,an insidious byproduct of bio-rhythms which attack the neural system of the brain. The superheroes are almost frozen into immobility, but overcome this devastating condition to track down and destroy the “fear-machine” in an old, eerie mansion.

Segment Thirteen “BATTLE OF THE REPLICAS!” H-hour also approaches for the world. The Justice League knows that somewhere, the earthquake hammer is being installed to generate mammoth vibrations in the crystal mountain. The heroes must learn the location of both and mount an attack against their enemies. One group of super-heroes corners some of the foes and defeats them--only to discover that

they’ve been fighting deadly duplicated constructed to divert them. Segment Fourteen “THE STREETS OF THE DEAD!” Aquaman and a team-mate find and trail on of Sivana’s subs to sunken Atlantis. The ancient ruin is now encased in a giant air-bubble and is used by the super-villains as a stopover enroute to the crystal mountain cavern. There is action in the sea with trained, mutated sharks and a rugged fight with the villains in the dead city where they set off a nuclear device in a temple idol. The heroes escape with valuable information for the Justice League. Segment Fifteen “THE CRACK OF DOOM!” The super-heroes now know the location of the crystal mountain and that the earthquake hammer is being put into place to do its infamous work. They also know that a possible error could cause it to destroy the Earth itself. However, the villains make an all-out effort to contain the Justice League. They trap its members in a force shield and fill it with sleep gas. The heroes break out of this trap and are stopped by heavygravity machines which pin them to the earth. But they eliminate all obstacles to prepare to confront the villains in the great cavern. Segment Sixteen “FINAL FURY!” In this last segment, the Justice League faces Sivana and his cohorts as the earthquake device goes into action. The battle is fought in a doomsday atmosphere in which the Earth is on the brink of destruction. But the superheroes stop the operation before it can reach a fatal pitch.

Innerview (below) A partially inked, unused page from Demon #1 (Aug. 1972) which ran with this interview. (next page) A fan drawing of Mark Moonrider from G.A.S.Lite. The TJKC editor remembers seeing the original of this drawing for sale at the 1978 Atlanta Fantasy Fair (his first big con) for the ridiculous sum of $25. He passed on it, much to his current regret. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

Cleveland Rocks! Submitted by Bruce Hannum (Reader Bruce Hannum received the fanzine G.A.S.Lite, The Official Magazine of the Cleveland Graphic Arts Society Vol. 2, #10 in the mail in 1973, shortly after the cancellation of Kirby’s Fourth World series. Inside was the following interview with Jack, which was conducted by Peter Kuper—the current artist and writer on “Spy Vs. Spy” for Mad Magazine—when he was 14, and Seth Tobocman, co-founder with Peter of World War III Illustrated, which has been running since 1979. Our thanks to Bruce, Peter, and Seth for their permission to reprint this interview.) Q: Could you repeat for the readers the symbolism of The Hulk? A: The Hulk—when he is the Hulk—is the epitome of ignorance and therefore unstoppable, because ignorance combined with power is unstoppable. He represents everything that is primitive

and that’s why he is the way he is, and is so hard to contend with. A caveman endowed with super-hero powers is unstoppable and becomes overwhelming. When he is Dr. Banner he’s entirely different. He is a disciplined man, well-educated and under control.

ociety

Q: And without much power? A: Well, he’s got power in his knowledge. That’s symbolic of all of us, because when we’re out of control we’re all capable of doing as much damage as The Hulk. Q: Could you give us a brief run-down on your career in comics? A: I began probably with the kind of stuff that needed improvement and over the years it got improvement because I worked at it and, of course, today I still see avenues where my art can be either changed or improved. Q: What single character is your favorite? A: All of them, because when I work on a character, each character is important to me. I try to make them as dimensional as possible. It’s not an ego trip; it’s just a responsibility to see that I don’t give the reader caricatures. Q: Where does most of the influence come from in your art... such as style? A: The style is your own to begin with if you have no formal schooling in art. You know, you swipe and you cannibalize and you take the best of a lot of the other artists and they become your school—they become your influence; but the style that develops is your own. Q: Was there anyone who influenced your writing? A: There wasn’t a certain writer; just my experience of writers—all sorts of writers. I combined whatever I learned from them with my own sense of drama. Each person has his own sense of drama. It could be passionate drama or sometimes it could be very cool drama. I feel that extreme drama will make a larger impact on the reader. Q: What do you have planned for the future? A: Anything that’s assigned to me by DC. Q: Are there any new concepts that you will be bringing up, or new characters? Such as... A: I’m not going to give you “such as” because I would be giving away my ideas. I can only say that I am entertaining a variety of ideas which I will submit to the proper people and see what they think of them. Q: What, if any, is the symbolism of Galactus and the Silver Surfer? A: Galactus is an overwhelming force; an energetic, overwhelming force which I believe we all have to contend with from time to time; a force we can’t control. He represents a force as strong as a hurricane or a natural disaster of some kind, like a landslide or a cyclone. Those are forces that we can’t predict or control. They just come and if we’re in their path we can get hurt and if we’re not in their path we can only watch them and just wonder at the bigness of them. Galactus represents that kind of thing. In the instance

of the Fantastic Four, the Fantastic Four represented the challenge to Man to stand against those forces, like Galactus. Q: Do you have a favorite inker? A: No, they are all my favorites, because they represent a variety of styles which I like to see on my work. Q: Do you pick up most of the comics that come out on the stands? A: Not really. No. Being a pro, I receive comics from time to time. I haven’t got time to go out and browse through the newsstands, so I collect what comics are sent to me and I keep those. Q: What to you think of Steve Ditko’s Mr. A? A: I like anything Steve does. Steve is a very creative person and I respect him as an individual and I expect anything good from Steve.

putting too many restrictions on the artists and writers. Do you think this is true? A: I wouldn’t like to make a comment about organizational structure because I believe that this kind of thing should be thrashed out among the professionals themselves and certainly not discussed with the fans, so if there are any areas of conflict I believe it’s between whoever is really involved professionally. Q: What do you think of the Comics Code? A: I think it is very flexible and very fair and certainly more reasonable these days. Q: Have you ever had trouble with it in your earlier days or now?

way if our own images act out the fantasies that we entertain. Q: Is it true that Jim Steranko and Mr. Miracle are one and the same? A: Let me say that some of Jim Steranko is in Mr. Miracle, but not all because Mr. Miracle has a mystic tie-up which has nothing to do with real people. Jim Steranko was a good escape artist before he became an artist. He is certainly a fine entertainer and what he says is true. I did discuss that I had an idea that was similar to what he had done and certainly Jim Steranko being part of my experience was a part of the idea. Q: How many years have you been in comics? A: Probably close to 35.

Q: Do you intend to have in The Demon any of the regular other DC characters like you had in the New Gods? A: Anything can happen in a comic strip and we can bring in any kind of a character if we think that it would make a commercially good story, so characters can come from any corner. They can come from the gods, they can come from adventure characters, or certainly from traditional DC characters.

Q: What is the symbolism behind Orion? A: Orion is you. Orion is people who are not good, who are not evil, but have the potential for both and when they exercise both, they get a reaction and have to take the risks for what they do or say. Orion does, too. He is tormented by his own potential for savagery, by his own potential for goodness.

Q: What exactly is Big Barda? Is there any symbolism behind it? A: Well, I think Big Barda represents a woman to me... all women. And, of course, I was raised among women like Big Barda, large women, warm women. And despite the bigness of their size, they’re very feminine, and a man can regard them with respect, which I do. Q: It has been said that you like drawing buildings and rocks and huge cities and structures. A: It’s not the main thing I enjoy doing, but it represents something I know very well, and that’s the city. Q: Where did you pick up this technique of the super buildings? A: I’m basically a city boy and have lived in the city all my life, and certainly the first thing I know about is a building, because it’s one of the first things I saw when I hit the street as a child. I’m quite sure that if you had to draw a building, you’d do it very well if you were a city boy. Q: What do you think of Neal Adams’ art work? A: I think Neal is a fine artist. He is an artist in an illustrative sense—a fine illustrator. Q: What do you think of Denny O’Neil’s relevance in Green Lantern/Green Arrow? A: Gee, I think Denny O’Neil is a good writer and he can handle a subject well. Q: What do you have to say about the new young group of artists coming into comics now? A: New artists coming in or who really want to get in should be encouraged and given avenues of opportunity where they can make some headway in comics. I think what comics need is a variety of new writing styles, new drawing styles, new thinking styles, and anybody who wants to do comics I think should be able to do them. Q: How many pages do you do a day? A: I do three comfortably. Q: Alex Toth has said that the publishers are

A: I think everybody did, because when you first devise something in response to a reaction, it gets severe and then begins to lessen. Q: Could you repeat what you said yesterday about your gods? A: To put it short, the gods are giant reflections of ourselves. They are ourselves as we think we should be or we think we might be. They are idealistic and dramatic versions. They make a lot more noise than we do and therefore attract a lot more attention than we do. We feel that we’ve been fulfilled in some

Q: Is there anything you would like to say to finish off this interview? A: I thank you guys for your interest. And if you represent a group or a club, I thank them for their interest. I’d like to say hello to anyone who reads what we had to say here, and I hope their interest in comics keeps up. I’d like them to know that every professional who works in comics is only trying to do his best to entertain them and give them their twenty cents worth (or whatever a comic costs). That’s all. ★ 5

UPSTARTS (below) Simon & Kirby splash page from the Boy Commandos story in Detective Comics #79 (Sept. 1943). Art restoration by Chris Fama. (next page, top) X-Men #17 panel (Nov. 1965). (next page, bottom) Presentation art for the Dingbats of Danger Street; this was originally part of a concept called “Death Fingers.” Boy Commandos, Dingbats TM & ©2006 DC Comics. X-Men TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Group Dynamics, Kirby Style

The Evolution of Kirby’s Team Concept, by Bruce Younger n 1941, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby introduced the Newsboy Legion in the pages of Star Spangled Comics. The formula was a simple one: A beneficent and experienced mentor takes charge of a group of plucky youngsters, and together they get involved in all sorts of adventures. Each member has a distinct personality— Tommy, the shy, sensitive, reasonable one (read “normal”); Scrapper, the tough guy; Gabby, the hot-head; and Big Words, the smart one. The Newsboy Legion was the first book in an evolutionary creative process for Kirby that yielded no fewer than eight more team concepts between 1942 and 1972. (For the purpose of this article, I am only including teams that had no independent affiliation, such as Young Allies or Avengers, or concepts that involved a loosely affiliated group that all appear in one book, such as New Gods or the Eternals.) Simon & Kirby were obviously on a roll with the success of their Newsboy Legion, and just a couple of months later produced Boy Commandos, which not only played off of the popularity of

the Kid Gang concept, but also the growing nationalism with the US’s entry into World War II. Joe & Jack kept the same basic pattern they used for Newsboy Legion: Rip Carter, the beneficent and experienced mentor, takes charge of a group of plucky youngsters orphaned by war—the shy, sensitive one, the tough guy, the hothead and the brain. Four seems to have been the magic number, giving Kirby the diversity and dynamics within the group without confusing the reader. Although he sometimes expanded that number to five to avoid too much similarity, he continued to use this as a template for most of his team concepts. After the war, Joe & Jack took their talents to Harvey, coming up with two Kid Gangs: Boys’ Ranch and what turned out to be their last kid concept, Boy Explorers. By now, their formula was well established, and in each of the series (even the short-lived Explorers), it’s easy to see how the template was filled in for each of the character types. But the times, they were a’changin’. After the European and Korean wars, America had grown up. We all know what happened to cause the comic glut of the early ’50s and the subsequent collapse and self-censorship of the industry. Along with many other genres, Kid Gangs went by the wayside, as did the creative team of Simon & Kirby. It’s important to note that, within the pages of their Kid Gang stories, Joe & Jack created something unique that still goes largely unrecognized: The dedicated team. By that, I mean a team that is formed out of some shared experience and has no affiliation with any other group and whose members do not appear in solo adventures. With the demise of the popularity of the kid team, however, Kirby took what he had learned about team structure, roles and group dynamics, and applied it to a new concept developed for DC: The first adult dedicated team, and the first dedicated team of the Silver Age, Challengers of the Unknown. Basically, the Challengers were a grown-up version of the Kid Gangs of the ’40s and ’50s, without the mentor figure. The concept, however, had one additional and unique aspect to it: The group was brought together by a near-death experience. In this way, the Challengers were the direct antecedents of the Fantastic Four. Kirby’s magic formula of four distinct characters once again proved to work well. We get Professor Hale as the brain, Red Ryan as the hot-head, Ace as the cool, sensitive one, and the tough guy played by ex-boxer Rocky. The formula worked so well that, after being featured four times in Showcase, they were given their own book. The Challengers of the Unknown set the stage for what was to come. While most comic historians agree on the Flash’s appearance in Showcase #4 being the official start of the Silver Age, I believe the Challengers were actually the transition between the Golden and Silver Ages, as well as the differentiation point between the DC House Style and the Marvel. If you look at the early Challengers stories, you can see a reflection of the same style that Kirby had used in the ’40s on titles like Captain America and Newsboy Legion. There’s a sketchiness, a roughness in the finishing that was common to Golden Age art, but was also a hallmark of much of Simon & Kirby’s art through the ’50s. In addition, the way Kirby used unusual panel shapes and page layouts is very reminiscent of the way S&K designed pages for many of their Golden Age books, with

interlocking panels that look almost like puzzle pieces, and shapes such as circles. By the end of his run on Challs, however, panels have fallen into a uniform pattern of rectangles, either 4- or 6-to-apage, and the inking of Wally Wood gives Kirby’s work a slick, refined look, all of which established the standard for his subsequent work at Marvel. The success of Challengers at DC must have been proof to Kirby that the tried-and-true formula he and Simon developed for the Kid Gangs could still work for a more sophisticated audience, especially with influence from science-fiction and the fantasy. It’s no surprise, then, that after his return to Marvel Jack helped Stan Lee develop what was probably the greatest creation of the Silver Age—the Fantastic Four, the first ever super-powered dedicated team, and the embodiment of the pattern established with the Newsboy Legion. For the first time, Kirby’s magic formula comes into play in a literal sense: Reed Richards is a brilliant scientist, who, as Mr. Fantastic, brings both mental

and physical flexibility into play; Benjamin Grimm stars as the toughest tough guy ever in his guise as the toughskinned Thing; shy, sensitive Sue Storm adds the voice of reason and heart to the team; and as the epitome of hot-headedness, Johnny Storm becomes the Human Torch. Just as he had in the Challengers, Kirby brings his cast together for a common cause, and bonds them together forever as survivors of an aircraft tragedy. However, the affects of the cosmic radiation make them outcasts of a sort, and create more tension within the group as they each try to deal with their powers in different ways. Also, for the first time one of the key players is a woman, giving the FF a group dynamic with more potential than any group of heroes before, which I believe to be a large part of the group’s success. (Despite the inclusion of Wonder Woman in the Justice Society, there was no male-female tensions or romantic entanglements.) That success paved the way for another successful dedicated team concept in 1963: the X-Men. X-Men used the same basic formula established with Newsboy Legion, even going back to the idea of a mentor who guides the team. Just to mix things up, or possibly to make it look less like a copy of the FF, Jack and Stan added a fifth character to the mix, and also switched around some of the personality traits with the characters. So the role of shy/sensitive

is shared between Cyclops and Marvel Girl; the toughguy Beast also shares the role of brain with Cyclops, and Angel and Iceman share the role of hot-head. The basic premise of a dedicated team had a lasting effect on the comic book industry, as evidenced by the other dedicated teams that appeared shortly after the first issue of the Fantastic Four. DC produced Metal Men, Doom Patrol and Sea Devils (essentially an underwater version of Challengers, and probably influenced to an extent by the popularity of the television show Sea Hunt). Two years after the X-Men appeared, Wally Wood created T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for Tower. Jack himself revisited the concept when he worked on the Inhumans series in Astonishing Tales during his short return to Marvel in the ’70s. Even though the Inhumans featured a much larger supporting cast, the stories all center on the key five characters of Black Bolt, Medusa, Karnak, Triton and Gorgon. One could even argue that Black Bolt is more of a mentor figure, and that Medusa, as his “voice,” took on the role of brain. Over the years, dedicated teams have been produced by many publishers and in many forms, but probably the most notable example of a team concept based on Jack’s formula is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It fits the basic criteria: a common origin, and no other affiliations. In addition, TMNT is based on the magic number of four, and each of the team members is given a defining character trait. Some of the other teams that have followed the S&K formula include Wally Wood’s Misfits, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Harbinger from Valiant, and The Atomics from Mike Allred’s AAA Pop Comics, to name a few. Of course, Jack returned to the form to create The Forever People for his Fourth World at DC, still

wooden characters whose only distinguishing characteristic was their super-powers, readers were treated to a varied group of individuals that were almost as likely to fight amongst themselves as with the bad guys. And, of course, that added dimension is just another facet of the Jack Kirby magic. ★

Here’s a “Before & After” comparison of Kirby’s pencils from page 15 of Fantastic Four #108 (Mar. 1971, originally meant for #102), before alterations! The Joe Sinnott-inked published version at left features two John Buscema panels. Notice Stan’s note to J.B. at right.

BEFORE & AFTER

using his basic template for character traits and team dynamics. Although it wasn’t quite as successful as his team books, it still had plenty of the Kirby magic—and still used the basic formula established with Newsboy Legion. Interestingly, the Forever People roster included a character who was almost the inverse of a mentor figure: Infinity Man, the recombinant life force of the entire group. What Simon & Kirby created in the ’40s, and what Kirby continued into the ’60s and ’70s, added a dimension rarely seen in comics of the time. By giving each of the members of the team a distinct personality, they created a group dynamic beyond what could be seen in titles such as All-Star, “Justice Society” and later in Justice League, or even in The Avengers. Instead of the usual

Gallery 1

KIRBY’S Super Teams

by Shane Foley

When it comes to Super Teams, Kirby was the godfather of the genre. From his first work on Young Allies to his final on Super Powers, here’s a few memorable ones. (page 20) New Gods #8, page 6 (April 1972): Within an entire pantheon of New Gods was this super-team of Orion and Lightray. What a great pair, so different and so complimentary to each other: Orion, the seasoned warrior, filled with barely controlled rage and torment; Lightray, younger and new to the battlefield, the strategist. Yet Kirby never stooped to the ploy of portraying Orion as a mindless idiot, nor did he simply use Lightray as a foolish foil for Orion. Some of Kirby’s strongest characterization slowly played itself out between these two. (page 21) Forever People #11, page 18 (Oct. 1972): In the ’70s, this book always felt like the strangest of the New Gods trilogy to me. Is it because there was no real ‘super-hero’ focus (especially after the characterless Infinity Man disappeared after #3)? Mark Moonrider and Vykin the Black didn’t even have their own super powers until #8 (and then Vykin’s ended up on the cutting room floor, as shown in TJKC #6). Yet it was here that Darkseid’s personal presence was felt most strongly. It was here that the Anti-Life Equation reared its head in some fabulous stories. I can’t help but feel that in many ways this super-team book was too mature for my young teenage taste.

(page 22) Jimmy Olsen #143, page 17 (Nov. 1971): These guys count as a ‘super-team’? (John Morrow thinks so.) So what do we see? A collection of slightly updated ’40s characters with dual roles of providing Kirby humor on cue (particularly through Gabby or Scrapper) and for launching the story from one dynamic Kirby situation to the next. I see this as a book where the emphasis was on the concept Kirby wanted to talk about, with the heroes being

little more than facilitators to get us there. (page 23) Jimmy Olsen #144, page 8 (Dec. 1971): This fun super-team created by Kirby has a well-known origin amongst his fans (most recently touched on in TJKC #44). But the question must be asked—is a ‘String Mob’ with no stringed instruments a stuff-up by Jack, who was drawing so fast he never stopped to think about it? Or was he chuckling away to himself as he drew such an incongruously-named band? (Since he added a ‘Sixth-Stringer’ to a five-piece band on the next page, perhaps Kirby knew exactly what he was doing.) One can’t help but admire Kirby’s design flair for the instruments; how unique and hightech each of them seems, while looking like they might actually work. (page 24) Justice Inc. #3, page 7 (Sept. 1975): Looking at this page by Jack, who would know that it was filler work that he had little interest in? His pencils are tight and the detail in the final panel gives marvelous atmosphere and depth. What constantly astounds me about Kirby’s penciling is that, even when drawing something of no interest to him, he never, but never, slackened off in filling in every black or necessary detail. Why, we could ask, would he bother to blacken the policeman’s uniform in that last panel? An inker could easily provide that. Or why bother with four highlights on the top hat when one would do? Why put so many lights on the arch, when half as many would do the job and no one would ever notice? His dedication to always doing his best is astounding. (I guess I should mention there’s the Avenger’s ‘superteam’ here, too.) 13

(page 25) Roxie’s Raiders #1, page 8 (1980s): Buster, Toad, Tommy, Big Hands, Catfish, Giraffe the human periscope, etc. (and perhaps different ones in the page shown here, all originating as a 1980s Ruby-Spears animation concept.) With a Steve Gerber script over these late Kirby pencils for a never-published comic, Roxie’s Raiders would have been a really interesting super-team book. Notice that, while it’s obvious that Kirby’s actual figure drawing at this stage of his life is losing its grace and balance, his design sense is as sharp as ever. The black ‘shadows’ in the first panel are as unrealistic as any modern ‘reality’ show on TV (am I subtle or what?), but while playing the role of shadows in delineating the separate figures of the group, they also energize the panel with potential movement and drama that the static figures don’t naturally give. Indefinable Kirby genius! (page 26) What If? #11, page 21 (Oct. 1978): Kirby draws Kirby in the nearest he ever got to doing a 1970s story of his most famous ‘superteam’; and he scripts Flo telling him how handsome he is. Ha! This is a ‘talking heads’ page with nothing boring about it. In the inked page, Stan was given a mustache which Jack had omitted here. Stan’s ‘ya’ in the fifth panel was changed to “you” (a good call) and, for some reason, the sky behind the Watcher was changed. I can’t see why.

(page 27) Super Powers (2nd series) #2, page 12 (Oct. 1985): Kirby drawing a ‘super-team’ with Hawkman and Red Tornado! Who could have imagined such a thing a few years earlier? This page shows more trademark Kirby spotting of blacks that show his talent for ‘feeling’ what was necessary rather than abiding by any natural rules of shading. As always, he used blacks to invoke design, clarity and power! And here too are more examples of the weakening of his figure work that was a hallmark of his later years. How is this explained? I believe the very talent he had to largely ignore reality in his shading was the same that he used with his figure-work. There was never any pretense that his figures were reflecting reality. He only ever drew just enough ‘reality’ to make his impossible figures grounded enough to be credible. In his later years, however, he seemed to lose that vital component. Probably his blacks lost it too, but because shadows have no constant, recognizable form, we don’t notice it there. ★ 17

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier kay, I promised this issue I’d discuss this first matter and I always keep my promises except when I don’t. It’s a question I’ve received it from any number of people over the years and I’ve stalled giving a firm answer ’til now. Most of the time, it’s asked roughly as follows:

O (below) Who inked the first issue of Fantastic Four in 1961? Mark thinks he knows...

(next page, top) Compare the background inks on these panels from FF #2 (Jan. 1962) and Thor #168 (Sept. 1969). Since George Klein inked both, it’s a pretty compelling argument. (next page, bottom) So, Mark, who inked this unused cover to Fantastic Four #3, circa 1962? Inquiring minds want to know! Characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters Inc.

Hey, Evanier! So, like, what’s the deal with the inking on the first issue of Fantastic Four? I’ve read that Jack inked it. I’ve read that Dick Ayers inked it. A lot of people have said it was someone named Christopher Rule. In the Kirby Collector, you said it could have been Rule but might have been George Klein. What more can you tell us? For whatever it’s worth—and my opinion and eight dollars will just about buy you a latte at Starbuck’s— I’ve decided that the first issue of Fantastic Four— the first two, actually—were inked by George Klein. In the past, I hedged this identification by saying that perhaps his friend Christopher Rule assisted or that the two men double-teamed the assignment. After taking a harder look at the evidence, I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s just plain George Klein. It’s kind of interesting how this identification has evolved for me and for others. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, when I first got involved with this kind of comic scholarship, no one gave the matter much thought. I think Dick Ayers was generally identified as the inker of all those early issues of FF that lacked credits, except for #5 by Joe Sinnott. (If you want to get really fussy about this, Sinnott inked a little bit of #6 before he had to turn the job back. Ayers finished it and then became the book’s regular inker... with occasional exceptions.) I knew the identification of Ayers as the inker of #1 was wrong because I’d examined the issues. The first two were obviously by one guy. The second two were obviously by another... and neither work matched the inking that was credited to or signed by Dick Ayers. With a little more sleuthing, I matched up the inking on #3 and #4 with inking that was credited to Sol Brodsky (left) on the Ant-Man strip in Tales to Astonish. I think I was the first person to make the Brodsky connection. Around 1975, my pal Tony Isabella was working at Marvel

on a project that needed some information. He called to ask who’d inked FF #3 and I told him it was Sol, and that he’d inked the issue after, as well. Tony marched down the hall and asked Brodsky, who was then working in some sort of production managerial post for the company. Sol confirmed it. Unfortunately, though Sol was there at the time Fantastic Four #1 was done—he even did art touch-ups on it and designed the title logo—he didn’t remember who’d inked the first two issues. And when Tony asked me, I had to admit I wasn’t sure. On another occasion, someone else at Marvel needed to know about #1. They checked with Stan Lee but Stan didn’t remember. So they called Kirby and asked him... and Jack, for some reason, said it was Artie Simek. No, it wasn’t. I almost don’t blame Jack for this bit of false info entering the annals of comic book history. I blame whoever asked Jack and thought he might know. Mr. Kirby never paid much attention to who inked his work. On the rare instances when he did know, his memory for that kind of thing was worse than Stan’s, Stan’s being about as bad as your average amnesia patient. Simek (right) did letter the first issue but he was not an inker. I’m told he got some sort of artist credit on a few old Timely/Atlas teen publications but I see no reason to presume those weren’t a matter of someone lumping his lettering handiwork into the list of those who actually drew. Also, Simek didn’t letter the second Fantastic Four, which was inked by whoever inked the first one. Why wouldn’t he letter the book if he was also inking it? Why wouldn’t he ever ink anything else? So if it wasn’t Simek, who was it? Others suggested Bill Everett, Marvin Stein, Carl Hubbell and Kirby himself. I was never convinced of any of those and many of us found it a maddening riddle. It had to be someone who’d done something else in comics. I mean, you don’t just enter the business, ink the first two issues of what would soon be called “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” and a few concurrent monster stories for Marvel, then disappear forever. Then one day, well into the Eighties, the name of Christopher Rule entered the picture. I believe John Romita identified him in an interview as a guy who’d embellished some of Jack’s sciencefiction stories for Atlas in the late Fifties. Kirby scholars pounced on this revelation of a hithertounidentified Kirby inker. It was true that Rule, who did most of his work on Marvel’s teen comics, had sometimes been called on to ink Kirby stories. Many then vaulted to the conclusion that he must have been the mystery inker of Fantastic Four #1. But was he? A comparison of inking styles—laying those late Fifties’ Tales to Astonish jobs alongside FF #1 didn’t convince me. Just not a close enough match. Then there was also the following to consider, as I explained in my first column for this publication: “…there’s some circumstantial evidence that argues against Rule. At the time of Fantastic Four #1, almost half the Marvel line consisted of books in the teen or romance genres— Millie the Model, Love Romances, Teenage Romances, Linda Carter, Student Nurse; Kathy, Life With Millie, Patsy Walker and Patsy & Hedy. One might assume that if he even set foot in Stan Lee’s offices around then, we’d also see his handiwork in

those titles, for Rule was mainly thought of as an artist for teen comics. In fact, when I asked Stan about Rule, he recalled him enthusiastically for drawing great “girl” comics and did not recall him ever working in adventure-type comics, let alone inking Kirby. “From what I can ascertain—and, admittedly, I have not studied every teen comic of the period— Rule does not appear to be in any of them. In fact, I have yet to see a verified appearance of his handiwork in any comic published after around the middle of 1959.” I asked a number of folks besides Stan about Chris Rule, among them Mike Sekowsky, Al Jaffee, Chic Stone, Don Heck, Dan DeCarlo, and Stan Goldberg. Almost every one of them said the same thing: “He looked like Santa Claus.” He was apparently an older man who, unlike most artists who worked in comics in the Forties and Fifties, actually had a career in art before he began drawing comic books. He had worked in book and advertising illustration and on some obscure newspaper strips before getting into comic books around 1943, laboring initially for the Binder shop and inking for Fawcett and Timely. Almost everyone I interviewed said, “He and George Klein were best friends. They were always working on each other’s jobs.” I think that’s how the name of George Klein eventually came up in connection with Fantastic Four #1. In 1961, Klein was a veteran comic artist—not as old as Rule but he’d started in comic books about the same time. There are several inking jobs in Timely comics as early as 1940 that may have been by Klein and he was definitely working for them by ’43. He worked off and on for the company into the midFifties and also for Lev Gleason, Ace, Classics Illustrated, ACG and any other company that would have him. Around 1944, he took advantage of a wartime artist shortage and scored some inking work for DC, mainly on Boy Commandos stories penciled by Kirby or Curt Swan. Thereafter, his work popped up intermittently in their books, often as an inker of Mr. Swan. Some people think—and I’m still deciding on this one—that he’s the guy who inked Kirby on Challengers of the Unknown, just before Wally Wood came aboard. (In between, there’s an issue or two which would appear to be Bruno Premiani inking Jack.)

The DC editors seem to have treated Klein as one of their second-string freelancers, meaning he was a guy who got work only if all the regulars had enough to do. Around 1955, he began getting work on the Superman books that were edited by Mort Weisinger but he never got enough of it to keep him busy full-time. He filled in his schedule primarily with work for the American Comics Group on their mystery stories. The editors at DC often frowned on their people working for other companies... but ACG had a business connection to DC so that was not the same act of disloyalty as working for, say, Marvel. Weisinger reportedly referred to ACG as his “farm team” and when he had openings in his stable, he often looked in that direction. Usually, Klein inked for ACG but there were a handful of stories that were ostensibly penciled by him, though he doesn’t seem to have ever put his name on any of them. When the company began running credits on their books, Klein’s were listed as having been drawn by “Mark Midnight.” I don’t know if he actually drew these stories or, as was the custom with many inkers who occasionally got penciling assignments, he farmed out the job of penciling to someone else. Given how few comics he penciled during his long career in comics, I would suspect the latter. Work at ACG was sporadic as the company was notorious for its buying freezes. Editor Richard E. Hughes would be authorized to buy ahead a certain number of months, often in anticipation of the company adding some new ghost/mystery books. Then plans would change or the publisher would decide they had too much money tied up in inventory artwork and they’d stop or limit the commissioning of new work for a few months. One of these cutbacks occurred in 1961. That year, ACG launched a new mystery book called Midnight Mystery to join its existing titles, Adventures Into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds and Unknown Worlds. They also started a new book called John Force, Magic Agent about a spy who dabbled in the occult. Both new books were cancelled almost immediately—John Force after three issues, Midnight Mystery after seven. Hughes was left with a lot of material for those two books so he had to curtail his buying for a time. I’m theorizing here that Klein was suddenly not getting enough work there so he called Stan Lee and wound up inking a couple of jobs for him, including the

first two issues of Fantastic Four. But around that same period, DC suddenly lost the services of one of their main inkers, Stan Kaye. I’m not sure exactly when Kaye died but his work pretty much disappears from the pages of DC comics as of issues dated January of 1962. (One last Kayeinked story—apparently an inventoried one— appeared later that year.) Immediately, George Klein picked up almost all the assignments that Kaye had been doing for Mort Weisinger. And guess what: The issue of Fantastic Four cover-dated January of 1962 was #2, the second and final issue inked by the guy who inked #1. The timeline is perfect. Klein inks the first two issues of Fantastic Four, then suddenly begins getting enough work from DC that he no longer has time for Marvel—or the desire to antagonize Weisinger by trying to work for both. At the time, DC paid considerably better than Marvel and was a much more stable company. There were still rumors that Stan Lee’s outfit wasn’t long for the newsstands. If you were an inker then, finishing the work of Curt Swan on the Superman books was about the best assignment you could hope to land. You sure weren’t about to turn it down in order to keep doing lowerpaying work for Stan Lee, whose company was teetering on the brink of insolvency. However, I’m not basing my identification of Klein as the mystery inker of FF #1 on any of the above. This is just additional info. What convinced me was comparing the inking of the first two issues with known Klein work... and by the way, if you make this comparison, it helps to look at a real Fantastic Four #1 and not a reprint. I suspect one of the reasons this i.d. has been made by so few is that not very many comic scholars have an original FF #1 to look at. Some of the reprints are so washed-out and retouched that almost anyone could have inked them. (A colleague of mine believes—and I’m agnostic on this topic—that there was one reprint of Fantastic Four #1 in the late Sixties where the bad stats Marvel printed from were retouched at the time by Bill Everett. That might explain why so many people thought Everett inked FF #1.) Elsewhere on this page, the incomparable John Morrow should have dropped in samples of two panels that were sent to me by the equally-incomparable Dr. Michael Vassallo. Michael is a noted scholar of Atlas comics and he has spotted numerous examples of the Mystery Inker of FF #1 and #2 doing certain techniques that pop up in Klein’s DC inking as well as 19

his later, credited inking for Marvel. Notice the background patterns. Jack never put anything like that into his pencils. It had to have been added by the inker. There are dozens of examples like this one. The match of linework is not exact but it’s close enough to satisfy me, especially given how Kirby’s pencils had changed in that time. So had the size of the original artwork. The move from 12" x 18" artwork to 10" x 15" caused many inkers to work in bolder brush strokes and to add a lot of fine line detail to establish shapes and contours. In 1968, Klein was kicked out of DC. Carmine Infantino was then moving more and more into an editorial executive capacity at DC and one of his immediate tasks was to improve the look of Weisinger’s books. Several artists who’d been working on the Superman titles were ousted or encouraged to retire around this time, including Jim Mooney, Wayne Boring, George Papp, Pete Costanza... and George Klein. Klein went directly to Marvel where Stan Lee welcomed him back and gave him the Marvel editorial directive for inking, which at the time could have been boiled down to: “Do it like Joe Sinnott.” Klein began employing a heavier line with more cross-hatching and feathering than he’d used in any of his earlier work. Before he died in 1969, he inked several issues of Thor over Kirby, as well as the pencil art of John Buscema, Gene Colan and Barry Smith. If you lay those 1969 Thor issues next to the first two issues of Fantastic Four, I think you see the same inker. His line has gotten bolder but he still has that soft “snap” at the end of his bold strokes and he still has the same repertoire of textures to use in backgrounds. Now, it’s theoretically possible that Christopher Rule assisted George Klein on one or both issues of Fantastic Four in question... but that theorizing is based wholly on the info that the two men were friends who sometimes teamed up on jobs. I do not see any trace of Christopher Rule inking in either issue. In fact, I see no proof that Rule had new work in any comic book after 1959. So I say Klein’s our man. If you have evidence to the contrary, I’d love to see it. For now, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Next topic: On my website, I also promised this issue to tell the story of the cover of New Gods #1 (above). To get there, I have to back up a little bit. As should come as news to no one who reads this publication, Mr. Kirby was very unhappy at Marvel in the ©2006 Jack Kirby Estate. late Sixties. Put simply, he felt that he was contributing more to the scripts than Stan Lee was... but Stan was getting the writing fee and credit. Jack also felt that the company’s owner-publisher, Martin Goodman, had promised all sorts of bonuses and financial participation in the success of Marvel and was now pretending he hadn’t. There were other, lesser squabbles but in Jack’s mind, they all flowed one way or another from those two perceived “wrongs.” Beginning around 1967 and continuing thereafter, Jack was approached every few months by people who said to him, in essence, “I’m starting a new comic book company. Marvel is screwing you over and if you’ll come work for me, I’ll treat you right.” The Kirby response to such approaches was to say something like, “I might be interested... keep me posted.” Privately, Jack did not believe any of these wanna-be publishers would ever secure the necessary financing... and even if they did, they’d never get their wares distributed. Independent News (i.e., DC Comics) was the Godzilla of Magazine Distribution and was not about to let a new player into their game. This is Kirby’s view I’m giving you here but it was a not-uncommon belief at the time. In Jack’s case, it was reinforced by the experiences of his friend Gil Kane when Kane attempted to become a publisher. His Adventure House Press managed to get one issue of His Name is Savage onto newsstands...and not even very many newsstands. Then—to hear Kane tell it—pressures were brought that cost him his printer and his distribution. Over a tearful lunch, Kane told Kirby that he’d been sabotaged; that the “big boys” had conspired to squeeze him out of business. I have no idea how true this 20

may have been. The point is that Gil believed it. And Jack believed it. Aspiring publishers came to him and talked about putting out a new line of comics so terrific it would drive DC and Marvel off the newsracks and into the one-hour Dry Cleaning business. Each time, Kirby advised them to forget that as a goal. Conventional comic book distribution, he told them, was a rigged game. Worse than that, it was a rigged game that was on its way out. He urged them instead to look into publishing comics in book form, using book distributors and selling in bookstores. Or if they felt they had to sell comics via magazine distribution, do them in larger, more upscale formats and get the heck off the comic rack. It was sound advice, heeded by no one. But then, none of those who approached Kirby about starting a new company got past the talking stage. It was during this time that Jack decided that he ought to have some concepts for new characters, if and when the time came that he needed them. And I should probably emphasize that he did not want to leave Marvel. Even when he finally departed in early 1970, it was only because the situation had become so unbearable that he felt practically forced out. But it did not come as a surprise. By the end of ’68, it seemed all too plausible that he would have to go elsewhere and to protect himself, his family and their income, he felt he had to do something. So Jack did what he did best. He created new characters. He drew up a pile of what he called “presentation drawings” that could serve as visual aids if and when the opportunity came to sell something somewhere. It was even possible—not probable but certainly possible in the Kirby imagination— that Marvel could be induced to change how they dealt with him. Perhaps if he told them, “I’ve got a batch of new characters but you’re not getting them unless I get a better contract,” someone there would see the wisdom of offering him that better contract. You have seen many of these drawings reproduced in the pages of this magazine. They were all done around this time though a few were signed years later and dated 1967. Since Jack hated to ink, he hired Don Heck to handle that. Heck tried to decline payment, feeling Kirby had done so much for him that he owed the man. Jack, who was scrupulous in his belief that professionals should be paid for their work, insisted on paying. I’m not sure how they resolved it but Heck did get a Kirby pencil drawing he could keep...one that he told me he treasured more than any other piece of art he owned. Jack himself colored the presentation drawings and had them mounted into cardboard mattes. Then he showed them to the aspiring publishers and other industry people who visited him. The drawings fell more or less into two categories: New characters and revamps of old. Some qualified in both camps. In the “revamps” category were new versions of Thor, Heimdall, Balder, and other players in the Thor comic. One gent who’d approached Jack about launching a new company had the idea that they should do, among other things, a non-Marvel Thor comic. He reasoned that while Marvel might be able to claim copyright on their interpretation of the Norse God, they could not own the concept of Thor any more than someone could claim total ownership of Hercules or Santa Claus. Jack wasn’t sure of the legal ramifications and he also regarded a new Thor as a bad idea. “Why try to beat Marvel at their own game?” he asked. “If you’re going to do gods, take them to the next level.” (The New Gods concept was among those he was then considering.) Still, the idea of revamping the Thor characters intrigued him creatively. Perhaps it could work or perhaps Marvel would spark to a new interpretation of the strip he had in mind. So when he did the presentation drawings, he included a new Thor (with an odd sword instead of a hammer) and some of his sidekicks. He also whipped up a new version of Captain America. You saw this drawing on the cover of The Jack Kirby Collector #37 (above). You also saw the character when, many years later, he was named Captain Glory for one of the Kirby-based Topps Comics. But when he was originally drawn, he was a new version of Captain America. Jack, at the time, thought the Captain America he was doing for Marvel was getting... well, tired. And lacking in purpose. The character had had a raison d’être to exist during World War II. He might have had a similar reason to exist during the Vietnam era of ‘68 had he gone off to fight in that war but for a myriad of reasons—including the fact that Kirby and Stan Lee did not see eye-to-eye on the politics of the day—that was out of the question. What was the proper place for Captain America? It’s too long to go into here

but Jack had an idea for a “new” Captain America in a new context. He designed a new costume for the star-spangled hero, pointedly putting an eagle, not an “A” on his chest. That was so that if the concept was pitched to someone other than Marvel, it could be about a flag-swathed character not named Captain America. Insofar as I can tell, the rest of the presentation drawings Jack did were all of new characters. Something I find rather intriguing—and indicative of the odd-but-brilliant way Jack’s mind worked—was that he had only vaguely figured out who the characters were when he drew them. And every time he pitched them to someone else, they were liable to change. If you and I sat down tomorrow to create a batch of new characters we could sell somewhere, we probably wouldn’t work that way. We’d decide who each character was going to be and what his or her name was and how they functioned. We’d know which ones were the heroes and which were the villains and if we were trying to sell several new comics at once, we’d know that these three characters were in this book and these five were in that book. Jack didn’t think that way. He had ideas about each character but they were fluid, forever subject to change. As he showed the drawings to friends and potential business partners, he’d describe who they were, how they functioned, etc. And it was constantly changing. Just as Jack often sat down to draw with one story in his mind and it morphed into another, his descriptions of his new characters were freeform improvisations. Little by little, he firmed up the plans for them. Little by little, he settled on names, including Orion, Lightray, Darkseid and Metron. But all of those were subject to change until he finally put them down in a story intended for publication. He had the “New Gods” concept, the germ cells of which had occurred to him in the final “Tales of Asgard” stories he’d done for the rear of the Thor comic. He decided Darkseid—always intended as a villain—would be the master villain of that series. He eventually decided Orion, Lightray and Metron would be the main heroes... but at the time he did the presentation drawings of them, he wasn’t certain if they’d be from New Genesis or Apokolips or even in some other, unrelated comic. It was like he had all these actors at his disposal and he had to “cast” them in his movie. At one point, he decided that a bizarre character on skis would be called The Black Racer and would be in a standalone comic, completely unconnected to the others. That plan later changed. There was also a drawing of a guy in yellow (I think) wielding a Kirbyesque gun. Jack decided to lose the gun and make that character into Mister Miracle, the Super Escape Artist. And then still later, he decided Mister Miracle had a role in the New Gods saga. Some of the other characters might have turned up in the Fourth World books, had they continued longer. When it came time to design a cover for New Gods #1, either Jack or Carmine decided to use the presentation drawing of Orion in a larger composition. Jack sent it back to New York along with a penciled space background. The idea was that DC’s production department would make a stat of the presentation drawing using filters to bleach out the color. Then they’d paste it in the space indicated on his background after Vince Colletta inked it. Jack also sent back a mock-up of a title logo. In some magazine, he’d seen display lettering that he liked. All the letters necessary to spell out NEW GODS were in the block of copy on the page so he cut them out and repasted them to spell out the name of his new book. Someone at DC—perhaps ace letterer Gaspar Saladino— took that mock-up and lettered the New Gods logo in much the same style. (Before someone asks: Saladino did do the logos for Forever People and Mr. Miracle, and Jack had no input into them.) Back at DC, they tried assembling the cover as per Jack’s design and didn’t like what resulted. Various folks fiddled with it under Infantino’s supervision and it was finally decided to alter it as they did and to throw in that textured space background. I’m pretty sure Jack was told at the time that it was the handiwork of Neal Adams, but Neal later informed me he had nothing to do with it. So if you’re ever making up an index and you have to specify who inked the cover of New Gods #1, the correct answer is: “Don Heck, sort of.” I suspect that when they shot Jack’s presentation

drawing and dropped out the color, it was necessary for some artist to go in and do some touching-up on the Orion drawing. About that color presentation drawing of Orion... For months, DC did not send it back to him. Jack wanted it and DC acknowledged it was his property... but no one knew where it was. At one point, he was told that there’d been a rash of original art thefts from the office and it was assumed that the Orion drawing had disappeared in one of them. Then one day, it turned up in a drawer. It had been folded in half and severely crumpled when they sent it back to him. Jack was pretty angry about that. To try and flatten it out, we put it in a cardboard folder and then put the folder under a large, heavy cabinet Jack had in his studio. And then everyone forgot it was there. A year or so later, Jack and Roz were moving out of that house and into what would be their final home, a few miles away. It was the moving men who discovered the drawing there and handed it to Jack. “Poor Orion,” he said. “DC shoved him in a drawer and cancelled his comic... I lost him under a cabinet... but mark my words. He’s too strong for any of us to defeat him. He’ll be back!” Next question? ★

(above) Original cover art (inked by Colletta) for New Gods #3 (June 1971)—the Black Racer’s first appearance. Kirby composed a photo collage for the background. Characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics. Art courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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Reimaginers

The Eternal John Romita Jr. A May 2006 Interview by Christopher Irving (We previously interviewed John Romita Jr. back in TJKC #36, but with his recent work on Marvel’s Eternals revamp with Neil Gaiman, we thought it was high time for some more from this great artist.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How far into drawing The Eternals are you right now? JOHN ROMITA, JR.: I’m about halfway through drawing the second issue, but the first one was double-sized. I call it “third issue, in page count.” TJKC: How would you describe this new Eternals series to someone who’d never heard of Jack Kirby? JRJR: It’s Neil Gaiman’s version of the telling of the origin of man through space gods.

(this page) Romita Jr.’s work on The Eternals. (next page, top) Gaiman’s account of never meeting Kirby, from Entertainment Weekly #884/885 (June 30/July 7). Art by JRJr. (next page, bottom) Kirby cover pencils for Eternals #5 (Nov. 1976). Eternals TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

TJKC: This project just seemed to fly out of left field when it was announced. JRJR: I think it came out of Neil’s left field. It wasn’t announced until the assignment was agreed upon. Neil couldn’t have made it all up in two days. This was an ongoing thing with Neil. When I finally got it offered to me, it was announced once the team was intact. Neil has been working on this for a while, and it’s a pretty strong and intense storyline with a great backstory. It’s a complete re-telling of history. TJKC: How does this relate to the Kirby series? Is it a complete re-imagining? Does Neil work to retain the tone of the original Kirby series? JRJR: There’s enough of Kirby’s original, but it’s used as a springboard. I don’t want to get too detailed, but Neil took something in its infancy and sailed with it. He did an amazing job. TJKC: Had you read the original? JRJR: I had, but not when it came out. I started going through it again. I looked more at it visually than anything else, because I’m

a fan of Kirby. I didn’t really read it, so much as I looked at it. I hate to say that I look at the pictures, but that’s the case. TJKC: There’s a real Kirby influence to your work. Have you felt the need to channel that more heavily with The Eternals? In drawing it, have you looked more at the Kirby template, or have you tried to go in a completely different visual direction? JRJR: I haven’t tried either. I think what happens is that my generation of artists had such an influence from Buscema, Romita, and Kirby, that it’s almost impossible to avoid referencing their storytelling and visual strength. As far as specifically influencing Kirby in my art, I don’t see that; I think it’s more in design and storytelling. I’ll put the Kirby stuff up when I’m redesigning the visuals of the characters. I think that copying Kirby (or anybody) is a big mistake. My own style is a deadline style: Whatever comes out on time is what I take. It’s hard to describe. There comes a time when I take an artist’s work and look through their books, like Jim Lee or Frank Miller. It’s an inspiration, like watching an athlete before you go do something athletic. I’ll watch baseball games before I play softball or look at a weightlifting magazine before I go to the gym. It’s a subtle thing, but still an inspiration. With Kirby, I’ve worked on characters that he created visually. I don’t want to use his stuff so much that it’s an obvious rip-off, but there is a certain amount of inspiration you get from looking at his work. When I did Thor, it was the same way with redesigning old costumes or designing new characters with the flavors of the old character designs. It’s the costume, building, and machinery designs that are so unique that you can’t copy it. You could copy it, literally, but that would be a mistake. TJKC: When people try that, it fails. JRJR: Exactly. Jim Lee’s work was taken by a whole group of young artists and created a stamped copy of his stuff that was so obvious it was a shame. I don’t want to do the same thing with Jack Kirby, my father, or John Buscema, but there was the influence of all three of them in my work. I used reference of Kirby’s Eternals, but we’ve altered the designs of the costumes while keeping the characters intact. We changed the visuals slightly, kept the characters as they were, and just went from there. It’s a real testament to Kirby’s stuff, and a testament to Neil to just take something and improve upon it; especially Jack Kirby’s stuff. I’m really pleased with the balance of this. This is Neil Gaiman’s work, but using Jack Kirby’s visuals, and I’m really excited about this. I can’t tell you. TJKC: It’s an interesting combination. JRJR: Yes, it is, and it came out of left field. One day, Marvel went, “We’ve got this assignment with Neil Gaiman,” and I went “Great! Whatever it is, I’ll do it.” “It’s on The Eternals.” I didn’t expect that and went with it, no problem. TJKC: Did you ever meet Kirby? JRJR: Yes, I did. I met him a couple of times. He was a great guy, to me he was a big, cigarsmoking guy (I was a short guy at the time). He was very nice. TJKC: Is there anything else that sticks out about him? JRJR: It wasn’t much more than an introduction, and then a second “Good to see ya again,” kind of thing. TJKC: I’m anxious to see how the book comes

out. I’m glad you’re not being slavish to Kirby. Everything he drew captured the essence of things, rather than completely representing something... JRJR: And that’s completely accurate; he never used exact replicas of anything. It was always his version of something. It’s almost the same way with mine; I’m not trying to do a complete Kirby visual, it’s my version of a Kirby visual, so to speak. It’s his flavor. Dan Miki is inking this. If anybody’s hitting his stride, it’s Danny Miki. It’s breathtaking. I think he’s two guys and has a twin brother. What he puts into his stuff is beyond belief. TJKC: Is there anything you’d like to add about the book? JRJR: If you have to get influence from a previous artist, you can’t go wrong with my father, John Buscema and Jack Kirby. The Frank Millers and Jim Lees are the Kirbys and Buscemas to the new guys. Everybody has that group whose work they pick up and use as inspiration. Maybe, when I’m about 115, there are going to be guys who use my stuff. It might take that long for me to establish my legacy! [laughter] ©2006 Neil Gaiman and John Romita, Jr.

TJKC: You’ve got a pretty big body of work. JRJR: That’s it! Success by volume! [laughter] TJKC: Seriously, you’ve done some high-profile projects. You’ve done so many different projects, with your “deadline style,” and there’s something different about each one. It’s you, but not the same you on each book. JRJR: I can only blame that on improvement as I get older. If you play the piano every day, you’re going to get better. I’ve been doing it nearly thirty years, but I

get better, even at this age. I think that’s going to happen when I retire—if I retire. I think that happens out of sheer repetition. People ask me why my style has changed so much over the years. I haven’t reinvented myself. I’m not the Madonna of artists. [Irving laughs] I just improved. If you can’t improve, then you’re going to regress. A lot of artists have that problem, in that they’re always happy with what they do. I’m never happy with what I do. There’s always room for improvement. I am very happy for the comic-reading fan that sees improvement! [laughter] TJKC: Does Neil work in a full script for this? JRJR: It is a full script. However, he leaves room for me to play, and he’s also left himself open to add dialogue as he sees artwork. I guess you could call it an amalgamation of both. His dialogue/plot could be a complete script (should it not need any improvement), or he can add as he sees the artwork coming in, which is just brilliant. TJKC: Have you seen your storytelling approach change any with this one? JRJR: No, fortunately, this isn’t the first time I worked with a full script. I got a full script with Mr. Stracynzski on Spider-Man. That really helped me out, because I’d only gotten plots before that. Working those many years on Spider-Man with JMS really helped me towards learning to work with scripts. Being that I’m an experienced artist, the writers felt that they don’t have to tell me what to draw. When they do get specific, they give me room for an adjustment if I feel there’s a visual that could be better suited for the spot. I thank the writers I work with if they don’t mind my altering something slightly. I haven’t altered anything to the point of rewrite, I’ve altered things to the point of adding a line or two, or moving balloons from page to page, or adding a panel. Working with Neil, there shouldn’t ever be anything added to Neil’s stuff, but I’ve got enough experience where he might want to add a line or two. I never take anything out, and would never want to remove anything from him. ★

Obscura

Barry Forshaw Looking for inexpensive reprints of the stories featured this issue? Journey Into Mystery #56 (Jan. 1960) was reprinted in Where Creatures Roam #6 (May 1971). Although “The Microscopic Army” from Yellow Claw #3 (Feb. 1957) was reprinted in 1997’s The Golden Age of Marvel Comics trade paperback, the other three Kirby stories from that issue, alas, remain unreprinted. Likewise for the Kirby story in Cracked #14 (June 1960); it’s still unreprinted also.

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

t’s fascinating to see the very different ways for which the Atlas/Marvel ‘monster’ period has been regarded over the years. Stan Lee had become aware that the blandness of the post-horror stories had worn thin, and the rejuvenation of his comics line might come about via borrowing from the popular big screen creatures that were laying waste to such cities as Tokyo. But before Lee put together the implacable Lee/Kirby/Ditko team that filled so many books with rampaging behemoths, there were some fascinating ‘inbetween’ issues—such as Journey into Mystery #56 (1960). Don’t be deceived by appearances: This is not a fully-formed book in the new manner. Despite what the cover suggests, “I Brought Zog The Unbelievable Back To Life!” has a giant Kirby monster bursting out of a block of ice, but the first (title) story is actually illustrated by Don Heck in capable fashion (although lacking the sheer dash that Kirby was to bring to such material). Joe Sinnott’s “I Spent a Night in the Haunted Lighthouse” is eminently forgettable, but it’s the penultimate tale which is the Kirby treat. “I Planted The Seeds of Doom!” is actually a rather pedestrian Lee tale in which an astronaut brings back seeds from another planet, which he thinks will blossom into beautiful flowers. Having marketed them throughout the world, he discovers to his horror that they are Trojan horses;

they actually blossom into the dinosaurlike monsters which were chasing him in the first (impressive) splash panel. Perhaps kids in the early ’60s didn’t think it odd that there wouldn’t be some kind of control over things brought back from an alien planet, but for an adult reading the tale now, it rather renders the whole thing ridiculous. But it’s the art we are here to talk about, and Kirby delivers an excellent job—crammed with monsters, yes, but not yet the simple monster-on-the loose tale that he and Lee were to deliver ad infinitum (and ad nauseam). The spaceman running from two alien monsters splash is followed in the tale itself by some typically eccentric Kirby space vehicles (no simple silver needles for The King), and the monster that menaces the astronaut in his apartment on Earth is well characterized. Interestingly enough, the best way to read this tale is in its Marvel reprint in Where Creatures Roam #6 (1971), where the rather pedestrian colors of the original have been replaced by a far wider color palette. Take the splash panel for instance: In the original, the mountains in the distance are a simple cream color, while the reprint makes them a riot of color. And the monster itself is no longer a simple primary green, but a variety of hues. Usually, such re-coloring is disastrous (or renders everything too joltingly colorful, as in the hardback Archive editions from both DC and Marvel), but the result is triumphant. A short Ditko tale of no great distinction winds up the issue, showing that Lee already had him in mind as the standard provider of finales. When it comes to reissuing comics material from an earlier era, there is a problem that occasionally comes up which makes life very difficult for the new editors assembling such material: The changing attitude toward race. As a schoolboy growing up reading Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera’s otherwise splendid Silver Age Blackhawk, I was vaguely uncomfortable with the Chinese member of the team, Chop Chop. Why was he the only member of the Blackhawks not given one of those splendid militaristic uniforms with peaked cap, but instead confined to a pantomime Chinese outfit with waistcoat, etc.? Why was he the most cowardly member of the team, given to panicky explanations of ‘Oh, wobbly woes’? Yes, I had never met anyone who was Chinese, but I’d become aware of the fact that we were dealing here in stereotypes, and while I might have been less than happy with the Silver Age Chop Chop, I had no idea that the original incarnation of the character (in the earlier Will Eisner and Reed Crandall era) was an even more outrageous Chinese stereotype, with hideous buck teeth and ludicrous pigtail. Furthermore, he was drawn in an exaggerated cartoonish style—at least the Dillin/Cuidera Chop Chop was rendered naturalistically. Similarly, British schoolboys had never seen another Will Eisner creation, the demeaning black sidekick Ebony in The Spirit, with his comically distended eyes and rubbery lips. What we had seen, of course, was Green Lantern’s Silver Age buddy Pieface in the classic Julius Schwartz revival of the character—and while such a name that references skin color would be completely unacceptable today, I confess that any incipient racial stereotyping passed this then-14-year-old by. All of this is not to argue for some kind of retrospective Political Correctness—these things were the products of their day and must be seen in context (similarly, Jewish objections to Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Fagin in Dickens’ Oliver Twist ignore the received attitudes of the Elizabethan age in wanting to ban these products of the greatest of all English writers). Problems of presenting such dated characters in the present remain, and when Tom Brevoort was putting together the trade paperback The Golden Age of Marvel Comics in 1997, he had a problem with one of Kirby’s earliest creations for Marvel, The Yellow Claw. This oriental super-villain (with his demonic face, pointed ears and taloned fingers) was, of course, a knock-off of Sax Rohmer’s diabolical Fu Manchu, and any racism in the treatment of the character should perhaps be attributed to the original author. Perhaps that’s why Brevoort put the Yellow Claw reprint right at the back of the book, and, moreover, utilized an extremely short five-page story. Then again, he could fill the whole book with Golden Age “Human Torch,” “The Vision” and

real-life western heroes (with the spruce, good-looking TV Billy the Kid in white linen ironically contrasted with the sloppy and moronic-looking William Bonney). But (I hear you ask) what of Jack Kirby’s contribution to this issue? Cracked #14 is pretty difficult to track down—is that a cause for regret among the real Kirby fanatic? Frankly, no. It’s a five-page piece called “Old Ideas For New Panel Shows”, in which celebrities of the day (dressed in ballgowns and evening suits) perform a variety of silly children’s games (such as hide and seek) for a TV audience. Apart from the last page, the entire piece is presented in long shot, and Kirby’s pen and wash style is actually more reminiscent of the humor work that his old partner Joe Simon was doing concurrently in another Mad imitator, Sick. Those of us who love Kirby’s work ruefully admit that his humor illustration was not really a strong suit, and in fact Joe Simon’s work in this field is much more surefooted. Nevertheless, there is interest here in seeing Kirby try on new styles (although his caricatures are a little hit-or-miss—the drawing of Frank Sinatra is very strange). There is a curious relevance that has crept into the strip with the benefit of 21st Century hindsight—and that’s a totally unintentional gay subtext. In one segment, where celebrities are forced to play spin the bottle, Mickey Rooney gets to kiss the statuesque blonde Dagmar (who, in Kirby’s drawing looks very much like a prototype for Big Barda, with a tiny Mickey Rooney clinging to her neck). But in the final panel, Rocky Graziano and Charlton Heston are the ones obliged to kiss, with the MC shouting, “C’mon fellas, be good sports!” On the next page, a game of musical chairs has two more males on one chair, one sitting in the lap of the other, while a game of Johnny-on-a-pony only has Rock Hudson (no less!) having other actors such as Jackie Gleason climbing on his back and wrapping their arms around his neck—the final panel shows Hudson collapsing under the weight of three men clinging to his back on. Hmmmm... Leaving such thoughts aside, Kirby completists could do worse than pick this curio up if they see it affordably. After all, the whole package (with its multiple illustrators) is intriguing. ★ (Barry Forshaw edits Crime Time magazine and lives in London.)

“Captain America” reprints, which is what most readers would have been looking for. Not necessarily readers of The Kirby Collector, however, and it’s a shame that this most neglected of Kirby characters is so little seen these days (perhaps for the reasons mentioned above). But in lieu of other reprints, this one will have to do to be going on with. The splash panel is in distinctly Eisner-ish mode, as a grinning Yellow Claw rubs his hands, gazing down at miniaturized soldiers on top of a futuristic machine (the clue to the Eisner inspiration is the incorporation of the Yellow Claw logo into the machine). In such a brief tale, there is no chance for real characterization or plotting, but Kirby gets to strut his stuff, notably in a desktop fight on top of a typewriter—there is a panel featuring seven separate stages of the action, rather like the cover Kirby provided for the short-lived The Double Life of Private Strong. Still, until another editor is prepared to risk the wrath of those who object to such politically incorrect characters as The Yellow Claw, we’re unlikely to see any more reprints of Kirby’s Chinese villain. Now, here’s a question to sort out the real comic art aficionados among you: In what title would you find in one place (for the first and only time) Jack Kirby, Jack Davis, Russ Heath, John Severin, and the artist who specialized in women with unlikely superstructures, Bill Ward? Give up? This highly collectable title is the early Mad imitator, Cracked —#14, to be precise, published in June 1960. Although the comic writing of Paul Laikin was never remotely as inventive as that of Harvey Kurtzman (or the team of writers Al Feldstein used in Mad after Kurtzman had his acrimonious split with Bill Gaines), Cracked magazine proved to be by far the longest lived Mad clone, and attracted several prestigious illustrators over the years (as the above collection might suggest). Cracked #14 has a very nice Jack Davis cover, but his moonlighting from Mad clearly didn’t inspire his best work, as the interior Davis work here looks a little rushed. Not so John Severin’s lovingly rendered feature which contrasts TV and 25

Foundations

Art restoration by Christopher Fama

his magazine’s editor makes no secret of his fondness for Kirby’s Kid Gangs, so you know no team-theme issue would be complete without at least one such example! And though we managed to run an unpublished Boy Explorers story back in TJKC #25, as Chris Fama and I were digging around for something to run in this issue’s “Foundations” section, Chris realized that their origin story had never seen print since it was first published (and apparently not widely distributed) back in May 1946! So with Joe Simon’s kind permission, we proudly present the inaugural outing of Gashouse, Gadget, Smiley, Mister Zero, and Commodore Sindbad, as they show off their “Talent for Trouble.”

Hangin’ With The Boys!

(above) Original art boards for the “Next Issue” ad from Boy Explorers #1 and (right) the ad planned for Boy Explorers #2. Due to the post-war comics glut, the second issue saw print as a 51⁄2" x 81⁄2" black-&-white 32-page pamphlet, sent only to subscribers, but we reprinted “The Edge of the World” in TJKC #25. Issue #3’s “The Isle Where Women Rule” was serialized across Terry And The Pirates #3 and #4 (April-June 1947), while “Demons of the Deep” appears to have been reworked and sold to DC Comics as “City at the Center of the Earth” in Boy Commandos #29 (Sept. 1948). See TJKC #25 for an unused page from that story, as well as nine pages of the final, unfinished Boy Explorers story planned for #4. Images courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Jonathan Lethem Interview

Novel ApproachES

Interviewed by Chris Knowles, and transcribed by Steven Tice (below) A stat of Jack’s pencils from page 19 of Jimmy Olsen #139 (July 1971). Clark Kent’s face looks pretty good to us, just the way Kirby drew him. All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics. The Disappointment Artist ©2006 Jonathan Lethem.

(Jonathan Lethem is one of today’s top novelists, with such titles as Motherless Brooklyn, his take on the hard-boiled detective novel, and Fortress of Solitude, a story of the racial tensions that take place on a Brooklyn street. His recent collection, The Disappointment Artist, contains an essay that spotlights Kirby’s influence on him, and he graciously took time out to participate in this interview in 2006.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: This is for The Jack Kirby Collector. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the magazine. JONATHAN LETHEM: Yeah, I like the magazine a lot. I see it sporadically. I always come across it when I’m in comic shops, which isn’t often enough anymore, but I always pick one up when I see it. It’s incredible what emerges. Well, there’s the vitality of the response to it, too, the way that people are still thinking about him and arguing about him, and the magnetism of his life and career—an extraordinary thing. TJKC: Let’s talk about The Disappointment Artist. I had actually listened to The Disappointment Artist on audio, which you had read yourself. That’s why it caught my notice—the Kirby in the Seventies chapter, which really is quite remarkable for an author of your standing to take time in a book of essays to talk about something that’s really obscure. LETHEM: Well, you flatter me. I took a lot of inspiration from 1970s Marvel comic books, and Kirby in particular, and it’s a big part of what I do, in a weird way. It resonates for me with those images, those authors. TJKC: What kind of themes do you try and visit in your own work that came specifically from Kirby? LETHEM: Well, y’know, I mean, Kirby was always really mysterious to me, because of the way a reader of my age encountered him. When you first encounter Marvel in 1974, I guess, he’s sort of the great, unspoken missing piece. There was always this nostalgia or kind of hyper-inflated sense of history in Marvel, and, as a young reader, you’re confused by this sort of “It was always greater before.” There were always these, “Once, giants walked the Earth.” And you’ve got to look back, you’ve got to buy the back issues, you’ve got to figure it all out, because everyone’s always making reference to everything. TJKC: Well, that’s endemic for any kid in the Seventies. LETHEM: Yeah, exactly. Right. It’s not the different love of things you’re experiencing, where you’re listening to Paul McCartney and Wings, and everyone’s telling you how good the Beatles were. So there’s a sense at that moment that Jack Kirby’s a sort of great exiled figure. You can’t figure out why he’s not around, or what it means that he’s over at DC. TJKC: Did you read any DC comics? LETHEM: I would glance at them, but I never figured them out. It was like I didn’t have an entrée into that world. I knew who Superman and Batman were, but the DC comics at that moment, of course, weren’t that way. Some of them were very interesting and strange. I’d come across something like a socially conscious Green Lantern comic book, or a really muddled-up issue of Jimmy Olsen and the Newsboy Legion with this Jack Kirby art and these weird Superman heads drawn over the top. And I could sort of tell that there was something going on that I couldn’t translate. But, because of the kids I knew who were a little older and had better comic collections, I just understood and identified with the Marvel mythology much more easily. TJKC: It’s much more resonant at that point, too. LETHEM: Yeah, yeah. I immediately identified with all those young, alienated loner characters. I was a born customer for 33

to introduce all these ridiculous cosmic themes, and they were always going to the Negative Zone. So at the same time there was this great propensity, which I guess I later understood might have come more from Stan Lee, for keeping things grounded in really human melodrama, the pregnancy, and Johnny’s dating life, and the Thing and Alicia. This combination to me was just sublime, and that’s still, I think, what I reach for in my work; to constantly put together the most outlandish and conceptual kind of material, the most raw-canvas, mind-blowing… TJKC: High concept. LETHEM: ...high concept stuff, with innately, almost embarrassingly, intimate, human material. That conflation really gets me where I live. TJKC: And that’s the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby tug of war. LETHEM: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so this part of Kirby that was a sort of dreamer, who was so alienated that I’ve speculated— quite irresponsibly, of course, in print— about things that might have been going on in his mind. I identify Kirby with a generation of guys who went to World War II and kind of came back and were never the same. I think there’s something about seeing the devastation that changed him and gave him a really, really—not the really cosmic perspective, but the kind of mystical one. But he’s also really morbid, very deathobsessed. Very...

(above) Inside front cover pencils for Jack’s 2001: A Space Odyssey movie adaptation from 1976.

(next page) Eternals #12 cover pencils (June 1977). After xeroxing the pencils, Jack scribbled the cover captions (shown here) on the back of his photocopy before adding them to the cover itself. All characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. 2001: A Space Odyssey TM & ©2006 Turner Entertainment.

what Marvel was selling at that point. It’s right around that time— you would know probably better than I—that Stan Lee put out those Origins books. So then you’re looking at the beginnings of these characters’ lives, and the early, very—sometimes very awkward, but very stirring art on those early issues, the Thing looking kind of weirdly molten, and then Hulk all gray. You just get very involved, as a reader, immediately, in the idea that there’s all this great stuff in the past that you’ve got to check out. And Kirby is this mythic name who everyone’s got this total reverence for. Then suddenly here he is coming back. So I’d been looking at old issues of FF and that stuff just—I’d read it in the reprint issues or I’d look at old copies that my collector friends had, and I sort of thought, “This is really the heart of what this kind of storytelling can do.” I wouldn’t have articulated it back then, I just liked it. TJKC: Like the Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprints? LETHEM: Yeah, yeah. Y’know, I guess, in retrospect, the ones I was probably looking at were FF in the mid-forties into the mid-sixties of the run; really the classic, heart-of-the-plate issues. Y’know, Kirby wasn’t burned out yet, they weren’t imitating themselves quite as much as they would be towards the end, and he was free

TJKC: Pessimistic. LETHEM: ...yeah, very concerned with imparting to his readers what he, I think, felt intuitively, which was that the scale of human events was so much vaster than they’d ever considered. There was a scale of cosmic events that dwarfed the human scale, that we were sort of near-puppets on stage. One reason that strange attempt to do Kubrick’s 2001 as a comic book was so striking was because in some ways that super-alienated vision that Kubrick put across in that movie was already very Kirbyesque. I’m sure that Kirby felt it when he looked at that movie; that here was material that had the kind of cosmic reach that he was always straining for, and when he was throwing the Fantastic Four or whomever it was out at it, it just seemed a kind of infinitely protracted cosmic struggle with—well, just creating characters like Galactus, for whom human beings are kind of, y’know… TJKC: But it seems like the Vaudevillian in Jack was kind of struggling within himself, because he didn’t really know where to go with the 2001 book and it ended up being Machine Man. LETHEM: That’s a great description, the Vaudevillian. The other thing that, of course, I ended up much, much later realizing I identified with very profoundly was his street kid side. You know, the part of him that was kind of a—he hated bullies and was constantly reliving the sort of dramas of ground-eye-view New York street kid culture. TJKC: Well, that’s what Kamandi is all about. LETHEM: Absolutely. Exactly. And if you’ve even glanced at Fortress of Solitude, you’ll see my own version of that material comes from a different era in New York street life. It happens to be much, much more informed by racial politics, but a lot of the energy, a lot of the strife and anxiety that comes from growing up in that

realm, I think I identified with in Kirby’s work without even knowing that he had that—we had that sort of in common. TJKC: Well, I think that in his time, ethnic politics were as fraught as racial politics. LETHEM: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. Of course, it was varieties of white ethnicity. It was the Irish and the German kids and the Italian kids, of course. That’s very much the same thing, in another disguise. I think you’re right. TJKC: The first shot across the bow when Kirby returned was Captain America, which interestingly, they’ve recently reprinted the “Madbomb” saga in its entirety, as well as the Bicentennial Battles. I don’t know if you ever read that. LETHEM: I did look at those when they were coming out. I’ve wanted to check out the reprints, because I have a feeling it might cohere better than I understood at the time. As it happens, I had a resistance to Captain America. I was too much of a hippie child to dig a character who was all in red, white and blue. He always seemed the squarest of what Marvel was telling me were its important characters. TJKC: But he was very alienated in the ’70s. LETHEM: Well, of course he is, and I just wasn’t smart enough to catch that Kirby was playing against that image. The fact that I still needed my heroes themselves to be kind of, y’know, dressed in black, or—. TJKC: Jim Starlin kind of characters. LETHEM: Yeah, I was still reaching for something that seemed cooler to me than Captain America. So I read the Kirby Captain America stuff, but I didn’t groove to it that much. I was more responsive to the new books he introduced, and then, of course, as I say in the essay, quite confused by them, too, and the energy that seemed to surround them.

Marvel’s vision of the X-Men. He has Silver Star say to this old Black guy in this corner store, “Listen, we’re going to wipe you off the face of the Earth. You’re done.” LETHEM: Yes. I think that’s absolutely right. TJKC: Where do you think that came from? Do you think that was intrinsic to his upbringing? LETHEM: It’s a paranoid view of consciousness, and the human consciousness, that is obsessed with the idea that nobody understands that death is everywhere. But in strict scientific terms, it’s not pessimism. It’s deeply accurate. [laughs] The problem is that all storytelling has to begin from a point of view where human affairs, however inconsequential, do matter to the people involved in them. And it’s as though Kirby was grumpily losing his patience for that pretense. TJKC: Do you think he was that dramatic, or do you think that’s just the way he was? LETHEM: Well, I think it was innate. I don’t think it was a decision he made. I’d put it that way. It doesn’t feel like a decision. It’s feels like, y’know, just as when you look at some

TJKC: What about the Eternals? The Eternals seemed to start off as Kirby’s riff on von Daniken, and then Kirby being Kirby, again it kind of lost focus very quickly. LETHEM: Yeah. Yeah, it gets really distended. I think it’s something I probably put better in the essay than I could ever just do aloud for you now, but there was a feeling of someone distracted and irritated with storytelling and not having anyone somehow provoking him into tightening his focus. It got quite inhuman in a lot of ways. If you think about it in one way, it’s as though Kirby introduced, successively, these different outcast bands. First there’s the Fantastic Four themselves, who are the prototype, but they’re still quite human, thanks to Lee or however you want to credit the balance; they still have these very tangible, human lives. And then it’s as though he’s unsatisfied by that and he says, “Well, here are the Inhumans. These guys are really not of this world.” And I always think of the Eternals as another— obviously, there was the New Gods—. TJKC: A lot of similarities between the Inhumans and the Eternals. LETHEM: Yeah, he’s impatient with the stuff that most people need to identify with, so what you get instead is a kind of theatrical—I’m going to use a really ridiculous word here, but almost like a kind of kabuki. It’s not a world of—. TJKC: You mean, like a ritual kind of story? LETHEM: Yeah, like a ritual occurrence. There’s a sense that you’re watching mythology enacted in masks, or watching human issues being reenacted in broad, symbolic strokes. TJKC: One thing that I always kind of noticed about the Eternals is that all of a sudden you had an army of Galactuses. What did you think Kirby was saying in that way? Did you think about that all thematically, or did it even cross your mind? LETHEM: I didn’t have the equipment back then to judge it, but from this point of view now, it seems to me there’s this kind of rebuke to the optimism that’s intrinsic to super-hero comics. He’s basically saying, “Give up. Earth, surrender. Forget it.” TJKC: It’s interesting that you pick up on that pessimism, because I had written about his Eighties work. That stuff is really off the wall, but Captain Victory, he said, was his rebuke to Stephen Spielberg thinking that aliens would come and be our friends, and Silver Star was his rebuke to 35

profoundly gloomy, strident philosopher, someone like Nietzsche. Sure, he puts his thoughts into words, he makes arguments for them, but there’s some kind of native response to the universe that someone like that is having, where they see the darkness that surrounds all human affairs, and they can’t believe everyone else doesn’t, and I think that was Kirby’s situation. TJKC: Growing up, his parents were Austrian immigrants, and he was thrust into this Kamandi world of the Lower East Side, and then seeing the way the comic book business operated, which was basically a mob, and then being sent over to the Verdun to watch people being blown to bits day and night—y’know, Stan Lee didn’t have that experience. LETHEM: Of course. TJKC: Stan Lee was an upper middle class kid, y’know? LETHEM: Yeah, yeah. Well, you raise another—I agree with everything you say, I’m just going to extend it even further, and perhaps, more pretentiously, but there’s almost a European versus American outlook that you’re discussing. When you look at what European writers and philosophers and historians think of the American intellectual world, they’re always so struck by its kind of booming optimism and sense of entitlement and progress, and the idea that things are going to eternally get better, because that’s not necessarily the universal human view of things. There are much more resigned and morbid and kind of—I don’t know, not nihilistic, but more—. TJKC: I always thought of it as being nihilistic and defeatist, to be honest with you. LETHEM: Yeah, yeah. Well, one way you could put that discussion in a slightly different light is to say it’s more European and much less American. And in some ways that’s Kirby’s style of thought, and it probably was inherited from his parents’ world view, and then deeply reinforced by World War II. TJKC: Which was, after all, a European war, right? LETHEM: Right, right. Absolutely. TJKC: So Kirby’s artwork was very much out of step with what was going on in comics at the time, too. Is that something that you paid attention to? Your parents were artists. LETHEM: Yeah. Well, you know that I wrote about it, and I think I was an exception. I had kind of throwback tastes, in a way. Kirby’s style made more sense to me than it probably did to most kids my age, and I know that there was a lot of resistance in fandom to the way he not only wouldn’t change or wouldn’t update his work, but was making it even more exaggerated and cartoonish. The whole “turning away from stylization towards something kind of Neal Adams-esque, very wellproportioned, kind of photorealistic style,” Kirby wasn’t interested at all. And in some ways I was on his side, instinctively, and that was probably because my parents were Bohemians. My father was an expressionist painter who used a lot of distortion in his work, and I was kind of raised—not to brag about it, but I was kind of raised into a kind of taste that was unconventional and anti-realist in a lot of ways. I grew up reading things like Kafka and Borges, and I grew up looking at surrealist painters, and so Kirby’s distortions didn’t strike me as out of sorts in some way. I thought they were just beautiful, and terrifying, and blazed with attitude. But I didn’t find them kind of uncomfortable the way I think a lot of younger readers were probably resisting the thing. “These characters don’t look right anymore. Their kneecap doesn’t look like that.” TJKC: I see in Kirby this very unexpressed but overwhelming rage, and it seems to me that those abstractions of the figure and of the work were all sort of an expressionism; it was an expression of a very deep frustration and anger. LETHEM: Mm-hm. I think that’s the right word for it. And it’s as though in the Sixties, and before that, of course, he had negotiated his instincts against other considerations, other kinds of storytelling, other commercial considerations. He’d found ways to balance that rage, or whatever we want to speculate on, the expressionist, the sense of being at odds with other people, other artists; with comic books and their readers, he’d found ways to sort of have the alienation he felt represented as a part of the story. You know, you’d have the human-looking characters in the Fantastic Four, and then you’d have the Thing, who was obviously Kirby’s alter ego, in a way. And you’d have the Hulk, who was raging against the human world. Even before that, you had the monster comics, where there was always this sort of weird creature erupting into existence on planet Earth and threatening everybody. And by the end of the story it might have been beaten down, but the fact that you’d tune in next month and there’d be another monster, was a way that he was expressing what he felt. TJKC: It almost seems kind of Freudian. LETHEM: Of course, yeah. TJKC: The “Id” bursting to the surface. 36

LETHEM: Yeah, in the Seventies, by that time he wasn’t negotiating anymore. He wasn’t willing to have that feeling that was coming out of him modulated to the same extent. It had to run riot now. Which is typical of artists as willful and as brilliant as Kirby, is that at some point they stop working within the normal constraints. TJKC: Here’s a question for you, with your confession of being hooked into the whole Marvel, Seventies, cosmic, pseudo-relevant kind of idea. Looking back, that stuff looks very, very silly, and very dated. And Kirby’s stuff—you know, there isn’t a Neal Adams Collector, there’s a Jack Kirby Collector. Do you know what I’m saying? LETHEM: Of course. TJKC: It seems to me that all these attempts at sophistication and intellectualism and this sort of reaching for relevancy were actually made by people who were just a bunch of privileged middle-class suburbanites. It seems to me that you can’t have great art without great experience, in a way. And I’m not diminishing the work of these guys for what they were doing at the time. But what’s your feeling in that regard—that all these self-conscious attempts to be very sophisticated and relevant really don’t add up, and that Kirby just doing what he did, trying to be that Vaudevillian, was making a genuine expression? LETHEM: Well, I completely agree with you, and I’ll make the point even more general, in a way. At any given time, there’s a lot of art in any medium that’s sort of “of the moment,” that seems to be speaking to current concerns, that seems relevant in some way, or contemporary, or fresh. And at that same time, there tends to be older practitioners or greater practitioners who are sort of out in the wilderness. I mean, you could take rock ’n’ roll in the mid-Sixties. What was on the radio, and what seemed fresh to people, and what people wanted to hear and celebrate or was on the covers of magazines—a tremendous amount of that, no one would ever want to listen to ever again. It just was only of its moment. TJKC: I think maybe Jefferson Airplane are a perfect example of that. LETHEM: At the same time, still alive, still walking the Earth, making music, were people like Chuck Berry and James Brown and Elvis Presley and Little Richard, who seemed corny or old hat or embarrassing, even, to the listeners who were grooving out on the Strawberry Alarm Clock. But, in fact, when you listen now to a Chuck Berry record, you hear it as though it was recorded yesterday. It still stops time, because it’s pure expression. And we don’t even have an argument. We don’t wonder, oh, why is this ten leagues better than the Strawberry Alarm Clock? And y’know, a lot of Indie rock seems very appealing and contemporary and relevant today, but nevertheless—y’know, Kirby exists in this kind of stratospheric realm where even his bad work—and he certainly made plenty of bad work—is utterly his own. It speaks in his language, and his language is recognizable, and it changes your mind when you encounter it, just as a Chuck Berry song, at the time that it was written, changed music. Nobody could listen to music the same way after he reorganized the Blues and R&B into this new combination. Kirby’s like that. And so the fact that, yeah, of course there were guys in the Seventies who seemed like the cat’s pajamas, and comic books that were extraordinarily well-received, while Kirby’s were being rejected at that moment; but that’s not really any different than the fact that, say, Orson Welles couldn’t get a directing job for the last twenty years of his life in Hollywood, while hundreds of mediocre directors were making instantly forgettable movies for very high budgets. This is just the way of the world, y’know? TJKC: When you’re Jack Kirby, and you really defined the Sixties or the Silver Age to such a point, is that just natural with any form of art that you’re discarded, whether you’re still doing interesting work or not? LETHEM: I think it’s often the case that audiences become extremely resistant to seeing figures progress and move into new realms and update themselves, or not, or just persist with their work after fashions have changed. It’s embarrassing to people. Audiences mostly like to put their artists in comfortable boxes, and the

kinds of artists like Kirby or, y’know—I’m going to go on and keep up with my comparisons—the Picassos, the Dylans, the Orson Welles, they’re going to encounter a resistance from their audience at one point, or maybe at many points, in their career. Y’know, if you look at Bob Dylan, he’s had to reacquire his audience and renegotiate that relationship a dozen times by now, and, of course, it’s absolutely difficult to span decades, and it rarely works, you rarely stay in fashion. But the fact is, time sorts these things out. You and I can recall the awkwardnesses, we’ve heard the gossip, we know the stories of how difficult it was for Kirby to return to Marvel. That’s sort of our topic today. But, in time, the work is going to be the only thing that really needs contemplation. These stories will fade away, as gossip tends to. TJKC: Well, what do you think of the whole idea that it takes twenty years for art to sink in again? The reason I bring this up— and this is more like thirty years—is [part of] DC’s big crossover event was the OMAC Project, based an incredibly obscure Kirby book from the Seventies that I think nobody actually read when it came out, because I don’t think it even got on the stands. I don’t remember seeing it on the stands. [Editor’s note: I do, and I read it!] Is it that kids who are alienated and passionate are the ones who eventually grow up to create art, and the kids who are well-adjusted and reject weirdo, marginal stuff like Kirby’s Seventies work grow up to become stockbrokers or something? LETHEM: Well, sure, you could say that’s some of that. But there’s also a complexity in this discussion, which is that the audience for comic books, and the audience that celebrates something like OMAC now, is an extremely self-conscious audience, and a much older one. Whereas originally, they were trying to sell that comic book—basically, for it to make any money, they were trying to sell it to kids. And whether they gave it its best chance, and whether it could ever have worked in another context, we don’t know, but the people who are excited about it now are older than the people who would have made it succeed or fail back then, and they’re schooled in many, many successive versions of sophistication in comics. I mean, Kirby was alone at that point. He didn’t have a hugely celebrated underground to react against. He didn’t have Art Spiegelman’s generation of the RAW cartoonists who adapted some of those innovations and brought them closer to the culture. If you look at someone like Gary Panter, here’s a guy who, in many ways, takes Kirby’s innovations and puts them in a—well, he stands in relationship, if you accept my kind of analogy, and think of Kirby as a kind of a classic rock ’n’ roller; I think he is the Rolling Stones. That makes Gary Panter the Sex Pistols. He isolates the violent and confrontational and expressionistic part of Kirby and takes it to another degree, makes it even more hostile and weird. So these innovations make Kirby’s accomplishment more visible, so then you can grasp their enormity, because Gary Panter’s innovations enter the culture, and people begin to see the language that Kirby invented being manipulated in different ways. And so, of course, being ahead of your time is a very lonely occupation.

plotting, and it was the right moment, and comic books looked a certain way, and Kirby’s drawings were legible in relation to that look. Later, things he was doing that were smashing precedent gradually became more prominent in his work—that was the part of him that was ahead of his time. TJKC: This is something that’s always kind of confused me, because Kirby was ahead of his time, but was seen as being hopelessly backward in the Seventies. How does that work? How does that happen that an artist? One of my other big obsessions is the Clash, and after their heyday, they were seen as being corny and old. Then all of a sudden twenty years later everybody goes, “Oh my God, they were so ahead of their time.” How does that work? LETHEM: Well, it’s probably an intricate lesson in how the greatness of an artist often has to do with a radical combination of traditional and innovative elements. The thing about Kirby was, in the Seventies he was old-fashioned, in a sense. He was persisting in using a kind of more raw or cartoonish or symbolic language in comic books at a time when that was unmistakably out of fashion. So, in that sense, he was holding on to something that other people thought should be discarded entirely, or revamped entirely. The Clash is a good example. When they sounded like the only band that mattered, in the middle of the Seventies, or the late Seventies, it was as much to do with things they’d recaptured, bits of Fifties rock ’n’ roll and early Sixties rock ’n’ roll.

(below) Splash page from Eternals #12 (June 1977). Never at a loss for new throwaway characters to add to his comics, Jack created a whole host of Eternals to meld together into the “Uni-Mind.” Heck, Marvel could (and perhaps should) take just the six unnamed characters shown here, and create a new super-team out of them. All characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

TJKC: Now, do you think he was ahead of his time? LETHEM: Yeah, of course. But that’s the trick: Was Picasso ahead of his time? Was Dylan ahead of his time? People who invent so much—who really go into a field where things are possible but no one has achieved them, and single-handedly show you what the language of that medium can accomplish—are always both utterly of their time and totally ahead of it. The first wave of what Kirby did, everyone responded to immediately. It’s like we were dying for that stuff. And that’s the Sixties. That work succeeded because it was balanced against Lee’s soap opera 37

course, we’re living in his world, so of course his material, even some of his more esoteric material, can seem much more familiar. Of course, the ultimate irony is, inevitably there will be some moment—and it’s probably happened a hundred times already—where somebody will look at some Kirby thing and say, “Oh, that’s just like X,” and they’ll be naming something that, of course, came after Kirby’s basic innovation and couldn’t have existed without it. But that’s the fate of a consummate inventor; once you change the world that way, change the way people see things, your own work doesn’t seem as innovative. When you look at the earliest great directors— D.W. Griffith or Eisenstein, their work— you can’t touch and even see anymore how radical it was, how extraordinary and trippy it was to encounter for the first time, because everything rests on those innovations, everyone’s followed them. Early John Ford films, everything looks like that now. It became the language of cinema. And Kirby’s accomplishments, I think, reside in that same kind of relationship to the culture at large.

(above) Splash page pencils to Eternals #3 (Sept. 1976), showing a still-plainsclothed Ikaris. This magazine’s editor recalls buying the series off the stands in 1976, with its top left corner cover image of Ikaris in full costume, and wondering why it took until this third issue to see him appear in uniform in the actual comic. All characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

They were traditionalists just as much as they were innovators. So it’s very easy, with radical figures, to overlook how much tradition they embody, how strong a continuity they carry with their predecessors. I think Kirby was a traditionalist, too. You could always point to that if you felt he was out of step, and say, “Look, he’s a throwback. He’s not acknowledging the present.”

TJKC: Another thing that I was interested in was the “Wish You Were Here” chapter in the book, and sort of your thoughts on the adolescent experience of psychedelia. Again, that kind of takes me back to Kirby, because Kirby’s work was so un-self-consciously and innately psychedelic, and I was wondering what your feelings on that are. Where do you think that came from, and do you think that was just part of that unwillingness to negotiate his inner thoughts? It seems so contradictory that somebody as buttoneddown and G.I. as Jack was could really take you into this incredible, otherwordly, shamanistic almost, kind of experience. LETHEM: Right; but that’s only if you focus on the happenstance, which is that a lot of his greatest work was done at a time when psychedelia was very much in fashion in the culture. So you focus on the associations of the drugs and the hippies, but he’s not arriving at that by any collective or fashionable route. He’s arriving at that, as you say, out of some almost primitive instinct. It’s more like when you look at the artwork of someone who, in retrospect, would be called psychedelic, because then it’s very appealing to people who are into psychedelia, someone like William Blake, or Hieronymous Bosch. That’s the kind of visionary that Kirby was, and the fact that he was concurrent with a time in the culture when psychedelia was being celebrated was just lucky, actually, for him, in a way, because it meant for a little while he could be in fashion in that way. But, needless to say—and I doubt that you’re confused—he wasn’t somebody who was noticing that Peter [Max] was psychedelic and thinking, “Gee, I want to be like that.”

TJKC: Do you think that kids today may be more receptive to the kind of stuff that Kirby was throwing at them in the Seventies now, with everything that’s happened before? Do you think there’s been a culture shift in the entertainment that you would present a young adolescent? LETHEM: When you look at subsequent comic books, when you look at a film like The Matrix, when you look at the way that a character—let’s say Hellboy—can be viable, can be comprehensible; I mean, those are essentially all things that would be unimaginable without Kirby’s innovation. Star Wars, for instance, rests on Kirby’s visual language, his imagery and his sense of scale.

TJKC: It’s just where he was going to inside his head? LETHEM: I think it was, yeah. It becomes absolutely unmistakable when you look at some of those private oil paintings that he was doing, that were not for—.

TJKC: Well, Dr. Doom and Darth Vader are the same character. LETHEM: Close enough. And I think it’s very hard with someone as intrinsic and innovative and radical as Kirby to realize how much he invented and how much this language derives from him. So of

TJKC: Yeah, with the gods? LETHEM: Yeah, that stuff—it’s almost upsetting how little regard he has for putting his vision across to the viewer. It’s so obviously a pure, personal exploration, and that’s one of the things I think I

alluded to in the essay. I might not have gotten it quite clear, because it’s a little bit of a muddy thought, but there’s this way in which he was almost like an extremely well-managed primitivist who functioned as a kind of professional. TJKC: How do you reconcile this pessimism that we’re talking about with psychedelia, which seems more utopian and Orphic, and the whole obsession with the gods, this paganism that’s so strong in his work? It seems like three totally contradictory impulses expressing themselves. LETHEM: Well, it’s interesting. I don’t know that, in the long view, psychedelia is necessarily so life-embracing. It may be a kind of twentieth century American translation of psychedelia that’s sort of optimistic. But again, when you look at someone like Bosch or William Blake, it does often have to do with glancing at the raw face of infinity, which is not particularly kind to the small affairs of human beings. And it seems to me that’s more [what] Kirby investigated. As for the idea of gods—it’s difficult for me. I’m a very anti-religious person by instinct. In fact, I think it’s another reason that I didn’t really grapple with the DC Kirby stuff very easily; it was explicitly talking about God, and I was always a little bit—I felt a little alienated by that. But for him, obviously, it was a language that mattered a lot, this kind of language of mythology and religion. But what I can’t help noticing is he always identifies with the kind of outcast gods. TJKC: Orion, yeah. LETHEM: The gods on the ropes. It actually reminds me of another artist who I’m very, very engaged with, who forced me to deal with religious imagery because he began to use it so much, and that’s Philip K. Dick, who became very explicitly fascinated with gnosticism. In some ways, Kirby’s—I don’t know if that word was ever on his radar, I don’t know what his reading or education was in the areas of religion and mythology, but his vision is very gnostic. It’s sort of like, there were good gods, and then the bad gods came and kicked their asses, and now we’re living in the time of the bad gods. TJKC: What do you think of the contradiction of a Diaspora Jew being obsessed with Norse mythology? LETHEM: [laughs] Well, again, I’m not hugely qualified to comment. What was his relationship to Judaism? TJKC: I think he was very much of his generation; the temple was important to him, but maybe not as central as some generations before. LETHEM: I’m really talking through my hat here, but it seems to me the Norse mythology is another version of that very pre-Enlightenment, European, medieval, dooming instinct he had. Again, this sort of reminds me of the whole idea that Americans have gotten way too optimistic and they really think that the world is progressing. But the Norse mythological figures seem to be so damned to some kind of an eternal return. There’s never going to be assimilation. [laughs] TJKC: And it all ends in Gotterdammerung, anyway. LETHEM: Exactly. Exactly. TJKC: I just want to backtrack to the Eternals again. The Eternals really is Gotterdammerung all over again, and, y’know, Ikaris is really Thor. It’s so obviously redoing Thor—there’s a Loki character, and then there’s a kind of gnostic, Manichean dualism. And, really, when you look at it, the Eternals is in some ways the New Gods, and in some ways Captain Victory. Kirby always said that Captain Victory was Orion of the New Gods’ son. What does that constant strain of all these very Nordic archetypes, and this very Nordic mythology, and this storyline that all leads to total destruction, mean? It’s not American. LETHEM: No, no. It’s anti-American, actually. [laughs] TJKC: Do you think that had something to do with his work not being as wellreceived? LETHEM: Of course. Of course. Well, that’s the thing; once he came out from hiding, in a way—as I say, in the Fifties and Sixties work, he’s negotiating. Sometimes he’s negotiating to an absurd degree and he makes a romance comic. Other times, he’s negotiating with Lee’s optimism, and he’s making these sort of uneasy truces between his doomy, cosmic stuff and Lee’s happy families or struggling adolescents. But the Seventies, by that time he’s unwilling to compromise, and so—no one would have articulated that, “Gee, this stuff seems anti-American.” TJKC: Because maybe people didn’t even understand what that meant. LETHEM: They would never have been able to articulate it, but their uneasiness with it surely could be traced to some degree of suspicion, sensations where they think that, “This isn’t all going to work out in the end.” [laughs] TJKC: Let me ask you another question, because you deal with racial politics a lot, especially in Fortress of Solitude. Now, what about Black Panther? There was a huge outcry because all these white, liberal kids wanted their relevant Black Panther so they could sort of vicariously live New York’s underclass street life. And Kirby

took Black Panther out of that completely, into this total fantasy realm of King Solomon’s Mines and this mythical, ultra-wealthy African kingdom that’s ultratechnologically advanced. What is your take on that? LETHEM: It’s interesting, because it could be seen as a rebuke to the whole idea of ‘relevance,’ the kind of middlebrow sop to the anxieties and vanities of the audience. “You want to identify with a black guy? We’re not going to give you Louis Armstrong, we’re going to give you Miles Davis, someone who basically isn’t interested in you identifying with them.” I think you’re very savvy that there was some instinct in Kirby, probably, to refuse the easy, y’know, doing a kind of Harlem super-hero or something. TJKC: Well, my eighteen-year-old son is really interested in rap and “gangsta rap,” and really, it’s mythology to him. We live in this incredibly white, segregated, very wealthy area, and it becomes this vicarious experience. Do you think that Kirby was consciously denying that, or do you think he just said, “That’s not what I thought of when I invented the Black Panther”? LETHEM: If I were to guess, I’d say he wasn’t conscious of a refusal to pander with the Panther—little pun, there—but he probably just did what he was interested in. What you feel in Kirby’s choices is that they arrived out of his interests and his necessities. They’re never calculated. TJKC: But how do you think he could go, in a split-second, from that Gotterdammerung mentality to something that’s almost like Leonard Jeffries’ Afrocentric? It seems to be such a strange shift in ideas. LETHEM: Yeah. Well, except that he was probably responding to the notion that there had to be a center of kind of mythological turmoil in any culture, and if he were to be asked to investigate a culture, Kirby’s instinct’s always going to go for that central, dark mythos. It’s a tendency that penetrates past what must have felt to him like superficial human circumstances, to these strident worlds of gods and monsters instead. It’s the same thing that makes his work hard to identify with at times; he’s not particularly engaged with the prosaic details of normal human life. He reaches beyond it, to archetype. TJKC: That kind of segues to my next point. Team books were very popular in the Seventies: the Avengers, the X-Men, to a lesser extent the Justice League, the Legion of Super-Heroes. To me, that always seemed parallel to the rise of fandom. The team books always seemed to me to be a stand-in for collections of fans gathering together and sharing their experience, sharing the fantasies. Now, I got the sense from your work that you’re a Kirby loner. I mean, you didn’t associate with a lot of other comics fans. LETHEM: I didn’t find my way into the subculture, no. I mean, I went to one comics convention when I was, I don’t know, fourteen or fifteen years old, and I actually met Bob Kane. It was a very intense experience, but I was there alone, and I kind of lurked around. I didn’t gather, no. I didn’t really know how to do it. TJKC: It was probably a pretty sad and marginal experience for you at that age, when you tried to negotiate it. LETHEM: I was like a fly on the wall. I remember walking in and seeing that there were rituals amongst the attendees that I didn’t quite understand. But I was sort of looking past them at the creators. I was interested in seeing the old guys on the panel discussions and, y’know, checking them out. Maybe it was my tendency as a kid, also, not to identify with the consumer culture, but, ’cause my dad was a painter, to identify with the makers. That’s probably one reason I was—. TJKC: So you weren’t sitting around Filk-singing and stuff? [laughs] LETHEM: Not so much of that, no. TJKC: But do you think that played into Kirby’s sort of slide into obscurity, too, that he was still very much clinging to these loner archetypes, and maybe more so than he ever had been? I mean, the Eternals was really a team book in name only; it’s really Ikaris’ book. LETHEM: Yeah, it didn’t give you that feeling of a team. That’s an interesting thought. Of course, the thing about Kirby in the Seventies is that you don’t need to find one reason, because there’s a dozen reasons why it wasn’t working for him at that company at that time in his creative life, to do what he wanted to do and have it go over well. So that’s another one. But comic books now are very—I’m not sure exactly how to describe the difference, but they used to be made by professionals for readers, and now they’re made by fans for other fans, many of whom aspire to become the fans who make them. And it’s a very different framework. I’m sure Kirby was—he can’t admit anything, but very restless with this, his glimpses of that fan-based culture. TJKC: He sort of made fun of it, in some ways. LETHEM: Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m sure that it must have struck him as, in some ways, excessively reverent about things that he was not particularly impressed with, himself. 39

TJKC: One of the things that I wanted to cover with you was just that sense, it was almost like a replay of this lost era. It reminded me a lot of the Bicentennial in a lot of way. You remember how kind of dispirited the Bicentennial was, and Kirby returning to Marvel was just kind of like this sad ritual, recreating the glory days. I’m a couple years younger than you, but I remember very much being aware, growing up in the Seventies, that it was all over in some ways. The glory days of youth culture that happened in the Sixties were kind of long away. Do you think Kirby was being punished for that, in some ways? LETHEM: Well sure, but y’know, this thing that I would emphasize is, it all seems very dramatic or— like I said, the grudges are still fresh. Of course, there’s another issue, which is remuneration, injustices on that level. He should have been paid more for what he created. But in terms of an artist’s privilege of being in fashion or celebrated in their lifetime, experiencing that, Kirby had a pretty good run of being the best at what he did, and celebrated for being that, recognized. So, the fact that he also experienced an era of being out of sorts, or of feeling rejected or overlooked by the audience that once embraced him—in the career of a long-lived artist, y’know, those are the breaks. Most everyone, unless they’re a miracle worker like Picasso or Bob Dylan and can kind of reinvent themselves in a popular sense as well as creatively, most everyone is going to be out of fashion at some point, as well as having been in fashion. TJKC: Dylan’s an interesting example, because I don’t know if you’ve been following this Endless Tour that he’s on, but all the reviews seem to be reverent to what he did, but very confused by what’s he’s doing now—rearranging all the songs and kind of mumbling through them and playing piano instead of guitar. LETHEM: Yeah, it doesn’t always work to be the great figure and to keep going. It very rarely works. People want you to sit still, rest on your laurels, burnish your medals. Kirby, like I say, had a great run of not only being the best at what he did, but having everyone know it. Then he had another experience, less fun—and in the lives of artists, those things are not uncommon. TJKC: Well, the interesting thing is, too, that towards the end of his life, it really turned around. He came to be seen as this founding father. LETHEM: Well, thank God for that. TJKC: And that doesn’t always happen. That might not happen with Dylan. I don’t know what Picasso’s experience was. Somebody like Philip K. Dick, his life had sort of a happy ending with Blade Runner and everything, but he didn’t live to see his work really entirely permeate the culture. LETHEM: No, he died mostly out of print, with no notion that he’d become studied in universities all over the world. TJKC: You had compared Dick and Kirby. Do you think there’s a lot of similarities between the two? LETHEM: I think there are interesting similarities in their instincts, their temperaments and their instincts. In his field, Kirby is the greater figure. The more natural comparison, really, is to talk of Dylans or Picassos, because though Dick is one of the most important writers in my own personal pantheon, terrifically important to me, he didn’t revolutionize an art form. That’s why Kirby is in 40

such a rarefied class. TJKC: You don’t think that Dick almost reinvented the language of science-fiction in some ways? LETHEM: He made it absolutely his own. If I were really looking for comparisons, I might be more inclined to say Dick is R. Crumb, who takes a form that’s being used in a more mass, popular sense, and makes it innately personal and obsessive. He’s a great figure. But Kirby in comics is an even greater figure than Dick is in the field of literature. TJKC: Okay, let’s take it out of the realm of literature and just say in the field of science-fiction, which is almost like its subcategory. LETHEM: Well, it’s very interesting, because if Dick did for science-fiction what Kirby did for comic books, the difference is, science-fiction decided to shrug and go a different way. TJKC: What about the cyberpunks? LETHEM: There’s a lot of influence. There are a lot of writers who, like myself—in and out of sciencefiction, I’ve been sort of both—who have been influenced by Dick. He’s a wonderful figure and a signal figure. But to look in that genre, they didn’t take him up on his—he called their bluff. He said these motifs have to be taken to this other place, and much of science-fiction said, “Nah, that’s too weird.” TJKC: But don’t you think that Dick is kind of predominant in a lot of the movies? Even that Solaris remake that Soderbergh did was totally Philip K. Dick. LETHEM: It’s true that he’s infiltrated the culture. I’m delighted to agree with you, he’s infiltrated the culture. I’m just not sure that you could say that, when he first produced his innovations, everyone

in the fields he was working in were forced to change what they thought. And I think Kirby accomplished that. I think Kirby was a figure like Dylan, one where you couldn’t be the same after you’d encountered him as you’d been before. TJKC: Do you think there’s a downside to that, though? Because with Dylan, Dylan made it almost mandatory for artists to write their own material if they want to be taken seriously, and I think there’s a lot of artists who are performers and shouldn’t write their own material, and whose careers have suffered. LETHEM: Oh, yes. A classic irony is that a lot of artists you admire inspire trends that you deplore eventually. There’s no question. TJKC: Kirby kind of led to the whole Image explosion. I don’t know if you even know what I’m talking about—the comics of the early Nineties that were, y’know, Kirby on steroids and crack. LETHEM: Oh, yes, the unpleasant dynamism, the meaningless dynamism of the look of the comics. I hate the way those comics look. I agree with you completely. Without even having looked at very many of them, I just always thought, “Oh, God, that’s not right.” TJKC: All right, Jonathan, is there anything else you want to discuss or bring up? LETHEM: I think that’s great. That’s good. ★ (above) Kirby cover pencils to Eternals #16 (Oct. 1977). All characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

www.kirbymuseum.org Feed Your Jack Attack! Join The Kirby Museum! Original Art Digital Archive update Once again, Kirby Museum Vice-President John Morrow donated some of his TwoMorrows Publishing booth space at Comic-Con International: San Diego to the Kirby Museum. This year, Museum member Tom Kraft and Secretary/Treasurer Rand Hoppe were manning a large-format scanner acquiring archival quality scans for our Original Art Digital Archive project. Thanks to the generosity of the Kirby family, Mike Thibodeaux, art dealers and collectors like Anthony Snyder, Glen Gold, Dan Forman, Bechara Maalouf and Dan Forman, the Museum now has archival scans of all interior pages from 1968’s Kirby Museum Shop - open for business “When Wakes The Sleeper!,” first We’re all connected up, now, so be sure to make the Kirby Museum Shop the place to get published in Captain America #101, all of your in-print Kirby goodness. Whether you’re looking for Kirby Archives, Masterworks, as well as pages from Mister Essentials, Omnibus (Omnibi?) or Trades for yourself or as gifts, the Kirby Museum Shop is the Miracle, Tales To Astonish, New place to go. http://kirbymuseum.org/shop Gods, Journey Into Mystery, a Sky Masters Sunday strip, pencil art Don’t forget our Online Kirby Discussions! commission pieces, full color pre• Bob Heer’s Jack Kirby Comics Weblog * http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby sentation pieces, and more. • Harry Mendryk’s Simon & Kirby blog * http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby We aren’t just looking for • “Comic book cartoonist” discussion groups, with Kirby-L: http://kirbymuseum.org/groups.html archival scans, though. We’re interested in compiling scans or photos at any quality level. Visit the project’s web page for more information: The Museum welcomes new members: Dennis Cripps, Ger Apeldoorn, Christopher Harder, http://kirbymuseum.org/oaarchive. Lyle Tucker, Gilbert Jarrell III, Bill Loscher, Mark Badger, Martha Breen, Steve Sherman, Joel Kelly, jkm Thessalonikianastsios Lazaridis, Marty Lasick, Russ Maheras, Scott Shaw!, Bruce Hannum, Mark Reznicek, Olivier Foltzer, George Edwards, Clayton Moore, Will Hoppe. Thanks for Your Support! Kirby Museum panel at CCI: San Questions about membership? New Address? E-mail us at: membership@kirbymuseum.org Diego Lisa Kirby, John Morrow and Rand Hoppe all took part in a special Kirby museum panel in July at the We’d like to thank Greg Theakston for donating two pages in his publication of The Comic San Diego convention. We discussed Strip Jack Kirby to the Museum. Thanks to TwoMorrows for their help with convention space, this our plans for the organization and page in the Jack Kirby Collector, and so much more. And thanks to Max Schulze of Düsseldorf, shared some Jack Kirby video clips Germany for sending us an archival-quality scan of this rare veteran eagle above. with the attendees. Our thanks again to Tom Kraft for helping with the audio/visual tools. $

Newsletter TJKC Edition Fall 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 comic books and comic book 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

Membership News

Thanks for Your Support!

Annual Membership with one of these posters: 40*

Pencil art photocopies go live! Jack Kirby pencil art is now viewable in our web gallery. TwoMorrows has donated the results of its efforts in scanning the photocopies of Kirby pencil art to the Museum, and we’ve made selected pages from Captain Victory, Eternals, New Gods and OMAC available for viewing on our web site. Museum members, however, get a little bit more, as we’ve made some Captain America scans available to members only. So now, your membership dues not only helps us with in our operations and programs, but it gets you a nice poster and grants you greater access to awesome Kirby pencil art. http://kirbymuseum.org/gallery *Please add $10 for memberships outside the US, to cover additional postage costs. Posters come “as-is” and may not be in mint condition.

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 41

Adam M c Govern Know of some Kirby-inspired work that should be covered here? Send to:

As A Genre

Adam McGovern PO Box 257 Mt. Tabor, NJ 07878

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

DRAMA KING

irby started in animation and dreamed of filmmaking, so it’s no surprise that we can fill a column with pop discoveries that bring his style into the dimension of performing arts, or bring it to mind...

Live-Action Heroes

The Kirby DNA was clear in the poster heralding primordial indie-comics hero Caveman Robot’s breakthrough to the musical stage. Adventures of Caveman Robot: The Musical conquered Brooklyn’s Brick theatre for a month or so this Spring, worthy of a cult to match its shamanic stone-age subject matter. The creative team are omnivorous archaeologists of pop and folklore, so the super-heroic promo image fit as well with the fringe theatrics as the serial score of operetta, glam anthem, revolutionary march and themepark-Broadway power-ballad fit together for a kind of giant-size anthology of musical styles and greasepaint clichés. Fourth World fans would recognize the source code of the digital oracle Mater Vox (among the show’s honor role of other witty pulp archetypes), and the cast-of-thousands fight-scenes had an unmistakable phantom choreographer. A grown-up re-creation of super-hero icecapades turning the B-movie trademarks of yesterday into the collaged multimedia theatre of tomorrow, Caveman Robot: The Musical takes you back to a utopian future where our brains fire like Kirby’s and all our bodies have corners and a shine. (www.cavemanrobot.com )

A League of Their Own If you’ve heard of Cartoon Network’s Minoriteam, it’s probably for the calculated outrage of its cast of ethnic caricatures in conflict with exaggerated icons of WASP authority. As politics, it’s a serviceable addition to the canon of pop product seeking to defuse the multiplying frictions of our impending nomajority national patchwork. As humor, in the post-Chappelle TV landscape the show’s catalogue of ironic stereotypes is practically pedestrian, while its most outlandish joke may be reserved for Kirby insiders: The producers have marshaled the omnipotent capabilities of the computer era to re-create the jumpy, clumsy low-tech look loved and hated by generations of cult-admirers of the original Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons. Since there were of course no Kirby panels of Minoriteam’s characters to shoot directly from, his style has been painstakingly, eye-scorchingly reconstructed. Of course, there are some Kirby panels too close to this material for comfort (Yellow Claw, anyone?), which is as good for Kirbyphiles to keep in mind as Kirby’s staggering contribution is important for those not in on the joke to know. Where stereotypes are concerned, Kirby, early in his career and to a degree rare for white guys of his era, got over it, which is as good a subtextual subtitle as any for this whole cartoon.

The French Recollection No sooner did we travel across France in last issue’s column than another sector of the Kirbyverse was mapped with the receipt of artist and animator Reed Man’s epic music video for apunkalypytic French cult fave Bérurier Noir. Introducing their concert DVD L’Opera des Loups, the extended cartoon uploads the explosive Kirby aesthetic into the videogame spectacle of today for a dystopian mini-movie, disjointedly scored by shards of the band’s post-industrial squawk, in which imprisoned rebels play out the whims of two cosmic beings’ Yahweh-Satan-and-Job-style RPG in a way that would do the spiritually questioning Kirby proud. Reed Man also runs his sleek, tense take on the King’s style through the recent Atomics avec Mikros series, a Kirby Kornucopia collecting French-language versions of Mike Allred’s already-classic Atomics, Reed’s own new stories of venerable French characters, and surprisingly 42

modernized Simon & Kirby material (including an atmospherically computer-colored Black Magic monster story), with pinups from a Justice League International of Kirby avatars from France’s own Jean-Marie Arnon to America’s renewable Kirby resource Tom Scioli. In this case, vive the differences and similarities! (www.organic-comix.com )

Ape Opus Of course, whichever way the transformation travels, to us geeks no action flick’s complete without its tie-in comic, and though the films are long gone (and Tim Burton’s recent remake strenuously forgotten), Mr. Comics’ Revolution on the Planet of the Apes recalls and renews the wacky satire and skillful tension of that beloved, notorious franchise. Tracing Caesar the chimp’s bumpy rise to world rule, it’s the primate Prez, a sophisticated political thriller in unlikely absurdist wrapping. The action and intrigue are well-handled, and the creative team does an impressive job blending the movies’ dystopian “future” 1990s/2000s and our own disappointing present with more-things-change, more-they-stay-the-same dexterity. POTA was what DC ordered up from Kirby in his also-classic Kamandi, so it’s only right that TJKC readers should support the source, and the expert upstarts at Mr. Comics make it worth the trip through time. (www.mrcomics.ca )

Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp. The age of Kirby behemoths isn’t dead, it’s merely frozen at the North Pole, waiting for the right foolhardy thrill-seeker to start a camp-fire over it... (www.tabloia.com )

Credits Roll

Enjoy All Monsters Most people associate giant monsters with cinema, but all Kirby fans remember (like it or not) that he spent much of the pre-Marvel age letting them loose across the comics page (and several expendable jungles, cities and remote islands). Chris Wisnia and company continue to pay tribute to this era like it was a walking twelve-story totem, most recently in the indie treasury edition (with new material!) of Doris Danger Seeks...

Few creators have preserved Kirby’s sense of pacing and drama while moving his ideas forward in the same spirit of exploration like Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr. do in Eternals, the most recent reinvention of Kirby’s last great concept. With the first three of six issues available at the time of this writing, Gaiman had jumped quite comfortably into Kirby’s world of gods and monsters with an ease that must be deceptive, so daunting is the balance between the King’s broad, timeless archetypes and Gaiman’s eye for deep characterization and ear for contemporary speech—and Romita was delivering Druillet-meetsSimonson visuals, at once carefully atmospheric and ambitiously grand, that could end up being the masterwork he’s most remembered for. [See the JRJr. interview elsewhere in this issue for sample illos.] Almost as satisfying for Kirby fans, Marvel has fully embraced his role in the once-obscure, now-central Eternals mythos,

emphasizing his creator credit in each issue and praising his founding vision prominently in text features there and elsewhere. Between this, the dignified return of the Kirby lineage to the Marvel fold with Lisa Kirby and friends’ creator-owned Galactic Bounty Hunters, and the upcoming reconstruction of Lee & Kirby’s lost FF #102 (helmed by TJKC truebeliever Tom Brevoort and well compensated to the Kirby estate), the state of the King’s due acknowledgement by the empire he helped found may be entering a new, golden age. We’ll see, but so far, we believe. ★

(Adam McGovern has siphoned billions from the world’s illicit offshore casinos and is using it to construct a death ray in his Mt. Tabor, NJ, basement. But what he really wants is to direct.)

Origins

Secrets of the Fantastic Four by Will Murray

hen people talk about the origin of the Marvel Universe, they of course point to the inaugural issue the The Fantastic Four, cover-dated November 1961, but which actually went on sale on August 8th. Stan Lee often tells the story of how Martin Goodman discovered that DC’s Justice League of America was selling usually

So I imagined we’d be talking about the beginning of 1961 at the earliest for Goodman to make his wishes known. I got on the trail of the truth when I was looking over a list of early Marvel stories listed in the order of their job numbers. FF #1 is V-374. I was fascinated to discover that the numbers that immediately preceded FF #1 pertained to the pin-up and other short features for Millie the Model #105 and Linda Carter, Student Nurse #2, both cover-dated November 1961. Afterward, Lee returned to script the main stories for those two titles. It seemed clear that the job numbers were applied at the script, not pencil art, stage. And that Lee had paused in the middle of those tasks to fit in the Fantastic Four. Then I looked to see what Jack Kirby was doing at the same time.

(above) We combined the last panels from FF #1, chapter one, with the splash image from FF #2, chapter two, to show what looks like a pretty convincing possibility of how the first FF tale might’ve originally been drawn. What do you think, readers? All characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

well and suggested that it was high time Timely reentered the genre. Working with Jack Kirby, Lee came up with the novel concept of four American astronauts who ventured into space and are transformed into super-mutations by cosmic rays. I’ve often wondered when the FF were really created and why the space background was selected over a more traditional super-hero origin. Of course, Kirby had recently wrapped up his Sky Masters newspaper strip, which focused on the new NASA space program. So that was a probably a primary influence, even though the FF weren’t primarily space heroes. And the Challengers of the Unknown parallels, particularly the idea of a quartet of explorers who rededicate their lives after surviving a near-fatal crash landing, are striking. DC’s Justice League premiered in its own title with a November 1960 cover-date. Several months and issues would have to pass for sales of the new title to be definitively known.

V-364 was “Orrogo... the Unconquerable,” which appeared in Journey into Mystery #74. While “The Thing in the Black Box” in Strange Tales #90 was numbered V-377. Both bore November 1961 cover dates, and both were inked by Dick Ayers. Knowing that Ayers kept meticulous records of his assignments, I e-mailed him and asked if he’d indeed worked on both stories consecutively. His answer surprised me. He reported that both stories arrived in his mailbox on the same day: May 16, 1961. Amazingly, he turned them around in a mere ten days. This date suggested that FF #1 was probably drawn in May, 1961. It followed that the FF were created no earlier than April. Something about that period tickled a faint memory. So I did a little research on the space program. Ours, it turned out, was still struggling. John Glenn was almost a year away from becoming the first American in orbit. But the Soviets had launched their first cosmonaut into space on April 12, 1961! His name was Yuri Gagarin. It sure seemed that the Russian leap into the cosmos might have inspired Lee and Kirby to provide the U.S. answer by sending Reed Richards and his brave band up to beat the Soviets to the moon. While Jack Kirby is no longer available to comment, I turned to Stan Lee for confirmation. Here is what he wrote back: “Yuri Gagarin! Wow, that’s a name out of the past! “Y’know, I truly don’t remember why I had the four go into space like astronauts. In fact, I had no idea at what exact date I dreamed up the FF until reading your email. “But— “Considering the date, and considering our friend Yuri, I’d say it’s a very safe bet that I probably was motivated to send our little quartet into space because of the Russian space flight! It all fits too neatly to be just coincidental. “But damn, if only I had a memory—or a filing system like good ol’ Dick Ayers!” If this is the way it really started, then maybe we can start dating the beginning of the Marvel Universe to April 1961. While I had Stan, I thought I’d ask about another FF origin puzzle. While the origin script to FF #1 survives, there is no companion script for the Mole Man main story. In fact, they read as if there were two different tales. Some have posited that the FF

was originally prepared for Strange Tales, or the floundering Amazing Adventures, and when it was decided to put Fab Four into their own book, Lee scripted an origin prologue to fill out the Mole Man pilot story. Lee replied: “Don’t have the original outline in front of me and don’t remember it all that well, so I’ll have to guess at my answer. “I would guess that I merely discussed the battle with the Mole Man with Jack after giving him the origin note. In fact, in most of the stories we did together, we just discussed what the theme should be. Same with Romita, Buscema, Ditko and others. I rarely had time to write out detailed scripts or outlines. “No, we didn’t cook up the Mole Man story as a ‘pilot,’ nor did we originally plan to put the FF in Strange Tales or Astonish. I planned the strip as a complete, self-contained book from the start.”

That seems definite, and perfectly plausible. At that time, Lee would feed fantasy monster plots to his brother, Larry Lieber, who would then generate a full script for Kirby. With the Mole Man sequence, it was probably more efficient to tell Jack the ABC’s of the action part of the tale and let Kirby rip. The only major mystery remaining on the early days of the Fantastic Four is what the heck happened to them after they crash-landed their ill-fated rocket? They stole it, didn’t they? How could they not land in the brig? And I hate to bring this up, but if you skip directly from the crash in FF #1 to Chapter 2 of FF #2, where Reed and the others are hiding in a woodland cabin with the U.S. military closing in on them, I’d almost swear that we’re looking at the original chapter 2 of FF #1! But I’m afraid to ask Stan about that theory. He’ll think I’ve been reading too many comic books... ★

French Kirby fan Philippe Queveau writes: Last year, BNP Paribas, one of the largest banks in Europe, launched a very funny French television ad for a new retirement product. It’s set in the countryside close to an old gas station, where a small group of people are waiting. Suddenly, several very large flying saucers arrive and beam down a bunch of alien invaders. As soon as they land, we discover they are shape shifters who quickly transform themselves into cows. During the invasion, one guy—a salesman for BNP Paribas—calls one of his customers regarding his new retirement plan. Though the aliens are circling the group closer and closer, the guy is so dedicated that nothing can disturb him from his work. At the end, he just complains that the line is cutting out because of the heavy parasites stemming from the spaceships. The movie ends with the cows arriving so close that they almost touch the people, the phone line being cancelled… Anyone remembering Fantastic Four #2 knows that at the end of the story, the Skrulls are hypnotized by Reed Richards and turn themselves into cows. It’s impossible to know for sure, but it’s likely the guy who created this ad had read FF #2 at least once in his life. The Chairman of BNP Paribas is a known science-fiction literature fan, so maybe the communications people wanted to please their boss. By doing so, they gave European Kirby fans a lot of fun! 45

Accolades

Marty Lasick Interview Interviewed by John Morrow (Kirby Award recipient Marty Lasick was born, raised and continues to reside in Northern California. Happily married to his wife Rita for 25 years, he’s a self-taught freelance and commercial artist who began his work in comics during the Black & White independent era as an inker on such titles as Beast Warriors, Rust, Phigments, and Wild Knights. His circle of friends at the local Comics & Comix shop included Kelley Jones, Sam Keith, and Ron Lim, who encouraged and helped one another hone their skills. He first met Mike Thibodeaux and Rick French at the San Diego Comic Con, beginning a friendship and collaboration with Mike on Kirby-related projects like Last of the Viking Heroes and Phantom Force. This interview was conducted by e-mail in September 2006.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Did you grow up reading comics? When did you first discover Jack Kirby’s work? MARTY LASICK: As far back as I remember I was reading comic books. My earliest recollection of my first comic books was reading “Green Arrow”, The Fly and Challengers of the Unknown. Next was the world Jack created at Marvel (X-Men, Fantastic Four, Avengers, The Hulk, Thor and so on.) I didn’t know who the artist was at first; I was just pulled in by these incredible images. I was hooked and I knew I needed to get more. When it turned

out that one man was responsible for all these books and stories I loved, they inspired me to draw and it was the beginning of my goal of becoming a comic book artist. Jack’s work transported me to extraordinary places and was the catalyst of everything I did from that moment on. His influence drove everything I did and how I saw the world with endless possibilities. Jack became my hero. I recall the highlight of my childhood was running to the local liquor store to purchase the latest Jack Kirby comic books that came out like clockwork every month. That is when I learned the value of a dollar. I saved my money to make those important purchases of comic books… Jack’s books. I would have to sneak and hide my books from my parents since they thought “funny books” were a bit of a waste of money. Now they are very supportive and proud. TJKC: When and how did you first meet Jack in person? MARTY: I first met Jack and Roz Kirby as a fan when they came up to the local Comic & Comix shop in Northern California; I believe it was 1985. My wife and I arrived early to ensure a great spot to see them. I was in complete and utter awe. I had played in my mind everything I wanted to say to him, but the reality overwhelmed me. I couldn’t mutter a word and luckily my wife held out some of the books I brought for him to sign. We stayed there the entire time and enjoyed watching Jack thoughtfully interact with everyone. Jack was never negative and encouraged everyone he spoke to. The remarkable thing about Jack was he was signing some books he didn’t even draw, for example Casper the Friendly Ghost. Roz would tell him that those weren’t his books and it didn’t faze him a bit. He continued signing while enlightening everyone with stories. Jack had brought a portfolio of original art and I kept going over and over it in amazement, and disappointed I couldn’t afford to purchase any of them. I was looking at The King’s masterpieces! The pages were beyond belief and that was my first encounter with original comic book art. During that time, Roz walked over and said something to me I still cannot believe. Roz was watching me and then told me to pick out my favorite piece and send her the money when I could. I was stunned. They didn’t know me at all. This was the first time she met me and still had the trust that I would pay her for such a treasure. As generous and tempting that may have been, I just couldn’t do it. However, this is when Roz also became my hero, and my first introduction to the legendary openness of The Kirby’s. TJKC: How did you meet Mike Thibodeaux? MARTY: At my first comic book convention in San Diego in 1987. I had created booklets of my portfolio to hand out and was going from one booth to another showing my work. It was my wonderful luck I came across Rick French at the Genesis West booth. Mike was not at the booth at the time, but Rick wanted me to stay and meet Mike. When Mike arrived, he looked over my samples and he was extremely enthusiastic and complimentary of my art, which by the way was mostly on Jack Kirby. I guess he could see exactly how I felt about Jack. We struck up a conversation and we’ve been immediate and great friends ever since. I consider the friendships I have with Mike and Rick to be one of the most special things to have happened to me. Mike and I are a solid artist/inker team. We come from the old school of comics, comic art and storytelling. We both share the same (artist) heroes: Jack, Frank Frazetta, Ditko, Steranko, Gene Colan, Bernie Wrightson, and many others. Most of all, our love of Jack formed an instant bond between us. TJKC: How did you end up getting to know the Kirbys so well over the years? MARTY: After meeting Mike at the convention, I later learned he was close friends of the Kirbys. On one of my visits to Los

Angeles with my wife, Mike surprised us by insisting on taking us over to meet the Kirbys at their home. We didn’t want to impose, but Mike can be very persuasive, and deep down inside I wanted to make up for the time I first met Jack and couldn’t express what he meant to me. We met up with the Kirbys at a function put on by one of the large comic book distribution warehouses in Los Angeles. Jack was there to (as he thought) pose for a sculpture. Later, Jack comes walking around the corner wiping off white latex from his face since he was actually there to pose for a life mask (see above, and TJKC #43). Poor guy was picking out latex off his face all night long. Jack and Roz greeted us with open hearts as we rode with them to their house in Thousand Oaks. They shared all sorts of wonderful stories, from Jack’s inability to drive and talk at the same time, to New York stories and kidding with us about guessing which one was their home when we could see it from the freeway. We spent the day talking shop, enjoying their beautiful home and eating a memorable snack of cookies and milk with Jack and Roz. Jack had just gotten about 4-5 boxes of original artwork back from Marvel. Jack let me and Mike open them up and go through them. You couldn’t have seen two more delighted “little kids” in your life. There we were, Mike and I, on the floor poring over page after page, quizzing each other on our knowledge of Kirby history. Roz brought us dessert and you could hear a Carey Grant movie playing in the background as the Kirbys told stories. Heaven doesn’t get much better than that. We also took note of how badly some of these priceless gems were treated. I remember a page from FF #4 being ripped in half. A few were water damaged, but that did not take away from the magic that we were enjoying. We were left to tour the house with all the stunning artwork on the walls, go into the studio where Jack worked and see the pieces stored in their art room. It was such a wonderful blur that was over much too soon. One could easily be the guest that would not go away. During the years that followed that first visit, I was privileged to work on projects with Jack and get to know most of the Kirby family. My wife and I feel honored to have been welcomed into the Kirby family and are considered friends. From a fan’s childhood dream of just meeting my hero Jack Kirby to becoming a collaborator, and finally a friend, is truly priceless. I will always be indebted to Mike for being the catalyst of all these amazing experiences.

sent me more work. I was inking pieces Jack had prepared for Mike’s projects and toy and animation presentations Jack was working on, and commissions that needed to be finished. The work continued to be sent even after Jack passed away, with Roz’s requests, and now the Kirby family members and their projects. Anything I can do to contribute to the Kirby legacy, I will always be there for them. TJKC: How much were you involved with Jack and Roz and the family over the years? MARTY: On top of working on several projects with Mike and Jack, my wife and I were fortunate enough to be invited to several Kirby functions. We attended their anniversary celebration and several birthday parties. At the San Diego convention award functions we were invited to sit at their table on several occasions and just go out to dinner with them and their friends. During these times we got to know the family better, especially their daughter Lisa. Now I am fortunate enough to help Lisa with anything she needs to preserve and immortalize Jack forever. TJKC: All modesty aside, why do you think you received a Jack Kirby Award? MARTY: Loyalty to the Kirby family and doing my (small) part whenever possible to keep Jack’s name out there—not that he will ever be forgotten. Jack has passed on the torch to all of us, his students, to carry on and be the best we can be. We have to live up to the model he presented as a working professional artist and as a person in the way Jack and Roz treated everyone they met. Jack and Roz are such special people. We miss them deeply. TJKC: Are you still doing inking for Mike today? MARTY: Yes. I enjoy working with Mike. Our collaboration has always been fun and that has been the most important factor in choosing work. At our age, it is not worth it if it is not any fun. Our most recent work is on Jack’s Galactic Bounty Hunter project with his daughter, Lisa Kirby. TJKC: What’s the first piece of Kirby artwork you remember owning? MARTY: When I finished the Goozlebobber toy presentation projects for Jack,

TJKC: What was your most memorable encounter with Jack? MARTY: Again, I would have to say that first visit to the Kirby home. Selfishly, I didn’t want the day to end. Getting to sit at Jack’s drawing table (the throne) was another thrill. Really, every encounter with Jack and Roz was special and memorable—from the first time seeing him in person in our local comic book shop to when I got to hand out the birthday pamphlets for his 70th birthday party at the San Diego Comicon. To be unbelievably asked to work on his pencils, going up to the Kirby home all those times, to getting to know the family on so many different occasions—I am very blessed. There were times where it was just Jack and me talking outside. Jack did most of the talking anyways, but I loved the stories. It even made me appreciate the stories my dad tells me, and not to tune out. Mike taped Jack telling me what he thought about my work and how I handled him. Jack did that especially for me. That was a kind and big surprise! I still can’t believe he did that. I could go on and on about my memories of Jack and Roz. I know I am not alone in feeling this way toward Jack and Roz and the family. It is a wonderful circle of friends. TJKC: How did you get started inking for Jack? MARTY: Mike simply asked me if I wanted to work on something for Jack. He had this Justice League splash page that needed finishing up. It was so scary to even touch, let alone ink, but Jack and Mike said, “Just do it.” They were very encouraging and offered pointers, such as “Don’t be afraid to put down solid blacks.” It was an enormous testimony of the faith that I was ready for this and that Jack was willing to give me a chance. When the piece finally arrived, it was so awe-inspiring to be actually holding an original Kirby pencil, that it was so hard to put ink to paper. I had to show it to my fellow (comic book) buddies and I was so jazzed. I must have passed the audition because Jack 47

he offered to pay me monetarily or in artwork. No-brainer—I chose the artwork! Then Jack asked me who my favorite character was, and that was extremely difficult to narrow down. I began picturing all the magnificent characters Jack created. Ultimately, I said Galactus. I always loved the majesty that Jack portrayed him with. Not too long after that, I received a beautiful four-panel Galactus page from the Silver Surfer graphic novel. Unbelievably, my first piece of artwork was drawn by my favorite art team, Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. This has led me on a quest to own artwork of my favorite Kirby inkers: Sinnott, Royer, Chic Stone, and Colletta. Their creations serve as examples of superior excellence that I strive to achieve in all my projects. TJKC: Do you have a favorite Kirby comic or story? MARTY: As any fan of Jack Kirby can attest to, identifying just one is no small task. I like stories for different reasons: The artwork, how different inkers helped add magic to a specific comic book character and not give it a house-look. The stories and characters are a factor in deciding on a favorite. How does one narrow down a favorite, given the sheer variety within the Kirby universe? As an inker I am drawn to how the inker impacts artwork and how that impacts the look of the book. That is why I think the artist/inker teams were so extraordinary on the Marvel books during those golden years. Since you’ve asked, I do find myself going back to certain issues and storylines. That is the charm of these old comics, too. You can go back to them time and time again; they still hold up and are fun to read. You cannot really say that in today’s comic book world. From beginning to end, I find the saga with FF #72, 74-77 the most compelling. I remember being on pins and needles waiting to see how that story would play out. As a single issue, I like FF #89, “Doomsday on the Moon,” because I was a big fan of the Apollo space missions. It was an epic thing at the time and I loved a super-hero take of that historical event.

I love his Fourth World titles at DC too. I wish it didn’t have to end. See, I can’t stop. TJKC: What are you doing today? MARTY: I am still involved on projects with Mike and the Kirby family. Mike and I are still very much the artist/inker team through all these years. It is still exciting and rewarding. We share the same intense desire to make our pages something that Jack would be proud of. His is the excellence we strive for. I enjoy working with Mike because of the freedom he lets me have with his pages. He has faith that I can see the direction he is taking on a page. He will let me experiment and try new things to get the best effect on a page possible. I’ll say to Mike, “This looks like Jack or a John Buscema, Steve Ditko, Steranko or whoever the influential master may be” and he allows me to work in that look. Our homage to our artistic heroes is by continuing to create work that Jack would approve of. There are those who claim that art style of years ago are passé, but I couldn’t disagree more. In-between inking assignments, I have cover recreation commissions, portrait requests and personal projects. There is always something to keep me busy artwise. There is just not enough time in a day. I am lucky to have a wife who is willing to put up with the solitary nature of an artist. We are lucky we like the same things like being homebodies, watching old horror monster movies and loving our four-legged children. TJKC: What was the most remarkable thing about Jack and Roz? MARTY: Jack and Roz’s beautiful love story and amazing partnership. Jack and Roz shared everything and were an inspiration to my wife and I and many others. Jack and Roz taught us how to treat each other without talking about it, they just lived it. Jack and Roz had such strong faith and had astonishing belief and trust in people. My wife and I were astounded on how they immediately embraced us into their family without judgment or hesitation. They are our role models. Getting to know them is one of our most cherished experiences. An example of their remarkable union is the time we were in their kitchen and Roz shared a story that Jack would always give her yellow roses for her birthday. It was very touching and sweet and that story has always stayed with us. When Jack passed away, we vowed Roz would continue to get those yellow roses and she continued to receive them until she left us to join Jack again. Their love story was truly inspiring and we continue to lead lives that they would be proud of. It is our generation’s responsibility to ensure the Kirby legacy continues. ★ (top) Jack at home, circa 1980. Photo by Marty Lasick. (left) We ran the pencils for this piece in a previous issue of TJKC—check out Marty’s inks! Characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MARTY LASICK

HE TURNED

INTO HIM?

Incidental Iconography An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld he idea behind “Incidental Iconography” came about in my studying Jack Kirby’s character designs and seeing them visually evolve as he continued drawing them month after month. The question in this issue, though, looks at a character Jack did not actually intend to be seen in a comic book: Z-Z-1-2-3. As has been recounted in greater detail elsewhere (notably in Mark Evanier’s “Jack FAQs” from TJKC #33), animation studio DePatie-Freleng secured the rights to create a Fantastic Four cartoon; however, with the Human Torch under option to Universal, they needed a new character to fill in the fourth spot of the super-powered quartet. After several ideas from Dave Cockrum were rejected, Jack Kirby quickly developed a design for a small, flying robot called Z-Z-1-2-3. It seems unquestionable that the cute robot idea was influenced by Star Wars which had opened to overwhelming success earlier that year, but Jack’s design (below) bears no similarity to R2-D2. The new character was approved with two minor alterations: He was renamed Herbie the Robot—likely to distance him somewhat from his Star Wars counterparts—and his hands were replaced with clamps. I suspect the hands were changed for a number of reasons. Jack had drawn them with three fingers and, coupled with Herbie’s sticklike arms, gave him something of a resemblance to traditional cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny. The clamps would also be easier to animate. It’s also the least robotic part of Jack’s initial design, so perhaps the decision was made to simply make him look more like a robot. (Although renaming him Herbie seems to run counter to that notion.) Jack then developed his version of storyboards. The illustrations are rather impressive for storyboard art, but crude by Jack’s usual standards (see an example elsewhere this issue). Throughout the boards, though, one can see Jack’s version of a simplified Herbie. The head has become more squared off, and many of the details of Herbie’s body—the buttons, lights and knobs—are eliminated. This is a unique perspective of how Jack must have pictured characters in his mind’s eye. Let me stop a moment and remind readers of the intent of “Incidental Iconography.” My contention has been that Jack, when designing characters, would remember only certain key elements of the character’s design and used that as the basis for his illustrations. Individual details of continuity were less important than the story as a whole, so as long as he conveyed the basic character design— enough that readers could easily identify the character—then he was generally content. The details he would put in any given drawing were so the final product had a pleasant aesthetic, not so that a strict continuity was maintained.

Now, keeping that in the forefront of your mind, let’s look at what Jack was doing with his storyboards (examples shown above and below). Jack was developing artwork not to be aesthetically pleasing, but exclusively to get the basic storytelling elements across. His drawings are deliberately and necessarily a shorthand for other artists, and they have considerably less polish on them. So when he was creating them, he was deliberately avoiding many of the details he would include in comic books and we are left with something that I feel more closely approximates how he saw character designs in his head. Unfortunately, he did not develop storyboards for every character he ever created, but we can see that the Fantastic Four, with their relatively simple costumes, are not far removed from his comic book illustrations for them. Herbie, as I noted earlier, loses much of his detail, and I think hits close to how Jack visually saw the character: Bulbous body with a radar scope, a blocky “sound box” on a collar which supports a box-ish head; the face is composed of two circles for eyes and a wavy line (probably inspired by waveforms) for a mouth; and three jets protrude from below the body. Further details are unnecessary in conveying the idea of the robot, so that’s what Jack kept in his head. The character was simplified further for animation: The unusual collar Jack originally drew was made more uniform, the “sound box” was replaced with a few vertical lines to suggest an internal speaker, the mouth was reduced to a simple rectangle, and the array of lights on his chest were made into a more uniform checkerboard-type pattern. This design can naturally be seen in the cartoon itself, but also the promotional material associated with the cartoon, including the cover to Fantastic Four #209. (Marv Wolfman once noted to me that the inclusion of Herbie in the comic book was an editorial edict to tie in with the cartoon, and as soon as the edict was lifted, Marv wrote the robot out of the story.) It is interesting to note, though, that John Byrne’s artwork within FF #209 portrays a H.E.R.B.I.E.—within the story, the name is an acronym—closer to Jack’s original design with the return of a “sound box” of sorts as well as the waveform mouth. John also elaborated on Jack’s ear pieces and used them as a sort of visual gyroscope, always maintaining their relative position to the floor regardless of the position of H.E.R.B.I.E.’s body. While the original Herbie was short-lived and fairly poorly executed in the cartoon, creators have recognized the power of Jack’s design. Various Herbie-style robots have cropped up intermittently in the comics since 1978 and most of them are more closely aligned with Jack’s original design than the watered-down version used in the cartoon. Alan Davis, Paul Pelletier, Joe Bennett, Barry Windsor-Smith, Roger Langride, Duncan Rouleau... they all based their work on what Jack never actually drew for a comic book himself. The H.E.R.B.I.E. character has been the butt of many a joke over the years—from a simple April Fool’s joke on the Thing to playing the straight man against Franklin Richards’ antics. Throughout all the indignities he suffers, though, he remains one of the last, great character concepts Jack gave Marvel and with his storyboard art, we can see what Jack had in his head when he developed Herbie. ★

Gallery 2

FANTASTIC FOUR REDUX

ack didn’t entirely abandon the Fantastic Four when he left the book in 1970. In addition to some covers in the 1970s, and an issue of What If? with the Marvel Bullpen as Reed & Co., Kirby had an extended stay doing storyboards for the 1978 DePatie-Freleng Fantastic Four animated series. Presented here is a complete set of Kirby storyboards for one of the episodes. Of note is Jack’s calling H.E.R.B.I.E. “Charlie”; guess that’s better than Z-Z-1-2-3!

FOurGround (next page) Unused page from Fantastic Four #68 (Nov. 1967). Kirby’s name “Go-Go” corresponds to the initials “GG” on the hot rod in that issue. All characters TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Fantastic Family

By Nicholas Caputo hile much has been written about the overwhelming aspects of Kirby and Lee’s Fantastic Four, there is another aspect of the strip that is often overlooked. Lurking inbetween the innovative villains, imaginative concepts and continual exploration of the unknown, Kirby’s ability to convey the little moments in the characters lives provided the strip with an unenviable charm. The use of body language, facial expressions and familiar places gave the strip a strong foundation that readers related to. While the fanciful aspects of the strip were essential, there was always a touch of the real world within the superscientific universe that the FF populated. By relating to outlandish characters such as the Thing, Kirby defined both himself and his audience. Below are four moments (appropriately enough) that illustrate the essence of that special feeling.

Baseball Kirby’s ability to weave the unbelievable with the mundane was mastered in Fantastic Four #53 (Aug. 1966), opening with the sight of Ben Grimm pitching to Wyatt Wingfoot in the African kingdom of Wakanda. After a two-part adventure introducing the Black Panther to the strip, the reader is suddenly placed firmly back on Earth. In their own simple way, Lee and Kirby were breaking new ground by having an AfricanAmerican (or more accurately, an African) and an American Indian appearing not only as supporting players, but as equals interacting with the FF. Whether done consciously or not, it nevertheless illustrated the dignity, respect and friendship that the team afforded to everyone they made contact with (besides, what were the Inhumans and the Silver Surfer besides outsiders?). Avoiding the stereotypes of the past, both T’Challa and Wyatt Wingfoot were intelligent men: One the leader of his nation, the other an athlete and college student. What better metaphor then playing the allAmerican game of Baseball together? Lee and Kirby choose not to preach to their readers, but instead let their characters speak through their actions.

The birth of Reed and Sue’s child (FF Special #6, 1968) was an event that Lee and Kirby had led up to for a year. While the majority of the issue centered on the prerequisite action (the teams attempt to obtain an antidote to save the life of Sue and her unborn child), the final pages focused on Reed, Johnny and

Ben in the Hospital waiting room. Kirby evokes tension with scenes such as Ben comforting a worried Johnny. The scene changes abruptly with news of the baby’s birth, and the excitement of the moment is captured with a smiling Crystal hugging Johnny, arm raised in exuberance. The final panel focuses on a somber Reed holding his child, surrounded by his family (Lee’s dialogue complimented the moment: “He seems so HELPLESS—so TINY... in a world that’s so GIGANTIC—so filled with unknown DANGERS!”). The mixed feelings of a parent’s joy and trepidation came through in both story and art.

The Family Unit The opening pages of FF #88 (July 1969) involve the team returning home from an extended battle, excitedly rushing towards Alicia and the baby. Kirby’s direction here is excellent, beginning with a three-panel sequence on page 2. The large opening panel centers on the Thing lifting Alicia into the air, as the parents hold their child and Crystal and Johnny look on. Panel two focuses on Reed and Sue looking down on their smiling baby. The third panel pictures the family surrounding the child. The following page continues with Reed lambasting Johnny as he entertains the baby with a flaming finger, illustrating the division between adult wisdom and youthful recklessness (the Baby, meanwhile, is gleefully reaching out to the colorful flames). In the next panel Reed’s anger quickly dissolves as he waves to the baby as Sue carries him away. Kirby uses his own experiences as a father and husband and incorporates them into the strip, touching on universal feelings.

At The Beach While Kirby’s mid-1960s FF stories were arguably his most dynamic work on the strip, individual moments stand out even towards the end of his run. One such moment was encountered on the cover of FF #97 (April 1970). While the family is unknowingly threatened by a green skinned “Gill-Man” in the background, the foreground focuses on the FF (out of costume) on vacation, enjoying the beach. Reed is playing with Franklin, Sue is testing the baby’s bottle, Ben is laying down, grooving to the music on a transistor radio and Johnny looks bored, burning flame into the sand. Kirby’s takes a typical family event and uses it as fodder for a fantasy comic, transforming it to suit his needs. Inside, a single panel of Johnny lifting a giggling Franklin in the air needs no explanation: It speaks clearly for itself. Many such family moments populated the pages of the Fantastic Four through the years: The team shopping, arguing, laughing and suffering together, but these four vignettes struck a chord with me and speak volumes about Jack Kirby’s ability to make not only the overwhelming come to life, but the everyday events as well. ★

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!

THE LEGION COMPANION

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

(200-page trade paperback) $26 US

(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

(208-page Trade Paperback) $29 US

• Wraparound CARLOS PACHECO cover! • More amazing information, speculation, and unseen ALL-STAR COMICS art! • Unpublished 1940s JSA STORY ART not printed in Volume One! • Full coverage of the 1980s ALL-STAR SQUADRON, with scarce & never-published art!

ROY THOMAS’ new sequel, with more secrets of the JSA and ALL-STAR COMICS, from 1940 through the 1980s:

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 2

(156-page trade paperback) $22 US

Compiles material from issues #3 and #4 of DRAW!, including tutorials by, and interviews with, ERIK LARSEN (savage penciling), DICK GIORDANO (inking techniques), BRET BLEVINS (drawing the figure in action, and figure composition), KEVIN NOWLAN (penciling and inking), MIKE MANLEY (how-to demo on Web Comics), DAVE COOPER (digital coloring tutorial), and more! Cover by KEVIN NOWLAN!

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1 BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 2 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!

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)

(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.

TITANS COMPANION

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US

A comprehensive examination of the Silver Age JLA by MICHAEL EURY, tracing its development, history, and more through interviews with the series’ creators, an issue-by-issue index of the JLA’s 19601972 adventures, classic and never-beforepublished artwork, and other 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)!

Unlocks the secrets of Superman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, when kryptonite came in multiple colors and super-pets flew the skies! Features all-new interviews with NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, NICK CARDY, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, KEITH GIFFEN, JIM MOONEY, DENNIS O’NEIL, BOB OKSNER, MARTY PASKO, BOB ROZAKIS, JIM SHOOTER, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and others, plus tons of rare and unseen art! By BACK ISSUE MAGAZINE’S Michael Eury!

(224-Page Trade Paperback) $29 US

JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION VOL. 1

THE KRYPTON COMPANION

NER! D WIN R A W A EISNER

THE TWOMORROWS LIBRARY

THE

(192-page trade paperback) $26 US

Collects the first two issues of ALTER EGO, plus 30 pages of NEW MATERIAL! JLA Jam Cover by KUBERT, PÉREZ, GIORDANO, TUSKA, CARDY, FRADON, & GIELLA, new sections featuring scarce art by GIL KANE, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MURPHY ANDERSON, DICK DILLIN, & more!

ALTER EGO COLLECTION, VOL. 1

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

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)!

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: GENE COLAN

(108-page trade paperback) $18 US (120-minute companion DVD) $35 US

• VOLUME 4: Reprints TJKC #16-19 (the Tough Guys, DC, Marvel, and Art theme issues), plus more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (240 pages) $29 US • VOLUME 5: Reprints TJKC #20-22 (the Women, Wacky, and Villains theme issues), plus more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (224 pages) $29 US

• VOLUME 3: Reprints TJKC #13-15 (the Horror, Thor, and Sci-Fi theme issues), plus 30 new pieces of Kirby art! • (176 pages) $24 US

• VOLUME 2: Reprints TJKC #10-12 (the Humor, Hollywood, and International theme issues), and includes a new special section detailing a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, showcasing more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (160 pages) $22 US

FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

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 “Marvel-style” 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!

HOW TO CREATE COMICS

THE DARK AGE

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

CALL, WRITE, OR E-MAIL FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG!

(160 pages) $24 US

JACK KIRBY’S six-issue “Visual Novel” for Pacific Comics, reproduced from his powerful, uninked pencil art! Includes Kirby’s illustrated movie screenplay, never-seen sketches, pin-ups, & more from his final series!

(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:

TRUE BRIT

CELEBRATING GREAT COMIC BOOK ARTISTS OF THE UK

(168-page trade paperback) $24 US

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.

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US

(336-Page Trade Paperback) $44 US

ART OF GEORGE TUSKA 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!

WALLACE WOOD

(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!

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

The definitive biographical memoir on Wood, 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 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 art.

AGAINST THE GRAIN: MAD ARTIST

(168-page Trade Paperback) $24 US

• VOLUME 1: Reprints TJKC #1-9 (including the Fourth World and Fantastic Four theme issues), plus over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (240 pages) $29 US

See what thousands of comics fans, professionals, and historians have discovered: The King lives on in the pages of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR! These colossal TRADE PAPERBACKS reprint the first 22 sold-out issues of the magazine for Kirby fans!

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. 1-5

(176-pg. Paperback) $24 US

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

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

CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

DICK GIORDANO

(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!

HERO GETS GIRL!

THE LIFE & ART OF KURT SCHAFFENBERGER

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: • BRUCE TIMM • LOUISE SIMONSON • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • DAVE DORMAN • ADAM HUGHES • GREG RUCKA & MORE!

SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

COMICS ABOVE GROUND

GEORGE PÉREZ

VOL. 11: CHARLES VESS

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

(116-page magazine) $9 US

Plus a KEVIN NOWLAN interview, and a new BRUCE TIMM COVER!

ALAN DAVIS GEORGE PÉREZ BRUCE TIMM KEVIN NOWLAN JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ ARTHUR ADAMS JOHN BYRNE WALTER SIMONSON

(100-page magazine) $9 US

Plus a PAUL GULACY interview, a look at oddball penciler/inker combinations, and a new GULACY “HEX” COVER!

BRIAN APTHORP FRANK BRUNNER PAUL GULACY JERRY ORDWAY ALEX TOTH MATT WAGNER

ROUGH STUFF #2 The follow-up to our smash first issue features more galleries of UNSEEN ART by top industry professionals, including:

ROUGH STUFF #1 Our debut issue features galleries of UNSEEN ART by a who’s who of Modern Masters including:

ROUGH STUFF #3

(100-page magazine) $9 US

Plus a JOHN ROMITA JR. interview, looks at the earliest work of some of your favorite artists, and a new ROMITA JR. COVER!

MIKE ALLRED JOHN BUSCEMA YANICK PAQUETTE JOHN ROMITA JR. P. CRAIG RUSSELL LEE WEEKS

This third groundbreaking issue presents still more galleries of UNSEEN ART by some of the biggest names in the comics industry, including:

THE ULTIMATE COMICS EXPERIENCE!

ALTER EGO SUBSCRIPTIONS: Twelve issues in the US: $72 Standard, $108 First Class (Canada: $132, Elsewhere: $144 Surface, $192 Airmail). NOTE: IF YOU PREFER A SIX-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

ROUGH STUFF, DRAW! & WRITE NOW! SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in the US: $24 Standard, $36 First Class (Canada: $44, Elsewhere: $48 Surface, $64 Airmail).

BACK ISSUE! SUBSCRIPTIONS: Six issues in the US: $36 Standard, $54 First Class (Canada: $66, Elsewhere: $72 Surface, $96 Airmail).

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four tabloid issues in the US: $40 Standard, $56 First Class (Canada: $64, Elsewhere: $68 Surface, $84 Airmail).

2006 SUBSCRIPTION RATES

LOOK FOR OUR NEXT CATALOG IN JANUARY 2007 FOR MORE NEW & UPCOMING ITEMS!

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Spinning off from the pages of BACK ISSUE! magazine comes ROUGH STUFF, celebrating the ART of creating comics! Edited by famed inker BOB McLEOD, each issue spotlights NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED penciled pages, preliminary sketches, detailed layouts, and even unused inked versions from artists throughout comics history. Included is commentary on the art, discussing what went right and wrong with it, and background information to put it all into historical perspective. Plus, before-and-after comparisons let you see firsthand how an image changes from initial concept to published version. So don’t miss this amazing new magazine, featuring galleries of NEVERBEFORE SEEN art, from some of your favorite series of all time, and the top pros in the industry!

ORDER ONLINE: www.twomorrows.com

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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.

120-MIN. STD. FORMAT DVD • $35 US Postpaid

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $19 US

V.10: KEVIN MAGUIRE

V.5: GARCÍA-LÓPEZ

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

IN FEB. 2007:

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

V.9: MIKE WIERINGO

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

Comics International on MODERN MASTERS VOL. 2: GEORGE PÉREZ

“TwoMorrows blesses us fans with a frank, honest interview with the man himself. And it doesn’t cut any corners... If you love Pérez’s work, you’ll definitely love this.”

V.4: KEVIN NOWLAN

MODERN MASTERS: IN THE STUDIO WITH

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $19 US

V.8: WALTER SIMONSON

V.3: BRUCE TIMM

(120-Page TPB with COLOR) $19 US

This DVD companion to the Modern Masters book series gives you a personal tour of George’s studio, and lets you watch step-by-step 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!

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $19 US

V.7: JOHN BYRNE

V.6: ARTHUR ADAMS

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

V.2: GEORGE PÉREZ

(128-Page Trade Paperback) $17 US

VOL. 1: ALAN DAVIS

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks are 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!

MODERN MASTERS SERIES

Collector

Comments

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 Go, team go! Send your letters and e-mails to TJKC, where we reserve the right to edit them for space and content!

(This letter column is the last thing I do when putting each issue together, and while you might not realize it, it can be pretty challenging deciding whether or not to run a given letter. To wit:) Greetings from Finland. Yesterday I purchased FF undies from a H&M store (a Swedish clothes store chain) and thought that you might be interested hearing about this, erm, rather unusual a product.

What great pick up lines these make: “Hey baby, wanna see the Thing in my pants?” or “Sugar, didya know that I have Mr. Fantastic in my pants?” If you want to see pics of the back and side, let me know and I’ll send you them. Janne Lonnqvist, FINLAND (Umm... no thanks, Janne. I think we’ve all seen more than enough.) It’s always a treat to get the distinctive giant envelope in the mail, and this was no exception. Stopped writing novel, started reading about Jack. But I’m afraid you gave me too much credit in the “Other Non-Kirby Fourth World Appearances” section. I wrote only #19-22 of MISTER MIRACLE; the other Steve, Gerber, did #23-25. Steve Englehart (Oops, sorry about that. Of course, all Kirby fans know that Mr. Englehart is the writer of that great ’80s Kirby comic, Destroyer Du... waitaminnit, that’s not right...) It’s been a long time since JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #6, but #46 was worth the wait! Kevin Ainsworth made some good observations in his article. As a longtime California resident, I’ve met many people over the years who’ve attested that the generally relaxed, easygoing atmosphere of our state had “mellowed” them from the other cities/areas they’d moved from. Cali’s no New Genesis, of course, but Mr. and Mrs. Kirby’s comments in their chat with Ray Wyman seemed to bear out that they’d found a beautiful area in Thousand Oaks that was conducive to the couple’s happiness. I’m glad you’re receptive to articles that deal with later interpretations of Jack’s concepts and characters. I enjoyed Douglas Poole’s Post-Kirby Kirby as I did your afterKirby KAMANDI/OMAC overview in #40. The King’s work in his godwar was incredibly personal and stylized, but a later number of creators did do some intriguing things with them. Still, I have to agree—like all of them —that no one but Kirby could’ve truly done that epic the way it needed to be done. 78

Which brings me to this: The lingering frustration I have with that godwar is that Jack didn’t continue it anyway after the books’ cancellations, if only for himself. Bear in mind that he was writing/editing/penciling four comics then on a bi-monthly basis (an incredible achievement!). So he could’ve easily done one “umbrella comic” uniting FP, NG, and MM’s struggles even though he was paying the bills by doing DEMON and KAMANDI. (Jack’s Orion vs. Darkseid “war poster” in the Kirby MASTERWORKS proved he hadn’t abandoned the New Genesis/Apokolips conflict in the late ’70s.) If he’d done this, he’d had have “a director’s cut” (as a later generation of fans might call it) of his masterpiece just the way he’d intended it to be. The King could’ve done this book at his leisure, of course, since he wanted this war to go on for years as Mr. Evanier stated back in #6. That way if and when the DC brass came to their senses (as they seemed to do a short while later with the RETURN OF THE NEW GODS in ’76), Jack would’ve had material ready for inking and publishing! My take on the Heck AVENGERS stat in Jack’s files is that he needed some kind of scenario on which to base his cover. Put those characters (in the lower panel) in motion and you have the cover to AVENGERS #18. Another high note in #46 was the toy design gallery—astounding! I’m not big on much of the artwork I’ve seen by Jack in the ’80s, but it’s clear he meant to blow a lot of minds with those stunning conceptual pieces! Jerry Boyd, Torrance, CA (Jack was was working on other stuff while doing “just” two monthly books in KAMANDI and DEMON. Carmine had him cranking out ideas like ATLAS and DINGBATS for FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL, and OMAC and OUR FIGHTING FORCES came soon after. He had to make his page quota, so wouldn’t have had time to fritter on his own NEW GODS story without a definite venue to sell it.) Almost hidden in the latest issue of the always-great TJKC is one of the greatest things you’ve ever presented—mainly the unseen issue of NEW GODS #12! We finally get to see and read what Jack originally did, although maddeningly tiny. This is far more interesting and important than a million analyses of this or that. You mention that Jack was contracted to do a 25-page story and the story which culminates in Esak's death and “reversion” to his true physical form in the last two pages is indeed a twenty-five page story—which has a very satisfying conclusion leading me to think you may be wrong to postulate that the last two pages were done later, despite the obvious change of the blurb on page 23. That area MAY have been filled with some bombastic caption-verbiage and not necessarily the “continued next issue” type of statement one might expect. Despite the absence of the stats of the last two pages that you mention, it would seem odd that Jack would not finish his story in that touching way, but rather leave the conclusion for later.

But the most obvious indication that the story was indeed a 25-pager ending with Esak’s transformation is the fact that pages 24 and 25 were inked and lettered by Mike Royer—at least they sure look that way. And Royer was supposedly not involved once the hubbub started. Why would they bring him back for two pages when all the other “correcting” and “improving” was being handled by others at DC? Thus I must vote for the 25 page, Royerinked-and-lettered story with the nice ending as being what Jack sent to DC in the first place. Pete Von Sholly, Sunland, CA (In case it wasn’t clear, here’s my “Armagetto” hypothesis: 1) Jack does 23page story, plus 2-page text piece, presumably “ending” the New Gods saga. 2) DC says “this doesn’t end it,” so Jack goes back and tries to end it by adding pages 24 and 25. 3) DC still doesn’t think it works, so decides to do a separate Graphic Novel to end the saga. 4) Jack goes back and changes caption at bottom of page 23 to reflect the upcoming GN. 5) Mike Royer inks the whole shebang. 6) DC sees the later, weaker Kirby pencils, and decides to use the stronger Royer pages as part of the GN, and Jack does the new intro story.) In your new issue are some new variations on previous information that we had about the scrambled editorial snafus that beset HUNGER DOGS. The account differs from the story from the very early Fourth World TJKC issue where Mike Royer says that the original story had Darkseid and Orion dying, an appearance by Metron, and Esak represented as the hope of the epic. Now this version is not mentioned as they go straight to the version that Mike actually inked, “On the Road to Armagetto.” Still, the pencils would probably tell the real story if copies exist. The “Armagetto” story was intended as an intro to HUNGER DOGS and had already been changed significantly from the original ending. Then Jack was asked to do a NEW intro and “Armagetto” was clumsily inserted into HUNGER DOGS. We now hear from Mark Alexander, the production guy, that the new intro, “Even Gods must Die,” contains panels or pages that Jack didn’t even draw— specifically the “peppering” of Orion, which is perhaps drawn by Joe Orlando?! Or is it the extra border art of the ill-proportioned stats of HUNGER DOGS itself that wasn’t drawn by Jack? Your earlier articles say Jack was forced to draw those borders and they were inked by D. Bruce Berry, but Alexander seems to be saying he worked on those also. It’s a shame given that DC was trying to give Jack a good deal, and did with the SUPER POWERS merchandising. Somehow they didn’t understand how to deal with HUNGER DOGS, though. The editing seems to have jumped from Giordano to Orlando according to Alexander, while he doesn’t mention Andy Helfer who was definitely involved in the proceedings; he was the guy who basically washed his hands of it and gave the lot to Greg Theakston. If DC had lived with “Armagetto” as an intro and had Jack do HUNGER DOGS with an attentive editor, we might well have had a great late-Kirby masterpiece. “Armagetto” stands well in its original inked state and

deserves to be printed in that form, IMO. James Romberger, New York, NY (HUNGER DOGS was indeed a mess, and I think we’re still just beginning to find out how convoluted the actual tale—both on the printed page, and behind the scenes—really was. But yeah, the new article does raise a lot of new questions and contradictions to what we previously thought, and we’ll keep digging for more info. I wish Len Wein remembered more, but when we contacted him, he didn’t really remember anything significant to add to the record.) As a fan, not knowing the behind-the-scenes stuff, all I knew was, I tolerated the art in “Even Gods Must Die”, while acknowledging the odd parallel it shared with THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (father and son confront each other, son appears to die by father’s hand). I think I also got OMAC around that time, and while I LOVED the series, the concept, the wild ideas, I didn't care for the inks at all. On the other hand, THE HUNGER DOGS was much more like it. I felt Greg Theakston’s inks brought a solidness missing from much of the later CAPTAIN AMERICA, CAPTAIN VICTORY, SILVER STAR, etc. Had he inked it entirely on his own from the start, the book might not be under such dispute of late. I also LOVED the story, the fact that Orion found love and decided to WALK AWAY from the conflict rather than face the “inevitable” father-son confrontation (then again, hadn’t he ALREADY done that and just barely survived?). I loved the social commentary in “Even Gods Can Die” where Darkseid laments the mechanization of war, how it removes any pretext of “honor” among warriors. And I ESPECIALLY loved the ending— with its comments about the arms race. More people should read that story. World leaders should read that story. It deeply offended me, not long after, when certain writers at DC began saying that HUNGER DOGS “didn’t happen—at least, not yet.” SCREW the “New DCU”! HUNGER DOGS is Earth-1, and perfectly valid as it is. Looking back, I’d like to say a big “Thank you!” to Dick Giordano for opening up his mouth, no matter how Kirby may have misinterpreted it. If not for that, the story I love so much might never have gotten told! Henry R. Kujawa, Camden, NJ A few of the highlights for me about #46: THOR #145 page! Wow! Another find since the index published in TJKC #38! It’s great that pages like this and the #121 page two issues ago, then the TOS #93 pages turn up. Fantastic! Another stunning find! Don Heck pencils from the early ’60s. What fabulous, tight work it is too. Surely this is one of the earliest examples of his pencils that exist? The pencils for “Raid from Apokolips” show that this was a good ink job by Vinnie Colletta. Only in the second-to-last panel on page 4 do we see a hint of the speed at which the work was probably done—where he ignored the intention of the guideline around Big Bear’s head (which was to place the fur) and simply inked the guideline itself. Maybe the guideline was darker than normal and looked like it was a line to be inked. But then he ignored the other fur that was there. “On the Road to Armagetto.” Yet more complications to this troubled piece are revealed. I find it fascinating that Kirby him-

self played with parts of the script—after it was lettered and perhaps before HUNGER DOGS. On good copies of page 1, it can be clearly seen that Kirby is unhappy with his own script, changing “...cast not by ourselves—but only those of the gods.” to “..cast not by ourselves, nor the gods... but by the ugly images of deadly erosion.” Hmmm—not very clarifying, simultaneously having that wonderfully bizarre, poetic feel of his while being too annoyingly obscure. I guess he changed his mind himself and left the script as it was. I loved the exchange between Roz and Jack where she corrects him after he says he remembers BLACK HOLE being done in New York. If ever we needed an example of how bad his memory got, this has to be one. THE FIFTH WORLD: a) I remain stunned that in the ’70s Orion went from one of the greatest looking warriors in comics to one of the absolute worst! I wonder who designed that horrible costume from RETURN OF THE NEW GODS and I wonder what writer Conway thought of it? b) Mark Evanier may hate his NEW GODS books but there was one period during the “Bloodline Saga” where fellow Kirby-ist Mark Muller and I really felt it had a great feel to it. And I specifically remember him pointing to Paris Cullin’s cover for #9 saying “This feels like Kirby’s back!” c) But far and away the overall best of the non-Kirby stuff was, I think, Walt Simonson’s ORION series. “Father Box”, the “Wrath of the Source”, Mr Miracle ‘escaping’ the anti-life equation—I think Simonson was the best at ‘thinking’ through Kirby’s concepts and doing something with them that felt in tune with Kirby’s vision rather than working against them. Some truly wonderful imaginative twists in many of his issues. And he also brought back Orion’s dignity, rather than having him act like a raving lunatic as most did. Your back cover: Nice. It looked familiar to me —as though it was appearing the way it originally did. Then I worked out why. I had done exactly the same combination years ago when I had the time to play around with pseudo-covers for the Fourth World at Marvel—except that I didn’t flop Infinity Man. Below is the cover I did up (the missing logo of course is “The Forever People”). Shane Foley, AUSTRALIA

One thing I noticed looking through the art gallery section you chose from NEW GODS and FOREVER PEOPLE was, by a very strange coincidence, you chose art which illustrated perfectly the difference between how Jack saw Highfather and Darkseid and the effect they had on others. On the bottom left hand corner panel of the Esak and Highfather page (page 36) is the clenched hand of Highfather being embraced lovingly by Esak. Highfather calls it a ‘hand of

power’ and, boy, does the art show that to be true. On the bottom left hand corner of the FOREVER PEOPLE page (page 38) is the clenched hand of Darkseid in a similar pose and also the central point of the panel. Contrast the reaction of the Forever People to that ‘hand of power’. Look also at the panel following each of those hands. Highfather comes down to Esak’s level while Darkseid makes the Forever People stand fearfully and respectfully to attention thus coming to his level. What an amazing example of compare and contrast that is! To Jack, Highfather was not a wishy-washy pacifist. He was a being of power and a warrior who chose the path of peace. It was a positive choice he made and he was never less than an awesome presence in any scene he is in. He is guiding the next generation to be the generation who embrace peace without first having been warriors. He also has the power to undo Darkseid’s ultimate Omega Force. Those two panels on each page sum up so much. It was an interesting letter in issue #45 about Stan Lee and Vince Colletta. I have disagreed with things said about Stan Lee in the past but I would never have dreamt of not buying your magazine! Talk about cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face! You have a very good letters’ page and if there was anything I disagreed with, then I wrote a letter. You have always been very good, as far as I can see, about letting people with different points of view air those views in your letters’ page. Coming back to TJKC #46. I loved the covers (both front and back). Darkseid is Jack’s ultimate villain and the love he has for that character comes through in the art. When he came back for his last hurrah on New Gods with THE HUNGER DOGS, it is Darkseid who is threedimensional and the star of the show. Then again, with my earlier comments about Highfather and Darkseid I guess we should never underestimate Jack’s love for any character he was drawing. After reading the article on the production, I would love to see a proper version of NEW GODS #12 and THE HUNGER DOGS as Jack drew them and without the work done on his art to resize it. I assume the art still exists to enable this to happen? In the film world a film can be released to the cinema and then brought out on DVD. Then a while later a second version, a Director’s Cut, is released on DVD to maximize the revenue. People quite happily pay for both versions. I am amazed that this has never happened in the comic’s world. Imagine a “Director’s Cut” version of NEW GODS #12 and THE HUNGER DOGS. It would sell. Imagine a “Director’s Cut” version of Kirby’s JIMMY OLSEN with Kirby’s original versions of Jimmy and Superman restored. It would sell. Congratulations on your article in the latest FANTASTIC FOUR MASTERWORKS book. It shows that all your hard work on TJKC (a labor of love) has been noticed. It also shows that your work with TwoMorrows has changed the ground rules for looking back at older comic books. The bottom line, as far as I can see, is that there was no need for Marvel to commission that article. There was no need for them to admit about FF #102 to those who do not know about it. The Masterworks series exists simply to reprint older comics in a deluxe format and make money from an existing back catalogue. That MASTERWORKS volume will sell whether your article is in it or not, so for them to allow an article on the original FF #102 is a very positive milestone. And it’s a milestone that may (hopefully) lead to the “Director’s Cut” versions I mentioned above. I also enjoyed Lisa Kirby’s writing on the GALACTIC BOUNTY HUNTERS comic. It was a highly enjoyable read and a very good use of Jack’s unused ideas and inventory. Please pass

on my congratulations and encouragement to her. I, for one, think she has inherited her Father’s creative gene. Kevin Ainsworth, UK I would like to put the following ad in your next JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR issue: Inkers wanted for Kirbyesque comic. Please contact me and send samples of your work. JUAN GONZALEZ, 2830 Magowan Dr. Santa Rosa, CA 95405 (In these days of Internet chat rooms, eBay, and web stores, I’ve decided that there’s not much need for our humble classified ad section any longer. But all you wannabe inkers out there, drop Juan a line! Hey, while we’re at it, we’re looking for a photo of Arthur Pierce dressed as Captain America. Arthur played Captain America in the Boston Area for WNAC Television in the late Sixties. If you have one, contact George Khoury via e-mail at vandaly6@aol.com, or by telephone: (609) 955-5232) Thought you’d be interested to hear about another mention of Kirby, or at least a tip of the hat to one of his creations. The reference appears in a recent book by Walter Mosley, author of such books as the Easy Rawlins mystery DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS. The title of his new book is FORTUNATE SON, in which the 6-yearold character named Tommy befriends a boy from his class, after which they spend hours perusing old tattered issues of the FANTASTIC FOUR. His interest in the FF is mentioned a number of times in the novel, including descriptions of the characters, and a dog named after the Skrulls! Although it’s not a key feature of the story, it does give quite a bit of insight into Tommy’s character, and it’s obvious that Mosley has a soft spot for the comic. At any rate, it is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it. Bruce Younger, Rochester, NY (Walter Mosley is interviewed as part of the F4 DVD documentary on Jack that still hasn’t been released, and he spearheaded the recent MAXIMUM FF oversized reprint of FF #1 from Marvel. Thanks for the tip on his new book!)

#47 Credits: John Morrow, Editor/Designer Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor Chris Irving, Production Assistant Proofreader Rand Hoppe, Webmaster Tom Ziuko, Colorist Chris Fama, Art Restoration Bob Brodsky, Circulation Director, Seastone Marketing Group SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Nicholas Caputo Dewey Cassell • Shel Dorf Mark Evanier • Chris Fama Shane Foley • Barry Forshaw Mike Gartland • David Hamilton Bruce Hannum Heritage Auctions • Rand Hoppe Larry Houston Christopher Irving George Khoury • Lisa Kirby Sean Kleefeld • Chris Knowles Peter Koch • Peter Kuper Marty Lasick • Jonathan Lethem Adam McGovern • Will Murray Owen O'Leary Philippe Queveau John Romita, Jr. David Schwartz • Joe Simon Mike Thibodeaux Seth Tobocman • Bruce Younger 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 get technical in JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #48, spotlighting “Kirbytech”—Jack’s knack for creating high-tech gizmos, gadgets, and concepts, from Iron Man’s armor and Machine Man, to the Negative Zone and beyond! Included is a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, a complete 1950s story, interviews with Godland’s TOM SCIOLI and Dark Horse publisher MIKE RICHARDSON, the 2006 Kirby Tribute Panel (with NEAL ADAMS, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOHN ROMITA, MIKE ROYER, and Kirby lawyer PAUL LEVINE), Kirby covers inked by TERRY AUSTIN and TOM SCIOLI, and more! After a short break, it ships in April 2007, and the submission deadline is 1/2/07.

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! WE MIGHT USE THEM FOR #51! 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.

Jack drew this cover for Marvel’s What If? #9 (June 1978), featuring a quintet of 1950s characters forming an alternate version of the Avengers. Kudos to Roy Thomas for getting Kirby do create this nostalgia-laden cover!

Parting Shot

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!

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.

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 #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 #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 #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

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