Jack Kirby Collector #48 by TwoMorrows Publishing

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR FORTY-EIGHT

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(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: FEB012234

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FANTASTIC FOUR ISSUE! Gallery of FF pencils at tabloid size, MARK EVANIER on the FF Cartoon series, interviews with STAN LEE and ERIK LARSEN, JOE SINNOTT salute, the HUMAN TORCH in STRANGE TALES, origins of Kirby Krackle, interviews with nearly EVERY WRITER AND ARTIST who worked on the FF after Kirby, & more! KIRBY/LARSEN and KIRBY/TIMM covers!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #33

KIRBY COLLECTOR #32

KIRBY’S LEAST-KNOWN WORK! MARK EVANIER on the Fourth World, unfinished THE HORDE novel, long-lost KIRBY INTERVIEW from France, update to the KIRBY CHECKLIST, pencil gallery of Kirby’s leastknown work (including THE PRISONER, BLACK HOLE, IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB, TRUE DIVORCE CASES), westerns, and more! KIRBY/LADRONN cover!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #31

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(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY991744

(68-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: FEB991553

FIRST TABLOID-SIZE ISSUE! MARK EVANIER’s new column, interviews with KURT BUSIEK and JOSÉ LADRONN, NEAL ADAMS on Kirby, Giant-Man overview, Kirby’s best 2-page spreads, 2000 Kirby Tribute Panel (MARK EVANIER, GENE COLAN, MARIE SEVERIN, ROY THOMAS, and TRACY & JEREMY KIRBY), huge Kirby pencils! Wraparound KIRBY/ADAMS cover!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #26

KIRBY’s GODS! Interviews with KIRBY (discussing the true nature of God) & WALTER SIMONSON, 8-page color section with NEW GODS CONCEPT DRAWINGS, how Jack was influenced by JUDAISM AND THE BIBLE, examining Kirby’s take on mythology, plus features and art (including uninked pencils) from THOR, MR. MIRACLE, ETERNALS, FOREVER PEOPLE, and more!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #25

SIMON & KIRBY ISSUE! Feature-length interview with JOE SIMON about the S&K shop, KIRBY talks about his Golden Age work with SIMON, interview with JOHN SEVERIN, unpublished BOY EXPLORERS story, the rise and fall of S&K’s MAINLINE COMICS, unpublished art, pencil pages before inking, and more! KIRBY/ADKINS and KIRBY/SEVERIN covers!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #24

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: DEC012667

FIGHTING AMERICANS! MARK EVANIER on 1960s Marvel inkers, SHIELD, Losers, and Green Arrow overviews, INFANTINO interview on Simon & Kirby, KIRBY interview, Captain America PENCIL ART GALLERY, PHILIPPE DRUILLET interview, JOE SIMON and ALEX TOTH speak, unseen BIG GAME HUNTER and YOUNG ABE LINCOLN Kirby concepts! KIRBY and KIRBY/TOTH covers!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #34

(72-page magazine with COLOR) $9 US Diamond Order Code: NOV991577

THE KIRBY INFLUENCE! Interviews with KIRBY (on his WWII experiences) and ALEX ROSS, KIRBY FAMILY roundtable discussion, All-Star Tribute Panel (featuring NEIL GAIMAN, DAVE GIBBONS, KURT BUSIEK, JEFF SMITH, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, MARK WAID, and others), color section, features, art (including uninked pencils), and more! KIRBY/BRUCE TIMM cover!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #27

Only a few left of our TJKC retailer’s poster! $10 US Not available through Diamond.

17" x 23" JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR POSTER

KIRBY’S GREATEST BATTLES! Interviews with KIRBY and JIM SHOOTER (on Kirby’s art battle with Marvel), comparison of KIRBY’S margin notes to STAN LEE’S words, page-by-page analysis of NEW GODS #6 (“Glory Boat”, including Jack’s pencils), how Kirby’s WWII experiences shaped his super-hero battles, Sgt. Fury, unpublished art, and more! KIRBY/MIGNOLA cover!

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The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERVIEWS WITH KIRBY and his contemporaries, FEATURE ARTICLES, RARE AND UNSEEN KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and presentation of KIRBY’S UNINKED PENCILS from the 1960s-80s (from photocopies preserved in the KIRBY ARCHIVES). Now in OVERSIZED TABLOID FORMAT, it showcases Kirby’s amazing art even larger!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: MAR022526

GREAT ESCAPES! MISTER MIRACLE pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER, MARSHALL ROGERS & MICHAEL CHABON interviews, comparing Kirby and Houdini’s backgrounds, analysis of “Himon”, 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel (WILL EISNER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, MIKE ROYER, and JOHNNY CARSON) & more! KIRBY/MARSHALL ROGERS and KIRBY/STEVE RUDE covers!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #35

(68-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: SEP002235

KIRBY’S TWILIGHT YEARS (1978-94)! Interviews with ALAN MOORE and Kirby Estate co-trustee ROBERT KATZ, comparison of KIRBY’S margin notes to STAN LEE’S words, Jack’s 1980s career in-depth, including pencil art from SILVER STAR, CAPTAIN VICTORY, HUNGER DOGS, an animation art portfolio, FF STORYBOARDS, and lots more! KIRBY/PAUL SMITH cover!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #30

(68-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: DEC981537

Rarely-seen KIRBY INTERVIEW, UNINKED PENCILS from FANTASTIC FOUR #49, comparison of KIRBY’S margin notes to STAN LEE’S words, interview with DENNY O’NEIL, 7th Grade school project by granddaughter TRACY KIRBY (illustrated by her grandpa!), unpublished story from SOUL LOVE, unpublished art, pencil pages before inking, & more! KIRBY/ALEX HORLEY cover!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #23

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(84-page tabloid) $13 US Diamond Order Code: MAR063567

KIRBY COLLECTOR #48

(84-page tabloid) $13 US Diamond Order Code: FEB073907

KIRBYTECH ISSUE, spotlighting Jack’s hightech concepts, from Iron Man’s armor and Machine Man, to the Negative Zone and beyond! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, TOM SCIOLI interview, Kirby Tribute Panel (with ADAMS, PÉREZ, and ROMITA), and covers inked by TERRY AUSTIN and TOM SCIOLI!

(84-page tabloid) $13 US Ships July 2007

WARRIORS, spotlighting Thor (with a look at hidden messages in BILL EVERETT’s Thor inks), Sgt. Fury, Challengers of the Unknown, Losers, and others! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, interviews with JERRY ORDWAY and GRANT MORRISON, MARK EVANIER’s column, pencil art gallery, complete 1950s story, wraparound cover inked by JERRY ORDWAY, and more!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: AUG053346

KIRBY’S MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS! Coverage of DEMON, THOR, & GALACTUS, interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER, pencil art galleries of the Demon and other mythological characters, two never-reprinted BLACK MAGIC stories, interview with Kirby Award winner DAVID SCHWARTZ and F4 screenwriter MIKE FRANCE, and more! Kirby cover inked by MATT WAGNER!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: JUN032631

KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

(100-page comic book) $8 US Diamond Order Code: OCT981647

The most thorough listing of Kirby’s work ever published! Lists EVERY PUBLISHED COMIC featuring Jack’s work, including story titles, page counts, and inkers, plus an extensive bibliography, listing BOOKS, PERIODICALS, PORTFOLIOS, FANZINES, POSTERS, a detailed list of Jack’s UNPUBLISHED WORK, and more. A must for serious Kirby collectors!

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST

(84-page Tabloid) $13 US Diamond Order Code: DEC053415

Jack’s vision of PAST AND FUTURE, with a never-seen KIRBY interview, a new interview with son NEAL KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’S column, two pencil galleries, two complete ’50s stories, Jack’s first script, Kirby Tribute Panel (with EVANIER, KATZ, SHAW!, and SHERMAN), plus an unpublished CAPTAIN 3-D cover, inked by BILL BLACK and converted into 3-D by RAY ZONE!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: FEB042811

WORLD THAT’S COMING! KAMANDI and OMAC spotlight, 2003 Kirby Tribute Panel (WENDY PINI, MICHAEL CHABON, STAN GOLDBERG, SAL BUSCEMA, LARRY LIEBER, and STAN LEE), P. CRAIG RUSSELL interview, MARK EVANIER, NEW COLUMN analyzing Jack’s visual shorthand, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by ERIK LARSEN and REEDMAN!

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TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

KIRBY COLLECTOR #47 KIRBY’S SUPER TEAMS, from kid gangs and the Challengers, to Fantastic Four, XMen, and Super Powers, with unseen 1960s Marvel art, a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, author JONATHAN LETHEM on his Kirby influence, interview with JOHN ROMITA, JR. on his Eternals work, and more!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #46

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: MAY053191

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: FEB053236

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: AUG043207

Focus on NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, and DARKSEID! Includes a rare interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’s column, FOURTH WORLD pencil art galleries (including Kirby’s redesigns for SUPER POWERS), two 1950s stories, a new Kirby Darkseid front cover inked by MIKE ROYER, a Kirby Forever People back cover inked by JOHN BYRNE, and more!

KIRBY AWARD WINNERS! STEVE SHERMAN and others sharing memories and neverseen art from JACK & ROZ, a never-published 1966 interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER on VINCE COLLETTA, pencils-toSinnott inks comparison of TALES OF SUSPENSE #93, and more! Covers by KIRBY (Jack’s original ’70s SILVER STAR CONCEPT ART) and KIRBY/SINNOTT!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #42 1970s DC WORK! Coverage of Jimmy Olsen, FF movie set visit, overview of all Newsboy Legion stories, KEVIN NOWLAN and MURPHY ANDERSON on inking Jack, never-seen interview with Kirby, MARK EVANIER on Kirby’s covers, Bongo Comics’ Kirby ties, complete ’40s gangster story, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by NOWLAN and ANDERSON!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: DEC023051

KIRBY COLLECTOR #41

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: SEP022438

KIRBY COLLECTOR #39 FAN FAVORITES! Covering Kirby’s work on HULK, INHUMANS, and SILVER SURFER, TOP PROS pick favorite Kirby covers, Kirby ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT interview, MARK EVANIER, 2002 Kirby Tribute Panel (DICK AYERS, TODD McFARLANE, PAUL LEVITZ, HERB TRIMPE), pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by MIKE ALLRED and P. CRAIG RUSSELL!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #38 “HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” PART 2: JOE SINNOTT on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE PENCIL GALLERY, list of the art in the KIRBY ARCHIVES, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s technique and influences, SPEND A DAY WITH KIRBY (with JACK DAVIS, GULACY, HERNANDEZ BROS., and RUDE) and more! Two UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

1970s MARVEL WORK! Coverage of ’70s work from Captain America to Eternals to Machine Man, DICK GIORDANO & MARK SHULTZ interviews, MARK EVANIER, 2004 Kirby Tribute Panel (STEVE RUDE, DAVE GIBBONS, WALTER SIMONSON, and PAUL RYAN), pencil art gallery, unused 1962 HULK #6 KIRBY PENCILS, and more! Kirby covers inked by GIORDANO and SCHULTZ!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $13 US Diamond Order Code: JUN022612

KIRBY COLLECTOR #37 “HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” MIKE ROYER interview on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE GALLERY tracing the evolution of Jack’s style, new column on OBSCURE KIRBY WORK, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s TECHNIQUE AND INFLUENCES, comparing STAN LEE’s writing to JACK’s, and more! Two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #36 THOR ISSUE! Never-seen KIRBY interview, JOE SINNOTT and JOHN ROMITA JR. on their Thor work, MARK EVANIER, extensive THOR and TALES OF ASGARD coverage, a look at the “real” Norse gods, 40 pages of KIRBY THOR PENCILS, including a Kirby Art Gallery at TABLOID SIZE, with pin-ups, covers, and more! KIRBY covers inked by MIKE ROYER and TREVOR VON EEDEN!

Contents

THE NEW

KirbyTECH! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (a whole lotta Kirby goin’ on) UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . .3 (are these inkers men or machines?) UNEARTHED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (an unknown Kirby sketchbook)

ISSUE #48, SPRING 2007

JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (Mark Evanier discusses his new Kirby bio, and Joe Maneely) CUT-UPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 (the making of Kirby’s collages) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . .13 (Mr. Machine to Machine Man) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 (a landmark unpublished interview with Kirby from Italy, in 1976) BEFORE & AFTER . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 (a pencils-to-inks comparison of Fantastic Four #75, page 11) FINISHERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 (the machineries of Jack) BIG IDEAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 (big head, small heart) NEAR MYTHS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 (the myth of Tom Scioli) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 (only one gallery this issue, but what a doozy!) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 (Barry Forshaw runs in fear of Kirby’s Atlas monster output) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 (a complete reprint of a 1957 Alarming Tales story) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 (the 2006 Kirby Tribute Panel, with Mark Evanier, Neal Adams, George Pérez, John Romita, Mike Royer, and Kirby lawyer Paul Levine) MUSEUM PAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . .64 (Adam McGovern runs down the usual suspects...) INTERNATIONALITIES . . . . . . . . . .66 (French sculptor Bernard Pras’ Kirby influences) ACCOLADES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 (Kirby Award winner and Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson) THINKIN’ ’BOUT INKIN’ . . . . . . . . .70 (how top inkers handled Kirbytech) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . .78 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (the flip-side of the image at right!) Front cover inks: TERRY AUSTIN Back cover inks: TOM SCIOLI Cover colors: TOM ZIUKO

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 14, No. 48, Spring 2007. Published quarterly by & ©2007 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 ©2007 Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2007 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA. ISSN 1932-6912

COPYRIGHTS: Annihilus, Black Knight, Black Panther, Bucky, Captain America, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Eternals, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Goliath, Hatch-22, Hercules, Hulk, Iron Man, Journey Into Mystery, Machine Man, Mad Thinker’s Android, Magneto, Melter, Mephisto, Orogo, Rawhide Kid, Red Skull, Rick Jones, Rro, Scarlet Witch, Sgt. Fury, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Sub-Mariner, Tana Nile, The Martian, Thing, Thor, UFO, Ulik TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Black Racer, Buddy Blank, Desaad, Dubbilex, Forever People, General Electric, Glorious Godfrey, Hawkman, In The Days Of The Mob, Jimmy Olsen, Kalibak, Kamandi, Manhunter, Mantis, Misfit, Mr. Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Spirit World, Superman, Virmin Vundabar TM & ©2007 DC Comics • Adam & Eve, Collages, Ding-Dong Twins, Robot, Space Charioteer, Visitor On Highway Six TM & ©2007 Jack Kirby Estate • Drac Pack TM & ©2007 Hanna-Barbera • Hidden Harry TM & ©2007 Ruby-Spears • Myth of 8-Opus TM & ©2007 Tom Scioli. • 2001: A Space Odyssey TM & ©2007 Warner Bros. • Stereon, Battle For A Three-Dimensional World TM & ©2007 Cosmic Productions. • Fighting American, “I Want To Be A Man” ©2007 Joe Simon and the Jack Kirby Estate • Thunderground TM & ©2007 Sega Enterprises, Ltd.

Opening Shot

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

oy! I take a couple of extra months between issues, and there’s all kinds of big Kirby news to report. So let’s get started! First: the long completed, but never released, documentary Jack Kirby: Storyteller is coming to DVD on June 5th! This hour-long look at the life and career of the King was hailed with cheers when we screened a short excerpt of it at the Kirby Tribute Panel at last year’s Comic-Con International: San Diego (see elsewhere this issue for the panel transcript), and features a who’s who of top comics pros telling the world why Kirby matters (plus a few seconds of me putting my foot in my mouth, unless it ended up on the cutting room floor). The documentary is part of the Fantastic Four: Extended Edition DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (a 2-disc set that contains the 106-minute theatrical version of the film as well as a 111-minute extended cut), which is being released just two weeks prior to the big-screen debut of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on June 15th. Second: I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that we’re roughly 98% complete scanning the over 5000 pages of pencil xeroxes in the Kirby Archives! We started it back in 2003, and by summer, we should have rounded up and catalogued the last of the straggler images, and the task will finally be complete. For those not familiar with what we’re doing, Jack Kirby xeroxed most of his pencil art, prior to inking, from the early 1970s-on, in case anything ever got lost in the mail on the way to the inker, or his publisher. Jack had xeroxes of some of his 1960s pencils in his files as well, and we’ve been scanning and archiving them for several years. There’s a level of urgency to it, because xerox machines of that era weren’t like today’s; they used technology much like the old Thermal Fax machines, with that greasy-feeling gray paper, and the copies are susceptible to fading when exposed to light over long periods. So this amazing record of Kirby’s pre-inked art was slowly fading away. We’ve done basic tonal adjustments on each 11" x 17" scan, to restore the images to a viewable level, and these images are available for viewing to members of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center (www.kirbymuseum.org), so consider joining. A special thanks to Eric Nolen-Weathington for his dedication (and wear and tear on his scanner) in seeing this project to completion. I know I’ll rest easier knowing that this great material will be preserved indefinitely, so future generations can discover Kirby’s penciling wizardry. Third: Marvel Super Heroes Stamps will be available this July from the US Postal Service. And where there’s Marvel Super Heroes, you can bet there’s Kirby art. Much like the DC Stamps released last summer (featuring Kirby’s rendition of Green Arrow), these feature close-ups of several Marvel characters, including Kirby illos of the Thing, Captain America, and Silver Surfer, plus reproductions of several Klassic Kirby Kovers.

They’re Coming...

(above) To give you an idea of the material in the Kirby Archives, and in memory of poor old Steve Rogers who bit the dust in issue #25 of his current comic, here’s pencils from Kirby’s cover to Captain America #203 (November 1976). Characters TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

They should be released during this summer’s San Diego Comicon, so get your mail ready! Last (but definitely not least): Mark Evanier announced that his long awaited biography of Jack Kirby will now be in two parts. The first will be a very nicely printed art book titled Kirby: King of Comics, to be released this October as a full-color hardcover volume; probably in a year or two, he’ll publish the expanded version for hardcore Kirby fans. In the meantime, if you’ve got original art you’d be willing to have photographed for the book, please contact us at twomorrow@aol.com, and we’ll pass it on to Mark for consideration to be included in the book. See Mark’s column for more info. And if it all works out right, just in time for the end of the year holiday season, we’ll be releasing issue #50 of this magazine. It’s still top secret, but stay tuned next issue for the details (gotta get #49 done first this summer). Oh, yeah; 2007 is shaping up to be one Kirbyful year! ★

Under The Covers

Machine Men

by Douglas Toole ome inkers make their job look effortless, almost like it was produced by a machine instead of a man. This issue’s cover inkers are a great example. Our front cover is an eye-popping image of Machine Man against a background of abstract machinery. The theme of this issue is Kirby Tech, and from his beginnings in Marvel’s 2001 series and into his own series, Machine Man is one of Kirby’s higher-profile “techno” characters. This image comes to us straight from the Kirby household walls. David Schwartz, a friend of the Kirby family, said the Machine Man pencil drawing was one of about a dozen pieces hanging on the walls of the hallway at the Kirbys’ home, which included both penciled pieces and finished production art. Schwartz recalled that a pencil sketch of Kirby’s western character, Bullseye, and the covers to Strange Tales #142, Fantastic Four #68 and Captain America #102 hung on the opposite wall, to the left of the Machine Man piece. To the right of the Machine Man artwork (also on the opposite wall) was a penciled Stuntman poster and a gorgeous large pencil drawing featuring a number of Marvel super-heroes. Next to the Machine Man artwork were two pencil drawings, one of Captain America and the other of Thor. To the left of the Machine Man piece, Schwartz recalled, were two large drawings. The first, titled “Jacob and the Angel,” was a large drawing of two figures locked in battle. The second, titled “Jericho,” featured a man on a horse in the foreground, with a science-fiction apparatus in the background. “Jacob and the Angel” later saw print as a Kirby lithograph. A version of the Machine Man piece, which was reproduced from its penciled form, was run in TwoMorrows’ updated Kirby Unleashed portfolio in 2004 (still available from www.twomorrows.com). For the cover of this issue, we asked Terry Austin to ink the image. “I’m told that Jack did this piece after Roz requested some new art for the walls at home,” Austin said. “So I’m sure that what the rest of us would have taken two days to accomplish, Jack bashed out before his morning cup of Ovaltine!” Tom Ziuko did his usual outstanding job coloring the image, giving us a great lead-in to an issue filled with wacky technology. Thanks to all of you for your contributions! About the image itself, Austin noted that the background ‘tech’ moves the eye around the page in an interesting way, and reminds one of a hunk of circuitry board. “It is simple, effective, and really quite lovely. As usual, my hat is off to you, Jack!” Our back cover this issue was inked by Tom Scioli, who’s profiled elsewhere in this issue. The artist has brought the Kirby style back into vogue with his recent work at Image Comics on Gødland. His art evokes a bit of those great Neal Adams-inked Kirby covers from the early 1970s Jimmy Olsen issues at DC Comics. When we asked him to ink the 1966 Kirby robot drawing (seen in TJKC #45), he jumped at the chance, and added an amazingly Kirbyesque background. Tom Ziuko channeled the retina-scalding colors Jack used in his self-hued work, and finished off this visual feast. Great work by all, gents! ★

Unearthed

Sketch Artist

by Henry Kraus e-mail him at: 4hskpub@roadrunner.com ave you ever started to clear out the garage or closets in your house and found something that you have not seen for years? The memories start to return. What a great feeling. That is exactly what happened to me about a year ago when my wife asked me to clean out the garage to make room for more valuable things to be stored there. To my surprise, I found an old sketchbook that I got about 30 or 35 years ago. This sketchbook has followed me through four different schools that I worked at and six moves during my marriage. Believe it or not, it’s still here and in good condition. What am I talking about? A sketchbook by Jack Kirby with about fifteen drawings and sketches. It was in the first school I ever taught in. We had the students from the upper grade classes come to an assembly. What a

great surprise to meet and talk to Jack Kirby! He began by talking to the students about his love of drawing and began to draw super-heroes on his sketchpad. Not only were the students excited and focused on this inspiring man, but so was I. He talked about how you can make a picture from almost anything given to you on paper. At his request, some of the students from my class called out numbers or letters for him to put on the paper, and without a moment’s hesitation Jack Kirby began to turn them into characters. Why and how I cannot recall, but I was the fortunate one to be given this sketchpad. We kept the drawings in our room for a long time. The class was so excited about drawing that I went out to get a book to teach my class how to draw cartoons. Who knows, maybe one of the students in my class is now working for Disney or drawing his own cartoons for the newspaper. All I know is that it was great to hear from a man who loved what he did and inspired kids with his talents. It’s things like this that bring back memories and feelings about your life. This was a great man who left me with a great memory of him and my career in education. As a great comedian always said, “Thanks for the memories.” Thank you, Jack Kirby. I am interested in selling this sketchbook. If anyone is interested in purchasing it, please contact me and I will be happy to e-mail pictures, descriptions, and any other information you would like. This sketchbook is in good condition. There is a tear on the cover and on two of the pages, but there are no drawings on those pages. The sketch of Superman has Jack Kirby’s signature on it. ★

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier (next page, top) Kirby’s layouts for George Tuska, on Tales of Suspense #70 (Oct. 1965).

(above) After turning over the “Iron Man” strip early on, Jack was constantly called in to provide covers (such as this one for Tales of Suspense #47, Nov. 1963), spot illos (like the one at right, which saw print as a pinup in Iron Man Special #2, Nov. 1971), and (next page, bottom) fill-ins like Tales to Astonish #82 (Aug. 1966). All characters TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

irst off this time, let me tell you about the book—or rather, books (plural) I’m writing about Jack. As some of you may know, I’ve been working a lonnnng time on a biography of Kirby. Some people have described it as “definitive,” but that’s not my adjective. This paragraph is an aside so you may want to skip it. The word “definitive” has many meanings, but people usually use it to denote that something is the final say on a matter; like once you’ve done the definitive version, there’s no point in anyone else addressing the topic. I don’t

believe that could ever be true about a subject like Jack Kirby. I also wince when I hear someone say that a given interpretation is “the definitive Batman” or “the definitive Spider-Man” or whatever. There are definitions of “definitive” that could be correct in that context, but I don’t think that’s the way people usually mean it. And I think the way they mean it is wrong. End of aside, back to Kirby. I started the bio... well, I started thinking about it when I first met Jack in 1969, and more so when I went to work for him in 1970. He said several times that he wanted me to “write the history” and I was impressed that he never added or implied, “Write it the way I tell you.” Jack loved honesty. He was totally honest and I think that quality informed his work in many ways.

There were times when I thought he was wrong about something—including one time when I told him so and it did serious damage to our friendship for a year or so. But I never thought he was dishonest about a thing. Incorrect? Sure, at times. Confused? Often. (Not long ago in this magazine, there was an interview in which both Jack and Roz talked about his work for the Filmation Cartoon Studio. I don’t know how they both got that one wrong but they did. The studio they were talking about was DePatie-Freleng, not Filmation.) So he never told me what to write. He answered every question I ever asked him but he always made it clear that if I wrote anything, it should be what I perceived as the truth. He believed the truth was his friend and that he’d come off pretty well in anyone’s account... ... just so long as they wrote the truth. I thought about a bio for a long time but, well, I’ve thought about a lot of things I haven’t gotten around to doing. It wasn’t until Jack passed away that Roz started encouraging me to put down everything I knew about Jack on paper and toss in everything I could find out about him. I keep trying to do that but there’s so darn much of it. The book in its present form is huge and still not finished. I won’t say when it will get done since I keep finding out what I still need to find out. But in the interim, I’ve decided to put out another book on Jack

with a shorter, streamlined biography. This will be a very nicely printed art book loaded with rare Kirby art, all of it reproduced in full color, much of it shot from the original artwork. That needs a bit of explanation. Many of the pieces will consist of blackand-white artwork in pencil or ink but we’ll be printing them in color so that you can see all the pencil marks, corrections, smudges, and in some cases, notes in the margins. There will also be plenty of pages that print Jack’s art in pencil form and, of course, color pieces and some things you’ve seen before but not in the way we’re going to present them.

This book will be called Kirby: King of Comics and it will be released in October of this year by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., which is one of the world’s most prestigious publishers of high quality art and illustrated books. It’ll be a hardcover volume, 9" by 12 1⁄ 2" with a gatefold and all sorts of nifty features that we hope will make it worthy of its subject. Later on—and don’t ask me when but it’ll be another year or two at least—you’ll get the gargantuan, Galactussized bio for the hardcore Kirby fan... the kind of person who wants to read every little detail of the man’s extraordinary life. As soon as fresh data stops coming my way, I’ll wrap that one up but in the meantime, you’ll have the first book before this Christmas. By the time you read this, it should be heading for press. I don’t need to plug this anymore. If you read this magazine, you’ll be buying this book... so let’s go to the mailbag. Mark Poe, an artist himself, writes to ask: Jack was one of the fastest pencilers in comics for most of his career. I’ve heard he could pencil anywhere from 3 to 6 pages a day and on occasion as many as ten per day. What was his best average? And how do pencilers in the Modern Age rank with his speed? Are Kirby’s records still among the highest? Jack was very fast, but as I always point out to folks who say this, and as I’ve probably said in this column many a time, “fast” was only part of it. Jack’s incredible output had a lot to do with the sheer number of hours he put in at that beat-up drawing table of his. He didn’t work set hours but I would guess he averaged an eighty-hour week during his busiest times. His prime period seems to have been the early days of the Marvel Super Hero comics. Several different folks have gone over the checklists and attempted to tally how many pages Jack had in print during this period and as a result, I have several different lists with slightly varying numbers. They’re all pretty close to one another so I’ll use one compiled by Ted Carey, and we’ll just agree the numbers are approximate. In 1962, Kirby had 1164 pages and 88 covers hit the newsstands. In 1963, there were 894 pages and 94 covers. In 1964, we got 1072 pages and 103 covers. In 1965, it starts getting complicated because Jack was doing a lot of layouts for other artists. He did 261 pages of layouts, 734 pages of finished pencils and 96 covers. And in 1966, there were 364 pages of layouts, 633 pages of finished pencils and 71 covers. The totals for this five-year period: 4497 pages of finished pencils, 625 pages of layouts and 452 covers. It works out to something like a book a week. Before anyone asks about the fluctuating totals: Keep in mind that this list was based on when the work was printed, not when he did it. He probably maintained a fairly steady pace throughout these years. One should also keep in mind that Jack drew pages and covers that weren’t printed; I’d guess at least two dozen a year of those. And one other thing that makes the total amazing: This was during a period when Jack had to go into the office around once a week to deliver work and discuss future issues with Stan. So he lost at least half a day per week there. In the late ’60s, he was being paid a little better and he drew a little slower. In 1969, his last year at Marvel, he only had 520 pages and 27 covers come out. Part of that was because when he and Roz moved their family to Southern California, there were several weeks there where he got very little work done... ... although Roz did claim that when they left New York, the drawing table was the last thing loaded onto the moving van, and that the movers actually had to wait until Jack had finished an issue of Thor or something before they took it. And then when they unloaded at their first California home, which was in Irvine, the table was the first thing off the van. It was set up and Jack began drawing an issue of Fantastic Four on it while the moving men went out to unload the bed and couches and saucepans from the truck. The following year, his productivity went up. His contract with DC called 7

for a minimum of fifteen pages per week. In calendar year 1971, he had almost that exact number published. He maintained that pace throughout much of the ’70s... until he began working in animation. Is this a lot of work? Yes. In fact, it would be an amazing amount of work if the artist in question had been handed a full script and didn’t have to plot or coplot stories. Most other artists then were doing around two pages a day—or if they were inking their own work, one. That’s still a good pace today, though some artists are slower than that. I don’t think there’s anyone outputting even half as many pages as Kirby did then. (In fairness to artists today, the job often involves other things besides drawing. At the recent Wondercon, I talked with an artist currently doing some major projects for DC who was complaining about the convention and bookstore appearances he’s expected to make. He loses several days a month to these. I should also point out that if Jack had been paid better, as artists today are, he would have done less work. He was never happy with how quickly he had to leap from the last page of one story to the first page of the next.) Actually, I don’t think Jack was the fastest comic artist who ever lived. Just in what we jokingly call my career, I’ve worked with a number of artists who could produce a page faster than Jack, including Owen Fitzgerald, Mike Sekowsky, Jack Manning, and Sergio Aragonés. If you’d put Kirby in a head-to-head drawing match against Alfredo Alcala or Joe Kubert or Jack Sparling, I’m not sure I would have bet on Kirby. Before I depart this topic, let me mention one other thing about how prolific Jack was. He was fast and he also worked insane hours... but I always thought the key to his rapidity was not that he drew fast, but that he thought fast. I wrote this in one of my old columns which is somewhere in one of my silly books, but it bears repeating here. Mike Sekowsky was, in a way, much faster than Jack once he’d decided what he wanted to put on the page and where to put it. Jack was faster at deciding. If you gave them each two hours to draw a page, Mike would spend the first hour—maybe even the first ninety minutes—thinking about that page and his composition. He’d make little light layout lines on the page... a circle here to denote a head... a horizontal line there to suggest a horizon... And then, once he knew where everything should go, he’d attack the page and fill it with a lightning speed. In fact, if that stage of the process took too long, he’d decide he’d made the wrong design choices and he’d toss the page and do it over. Often, he’d just flip over the piece of illustration board and draw the page over on the back. I have the original art to an unpublished 12-page story Mike drew for DC’s Weird War Tales. On three of the pages, he did that. The back of the page has another version of what he drew on the front of the page. On one, there’s a note from him to the editor, “Use whichever version you prefer.” Jack, by contrast, would spend the two hours drawing. If you started the stopwatch in this imaginary contest of ours, he’d be laying down finished graphite within a minute or two. He made instant artistic decisions... though like Mike, he sometimes was dissatisfied with what he produced and did it over. I saw him toss or erase a lot of panels and whole pages that were much better than what many artists were handing in. I’m not sure he ever had the record for speed. He may not even have had it for the most pages produced since there have been guys who put a lot less on their pages and therefore could complete a lot more of them with the same effort. Kirby certainly holds a record for some intersection of speed and complexity of artwork. In fact, in the time I just spent writing this reply, he could have done a whole issue of Thor and laid-out two Hulk stories. So let’s move on... Someone who signs his or her e-mail “B. Bonzai” wrote me the following: One of my favorite artists of the ’50s was Joe Maneely. As I’m sure you know, he died at a very early age. I was wondering if Kirby knew him or if he ever said anything about Maneely. That’s one question and I have another. I read in an interview where Stan Lee said that if Maneely had not been killed in that train accident, he would have been a valuable addition to the Marvel Age and might even have drawn Fantastic 8

Four instead of Jack. I wondered what you thought about that and if you’d be interested in speculating on this. To the first part: Kirby had a casual acquaintance with Maneely. They met one day in Stan Lee’s office around the middle of 1956 when Jack was drawing Yellow Claw. Maneely had done the first issue but I don’t think that’s why they met. I believe they were just delivering art at the same time. At the time, Maneely was probably Stan’s favorite artistic collaborator. With a speed that rivaled Kirby’s, he could draw war comics, ghost comics, humor comics, westerns... just about anything, and it was always good. If there was one artist who personified the output of Martin Goodman’s company in the ’50s, it was Joe Maneely. He did the bulk of the covers, and inside the books, one could see the other artists trying to emulate his approach. Whenever Kirby encountered Maneely, they exchanged compliments and conversation, always about the insane hours they both labored. Jack told me he liked and identified with the young man, and he recalled one meeting where Maneely spoke of having just purchased a home in New Jersey for himself, his wife and three small daughters. He was working around the clock, he said, to pay for the house. Then on June 7, 1958, a month or so after that discussion, Joe Maneely was riding the commuter train between New York and New Jersey. He was walking between cars when he somehow stumbled and fell to his death. He was thirty-two years old. There are conflicting stories as to what happened. Some say he was drinking.

Others say he didn’t drink. One report said that he’d lost his glasses and that he was nearly blind without them. I have no idea which of these, if any, is so. But I do know what Jack believed and I want to underscore that this may not have been anything more than the Kirby Imagination leaping to a conclusion. Jack did not know Maneely all that well. Like some who knew the departed—Sol Brodsky, to name one—Jack was convinced the accident was due to exhaustion. “All those hours at the board was what did it,” he remarked. “Joe was so bleary-eyed that he couldn’t see straight. Comics killed Joe Maneely.” Jack’s diagnosis may not have been correct, but it was what he believed and it had a strong impact on him, especially when he heard that Maneely’s wife and kids were struggling and had lost the house. As we’ve noted here, Jack was always very concerned about providing for his family and upset that the financial structure of the comic book industry never seemed to allow him to sock anything away for Roz and the kids. He worried often about what would happen to them if he died suddenly. What happened with Maneely more than redoubled those concerns. The cautionary tale of Joe Maneely—Kirby’s version, anyway—was told often to friends and colleagues. Wally Wood, who was famous for his own marathon work binges, told me that he rarely spoke with Jack without hearing what he called “The Joe Maneely Warning.” Wood also noted that if ever there was a man who didn’t follow his own advice about not working too hard, it was Kirby. Oddly enough, Jack benefited from Maneely’s death. It was around that time that Jack had a falling out with DC and was banished from Challengers of the Unknown and other books that had been featuring his work there. One of the few places he was able to secure work was Martin Goodman’s company. With fortuitous timing for Jack, Stan Lee had recently been authorized to increase production after a long period of using mostly inventory material. So there was work available and Jack got a large share of it because, sadly, Maneely wasn’t around to do any of it. Certainly, Jack would not suddenly have been doing most of the covers and lead stories otherwise. As for the little “What If?” game, I don’t have a lot to say other than I’ve never believed that people are quite that modular in history. I don’t think Stan would have done Fantastic Four or even anything remotely like it with Maneely. One could even concoct a credible scenario that Martin Goodman’s comic line would not have been around long enough to publish super-heroes again if Lee and Kirby had not played precisely the roles they played in the preceding years. Brodsky, for example, believed that one of the things that stopped Goodman from getting out of comics before then was that Rawhide Kid went up in sales when Kirby started drawing it. Would it have gained readers if Stan had put Maneely on the book? Who knows? Sometimes, it’s not a matter of having a good artist, but of having the right good artist and the right chemistry. Or you could speculate that because he would probably have been getting less work from Marvel, Kirby might have gotten out of comics and done something else for a living. That sure would have changed Marvel history. Or maybe if Maneely had lived, he and Stan Lee would have sold one of the newspaper strip ideas that they worked up together, and it would have been so successful that Lee and Maneely would both have left Marvel. Or perhaps if Maneely had lived, Steve Ditko would have gotten less work from Stan, so Ditko would have created a new book for Charlton that would have been a megahit. In this “What If?”, instead of looking at the sales of Justice League of America and telling Stan to work up a super-hero team, Goodman sees the

sales of Ditko’s comic and has Stan whip out an imitation of that, instead. Or else, or else... It’s like asking what you’d be like if your mother had married someone else. Everything would have been different... not just your last name. I’m sure Maneely would have been an asset. The field lost a wonderful talent on that train. I just don’t think you can be certain anything else would have been the same. Next question? ★ Mark Evanier welcomes your questions about Jack Kirby. In fact, he’s running out and would appreciate more of them. You can reach him through his dual websites, www.POVonline.com and www.newsfromme.com. And while you’re there, have a look around. There’s plenty there to read. And don’t forget; you can still get all three collections of Mark’s acclaimed “POV” columns (shown at right) for the price of two: $34 US Postpaid! To order, go to www.twomorrows.com

(previous page) Had he lived, Joe Maneely would’ve been a logical choice to draw Thor, based on his work for the “Black Knight” in the ’50s. Still, we’re glad Jack got the job (as in the example above, from Thor #253)! All characters TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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

CUT-UPS

Cut & Paste The Making of the Kirby Collages, by Robert L. Bryant, Jr.

(below) Gary Scott Beatty’s Spirit World #1 collage (Fall 1971), recently purchased on eBay. (next page) For those of you who didn’t want to destroy your copy, or just don’t have the issue, here’s the Souls poster that ran as the centerfold in Spirit World #1 (and only). (following page, top) Jack’s collage for the cover of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #138 (June 1971), along with a repro of the cover, showing how it was used. Images ©2007 DC Comics.

“ ...you gotta know everyone in comics stepped back in wonder about those (Kirby) collages. Even today, no one dares attempt them. A true Kirby concept from thought to realization.” —Neal Adams, in TJKC #42 hen Gary Scott Beatty got his first close look at the Jack Kirby collage he’d bought on the Web, this thought struck him: “What a craftsman the King was, even with an X-Acto knife.” Beatty, a writer, illustrator and comics colorist (reach him at www.comicartistsdirect.com), bought the collage—a page from Kirby’s ill-fated Spirit World magazine—on eBay in 2000. It’s from the “Amazing Predictions” story, and Beatty describes it as “an odd, war-and-peace-oriented collage, with World War II images, knights, and British colonial-era soldiers. The printed version, one color in blue ink, lost much of the detail.” “The first thing that struck me about the original is how carefully it was pieced together,” Beatty says. “It’s hard to see where the magazine pictures were cut out... I’m pretty sure he worked it over with inks to blend the pieces together, though how he kept everything from curling up, I don’t know.” It’s pure Kirby, even though he didn’t draw it. That’s the paradox of the King’s collages, which are a sort of no-man’s land on the map of Kirby’s achievements in art. Since they didn’t

spring from his pencil, the collages aren’t of high interest to most fans and collectors. And since they usually didn’t reproduce well in the published comics, most Kirby fans probably take the view of most Kirby inkers: Interesting, but Jack could have drawn something from scratch that looked better. “Collages were another way of finding new avenues of entertainment,” Kirby said (quoted in Arlen Schumer’s magnificent The Silver Age of Comic Book Art). “I felt that magazine reproduction could handle that change. It added an extra dimension to comics. I wanted to see if it could materialize and it did. I loved doing collages. I made a lot of good ones.” Kirby aide Mark Evanier has said (TJKC #17) that in most cases, Kirby would do a collage, then figure out later how he would fit it into a given story. “He usually did not plan them,” Evanier said. “He’d leaf through magazines in his sparse spare time and cut out shapes that were of interest to him. When he felt he had enough, he’d paste them into a collage.... Most were just built through instinct.... He didn’t do many of them in his last few years. One of the reasons was that most of the magazines he used for material—Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post—had gone out of business.” I don’t think anyone has done a detailed census of Kirby collages, but a quick check of TwoMorrows’ Kirby Checklist indicates the King did several dozen photo collages in his comics, ranging in size from a small panel to a double-splash page, mostly during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They appeared on a fairly regular basis in Fantastic Four and less so in Thor, Kirby’s flagship Marvel titles of the 1960s. In Fantastic Four, you can see Kirby beginning to experiment with photo collages as early as 1964 (in FF #24, with two small shots of a starship in space that looks very much like the Martian manta-ray ships from George Pal’s War of the Worlds). In FF #29 (1964), Kirby does a nearly half-page collage showing the Red Ghost’s spacecraft approaching the moon. A few months later, in #32, he does an entire page of collages showing “a strange shimmering ray... knifing through time and infinity.” In #33, there’s a partial collage cover and a full-page collage inside, showing the FF’s submarine ploughing through the ocean depths. By the end of 1964, he was growing comfortable with the technique. By 1965, Kirby was beginning his “cosmic” period, and he used collages more often, and more memorably. In FF #37, there’s a collage page showing the FF’s starship zooming toward the Skrull Galaxy. (The caption describes it as a “photo taken by remote control via a special camera.”) In FF #39, there’s a collage page depicting Reed Richards’ “world-famous lab,” filled with crackling electrical equipment. In FF Annual #3, for a collage showing Reed and the Watcher jumping between dimensions, Stan Lee added this caption: “Instead of taking the easy way out, with a simple exaggerated drawing, we now present the published photo of a journey through the Fourth Dimension, for the benefit of the science buffs among you—!” Then begins the Galactus Trilogy, and Kirby goes into hyperdrive with new concepts and characters. In FF #48 (1966), he does a collage page showing Galactus’ probes testing the Earth’s composition. Soon comes the Negative Zone, and Kirby found that surreal space-time continuum a perfect vehicle for photo collages. In FF #51, we get perhaps the most memorable of all the Kirby collages—the full page showing Reed plunging through a landscape of concentric rings and planetoids as he enters the Negative Zone. The dialogue says it all: “I’m drifting into a world of limitless dimensions!! It’s the crossroads of infinity—the junction to everywhere!” Kirby would do at least two double-page Negative Zone collages (in FF #62 and FF Annual #6). Kirby’s inker on Fantastic Four at the time, Joe Sinnott, wasn’t all that impressed by the collage pages, even though they saved him time—on a collage page, Sinnott only had to ink the characters, not the backgrounds. “I thought they were a visual distraction from the story, and they didn’t print very well, either,” Sinnott said in TJKC #38. “I always felt they’d have looked better if Jack had just drawn it.” Could he have just drawn the stuff in pencil? Sure. But it wouldn’t have had the same psychedelic punch—using material

Spirit World collage is a true work of the King’s art, Beatty says. “Some of the background detail reminds me of Bill Sienkiewicz or Dave McKean—chunky and painterly. The composition is, of course, balanced and moves your eye around the page. “Anchoring the middle,” Beatty says, “is a large, blank-eyed face of Stalin, a monolith the remaining elements swirl around. A knight on horseback is cropped to stop your eye in the upper left, and a lightninglit tank floats in the distance in the upper right. A figure’s heil-Hitler salute bounces off of the vertical British soldiers and their vertical flagpoles. The genius is in the lower left, where airplanes in formation send your eye swirling back around. “A good chunk of the printed version was covered over by a caption box, thankfully missing from the (original) collage: ‘Instead of fading with the coming of maturity, the visions grow stronger!! More vivid!! More apocalyptic!! Great red flashes illuminate this man’s mind— revealing vast tableaus, unfamiliar to his own time!!’... The color on the original piece, as muted as it is, helps put it across better than the printed blue ink, but the magazine is pretty original in concept, predating Sienkiewicz and Dave McKean’s illustration-and-collage work by 15 years.” Beatty framed his Spirit World page and hung it in his living room. “Unlike other comic pages that would look goofy in that context,” Beatty says, “the Spirit World collage fit in as a piece of ‘serious’ artwork.” ★ from another medium (photos) really did make you think you were looking at something from another dimension, a visual twilight zone. (At the very least, it made you stop and wonder: How’d he do that?) Kirby unleashed a ton of collages in Jimmy Olsen, his first book for DC after he left Marvel in 1970. He seems to have done more collages in a shorter period of time on Jimmy Olsen than on any other series. In the six-issue “DNA Project” story arc (1970-71), Kirby did eight interior pages’ worth of collages and one partial collage cover. Did they reproduce well? Not really. Let’s look at the second page of the psychedelic Zoomway sequence from Jimmy Olsen #134. It’s two half-page panels showing the Whiz Wagon zooming through a surreal obstacle course. In the upper panel, the major elements are the Whiz Wagon and a broken human skull. In the published 1970 comic, the Whiz Wagon looks like a photo of a sleek race car, augmented with a few pasted-on additions, such as a large horizontal spoiler. The skull has concentric circles in its left eye and another skull floating in its right. In the lower panel, we see the Whiz Wagon flying above some sort of lumpy mass. Looking at the same page published on a much higher grade of paper, in DC’s recent trade paperback reprinting Kirby’s Olsen stories, we see more detail. Sections of the Whiz Wagon chassis have clearly been pasted on, along with round elements representing the “bubble seats” on the sides. You can also make out what looks like numbers on the skull. And in the lower panel, the mass below the Whiz Wagon resolves itself into the face of a screaming man, seen from the side. Viewing the same page on an even higher grade of paper—the back cover of TJKC #31 (2001)—all the details resolve. In the upper panel, the Whiz Wagon no longer looks like a photo of a race car that’s been slightly customized with cut-out elements—it actually seems to have been assembled from scratch, from maybe a dozen different photo pieces. And on the skull, the handwritten numbers “1079” are visible. (Written by Kirby? A previous owner of the magazine the photo was clipped from?) In the lower panel, the Whiz Wagon’s individual pieces are visible, and the screaming man’s face almost pops off the page—in the original comic, it pretty much bleeds into the background. (But poor reproduction giveth as well as taketh away: The loss of detail in the original comic made the Whiz Wagon look more real, more solid, like a large model car that had been photographed, rather than an illusion cobbled together with paste and paper.) Gary Scott Beatty immediately thought of “those wonderful Fantastic Four collages” when he spotted the Spirit World collage page for sale on eBay. The 12

The Unintentional Collage or “Why I’m a Dog Lover,” by John Morrow family friend David Schwartz recently sent me a surprise package. When it Kfromirby arrived, I opened it to find an envelope filled with shredded scraps of original art Kirby’s “Amazing Predictions” story in Spirit World #1 (Fall 1971; part of page 6 is shown below). “What gives,” I thought? David explained that the Kirbys, for a while, owned a pet cat. It seems their little kitty liked to sharpen his claws on anything handy, and one day discovered— you guessed it—the Kirbys original art closet. I don’t know the fate of the felonious feline, but based on the shards of art David sent, most—if not all—of that Spirit World story is (pun intended) history. There were tiny pieces of five different pages, all from that story, and try as I might, I was only able to reassemble portions of a few panels, with big chunks still missing. But just why did that cat single out this issue to destroy? I recall Mike Thibodeaux, a few years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con, showing me how he’d salvaged the Nostradamos panel from that story (nicely matted and framed), which mysteriously had remained intact while the rest of the page was shredded. But why would that lone panel “make the cut” out of all those pages? Was there some supernatural force at work, causing kitty to attack that story, lest we discover some longhidden DaVinci Code in it? Did the cat find something particularly attractive (or not) about Vinnie Colletta’s “scratchy” inking? Was this cat the inspiration for Witchboy’s cat Teekl? And more importantly, am I just overreaching to try to fill the rest of this page with text? You decide! ★

HE Tooled

INTO This!

Incidental Iconography An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld suspect that when most fans think of Machine Man, the image that comes to mind is Jack Kirby’s purple jumpsuit design; if they became familiar with the character later in his first series, perhaps with the mechanical arm and leg extensions that Steve Ditko made frequent use of. Even newer fans who know him as Nextwave member Aaron Stack are familiar with the purple jumpsuit, even if it is partially hidden by a trenchcoat. But what I find interesting in this is that Jack Kirby actually provided three character designs which have all seen repeated use in the comics, and people still tend to picture the purple one. Let’s start by reviewing a little comic book history. Stanley Kubrick presented to the world’s theaters 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. People either loved it or hated it, in part, because Kubrick intentionally left the meaning of the film open to interpretation. But that excited Jack and, certainly after he created the comic book adaptation for it in 1976, he wanted to continue to explore some of the themes he drew from the movie. Thus came the 2001 comic book, in the traditional periodical format. That periodical format helped kill the book fairly quickly. Taken as a whole, the series is a fascinating look at the human condition. But trying to break up each chapter with weeks of waiting prevents a reader from seeing the whole and carrying the theme from one issue to the next. Thus, in a last-ditch attempt to keep the book alive, the continuing character called X-51 was introduced in 2001 #8. Our first character design is seen on the opening splash of that issue. Soldiers try to hold down a grey metal robot with a skull-like face and insect-like eyes. It’s

an image that Jack plays up to even more terrifying effect in the opening of #9. Jack has used visual traits of fear-instilling creatures to metaphorically isolate the protagonist. The character doesn’t look like anybody else, and he tends to scare people with this visage. To help the character fit in, Dr. Abel Stack designed an outer casing that bore a striking resemblance to human skin and hair. With the exception of Aaron’s eyes, he looks like any other ablebodied (pun intended) man in his mid-thirties. Although not partaking of the opportunity under Jack’s guidance, Aaron could easily don a pair of sunglasses and normal street clothes and go wholly unnoticed in a crowd. The final design is the purple jumpsuit. It’s clearly designed to look like a more traditional super-hero costume, as noted in the dialogue of 2001 #9: “Well, you’ve certainly got me excited! You look like one of the Marvel Super-Heroes!” This was done as a means to increase sales on the lagging series by targeting the broad audience with something more mainstream. By and large, Jack did little tinkering with the three designs during his work with the character. The designs are indeed fairly simple and would be easy enough to recall without difficulty. The one change we do see take place is the removal of a chest logo. Jack’s first drawings of the purple jumpsuit include a stylized “A” on the left breast. It is certainly not an integral part of the design, and it soon disappears between pages 16 and 22 of 2001 #9. In total, Jack drew that insignia exactly eight times over the course of those first two stories, and it’s not surprising that it soon fell off. Machine Man remains without chest decoration for the remainder of his series. (Why, then, Jack opted to include one on the sketch that is used on this issue’s cover is beyond me!) One of the most intriguing visual aspects of the character, to me, is the eye design. The strange, pupil-less ovals cut horizontally by a classic Kirby squiggle. It remains constant in all three versions of Jack’s character. I suspect Jack put little conscious thought into their meaning, but I see them as the metaphoric windows to Machine Man’s soul. He may well indeed have a soul to call his own, but regardless of what outer raiments he uses to resemble humanity, his soul is that of a computer. He will forever be apart from the beings he has come to call “fleshy ones.” Taking metaphors a step further, did Jack really design the character with three sets of visuals to represent the three classic divisions of the psyche: The X-51 robot as the Id, harboring the innate “other-ness” that drives his instincts? The Aaron Stack human form as the Ego, giving the character an identity to call his own? The Machine Man uniform as the Super-Ego, calling him to a higher purpose and play super-hero? It’s not Sigmund Freud for the common man, but Sigmund Freud for the comic fan. In any event, Machine Man is certainly more action-packed than the iceberg graphic often used to illustrate Freud’s theory. I have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that Jack ever saw the character directly in these terms, but that’s really the point of this column, isn’t it? To show how Jack’s innate sense of design brought a wealth of iconography to the table, even if he didn’t know he was doing it! ★ (left) Page 10 pencils from 2001: A Space Odyssey #9 (Aug. ’77).

Innerview (below) Courtesy of Heritage Auctions, here’s a 1960s wash drawing of Captain America. We’re sure Jack did the pencils, but unsure if he also inked it and added tone. (next page, top) A photo of Jack, age 21, taken at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Note the bandage wrapped around his right hand; artist’s cramp, or the result of a youthful brawl? (next page, bottom) Fleisher’s two big hits, Betty Boop and Koko the Clown. Captain America TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Jack Kirby Interview Conducted in Lucca, Italy in 1976 Submitted by Peter Hansen, and used with permission Transcribed by Steven Tice © 2007 Peter Hansen (Jack Kirby was a guest of honor at the 1976 Lucca Comic Art Festival, and received the Yellow Kid Award while in attendance. This interview was conducted during that trip. A nice tidbit of previously unknown trivia comes out here: Kirby assisted Frank Robbins on the Scorchy Smith newspaper strip. If anyone has more information on this, please let us know.) INTERVIEWER: Just a few facts to get started. When and where were you born? JACK KIRBY: Well, I was born August 28, 1917, the Lower East Side of New York City. INTERVIEWER: When do you first remember drawing? When you were a kid, you always drew? KIRBY: Well, I drew randomly. I wasn’t serious about it. I believe I was in the area of eleven years of age when I began to fool around with it. INTERVIEWER: Were you drawing costumes at this time? KIRBY: I was caricaturing my neighbors and perhaps just fooling

with the family. Never taking it seriously. But later on I became— well, I’ve always been attracted to the Sunday papers. I looked forward to the Sunday papers and maintained my interest in comics that way. But, of course, as a young boy, you don’t make the association so easily. All you know is that you liked the Sunday papers and you liked to draw cartoons, and you just don’t stop to analyze it. INTERVIEWER: What were the strips you followed as a kid? KIRBY: Well, I loved them, whatever strips they had. Polly and Her Pals, Dumb Dara, Bringing Up Father. Of course, Blondie came later. It was that type of stuff that they had going. Gasoline Alley and Little Orphan Annie, of course, were just great. INTERVIEWER: When you were a boy I think they were mostly funny strips; they didn’t have adventure strips. KIRBY: Yes, they were. The first adventure strip I saw was Dick Tracy. INTERVIEWER: Which was 1930. KIRBY: Yes. Around that time. INTERVIEWER: Did this attract you immediately, if at all? KIRBY: It attracted me steadily, I should say, because I loved comics since my younger years, and of course the thing developed even more acutely when I was a teenager. Oh, I had no notions of becoming an artist. It suddenly came to me that I could, because I saw this ad in a pulp magazine from a school of cartooning. And it was then that the notion popped into my head, well, maybe if I take this course I can learn how to draw and all that. And I fought my old man for the dough; of course, I couldn’t get it. [laughter] INTERVIEWER: You were at school then? KIRBY: Yes, I was at school. But I did manage to get money enough for, oh, one or two lessons, I’d say, and that was enough to whet my appetite for drawing. After that, even though I couldn’t get any more lessons, I did it on my own. They had the fundamentals of drawing, and starting from those particular fundamentals, I went out to do my own. INTERVIEWER: Did you get art training at school? KIRBY: No, none at all. The art training that I did get, I got from the newspapers. And I believe it’s that way with most of the comic strip artists, one man becomes a school for the next man. You take a few elements from one man’s style and you inject it into your own. And of course I used to cannibalize [Milton] Caniff and take apart [Alex] Raymond, people like that. And [Hal] Foster, of course, had the heroic impact of his strip. I liked that, and I used that in my drawings. INTERVIEWER: Were you getting anything published at school in the school magazine? KIRBY: Yes, in the school newspaper, I’d do illustrations for that. I belonged to a boy’s club, and I was the editor-in-chief of that paper. Of course, it sounds rather pompous in a sense, but you boil it down to a teenage paper, and you can put it in its proper perspective. But I took it seriously, and as far as I was concerned, I was doing an important job. And for me it was a fairly good job. INTERVIEWER: So what was your first job when you left school? KIRBY: My first job was animating as an inbetweener, in-betweening the action at the Max Fleischer studios.

INTERVIEWER: How did you get that job? Did you apply for it? KIRBY: Yes, I applied for it. I just got my nerve up and went up and applied. INTERVIEWER: Were they somewhere near you? KIRBY: Yes, the studios were in New York. I forget what street they were on. I think they were in the ’40s and ’50s, I forget the exact address. INTERVIEWER: You were what, sixteen years old? KIRBY: Oh no, I was about seventeen, eighteen, around there. And I got the job. INTERVIEWER: Did you see a job advertised, or did you think there might be a job there? KIRBY: You know, I forget the circumstances. No, somehow I heard about it myself. I found out on my own and I went up and got it. INTERVIEWER: Were you working under any specific animator? KIRBY: Yes, I worked on Popeye and Betty Boop and… INTERVIEWER: I mean were you working under, alongside, rather, any—? KIRBY: I was working alongside about three hundred other people. There was about three long rows of desks or tables in which you had lights underneath and you can put these cels—. INTERVIEWER: Light boxes. KIRBY: Oh, yeah, light boxes. And it looked like a factory to me. It looked like my old man’s factory. And I think that’s what turned me off about animating at that time. Somehow there must have been a kind of an individual streak, or… I like individualism. INTERVIEWER: Were you a bit resistant to having to draw the other people’s characters, anyway? KIRBY: Yes, I was. I think I’m instinctively so. During my career, I’ve been offered jobs as assistant to some pretty good artists. In fact, I did assist Frank Robbins for a while, doing Scorchy Smith, in which I wrote and drew several sequences. Of course, I took that job not because I—I knew I could do it. There wasn’t anything like that involved. It’s just, I loved the stereo at his apartment, and the fact that he lived the kind of life that I thought I’d like to live when I became his age. [laughs] Or when I dared. [laughs] So it was a lot of fun for me, and of course I liked doing Scorchy Smith. INTERVIEWER: But we’ve jumped a bit. How long were you in animation? KIRBY: I was in animation for about a year, I’d say. Maybe less. Not too long.

INTERVIEWER: This was when they were turning out a lot of shorts? KIRBY: Yes, they were turning out a lot of shorts, and bits of pieces from other productions. Then there was a strike. There were difficulties all along the way on the administrative level, and of course that seeped down to the working level, and they decided to move the entire studio to Florida. And, of course, that—. INTERVIEWER: Is that why you quit? KIRBY: Yes, that’s why I quit. I couldn’t go to Florida, and I didn’t want to leave my parents, and those are just family circumstances.

lected these segments, and you had a small sequence in the overall story.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. [Interviewer and unidentified other participant overlap, asking what the Fleischer studio would’ve been producing when the strike hit.] KIRBY: Yeah, around Gulliver. And I think they had a big strike in New York at that time. ’36, maybe.

INTERVIEWER: Did you like working more on Popeye than Betty Boop, for instance? KIRBY: No, I loved them all. I loved all those characters. I just wasn’t attracted by the method in which they were turned out.

INTERVIEWER: No, actually, it was after Snow White came out, because that gave him the idea to do a feature cartoon. About ’37. KIRBY: Yeah, ’36 and ’37, that area.

INTERVIEWER: There were other studios around at that time. Did you try them? KIRBY: Well, I just didn’t like the general atmosphere, and I felt that I would rather turn out something myself, or take the entire responsibility for what I was doing. I didn’t like the idea of working for people that I couldn’t see, see? Or I couldn’t talk to, or I couldn’t get any advice from. So…

INTERVIEWER: But up till then, did you see yourself in a career as an animator? Was it this decision that they went to Florida that ended your career as an animator? KIRBY: No, no. Working at those long rows of tables turned me off. I didn’t like anyplace that looked like a factory. To be frank, I didn’t like anyplace I’d work where my old man would work. INTERVIEWER: What was he, actually? KIRBY: He worked in the garment industry, and they did piecework. And I never put my old man down or anything like that, it’s just that I—. [brief interruption to get more drinks] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any particular sequences you worked on in animation at all, or was it just all…? KIRBY: Oh, no, I’d have liked to be in a position of taking credit for an entire sequence, which I couldn’t, see. I would do inbetween action on small segments. Each in-betweener had a very small segment. They col-

INTERVIEWER: Why couldn’t you get advice from them? KIRBY: Well, it was all so impersonal. And if you work in a large organization, that’s impersonal. INTERVIEWER: I guess you were probably never involved with the creative end? KIRBY: Oh, of course not. They had animators. They had their animators do all the creating. And, of course, I was far from being a head animator. Seymour Kneitel I think was the head animator at that time. Of course, he was very well known, and quite a competent man. INTERVIEWER: He married Fleischer’s daughter. KIRBY: Well, I don’t know much about that, but I would say that he had never heard of me, and didn’t think much of asking for my advice. [laughs] So it was that kind of thing. And I felt that, not that I was a cog in a wheel, which is a cliché. I felt that the general atmosphere was impersonal, and I’d been brought up among people where the gang would get together, and one guy would say, “Well, what are you doing tonight, Barney?” Right? And that was a thing that I lacked in the office. INTERVIEWER: Did you ever meet Max Fleischer? KIRBY: Oh, I saw him walk past once. And it didn’t excite me that much. INTERVIEWER: I wonder what sort of man he was. 15

INTERVIEWER: Were you put on a strip right away? KIRBY: Yes, I was put on a comic strip, and then they allowed me to do one of my own. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the title of the one you were put on? KIRBY: Yeah, I was put on a thing called Socko the Seadog. Very much like Popeye. And that was one of the reasons I was hired, see? Naturally, I could draw Popeye real well, and they liked the way I did it, so I inherited Socko the Seadog. Of course, they probably couldn’t afford to hire Max Fleischer. INTERVIEWER: Or Segar. [laughter] KIRBY: I’m quite sure Segar was content to stay with King Features. INTERVIEWER: What kind of money would you get then? KIRBY: Very low money, you know. INTERVIEWER: Was it better than the animation, or roughly the same? KIRBY: Yeah, roughly the same. But a dollar went a long way in those days. And I didn’t see much of the money, anyway, because my mother, she’d save it for me and she’d deposit it for me. So I never paid much attention to that. And when it came time to get new clothes, my mother would suggest it, and I let it go at that. INTERVIEWER: What was the first strip you got on your own? KIRBY: It was called Cyclone Burke. It was a fellow who got lost in time, and had a science-fiction theme. INTERVIEWER: This was a daily? KIRBY: Well, it was a weekly. It would come out every week in a newspaper that was published weekly. They had the strip in the paper. INTERVIEWER: Black and white. KIRBY: Black and white, oh, yeah. It was an adventure strip, and I thought it was done rather well. And I had one called the Black Buccaneer. And that was a lot of fun. INTERVIEWER: How long did this go? KIRBY: Well, several years at that. This was a closer-knit organization, and everybody was friendly at the office. INTERVIEWER: Did any artists of interest work for the organization who became famous, like yourself? KIRBY: Let me see…

KIRBY: I don’t know. (above) Early Kirby “Solar Legion” strip. (below) Red Skull convention sketch. (next page) Now this one we’re sure is by Kirby; a 1967 sketch. Captain America, Red Skull TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

INTERVIEWER: It’s a strange setup, because Max and Dave hardly ever spoke to each other. They were at war. KIRBY: Is that right? Well, I don’t know much about that. INTERVIEWER: How can you make cartoons in this atmosphere? One’s the producer, one’s the director. KIRBY: Well, I wasn’t even in a position to get in on a good rumor, so it didn’t matter much to me. The only thing that mattered to me was that I kind of missed out on Koko the Clown, who I liked, I wanted to draw, and I never got the opportunity. I just loved the idea of him jumping out of that inkwell. I liked that gimmick. So that was the extent of my position there at Fleischer’s. INTERVIEWER: So what happened the day you left there? Did you go straight to…? KIRBY: Well, I had to get a new job, and I landed a position with the small syndicate, Lincoln Feature Syndicate, which serviced seven hundred weekly papers. INTERVIEWER: That doesn’t sound small. KIRBY: Well, it wasn’t King Features. That’s what I mean to say. And in the context of larger syndicates, it was a tighter operation, let’s put it that way. But it was a good operation. People demanded good work, and despite the fact that they might have hired a lot of young people, they demanded good work, and it was good to live up to their standards, because it improved your work, trying to do that.

ROZ: Jack Davis worked there, too? KIRBY: No, I was Jack Davis. All the smaller outfits had to pretend they were large, so each man took about five aliases. So I became Jack Davis and Jack Curtis, and at one time Jack Cortez. It went on like that. Of course, that gave the impression that this syndicate had a big roster. INTERVIEWER: Were these the strips that were exported to England, these four-page strips that came across in a comic? It was called Wags. Did you ever hear of a comic called Wags? KIRBY: No, I didn’t, no. INTERVIEWER: Well, we had a comic, it was produced by a man called Joseph B. Powers in America. Have you ever heard of Joseph B. Powers? KIRBY: No, I haven’t, but… INTERVIEWER: Well, it was a 32-page American comic book, with these characters, including yours, I think—I wish I had my list here. It was published here in about ’36, ’37. It was just exported into London in England, and into Australia. KIRBY: Well, it was something the boss didn’t tell me about. [laughs] INTERVIEWER: And then it turned into a comic called Okay Comic. And then it had people like [Will] Eisner, and I think it… KIRBY: Oh. Well, Will was my boss, and in fact he—. INTERVIEWER: I think this is the same. KIRBY: Well, he had two magazines for which I drew: Wow, What a Magazine and then Jumbo Comics.

INTERVIEWER: That’s it. I was going to say, because Jumbo Comics came out after Wags, but actually reprinted this material that had been in Wags, and was reprinted in Jumbo Comics. KIRBY: And, of course, Will did a very exciting pirate strip. He did that in Jumbo, and then I did a feature with a witchcraft theme, which I rather liked. I liked working for Will. And, of course, Will was demanding too; his standards were high, so I worked harder, and I think that helped me a lot. I never complained about working hard, or taking the advice of some fellow who had been there ahead of me. Will was older than I was, and I felt that he had a lot more experience, and whatever he told me, I took very seriously. INTERVIEWER: You mentioned the Wow! What a Magazine. I have a copy of that at home somewhere in my collection. That would have been your first comic book work, then, would it? KIRBY: Let’s see. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think there were earlier comics. I did one for a fellow named Sherman. I’m not so sure. And he was connected with the Delacorte people. INTERVIEWER: Oh, Dell Publishing. KIRBY: Yeah, right. And I jumped around so much at the time that I couldn’t tell where I started, see? And it’s been such a long time ago that I can’t really pinpoint where I started. But it comes back to me in flashes, into flashes out of sequence. In other words, I have no chronology for it. I remember where I worked, but I don’t know which came first. I know I did one thing called Cosmic Carson and, oh, things of that kind. I did a strip called “Hurricane”, which was a forerunner of the Thor mythology. And “Hurricane” became “Mercury”, and “Mercury” became something else. I began to combine mythology with present-day action. And, bit by bit, the format for a lot of the stuff that I do today was born at that time. And I can tell you that I had a healthy interest in mythology. Even in school, I was pretty good at history and learning that kind of thing because I concentrated on it. A lot of the elements of my work today were present in the strips then. Although they were a little more primitive, they had all of the qualities that I might have in my stuff today. But in a very, very simple fashion. INTERVIEWER: With this, the Eisner set-up—he was really one of the fathers, I guess, of American comics—. KIRBY: Sure, Will Eisner, I consider him one of the Deans in comics in many respects. In respect to the daily strip, in respect to the comic magazine, in respect to editing, production, administration. Will knows it all. INTERVIEWER: Were you good friends at this time? KIRBY: Oh, no—yeah, it was a boss and employee relationship, although, you know, Bill was a personable fellow. We didn’t joke around on “Bill and Jack” times. We were—. INTERVIEWER: You were working in a kind of a studio setup? You didn’t work at home and take it in? KIRBY: No, no. It was all done in a studio. It was with what we called a packaging firm. Bill and his partner, Jerry Iger, would package these books and sell them to a publishing house, and have the publisher, who had distribution, give them a flat fee for the magazine. INTERVIEWER: And they paid you the same amount weekly? KIRBY: Yeah, right. They gave me a weekly salary, and that was fine with me. INTERVIEWER: Were you always busy? KIRBY: Oh, yes, always busy. And a lot of the fellows—at this kind of an operation I met Joe Simon, and I met a lot of the artists who created—. INTERVIEWER: Lou Fine worked—. KIRBY: Yes, Lou Fine worked for Fox at the time, and I met Lou. And, of course, Lou Fine was one of the—he was really “fine.” He was a top-notch draftsman. He did Flash Gordon later, at King Features. He’s gone now, I believe. Eddie Herron… well, Eddie Herron became an editor at Fawcett, and he created Captain Marvel. There were other fellows, but I hadn’t met them offhand. INTERVIEWER: Bob Kane, I think, was involved. KIRBY: Yes, Bob Kane. Well, Bob Kane began to work for Donenfeld when Donenfeld organized his organization. He created Batman. And these two young fellows walked in with Superman. And, of course, that made Donenfeld a really big corporation. INTERVIEWER: Did you know [Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster at that time?

KIRBY: At that time they were— oh, I knew them by sight, but there was no acquaintanceship. That kind of thing grew between us. We had Jerry Siegel over to our house recently. We had him over for lunch and dinner. And, actually, it’s only recently that we became really good friends. But I knew Eddie Herron well. I knew the rest of the fellows well, because… well… INTERVIEWER: Joe Simon was the one that you sort of latched onto, wasn’t he? KIRBY: Yeah, right, we became buddies. And Joe is a big fellow, he’s 6' 3", and I was about 5' 3", and we looked kinda like Mutt and Jeff. I looked like Joe’s little brother Ike. But we each had something that made for good sales, and we each treated whatever we sent very, very seriously. And we came up with some great ideas. We created Captain America together. INTERVIEWER: But did you leave the Eisner set-up to go into partnership together? KIRBY: Well, here’s what happened. Joe became the editor up at Atlas, and… INTERVIEWER: Before Stan Lee? KIRBY: Oh, Stan Lee was an office boy. He was a young boy running in and out of the office with a clarinet. INTERVIEWER: He’s still in and out. He runs in and out of London. [laughs] KIRBY: But that’s the first time I saw Stanley. He was a young boy and he was a nephew of Martin’s, and, of course, Martin had him working—Martin Goodman was the publisher, and, well, Martin Goodman had him employed there, and I suppose Stanley learned all about editorial doing these chores. Joe Simon was the editor. And, of course, Joe Simon and I had done some stuff previously, and when I came up to Atlas I saw Joe again, and he says, “Well, let’s get to work. You’ve got 17

a job.” And that’s when I began doing “Hurricane” and “Mr. Scarlet” and things like that. The plan that Joe and I got together—Superman was all the rage, and they demanded a super-hero, too, so Joe said, “Well, let’s get together and let’s get busy on it.” And we sat down and worked out Captain America. And that’s how it all began. It was done on order. Everybody had the order, “Do a super-hero.” So Joe and I picked a patriotic issue and… INTERVIEWER: Well, it was before the war; the American war, anyway. I mean, it was the climate. KIRBY: Oh, yeah, the atmosphere was set, the climate was set. And that was it. INTERVIEWER: He was their first big runaway success, wasn’t he? KIRBY: Oh, yes. Yeah, I was only 22, and Joe was, let’s see, he was 27. And we were an immediate success. INTERVIEWER: You were Marvel’s own Siegel and Shuster. KIRBY: Well, just about. But, of course, I’m not putting ourselves in their context. They were already an institution. But I think Captain America today has reached a status where he can replace the old symbol of Uncle Sam, which I believe it is; Captain America

is the modern version of Uncle Sam. INTERVIEWER: Whereas in England we replaced John Bull with Andy Capp. [laughter] KIRBY: You’ll hear from the queen, I’m sure. INTERVIEWER: Did your money go up once this success hit you? KIRBY: Oh, believe me, they didn’t pay us thousands and thousands of dollars. Sure, my money went up, and I— [brief interruption] KIRBY: As you can gather, I’m not a big drinker. INTERVIEWER: So for quite a while, your signature was Simon & Kirby, wasn’t it? KIRBY: Oh yes, sure. INTERVIEWER: This was really through the big boom period. KIRBY: This went on for about twenty years. INTERVIEWER: As long as that? KIRBY: Yes. Joe and I got on well. And, actually, we were like brothers. Joe was a big brother to me, and I was a little brother to him. It was a kind of an age where fellows… when friends became good friends,

and then the circle widened. Arthur Goodman, Martin Goodman’s brother, became one of the gang. We began to, the fellows began to form cliques. And we even had an engraving salesman as part of the clique. [laughs] And we had a great time. Those were great times, because we all did things together, we went horseback riding and to amusement parks. And it was refreshing for me, because I’d always been a loner. Even in my younger days, when I’d been part of a gang, I was the guy who hung out in the rear. [laughs] So it was in Joe Simon’s company and Arthur Goodman’s company that I really got a good whiff of camaraderie and that kind of thing. And the beginning of comics kind of fostered that type of thing. At DC, the same type of thing was going on. The artists, the early artists and the early editors, had formed associations, and knew each other as good friends. Even the publisher. I could speak to Martin Goodman just as I was talking to you. And the publisher was the big boss. He was the guy where all the money came from. And, of course, he was very, very friendly. So… INTERVIEWER: When did that sort of disappear, then? KIRBY: Oh, that disappeared after the war. After service, we came back and, of course, the publishing houses were bigger, and the experiences of all these years had kind of widened the gulf between each level of operation. Editors had bigger staffs. The publisher was more isolated, and involved in bigger business, see. And that took them away from where the production was going on. He very seldom was involved with the production, and the further away they got from where the magazines were being produced—they didn’t exactly become alienated, you just—it was like just not seeing people for a long, long time. And it got to the point where, when you did see him, he was going out with someone to lunch. And that’s the way it became. INTERVIEWER: The success of Captain America obviously led to creating other books. KIRBY: Yes. And Joe and I did, created the books, and we found that the combination was so good that there wasn’t a thing that we created that didn’t sell. Nothing. INTERVIEWER: How long were you continuing at Marvel? You set up on your own, didn’t you, as packagers? KIRBY: Oh, yes, yeah. After about ten issues of Captain America, we left, and we went to work for DC, and we created the Boy Commandos. We did things like the Sandman, and then the Newsboy Legion. Even when I was doing Captain America for Atlas, I created the Young Allies. And new mythological strips. Then we did Blue Bolt, a new one. INTERVIEWER: That was a different publisher, wasn’t it? KIRBY: Yeah, that was a different publisher, but Joe and I worked on that. And we had characters like, well, the Green Sorceress and that kind of thing began. And, of course, that element you can see in Thor. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I’m just trying to get the progression of it. So did you actually move to DC to be employed by them? KIRBY: Yes. INTERVIEWER: And then move to Hillman

and being employed by them? KIRBY: Yes, yes. INTERVIEWER: Oh, you weren’t just like the Eisner shop? In other words, you weren’t just a shop and you provided for whoever wanted—? KIRBY: Oh, no. Joe and I made our own studio. We had our own studio. We didn’t work on the premises. Oh, no. We became freelancers. We had our own studio in Tudor City, on 42nd Street. We had a studio apartment. Of course, all of the editors came up to the place. Mort Weisinger would come up. We worked up there with our own letterer, Howard Ferguson, who was a fine— well, he was, as a letterer, he was an artist. And I think he was the last man to really make very, very fine comic lettering which is very distinctive, because it was just made for the comic magazine, or for the really good syndicated strip. Howard passed away in the 1950s, but I’ll rank him with any of the best artists that came out of comics. He was that good a man. And Joe and I treated him that way, and it was a combination. All three of us became a team. INTERVIEWER: Did you do your own coloring? KIRBY: Oh, that would have been too much, I think. Only when we needed special effects. In other words, if we had a battle scene and we felt that we’d make it more dramatic by coloring the whole thing red, you know… INTERVIEWER: You’d put an indication. KIRBY: Yeah, we’d put an indication. But the printers, by that time, could be trusted to put in the kind of coloring that comic strips demanded. They began to be artists on their own, too. I had full confidence in the printer, because— INTERVIEWER: Were you paid according to circulation of these items, or were you just paid per book? KIRBY: We were paid per page, a per-page rate. INTERVIEWER: Oh, I see. If a book went well—. JK: Oh yes, oh yeah. And there came a time when we got a percentage. When we worked for Crestwood, we got 35% of the books. So we became a production team. At Crestwood, which was during the ’50s, Joe and I had many, many people working for us. We had about ten magazines, which we divided up and produced among ourselves. Later, when Crestwood closed, Joe and I did our own magazines. We became Mainline Incorporated. That’s when we created Bullseye—Justice—No, not that. Police Trap was ours. Foxhole, which was a war story. What was the other one? Bullseye belonged to Joe and myself. INTERVIEWER: But you originated some, you were telling me, some types of comics, like the romance. KIRBY: Oh, yes. We originated the romance. Of course, we didn’t originate crime books, but we tried to make our own particular variation of the crime books. In other words, we never copied anybody else’s format. We felt that that theme was good, and Charlie Biro created the crime book, but we took the theme and we made our own variation on that theme. INTERVIEWER: Tell me how you originated the romance books. KIRBY: Well, we were working for Hillman Publications at that time, I forget who the editor was. I think his first name was Ed. And they had a book in their series called My Date, which was a teenage romance book. And as soon as I saw it, as soon as I read some of their stories, I felt that this poor fellow was missing out on the real core of the type of book he was doing. It was a romance book, and he didn’t know it. He felt it was sort of a light teenage book and it would be bought by the teenagers, because it would have their fashions in it, and he would have their type of lifestyle in it, and he felt it would attract the teenage circulation. But there it was, in the book. The longer the story, the more romantic it became, and the more consequential it became. And I felt, here it was, the romance. Like the McFadden books, all the True Romances and Your Romance and True Confessions. I felt with a little extension of that kind of stuff, we could do our romances that should be done. And that’s what we did. We did Young Romance, and we did Young Love comics, and…

INTERVIEWER: It became quite a boom, didn’t it? KIRBY: Oh, yes! The first issues did 92%, which was a sellout, really. It became a staple of the industry, just like crime and westerns. Come to think of it, we did do Western Romance. INTERVIEWER: The other one you originated was Black Magic, wasn’t it? KIRBY: Yes. Black Magic was done in competition with EC, which was a fine outfit and very innovative. You had to be on your toes to keep up with them. So we worked very hard on the Black Magic stories to compete with them. And every one of our stories was good, I believe. INTERVIEWER: You seemed to avoid the kind of horror that EC went to. They got more and more—. KIRBY: Yes, I admit we were—well, they took a little more license than we did. They felt the more sensational the thing was, the better it would sell. And they may have been right, in their own way. They made quite an impression. But we were conditioned to the other type of thing, and we depended heavily on good stories, on something that you’d want to read. And we did well.

(previous page) Back cover pencils to Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles (1976). (above) Manhunter splash page from Adventure Comics #74 (May 1943). Art restoration by Chris Fama. Captain America, Red Skull TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Manhunter TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

INTERVIEWER: I have a feeling that most of your stuff, although it never goes to extremes of violence or extremes of horror, and I would think this is your own personal taste, isn’t it? KIRBY: Yes. I’m a rather conventional fellow, and I think that we all, sooner or later, see the other side of life, and we’re not pleased with it. We go in to see a good film or read a good story, we’d like to see something that replaces what we think is ugly with something that pleases us, simply because it gives us that good feeling. I love to see a picture with a happy ending and a guy walk out with a good feeling, and that’s what counts for me. 19

KIRBY: No, not once. And I feel that the publishers were very responsible in that way. Somehow I felt that comics was getting a raw deal from the fact that, as far as I was concerned, I’d never seen any of the publishers or any of the staffs of the better-known comics involve themselves with sensationalism in order to build circulation. In fact, in that particular respect, they were very honest about being conventional, about selling a good product, putting quality into the product. And there were a few new publishers that came into the field that used other methods. INTERVIEWER: This was particularly so, I think, in the period of the crime comics or horror comics. KIRBY: Yes. I think the only thing wrong was we had no regulating body to use discipline, to create some kind of discipline in the field. Actually, I felt we never needed it, because we used it anyway. The people I knew were always ethical. I’ve been that way myself, and I’ve been consistently that way. That’s why I felt all the criticism against comics at that time was unjust. INTERVIEWER: The trouble is, everybody gets… once there is a sense of some agitation, or once something bad happens, everybody’s tarred with the brush. KIRBY: And, of course, there was also the fact that the comic sales were eating into the sales of the other media. I remember when our— what surprised us when we published Young Romance, we cut into about forty percent of the sales of McFadden, which is a big chunk. And the magazine publishers from adjacent fields were behind all this scapegoat stuff. I think it might have been very smart on their part, because it just knocked out our audience for a long, long time. Although I can’t believe it might have been anything like that, I feel like that could have been a good possibility.

(above) Page 9 inks (by Mike Royer) from In The Days Of The Mob #2, still unpublished. Note how Kirby portrays violence off-camera in panel 2. (next page) The Magneto sketch from Kirby’s “Black Book” sketchbook, which he drew in the 1970s as a Valentine’s Day gift for wife Roz. Magneto TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. In The Days Of The Mob TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

It’s not that—I have no criticism of a picture that fantasizes. They can fantasize all they want and it pleases me to no end. I walk out of there and I feel great. My wife Rosalind and I recently came out of a picture called—well, I’m not going to name the picture, but he played it straight, he was true to the theme, and it had a very depressing theme. And, in fact, I felt so depressed after it. It’s very rarely that I come out feeling that bad about a picture. The picture was done well, it was done artfully, it was done professionally. But it was done with an eye to extreme realism. And it didn’t shock me, it just depressed me, and I felt very bad. INTERVIEWER: You feel that the comic books should entertain and not—? KIRBY: I think that’s its prime purpose. I don’t believe in crusading. I believe there are more advantageous ways to crusade. I believe comics should tell a story. It doesn’t have to really make you happy. If you can read something that you can say, “Well, that’s the way it should end,” or, “That’s the way I’d like to see things,” or, “Gee, I’m glad that happened,” it’s a positive thing. If it’s a positive thing, I feel like comics has done its job. INTERVIEWER: In the various times of extreme in American comic books, were you ever asked by publishers to increase the violence, increase the horror?

INTERVIEWER: So after all these years, what do you think of Wertham now that it’s settled? KIRBY: Oh, I think Wertham had found something that gave him an audience. I don’t think much of his psychology, and I don’t think much of his outlook. I think he found himself a perfect scapegoat. He found a field that had no code, and had no regulations, and of course was open to attack. And he could point to them and say, “Well, here are all these publishers, and they all publish their own way, don’t give a damn about the way things are done. They don’t have to, see, because they’re not banded together with following any sort of code.” And he says, “If they’re not disciplined in that respect, what kind of thing can they produce?” That was a point of his attack, and it was valid, because that was the setup. INTERVIEWER: Do you feel he ultimately did harm or good to the industry? KIRBY: Well, that kind of thing did us a lot of harm, because it ruined the audience, and that ruined sales, and that ruined the people who worked in the industry. A lot of the fellows left the industry and went to either the commercial art agencies or they went to the syndicates. We lost a lot of good men. Of course, it made things tighter in the big publishing houses. It gave everybody a hard time. INTERVIEWER: But I guess if he hadn’t come along, somebody else would have done, really, at that time. Things were getting pretty bad, so things had to happen somewhere. I mean, it couldn’t have gone on with it, that situation.

KIRBY: Well, we were open to attack. It doesn’t matter whether it was a Wertham or anybody else, or even a Joe McCarthy, who came along and did the same thing. Sure, we were open to it. And, of course, that kind of thing may never have happened, because you can’t call the shots on it. Wertham just happened to come along, and there we were, sitting ducks. INTERVIEWER: You’ve remained very true to the comic books, haven’t you? You’ve never sort of gone into other forms. You never got back into newspaper strips or—. KIRBY: Well, I feel this is my bag. I feel this is the way I can operate at top efficiency. Oh, I could do it in a syndicated strip, but it would be frustrating, because it would be frustrating for me to drag a story out six weeks or eight weeks. I’m the type of guy who likes to just tell you something and come to the point and not—you know, you just can’t do it now in a syndicated strip. INTERVIEWER: When did this, what is now considered the Jack Kirby style, how did this emerge? You know, this combination, you talk about mythology and fantasy and other worlds. KIRBY: Well, it emerged rather late. For instance, when I created Galactus, I was looking for a new type of super-villain. And there I was with all these super-heroes. All these super-heroes were teamed up against ordinary gangsters or mad scientists, and I felt that kind of thing just wasn’t evenly matched. I had to get a match for those super-heroes, and naturally the ordinary gangster didn’t fill the bill. Using a gun against a super-hero I felt was kind of unfair. I had to get a villain who’d get an atom bomb or he’d get a disintegrator of some kind. Gangsters can’t invent that sort of thing. So I created Galactus. And, of course, Galactus was an omnipresent thing. In fact, he was omnipotent from the first time I—.

the devil was supposed to have fled before God to Earth and stayed there. And, of course, this happens to the Surfer in the style of the fallen angel. Although people don’t see him in that role, that was the original role that I intended for him, although he isn’t an evil character. But he has a power about him that’s typically Biblical, just as Galactus does. Galactus eats entire worlds, he eats entire planets. It’s an omnipotent type of thing, which, you know, the more ordinary super-villain can’t engage in. Of course, later on I got Magneto. The poor fellow only had this power of magnetism, you could say, and of course he didn’t rate on the level of Galactus. But he did rate above a gangster, and he was very, very effective. INTERVIEWER: Dr. Doom was one of your characters, wasn’t he? KIRBY: Yes, Dr. Doom. Yes. INTERVIEWER: He preceded the—he was a kind of, could be called an enlargement of—. KIRBY: Yes. Yes, right. Right. And where do you go after Dr. Doom, if not to Galactus? All these are progressive steps. In other words, you create a villain

with greater powers and you use him in five issues. Well, then you can’t use him anymore, you’ve got to give him a rest. You’ve got to create some kind of balance and bring in a new character. So I had to put Dr. Doom to rest, and there was Galactus. Where do you go after Dr. Doom? See, you’ve got to get someone more powerful. INTERVIEWER: So where are you going to go after Galactus, I suppose? [laughter] KIRBY: I go for Intergalactus or Transgalactus, I guess. But out of Galactus, I got the Watcher, who was also omnipotent. In fact, he’s so omnipotent, he doesn’t even take part in any of these affairs [laughs], except to come down once in a while and warn everybody that Galactus is coming. And, of course, from characters like Galactus and the Watcher, I evolved the Fourth World out of it, which was entirely Biblical, with New Genesis and Apokolips and the gods of New Genesis and the gods of Apokolips, the evil gods, the good gods, and gods that were trapped between good and evil, and, of course, frustrated. And, of course, that made them colorful. Like Orion. And now I’m working on The

INTERVIEWER: Was he a variation of the devil? KIRBY: No, no. He was a variation of God. I’d felt I’d come up against God, something completely omnipotent. Because the devil isn’t supposed to be omnipotent. He’s got a weak spot somewhere, see, and we’re supposed to be able to outwit him in some way. Well, you can’t outwit God. And I felt that way about Galactus. And here I discovered Galactus, and I said, like God, how do I contend with him, see? So, in the first story, I backed away from it. I felt that—. INTERVIEWER: What was the first story he was featured in? KIRBY: Well, it was in the Fantastic Four. And with Galactus, when I felt that that was possibly my version of God, I thought, well, as long as I’m going to do that sort of thing, I’ll include the fallen angel. And I got the Silver Surfer out of the fallen angel of Galactus. And, of course, I couldn’t say “fallen angel” in a Biblical sense. I put him on a surfboard because surfing was popular then. It became popular in California, and I read the papers, and there were all these guys walking around with surfboards, and they were putting out specialty magazines on surfing, and it became extremely popular. So I felt that might be a source of sales among young people who liked to surf. So I created the Silver Surfer, and I gave him the role of fallen angel, and Galactus banished him to Earth, which God did to the devil. God banished the devil to Earth, or 21

Eternals, which attacks the same theme from a different direction. The god theme is coming in from another direction. This is a takeoff on van Daniken’s theory about space gods being here in the past, and naturally I’m making a variation of that and elaborating on it. In other words, the intriguing question is, suppose they come back? What happens? INTERVIEWER: Your work over a number of years in fact has all been linked, isn’t it? It all links together, whatever you’re drawing, whoever the main characters are in the comic book. KIRBY: Yeah, right. And you may be right about that. And maybe part of my personality is affected by that particular strain of ideas. And I’m not going to stop to analyze myself, but there it is. INTERVIEWER: Do you keep any kind of record of what you’ve done with each character, or do you keep it in your head? KIRBY: Oh, they’re all in my head. INTERVIEWER: You haven’t got a great chart of what happens to him, there, in which issue of what? KIRBY: No, I’m just not that methodical. I know Dr. Doom is the Man in the Iron Mask. How do you make a character like Dr. Doom? He’s a paranoid. And he’s so paranoid, and he’s so egotistical, that a slight scar in a space makes him feel—he’s an extremist. A slight scar on his face makes him feel very, very grotesque. Imperfect. He’s a man that has to be perfect. So he’s so ashamed of his little scar—actually, he’s a very handsome guy. And he’s so ashamed of this little scar that he keeps his face covered with an iron mask. And his reaction is very extreme. And whenever he’s going to do you harm, he’s going to destroy you in some way. And not only that, in a very clever, gimmicky way. He’s a paranoid. He’s a great brain, according to his own imagination. Of course, he’s not. But he sees himself as extremely brilliant. He’s not only smart, but he’s the smartest man in the world. That’s where his failing is, and, of course, he’s not. He thinks he’s ugly, but he’s not. INTERVIEWER: Now, do you get caught out sometimes? Do people write and say, “Hey, wait a minute. Ten issues back, or twenty issues back—?” KIRBY: Of course, yes. Yes, that goes on all the time. INTERVIEWER: Do you have a quick, ready answer for these…? KIRBY: No, I don’t answer. I remain diplomatically quiet. And, of course, there are many times when you get a little tired and you’ll find yourself doing something stupid like putting six fingers on a hand. The strange part about it was, I once did a war magazine, and—in the service, I’d been attached to the mortar squad. And here I was, on the cover of a war comic magazine, drawing in the shells of the mortar at the wrong end, see? [laughs] Using the wrong end of the shell. And the humorous part, I think, is that the young man who brought it to my attention, he was just a kid, see? And here he was, telling me, who was in the service, that I was putting the shell in the wrong way! And I felt kind of silly, but these things happen. And I move right along. [laughs] But I find it funny, and I have a good time at it. INTERVIEWER: You were in the Army, were you? I didn’t realize that. KIRBY: Yes. INTERVIEWER: There’s a period when you weren’t drawing. KIRBY: For about two years. Of course, that was 22

another experience. I don’t know whether it did me any good or not, but it was an experience. INTERVIEWER: Did you see war action? KIRBY: Yes, I did. I saw war action at Metz. I was with the Fifth Division, General Patton. Kind of an odd fish among Texans, being from Brooklyn. So that was an experience, too. I felt that I was being attacked by two armies, my own and the other one. [laughs] But it was an experience, and I felt that, oh, just coming out of it added something to my own character. And I found new dimensions to many things cropping out from that experience. I find that I can inject elements into war stories that are not contrived, and they’ll add something to the war story, where another fellow might have to contrive something just to make it gimmicky. I know what all the gimmicks were, and that wasn’t one.

INTERVIEWER: But you really abandoned reality, didn’t you, over the last few years? KIRBY: Yes, I have. Well, I haven’t abandoned it, I’m just dealing with reality as a parable. In other words, I’m saying, well, this is what’s happening, but I’m giving it to you in an oblique manner. Saying, “What do you think is happening? What’s your version of what’s happening?” INTERVIEWER: Oh, I see. So in fact, there’s something behind your strips, isn’t there? They’re not just pure escape. KIRBY: No, they’re not escape, they’re conversation. In other words, you’re going to send back a response saying, “Did you mean this when you drew this?” And then I find that interesting, you see. In other words, the letter writer will say, “I think you meant this when you drew it. Did you really mean that?”

INTERVIEWER: So you have a message for your readers. KIRBY: No, I don’t have a message. I don’t have a message at all. I just have a lot of interesting questions, I believe. I believe that we all have interesting questions. I believe that none of us are ever going to know the answers. But to me it’s just a game just asking them, and I enjoy it thoroughly. I feel there’s a heck of a lot of questions to everything all about us. And whoever says he knows the answers, why, he’s the one guy I know who doesn’t. INTERVIEWER: But one thing, it always seems to me, in your drawings, or many of them, there’s a kind of a combination of machinery and the human figure or the human body. This is, you sort of try and combine the two very often, don’t you? A machinelike person, or a personlike machine. KIRBY: Yes. And I feel that slowly—that’s what’s happening, that we’re becoming, we’re merging with our own machines in some manner. We may be bionic mentally. Some of us may be bionic physically. Of course, what I mean by that is that we’re already manufacturing transplants for all our organs. We already have artificial kidneys, artificial heart valves, artificial esophagus. Well, I could go through the whole inventory. I’d say the inventory is not yet complete, but there will come a day when that inventory will be complete, and there’s a good possibility that we may have a living, breathing bionic man. Part of us are already partly bionic. Part of us are already merging with our own circuitry. We have people who spend their entire lives just taking care of circuitry of some kind. They’re gonna live with that circuitry. And someday they may have to talk to it, and have relations with it. That circuitry is going to emerge in a sort of a symbiotic relationship with man. They’re already talking about computers that have male and female voices. We already have machines which we can work with a blink of our own eye. Pilots have helmets which move up and down because they blink their eyes. Pilots can move some instruments by constricting their throat muscles, and they can move this machinery. So that’s what I call a symbiotic relationship. In other words, what we have are two living creatures doing the same thing. When the machine operates under our control, it’s alive. And I think that, when we operate with them, there will come a time when the machine will have to do an operation we can’t, and then it’ll still be a living creature when it does that. It’ll be alive. So, yeah, we’re going to have a bionic age.

race, so they’re going to be shaping those machines, and if machine acts bad, that’s going to be the brains for that machine, and it’s going to cause a lot of harm. So we’ve never been able to keep anything out of the hands of those among us who are going to pull off something very harmful. We learned how to ride a horse, so the bandits are riding horses as well as the good guys. That’s all I’m saying. So if there’s going to be an evil machine, it’s going to be run by an evil guy, that’s all. And if a machine learns evil and does it by itself, where’s the source? Us. We built them. INTERVIEWER: Well, anyway to finish up, which I suppose what we ought to do, this is your first visit to one of these? KIRBY: Yes. INTERVIEWER: You’ve probably seen some of the kind of comic books that they’re doing here, the kind of drawing, which I think—I mean, I don’t want to say what I think, because I want to hear what you think. Are you impressed? Are you intrigued? Did you see a new style emerging, a new future for comics that’s larger than it’s been, so far, in America, than in England? There’s something growing here?

(previous page) Doom steals the Silver Surfer’s board in this 1983 commission piece. (below) Page 9 pencils from 2001: A Space Odyssey #10, showing Jack’s own bionic man, Mister Machine (redubbed Machine Man). Dr. Doom, Machine Man TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

INTERVIEWER: Do you see this as bad or good, or just something that’s going to happen? KIRBY: Oh, I think it’ll happen. If there’s evil in it, I think a lot of it will have to be blamed on us. INTERVIEWER: But would you personally as soon it didn’t happen? Would you as soon we all return to using our hands and our fangs, or do you think, having created these machines, we should be able to live with them and be their masters, and they should be in our service? Or to improve on it? KIRBY: I think that would be very compatible. I don’t see any evil in using a thing in the best manner possible. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to use it in harmful ways, but that will come by having harmful people. I would rather change the harmful people than change harmless machines. Sometime I’ll watch television, I’ll turn off the sound, and I’ll have a lot of people in unrelated fields, and they’ll all be acting the same way. And you can see them shouting to the audience, and there are all these paranoids keeping busy. And we’re never going to stop that kind of people, and the machines are at their mercy, too. And they’re part of the human 23

INTERVIEWER: Oh, sorry. No, I was only saying that the traditional, what we call the ten cents, 64 pages, we remember comic book, you know, has kind of been dying in America; other formats are being tried, and so on. I was really just sort of, get into that, because I remember you were saying the other day that you suggested some time ago that they should do a higher priced comic book. KIRBY: Why, yes. I mentioned it to Carmine Infantino when he was publisher of DC, and I felt that they would get better distribution if they had a larger book, and a higher price book. But with good, original stories. And I believe at that point all these Treasury Editions were born, but I felt that they put the wrong material in some of these books. But at least they had a chance of good distribution, and I don’t know how many of them made money; it wasn’t my position to keep track of them, but I understand Treasury Editions are still being put out, so they must be a good source of revenue. I believe that’s where comics are really headed: Bigger books, better color, better stories, and then, whammo, somewhere in that setup we’re going to get a classic that nobody’s ever going to forget. INTERVIEWER: What do you actually attribute the decline of the comic book to? Do you attribute it to television? KIRBY: Partly to television, of course, but not really to television. I feel there’s a watering down of the quality of the men who produce it, that’s what I feel. Of course, I may sound like I’m some kind of a cantankerous codger when you say—usually, a guy says, “Well, in my day…”, that sort of thing. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that men are not searching in a professional manner on how to produce the format. They’re relying on what has come before. I see very little innovation. I see a lot of variation on previous material, and people who don’t search remain static. In my day, one fellow tried to outdo the other, so we had true competition. We had people coming in from other fields that brought all their experience from these other fields to comics, and incorporated it to the point where, you know, we got good-looking books, professional books. These were professional men. And we don’t have that sort of thing today. Professionals aren’t being brought in from other fields. That kind of thing is closed up. We’re getting people who have had no experience at all, anywhere. I’ve seen editors that never worked on a comic book before, but there they are, they’re editors. KIRBY: Yes, I’ve seen a variety of publications, a variety of different formats. I believe that somewhere there’s one fellow, just as there were in the ’40s, that will arrive at a new format that will please everybody, and I see everybody adopting this particular format and saying, “That’s good because that’s going to make sales.” I can see that happening. I can see all of these publications on a stage where the formats are shifting, and where new combinations are coming in all of the time in order to produce sales. Finally, I believe that one format is going to be so striking that everybody will use it to their best advantage, and I see no harm in that. And, of course, I’ll use it myself, and I’m just waiting for that guy to bring it forth. [laughs] INTERVIEWER: At heart, you’re commercial? Comic books are for selling and buying, and for the business of making a living out of. KIRBY: Yes. 24

INTERVIEWER: You don’t seem like one of these people who see it as some kind of special communication or art form. KIRBY: Oh, I don’t know. I’m not that intricate a man. I’m strictly a bread and butter guy. I have a family and I’ve always had responsibilities. I had responsibilities toward my parents, and when I got married to Rosalind, I had responsibilities toward her. That’s always been at the bottom of it. You know, I’ve gotta make a living. I believe it’s mostly that. INTERVIEWER: There have been a few shifts in American comic book style in the last few years. KIRBY: Oh, yeah. INTERVIEWER: —other formats. KIRBY: Listen, I’m not the only type of fellow in the field, see. You’ll have your thinker, too. Did you want to say something there that I might have interrupted you?

INTERVIEWER: I think we’ve had the same thing in British comics, a big decline there with a lack of business, a lack of standards, too. They will accept very bad artwork. KIRBY: Well, you’ve probably made the entire point, that there are no standards. There are no yardsticks for anything except previously published material, and that kind of thing, if it goes on, produces a static quality in the magazines, and if you’re static, you don’t sell. I feel that I’m thoroughly qualified to keep a good balance in a magazine. My magazines sell because I’m constantly doing a razzle-dazzle dance, you could say. I’m constantly pulling off the unexpected, that the other fellow can’t do. He has nothing to draw from except maybe my stuff, and that’s a shame. That’s a shame, because these fellows should have already been at the stage where they can innovate, themselves. A good professional should be able to innovate anything. He can take a piece of editorial and know what it lacks, and of

course provide the thing that will help it. That’s my job, that’s what I do. Essentially, I sell. I think everybody has to sell in order to make their product successful. But you’ve got to put that certain element in it that’s going to attract either a reader, a viewer, or a participant. That’s my point. INTERVIEWER: Do you think you’ll find anything here that you’ll be able to take back, in the sense of ideas or inspiration. KIRBY: I’ve seen lots of things already, and I’ve bought lots of material which I’m taking back with me. In fact, there’s such a variety that I’m—. INTERVIEWER: That’s one of the reasons why I think something like this is so good, this kind of a convention or festival or whatever you call it, are bringing together from parts of the world, people just drawing. KIRBY: Yes, I find it very exciting. I’ve met a lot of new people with ideas that I feel have extremely good points to them. I’d like to study them and maybe get something from them that’ll help my own. INTERVIEWER: Do you have anything similar in America, apart from the fan conventions? Is there any getting together of comic artists like yourself, to exchange ideas? KIRBY: No, there hasn’t been for a long time. Well, not to my knowledge.

on a few people talking somewhere, I put an entire crowd. Why I do it, I don’t know. Maybe I’m nuts, and I’m willing to admit to that. Strangely enough, I had a funny book called From Here to Insanity. It was like Mad, you know, Mad magazine. My big feature was about a schizophrenic who everybody wanted to blame him for something, but when he said there were these two other guys, it turned out to be him. And things like that. But I had a good time. INTERVIEWER: So you could, given the opportunity, you could go back to—. KIRBY: Oh, I could—yes, I could have a good time on it. In fact, I love to do it. Yes, I did one thing called “Lockjaw the Alligator.” I did “Earl the Rich Rabbit.”

INTERVIEWER: Was this in the Insanity book? KIRBY: Well, no, this was for the fellow I did My Date for. Yeah, the romance people, they also had this funny book. And I did a thing called the Flying Fool, which was a takeoff on the Flying Tigers. INTERVIEWER: I never saw that one. KIRBY: Yeah, an American flying outfit that was working in the Far East. It was really a very good book. Earl the Rich Rabbit used to give out presents, like, instead of giving a toy fire engine, he’d give you a real one, and things like that.

INTERVIEWER: Do you belong to any of the organizations? KIRBY: Yes, I belong to the American Comic Book Artists Association. And I was sponsored for the National Cartoonists Society, which I didn’t join, because I’m really not a joiner. As far as the ACBA was concerned, they made no big demands on me, and I felt that these were people from my own field and it was incumbent on me to join. Which I did. INTERVIEWER: Do they do anything? Are they in any way organized? KIRBY: Oh, they’re organized to a certain extent, but as far as being effective is concerned, why, I think they haven’t really helped each other as much as I think—they haven’t used their full potential in that direction. INTERVIEWER: They sound pretty much like us in England, then. KIRBY: Yeah, I think they could use a lot more support than they do have. INTERVIEWER: Anyway then, we’ll call it a day or a night. [post-interview chatter, excerpts below] INTERVIEWER: You started out and you did these funnies, and Popeye and so on, yet you haven’t gone back to funnies. Have you ever fancied drawing cartoons? KIRBY: Yes, I have. Yeah, I have, from time to time, I’ve created what I feel are good funny characters, but somehow I can’t get as serious about them as I can with a good adventure strip. And I don’t know why. I know every trick in the artist’s book on how to produce a strip and be lazy, at the same time. So I’d love to do a strip like Peanuts; I could do a hundred in a week, say, and then take off for the racetrack or something. But I can’t do it. I can’t do a panel without making a battle scene out of it, or a crowd on Times Square. I don’t just plan 25

INTERVIEWER: [Looking at Kirby Unleashed] Did you publish this? KIRBY: Oh, yes. ROZ KIRBY: Yeah, our son Neal put that together. KIRBY: Yeah, that thing sold out. INTERVIEWER: Did you always keep scrapbooks of all your work? KIRBY: My mother did and my wife did. And, like I say, I’m not a hobbyist, I don’t collect them. Crazy enough as it sounds, it’s pulp magazines that are my collectibles. INTERVIEWER: In America, of course, you’ve got this system we

don’t have here; generally, this breaking down of artwork to penciler, inker, letterer. KIRBY: Oh, I see. And I think it’s better that way, because each man relies on his own self and is self-sustaining. Somehow I felt that I did wrong by not inking that stuff, and yet I haven’t the time to do it. ROZ KIRBY: Well, you did at the beginning. KIRBY: Yeah, I did it at the beginning, just inked my stuff. ROZ KIRBY: I inked some of his stuff for DC. KIRBY: Yeah, Roz did. She inked it during the ’50s. I did some

BEFORE & AFTER

This issue, we’ve got a “Before & After” comparison of Kirby’s pencils from page 11 of Fantastic Four #75, and Joe Sinnott’s inks. The Silver Surfer in subspace; who in comics but Kirby could’ve come up with such a concept?

INTERVIEWER: When you were Simon & Kirby, when you were a teen, did one of you pencil, one of you ink, or did you both do…? KIRBY: Oh, I penciled. I penciled almost all the time, and Joe inked and lettered. I did a story, and once in a while we both worked. We could function in any manner, because Joe was a thorough professional, a very competent man. So we could talk to each other and work with each other and just put out a good product. If I had to do something that was very important and do something else, why, Joe had to. He could have penciled it, too. It was that kind of a team, and it really functioned well. We used to split ideas, and talk things over, and attack things from all angles. And they worked. They worked. So I never regretted having a partner. But things got bad during the ’50s and there was nothing else to do, and so the thing wasn’t profitable anymore, so we just didn’t continue. INTERVIEWER: What is he doing now? KIRBY: Joe is in commercial art. But he does well at it. But I couldn’t get on it, comics is the only damn thing I know. And commercial art was too aggravating for me. INTERVIEWER: You must have been asked to do things like a poster book… KIRBY: Oh, sure. Sure, yeah, time and again. And I turned them down. I designed a package for Mattel and you can still see it on sale today. [Editor’s Note: Does anyone know what design Jack means?] But still, that kind of thing is not the kind of thing I’d like to make a living at. I’d rather do comics. And I like to do it on my own terms and in my own conditions. ROZ KIRBY: And stop benefiting them. KIRBY: Yeah. You know, get a little bit more of the benefits. INTERVIEWER: Were any of your characters done on a TV series? KIRBY: Yeah, the Fantastic Four, and Thor was done on TV, Captain America was televised. But the animation was just horrible, just horrible. INTERVIEWER: The Fantastic Four was Hanna-Barbera? ROZ KIRBY: Yeah. mystery stories for them, and witchcraft, and she inked them. INTERVIEWER: Did she get a credit? EVERYONE: No, no. KIRBY: I wouldn’t admit to it. ROZ KIRBY: Well, in those days they didn’t even bother too much with the names, you know. INTERVIEWER: Who is your main inker? Do you have one in particular? KIRBY: Mike Royer. ROZ KIRBY: Well, no, but you have a lot of them. KIRBY: Almost all the inkers have been on my stuff. INTERVIEWER: Do you have any say in who inks your work? KIRBY: Now I do, yes. 28

INTERVIEWER: You had no kind of say whatsoever? KIRBY: No. Oh, no. INTERVIEWER: They didn’t ask you to design the characters? KIRBY: Oh, no. Well, it was like a film. If you get the option on a film, you can make any change you like with the condition in the contract. And you can’t stop—well, unless somebody is completely destroying the image of the character. You can sue them for that, I suppose. But, well, this was just poor animation. ROZ KIRBY: You were looking forward to getting your name on it. Too bad you didn’t. KIRBY: Yeah, they gave me credits, they gave me full credits on that. But I had to fight for them. But when the final product came out, I wasn’t that eager to be associated with it. [laughter] So it was one of those things. INTERVIEWER: Well, considering you have a background in animation, it seems

a shame not to have used that particular piece of your talent. KIRBY: Well, it was always interesting to me on how they were going to animate the Thing, which I felt was very hard to animate because of the body structure and the makeup of the body, shifting all the plates on those hands. But they did a good job in that particular area. But it was in the movement, the general movement of the figure that was bad. It was choppy. Well, you’ve seen

it, you know. ROZ KIRBY: Well, he works from four in the morning. INTERVIEWER: Oh, do you? KIRBY: Oh, sure. I get these talk shows, y’know, and they aggravate the hell out of me. Of course, they keep me up. But during the daytime I break it up. ★

Finishers

The Machineries Of Joy

Introduced and compiled by Jerry Boyd

rowing up, if you were a decent enough artist to be able to imitate the King’s squared-off fingers, blockish kneecaps, and superb panel composition, you could feel somewhat justified in giving yourself a congratulatory pat on the back. Coming up with unique, Kirby-style costuming was a greater challenge (in my humble opinion). And doing his type of machinery— functional, sleek, imposing, majestic, even organic at times—was the toughest. The hi-tech devices of Jack’s were awe-inspiring to behold, and here, three of the King’s collaborators reminisce about three of the many creations that sprang from the master’s fertile imagination.

Spanning the inky expanses of the Negative Zone, Annihilus seemed to be just another of Stan and Jack’s dictators from the great beyond, consumed with domination of others. But he was the greatest challenge to the three male members of the Fantastic Four, who were on a grim mission to secure the element that would save Susan Richards and her unborn child. Annihilus, a villain Lee and Kirby would use again, would take

on Reed, Ben, and Johnny with devices that were unforgettable— in fact, Kirby would proudly use the cosmic gun ship in his tribute book to his wife and his fans.

MICK GRAY Artist/inker on the COSMIC GUN SHIP OF ANNIHILUS “The Annihilus job was offered to me at the end of the project (the inked version of Kirby’s Heroes and Villains). I only had a couple of pieces to choose from. If it would have been earlier in the project I would have picked something else I’m sure, but in the end I was very happy I got to ink this piece! “No, I never read that issue (FF Special #5, 1968). I know I have it in reprinted form, though. The way Jack designed that ship was something special. The Kirbytech really intrigued me and I saw that I could add to his penciled version with the starspackle, etc.” Summer, 1977—and filmgoers in the United States were stunned by George Lucas’s Star Wars. The special effects showed that new vistas had opened up and its incredible success opened up the way for movies like Star Trek, Superman, E.T., etc. That fall of ’77, Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released, featuring a memorable sequence where motorists meet a space-ship along a lonely highway. Was Kirby inspired by that? Let’s hear from another friend of his.

STEVE ROBERTSON writer/friend of the Kirby family on THE VISITOR ON HIGHWAY SIX “Unfortunately, I don’t recall anything specific Jack may have said about the “Visitor on Highway Six” art back in 1978. What I can do is share with you memories I have relating to Jack and his take on UFO-related subjects at that time. “As an aside, after Star Wars had just come out, Mike Thibodeaux and I were really excited about this film, and on a visit to the Kirby’s asked Jack how he liked it. He said, “It’s great, and do you know why? Because it’s good old-fashioned storytelling! Good guys versus bad guys!” “I don’t recall any conversations specifically about Close Encounters, but we frequently discussed UFOs and the possibility of human and extra-terrestrial interaction. Jack had a copy of Von Danniken’s Chariot of the Gods, a book that presents different archaeological anomalies as evidence of aliens visiting the Earth in ancient times. Kirby was really enthusiastic about this viewpoint, and he seemed to think that this was a likely scenario. He felt that unsophisticated humans would interpret advanced alien technology as supernatural power, with the aliens themselves becoming gods or demons to them. You can see a lot of this viewpoint expressed in The Eternals comic series that Jack produced for Marvel from ’76 to ’78. “Jack didn’t think that alien visitation was strictly something that occurred in the past, either. He felt that it was quite likely that some of the UFO sightings of the present day were real glimpses of outer space vehicles. This idea really excited his imagination, and we get to enjoy the artwork that Jack produced under this inspiration!”

(below) Some vehicles (a truck and a monorail, bottom), rendered by Kirby for animation presentations. (bottom) Two fascinating conveyances from a Drac Pak animation proposal. Drac Pak TM & ©2007 Hanna-Barbera.

Kirby used to shake his head in amazement and happiness at the good pay he was receiving doing animation design work, according to Darrell McNeil. Here, he could let his imagination flow in large drawings that would see fruition on Saturday morning cartoons. He took on a number of varied assignments and his machines were the ones that stand out the most.

DARRELL (BIG ‘D’) McNEIL artist/producer on the DRAC PACK CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION DIRIGIBLE “The Hanna-Barbera Company asked Jack to do presentation work for a cartoon called Drac Pak that eventually ran on CBS in 1980. Unfortunately, the show didn’t last long. It was about crime-fighting descendants of famous monsters. “Frankie, Howler, and Drac, Jr. were all normal teenagers, but by slapping their hands together (a motion called the ‘Drac Whak’) and saying “Whakko!” they would transform into super-powered monsters. “The Kirby piece you’re seeing was done in watercolor and marker on a 12" x 9" Bristol Board and features the dirigible of the kids’ enemy, Dr. Dred. “Kirby enjoyed the work and the pay a great deal!” These three modes of transportation just skim the surface. Kirby came up with the Super Cycle, the Fantasti-Car, the Whiz Wagon, the Heli-Carrier, the Boom Tube, the Astro-Harness, the Mobius Chair, galactic star-ships, space stations…. Thankfully, he took us all along for the rides. ★ (Special thanks to Mick Gray, Darrell McNeil, Steve Robertson, and Mike Thibodeaux.)

Big IDeas (below, left to right) UFO the Lightning Man from Yellow Claw #3, General Electric from Sandman #1, The Misfit from Kamandi #9, Hatch-22 from Black Panther #3, and Hidden Harry from Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives card set. UFO, Hatch-22 TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. General Electric, Misfit TM & ©2007 DC Comics. Hidden Harry TM & ©2007 Ruby-Spears.

Big Head, Small Heart A Light-Hearted Examination Of A Kirby Archetype by Craig McNamara f all the recurring motifs in Kirby’s body of work (the savage/civilized man dichotomy, the subversion of technology for mass subjugation, the secret societies and hidden races, etc.) perhaps the strangest is his fascination with oversized heads atop diminished bodies. This archetype surfaces in Kirby’s art as early as 1940, and appears periodically thereafter in his stories for the rest of his career, including his post-comics animation concepts for Ruby-Spears. On a very obvious level, the expanded heads most often denoted a greatly advanced and by implication, superior, intellect (and is a recurring motif in science-fiction and UFO lore as well). Along with this archetype, Kirby usually provided one of two basic body types to augment his desired characterization. Benign,

altruistic aliens and other beings had smooth, vertically elongated heads, androgynous features, slender frames and were of slightly less than average height. Shady and villainous characters, on the other hand, were generally more grotesque in appearance, with squat, asymmetrical heads, homely and disturbing features, and severely underdeveloped (and often useless) bodies, a very literal interpretation of an intellect that seems to have developed at the expense of the being’s very humanity. For Jack, these depictions were as iconic (and as intuitively understood by the reader) as his stylized representations of technology and the dot clusters that visualized radiation and other energy. Occasionally, Kirby would work against the paradigm for dramatic effect, but as the following examples show, he was remarkably consistent, no matter which medium, company or genre in which he was working. ★

Near myths

The Myth of Tom Scioli by Johnny Nine

(Tom Scioli (pronounced Shee-ëolee) won a Xeric Grant in 1999 for his Kirby-esque comic book series The Myth of 8-Opus.” Rave reviews followed, including one from TJKC’s own “Kirby As A Genre” column. 8-Opus, to use Tom’s own words, is “a spacefaring demigod,” a “son to Urdu, the living mother world,” whose enemies “seek the destruction of all that is beautiful in the universe.” In July, 2003, his A-Okay Comics imprint released a new volume in the ongoing 8-Opus epic, a 102page graphic novel entitled “The Doomed Battalion.” Packed full of super-science, deadly battles and cosmic concepts, the book shows Tom’s art style evolving to new heights, while maintaining a love and respect for Kirby that is evident on every page. While it follows the events of the series,”The Doomed Battalion” can also be read as a stand-alone 8-Opus story. As a hardcore Kirby fan and a true believer in the timeless power of the King’s work, Tom delivers bombastic thrills not often found this side of New Gods, Eternals and the Lee/Kirby Thor. TJKC spoke with Tom about the role Kirby plays in his life and work.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: When did you first discover Kirby’s comics? TOM SCIOLI: Growing up in the ’80s, the comics landscape was a pretty dreary place. The best comics I had were reprints, although I didn’t know at the time that they were reprints. The one bright spot in my comic collection was an old beat-up copy of the treasury-sized Thor comic with the classic Mangog story arc. Now this was a comic to feed a kid’s imagination. I loved the idea of these pagan gods, who had all this advanced technology,

but related to it as though it were ancient. It was futuristic, but had a patina of age to it. Ego, the Living Planet made a brief appearance. It had all these cool ideas just packed in there. At the time I didn’t think of them as “Kirby” comics. I didn’t have a very clear idea of how comics were made. I didn’t read the credits too closely or notice the artist’s name. I thought of them as Marvel comics—if anything, maybe Stan Lee comics. That was a name I’d recognized as the narrator from the Hulk and Spider-Man cartoons that were on TV then. Like a lot of people, I gave up comics by high school. I became a much bigger fan of comics when I was in college than when I was a child. At that point, I finally found out who Kirby really was. I was checking out the local comics shop just off of campus, Phantom of the Attic, here in Pittsburgh. I saw The Art of Jack Kirby book and some issues of the Kirby Collector. I saw the New Gods in there. A light went off, oh this is the guy. Not only did he draw Darkseid, but there is an entire universe that Darkseid’s a part of. I saw that this “Jack Kirby” was the same guy who drew a lot of the stuff in Thundarr the Barbarian. It all just clicked in that moment. This Kirby is the guy. I hunted down what issues of the New Gods I could find and could afford. Each piece of the story blew my mind. From New Gods I found out about Mister Miracle, then the Forever People. I loved the whole story as I read it bit by bit and out of sequence. This is the way you’re supposed to encounter comics, looking at the little pieces of this giant puzzle. For comics fans older than me, Kirby is somebody they might take for granted, maybe think of as old-fashioned. For me Kirby was a breath of fresh air. TJKC: You’ve never tried to deny your massive Kirby influence— your work reads like a celebration of that influence. How do you see your work in relation to Kirby’s (homage, inspiration, tribute, etc.)? SCIOLI: I use the Kirby similarity as a starting point for my own stories. Of course this puts me at an instant disadvantage. My stuff is always going to remind you of Kirby, and I’m inevitably going to suffer in comparison. I’ve been told by editors that the “Kirby thing” is a dead-end, but it’s what I love. Your work is inevitably going to show signs of its influences. Why be influenced by anyone but the best? For me the appeal of Kirby’s stuff was always so strong. I assumed everyone else felt the same way about him that I do. I’m a fan of the original Star Wars movies. Think of all the money and all the people that went into making those movies. With Kirby, you have a guy who sat down at his desk, and made Star Wars every day of his life. I guess I just look at what I’m doing as an apprenticeship. I studied the work of the master, learned from it, and now I try to continue what he started, building on it as best as I can. You just can’t be a carbon copy. You’ll inevitably bring a great deal of yourself to it. The alternative would be to ignore all I’ve learned from Kirby. I think Jack Kirby opened up a new doorway, showed the next step in the evolution of comics. For me to ignore these lessons would be a step backward. I can’t do it any other way. There are enough people doing comics in a straight, classical, representational way. Once you’ve seen Kirby, everything else looks flat and stiff. I appreciate all kinds of comics, but for my own work, this is the way I’ve got to try to do it. For my money, if I’m going to do a swashbuckling cosmic adventure into the outer reaches of the imagination, I’m going to do it the Kirby way.

TJKC: While most reviewers praise you for bringing your own original flare to the artistic principles that Kirby invented, you have experienced some negative reactions to your choice of style. How do you respond to negative criticism? SCIOLI: The negative reviews usually go something like this: “I knew Jack Kirby. Jack Kirby was a good friend of mine. You sir, are no Jack Kirby.” (Like Lloyd Bentson and Dan Quayle with the whole, “You’re no Jack Kennedy” thing.) What the reviewers never get to is, well, okay, I’m no Jack Kirby, but was it a good comic, did you enjoy it? Was it cool? Did it have stuff you’ve never seen before? Should this style of comics just die? Why? Because of a gut reaction that says, “Nobody should try to draw like Kirby”? Where’d that come from? When I draw this book, I’m just thinking about what I like to see in a comic book. The people who get it, get it. The people who don’t, don’t. Drawing a comic is an incredible amount of work. A bad comic can be just as difficult to draw as a good one. To sustain that effort, you’ve got to love what you’re doing. These kind of comics are what I love. TJKC: Your writing is full of amazingly ‘cosmic’ concepts and it’s clear that you’re inspired by the imaginative spirit of Kirby’s work, not merely the surface technique. Can you describe your approach to writing a script and how it relates to drawing the pages? SCIOLI: It’s hard to generalize about how a story comes about. Usually there’s a hook that pops in my mind and I start building around it. I might have a climactic moment in mind, and an endpoint. I might have some set pieces I want to do, and it’s a matter of finding the right place for them. I make thumbnails, but I like to leave a little bit of room for improvisation. The dialogue is the last thing I do. I’ll sometimes write some quick dialogue notes off to the side of the page. But it’s after the page is drawn and inked that I really start writing the dialogue. TJKC: You’ve published a 5-issue series and now the “The Doomed Battalion” graphic novel which continues the 8Opus adventure. What are your future plans for 8-Opus? SCIOLI: I’m currently working on the next graphic novel. The longer format worked really well for me, so this is the way I’m going to go. 8-Opus is something I could see myself working on for the rest of my life. It’s got enough plasticity that I could incorporate all my interests into it. I can work any genre I’d like into it: sci-fi, fantasy, western, samurai. My backlog of ideas far outpaces my drawing speed, so I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to get down on paper. I have an origin story that I want to do, but I’m not sure if it’ll show up in the next graphic novel or not. ★ (For 8-Opus ordering information, e-mail Tom Scioli at sciolit@yahoo.com or visit www.geocities.com/sciolit.)

KIRBY The Mechanic

Gallery

by Shane Foley

For a guy who couldn’t change a flat tire during his WWII basic training as a mechanic, Kirby sure knew how to draw convincing technology, as evidenced here: (this page) Space Charioteer (early 1980s): The horse head is all we get to tell us this is a technosteed of some kind. But apart from that, there is nothing equine about the design, yet it works. It’s all nicely composed and balanced shapes and decoration, using Kirby’s trademark slashes, squiggles, shine lines and piping. (page 37) New Gods #10, page 10 (Aug. 1972): Kirby was a master of when to use the ‘less is more’ approach. The Boom Tube was always nothing more than a few circles depicting the end of the metallic tunnel— with white areas and flash lines left to represent blinding light and obscured vision. Yet how evocative it is. (page 38) Forever People #6, page 3 (Dec. 1971): Kirby was clearly a great observer. Note the Super Cycle’s wheel at the left and the guard over the top. What is between the two? Enough shapes and shadows to suggest the mechanics that such a wheel would require to make it look convincing. (page 39) Mister Miracle #5, page 21 (Nov. 1971): Is Mr Miracle entombed in rock? Concrete? Metal? If not for the earlier caption, we would not know it was titanium. But it looks hard!!! So Kirby’s purpose was fulfilled! (page 40) Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #145, page 11 (Jan. 1972): 36

Look closely—most of this cityscape (Brigadoom, the evil “Project”) consists of simple cubes, cylinders and pyramids. But with decorative designs and deep shadows cutting across the forms, Kirby gives the hint of depth, breaking up the simple shapes and suggesting other shadow casting objects, which, in reality, often aren’t even there. And because it’s an evil city, there are lots of those blacks!

(page 44) Captain America #193, page 18 (Jan. 1976): How does one depict a bomb that is ‘mad’? Kirby’s way was usually to humanize it somehow. A face, like the Electric Head? Based on his record, I would assume Kirby considered that. But he decides instead to give the bomb a brain, suggesting it is a thinking menace. Subtlety is not something that Kirby usually aimed for in cases like this.

(page 41) First Issue Special #5, page 5 (Aug. 1975): Note how Kirby often put elements of a face on things that aren’t alive, to give them emotional quality. Here, he gives the unloving ‘Electric Head’ eyes to give the object menace. Gas erupting from its pipes hint at some technological function we can only guess at.

(page 45) 2001: A Space Odyssey #4, cover (March 1977): Kirby’s slashes and squiggles give this space suit not of his design his typical strong, metallic look. But look at the ship behind the spaceman. Just as Kirby was the best at drawing the Hulk’s torn pants, so he is the best at showing shredded metal. He seemed to find just the right moment of when the metal buckles and explodes from the pressure against it.

(page 42) Kamandi #20, page 18 (Aug. 1974): In panel 5 we see a circle on the Chicagoland computer. But Kirby breaks it into other shapes that hint it’s more than a circle. What is it? Who knows? Not even Kirby. But it looks anything but boring! Panel 6 has a flat wall, but Kirby energizes it and breaks the monotony of the flatness by running a wave of shadow along it. (page 43) OMAC #1, page 6 (Sept. 1974): Computer banks such as in this panel were a Kirby specialty, as seen on the Kamandi page. When you think about it, Kirby technology often seemed to be based more on what was hidden, under the casing, than what would be seen. Twisted wiring and circuits are much more descriptive and dynamic in storytelling than a bland cover plate.

(page 46) Black Panther #1, page 1 (Jan. 1977): How would one show a small carved frog is a thing of power? Kirby calls on his ability to fill it with bursts of energy. But is this mystical energy? Or is it meant to have a ‘scientific’ origin? (Because Kirby represented both types with the same sort of drawing techniques). The background ‘computer bank’ gives us Kirby’s clue. (page 47) Super Powers toy designs (1983): As seen here on the cockpit of Mantis’ craft, Kirby often depicted a pattern engraved onto screens, windows and glass to give the hint of technology woven into them. Where did he get this idea? I don’t know (maybe from the heating elements in some car rear windows?) but it sure is effective!

Obscura

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

n many ways, it’s a shame that the Kirby/Ditko/Lee era of giant monsters that filled so many Marvel pre-hero titles is not taken too seriously these days. In some ways, of course, Stan Lee himself is to blame: His use of the increasingly ludicrous names that he gave to his world-trashing monsters (visualized by Kirby) showed that an element of self-parody was already built in. And as the monster era wore on, the dead hand of repetition quickly crept in. But many Kirby fans have a great affection for this period—in its early flush of enthusiasm, at least. In fact, looking at all the Lee and Kirby monster book collaborations today, it’s clear that these can best be enjoyed mainly for the artist’s exuberant visual imagination. Frankly, Lee’s dialogue in these tales is largely clichéd and portentous, with the same plots reused ad infinitum—and ad nauseam. Matters were not helped by the mocking attitude that he and Kirby subsequently adopted in interviews to this material—and, of course, the fact that the glorious super-hero period that was to revolutionize the comics industry was just around the corner helped perpetuate the legend that the city-stomping adventures of Gagoom, Zontarr and Co., was undistinguished stuff, past its sell-by date and waiting to be swept away (a similar mythology exists today about the 1950s Batman period immediately prior to the Julius Schwartz/Carmine Infantino revamp of the character—readers are simply not obliged to take any of the Batman SF period seriously—when, in fact, there are many gems scattered throughout this era). A glance at one of the earlier monster books, Journey into Mystery #57 (1959) shows how unwise it is to summarily dismiss this period. A striking Kirby cover has a brown, robotlike monster striding aggressively out of a spaceship—but “Orogo, The Thing from Beyond” (the aggressive alien) never looks as good in the comic

Looking for inexpensive reprints of the stories featured this issue? Journey Into Mystery #57 and #58 (March and May 1960, respectively) are reprinted in Marvel Masterworks volumes, as are the Rawhide Kid stories discussed here.

as he does on the cover, as this tale is in fact drawn by another Marvel workhorse, Don Heck, who would probably have been the first to admit that he wasn’t in Jack Kirby’s league. But there is something of a mystery here, and true Kirbyites will spot that the splash panel is actually penciled by the Master: the suit design of the robotic alien, its legs-akimbo stance (seen from behind, taking up almost 80% of the whole panel, with terrified humans visible through its legs)—and even the design of the skyscrapers in the distance, shriek out: “Drawn by Jack Kirby!” And if further proof were needed, look at the rendering of Orogo himself in the story: a more pedestrian, humanoid figure that is very little like either of Jack Kirby’s renditions of the character on the cover or splash panel.

The tale itself is predictable but fun, as is the highly unlikely Steve Ditko piece that follows, “The Earth Crawlers,” in which giant out-of-control plants menace the planet. But after a disposable Paul Reinman tale about a perambulating steam shovel (“The Metal Monster”), we come to the grand finale of the issue, and here we are in prime JK territory. Journey into Mystery was one of the earliest Marvel comics to be available in the UK (there is some dispute whether issue #57 or #58 was the first US issue to be imported directly, after the black-and-white UK reprints were supplanted), and I can still remember the pleasure that the splash panel of “The Martian Who Stole My Body” produced: Kirby’s giant orangeskinned alien with its elaborate front-laced costume (and facial tendrils that seemed akin to some of the more exotic members of the insect kingdom) was unlike anything we’d seen before (even from Kirby himself) and its subsequent reappearances are all subtly different from this full-page debut. To be truthful, the tale itself is distinctly unexceptional (although Stan Lee was to bring back the body-stealing Martian in the very next issue), but The King’s visuals made sure that we more than got our money’s worth. The succeeding issue, JIM #58, cover-featured “I Found Rro! The Monster from the Bottomless Pit!”, with a curiously clunky monster erupting from the ground and manhandling a train, but the issue (despite Steve Ditko doing duty as cover artist) is of particular interest to Kirby fans, as there’s a plethora of Kirby—with one truly exuberant piece, one period tale (a “twist” ending tale concerning Salem witches) and—as a bonus—the King even supplying a splash panel for another (lesser) artist’s work. As mentioned above,

Stan Lee opted to bring back the marauding Martian from the previous issue, and, frankly (like all of the usually-reliable Lee’s writing in this issue), it’s very much the legendary editor/writer on autopilot. Unlike the interesting body-switch premise of the earlier appearance of Zetora, this is simply monster-on-the rampage fare, with not an ounce of inventiveness; Zetora simply breaks out of jail, wreaks havoc, threatens world domination, dies. And Lee doesn’t even trouble to conceal the ripoff premise of his plot: His Martian, like the prototype of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, is defeated by good ol’ Earth germs (“The creature had no resistance to the bacteria that we come in contact with every day!”); there’s even a redundant dose of religion in the final panel (a reference to “keeping our faith”—not notable for its presence in the preceding tale—rather like George Pal’s adaptation of War of the Worlds, which ladled on the religiosity at the end). But none of this matters when we look at the art. This is Kirby in full flow, with the dynamism of his compositions threatening to break out of the panels (and indeed it does on page three, as the giant alien scatters policemen—and panel borders—with casual abandon). Individual frames are composed with the King’s customary élan, and we don’t have time to worry about Lee’s perfunctory script. As is the case in the title piece, “I Found Rro!”, another big monster-onthe-loose piece. The interest here is comparing Don Heck’s efficient but pedestrian art on the story with the

striking Kirby splash panel that Lee asked the King to launch this story with, as he had done with the Don Heck piece in the preceding issue (Lee made no secret of who he regarded as his company’s signature artist— even more so, of course, in the super-hero period that was to succeed the monster books). Actually, Kirby’s “Rro”—a flying dragon—looks nothing like Heck’s “Rro”— perhaps Stan Lee should have been a little tighter in his editing? But who cares— it’s a nice splash. The tale features another Lee cliché (you won’t mind this spoiler, honestly): apparently destructive monster turns out to be benign, and could have enriched civilization if we hadn’t launched missiles at it. There’s a solid Steve Ditko piece here (always part of the mix in this era), but,

what makes Journey into Mystery #58 a collectable issue for Kirby fans is yet another tale by the Master, “They Called Me a Witch”. Once again, Lee’s story is predictable and uninspired, but the draftsmanship in this tale of Salem superstition is spot-on, with Kirby’s variety of early American costumes quite as eye-catching as the kind of futuristic garb that was his speciality. All of this material was, until recently, prohibitively priced, but as very welcome Marvel Masterwork editions begin to appear covering this pre-super-hero period (both the Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish collections have mopped up some very pricey early issues), Kirby fans can luxuriate. And even for those not disposed towards Western comics, the Masterworks hardback devoted to the Kirby/Lee version of the long-running Rawhide Kid is a must. While these tales are formulaic in the extreme, Kirby’s compositions— and his assured placing of the human figure in the frame—are among his most consummate work. Interestingly, Stan Lee’s name is on most of these tales (as is the Kirby/ Ayers signature), and one wonders why he seemed to take a pride in these simple pieces. The Kid is utterly onedimensional (wronged young man, eternally shunned as ruthless outlaw, but really a pussycat), and the crushing Comics Code restrictions on violence ensures that this preternaturally skilled gunslinger only gets to wing most of the baddies, even when a satisfying revenge death is called for (the most oft-repeated line for mustachioed heavies is “Muh arm!”, as they clutch their wounded bicep). Ironically, this sanitized violence is even further reduced by contemporary censorship, unaltered here (boy, did the Code administrators want comics to be anodyne stuff!), notably in poorly re-lettered captions and speech balloons— always with the sting drawn to make the threat of death or violence into something more harmless. There’s always a character in these Rawhide Kid adventures who starts off each tale thinking the Kid is a vicious outlaw but comes to see his essential virtuousness by the end of the piece. But the tales are fun, and several strong incidental characters are created by Lee in the course of them. However, it’s Kirby’s athletic art that makes this such an enjoyable collection: The sheer balletic grace of the movement here in fist brawls (or one those bloodless gunfights) has all the elegance and sprightliness of Kirby at his best—often (ironically) the Kirby work that one is most often reminded of is his original Captain America with Joe Simon. No one stands with legs together when they could stride legs widely straddled, and the human body (usually the diminutive Rawhide Kid’s) is stretched to make the action ever more kinetic. Interestingly enough, there’s even a pre-figuring here of the fantasy elements that were soon to come to the fore at Marvel—a tale called “Beware! The Terrible Totem!” As the ambulatory menace of the title creature menaces the Kid, it prefigures the later Steve Ditko treatment of a similar theme Lee was to commission from him in the monster books. Ironically, this one looks like a rush job for Kirby, with evident signs of haste. But the whole book is well worth your time—if you can put up with those innocent gunfights in which no one gets anything more than a flesh wound… . ★ (Barry Forshaw edits Crime Time magazine and lives in London.)

Foundations

Art restoration and text by Christopher Fama 957 found Jack Kirby working for several publishers. He had recently finished Yellow Claw for Atlas Comics, and had returned to Young Romance and Young Love after a few years’ hiatus. This story from Alarming Tales #2 (Nov. 1957) was published by Harvey Comics, who hired Joe Simon to create and edit a series of shortlived adventure titles. Jack’s style had changed quite a bit by the late ’50s. It almost seems someone suggested Kirby rein in his flair for the dynamic in favor of a more staid approach— and he listened. Also noticeably absent are inks by Joe Simon, who added a very distinctive fleshy touch to Jack’s pencils.

I Think, Therefore...

Tribute

2006 Kirby Tribute Panel Moderated by Mark Evanier (top), and featuring (shown here, clockwise) Neal Adams, George Pérez, John Romita, Mike Royer, and Kirby lawyer Paul Levine. Transcribed by Steven Tice. Photos by Chris Ng.

(below) Jack’s pencils from page 8 of 2001: A Space Odyssey #10 (Sept. 1977), the last issue of the series, before Machine Man was spun off into his own book. All characters TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MARK EVANIER: As we wait for our other panelists to arrive, I think I’m going to get started here, because we’ve got a lot to go through. This is the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. That means I’m Mark Evanier. [applause] I do these at any convention that will let me do these as often as I can, because at any convention we spend a certain amount of time talking about Jack. And the other day I was talking to Steve Rude, and we were just talking about how often—it was like dueling. “How often do you talk about Jack or how often do you think about Jack?” “Well, I think about him six or seven times a day.” “Well, I think about him twelve times a day.” “I think about him fourteen times a day.” And it’s really true. And it isn’t just a matter of comics. I’ve said this before, but it’s a thought that bears repeating. I was fortunate enough to know Jack. I met him in July of ’69. I knew him the rest of his life. I worked for him for a time. We socialized. We had an era where we didn’t speak, we had a little spat, but then we got back together. And I learned an awful lot about Jack, not just about comics. I learned about life, I learned about the way you treat people, the way you relate to other people. There’s a number of people here who have had the fortune to meet Jack, and I’m sure they would all agree that Jack had this wonderful way of treating people as equals. I mean, there was nobody more revered at this convention, and yet if you went up to Jack and said, “Hello, Jack”... first of all, if you said, “Hello, Mr. Kirby,” he would make you call him Jack. And he would talk to you and no matter how tired he was, he would stand, because if you were standing, he felt he should be standing. He would talk to you as an equal and would answer your questions. And if you asked him the stupidest question in the world, and many people did, he would make up an answer for you because you deserved an answer. If you cared enough to ask him, “What’s Captain America’s shield made out of,” even though Jack had never thought of this before, he would make up an answer for you. Because you deserved that. VOICE: And he could! EVANIER: He could do that. And I never—there were people I thought that Jack treated really well that didn’t deserve it. If you’d taken him your artwork, no matter how rotten you were, he gave you encouragement. He didn’t do sketches for people. He didn’t give them art lessons. He wouldn’t sit there and say how many heads high to make the anatomy, but he would give you some philosophical concept, some way of treating the artwork when somebody would approach your work, and some encouragement to try and do the best possible work you could. And this convention is filled with people, not just comic book artists, but people whose work—who are we waiting on, here? 53

Kirby’s work looked so good for many years, and that it came out on time constantly, due to the efforts and skills of a man who did an incredible job, Mr. Mike Royer. [applause] Let me introduce to you a couple of members of the Kirby family who are present. Let me introduce you to Lisa Kirby, who’s standing in the front row. Take a bow, Lisa. [applause] Let me introduce you to an artist who is sneaking up here onto the dais, a gentleman who over the years did a number of the strips that Jack did and did them really well, Mr. George Pérez. [applause] Let me ask the gentleman to take a bow who is responsible for the fine publication The Jack Kirby Collector, Mr. John Morrow. [applause] The only publisher in the world that gets all the attention. All right. Is Ray Wyman here? VOICE: There he is. EVANIER: Most of you have a fine book called The Art of Jack Kirby. Mr. Ray Wyman is back there. [applause] And I’ll introduce other people as we go along. Is Nat Gertler ready? Yes. There’s a couple of Kirby projects coming out that we want to mention to you. Let me introduce to you a friend of mine who’s a writer and a publisher, Mr. Nat Gertler. Nat, do you want to stand up and talk about your book? [applause] NAT GERTLER: Next year is the 25th anniversary of a project which isn’t one of the biggest comic books in Kirby’s career, but it had surprising significance in the comics industry at the time; a little book called Destroyer Duck. [laughter, applause] So we’re going to be putting out a nice, portable collection of about a hundred pages of the material that Steve Gerber, Jack Kirby, and Alfredo Alcala did on that book. We’ve got Steve doing some introductory comments and the like, so this will be an excellent thing. And not quite sure what month, but it should be out before the convention next year. EVANIER: Thank you. [applause] Lisa, would you like to talk about the new strip you’re doing? LISA KIRBY: Oh, I wasn’t prepared to stand up. Okay. EVANIER: Okay, come on up here and you can hold the mike. LISA: Oh, no. [laughter] EVANIER: Yes, you can talk to these people. They love you.

NEAL ADAMS: Neal. (above) A 1985 fan commission of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. (next page) George Pérez got to experience what it was like to be inked by Joe Sinnott on this 1978 Spider-Woman illo. Spider-Woman TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Adam & Eve art ©2007 Jack Kirby Estate.

EVANIER: Oh, Neal! There he is, okay. Anyway, so in these panels we talk about Jack. The way we do this panel is in three acts. In Act One, we’re going to talk a little bit about upcoming Kirbyrelated projects with a few people in the audience who are involved in them and we’ll let people talk about what’s coming up about Jack Kirby. Act Two, I’m going to talk to Mike, John, Neal, and, when George gets here, George, about the influence that Jack had on the industry and on their work. Act Three, held over from last year, we have at the far end the gentleman who is one of the many people who aided Jack over the years and helped him a lot as one of his attorneys. This is Mr. Paul Levine, ladies and gentleman. [applause] Some of you have seen this before, but we’re going to give you an expanded version of the story of the time Jack got into a war with Johnny Carson. Paul represented Jack in that in a legal action, which we’ll talk about. I’ll show you this video. And we also have a couple other little videos here. So let me introduce to you the rest of the dais at this moment. Starting over on the far right, not counting Paul, is a gentleman who had probably more influence on the comic book industry in the late ’60s and ’70s than anyone who ever picked up a pencil in this field; Mr. Neal Adams, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Most of Neal’s influence was at DC. Over at Marvel, the influence was coming from their lead artist and art director, Mr. John Romita, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] And then

LISA: No, actually, I just want to thank everybody, because I’ve had so many people coming up and saying such nice things about my father, and it’s just really heartfelt, and I really appreciate it. So give yourselves a big hand. [applause] But, you know, even after all these years, it’s just always amazing to me that, year after year, this room fills up. And I speak for everyone in my family, we really appreciate it. And, you know, that everybody remembers him. And what I’ve done, and Mike Thibodeaux, who I think is here somewhere—he’s hiding, I bet. A group of us found a concept of my father’s after he passed, and we called it the Galactic Bounty Hunters, and it just came out under the Marvel Icon imprint. We developed it over the years, and it’s a series that just came out. If you haven’t seen it, go buy it and check it out. It’s a concept my father originally started, and we kind of took it from there and developed it. We used as much of his artwork as we possibly could. And with a lot of talented people helping out, it looks like a really nice book, and I hope people enjoy it. And if you have a chance to take a look at it, please do. Thank you. [applause] EVANIER: Please give a well-deserved round of applause to another Mike who did a fabulous job inking Jack, Mike Thibodeaux. [applause] As some of you know, when the Fantastic Four DVD came out, missing was a documentary that was produced about Jack and his work. I have not seen this yet. I have just been given a copy of it here, and I thought we’d run about three minutes of it just to show you what’s in it. I think I’m in this, and if I am, I am eighty pounds heavier than I am now. [laughter, applause] All it takes is diet, exercise, and gastric bypass surgery. [laughter] I’m just going to play a few minutes of it and I’ll stop it at some appropriate moment; it’s too long to run here, but... could we have the lights down, please? [pause, laughter] I said lights down,

please, okay? [video clip is shown] [applause] EVANIER: That last drawing that they used of Jack at the drawing board, was I believe the first Kirby drawing that Mike ever inked. MIKE ROYER: At his drawing board, in his home, with him periodically looking over my shoulder. [laughter] And it was a wonderful job to ink, anyway, as all of these were. VOICE: Mark, where is that available? [Editor’s Note: Look for it June 5, as part of the Fantastic Four: Extended Edition DVD.] EVANIER: It’s not out yet. In the DVD business these days, it’s the same thing the comic book business does: How do we get people to buy this two or three times? So they brought out the movie without the documentary, and then in a couple of months they’re bringing out a deluxe version of the movie that will have the documentary, so that everybody who bought the DVD before will have to buy the DVD again. And then two years from now they’ll bring out the super-platinum deluxe edition— ROYER: With the outtakes. EVANIER: —which will have the outtakes, and will also have, like, a piece of Jack’s clothing. [laughter] I actually was approached by a DVD manufacturer who said, “We want to bring out this movie again. We’ve already released it two times. We’d like you to figure out something that we can put on it that hasn’t been on it, so we can sell it again.” It’s the same thing as putting multiple covers and repackaging. How many copies of FF #1 do we all have? About 35 reprints of it. Can we have the lights back up, because we’re not going to get to the other DVDs for a little while. Is there anyone else who has got a Kirby-related announcement they’d like to make? Or I can move on. RANDOLPH HOPPE: The Jack Kirby Museum? EVANIER: Oh, yes! Talk about the Kirby Museum a little bit. HOPPE: Well, at the convention we’ve had a lot of luck with scanning Kirby original art for our digital archives. Different comic book dealers have allowed us to borrow these valuable pieces of art for the project. We’ve got a new exhibit coming up on the website where we’re compiling Jack’s drawings of real people from life. Jack Kirby’s “Jack Ruby” story for Esquire, plus Kissinger in the Captain America book. So if you go to www.kirbymuseum.org, you’ll see the outcome of that. [applause]

my professional career, I worked as an assistant to Rich Buckler, who at the time was working on Fantastic Four and Thor, and had tons and tons of Jack Kirby references to refer to. And I got an education of how Jack worked. I mean, certain elements of how he draws, how he makes things stand out, how he spots blacks. It took me years to incorporate it to my style. But it definitely showed how to tell a story dynamically as very few artists have been able to match. I mean, we’re all like, the acolytes following Jack’s basic approach of super-dynamic storytelling. Sometimes the actual drawing, finesse, is secondary to being able to just tell a story in the most dynamic terms possible. And I wouldn’t have a career in comic books, maybe wouldn’t have even lasted as a reader in comics, if it hadn’t been for Jack Kirby’s work. EVANIER: Thank you, George. Let me ask you some follow-up here. One day somebody said to you, “Hey, George, how would you like to draw the Fantastic Four?” What was your response when you were first asked to draw the Fantastic Four on your own? PÉREZ: Well, I was asked to draw Fantastic Four because, unfortunately, Rich Buckler fell behind schedule, and they figured as his assistant, I was available. [laughter] I had no illusion that I was being asked for my talent, and had very little to prove myself. So when they gave me the Fantastic Four, oh my God! I mean, the flagship title! So I drew it as best I could, but of course with the same youthful cockiness of thinking that I knew better than everyone else, so I had been putting way, way too much detail in there, just cluttering up the scenery. But I was blessed with Joe Sinnott, who after inking the book very regularly, and he’s probably the unsung hero regarding Fantastic Four. I think anyone who knows anything about comics would know how much Joe Sinnott was responsible for the success of the Fantastic Four, especially post-Kirby, when he was the uniting factor. But seeing my name printed in a Fantastic Four comic, the first time it came out, I don’t think I could even replicate that again. It’s like, “Wow!” I mean, Stan Lee called me in when he saw this mysterious name on a Fantastic Four comic; thanks to Joe Sinnott, he assumed it might have been John Buscema or John Romita drawing, and then Stan saw this name he never heard of. I felt like I was welcomed into the community. I’d drawn, of course, a lot of Jack Kirby characters—I think everyone here has drawn a lot of Jack Kirby characters—but working on the Fantastic Four, working with Joe Sinnott, in a way that contributed to the legacy of Jack Kirby, was daunting, but I think I was just too stupid a kid to actually be afraid of it. EVANIER: Neal, the same question to you. What was the first of Jack’s work that you— [noise]

EVANIER: The best thing about that story Jack did for Esquire—he illustrated Jack Ruby’s final moments, the last twelve hours before he shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Publisher’s Weekly, when they talked about it at the time, said, “The new issue of Esquire has an article in which comic book artist Jack Ruby talked about how Jack Kirby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.” [laughter] ROYER: And he colored it himself. EVANIER: Let me go now to our panel, here. I’m going to start with George, if I may. George, you’ve never been on one of these before. The traditional first question I ask people is, what was the first Jack Kirby work you were conscious of, and what did his work mean to you professionally? What did you get from it? GEORGE PÉREZ: The very first piece I remember distinctly from Jack, something that prompted me to want to pick up more of Jack’s work, was an issue of Fantastic Four, and it was the introduction of Diablo [#30]. And Roy Thomas has since told me that that was one of the worst selling issues of Fantastic Four at the time, but there was a certain dynamic to it I’d never seen. In fact, the Thing, I think, on the cover was being transformed back into a human, so it was the first of many of those, as it turns out. But it was just something about—you know, even with the muddy colors of the Marvel books at the time, there was something energetic about it. I mean, I was a DC boy. I was reading the Superman comics, the Justice League, mostly DC. So there was something about Jack’s work. And then I saw it again on Thor, the first appearance of Loki. And there was a crudeness to it, I thought, even at that age, that was just dynamic. I mean, it was like a good down and dirty way of doing comics as opposed to a very pristine, almost Normal Rockwell environment of the DC Universe, and I just found it exciting. I found that, as I started to get more interested in drawing comics, I wanted to be more of a dynamic storyteller. If I was to put my finger on it, I wasn’t educated enough to know why it was exciting, but I know that it did influence how I wanted to tell a story visually, and to create a shorthand that almost innately you have to understand; you can follow it. You may never surpass it, you may never imitate it, but at least it collides with a real sense of how to tell a story. And when I started 55

NEAL ADAMS: Neal snags his microphone from John Romita. [noise] PÉREZ: And from George Pérez. (next page) Neal Adams gets the Sinnott-inking treatment in Thor #180 (Sept. 1970), the issue after Jack left the book. (below) Kirby did literally thousands of animation presentations in the 1970s and ’80s, and here’s one. The original pencil art is around 30" x 20" in size, and while the idea may be goofy, the pencil art is anything but. We’re unsure if this was ever actually presented to a client. Mephisto TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Ding-Dong Twins TM & ©2007 Jack Kirby Estate.

ADAMS: I’ll take this one. EVANIER: All right. You can do that when you’re Neal Adams. What was the first of Jack’s work that you were conscious of, that you recognized that artist? ADAMS: I saw this ugly Fighting American. I’m probably older than most of you guys, and a fan longer, but when I first saw Jack Kirby’s work, it was ugly. It was awful. It was—the teeth were all big, and everybody was gnarled, and everybody was jumping over everybody. You had all these other comic book guys that drew, like, pretty people, and Dan Barry, and nice, elegant stuff, and here was Jack Kirby, and it was like—it just would assault you. Like, the Fighting American would come over on his motorcycle, and these kids would be hanging onto it, Nazis would be shooting guns at them, and, you know? “What is this?” You know? “I want to see Dan Barry. I want to see guys who don’t get me all upset like this.” [laughter] Jack Kirby—to me, Jack Kirby is like a volcano. You know, when I first saw Jack Kirby’s stuff, it’s like this volcano, and it made me scared. “Oh, what’s going on? There’s this guy drawing people with big teeth.” [laughter] “This weird stuff.” And there was Johnny Prentice, and I would go to Johnny Prentice and Leonard Starr and all the guys who would draw, like, Rip Kirby, and all of them did nice, pretty girls with lipstick with little shiny spots on them. And then there was Jack Kirby, and girls with slouch hats, you know, who pulled out Lugers and shoot at somebody, at bullets blasting off of them, and suddenly the Shield comes out, little kids are jumping on the woman and carrying her down, and gnomes are climbing out of the ground and pulling people into the ground! What’s going on? And it was Johnny Prentice, [laughter] Leonard Starr, and all those guys with nice, elegant style. I didn’t know what the hell this was. It was just insane. They let this guy draw comics? I mean... “It’s fun to

read, though.” [laughter] It’s great. It’s like, what would happen to this guy? Obviously this guy was going to be somebody who was discarded because you have all the Johnny Prentices and Leonard Starrs and all the rest of those guys, you know, you know, because they were elegant and lovely. Jack Kirby. And you know what happened? [to John Romita] “You know, Mr. John Romita.” They tried to destroy the comic book business. And most of those guys went away. Johnny Prentice and Leonard Starr went away. And all that was left was those guys at DC that held on, and the guys at Timely doing those six-page stories with Stan, “Oogog the Moogog” and “Fin Fan Foom” and Ant-Man and Giant-Man and giant creatures from other planets that turn out to be seven inches tall when they get to the Earth. Steve Ditko, kind of like Kubert. And then there was a Jack Kirby story. And, you know, a Jack Kirby story. Ah well. I guess Jack Kirby didn’t disappear, and his stuff is getting interesting, but still it’s that ugly stuff. And then Jack Kirby would go with Joe Simon, woosshh, off to Archie Comics and do The Fly and do those other things. Of course, I’m getting a little bit older, and I’m starting to go, “Man, this guy is like, he’s everywhere. He’s, like, exploding over here, and exploding over there.” And he goes to DC Comics and does Challengers of the Unknown and he gets Wally Wood to ink him. And then he disappears, and he goes and does Sky Masters with Wally Wood and the Wood Brothers, who conveniently destroy their reputation and Jack’s and Wally Wood’s at the same time, with NASA. And then the strip is over and Jack’s out there again. And I’m watching the career of this guy who was, like, one explosion after another, one place after another. Sky Masters. He worked for Harvey Comics. I don’t know if you guys saw the Harvey Comics stuff that Jack did, and Joe? And nothing still was happening. Somehow there’s these regular guys who are drawing regular comics, and there’s this guy exploding here and exploding there and exploding there. One more explosion happened at Timely Comics with Stan Lee. Now, in my mind—I’m sure it didn’t happen this way. I’m not sure, but I think it did. Jack is doing these six-page stories with Stan, after he’s done Sky Masters and all the

rest of this, and Jack has gone to different companies and created these little publishing companies, four books here, four books there, fail, fail. He goes to see Stan and he’s thinking, “Six pages. Stan, why don’t we turn this monster book, this Hulk thing or this Fantastic Four idea, into a whole book?” In other words, not six pages, but 24 pages. This is how I’m thinking it happened. And so Stan went, “Sure, Jack. Go ahead and do it.” And he did. Now, you go over to DC Comics, they’re going, “Stan Lee, pfft. Bring Jack back and have him do the Challengers of the Unknown. Ah, the hell with it.” Then Jack creates another character, and as a comic book fan, I’m going, “Wow, cool. That crazy guy is doing it again.” [explosion sounds] “The Hulk! Wow! This really can’t be happening!” I saw it at Archie, I saw it at Harvey. It’s not going to happen. [explosion sound] Jack Kirby is doing four comics a month. Stan is going, “Who? What? What’s going on?” At DC they’re going, “Hmmm? Nah. Hmm?” [explosion sound] Everything he touches, everything he touches, people start coming back. Suddenly I’m seeing Johnny Romita on a regular book. What was he doing, romance comics? What? Ditko, who, Ditko’s little monster stories have got this Spider-Man doing stuff, he was inspired. And Don Heck, who, you know, Don Heck. All those guys were suddenly, like, turning on like light bulbs. And here’s the monster in the corner, Jack Kirby. [explosion sound] DC Comics was going, “Ohhhh, something bad’s happening.” [laughter] “What’s going on? Do we need new artists? No, we don’t need new artists. We have enough artists. Do we need new writers? No.” [gunshot sound] Jack Kirby explodes on the horizon. Other people are coming and exploding. Hey, Johnny’s doing stuff, other people are doing stuff, Don Heck can draw. [laughter] Pepper Potts and the Iron Man, very cool, that’s very cool, right? Man, you know, why don’t they do Pepper Potts like they did? She was so cute. And suddenly stuff is happening at Marvel, and it’s all surrounding Jack, and Jack seems to be able to switch styles with each book. He does Thor and it’s elegant and wonderful. What happened to all the big teeth? “Ah, I’ll put it on the gnomes. Or the fire, or the frost giants, or whatever.” But Thor looks great, it looks cool. He knows how to do this. Somehow I knew, even when I was a kid, that he knew how to draw all this stuff, that he just chose to do this. And he did everything. And then, while everybody else was trying to catch up with Jack, he just bolted ahead of everybody. Just, [explosion sound] double-page spreads with photographs, elegant cities, wonderful things, things we’d never seen before. And suddenly the whole industry is trying to catch up with Jack Kirby. And guess what? We never did. We never caught up with Jack Kirby. And I don’t think we ever will. [applause] EVANIER: That was the best answer that question ever had. [laughter] I want to see how John Morrow is going to transcribe it. [laughter] The first time I ventured to DC was 1970. I just remember I delivered an Alex Toth art job to DC with this Hot Wheels story with the black between the panels, and DC wanted to take the black out, and you talked them out of it. I just thought, what a great— ADAMS: Not because they were stupid. Because they were stupid. [laughter] EVANIER: At that time Neal had a very curious position at DC. He was not on staff, as far as I know, but he would come in and he would kind of critique everything they were doing, they would ask his

opinion on everything. And he was kind of becoming the unofficial creative heart of the editorial office at 909 Third Avenue. It was a very sterile office, and Neal would come in, like, four o’clock in the afternoon, and everybody would rush around and show him the new covers that were coming in, and the new art that was coming in, and he passed judgment in a very benevolent, constructive way, and assured people that what was good was good, and stopped them from destroying things. At that time, on my visit there— ADAMS: They called me a pain in the ass. EVANIER: Well, and what you get sometimes when you’re talking about their work. At that time I visited that office, a gentleman who shall remain nameless— it was Sol Harrison—[laughter] sat me down and he said, “So you’re—”. He alluded probably to Steve Sherman. Is Steve here? He’s not. And he sat us down and he said, “Now, you’re Jack Kirby’s assistants, right?” And we’d been Jack’s assistants for, like, an hour-and-a-half. We had no influence whatsoever on what he was doing. And Sol tried to tell me, “You’ve got to get Jack to draw more like Curt Swan.” [laughter] “We’ve got to get these damn square fingertips out of the comics.” [laughter] It was one of these, “I’ve got the greatest respect for Jack, but I hate everything he does.” [laughter] And, “you’ve got to change this.” And I got that from some of the other editors at DC; other ones who shall remain nameless, like Murray Boltinoff. And tell us what the environment that Jack entered into at DC was like, how they viewed Marvel when he walked in the door with New Gods and Forever People? ADAMS: Well, I have a feeling that a lot of what you heard was based on personal opinion and perhaps was shared with people who shall remain nameless. In spite of the fact that they made the business decision to bring Jack Kirby into DC, somehow they did it with a kind of snotty reluctance. They went and they sought him out, they gave him things that perhaps they shouldn’t have given him, perhaps too much freedom, and it was almost like, in my mind, kind of a plan to then shoot it down. You know, Jack Kirby was too great, and everybody kind of resented it. And, personally, I think that’s part of human nature. I think that people do things like that. Somehow, they’re forced to say, “This guy’s God. Let’s give him this, and let’s watch him fail.” If that’s the case, then they’re forgiven, if that’s the case. I don’t forgive them. [chuckles] [laughter, applause] And I think... I just think they took what Jack did and they did everything they could to destroy it. I rescued covers, and believe me, I don’t ink anything like Jack Kirby and I know it, but I took covers that I knew were going to go to—and I don’t want to mention people’s names, because then I would be defaming somebody who was an excellent artist in his own right, but when you turn a Jack Kirby figure into marshmallow, it’s not a Jack Kirby figure, and you just destroyed the work. So I was constantly going in and saying, “Hey, if you’re going to do this,

let me have it, and let me put some hard lines on it, and let me make it halfway decent.” And it just seemed to me that the people who were inking the stuff shouldn’t have been the people inking the stuff. Not me, but not the guys who did them like silly putty. And that’s what they did. And, you know, there’s only so many places you can point that finger at. You know what I mean? EVANIER: When Jack left Marvel, you did the Thor stories immediately following him. And I thought it was very interesting, because you were doing more Jack than your own style. There were a couple of panels there that were right out of Jack’s stuff. ADAMS: Yes, because I wanted to do a Jack Kirby story. What happened was that Jack Kirby had done the stuff, and Joe Sinnott, Joe Sinnott inks it, and he turns it into actually something else. When Joe Sinnott inks Johnny Romita, he turns it into that something else, and when he inks John Buscema, it turns into something else. And I thought, “I want my stuff turned into that,” at least for a couple of books. So you look at it and you go, “Is that—that’s not Kirby, but that’s not Romita, that’s not Buscema. What the hell is it? Was it Neal? Really?” That doesn’t even look like me at all. It looks like John Romita. It looks like Buscema. It looks like Jack. I just wanted to do a Marvel story, you know, a Marvel story. And I did. I did two issues. And Stan screwed up the dialogue. [laughter] No, he didn’t. Right up until the last two pages he was doing great, and then he gave away the trick, and I’ve hated him for it ever since. [laughter] I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding! [laughter] EVANIER: Now, speaking of following Jack, over on Fantastic Four, this man had that problem. I remember, I visited the Marvel offices on that same trip. You were sitting there sweating bullets in the bullpen, and he had this little drawing board between Tony Mortellaro and Herb Trimpe, and you were sitting there with Kirby reference issues— JOHN ROMITA: Everywhere. EVANIER: And you were very intimidated by that. ROMITA: When I was—I didn’t want to be there at all. When I heard Jack was going, I ran into Stan’s office and said, “What the hell are we going to do without Fantastic Four ?” He said, “No, we’re not going to drop it.” And I said, “Well, where are you going to get a guy to do it?” He said, “You’re going to do it.” [laughter] I said, “Did you forget, I just came in to ask you what are we going to do?” [laughter] 57

(above) Yeah, the Kirby Thing is the definitive one. Here’s a 1980s fan commission, featuring ol’ Benjy riding yet another cool Kirbytech invention. (next page) When recently asked to do a recreation of Kirby’s cover of New Gods #11 (Oct. 1972), Mike Royer first re-penciled the cover, as shown here, before applying ink to it. See the final version on page 72 of this issue! Thing, Skrulls TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. New Gods, Kalibak, Orion, Black Racer TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

“How can I?” I had no confidence in it at all. The only thing I could rely on—I was treading water for the two or three issues hoping, until John Buscema saved my life. I took all of Jack Kirby’s panels, and I just used every single shape that he had on heads and bodies and everything, and I just did a takeoff on Jack Kirby as if I were ghosting Dick Tracy for Chester Gould. I mean, I wouldn’t have put my style on Dick Tracy. I certainly wasn’t going to change Jack Kirby’s style. Because I thought that was the only way to do it. Why would I change it? It’s somewhat the same feeling that Neal had. Doing it like Jack Kirby did is the only way. Continuity. I thought the fans were expecting to see the things continue. They didn’t want to have a John Romita thing, they wanted Kirby’s thing. At least I wanted a Kirby thing. So I suffered for those four issues, and I’ll tell you, I didn’t mind doing the covers, because the covers were a little bit more like myself, I don’t know why. But the insides, I felt I was like in a cathedral, and I wasn’t going to use cymbals. I was going to try to keep it cool and quiet and make it look like the cathedral that I believed that book was. So I will tell you one thing. I don’t know if that covers what you were asking about, but Neal started his relationship with Kirby’s artwork as a fan in the ’50s, right? I started it in 1940 when Captain America came out, the early ’40s. When I was ten years old, Captain America came out, Captain America #1, and I was the resident expert on comics, because I was the only guy that could draw in my crowd, and so they came to me with

everything. And so when I saw the first Jack Kirby Captain America, as crude as it was and as knocked-out as it was, it was like a revelation to me. Everybody else was doing thin lines, and mouths that are talking slits, no open mouths; nobody was bending their head, everybody’s head was facing in the same direction that their body was. And so I accepted that, like every other kid. You know, even George Tuska, who I idolized at the time, was mild compared to this. Suddenly, what the hell is this? The guy’s fist is coming out of the panel! [laughter] What? What’s going on? There’s a light coming up here! [laughter] But I told them, and I’ll tell you, from ten years old—and I don’t know what happened, but I understood what he was doing, and I was saying, “This is dynamite stuff,” telling my friends, who didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. But it stayed with me. Ten years later or twelve years later, I’m sitting in a restaurant with Jack and telling him what happened when I first saw that stuff. No, that was about fifteen years later. Ten years later, I almost had a chance to work with Jack. I answered an ad in the New York Times. I was making $22 a week touching up ads. I get this little ad that said, “Forty dollars a week, cartoonist needed.” Forty bucks a week? That doubled my salary! So I went—and I was working between Madison and Fifth, on 40th Street, and this was 500 Fifth Avenue, where Jack and Joe had an office. I ran there at lunchtime, I answered the ad. I go in there, it wasn’t Jack or Joe, I didn’t talk to any one of them. Somebody just said, “Do you want a try-out page?” And I said, “Okay.” He gave me a page, maybe he gave me a sketch from somebody else’s stuff, and I went home that night and did a splash page and two panel pages. And I worked through the night. I was nineteen, eighteen, and labored over it so much. I labored it to death. And it was so shaky, and I never went back. I never went in there. Now, if I had had any brains at all, I would have realized that comics at the time—it was 1948 or the beginning of ’49—were still fairly crude in a lot of places. Everybody didn’t do polished stuff, you know? I should have gone up there. So when I told this to Jack Kirby ten years later, I said, “You know, I almost worked for you back in those days, because I was offered a job to do three pages weekly.” And Jack and Joe had this great gift, they would do a ten-page story, or a fifteen-page story, whatever it was, and they would do two pages, and then some amateur would do page three. Then they would do two more pages, then another amateur would do page six. And the fill-in pages didn’t shock anybody because they always got back to something decent in-between, you know? Very clever. They could do five pages and turn out a ten-page story in one day. And I didn’t realize that. So I told Jack the story, he said, “You dummy!” He says, “What are you, nuts? Why did—I had guys who didn’t even know how to tie their shoelaces!” [laughter] “And we were hiring them!” He says, “If you had just showed me the stuff, I don’t care how bad it was, it couldn’t have been as bad as the stuff we were buying.” [laughter] Then he said, “You moron, you would have been a genius by now.” [laughter, applause] He’s probably right. If I had gone there, I would have been liberated, because—one of the things that was mentioned was about Jack’s stuff looking crude to the casual observer, and a lot of people say, “Well, it’s too rough, it’s too ragged.” And that raggedness was the freedom that I had yearned—I’ve been in the business since 1949, 56 years, whatever it is. I can’t tell you how hard I have tried to be as free as Jack Kirby was with a pencil. And then, even worse, sometimes I was free with the pencil and I would screw it up with the ink, because I’m too tight. I connect all the lines, I fill in all the blacks. All of that wasted time. And he used to tell me many times, “You’re too worried about the stuff. Knock it out. Freedom is what you need.” And he—Mike and I were talking about the question that all kids ask an artist when they meet him, “What kind of pen do you use? What kind of brush do you use?” I asked him once what kind of pencil he used. And this is after I’m a pro and he’s been doing the FF. He said, “I use a No. 2.” [laughter] And he says, “And I don’t sharpen it, I just chew away the wood.” [laughter] And he says, “The reason I told you that is

that you don’t draw with a pencil, you draw with your head. That’s all.” I told Mike Royer, Jack turned my life around. From that moment on, I was less tight than I used to be. Never as free as I wanted to be, but that changed my whole life, because thinking is what we sell. We tell a story with our thinking. Everybody can do drawings. I know guys who can draw better than all of us, but they can’t tell a story. That’s the thing. You saw that Jack Kirby, Storyteller? That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. He tells stories, and he tells them so full of life and vigor that you cannot deny it. I never was able to just sit down and draw like Jack Kirby. I could take one figure like that. I could do a Thor or a Captain America, but I cannot do a whole story. And very few people can. ROYER: Jack never asked me ever to draw like him, because he was so incredibly— ROMITA: Well, he was just... ROYER: —creative, influential. He loved watching other people take off the stuff that he never did. ROMITA: Oh, yes. Yeah. But the point is that he was not trying to do what he did. It came out of him. As Gil Kane used to say, he couldn’t even stop it from coming out if he tried, it would spill through his fingers. And that was true. And all I could say is that if that ever happened to me, I would have been the happiest guy in the world. Instead of missing sleep, I would have been able to enjoy it. EVANIER: Johnny, briefly, we were talking yesterday about when Jack asked you to come over to DC and you wouldn’t do that. Do you want to talk a little about that for a second? ROMITA: Yeah, that was probably one of the proudest moments in my life. Now, I was doing Spider-Man, and, I mean, we’re getting into the point where people know me, and I’m a respected guy in the business, and I’ve been in there 25, 30 years in the business. But to get a call from Jack Kirby after he left to go to DC and ask me, “Would you be interested in coming over with me and penciling some of this stuff, because I want to have more time to do writing, and less time penciling?” So he’d like to palm off some of the pencil assignment on other people. I gather there was more than me, others than myself. But I was just, whoa! I couldn’t catch my breath. I was very flattered, very excited. And I tell you, if I wasn’t married—my wife is in this room. If I wasn’t married, I would have probably jumped. I would have done it. Because I wasn’t thinking. I was just thinking, “Wow! And I’ll work with Jack!” She was saying, though, “Don’t do it, you’ll become a Kirby clone.” And I wasn’t worried about that. I said, “No, I tried to be Milton Caniff for twenty years, I never could do it.” [laughter] “And then I tried to be Jack Kirby for another ten years and I couldn’t do it.” So I said, “I won’t be a clone.” The only thing is, I think, I realized if I went with Jack, I would be working for DC and not for Jack. They’d be paying my salary. I don’t believe Jack would have been paying me. And I didn’t want to find myself in two or three years working for DC against my will, and especially since I would have been one of Jack’s entourage, I probably would have been treated like a stepchild, so I had the sense not to make the jump. But boy, was I happy. And to this day, I wake up some mornings and I say, “I wonder what would have happened if I’d worked for Jack.”

cowboy in me—Boys’ Ranch and Bullseye and Carl Barks. And it was just, if you wanted to do something in New York, you had to move to New York. So if you were on the West Coast, you worked on Bugs Bunny, and you worked on Donald Duck, and Scamp, and all of these things, and then the Hanna-Barbera super-heroes. I did a lot of stuff that was my penciling, inking, and lettering. Nobody knows about it because it has to look like the cartoon shows. I’m digressing, but our favorite editor at Gold Key, I went in once and I said, “Look, Chase. Let me produce the book for you.” Because I had talked to Sparky Moore and Mike Arens, and they were in on it with me. I said, “I’ll produce the book. You don’t have to worry about it. No headaches. I’ll just bring you the book completed.” Well, I penciled and inked the whole book. What I brought in was, this was Sparky’s, this was Mike’s, and then the one story that they would allow me to do. I only did that once, and I don’t know if Chase ever caught on to it. But there was even a prejudice on the West that finally dropped after you and Steve convinced Jack to really look at the pages and see that he wasn’t getting what he—what was there in the finished page wasn’t what was there when he penciled it. I bought my first house with a mortgage from Bank of America solely based on the letter from Western Publishing that said, “We set our clock by Mike Royer.” And maybe it was the fact that there was Jack producing this many pages a week, and they were being inked and lettered just as fast. So I may have my critics about what I did with Jack; and people say, “What were you thinking when you were working on the Eternals,” or, “What were you thinking about on Forever People.” I was thinking that I have three of these a day to do. Don’t screw it up. [laughter] You have to do three a day. So that’s what I was thinking about. So if I had the luxury of lots of time, I probably would have tried to emulate Joe Sinnott, because starting out as an assistant to an established artist, I never developed my own personality. So, in a way, when I inked people, I wanted to ink a page that when it was finished, somebody would think the penciler inked it. And I still think that way today, and I don’t think I have any personality. [laughter] I illustrated a book for actor Denny Miller, and Scott Shaw looked at it and he says, “My God,” he says, “This is Mike Royer!” So I must have a personality. [laughter, applause] EVANIER: I think we’ll move on to the Third Act of this. Are there any questions? Let’s take a couple of questions for people in the audience. Yes, sir? AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is sort of aiming it at John, because none of

ADAMS: John, we’re glad you became Johnny Romita. [applause] EVANIER: Mike, I never asked you about this on one of these panels. There was initial resistance at DC to you inking Jack, and then there was an acceptance after a couple of months. Can you talk a little bit about that? ROYER: Well, I don’t—I met Jack. Everyone knows the story, you know, “Mike Royer? This is Jack Kirby. Alex Toth says you’re a pretty good inker.” So I inked a lot of his stuff for Marvelmania. And then he told me, he says, “You know, I’ve got a project in mind that I really want you to be part of, but I can’t tell you.” And so then he goes to New York, I get a phone call from Maggie Thompson saying, “What is this about Jack leaving Marvel and going to DC?” I’m going, “I don’t know!” When Jack gets back, he calls me from the airport and he says, “I’m going to DC. I wanted you to be part of the package and ink everything I did, but they don’t want that. They want to control it in New York.” And I said, “Well, that’s fantastic that you thought enough of me.” And I don’t know whether it was because I came from the West Coast, and I know for decades there was this prejudice that if you lived west of the Hudson River, forget it! [laughter] I don’t know how people feel about the work that Russ Manning produced, but one of the sore points with Russ was always the fact that he would send work to the New York publishers and they would just reject it out of hand. And I don’t think his work was bad, it’s just that he lived on the West Coast. So actually, thank God that Jack moved to the West Coast, because those of us who were out here actually had a chance to maybe work for the New York publishers. I mean, Western Publishing was here on the coast, but things were published in the east, but that was supposed to be funny animals. Y’know, I’m a guy that, as a kid, loved things like—maybe it’s the 59

(below) Looks like John Romita finally got the hang of drawing DD—and how! (top and bottom) Both sides of the 3-D glasses that got Johnny Carson so riled up.

the other people it really applies to, but when you worked from Jack’s layouts, what did that actually entail? Did he just do thumbnails? Did he—? ROMITA: Oh, that was different, though. When I worked from his finished pages, I was just swiping, but I worked from breakdowns from him. I did a Hulk story, a ten-pager, that is still one of my proudest achievements. I think I did the best inking job I ever did on that. I used a big brush. But those layouts, it varies. It depended on how much time he had. Jack was one of those craftsmen that if you told him, “I want a ten-page script”—Stan Lee called him up saying, “I need a ten-page Hulk story. It starts here and it finishes there.” That’s all he gave him. And if he told him, “You’ve got four hours to get it in the mail,” he’d give you a fourhour breakdown. Sometimes it would be silhouettes. He rushed enough, he would just put initials in there so you could recognize the character. Other times he would do a breakdown, and if a panel appealed to him, he’d give you finished pencils. So he’d do breakdowns on ten pages and give you one beautiful page where he did tight pencils. The first two Daredevils I did, I had done eight years of romance at DC, and my scope was somewhere about here. That was the range of my ability to think and to produce a pencil. I was thinking crying ladies. I did the first story, the first three pages, and Stan said, “No, no. This is no good. It’s too quiet, it’s too dull.” He calls up Jack Kirby, and says, “I need you to break down Daredevil for John Romita. Send me the first ten pages in a couple of days, and then the second ten pages you can take a little longer.” Well, he sent in the breakdowns, and some of the pages were strictly silhouettes, just a silhouette of a character. If

his arm was out, you would see his arm, you know. And then he would label “DD,” and he would label “Matt Murdock,” and then, you know, that kind of stuff. And then occasionally he would do a more interesting shot where you could see something that had some expressions. Then he’d get into the pirate page and do some beautiful pirates. And then he did this one shot of this amazing, primitive, prehistoric kind of a water vessel on a river. If you ever see Daredevil #12, it has raw, huge redwood type trees, rough-cut hewn and made into a ship, with a head on it, and it is the most glorious thing. And this was just a rough breakdown, but I could see every grain in the wood. I could see all the knots. I could see everything. And it was coming down this tremendous river. That page was, like, I didn’t want to ink it. I wanted to keep it. I almost lightboxed it. [laughter] And do you know what? If I was smart enough, I would have lightboxed it and kept the damned drawing myself as a prize, a treasure. So he varied very widely from story to story. Sometimes just silhouettes and an initial, and sometimes a little bit more finished. But his breakdowns were—what he was doing was pacing a story. They really were paced stories. “This is where you need a close-up, this is where you need a longshot, here you need action, now you see this sequence.” I had done Matt Murdock going to his secret place to put on his costume, so he, y’know, takes his clothes off and is truly putting on his costume. Y’know? That kind of stuff. Jack Kirby, what he gave me, a cutaway of the room, of this exercise room, it was huge, then zip, zap, out the window. Didn’t even look out the window to see if there’s anything to grab. [laughter] He swings on the flagpole, comes down. He jumps on the cab. He’s going over the East River Drive. Now he’s got one foot on two cabs. [laughter] In a thousand years, I would never think to put a guy on two cabs, because [whispering] it’s not possible! When he puts the brakes on, you’ll break your ass. [laughter] And Jack used to tell me all the time, “You worry about this stuff too much. What you want is to get the reader into the page, get them excited.” So that breakdown was like two years of art school. Not art school; cinema. Cinema. I was learning cinema. And he taught me, in those first 20-page stories with Daredevil, how to tell a story the way Marvel wanted it to be done. And I learned it by crash-course overnight. All I can tell you is that those were pacing guides. They were not drawings so much as they were pacing. And then close-up, longshot, action, slide. You know? All I can tell you is he created miracles with me. I was no longer a romance artist after those layouts. [applause] EVANIER: We have time for only one more before we have to move on. This gentleman here. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was reading a book about the history of Marvel, and someone was making a comparison that Jack Kirby had a character called Mark Moonrider, which sounds an awful lot like “Luke Skywalker,” and then the whole thing about the trading the babies and this and that. And a lot of the influence of the Fourth World and all that—well, of course, Darth Vader is Doctor Doom. Forget about it. But how much of Kirby’s influence do you think affected the Star Wars movies? And forget the fact that Marvel should be giving Jack Kirby’s estate about two million dollars a year. [applause]

EVANIER: And may the Source be with you. [laughter] Anybody want to tackle this, how much of Star Wars was...? ADAMS: Yeah. We’re a community of ideas, and there’s a point where you hit legal, and there’s a point where you understand that people read your stuff and are inspired. It seems to me George Lucas is smart enough to know to be inspired and not to steal, because he originally wanted to do Star Wars, I’m sure most of you know this, as Flash Gordon. And he couldn’t get the license for it, so he decided to create his own Flash Gordon. So when you see Luke Skywalker fight that monster in that pit, I forget what he’s called, you remember the first sequence in Flash Gordon, where Flash Gordon is thrown into the pit with these monster men. Clearly that’s being inspired by and borrowing. Who could not be inspired by, and borrow from, Jack Kirby? Think about it. He’s clearly a comic book fan, but he was smart enough to take it far enough away to say, “Okay, this is another version of it.” And we do it all the time in comics. I was given a piece of advice when I was a young man, and that was that we are not born and live in a vacuum. We are inspired by the people around us, and really the qualities that we are able to express as artists and creators are reflections of those things that we are inspired by. I think George did a pretty good job doing Jack Kirby. [applause]

out there signing autographs at this very moment, and they were selling 3-D glasses at 7-Eleven stores, and they were selling for, like, a buck apiece, or something like that. And Johnny Carson was making jokes all week about 3-D glasses, ripping off kids, selling them these big, crummy cardboard glasses. I think Johnny didn’t remember what things cost anymore, but he was making jokes all week about these 3-D glasses being sold to kids and kids were being exploited. And, on his Friday night show—this is the day before the American Booksellers Association convention—someone had given him a pair of 3-D glasses to use as a prop. And the glasses were not the glasses from the Elvira movie. The glasses were the glasses from the Battle for a Three-Dimensional World comic that Ray Zone did. You may remember it was the thing Jack did, and they said on them, “Jack Kirby, King of the Comics.” So Johnny—now, we’re going to watch this as I ineptly get the DVD working here. [setting up] I’m going to show you the original Johnny Carson monologue, which is—this should be it.

ROMITA: You want a closer swipe of Dr. Doom, did you ever see that old Flash Gordon movie that King Features put out, where Dr. Doom with a gold mask was in it, and he was the villain, I believe? That’s the closest I’ve ever seen as a swipe to Dr. Doom. Darth Vader doesn’t even come close to that. EVANIER: Speaking of legal matters, I’m going to move on to Act Three, here, if I may. The gentleman on the far right, Paul Levine, was a lawyer for Jack for many years. I’m going to tell you the story very briefly, and Paul, jump in here if I—I’ll do the first part and you do the second part. PAUL LEVINE: Okay. EVANIER: What year this was? LEVINE: ’82, ’83. EVANIER: ’82, ’83, Jack was honored at the—the American Booksellers Convention was in Los Angeles. Jack was honored at the ABA, and this was a very big thing in his life. Now, the weekend was kind of ruined because of what happened the previous Friday. In Los Angeles on Channel 9, we ran a 3-D movie. It was hosted by Elvira, who is

[Carson video, previously transcribed in TJKC #35] Okay, that was the first part. Jack gets a call Friday evening from somebody on the East Coast saying, “Oh, watch Johnny Carson tonight, he mentions you.” [laughter, groans] And Jack gets all excited, you know, that he’s going to get mentioned on the Tonight Show, and you saw what happened. Paul, you want to pick up the story? LEVINE: Sure. Jack only cared about one thing. He never cared about money, he never cared about any of the practical, normal things that most business people care about. What Jack cared about was his name. And so when he saw that, my office got a call I believe Friday at 11:00 whatever time Johnny Carson was on. And, of course, all we had back then was an answering machine, so when I got in the following Monday morning and I listened to the messages, Jack’s was of course the first message on there. I hadn’t seen the Carson show that Friday night before, but I was able to get a copy from NBC sometime, by messenger over to my office, sometime by mid-morning or early afternoon that Monday. The next thing that I did was write a letter, which is what lawyers do when they are confronted with these kinds of situations, to the folks at NBC. My entertainment law firm business had done business with all of the networks for various different clients over the year, so it didn’t take long to figure out who to send a letter to, was the general counsel at NBC, saying that if Mr. Carson did not apologize for what he said and correct the mis-impression of the word “comic” and “comic,” as it were—because obviously, as you can all figure out, Mr. Carson assumed that when it said “King of the Comics,” it meant “King of the Comedians” and not anything else. And so, for the first time, as I understand it, for the first and only time in Mr. Carson’s career on the Tonight Show, he went on the air the following... I guess it was the following Tuesday night. 62

EVANIER: He was off for a week. He was off in Hawaii the following week on reruns. LEVINE: Right. So the next opportunity he had to do a live show again, he did this. [another Carson video] [applause] LEVINE: An example of a client and a lawyer working together to get good results. EVANIER: There was also some money that changed hands. LEVINE: Oh, yes. But like most settlements, lawyers are usually not, and the parties involved are certainly not, allowed to talk about the details. EVANIER: But I am. [laughter] Some little money which, for Johnny Carson, was probably about ten minutes work. But during that week Jack was just devastated. It was a very big blow to him. Jack had had a heart attack not long before, and you know, if you have a heart attack, they give you these nitroglycerine tablets to keep around. That was the only time he ever took one of them. He was so upset. And Paul and I were tag-teaming for a while there during the week. I called up Fred DeCordova, who was the producer at NBC. And the thing which got him interested in doing something about it and rectifying it was I compared Jack Kirby to Jack Benny in his respective field, someone who is universally loved, and Fred DeCordova would have hit you if you ever said anything bad about Jack Benny, for whom he had once been the producer. And he worked from his end, and Paul was going to the NBC lawyers and scaring the hell out of them. And Mr. Kirby was, I think, very satisfied. What else do you want to add about this? LEVINE: Well, I think just that, for a lawyer, like I said, to be able to do something good for a client and to be able to use California law—which by the

way, this was libel per se. If you accuse somebody of a crime that one doesn’t commit, to be a con man is an accusation of criminal activity, so this was libel per se. There wasn’t much that the lawyers could come back to me with to argue that maybe this wasn’t libelous after all. So, again, the combination of Mark working his end and me working mine accomplished a good result, and that’s always gratifying. EVANIER: I think they were much more afraid of you than they were at me. But I want to just mention that I wish Jack had met Paul twenty years earlier, if Paul had been practicing then, because he did an awful lot—. LEVINE: Thank you, because that’s the second thing I wanted to talk about very, very briefly. Clients pay lawyers for two things. One is to anticipate things that could possibly go wrong and deal with them now, and the other is to deal with things that they couldn’t anticipate. In this case, obviously, Jack couldn’t anticipate what Carson did. But in other cases, Mark is exactly right, I wish I had met Jack in the ’60s, or in the ’50s, or in the ’40s, even, instead of in the ’80s, when it was too late for me to anticipate things that could go wrong and deal with them now; namely to negotiate a much better—I’ll put this nicely, a much better arrangement with Jack’s employers and companies he worked for over the years than he ended up able to do for himself. EVANIER: Would you thank Paul Levine for his fine work? [applause] George Pérez, ladies and gentlemen. [applause, more names] Thank you very much and we’ll see you next year at the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. ★ (top) Unused Battle For A Three-Dimensional World pencils. Battle For A Three Dimensional World TM & ©2007 Cosmic Publications.

www.kirbymuseum.org Join the fight! Become a member of the Kirby Museum! Kirby Museum sponsors MoCCA’s spring 2007 exhibit “Stan Lee: A Retrospective” What a pleasant surprise to be contacted by Ken Wong, President of New York City’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon and Art (a.k.a. MoCCA), who asked for our support for the Stan Lee exhibit he was co-curating with comics scholar Peter Sanderson. Ken hoped we would help find some original art and review interpretive materials like display and narrative cards. Our Board of Trustees agreed that the Museum should take the opportunity to participate in educating the show’s visitors about Jack Kirby’s contributions to the work he produced for Marvel in the 1960s with Stan Lee. The opening reception took place in the evening of the first day of the New York Comic Con, where Rand and Lisa Hoppe enjoyed speaking with Stan Lee, Ken Wong, Peter Sanderson, Kirby Museum member Tom Morehouse (who loaned art and Marvel memorabilia to the show), Jim Salicrup, Danny Fingeroth and more. The exhibit runs through July 3, 2007.

Newsletter TJKC Edition Spring 2007 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

“Jack Kirby SHOULD have a museum!” - Stan Lee, at the MoCCA Museum Rand scans at NYCC and WonderCon Rand Hoppe recently set up his scanner at the TwoMorrows booth at NYCC and WonderCon, where he was able to add archival quality scans of pages from “Bombing Out On The Panama Canal” from Our Fighting Forces #158, “The Devil and Mister Sacker!” from Kamandi #12, the 2001: A Space Odyssey adaptation, an uninked, unused Black Magic cover and the Molecule Man pin-up from Fantastic Four Annual #2, among others. Thanks to Tom Kraft, Tom Morehouse, Mike Thibodeaux, Albert Moy, Anthony Snyder and more for allowing their Kirby pages to be scanned. Don’t forget, we aren’t just looking for archival scans. We’re interested in compiling scans or photos at any quality level. Visit the project’s web page for more information: http://kirbymuseum.org/oaarchive.jkm Kirby Museum Shop - Amazon and Tales of Wonder affiliate links The Shop hasn’t come together as we prematurely announced in our last newsletter. However, over at his Museum-sponsored Jack Kirby Comics Weblog, Bob Heer offers the next best thing—he’s compiled two pages, Kirby In Print Guide and New Kirby-Announcement Page, that contain affiliate links to the Amazon and Tales of Wonder web stores. If you buy using those links, the Kirby Museum will get a portion of each sale to fund its programs.

Online Resources We certainly hope you’ve stopped by Harry Mendryk’s Simon & Kirby blog. Harry’s regularly writing fascinating studies on Simon & Kirby work • http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/ Our “comicbook cartoonist” discussion groups—featuring Kirby-L—are still going strong. Well, the Kirby group is. Ditko, Eisner, Kurtzman and Moebius don’t get as much traffic as they should... • http://kirbymuseum.org/groups.jkm Bob Heer’s Jack Kirby Comics Weblog: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/ Bob’s New Kirby - Announcement page: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/new-kirbyannouncement-page/ Bob’s Kirby In Print Guide: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/kirby-in-print-guide/ Membership News We welcomes these new members: Michael Niederhausen, Ed Savage, Patrick Peck, Jeff Hollick, Peter Cluck, David Frankel, Ernest Kwiat, Jonathan Ross, Russell Payne, James Good, Woody Fu and Tim Perkins. These are our recent renewed memberships: Phillip Miller, Mark Elstob, Melvin Shelton, Ralph Rivard, Tom Brevoort, Ernest Stiner, Jose Lopez, Peter Houde, Bob Heer, Greg Rowland, Kam Tang, Garrie Burr, Elbert Coalwell, David Schwartz, Gange International Press, Anthony Garcia, Ray Owens, Khasra Ghanbari, Shane Foley, Antonio Iriarte, Jean Depelley, Reedman, Jim McPherson. Thanks for Your Support! Kirby Pencil Art Archives We recently updated the Kirby Museum’s web gallery with new pencil art photocopy scans from New Gods, Eternals, OMAC and Captain America, and others, available to the general public at http://kirbymuseum.org/gallery/v/Pencil+Photocopies/ However, there’s an additional Captain America gallery available only to Museum members, so join now to receive all the perks!

Annual Membership with one of these posters: $40*

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

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

Annual Membership with one of these posters: $50*

John Morrow twomorrow@aol.com

*Please add $10 for memberships outside the US, to cover additional postage costs. Posters come “as-is” and may not be in mint condition. Marvel—14” x 23”

Galactic Head—18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation—24” x 18” color 63

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

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

USUAL SUSPECTS

ome of Kirby’s most dependably surprising disciples have been hard at work, and we survey the fruits of their latest labors here...

Infamous Monsters

It’s common to assume that history takes wrong turns, which we spend much of our life mourning into the rear-view mirror about. For most of us this parallel-universe detour seems to happen after our adolescence, when new comics, pop music, clothing and kids start to become incomprehensible; for many Americans in general, it was when the pleasant certainties of the 1950s gave way to the social turmoil and creative experiments of the ’60s and since. In high simulated style courtesy of Kirby Clonage’s founding father Keith Giffen, Kurt Busiek captures this syndrome eloquently in a clever homage to Kirby monster comics which leads off the suitably titled Dark Horse Book of Monsters. The hardback collection, latest in a handsome series of supernatural-themed anthologies, begins with “I Witnessed the End of the World!”, an elegy for the epically paranoid, strangely innocent era of Atlas Monsters that played out between the Golden and Silver Ages of super-heroes, through the eyes of monster-hunting adventurer Riff Borkum. Lamenting “the end of the world” though actually recounting the tale from his nursing-home room and really just writing the epitaph of his own celebrity, Riff’s narration wryly evokes classic Stan Lee hyperbole while pointedly satirizing a larger-than-life ego that can’t see change as anything but calamity, even if it’s a shift to Silver Age gods from late-’50s monsters. Busiek’s oral-history voiceover style, which can sometimes slow contemporary stories down with too much “tell” in a “show” medium, works perfectly with the eyewitness exposé style of the standard Stan/Jack creature saga. Giffen’s knowing goofery and Busiek’s elegiac bent make for a smart, deceptively blockbusterish bookend to the self-assured one-minute morality tales of its models. For talents like these, there’s no end in sight.

Next Big Thing Co-creators Gary Carlson & Chris Ecker and the other time bandits of the indie Big Bang Universe have materialized in this column before, and seem to keep extending their rich past of fabricated comics-history relics. The newest oldie— in trademark Kirby style and in the spirit of his most fevered wordplay—is “Teen Rex, Last of the Dino-Men,” in Big Bang Presents #5 (shipping this month). The cover alone shows the creative team drawing together pop and culture precedents and references like skilled, crazy sorcerers weaving mythic patterns from the air, ranging from the cross-dressed Fay Wray image of the Kamandiesque Teen Rex, to the Rodin & Asimov meet Ben Boxer & Mister Machine likeness of the silvery robot in “thinker” stance. It’s a vintage revisitation of The Last Boy on Earth and Kirby’s notorious neolithic potboiler Devil Dinosaur, and if postmodern creators like Carlson are sometimes bringing in better harvests than the late-career Kirby did himself, that’s nothing that the patron saint of pulp reinvention would begrudge. [http://comics.bigbangcomics.com]

Morning After of the Gods Kirby fans already knew what good treatment Grant Morrison and his collaborators were giving the characters at the margins of the King’s canon in DC’s Seven Soldiers cycle—from Shilo Norman and Klarion to a third Guardian & Newsboys—and in the series’ longawaited finale we got another glimpse of Grant colliding with those at its core. A mind-blowing 360-degree 64

narrative found artist J.H. Williams III converging the cycle’s many storylines in a spectrum of styles, including—in surprisingly sensational mode for this most subtle and moody of artists—five pages of flat-out Kirbydelia, as a hidden history of the New Gods was spun into the multileveled mythos of Morrison’s cosmic survival saga. Some is shown here, and the rest is well worth a quick quest for the collected edition. (And don’t forget to stop in for our feature interview with Morrison next issue!)

Atlas Slugged A most un-Kirbyish corner of the Marvel Universe—the super-heroes of the 1950s period, much more the domain of a Bill Everett Collector—was given a truly mythic makeover in Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk’s Agents of Atlas, just concluded as this is written and hopefully in bestselling trade paperback reincarnation as we hit the stores. An updating of Eisenhower-era almost-stars like Venus and Namora, the book managed to be both poignant and action-packed, a saga of heroic second chances

that made it no less than Marvel’s New Frontier. And as with anything touching on classic American comics, the Kirby associations were by no means completely absent—a fascinating revision of the iffy orientalmenace/ modelminority dynamic that underlay Kirby’s Yellow Claw stories wove that once-stereotypical villain and his G-Man nemesis Jimmy Woo into the fabric of folklore, and even the giant Kirby monster archetype makes a late appearance in an unexpected form (which I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t read it—which is everyone who should). This mini-series is the textbook on how to do retcons that enrich what went before and do character-changing reveals which improve on the originals while respecting them. No guiding force of comics as we know them could ask for more.

Dangerous Visions Any column in which Kirby Monsters come up so frequently can’t avoid the looming shadow of Salt Peter Press’ Doris Danger comics, which keep appearing in confounding forms— anthology, tabloid, cheapo pamphlet—like a subterranean Thing That Wouldn’t Die. From the subconscious of creator Chris Wisnia straight to you, the reading public, come these true confessions of a probably-delusional disasterchasing journalist, most recently Doris Danger Greatest All-Out Army Battles and Doris Danger in Outer Space, all first issues so everyone can jump on anytime and no one will be more mystified than anyone else. Stop not buying them, you inhuman fiends! [www.tabloia.com] ★

(Adam McGovern’s columns and features have been appearing as usual in TJKC since 1997. His own comic with artist Paolo Leandri, Dr. Id, Psychologist of the Supernatural, is in stores and available at www.doctoridcomic.com, and they hope you find it 65

Internationalities

Kirby Anamorphism:

by Jean Depelley, Phil Jecker and François Narbonne

(below) From a seeming pile of junk emerges a very Kirbyesque figure of Captain America. (next page, top) Variations on a female theme.

(During the 34th International Comics Festival in Angoulême (France), we had the surprise of discovering Bernard Pras’ work. The visual artist had created on that occasion a gigantic composition of Captain America, occupying the entire exhibition room at the Franquin hall. At first glance, the whole structure seemed to be a chaotic composition of heterogeneous and colorful objects, spread all over the large room. But upon closer examination, through a photographic lens, a metamorphosis occurred before our very eyes and a dynamic 3-D silhouette—blue, white and redcolored—leapt at us! Framed on the wall, posters of Captain America covers, for the most part by Jack Kirby, gave the proper tone to the show. The Jack Kirby Collector had to meet this outstanding artist. This interview was conducted before his incredible and short-lived cyclopean deconstruction, on January 27th, 2007. Many thanks to Julie Rhéaume from the Comic Festival for putting us in touch with the

first. Then, I decided to start a series and new super-heroes “fell” into my hands. I started having fun reading each of these heroes’ personal mythology. TJKC: There are Jack Kirby’s heroes, as well as other pop culture icons, such as Fantômas. PRAS: That’s odd, because they basically weren’t the heroes I used to read as a kid! TJKC: You didn’t read such comic books? PRAS: Oh yes, I did! But not those featuring these heroes. It started when I discovered that huge Marvel poster, which had all these characters on it. With my mind made up on flying characters, I picked up the ones who graphically suited me. Then, I got myself interested in their stories... For a painter, the fact that Daredevil is blind is very interesting. The Silver Surfer is also a very strong symbol... TJKC: What attracted you to these Kirby characters? Is it their visual aspects or their stories? PRAS: In the first place, it was the visual aspect... In the second place, the story was amazing, close to the Greek mythology that I love. When you get into it, it’s a fascinating world. But I’m not a specialist...

(next page, center) Pras’ interpretation of the Silver Surfer. You can tell from the photo (above) that he was inspired by John Buscema as well as Kirby. (next page, bottom) Pras’ Daredevil. All imagery ©2007 Bernard Pras. Captain America, Daredevil, Silver Surfer TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

sculptor and to Bernard Pras for his time and kindness, and for the peculiar sensation of utterly entering a comic panel!) TJKC: What was your approach to this work? What’s your background concerning US comics? BERNARD PRAS: I decided to conduct that work on super-heroes because I was looking for characters that could fly. My art started on the ground, in 2-D. I was using a camera, and little by little, I started to lift it until it reached a vertical plane. Keeping that idea in mind, like a growing plant, a tree, I decided to create things that could fly, with the intention of using American pop culture icons. I decided to work on super-heroes. I started with Daredevil. Daredevil is a sort of disguised homage to painter Yves Klein and his «Saut Dans le Vide» (“Jump into the Void”) and the painting is hidden somewhere in a corner of my composition. It was the

TJKC: You certainly have a strong interest in ’60s pop culture. PRAS: Yes, of course. Pop Art is one dimension of my work. Before working on that series, I was painting and, very soon, my personal universe cannibalized Walt Disney’s characters, for their graphic and animated aspects. And thirty years after, here I am,

An Interview With Bernard Pras

PRAS: To say the truth, I’m not very familiar with this artist. But be sure I’ll go through his work now, with all the things you told me about him. (laughs) I generally work spontaneously. TJKC: What will be the next heroes you intend to add to the list? PRAS: Actually, the last character for the series was created for the Angoulême Festival. This is Captain America. TJKC: Another Kirby character! PRAS: Thank you for making me fully realize it! Captain America is certainly the most graphic of them all. First, I wasn’t sure if I was to give the composition a more political aspect. But, the painting ruled and the painter had to obey! I was dragged along and it eventually gave something else... But I am very pleased to close the series on that character. Every time I use a character, I realize afterwards he corresponds to my personal mythology. Captain America is a kind of homage to my father, who used to be a racing cyclist when I was a kid. I realized, as I was creating him with his long colorful underwear, that it was as if I was doing my father’s portrait through Captain America. ★

returning to that sort of thing! The American reference aspect has always been a personal trademark in my work... TJKC: Even though he may not have known it himself, Kirby was certainly a frustrated sculptor. Unfortunately, apart from a few comics, he never really worked on 3-D structures. Besides, all his body of work shows a huge interest in texture and design, with his idiosyncratic representations of energy (the Kirby Krackle) or the giant machines he developed from everyday objects. What appealed to you in his drawings? 67

Accolades

Mike Richardson Speaks A 2006 interview, conducted by Christopher Irving (Mike Richardson is the President and publisher of Dark Horse Comics, the award-winning international publishing house he founded in 1986, which is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary. Mike is the President of Dark Horse Entertainment, for which he has produced numerous projects for film and television, including The Mask, Hellboy, The Mystery Men, and Barb Wire. Mike owns a successful pop culture retail chain, Things From Another World, stretching from Universal’s City Walk in Los Angeles to his hometown in Milwaukie, Oregon. He has written numerous comics series, as well as Comics Between the Panels and Blast Off, two critically acclaimed books about pop culture. Our thanks go to Mike for taking time from his busy schedule to do this interview.)

TJKC: You received the Kirby Award in 2004 for the Jack Kirby Portfolio. I was wondering how that project came about? MIKE RICHARDSON: Roz and I became good friends, particularly after Jack’s death, and we were involved in a project together at that time. During the course of that project, I discovered that many people were taking out licenses for Jack’s work and paying Roz with product, as opposed to green dollars. TJKC: With funny money? RICHARDSON: (laughs) Yeah, unspendable paper, we might say. On one visit, I noticed an amazing series of Jack’s drawings in one of the hallways. Roz told me that these were amongst the favorite

also made a substantial offer involving the kind of paper she could spend. She liked that idea and we went forward. Basically, the whole project began with a casual conversation. I believe our portfolio remains the only time the artwork has ever been reproduced. TJKC: When did you first meet Jack and Roz? RICHARDSON: I started calling Jack and Roz immediately after I started Dark Horse in 1986. My goal was to get all of the writers and artists I’d admired in the comics industry to work for, or with, Dark Horse at some point. I would call and Roz usually answered. I kept calling and telling her that I’d be persistent and she’s say Jack was too busy to entertain any additional work. I’d send her books and try to convince her that we were a serious publisher, and that she shouldn’t rule us out because we were new. The first piece of art we got Jack to do for us was the result of an annual scholarship we were doing with the Kubert School. We wanted to call it the Kirby Scholarship for Young Artists. We created an ad for the Kubert School, and Jack did a piece of artwork for us for the ad. I have that piece on my wall and I’m looking at it right now. That’s the first piece he did for us, and for a number of years, the only contact I had was with Roz, and always by phone. I finally met Jack when he came to San Diego, maybe during that birthday party they had for him in the early 1990s. I was so amazed because I was someone he didn’t really know, and he sat down and talked with me for maybe half an hour. Here was the greatest comics creator of all time, and he was so giving of his time. TJKC: So you’d consider Jack a pretty humble person? RICHARDSON: Oh, yes. He was just a regular guy. Again, I’m sure there are many people who could tell you better than I. Those times I had contact with him, he was very friendly and open and straightforward about his work. He knew that the fans respected him and his work, but Jack never put on any airs. Roz, who I knew much better, was as nice a person as I’ve ever met. TJKC: In every interview I’ve read with people who knew both Jack and Roz, she was apparently the boss and took care of him. RICHARDSON: I’m sure that’s true. Again, I ended up knowing Roz much better than Jack. I got to know her well after Jack passed away. I’d get together with people such as Dave Stevens and we’d go pick her up and take her out to dinner. I got to know Tracy pretty well, and became friends. She had an entertainment project that she brought to us at one point.

things Jack had ever done. He had never allowed them to be reproduced. The artwork was not framed particularly well and I discussed with Roz the idea of reframing them. While we were talking, she said, “If you really had a good idea for these, I’m sure Jack wouldn’t mind if you reproduced them in a quality format.” I suggested the idea of featuring the art in a portfolio and, because we’d have the artwork in our possession while scanning the assorted pieces, we’d reframe them in UV sensitive glass. I 68

TJKC: What do you feel the Kirby legacy is? RICHARDSON: Clearly, Jack’s influence goes beyond the comics industry. I don’t know how you can express the influence he had, and still has, on generations of comics artists. He invented part of the language that is comics. He was there at the industry’s beginning and was involved for more than five decades in that particular medium. The interesting thing is that Jack was at Marvel during both of their most creative periods, during their beginnings in the ’40s and again during the Marvel re-launch in the ’60s. Throughout his career, he constantly created new characters. After Jack left Marvel and went to DC, he created what many fans regard as their favorite characters with The Fourth

World. After another stint at Marvel, he went over to Pacific and created a whole new batch of characters. He was an idea machine and continued to create characters that are still relevant today. Marvel continues to live off of the characters he created or had a hand in creating. Certainly he goes beyond comics, when you see movies like X-Men or The Fantastic Four and others that are based on his creations, you realize just what an effect he had on our popular culture. You see re-occurring themes that travel through his career and you realize that Jack deserves a very large portion of the creative credit in any of the creative partnerships he was involved in. TJKC: When you look at, for instance, the Cartoon Network’s Venture Brothers and Samurai Jack, things he didn’t have a hand in creating, there’s still that influence there. RICHARDSON: Sure, he invented a certain visual language in comics that artists refer to on a regular basis. I just saw a stack of comics from another company and there are artists out there who don’t even disguise their obsession with Kirby. TJKC: Yeah, and I think that, sadly enough, those artists don’t understand that Kirby made it look easy to draw, but if you whittle it down... they may be able to ape the flash, but not the structure beneath the dynamism. RICHARDSON: That’s right, they only see that which is apparent. But when Jack created those extra muscles and extra lumps on the arms and legs of his heroes, he also demonstrated a real knowledge of anatomy and a definite knowledge of what he was drawing. Oftentimes, people will try to copy his anatomy and it goes awry. Everything Jack did was laid upon a solid understanding of art, design, and the mechanics of creating the human figure. The exaggerated action he created was from a solid understanding of anatomy, perspective, and design. TJKC: A lot who ape Kirby go more for the bombastic side, but aren’t able to do

those quiet moments. RICHARDSON: It’s true. Those who ape Kirby’s style are always over the top in every panel. Kirby did have those quiet moments. TJKC: Is there anything else you’d like to add about Jack and Roz? RICHARDSON: Again, I became much closer to Roz, who I thought was a wonderful person and I enjoyed the time I spent with her. From my experiences with Jack and becoming friends with Roz, I can see what a joy they must have had from all of those years of living together. Jack’s legacy is unmatched. We have few true giants in the comics industry, and Jack was the giant among the giants. You can’t underestimate his value or the creative vision he had and how it shaped comic books for all time. If you look over the history of comics, from his early days with Captain America, or the romance comics he later invented, or experiments such as In the Days of the Mob, he was always reaching to expand the medium, and was never stuck in one place. His vision encompassed all genres. He remained unique and remained creative and vital to the end of his life. Without Jack, there’s no Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four, Iron Man... so many of comics’ great characters came from his mind. When you read the interviews in which he discusses his thoughts in the creation of these characters, it was clear that he was always looking around, trying to use everything he saw as source material. Personally, Jack is one of the biggest reasons for my own life-long love of comics. For that reason, I will always be obligated to him. ★

MIKE RICHARDSON

Thinkin’ ’bout Inkin’ (below) Joe Sinnott inks Kirby machines (and androids) on this page from Fantastic Four #71 (Feb. 1968). Don’t miss our biography of Joe (shown below), now shipping! (next page) Inks by Terry Austin (top, done for a fan) and Dick Ayers (bottom, from Tales to Astonish #82). All characters TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Inking The Machines

Kirby’s inkers speak to Douglas Toole hile it is easy to appreciate the dynamics of a Kirby-drawn figure or the choreography of a Kirby battle, it is also easy to take for granted the costumes, weapons, rockets and machinery that appeared as backgrounds or props in much of Kirby’s artwork. Certainly, some Kirbytech stood out in splash pages—such as Galactus’ armor, the death traps faced by Mister Miracle, the S.H.I.E.L.D. heli-carrier—but there was so much of it on so many pages that a casual reader could almost overlook all the detail that went into the technology on the page. One group of people who did not overlook those details was Kirby’s inkers. The Jack Kirby Collector contacted seven of them, and they were kind enough to share their memories and impressions of Kirby’s technology. All interviews conducted by telephone were transcribed and reviewed and edited by the interviewees.

Joe Sinnott Interviewed by telephone on May 22, 2006 TJKC: Are you much of a science-fiction fan? SINNOTT: No, not really. I was a big Flash Gordon fan, and that had science-fiction elements to it. But I don’t think I ever saw a whole episode of Star Trek. I also didn’t follow the space program much, although I drew comics about the life of Robert Goddard, the father of the rocket, and Alan Shepherd, the first American in space, for Treasure Chest Comics. I liked drawing those simple little five- and six-page science-fiction stories for books like Adventures Into Weird Worlds in the 1950s because I didn’t have to use references. You could make up everything. Aside from the work I did, I rarely watched science-fiction programs or read science-fiction books. TJKC: People probably remember your inking of Kirby on Fantastic Four the best, but what other work of his did you ink? SINNOTT: I think the first work of Kirby’s I inked was “I Was Trapped By Titano” (Tales To Astonish #10, July 1960) during the monster period. Stan Lee called me up and asked me if I could squeeze the Titano story in, so I inked it. Stan liked it, so he kept calling me and having me ink five- and six-page Kirby stories around my regular assignments. I did some Kirby westerns, some Kirby science-fiction stories and some early Thor appearances—just some odds and ends. One short story I liked very much was “Pildorr, The Plunderer From Outer Space” (Strange Tales #94, March 1962). Pildorr had a rocket ship and a bunch of cronies—a real bad guy. The story came out about the same time as Fantastic Four #1, and I thought Pildorr looked like a prototype of The Thing. TJKC: How tight were Kirby’s pencils? SINNOTT: His pencils were very tight. If Jack drew a button, he would put the four little holes in the middle of the button. His pencils were always that way. I inked Fantastic Four #5, and then worked on the book for about four years starting with #44, and by the end I was just so burned-out and beat that I called Stan and said I wanted to take a month or two off—I had not ever had a vacation. So Frank Giacoia, who was a great inker and who worked well on Kirby’s stuff, took over for a couple of issues. Then I returned to the book and worked with Jack on the Fantastic Four until he left for DC. It was a good run. A lot of pages. I worked with a lot of people over the years. Sometimes you would get good penciled pages to finish, and sometimes not. But Kirby’s work

a couple of days with Roz. It was a great experience. TJKC: Was it unusual to receive no margin notes or calls from a penciler? SINNOTT: Jack would write notes in the borders for Stan. But after I got done inking the work, I would erase the pages. I always wanted the art to look clean so I would erase all the borders. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the collectors would have liked to have seen the notes. There went the history, right down the drain. But pencilers rarely contacted me about an assignment. I worked with John Buscema for years on Fantastic Four, Thor, Silver Surfer, Ms. Marvel and so many books but not once did he leave me a note or call to say, “Joe, I like this,” or “I don’t like this,” or “Would you do this?” We would meet at conventions, and I got along very well with John, but we didn’t call each other about the assignments. TJKC: Any closing thoughts? SINNOTT: Jack was the best cartoonist in the business.

Terry Austin interviewed by e-mail in June, 2006 AUSTIN: It seems to me that Kirby technology served its function well; it provided interesting shapes within the panel, while ultimately moving the story along its intended path. It occurs to me, though, that never in all my years of enjoying Jack’s way-out machinery have I ever seen so much as a bolt or a screw or any other practical means of holding the doohickey in question together. This leads me to conclude that the only thing holding anything together in Jack’s world is pure Kirby magic!

Dick Ayers interviewed by telephone on July 28, 2006 TJKC: Are you a fan of science-fiction? AYERS: Not really. My taste runs more toward westerns, war and O. Henry-type stories with surprise endings. was always very complete, right up to the end. I would embellish a little bit here and there, adding some black areas, making his krackle a little more uniform in size, making his work look a little slicker. But his pencils were always complete. Sometimes, I felt his heads were a little bit off—it was the way he drew. For example, I would draw my kind of an ear on Jack’s heads. I drew an ear like Alex Raymond, and I thought Jack’s ears weren’t that good. It was a unique look, and Stan encouraged me. He would say, “Joe, we like what you’re doing on Jack. You go ahead and do whatever you want to do.” So early on, probably too much of my style came though. Later, I decided to leave things the way Jack penciled them. I didn’t change much.

TJKC: As an artist, what is your favorite genre?

TJKC: Were there any of his science-fiction designs you especially liked? SINNOTT: I liked them all. I thought the machines in his pin-up pages were fantastic. He would shade everything in, and I would slick it up with some fine lines to make it look more metallic. I would add little touches here and there—the drawing really didn’t need it, but I would see little details I wanted to bring out a little more. But the imagination he showed with those machines! It really is hard to comprehend. They were just so far out and so unbelievable, and yet they fit the stories. You had to see these things in pencil form to really appreciate them. TJKC: Were there any characters or equipment that made you cringe? SINNOTT: Galactus was very impressive, but tough to ink. What is mean is, he slowed you down because of all the paraphernalia he had on him—his breastplate and his metallic uniform with all the buttons. The Silver Surfer was easier. He was just an outline with a shimmering effect. But Galactus took time, and when you’re a working artist, time is everything. You have deadlines. You can’t spend an hour working on one character. But it was satisfying looking at Galactus when you were done with him. He was impressive, but Jack wouldn’t take shortcuts with his pencils. TJKC: Did you ever talk with Kirby about those things? SINNOTT: I didn’t meet Jack until 1975. Marvel was having a convention, and invited me down and I met Jack for the first time then. During all the time we worked together on books, he never called me or made notes in the margins of the art for me to follow. We spent three days together at that comic convention, and that was really the first time we communicated. But, years later, he called me from California because he had done a Fighting American piece for one of his books and he wanted me to ink it. I did it, certainly, but that was the only time he called me. Can you believe it? I went out to a convention in San Diego in 1995. Jack was dead by then, but I spent 71

AYERS: Westerns are my favorite. I just finished a graphic novel of a western set in the 1920s. So many of them are set during the horse-and-buggy days of the 1860s, but I wanted a story where I could use airplanes and model-T cars. I thought it would open up the western theme a bit. TJKC: Most of your work is as a penciler. How did you come to ink some Kirby artwork at Marvel? AYERS: Prior to working at Marvel in the late 1950s, I had always done full artwork—penciling, lettering and inking. Stan Lee asked if I would take a turn at inking someone else’s work, and I agreed to do it. Stan sent me a cover for a western comic that Kirby had penciled, and Lee liked how the ink-job turned out. Stan started assigning me some of Kirby’s monster stories to ink, and I was off and running. TJKC: How tight were the penciled pages Kirby gave you to ink? AYERS: They were semi-broken down. They came close to being fully penciled. At that time, the popular style was more illustrative, like Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon or Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant or Milton Caniff ’s Terry and the Pirates comic strips. So I took Kirby’s pencils and finished them in my inking so that they had that sort of style. TJKC: Did any of Kirby’s machinery or armor or devices really stand out for you? AYERS: His hi-tech stuff was always well designed. Kirby had a designer’s approach to his artwork, although I did not realize that in the beginning. But if you went along with it, you saw how it was all put together, and if you inked it right it would look right. The beauty was that he didn’t just draw a piece of machinery, he drew something that looked like it would actually work. TJKC: As an inker, did you ever roll your eyes at some of the machinery or devices he would draw? AYERS: Sometimes you would take a look at his pencils and think there would be a lot of extra work involved in inking it. This one time, on a Fantastic Four page, there was a downward shot that looked like all of Manhattan was laid out in the background. You just think, this will take all day to finish! But again, at the end, you look at the overall design and it all worked. TJKC: Any closing thoughts? AYERS: Westerns are my great love. I found myself drawing over Jack’s pencils on those stories more often than I did his super-hero or monster stories. I never liked the way he would draw a six-gun. His period guns left a lot to be desired— sometimes, they were just unreal. The handle on a Colt .45 revolver is very distinctive, and the way he would have the handle sticking out of a holster sometimes was like no handle I had seen. I would correct those things with my brush, make them look right. The authenticity was less important to him than the design of the picture.

Mike Royer interviewed by e-mail in June, 2006 TJKC: Are you a science-fiction fan? ROYER: Yes, I guess you could say so. In my youth I read lots of science-fiction by Ray Bradbury and others. Growing up in the last days of dramatic radio, I loved X Minus One (and its original incarnation as Dimension X) and Lights Out and other shows of the genre. In the mid-1950s, I loved television shows like Tales of Tomorrow and the space operas for kids, Space Patrol and Tom Corbett. As an 8-yearold I was thrilled by movies like The Man From Planet X, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Destination Moon and, believe it or not, had nightmares after seeing Rocketship XM with my parents. My mother was a avid reader of sci-fi pulps and as a result of a mention in a letter column I discovered the EC sci-fi comic books. I guess 1949-1951 were great years for this kid: EC comics, early sci-fi movies, pulp sci-fi writers and Harvey comics reprints of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic strips. Then when we got our first TV in late 1954 (TV didn’t come to Oregon until 1952), I discovered all the wonderful movies of the preceding decades. Don’t get me started on the terrific gentleman who ran the little movie house in my small home town. Every chance he got he’d have special Saturday morning screenings of old Columbia and Universal horror movies from the 1930s and 1940s.

After a midnight Halloween screening of Frankenstein I can remember sitting on the stairs to the production booth listening to his stories. “You mean there were seven movies with the Frankenstein monster? There was a Son of Kong !?” and so it went. TJKC: What is your preferred genre as an artist? ROYER: When I was in my twenties I wanted to do space opera. I never developed as the artist I wanted to be (another whole story in itself ) and by my late thirties discovered I had an affinity for funny animals, to my surprise. I also like romance ’cause I like to draw pretty women. TJKC: How tight were Kirby’s pencils? ROYER: When I started inking Jack I was delighted because I felt I had a chance to ink Jack the way I thought he should be inked. That doesn’t necessarily mean “the right way,” but I never felt that Jack’s work was being inked the way he would have done it. I felt at the time his pencils were very tight, but in retrospect, having inked Russ Manning, Steve Rude and some others I now will say that his power was all there but I don’t consider them as being “tight” pencils. I was criticized by a fan once of “just tracing” Jack’s pencils. Well, I look at the reproductions of Jack’s pencils in TJKC and I can honestly say “bullsh*t!” I didn’t just “trace” Jack’s pencils. I was as true as I could be to the intent (as I saw it) of his statement and still ink three pages a day and letter a complete book in less than two days. TJKC: Do any of Kirby’s sci-fi designs stand out as being especially good? ROYER: I loved all his work. He was a master designer. TJKC: Did any of his equipment or machinery make you cringe?

ROYER: Not particularly. I know some would take longer than normal because of the ornate detail, but everything Jack drew was for me a challenge to do it justice and not screw it up. Of course I don’t think much of Jack’s machinery would really “work” but that’s not important. Jack was an impressionist/expressionist. TJKC: Any final memories or anecdotes? ROYER: Nope. I try not to live in the past, with the exception of personal experiences and old movies. A lot of the work details are lost in some dusty corner of my brain’s hard drive and I don’t always have the password.

Steve Rude interviewed by e-mail in June, 2006 TJKC: Are you a science-fiction fan? RUDE: Sure, I’m a sci-fi fan. Though I didn’t read much of the classics when I was younger, I did experience many of them on old radio shows I rented from the library in my college years— lots of great Ray Bradbury stories, as I recall. I was also a huge fan of sci-fi comics like Magnus, Robot Fighter, and I was there in front of the TV when Star Trek premiered in 1966. TJKC: As an artist, do you have a preferred genre? RUDE: I’m into all of them. Each offers the unique perspective of their respective genres. Or, to sound less lofty—sure, they all look like fun. TJKC: How tight are the Kirby pencils you’ve inked? RUDE: Throughout his 40-plus-year career, Kirby’s penciling was always tight, probably up until the very last drawing he completed on his old, cigar-burned drawing board. When Jack completed penciling a page, there was nothing to guess at for the inker. It was all there. None of this x-ing all over the place where blacks

were to be indicated. Every detail was there in glorious black-andwhite graphite. TJKC: Were there any of his designs you thought were especially good? RUDE: I wasn’t sure if this question was a joke at first. Yeah, you could say his designs were “especially good.” TJKC: Were there any of his designs or machines that just made you cringe to ink? RUDE: Well, no. An inker’s job is to follow what Jack penciled. From there, it’s just the stylistic bent of the inker that will make his inking unique from his peers. You might be stunned for a few minutes as you contemplate the mind-blowing ingenuity of it all, but then it’s time to get to work. It’s always amazed me how Mike Royer and Joe Sinnott didn’t need to use any mechanical aids when drawing curving and circular shapes. What amazing brush control! TJKC: Any closing comments? RUDE: Great-looking machinery was a Kirby trademark. No one else could do them with even one-fifth the imagination he had. Whatever was in Jack’s brain must’ve been something to behold. I feel one should actually study real designs of mechanical things to get a foundation on what made Jack’s machines look so cool and functional at the same time.

(previous page) Mike Royer’s final inked recreation of the cover of New Gods #11; see his pencils for this piece on page 59 of this issue. (below) Kirby layout for an unused Jimmy Olsen cover, and Steve Rude inks (more like finishes, actually) for the recent Jimmy Olsen: Adventures, Volume One trade paperback. All characters TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

Mike Esposito interviewed by telephone on May 28, 2006 TJKC: Are you much of a science-fiction fan? ESPOSITO: I like science-fiction movies. I’m not much of a sciencefiction reader, although my buddy Harry Harrison wrote “Make Room! Make Room!” [the story which was the basis for the 1973

I inked stood out—it had Nick Fury and all these guys flying around, and all this mechanical stuff in the middle of all this action. I also liked his adaptation of the 2001: A Space Odyssey movie. All that stuff was design, design, design. I sometimes had trouble inking Kirby because I couldn’t understand the designs. At DC, they always wanted us to be careful about inking all the details with a pen. This one time, I was inking a head on a Kirby page and Frank Giacoia asked what I was doing. I said I was fixing it—the guy had no nose. So I was putting in a bridge and nostrils. Frank said, “You’re not supposed to do that. He doesn’t draw noses. He puts two dots. It’s part of the design. If you change it, it’s not Kirby anymore.” Kirby didn’t think realistically—he thought in terms of design. I loved his technique—I loved it when I first saw it in Captain America Comics in 1941—but that wasn’t the way I drew. I was more of a Milton Caniff artist. Frank said, “Just trace. Just follow the lines. That’s what I did on 2001. It’s all there. You don’t have to be creative. Just trace it.” Joe Sinnott could smooth it out in a way so that it was still Kirby, but was smooth as silk. Frank Giacoia was good, too. Kirby’s other inkers were too heavy, in my opinion. TJKC: As an inker, did you ever get an assignment from Kirby that made you cringe, like a splash page with a thousand robots in the background? ESPOSITO: I tried not to think that way. Over the years, I was trained to just put it in. If I had to draw it—if someone had given me a script that called for that kind of detail—I would have gone crazy. But he did all the work. I just had to go over it and get it ready for printing. As an inker, finishing a page that had a million buildings in it did not bother me. You did the job, and you got paid for it. Ross and I drew an issue of Spidey Super Stories once where the Fantastic Four appeared, and we tried to draw it like Kirby would, but we couldn’t make it look the same. It had nice depth and nice shapes, but Kirby’s work had a smart look to it. I felt I couldn’t give Kirby’s machines the crisp look like I wanted. You have to be a guy who understands machines when you ink that stuff. I could never ink guns. Guys like Terry Austin can ink a gun and make it look shiny. He can ink machinery well, too.

film, Soylent Green] and other science-fiction short stories, and I was crazy about his stuff. I know Ross Andru and I drew a lot of science-fiction books for Marvel and Avon and other comic-book companies. I would say that I enjoy it. TJKC: Over the years, you have worked on lots of comic books in probably every genre there is. Do you have a preferred genre? ESPOSITO: I liked working on Spider-Man with John Romita and Ross Andru. I did a lot of Hulks with Jack Kirby, going over his scribbled breakdowns. Stan Lee wanted me to tighten his pencils, but I didn’t think he was paying me enough to do that, so I would just take a brush or pen to his rough pencils and ink it without re-penciling it. I didn’t think it looked that good, but the public bought it. Some of the fans wrote in and said that Mickey Demeo [Esposito’s alias at that time] was one of the better guys doing the Hulk. I never thought so, but fans are funny that way. TJKC: Were Kirby’s pencils pretty tight when you 74

were inking him? ESPOSITO: Let me explain that. At that time, he was turning out like five pages a day. He was like a workhorse. But things were very cheap then—inkers were getting paid $10 to $15 a page. If I would tighten the pencils prior to inking, I would get $28. Kirby developed a style with Stan so that his pencils wrote their own script, but without the dialogue. Pencilers would get a rough plot, and then pace it their own way. Kirby was a genius at it. Even his rough pencils told the story well. But, when Marvel got to the point where they could pay him more, and he could cut back on the number of pages he did and spend more time on them, his stuff got to be as clean as a whistle. The pencils were all there—no scribbles, no breakdowns. And when he did machines—I don’t know where in the hell he got these ideas. It was unbelievable stuff. Ross—as good an artist as he was—could never think that way. Few guys could. TJKC: Did any of his designs especially impress you? ESPOSITO: They all did. One of Kirby’s covers that

TJKC: Any closing thoughts? ESPOSITO: Jack was a pro. He was a master storyteller. He knew how to handle that little box, how to put everything in and get everything out of it. He was unbelievable. He was king—King Kirby.

Greg Theakston interviewed by telephone on May 24, 2006 TJKC: Are you much of a science-fiction fan? THEAKSTON: Yeah, I would say so. I’ve probably read a couple-hundred science-fiction books, and I also enjoy having science-fiction television shows and movies playing while I work. TJKC: As an artist, do you prefer one genre of story over the others? THEAKSTON: No, it’s all the same creative ball of wax to me. I wouldn’t say there’s one aspect I prefer over the others. TJKC: How tight are the Kirby pencils you’ve inked? THEAKSTON: The Kirby pages I inked were for DC’s Super Powers and Who’s Who series. The Who’s Who pages were done at a more leisurely pace— they were single drawings as opposed to multi-panel

compositions—and for the most part they were tighter than the panel pages just because he had the time to do it. At the point where I was working with Kirby, his health was failing. I would receive three or four penciled pages from him at a time. Inevitably, the first page would be very nice. By the time I got to the last page, the pencils would be thin and sometimes a bit shaky—as he got tired, his tremor was more pronounced. It was clearly a struggle for him; however, his machinery was always great. Even if the main figure wasn’t on the money, you could rely on Jack turning in a fascinating machine. And in the Super Powers series, none of the main characters were his—he didn’t really give a damn about them. He got off on doing the machinery. TJKC: Were there any of his spaceships or armor or machines that you thought were especially well designed? THEAKSTON: I can’t single out any of them. They are all fabulous. It’s interesting to compare Kirby’s machinery in the early part of his career with his later work. I was looking at some of his comicstrip stuff and the earliest representations of machinery are heavily aping Frank R. Paul’s painted covers from Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories magazines. Granted, it would be hard to be a science-fiction fan in the mid-1930s and not be affected by Frank R. Paul’s work. To an extent, the influence resonates throughout the rest of his career. The approaches that Paul took, the rhythm of the machinery, the interesting shapes— you can see where Kirby took from it and then expanded upon it. Kirby’s art in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s was very interesting, but it changed after Wally Wood started inking his work on the Sky Masters comic strip. Wood’s approach involved highly ornate machinery as a pattern—an approach Jack did not take prior to that. Wood stripped Jack’s pencils down to the bare bones and then added dramatic lighting on it. Wood was fanatical about machinery when he was working for EC. I think it must have been an eye-opener for Jack to see his machinery work that way. So you get to the 1960s, where Jack is doing ten pages a day or whatever, and the machinery is functional, but not highly ornamental. But in the mid-1960s, around 1965 or 1966, it became almost like a crossword puzzle. All of these words—or pieces of machinery—had to align properly to create a complete picture. And with his reduced workload starting around that time, he had far more time to embellish the machinery. Even the costumes around that time become far more ornate, as opposed to the extremely simple costuming he had always done. Now he wasn’t afraid to put the extra design work into his art, including the machinery. He developed that on his own quite uniquely. If you took the machinery alone, and excerpted it from the rest of the work, it would still be valid— maybe more so, because it was so beautifully designed. The machinery existed in a world of its own within Kirby’s world. I’ll go so far as to say that even the architecture has that same sort of giant-machine look about it—his buildings looked less like buildings than stone machines. Nothing quite like it in New York City. He once told me that his machines were entirely functional. A transporter would have a large screen through which you would transport. He said every piece, every knob, every switch had a function. Even though the reader would never know what that function was, and it was never explored in the story, he designed it to work—if you press this button, this little door opens, and you can access this little thing that you pull out to destroy the universe. It says a great deal about how Jack approached his work. It’s not just a bunch of wires and gears and bolts, it translates in our brain to looking very functional because Kirby designed it functionally. They also work thematically. If it’s a benevolent machine, it’s rounder and prettier. Something with a destructive capacity, such as a warship, looks dangerous. Visually, he expresses the personality of the machine. Often, you can see faces in the machinery. It’s not just a machine, it’s Jack trying to complement the story with additional design. Frequently, the machinery was the last thing he drew on a page. As far as I have seen, Jack first composed the figures, and then went back in and bracketed all the background information around those figures—including the machinery. Not only does the drawing represent a machine, it adds pattern and design to the page, which is pleasing to the eye. In

some instances, the machinery serves the third task of directing the reader’s eye in a particular way around the page. When it is done well, you don’t even notice it—there’s just a row of lights and these three black spokes are leading your eye towards this point in the panel where you’re supposed to be looking. So here you have Kirby’s machinery working on three completely different levels— storytelling, design and eye direction. It’s really quite remarkable. TJKC: Any closing thoughts? THEAKSTON: There seemed to come a point towards the end of his career when Jack was really tired. The last drawings that I saw from him basically are things that he did for himself, and were largely machine-oriented. I look at the stuff hung on the walls of his home and it’s largely ornate costuming and machinery. Sometimes I would flip over a page of his and see a big spaceship on the back. He really enjoyed drawing these abstract machines of his towards the end of his career. It shows where his heart really was towards the end. Drawing the Silver Surfer flying by on a board? He could do that in his sleep. Drawing the panoramic city below the Silver Surfer was the challenge in his later years. Probably the last thing he wanted to draw was another picture of Captain America running. He would rather do a relaxing exercise in logic, balance and beauty. And he did it best. Sometime during this century, “art critics” will finally see this, and Jack Kirby will finally get his just reward— mostly because of the machinery. ★

(previous page) Mike Esposito worked from Jack’s layouts (and margins notes, as seen here) for the Hulk story in Tales To Astonish #71 (Sept. 1965). (below) Greg Theakston inks for the cover to Super Powers #2 (second series, Oct. 1985). Kalibak, Hawkman, Super Powers TM & ©2007 DC Comics. Hulk TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1

REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW! #8 / DRAW! #9 crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH & MIKE MANLEY show stepby-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!

(108-page trade paperback with COLOR) $18 US ISBN: 9781893905603 Diamond Order Code: APR063422

(168-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905313 Diamond Order Code: FEB042700

HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 2

(120-minute DVD) $35 US ISBN: 9781893905399 Diamond Order Code: AUG043204

ink19.com on HOW TO CREATE COMICS

BACK IN PRINT IN SUMMER 2007

If you’re serious about creating effective, innovative comics, or just enjoying them from the creator’s perspective, this guide is must-reading!

• WILL EISNER • SCOTT HAMPTON • MIKE WIERINGO • WALT SIMONSON • MIKE MIGNOLA • MARK SCHULTZ • DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI • MIKE CARLIN • DICK GIORDANO • BRIAN STELFREEZE • CHRIS MOELLER • MARK CHIARELLO

Art professor DURWIN TALON gets top creators to discuss all aspects of the DESIGN of comics, from panel and page layout, to use of color and lettering:

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS

(156-page trade paperback with COLOR) $22 US ISBN: 9781893905580 Diamond Order Code: APR063421

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.

Documents two top professionals creating a (208-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29 US comic book, from initial idea to finished art! ISBN: 9781893905146 In this feature-filled DVD, WRITE NOW! Diamond Order Code: STAR19844 Magazine Editor DANNY (Spider-Man) FINGEROTH and DRAW! Magazine Editor MIKE (Batman) MANLEY show you how a new character evolves from scratch! Watch the creative process, as a story is created from concepts and roughs to pencils, inks, and coloring—even lettering! “The closest thing you’ll find to Packed with “how-to” tips and a comic creation tutorial; an tricks, it’s the perfect companion to the WRITE NOW #8/DRAW essential reference for anyone who’s #9 CROSSOVER, or stands ever hoped to self-publish or make a alone as an invaluable tool for amateur and professional serious bid at a career in the field.” comics creators alike!

DVD

HOW TO DRAW COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

(200-page trade paperback with COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905412 Diamond Order Code: OCT043046

Compiles material from the first two sold-out issues of DRAW!—a wealth of tutorials, interviews, and demonstrations by DAVE GIBBONS (layout and drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (drawing lovely women, painting from life, and creating figures that “feel”), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN (inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Each artist presents their work STEP-BY-STEP, so both beginning and experienced artists can learn valuable tips and tricks along the way! Cover by BRET BLEVINS!

COMICS ABOVE GROUND features 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 and more! Written by DURWIN TALON (author of the top-selling book PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators sharing their perspectives and their work in comics and their “other professions,” with career overviews, never-before-seen art, and interviews! Featuring: • BRUCE TIMM • LOUISE SIMONSON • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • DAVE DORMAN • ADAM HUGHES • GREG RUCKA • JEPH LOEB AND OTHERS!

SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

COMICS ABOVE GROUND

(176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905733 Diamond Order Code: MAR073747

TwoMorrows has tapped the combined knowledge of its editors to assemble an all-new 32-page comics primer, created just for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! You’ll learn: “Figure Drawing” and “How To Break Down A Story” from DRAW!’s MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Writing Tips” from WRITE NOW!’s DANNY FINGEROTH, plus ROUGH STUFF’s BOB McLEOD provides “Art Critiques” of promising newcomers! There’s even a “Comics History Crash-Course”, assembled by ALTER EGO’s ROY THOMAS and BACK ISSUE’s MICHAEL EURY!

Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of the creative process step-by-step. For this book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they “see” and “solve” the problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists’ processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches regarding storytelling and layout choices. The exercise may be simple, but the results are profoundly complex!

(32-page comic book) Diamond Order Code: FEB070050 FREE at your local comics retailer on May 5, 2007

HOW-TO & HISTORY LESSONS FROM THE PROS

COMICS 101:

COMIC CREATORS DETAIL THEIR STORYTELLING & CREATIVE PROCESSES

WORKING METHODS

HOW-TO BOOKS & DVDs

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905740 Diamond Order Code: APR074023

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905696 Diamond Order Code: DEC063948

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905795 Diamond Order Code: NOV068372

V.13: JERRY ORDWAY

MORE GREAT MODERN MASTERS VOLUMES ARE COMING IN FALL 2007; SEE OUR JULY CATALOG UPDATE FOR INFO!

V.12: MICHAEL GOLDEN

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905641 Diamond Order Code: MAY063444

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905566 Diamond Order Code: FEB063354

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905542 Diamond Order Code: DEC053309

V.11: CHARLES VESS

V.8: WALTER SIMONSON

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905252 Diamond Order Code: STAR20127

V.7: JOHN BYRNE

V.3: BRUCE TIMM (120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905306 Diamond Order Code: APR042954

V.2: GEORGE PÉREZ

V.6: ARTHUR ADAMS

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905191 Diamond Order Code: STAR18345

VOL. 1: ALAN DAVIS

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905665 Diamond Order Code: OCT063722

V.10: KEVIN MAGUIRE

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905443 Diamond Order Code: APR053191

V.5: GARCÍA-LÓPEZ

ISBN: 9781893905511 Diamond Order Code: JUN053276

GEORGE PÉREZ

ISBN: 9781893905771 Ships July 2007

MICHAEL GOLDEN

(120-minute Std. Format DVDs) $35 US EACH

MODERN MASTERS STUDIO DVDs

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905658 Diamond Order Code: AUG063626

V.9: MIKE WIERINGO

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905382 Diamond Order Code: SEP042971

Steven Grant on MODERN MASTERS VOL. 8: WALTER SIMONSON

“This volume does a really terrific job of explaining why Walt Simonson is great. It’s a really excellent job, for a really excellent comics artist. Get it.”

V.4: KEVIN NOWLAN

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks and DVDs are devoted to the BEST OF TODAY’S COMICS ARTISTS! Each book 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! And our DVDs show the artist at work!

MODERN MASTERS BOOK SERIES

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905504 Diamond Order Code: SEP053209

BEST OF THE LEGION OUTPOST

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905481 Diamond Order Code: MAY053052

LEGION COMPANION

(160-page trade paperback) $22 US ISBN: 9781893905368 Diamond Order Code: SEP042969

(160-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905047 Diamond Order Code: STAR11522

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905436 Diamond Order Code: MAR053228

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905290 Diamond Order Code: SEP032545

Profusely illustrated bio of KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, the preeminent Lois Lane artist and important early Captain Marvel artist who brought a touch of humor and whimsy to super-hero comics! Covers his LIFE AND CAREER from the 1940s to his passing in 2002, and features hundreds of NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS & ILLUSTRATIONS from his files! Also includes recollections by family, friends and fellow artists such as MURPHY ANDERSON, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE KUBERT, ALEX ROSS and MORT WALKER! Written by columnist MARK VOGER (Schaffenberger friend for the final 13 years of the artist’s life), with a Foreword by KEN BALD.

HERO GETS GIRL! THE LIFE & ART OF KURT SCHAFFENBERGER

(208-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905160 Diamond Order Code: JUN022611

• ALAN MOORE • WILL EISNER • STAN LEE • GENE COLAN • JOE KUBERT • JOHN ROMITA • HARVEY KURTZMAN • DAVE SIM • DAN DeCARLO • HOWARD CRUSE • DAVE COOPER and more!

BLAKE BELL takes a look at what its been like living with comic book creators over the past 60 years, with the people who know them best! Explore the lives of the partners and wives of the top names in comics, as they share memories, anecdotes, personal photos, mementos, and never-before-seen art! Featured are interviews with the “significant others” of:

“I HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS GUY!”

(136-page softcover with COLOR) $22 US ISBN: 9781893905726 Diamond Order Code: MAR073744

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905405 Diamond Order Code: DEC042921

A comprehensive look at GEORGE TUSKA’S personal and professional life, including early work at the Eisner-Iger shop, producing controversial 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 the very personal and reflective words of George himself, making this book a testament to the tremendous influence Tuska has had on the comic book industry and his legion of fans! Written by DEWEY CASSELL.

ART OF GEORGE TUSKA

(208-page hardcover with COLOR) $49 US ISBN: 9781893905764 Diamond Order Code: APR074019

(192-page softcover) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905757 Diamond Order Code: APR074018

“Jazzy” JOHN ROMITA—the artist who made THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Marvel’s #1-selling comic book in the 1960s—talks about his life, his art, and his contemporaries! Authored by former Marvel Comics editor in chief and top writer ROY THOMAS, and noted historian JIM AMASH, it features the most definitive interview Romita’s ever given, about working with such comics legends as STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, following Spider-Man co-creator STEVE DITKO as artist on the strip, and more! Plus, Roy Thomas shares memories of working with Romita in the 1960s70s, and Jim Amash examines the awesome artistry of Ring-a-Ding Romita! Lavishly illustrated with Romita art—original classic art, and unseen masterpieces—as well as illos by some of Marvel’s and DC’s finest, this is at once a career overview of a comics master, and a firsthand history of the industry by one of its leading artists! Available in Softcover and Deluxe Hardcover (with 16 extra color pages, dust jacket, and custom endleaves).

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ!

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

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

Featuring NEW autobiographical comics stories by: • BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH • SERGIO ARAGONÉS • MURPHY ANDERSON • JOE KUBERT • JACK KIRBY • BRENT ANDERSON • NICK CARDY • RICK VEITCH • ROY THOMAS & JOHN SEVERIN • SAM GLANZMAN • PAUL CHADWICK • EVAN DORKIN • C.C. BECK • WALTER SIMONSON • ART SPIEGELMAN • Cover by STEVE RUDE • Foreword by WILL EISNER

STREETWISE

NER! D WINRY! R A W A O EISNESRT SHORT ST BE

(192-page hardcover with COLOR) $49 US ISBN: 9781893905467 Diamond Order Code: APR053189

(168-page softcover with COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905450 Diamond Order Code: APR053190

During his 56-plus-year career in comic books, JOE SINNOTT has worked in every genre, and for almost every publisher, from 1940s Timely Comics to Charlton Comics, Treasure Chest, and Dell as a top penciler. But his association with Marvel Comics in the ’60s as its top inker cemented his place in comics history. This book celebrates his career, as he demonstrates his passion for his craft. In it, Joe shares his experiences working on Marvel’s leading titles, memories of working with STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, and rare and unpublished artwork from his personal files. It features dozens of colleagues and co-workers paying tribute to Joe, plus an extended Art Gallery, and a Checklist of his career. Written by TIM LASIUTA, with a Foreword by STAN LEE, and Afterword by MARK EVANIER.

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! 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)! Also includes an extensive index of his published work, comments and tributes by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO and others, plus a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS and Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

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 never-before-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)! Written by TOM FIELD.

(176-pg. Paperback with COLOR) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905276 Diamond Order Code: STAR20439

BRUSH STROKES WITH GREATNESS: THE LIFE & ART OF JOE SINNOTT

DICK GIORDANO CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: THE ART & LIFE OF GENE COLAN

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

The definitive book on WALLACE WOOD’s super-team of the 1960s! Included are interviews with Woody’s creative team, plus writers and artists involved in the T-Agents resurrections over the decades, and a detailed examination of the origins and exploits of the characters themselves! A perfect compendium to sit alongside the recently-published T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS ARCHIVES volumes, it features reams of artwork, much of it rarely-seen or previously unpublished, including a 27-page story drawn by PAUL GULACY & TERRY AUSTIN, UNPUBLISHED STORIES & ART by GULACY, GARRY LEACH, ALAN DAVIS, and others, and a JERRY ORDWAY cover! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

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

(240-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905375 Diamond Order Code: AUG063622

ROY THOMAS’ new sequel, with more secrets of the JSA and ALL-STAR COMICS, from 1940 through the 1980s, featuring: a 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 listing of all the 1963-1985 JLA-JSA TEAM-UPS and the 1970s JSA REVIVAL! Full coverage of the 1980s ALLSTAR SQUADRON and YOUNG ALL-STARS by ROY THOMAS, with scarce & never-published art!

ROY THOMAS has assembled the most thorough look ever taken at ALL-STAR COMICS, featuring: 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! Plus rare art by BURNLEY, DILLIN, KIRBY, INFANTINO, KANE, KUBERT, ORDWAY, ROSS, WOOD and more!

(208-page trade paperback) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905054 Diamond Order Code: APR042953

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 2

(128-page trade paperback) $21 US ISBN: 9781893905702 Diamond Order Code: DEC063946

(240-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905610 Diamond Order Code: MAY063443

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 1

His history from 1939 to today! Reprints his first appearance from MYSTERY MEN COMICS #1, plus interviews with WILL EISNER, JOE SIMON, JOE GILL, ROY THOMAS, GEOFF JOHNS, CULLY HAMNER, KEITH GIFFEN, LEN WEIN, never-seen Blue Beetle designs by ALEX ROSS and ALAN WEISS, as well as artwork by EISNER, JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, KEVIN MAGUIRE & more! By CHRISTOPHER IRVING.

KRYPTON COMPANION BLUE BEETLE COMPANION

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 ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, , MOONEY, O’NEIL, OKSNER, PASKO, ROZAKIS, SHOOTER, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and others, plus tons of rare and unseen art! By BACK ISSUE magazine’s MICHAEL EURY!

CALL OR WRITE FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG!

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905221 Diamond Order Code: STAR20091

Collects the best material from the hard-to-find LEGION OUTPOST fanzine, including rare interviews and articles from creators such as DAVE COCKRUM, CARY BATES, and JIM SHOOTER, plus never-beforeseen 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 rarelyseen classic 1970s cover by Legion fan favorite artist DAVE COCKRUM! Edited by GLEN CADIGAN.

Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the NEW TEEN TITANS, this comprehensive history features interviews with and rare art by fan-favorite creators MARV WOLFMAN, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, LEN WEIN, & others! Also included is a comprehensive Silver Age section featuring interviews 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, rare and unpublished artwork by CARDY, PÉREZ, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GRUMMETT, JIMENEZ, and others, a new cover by JIMENEZ, and an introduction by GEOFF JOHNS! Written by GLEN CADIGAN.

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

The definitive 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! Plus: 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! And a new cover by DAVE COCKRUM and JOE RUBINSTEIN, introduction by JIM SHOOTER, and more! Written by GLEN CADIGAN.

TITANS COMPANION

JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION VOL. 1

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Send letters to: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR c/o TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com Our response department is totally non-automated, so send your letters and e-mails to TJKC, where we will personally edit them for length and content!

(My longtime penpal from France, Jean Depelley, has been a Kirby fan as long as I have. Our experiences, despite our being separated by an ocean and never having met face-to-face, are remarkably similar: We’re the same age, we both have beautiful wives, and two young daughters. His daughter Marie recently sent the above drawing to my daughter Lily, who’s also more than a little familiar with the name “Jack Kirby.” You can see that Jean’s carrying on the Kirby tradition overseas! Now, on to your letters:) In TJKC #47, Marty Lasick mentions FANTASTIC FOUR #98, “Doomsday On The Moon,” as his favorite issue because of his interest in the Apollo missions. Here’s an interesting footnote about that. Kirby ends the issue with Neil Armstrong’s foot plopping on the lunar surface with the words “the beginning” at the bottom of the panel. Of course, the FF landed on the moon in April 1963 (FF #13), as did the Red Ghost, but none of that ever comes up in #98. By that time (May 1970), after all the business with Galactus, the Skrulls, the Negative Zone, etc. landing on the moon was the least of what the FF had done. Kirby did not get so far out that that he lost track of important details, however. In the second-to-last panel of #98 he has Armstrong saying, “That’s one small step for a man—”. Armstrong always insisted that this is what he said, but it passed into popular history (from the mission transcript error) as “one small step for man” without the “a.” Last September a programmer named Peter Shann Ford analyzed NASA’s recording of Armstrong’s words with software designed for the disabled to use their nerve impulses to communicate with computers—a very Kirbyesque concept in point of fact. Ford’s graphical representation of the recording demonstrated that Armstrong did indeed say the word “a.” Kirby got it right. 78

The last panels of #98, depicting the Apollo landing, are uncharacteristically photo-realist, not Kirby style at all. Does anyone know the story behind this? (By the way—FF #98 is misidentified as #89 in your issue.) Kenn Thomas, St. Louis, MO Hey, I had an idea for TJKC; if you’ve already done it, never mind. I was looking at early AVENGERS covers and noticing Jack’s excellent trademarks beginning to show up: The first Kirby exaggerated point was AntMan on the AVENGERS #12 cover, the first true Kirby Machine on the cover AVENGERS #13, and the first Kirby fingers on the cover of AVENGERS #14, etc. Now, I’m not saying that these were the first appearances of these items, but it would be cool to track down the first streamlined-out-of-this-world-knockyou-out Kirby machine, the first exaggerated perspective walk (where it looks like they’re running with a 15-foot stride, but they’re walking), the first yell-talk (someone is talking but they look like they’re screaming), first Kirby squiggle, first Kirby crackle (that cosmic dots-and-blaze energy), first Kirby square knees (sounds like a Nickelodeon cartoon), etc. Could be a hoot. I’d like to see it. Thanks for ALL that you do to preserve and promote the Great Art. Stu Kilgour Apparently there was a show in the ‘60s called Wonderama. It was a kid’s show filmed in New York, and would feature occasional guests from the comic book world. Stan, Jack, and Romita were some of the guests and one segment featured Jack drawing something for the kids. I’ve never seen Jack draw and it may be something of historical interest should someone track down this rare find. Got anyone on staff who wants to earn some extra credit and try and hunt these segments down? Steve Rude

The interview with Jonathan Lethem is one of the best ever done! What superb insight into trying to understand Kirby. From trying to see the differences in Jack’s mental approach between the ‘70s and the ‘60s, to his status as seeming to a young reader in the early ‘70s as ‘the exiled master!’—a brilliant interview and one that I’ll be reading again. Congrats to Chris Knowles for his part. Mark Evanier’s column had new insights as normal and it’s great to see that he acknowledges Doc Vassallo’s identification as Klein as the mystery inker for FF #1. And this is the first time I’d ever heard that Captain Victory/Glory was originally Captain America! While writing wonderful stuff here, it’s odd to see how he then goes and makes simple errors in regards to inking. Recently, he spent time discussing Frank Giacoia, then offered one of the few pieces of Kirby’s own ‘60s inking as an example. Now this issue, he continues to talk of Don Heck inking the Fourth World prototype illos when it’s quite clear that only the Black Pharaoh pic was inked by Heck. The others look like Giacoia. The Captain America/Victory/Glory pic was Giacoia too. Mark must be thinking of the Heck-inked ‘Gods’ pieces. (Which reminds me to ask—do you have access to Kirby’s ‘other’ Captain America redesign [left]? Or know any more about it? I only have a poor scan from the kirby-l site.) Thank you SO much for printing “Talent for Trouble.” What a hoot!!! Pamela Axehandle? J. Edgar Ben Groover?? Laugh out loud stuff! Made me reread “Edge of the World” and I’d like to ask if you could see your way clear to also publish “The Isle where Women Rule. “ One other thing—looking at your site

where you display the Machine Man cover for next issue, all I can say is ‘Yuk!!!’ Do you have to have such bright, lollipop background colors?? The red and yellow particularly look garish. No depth at all. After the great covers you’ve done I find this one hard to believe! Wouldn’t it be better to color it more like the way Jack did his own tech stuff—like on page 165 of THE ART OF JACK KIRBY? Please? On page 4, you say the incomplete DEMON page was from DEMON #1. Yet the Policeman’s off-sider is from DEMON #2, not #1. And the dialogue in panel 1 is the same as that on page 2 of DEMON #2. Looks to me like Jack had this as DEMON #2 page 2, then junked it because those double-pagers of his wouldn’t work as pages 3 and 4 (unlike today where they’ll stick an ad on page 2!) Either that or, if the source of your identification is correct, #1 went through some BIG changes before print! Shane Foley, AUSTRALIA (Gee, Shane, I liked that coloring. But does anyone have info on that Cap redesign?) I’ve just spent a happy couple of hours digesting the latest TJKC. Excellent as ever. After reading the letter column with the theories on the evolution of NEW GODS #12, it occurs to me that the following may have been the sequence of events: DC intend to reprint NEW GODS as a 6issue Baxter series, meaning that half the last issue will be blank. Kirby is asked to come up with a story to fill the space and “finish” the NEW GODS saga. Kirby writes and draws the “Armagetto” tale; DC is not happy, but decides they’ll run the story anyway—but now as a lead-in to a new GN, which will finally conclude the story once and for all. Kirby writes and draws the 50-page GN conclusion “Even Gods Must Die!” DC is horrified by the deterioration of Kirby’s art, and less than amused by the unexpected death of Orion. They decide to switch “Armagetto” and “Even Gods Must Die!” and run the latter as the back-up in the Baxter NEW GODS #6. Kirby is instructed to use the already-completed “Armagetto” pages as the basis for a new, new GN, THE HUNGER DOGS. And the rest is history... Allan Harvey

Here’s a small curiosity that I discovered on an original Kirby TALES OF SUSPENSE page I recently acquired. It’s page 2 from TALES OF SUSPENSE #92 by Kirby and Joe Sinnott from 1967. It features the Avengers talking with Steve Rogers over a communication device that looks not that different from a cell phone! The curiosity is this: In the margins, Stan indicates he wants the images of the Wasp and Hawkeye in the fourth panel changed to the Scarlet Witch and Hercules. I’m assuming that Jack was able to make the changes because the Scarlet Witch costume is the original with the full headpiece that Jack was familiar with, not the simple tiara that she wore when the page was published. And looking at the panel more closely, when Hawkeye was changed to Hercules, no one remembered to erase the quiver of arrows on Hawkeye’s back. Joe Sinnott proceeded to ink those arrows right into the panel. And unless Hercules was taking archery lessons from Hawkeye, it’s an amusing gaffe. I submit the accompanying photos for submission. Note: Also in this issue is the famous “And it won’t be me!” Captain America line. Stan must have been overworked that month. Bruce Hannum, Saint Paul, MN Another interesting issue of TJKC (#47). I particularly enjoyed the interview with Jonathan Lethem and the FF storyboards. I’d certainly like to see more of them. It was also nice to see my contribution, although I was hoping that my article on the original art pages to FF #3 was going to appear here. It would have fit well with the Will Murray and Mike Evanier articles. Regarding George Klein. Having studied many pages of artwork that Timely/Atlas historian Michael Vassallo has, and having a good eye for detecting art styles, I am in complete agreement

that George Klein is indeed the inker of FF #1 and #2. Michael has done an exhaustive study of Klein’s trademark style and I hope this visual comparison makes it into print someday. On to some corrections. Barry Forshaw’s “Kirby Obscura” column is always a welcome addition. Although I’m not certain, I suspect that Kirby wrote as well as drew some of the early Atlas stories. Lee may have provided a plot (or not) but certain traits lead me to this theory. In “I Planted the Seeds of Doom!” the wording and the use of quotes (see page 2, panel 5: “I planted the flower in rich and for the next couple of days felt like “Gunga Din”...) point me in this direction. Barry also mentions that the Yellow Claw was Kirby’s creation when, in fact, Kirby came aboard with issue #2. The first issue was written by Al Feldstein (his first and only Marvel job) and drawn by Joe Maneely. Lee may have had a hand in creating the character as well. I am fairly certain that Kirby authored all the stories he drew. Onto the back cover. While the majority of the SUPER POWERS piece is inked by Mike Royer, there are corrections by another hand, notable on Aquaman, Wonder Woman and possibly the Flash. These touch-ups are likely the work of Dick Giordano. Nick Caputo (Nick, your article is slated for print soon; thanks for your patience! And yes, now that you mention it, that does look like a Giordano Aquaman face on the SUPER POWERS poster. Good eye!) In regards to theme ideas... I’m wondering if you could dedicate a few pages to Jack Kirby’s interest in the paranormal. It seems likely to me, after having read a great deal of his work, that Kirby did not view the paranormal merely as a

source for “nifty ideas.” It’s evident from his text piece in THE ETERNALS #1, and from various interviews, that Kirby had an open mind when it came to paranormal phenomena, perhaps most especially in regards to the subject of UFOs. I suspect that THE DEMON, BLACK MAGIC, and THE ETERNALS (just to name a few) reflect this deep belief in prevalent supernatural forces. Back in 1990, during a two-hour-long interview with J. Michael Straczynski on the L.A. radio show HOUR 25 (a complete transcript of this interview would be worth printing in TJKC, if you haven’t already done so), Kirby states at one point that when he was very young the rabbis in his neighborhood introduced him to the concept of demons who could possess human beings. “This kind of thing was very real,” Kirby says, “and I think it added to the type of storytelling that I would do later on in life.” I think it’s clear from the context of the quote that Kirby wasn’t referring only to THE DEMON series, but to his work as a whole. Extending the paranormal theme even further, it’s clear that Kirby’s interest in the UFO subject recurs consistently throughout his oeuvre. (The last page of CAPTAIN AMERICA ANNUAL #3, just as a minor example, is certainly suggestive in this regard.) Karl Roulston’s letter in TJKC #46 concerning Kirby’s 1958 “Face on Mars” story is another tantalizing indication of his fascination with the UFO/extraterrestrial subject. Kirby’s interest in such esoteric subject matter appears to have served as a major impetus for his most important creations. For someone who comes off as so pragmatic and down-to-earth in many of his interviews, perhaps this fascination with the paranormal would seem to come out of left field. However, it’s possible that this dualistic nature is what makes his work so compelling. His best stories represent a clash between his nononsense, rationalist street smarts and intensely mystical notions that border at times on the Gnostic and/or the Manichean. This dualism is certainly most evident in his Fourth World books. A very strange spilt personality, indeed. More than a few articles (perhaps an entire book) could be based around this subject. Robert Guffey

#48 Credits: John Morrow, Editor/Designer Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor Chris Irving, Production Assistant Eric Nolen-Weathington, Proofreader Rand Hoppe, Webmaster Tom Ziuko, Colorist Chris Fama, Art Restoration Bob Brodsky, Circulation Director, Cookiesoup Periodical Distribution, LLC SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Neal Adams • Terry Austin Dick Ayers • Gary Scott Beatty Jerry Boyd Robert L. Bryant, Jr. Jean Depelley • Mike Esposito Mark Evanier • Chris Fama Shane Foley • Barry Forshaw Glen Gold • Mick Gray David Hamilton • Peter Hansen Heritage Auctions • Rand Hoppe Phil Jecker • Sean Kleefeld Tom Kraft • Henry Kraus Henry Kujawa • Marty Lasick Paul Levine • Adam McGovern Craig McNamara Darrell McNeil Francois Narbonne • Chris Ng Johnny Nine • George Pérez Bernard Pras • Steve Robertson John Romita • Mike Royer Steve Rude • David Schwartz Tom Scioli • Joe Sinnott Greg Theakston Mike Thibodeaux • Steven Tice Douglas Toole • 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! 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!

NEXT ISSUE: Strap on your armor for JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #49, spotlighting Jack’s WARRIORS, such as Thor, Sgt. Fury, Challengers of the Unknown, the Losers, and others! Included is a rare Kirby interview (where Jack conveys what he really went through on the battlefields of WWII), a new interview with JERRY ORDWAY, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a look at hidden messages in Bill Everett’s Thor inks, an interview with Seven Soldiers writer GRANT MORRISON on his Kirby-inspired work, pencil art galleries, a complete 1950s story, an amazing Kirby wraparound Thor cover inked by JERRY ORDWAY, and more! It ships in August 2007, and the submission deadline is 5/31/07.

KIRBY FIVE-OH! (#50) It’s still too soon to spill the beans about our 50th anniversary issue, but the title above is a hint! Get all the details next issue! UPCOMING ISSUES (#51-UP) We’re not going anywhere after #50 wraps, and we’ve got some ideas for future issues. But let us hear yours! SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Submit artwork as: 1) Color or B&W photocopies. 2) 300ppi TIFF or JPEG scans 3) Originals (insured). Submit articles as: 1) E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com 2) ASCII or RTF text files. 3) Typed or laser printed pages. We’ll pay return postage and insurance for originals—please write or call first. Please include background information whenever possible.

Parting Shot

The flip-side of Jack’s ad artwork for Sega’s Thunderground video game, circa 1983. The final ad that incorporated this art can be seen in TJKC #15, but we’re unsure if the head-on shot on page 1 was ever used. Thunderground TM & ©2007 Sega Enterprises, Ltd..

JACK KIRBY (1917-1994) stands as comics’ most prolific talent, with a 50-year career wherein he created or co-created such iconic characters as THE FANTASTIC FOUR, SILVER SURFER, THE HULK, X-MEN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE NEW GODS, and a legion of others. These books pay tribute to him and his creations.

(176-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905023 Diamond Order Code: APR043058

(160-page trade paperback) $22 US ISBN: 9781893905016 Diamond Order Code: MAR042974

(240-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905009 Diamond Order Code: DEC032834

VOLUME 4

(240-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905320 Diamond Order Code: MAY043052

Reprints issues #16-19 of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, including the Tough Guys, DC, and Marvel theme issues, and a special issue detailing the intricacies of Jack’s art! Also included is a new special section with over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, featuring Jack’s uninked pencils from NEW GODS, MISTER MIRACLE, FOREVER PEOPLE, JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE SILVER SURFER, OMAC, and more! It features interviews with KIRBY, STAN LEE, FRANK MILLER, WILL EISNER, NEAL ADAMS, nearly the whole MARVEL BULLPEN (including JOHN BUSCEMA and JOHN ROMITA), and others, plus a KIRBY/STEVE RUDE cover!

VOLUME 5

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905573 Diamond Order Code: FEB063353

Reprints issues #20-22 of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, including the Kirby’s Women, Wackiest Work, and Villains issues, featuring interviews with JACK KIRBY and daughter LISA KIRBY, plus DAVE STEVENS, GIL KANE, BRUCE TIMM, STEVE RUDE, and MIKE “HELLBOY” MIGNOLA! Also features an unpublished Kirby story still in pencil, Jack’s original pencils to FANTASTIC FOUR #49 (from the fabled Galactus trilogy), and over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including Jack’s uninked pencils from THE DEMON, FOREVER PEOPLE, JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, ETERNALS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, BLACK PANTHER, and more, plus a KIRBY/DAVE STEVENS cover!

(60-page tabloid with COLOR) $24 US Diamond Order Code: OCT043208

(52-page comic book) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JAN042759

SUPPORT THE KIRBY MUSEUM: www.kirbymuseum.org

(160-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905559 Diamond Order Code: JAN063367

For the first time, JACK KIRBY’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHIC NOVEL is presented as it was created in 1975 (before being broken up and modified for the 1980s Pacific Comics series), reproduced from copies of Kirby’s uninked pencil art! This first “new” Kirby comic in years features page after page of prime pencils, and includes Jack’s unused CAPTAIN VICTORY SCREENPLAY, unseen art, an historical overview to put it in perspective, and more!

First conceptualized in the 1970s as a movie screenplay, SILVER STAR was too far ahead of its time for Hollywood, so artist JACK KIRBY adapted it as a six-issue mini-series in the 1980s, making it his final, great series. Now, the entire run is collected, this time reproduced from his powerful, uninked pencil art! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective!

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

Reprinting the fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED PORTFOLIO, completely remastered! Spotlights some of KIRBY’s finest art from all eras of his career, including 1930s pencil work, unused strips, illustrated World War II letters, 1950s pages, unpublished 1960s Marvel pencil pages and sketches, and Fourth World pencil art (done expressly for this portfolio in 1970)! We’ve gone back to the original art to ensure the best reproduction possible, and MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN have updated the Kirby biography from the original printing, and added a new Foreword explaining how this portfolio came to be! PLUS: We’ve recolored the original color plates, and added EIGHT NEW BLACK-&-WHITE PAGES, plus EIGHT NEW COLOR PAGES, including Jack’s four GODS posters (released separately in 1972), and four extra Kirby color pieces, all at tabloid size!

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

ORDER ONLINE: www.twomorrows.com

VOLUME 3

Reprints issues #13-15 of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR—the Horror, Thor, and Science-Fiction theme issues! There’s also a NEW special section with 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including uninked pencils from CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, JIMMY OLSEN, THE DEMON, NEW GODS, THE PRISONER, and more! Go behind-the-scenes of Jack’s career through interviews with KIRBY and his collaborators and admirers like DICK AYERS, CHIC STONE, WALTER SIMONSON, AL WILLIAMSON, and MIKE THIBODEAUX, and see page-after-page of rare and unpublished Kirby art! Features a 1960s Kirby cover, and an introduction by STEVE BISSETTE.

VOLUME 2

Reprints issues #10-12 of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR —the Humor, Hollywood, and International theme issues! Also included is a new special section detailing a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, profusely illustrated with photos, and more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including Jack’s uninked pencil art from THE PRISONER, NEW GODS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, HUNGER DOGS, JIMMY OLSEN, SHIELD, MACHINE MAN, THE ETERNALS, and more! Learn more about the King’s career through interviews with JACK AND ROZ KIRBY, JOHN BYRNE, STEVE GERBER, MARK EVANIER, ROGER STERN, MARV WOLFMAN, and others!

VOLUME 1

This colossal trade paperback reprints issues #1-9 of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, the highly-acclaimed magazine about comics’ most prodigious imagination: JACK KIRBY! Included are the low-distribution early issues, the Fourth World theme issue, and the Fantastic Four theme issue! Also includes over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including uninked pencils from THE PRISONER, NEW GODS, FANTASTIC FOUR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, HUNGER DOGS, JIMMY OLSEN, SHIELD, and more! Features interviews with KIRBY, JOE SIMON, MIKE ROYER, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, STEVE SHERMAN, and other Kirby collaborators, plus an introduction by MARK EVANIER.

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOLUMES 1-5, EDITED BY JOHN MORROW

JACK KIRBY BOOKS

During his 56-plus-year career in comic books, JOE SINNOTT has worked in every genre, from 1940s Timely Comics to Charlton Comics, Treasure Chest, and Dell as a top penciler. But his association with Marvel Comics in the ’60s as its top inker cemented his place in comics history. This book celebrates his career, as he demonstrates his passion for his craft, sharing his experiences working on Marvel’s leading titles with STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, and rare and unpublished artwork from his personal files. It features dozens of colleagues and co-workers paying tribute to Joe, plus an extended Art Gallery, and a Checklist of his career. Written by TIM LASIUTA, with a Foreword by STAN LEE, and Afterword by MARK EVANIER. (136-page softcover w/ COLOR) $22 US ISBN: 9781893905726 Diamond Order Code: MAR073744

In 1992, seven artists shook the comic book industry when they left their top-selling Marvel Comics titles to jointly form a new company named IMAGE COMICS! IMAGE COMICS: THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE is an unprecedented look at the history of this company, featuring interviews and art from popular Image founders ERIK LARSEN, JIM LEE, TODD MCFARLANE, WHILCE PORTACIO, MARC SILVESTRI and JIM VALENTINO. Also featured are many of finest creators who over the last fifteen years have been a part of the Image family, offering behind-thescenes details of the company’s successes and failures. There’s rare and unseen art, making this the most honest exploration ever taken of the controversial company whose success, influence and high production values changed the landscape of comics forever! Written by GEORGE KHOURY. Introduction by DAVE SIM. (280-page trade paperback) $39 US ISBN: 9781893905719 Diamond Order Code: MAR073745

BRUSH STROKES WITH GREATNESS: THE LIFE & ART OF JOE SINNOTT

(176-page paperback w/ COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905733 Diamond Order Code: MAR073747

Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of their storytelling and creative processes stepby-step. For this book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they “see” and “solve” the problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists’ processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches regarding storytelling and layout choices.

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

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(120-minute Std. Format DVD) $35 US ISBN: 9781893905771 • Ships July 2007

Shows the artist at work, discussing his art and career!

MODERN MASTERS: MICHAEL GOLDEN DVD

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905740 Diamond Order Code: APR074023

Features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from Golden’s files, plus an enormous sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art!

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 12: MICHAEL GOLDEN

(84-page magazine) $9 US Ships July 2007

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $9 US Ships July 2007

WORKING METHODS

WRITE NOW! #16 An in-depth TODD McFARLANE interview, STAN LEE, STEVE ENGLEHART, JIM STARLIN, GEORGE PÉREZ, and J.M. DeMATTEIS on writing the Silver Surfer, Nuts and Bolts script and pencil art from BRIAN BENDIS and FRANK CHO’s MIGHTY AVENGERS and from DAN SLOTT’s AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE, STAR TREK comics writers' roundtable Part 2, cover by MIKE ZECK, plus a FREE DRAW #14 PREVIEW!

DRAW! #14 Features in-depth interviews and step-bystep demos with DC Comics artist DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), plus Part 3 of editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, a new MAHNKE cover, and a FREE ALTER EGO #70 PREVIEW!

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

SUBSCRIPTIONS:

(208-page hardcover w/ COLOR) $44.95 ISBN: 9781893905764 Diamond Order Code: APR074019

(192-page softcover) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905757 Diamond Order Code: APR074018

The artist who made AMAZING SPIDERMAN Marvel’s #1-selling comic book in the 1960s talks about his life, his art, and his contemporaries! Authored by former Marvel Comics editor in chief and top writer ROY THOMAS, and noted historian JIM AMASH, it features the most definitive interview Romita’s ever given, about working with STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, following Spider-Man co-creator STEVE DITKO as artist on the strip, and more! Lavishly illustrated with Romita art, it’s a career overview of a comics master, and a firsthand history of the industry by one of its leading artists! Available in Softcover and Hardcover (with 16 extra color pages, dust jacket, and custom endleaves).

IMAGE COMICS

THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE

(100-page magazine) $9 US Ships July 2007

(108-page magazine) $9 US Ships July 2007

JOHN ROMITA... & ALL THAT JAZZ!

ALTER EGO #70 Spotlights ROY THOMAS's stint as Marvel’s editor-in-chief and major writer in the 1970s, with art and reminiscences of both BUSCEMAS, GIL KANE, ADAMS, ROMITA, CHAYKIN, BRUNNER, WRIGHTSON, PLOOG, EVERETT, PÉREZ, ROBBINS, and a passel of talented writers (including a guy named LEE)! Plus, Golden Age artist LILY RENEE, cover by GENE COLAN, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #5 PREVIEW!

ROUGH STUFF #5 NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED art galleries (complete with extensive commentaries by the artists) by PAUL SMITH, GIL KANE, CULLY HAMNER, DALE KEOWN, and ASHLEY WOOD, plus a feature interview and art by STEVE RUDE, an examination of JOHN ALBANO and TONY DeZUNIGA’s work on DC’s Jonah Hex, a new STEVE RUDE COVER, plus a FREE BACK ISSUE #23 PREVIEW!

BACK ISSUE #23 Comics Go Hollywood! Spider-Man roundtable with STAN LEE, JOHN ROMITA, SR., JIM SHOOTER, ERIK LARSEN, and others, STAR TREK comics writers' roundtable Part 1, Gladstone’s Disney comics line, behindthe-scenes at TV’s ISIS and THE FLASH (plus an interview with Flash’s JOHN WESLEY SHIPP), TV tie-in comics, bonus 8-page color ADAM HUGHES ART GALLERY and cover, plus a FREE WRITE NOW #16 PREVIEW!

GREAT NEW STUFF FROM TWOMORROWS!