Kirby Five-Oh! by TwoMorrows Publishing

& s. TM ic an om rm DC C e p Su 2008 ©

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Celebrating 50 Years of the “King” of Comics

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

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KIRBY FIVE-OH!

Edited by John Morrow Book design by John Morrow Proofreading by John Morrow and Adam McGovern Front cover inks/colors by Darwyn Cooke

Celebrating 50 Years Of The “King” Of Comics

Published by TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 web: www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com ISBN-13: 978-1-893905-89-4 • ISBN-10: 1-893905-89-6 First Printing • April 2008 • Printed in Canada ©2008 TwoMorrows Publishing. All rights reserved.

Dedicated to Dave Stevens, who passed away during the production of this book; a great artist, a great Kirby fan, and a great guy. (left) A 1969 lobby poster illustration for a college stage production of Julius Ceasar. See page 100 for Kirby’s full-color costume designs for the play. ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

The editor would like to thank the following 50 people who’ve helped immensely with The Jack Kirby Collector since 1994: Mark Alexander Jerry Boyd Robert L. Bryant, Jr. Jon Cooke Jean Depelley Paul Doolittle Mark Evanier Chris Fama Shane Foley David Folkman

George Khoury Lisa Kirby Roz Kirby Sean Kleefeld Peter Koch Richard Kolkman Richard Kyle Marty Lasick Adam McGovern Mark Miller

Barry Forshaw Mike Gartland Russ Garwood Glen Gold David Hamilton Chrissie Harper Charles Hatfield Rand Hoppe Richard Howell Frank Johnson

John Modica Glen Musial Chris Ng Eric Nolen-Weathington Marc Pacella Steve Robertson Mike Royer David Schwartz Steve Sherman Joe Sinnott

Ed Stelli Jim Steranko Greg Theakston Mike Thibodeaux Kirk Tilander Douglas Toole Pat Varker R.J. Vitone Ray Wyman, Jr. Tom Ziuko

And the artists who’ve collaborated with Jack Kirby on our covers for 50 issues: Neal Adams Dan Adkins Mike Allred Murphy Anderson Terry Austin Dick Ayers Steve Bissette Bill Black John Byrne Georgio Comolo Darwyn Cooke

Kevin Nowlan Jerry Ordway Reedman David Roach Marshall Rogers Alex Ross Mike Royer Joe Rubinstein Steve Rude P. Craig Russell Randy Sargent

Shane Foley Dick Giordano Al Gordon Alex Horley Richard Howell Klaus Janson Karl Kesel Ladronn Erik Larsen Mike Mignola Frank Miller

Mark Schultz Tom Scioli John Severin Walter Simonson Joe Sinnott Paul Smith Ken Steacy Jim Steranko Dave Stevens Ernie Stiner Chic Stone

Mike Thibodeaux Bruce Timm Alex Toth Trevor Von Eeden Matt Wagner Bob Wiacek Al Williamson Barry Windsor-Smith Ray Zone

And the contributors to this book: Neal Adams Mike Allred Jim Amash Jean-Marie Arnon Dick Ayers Gregg Bendian Jerry Boyd Tom Brevoort Frank Brunner Mike Burkey Len Callo Joe Casey Michael Chabon Daniel Clowes Gene Colan Darwyn Cooke Jon Cooke Jean Depelley

Junot Diaz John Dolmayan Shel Dorf Ryan Dunlavey Steve Englehart Michael Eury Mark Evanier Chris Fama Al Feldstein Danny Fingeroth John Fleskes Shane Foley David Folkman Barry Forshaw Scott Fresina Mike Gartland Michael T. Gilbert Glen David Gold

Matt Groening Geoff Grogan Chrissie Harper Dean Haspiel Charles Hatfield Russ Heath Heritage Comics Lee Hester Rand Hoppe Carmine Infantino Jack Kirby Estate Jack Kirby Museum Lisa Kirby Neal Kirby Sean Kleefeld Richard Kolkman Richard Kyle Erik Larsen

Paolo Leandri Stan Lee Mark Lewis Reed Man Dwayne McDuffie Adam McGovern Bob McLeod Harry Mendryk Mike Mignola Bill Morrison Grant Morrison Qui Nguyen Leo Ortolani Stefano Pavan George Pérez Bud Plant Stefano Priarone Dom Regan

Byron Roberts Steve Robertson John Romita, Jr. John Romita, Sr. Alex Ross Mike Royer Steve Rude Paul Sager Bill Schelly Mark Schultz Arlen Schumer David Schwartz Tom Scioli Marie Severin Steve Sherman David Siegel Joe Simon Gail Simone

Walter Simonson Joe Sinnott Brent Staples Jim Starlin Jim Steranko Dave Stevens Greg Theakston Mike Thibodeaux Roy Thomas Bruce Timm Jim Vadeboncouer, Jr. James Van Hise Fred Van Lente Rick Veitch R.J. Vitone Marv Wolfman Ray Wyman Tom Ziuko

A huge thanks to all of you, and to all our other contributors over the years! COPYRIGHTS: Batman, Beautiful Dreamer, Big Barda, Boy Commandos, Brooklyn, Challengers of the Unknown, Darkseid, Demon, Desaad, Dingbats of Danger Street, Dr. Fate, Female Furies, Firestorm, Flash, Forever People, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Guardian, Hawkman, Highfather, Hunger Dogs, In The Days Of The Mob, Jimmy Olsen, Justice League, Kalibak, Kamandi, Klarion, Knockout, Kobra, Lightray, Losers, Manhunter, Mark Moonrider, Martian Manhunter, Metron, Mister Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Oberon, OMAC, Orion, Red Tornado, Robin, Sandman, Sandy, Scrapper, Super Powers, Superman, Toxl, Wonder Woman TM & ©2008 DC Comics • Agent 13, Ant-Man, Avengers, Baron Zemo, Black Bolt, Black Knight, Black Panther, Blastaar, Bucky, Captain America, Crusader, Crystal, Daredevil, Devil Dinosaur, Doombots, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Dum-Dum Dugan, Ego, Eternals, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Forbush Man, Galactus, Giant-Man, Giganto, Gorgon, Hawkeye, Hercules, Him, Hulk, Ikaris, Impossible Man, Inhumans, Invincible Man, Iron Man, Jemiah, Kaa, Kang, Karnak, Ka-Zar, Machine Man, Magneto, Marvel Girl, Medusa, Nick Fury, Odin, Prester John, Princess Zanda, Quicksilver, Rama-Tut, Red Skull, Ruler of Earth, Scarlet Witch, Sentry, Sgt. Fury, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Triton, Ulik, Uni-Mind, Vision, Watcher, Wyatt Wingfoot, X-Men, Yellowjacket, ZZutak TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Black Magic, Boy Explorers, Bullseye, Fighting America, Foxhole, Race For The Moon, Stuntman, Young Romance TM & ©2008 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estate • “Julius Ceasar” characters, “When It Is Spring”, Astrals, Black Sphinx, Black Tiger, Bombast, Captain Glory , Captain Victory, Death Fingers, Galactic Bounty Hunters, Galaxy Green, Garm, Goozlebobber, NFL Pro art, Night Glider, Pharaoh, Satan’s Six, Silver Star, Starman Zero, Street Code, Surf Hunger, The Ape, The Horde, Tribes Trilogy TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate • 2001: A Space Odyssey TM & ©2008 Turner Entertainment • Airboy, Lord of Light TM & ©2008 the respective owner • Badge TM & ©2008 Big Bang Comics • Captain Justice TM & ©2008 Vampire Cowboys Inc. • Colossus TM & ©2008 Geoff Grogan • Destroyer Duck TM & ©2008 Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby Estate • Godland TM & ©2008 Joe Casey and Tom Scioli • Janus, Roxie’s Raiders, Thundarr TM & ©2008 Ruby Spears Productions • Madman TM & ©2008 Mike Allred • Nightworld, Idoru Jones TM & ©2008 Paolo Leandri and Adam McGovern • Quitter TM & ©2008 Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel • All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. • All artwork is ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. • All editorial matter is ©2008 the respective authors.

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PREFACE (by editor John Morrow) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 FOREWORD (by Mark Evanier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 INTRODUCTION (by Glen David Gold) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 50 BEST KIRBY STORIES (by John Morrow and a variety of Kirby experts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 50 BEST KIRBY COVERS (assembled by Jerry Boyd, as chosen by a galaxy of superstars) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 50 BEST EXAMPLES OF UNUSED KIRBY ART (by Shane Foley, Adam McGovern, and John Morrow) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 50-PAGE KIRBY ART GALLERY (by Jack Kirby—who else?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 COLOR GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 50 BEST KIRBY CHARACTER DESIGNS (by Sean Kleefeld) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 50 PEOPLE INFLUENCED BY JACK KIRBY (by Adam McGovern) . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 AFTERWORD (by editor John Morrow) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

STOP! This Book contains

Kirby’s FIFTY Best of Everything! Can yo u handle it?!

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hn Morrow Photo by Jo

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by John Morrow, editor of The Jack Kirby Collector magazine he picture at left was taken by me, at my one and only meeting with Jack Kirby in 1991. We only spoke for a few minutes, but thankfully I had the wherewithal to snap a shot to preserve the moment. He was gracious and polite, just like I’d always heard he was to his fans, and at the moment I had no idea how that brief encounter would eventually change my life, and lead me to create this magazine about him. Yes, you read correctly; contrary to appearances, what you hold in your hands is a magazine, not a book. It may look like a book, feel like a book, quack like a book... but at its core, it’s a magazine—issue #50 of The Jack Kirby Collector magazine, to be exact. I’ve been producing TJKC since 1994, and after producing the first thirty issues at standard Time magazine-size, I felt like the biggest imagination in the history of comic books should have the biggest magazine in the history of comics books, so I bumped it up to an 80-page tabloid-size monster with card stock covers. Now, to celebrate reaching the half-hundred mark, I figured it was time to take it the next step, and do one as a bona fide tabloid-size book, and title it Kirby Five-Oh! (a name that hit me as the Hawaii Five-O theme song inexplicably ran through my head). Since Jack was in comics for 50 years, it just seemed right. But make no mistake; there were 49 issues before this book, and #51 will appear a few months after this one is published, with many more to come— including Kirby One-Oh-Oh! a couple of decades from now, if I live that long. As I’ve watched the last fourteen years pass working on each new issue, I’d routinely make a game of sorts in thinking to myself, “What was Jack Kirby working on when he was my age?” Comparing his relative successes and failures at that age to my own, and thinking about what he still had ahead of him related to my own life, was sometimes a bit depressing in comparison—hey, I seriously doubt anything I create will be breaking box office records some day—but it’s a fun exercise nonetheless. I’m 45 years old as I write this, and my wondering what age 50 will be like was where much of the inspiration for this book came from. See, when Jack was 50 years old (he was born in 1917, so that would’ve been 1967 by my count), he’d just completed arguably the most prolific (and successful) creative period of his career, ushering in the Marvel Universe with Stan Lee. He co-created a score of characters that are now household names thanks to Hollywood, from the Fantastic Four and Hulk, to the X-Men, Silver Surfer, and Iron Man (with more certain to come). But at the half-century mark, he was getting more and more disgruntled about his treatment and lack of recognition (and compensation) at Marvel, the company he helped save from the brink of closing in the late 1950s. It’s reassuring to me that, though he pretty much bided his time in the latter 1960s (refusing to offer any more really lasting concepts to Marvel), he went on in the 1970s to produce my favorite Kirby work: the Fourth World, at DC Comics. Hey, there is hope after 50! Kirby at the 1939 World’s Fair, age 22. Note the bandaged hand, probably from a street fight. After five-oh issues of TJKC, I’m optimistic about what the future holds for both my magPhoto courtesy & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate. azine and me. And I figured, what better time to reflect on the past accomplishments in Kirby fandom than this book, which is a love-fest of TJKC contributors? So I rounded up the mag’s regular columnists and formed a panel of Kirby experts to pick the fifty best of everything Kirby, and then tracked down some contributors whose names will be familiar to readers who’ve been with us since those primeval days of 1994 when I used to hand-xerox this publication. Why use an illo of Superman as the cover art of this book, you may be asking? After all, Jack didn’t draw the character on many occasions, and when he did most prolifically (on Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen in the early 1970s), the management at DC Comics had other artists redraw the character’s head to match the company’s generic house style. But like Jack, Supes was there at the beginning of comic books (although Jack didn’t get a chance to work on the character until much later in his career). And this drawing is one Jack did for his daughter Lisa Kirby, who had graciously loaned it to me for use in my magazine. I’ve been saving it for just the right opportunity, and this seemed perfect. Seeing how Darwyn Cooke, one of the current keepers of the Kirby stylistic flame, spiffed it up, I think you’ll agree it was a great choice. So, after fifty issues, what’s left to learn about Jack? Hopefully a lot, but if nothing else, this book should serve as a refresher course for semi-jaded Kirby fans who’ve been with me since issue #1, and think they’ve seen it all. I know, in doing research for this volume, that I ran across a lot of art and anecdotes I’d long since forgotten about “King” Kirby, and it was a blast to re-experience them! Hopefully it will be for current TJKC readers too, and a real eye-opener for anyone out there who’s just discovering this magazine, and the “King” of comics. This book isn’t here to tell you Jack Kirby’s life story—a tale much too complex for any single book anyway (although the guy who wrote the Foreword on the next page is working on proving me wrong about that). It’s more a retrospective of the 50-year career of a man I only met once for a few minutes, yet I feel like I know him well enough to be on a first-name basis. From my encounters with other Kirby fans, many feel the same way—even those who never actually met him. His work spoke to us, and continues to do so, in a way that transcends any personal encounter with the man himself. And as long as that work exists, the man’s always with us. This book (excuse me, magazine) is a celebration of that work, and I’m delighted to have the honor of putting on the party. So welcome, have a seat, and enjoy. Fifty years of Kirby magic is about to unfold! ★

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by Mark Evanier s I’ve said many a time, the only bad thing about The Jack Kirby Collector is that Kirby didn’t live to see it. And hey, I just thought of another one: Roz didn’t live to see enough of it. Other than that, it’s wonderful. Every time another issue arrives, those of us who miss Jack get to spend a little more time with him. No, it’s not as good as the real thing—or even the real Thing, which is kind of what Jack was at times—but it’s a whole lot better than no Kirby at all. I am happy (“Happy?” Try “ecstatic.”) to report that Jack Kirby has never been more popular, more recognized, more valued... ...or more reprinted. The way it’s going, it won’t be long before every major work of his, as well as a great many lesser ones, will be back in print. And not just in print, but usually in deluxe, well-printed “keeper” collections that we can all keep on our shelves and read any time we want a little dose of comics’ most vibrant, imaginative talent. This includes the Kirby output that at the time of its original publication was declared uncommercial or unsuccessful or just plain ungood. It may have been outta sync with the marketplace when it came out—Jack was always a bit ahead of his era—but it has endured. New readers find it and old readers find it again. I don’t know how much credit, if any, I should give to John Morrow’s wonderful publication for this endurance. I mean, the work is the work. People seek it out now for purchase because it speaks to them, energizes them, means the world to them. Understandably, it leads to questions about its creator. The day does not pass that I do not hear from people who want to know more about the amazing man who concocted all that amazing imagination. I’m so delighted with The Jack Kirby Collector that I usually forget about my own book and tell the inquirers to grab up every issue they can of the magazine. The interest in Jack has been thrilling to me and also a little stunning. A few years ago, I was amazed at how often I was hearing people say, “I’m so sorry I never got to meet Jack.” My first thought was, “How could you not meet Jack?” He was so available to his fans, so open and approachable. Go to any San Diego Comic-Con of his lifetime, save for the one he missed, and Unused cover you could meet Jack. for Eternals #7 He’d stand around all (January 1977). day and make himEternals TM & ©2008 self available to anyMarvel Characters, Inc. one who wanted to meet him... and I mean just that: He’d

Kirby Five-Oh! Final:TJKC #44

(top) Jack stands as he signs autographs for fans at the 1979 San Diego ComicCon, and (above) Mark Evanier whisks him from his adoring public to have lunch. That’s comics writer Marv Wolfman peering from behind Kirby. Photos courtesy Shel Dorf.

(right) A self-portrait of Jack and wife Roz, whimsically recounting the couple’s arrival to Southern California in 1969. This was done for the 1983 San Diego Comic-Con program book. Artwork ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

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stand. Oh, once in a while, Roz would make him sit down, but Jack was never on his butt for very long except when he was drawing, and he didn’t draw at conventions. The folks who came up to meet him were almost always standing, so Jack was standing. Because to him, everyone was at least an equal, even total strangers. You were standing so he’d stand. Simple as that. As the two of you stood there, you could ask him anything and get an answer. It might not be an answer you understood and occasionally, it would have very little to do with your question. But by God, it would be an answer. Someone once said of a famous politician, “If you ask him about New York, he’ll have you in Bermuda by the time he stops answering.” Jack would have you on some other planet in some other galaxy— probably one he invented on the spot. And unlike the politician, he wouldn’t take you there because he was trying to sidestep a direct reply. Jack’s mind just wandered... here, there, everywhere. It was the same wonderful disconnect with reality that made his stories possible, so you just accepted it. And then one day, you couldn’t ask him anything. He was gone. That was a wrenching day for some of us. Jack had seemed like, to borrow the name of a Kirby comic, an Eternal. He was a constant and enriching presence in our industry and some of our lives. It was a few years after that—maybe seven or eight—that I began to hear the “Wish I’d met him” line and I realized how much time had passed. A whole new generation had discovered comics and Kirby (for most, those two discoveries go together) and they’d never had the chance to meet the man. He was gone before they got here. For them, for all of us, I’m so glad we have this magazine. You can get to meet Jack in some ways by reading his comics, but TwoMorrows gives us so many other vantage points. Fifty issues may seem like a big deal and in some ways, it is. Fifty issues? My God, how many publications of any kind last fifty issues? Especially ones with me in them? And yet... no offense, John... Fifty issues about Kirby? Piece o’ cake. There’s just so much to say about the man, so much to write about the work. And so much that remains to be said. Which is why I hope there’ll be another fifty and another fifty and another fifty... Jack Kirby: The gift that keeps on giving. ★ (Mark Evanier met Jack Kirby in 1969, worked as his assistant, and later became his official biographer, resulting in his just-released fullcolor hardcover book Kirby: King Of Comics, published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. He has written more than 500 comics for Gold Key, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics, several hundred hours of television (including Garfield) and is the author of several books including Mad Art (2002). He has three Emmy Award nominations, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award for animation from the Writers Guild of America.)

INTRODUCTION

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by Glen David Gold hen Jack Kirby was nine years old, and still Jacob Kurtzberg, his family lived in the Bowery. It was 1926, and he lay on the cusp between the old country (oral tradition, stories told to him by his mother) and the new country (Hollywood, The Black Pirate, The Covered Wagon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame). For a while, he also lay between life and death, overrun by pneumonia that sent him past medical cure and into delirium. So his mother called in the rabbis. Kirby later reported that: “They all gathered around my bed and chanted in Hebrew: ‘Demon, come out of this boy… What is your name, demon?’” He survived, but some kind of fever remained, and Jack Kirby began to draw. He drew each of his 25,000 published pages of art by starting in the upper-left-hand corner and continuing until he was finished at the lower right. Then he turned the page onto the stack of finished art and started on the next one. He didn’t sketch. He didn’t lay out lines of perspective. He didn’t erase. And sometimes he would find he’d drawn twenty-three pages that completely departed from the twenty-page story he’d thought he was doing. This was a man consumed by imagination (his wife, who clued into this early, stopped allowing him to drive). In 1968, he drew the twenty pages of Captain America #112 over one weekend, a Voltaire-on-Candide-like speed record unlikely to be surpassed. By the 1970s, the surface of his drawing table was so caked in pencil grit that the back of each page was covered in graphite seasoning. Observers said Kirby’s process was less like drawing than calling forth existing images from a blank page. I have wondered if he had eidetic imagery, in which the mind takes snapshots of memories, and in recalling them, the rememberer seems to project them onto whatever he’s looking at, in this case three-ply Strathmore. Kirby wasn’t known to have a swipe file, unless you count the world— which he apparently saw in a compelling way. When Roy Lichtenstein painted his iconic “Image Duplicator” in 1963, raising some of the definitive questions about the relationships among pop art, low art and high art, the panel he chose of all the panels in the world to sorta kinda duplicate was from The X-Men #1, originally drawn by that most definitive of comic book artists, Jack Kirby.

(top) Kirby’s final new work for comics, the cover of Action Comics #638 (February 1989), featured his character The Demon. Inks by Terry Austin. (center right) From the beginning of Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olsen, he never drew Superman’s symbol correctly. (above) Roy Lichtenstein’s take on Kirby’s panel detail from X-Men #1 (September 1963) with inks by Paul Reinman. Demon, Superman TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Magneto TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. “Image Duplicator” © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.

Why “definitive”? The superhero gig is a harsh one for creators— it seems that each person (or team) is allotted just one character that outlives them. Bob Kane and his many assistants got Batman— just Batman—and Siegel and Shuster got Superman. But Kirby? Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, Hulk, Sandman, Thor, New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle, each of them with supporting casts that could carry their own comic books. And what a variety of genres he contributed to (or pioneered): superheroes, westerns, romance, kid gangs, science-fiction, adventure, crime, horror, Classics Illustrated, animation, creator-owned independents, autobiography, and even, when things got slow in the 1950s, the bizarre Strange World of Your Dreams and Win a Prize comics. But… so what? Between presentations at the 2002 San Diego Comic-Con, Will Eisner mentioned he was uncomfortable calling Kirby someone with heavy artistic intent. I paraphrase, but Eisner felt Jack was mostly concerned with hitting his page count, telling good stories, and keeping his family fed. Not pursuing some aesthetic ideal—to seek that motive in Kirby’s work was, he suggested,

misguided. I happened to be holding the original artwork to the Devil Dinosaur #4 double-splash, which I turned around and showed Eisner—who took a moment, and said something uncharacteristic: “Okay, I might be wrong.” Kirby poses a problem in that his text is so dense, his surfaces so fully packed, his line so direct, there seems no room for subtext. And what could that subtext be? He wasn’t exactly holding up a mirror to life—he was best known for drawings of bulky men in funny clothing beating the daylights out of each other. Further, there is very little pure Kirby in the world. Mostly, he penciled, meaning he was at the mercy of inkers’ interpretations. And Kirby is famous mostly as co-creator. He worked with Joe Simon first, and then with Stan Lee, who wrote (and there are men who will debate the exact meaning of “wrote” with a passion that makes the whole God-versus-Darwin thing look like schoolboys arguing over comic books) some of Kirby’s most memorable stories at Marvel Comics. On his own, Kirby’s dialogue betrayed a tin ear, a hipster technopastiche something like Thomas Pynchon’s, groaning with the cargo-ship-tonnage conveying of theme. And what about that art? Kirby’s bodies were a mannerist parody of Gray’s Anatomy. Women’s feet were like angels’ tap shoes. The buttocks on a retreating hero could look like the groin of one charging at you. Every gangster, no matter the era, wore a striped suit and a hat, which seemed as thick and wooden as a scuppernong. Perhaps most damning: He could never properly make the “S” on Superman’s chest. But I get chills when I look at a Jack Kirby page. The art is emotionally-overwhelming, inimitable, and easily the most influential in superhero comics. Kirby was, for a great many professionals and fans, the best comic book artist of all time. They throw the word genius around, which I can’t evaluate, but it’s good to admit that certain words, like certain lit fuses, are in the room. Academic folklorists differentiate among folktale, legend, and myth. Folktales are fairytales, fiction, lacking the tensile narrative strength to fool even a child, populated by talking animals, goldspinning dwarves or (let’s say) men who dress in capes and fight crime. A legend is a story that may or may not be true about a character who may or may not have existed—Achilles, Abraham, George Washington. A myth, however, is the jackpot, the 800pound gorilla, the gravitation center of folklore, as it concerns events before the creation, the sacred play of gods and elemental figures that are beyond mere mortal ken. So: Jack Kirby, a legend in his field, was employed to tell folktales, which he did well enough, but he wanted more, to describe events he alone could see, and so he created myths. His abilities flourished due to a remarkable circumstance: at age fifty he could tell a continuous story for the first time. He had never before worked on the same character for more than a year or two; in 1966, however, he’d been focusing on the adventures and private lives of the Fantastic Four for about five years. It turned out that homeostasis was his enemy, and he began to expand, adding Inhumans, African superheroes, the Negative Zone (an anti-matter universe), new races (the Kree, enemy of the shapeshifting Skrulls he’d previously created), a perfect human being engineered by scientists (it goes badly for them), and a Microverse (ruled by a tyrant who manipulated emotions). Stan Lee dialogued much of this, but it’s evident from page notations that Kirby plotted more and more of these stories as he grew in audacity. In The Fantastic Four #48, having taken antagonists as far as they could, the plan (by Stan and Jack) was to have the Fantastic Four fight God. But since it was 1966, it had to be a stand-in for God, and so 7

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(above) Original pencils to the Devil Dinosaur #4 (July 1978) double-page spread that impressed a skeptical Will Eisner.

(below) Panel detail from the original pencil art for Fantastic Four #49 (April 1966), part of the Silver Surfer’s initial story arc. Devil Dinosaur, Moonboy, Silver Surfer TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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they cracked the idea of Galactus, a being as old as the universe, who eats planets to survive. When Kirby turned in his pages, however, Galactus had pulled a Godot. In his place, to Lee’s surprise, was a herald, coated in silver and riding the spaceways on a surfboard—which is inherently ridiculous, until you actually see him. In the Silver Surfer, Kirby had created the most noble-looking creature in the genre, a blank slate with empty eyes and a balletic range of body postures that somehow conveyed emotions—humility, anguish, betrayal, empathy—previously unexpressed in the world of long underwear. The Surfer was both Jesus Christ to Galactus’s God, and Adam, in that he rebels, embraces humanity and its various sins, and is punished by Galactus, who expels him from the wider

universe, forcing him to dwell, in Lee’s apt words, upon “the dunghills of man.” As Kirby’s imagination exploded, so did the storytelling. The “camera” moved closer, the characters’ expressions grew more vivid, the machines more complex, the violence more brutal. His forms became geometric and stylized. Every surface, including human skin, gleamed like chrome. Every starscape exploded with mysterious dots and “Kirby Krackle.” Fight scenes, which had already looked sweaty, and punches, which had already resonated with the crack of bone on bone, found extra volume; they went up to 11. When pencil wouldn’t cut it, Kirby got out the scissors and paste and made collages. The tensions brewing behind the scenes at Marvel Comics in the late 1960s have yet to be fully documented. Apparently, money was involved. So was creative control. There were profound misunderstandings between two honorable and creative men, Lee and Kirby. In 1968, Lee gave the Silver Surfer his own comic book, but did not ask Kirby to draw it. Kirby’s imagination seemed to dry up. Storylines in The Fantastic Four and Thor went stale. He began to add arbitrary splashes, as if eager to get each issue over with. In fact, he withheld his most interesting ideas, and in 1970 took them (and himself ) to rival publisher DC. There he launched New Gods, Forever People, and Mister Miracle, actually one incredibly complex saga that became known the “Fourth World.” If the Marvel work was his Ulysses, with Manhattan superheroes standing in for Dublin’s wandering rocks, then the Fourth World was his Finnegans Wake, an epic, dream-like story told in a language that was at times impenetrable. (If that metaphor strains credulity, I recommend an obscure but brilliant comic book called Boom Boom, in which David Lasky re-tells the life story of James Joyce using only panel swipes from Jack Kirby.) He created his own antipodal cosmopoles, New Genesis and Apokolips, worlds governed by equal parts science-fiction,

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Judaism and Lower East Side street ethics. His characters were fantastically colorful, flawed, Shakespearian in their triumphs or dooms. Each plotline became not just a series of fight scenes but an allegory about Vietnam, religious fervor, poverty, the nature of aggression and evil. The panels got bigger again, and double splashes became a normal part of each issue. And yet, it wasn’t popular. You had the sense as reader you were grabbing on to a train thundering down a mountainside at a dangerous clip, the scenery a blur. In part, Kirby was learning about his dreamworlds as he wrote; in part, it was hard to keep track of everything. None of the series lasted past eighteen issues. The remainder of his work is generally that of a man tired of having the rug yanked out from under him. In 1975, he returned to Marvel as the equivalent of a day player. And yet, at age sixty, he was still producing art like the Devil Dinosaur doublesplash, which illustrates an ancient myth about a dragon that eats the moon. At a glance, it’s abstract, and yet, like his fantastic machinery, each element resolves into something entirely functional. Freud, who was onto myths like a hawk on field mice, suggested that myths were sacred because they were, by avenues not yet understood, public dreams. So, sidestepping that “genius” epithet, here’s a title we might agree upon: Jack Kirby, public dreamer. And yet… when I ran my thesis statement about myths and Kirby past Rob Stolzer, an art professor at the University of Wisconsin, he was polite but unconvinced. “Look at those Kirby crowd scenes—there’s a reason there’s always a soldier pointing toward us, and yelling— he’s talking to us!” What works isn’t necessarily the cosmic, but its relationship to the small person in the foreground. When Steve Rogers became Captain America in 1940, he wasn’t a millionaire playboy, scientist, or last survivor of the planet Krypton—he was a 4F draftee. Thor wasn’t just the god of thunder, he was a man (a lame physician), as well as a son and brother tormented by a dysfunctional, immortal family. They are our family, we are their relatives; we are at our best all characters in a Jack Kirby story. That link of myth, folktale, and our own dynamics is why they thrive. Read classicist Edith Hamilton again, and you’ll see that myths have survived not because of their dressing, but because of their emotional content. When you strip away the women turning into laurel trees, you’re left with love, lust, anger, desire—exactly what fuels Kirby’s best work. It’s almost blindingly personal, and not necessarily for the reader. I think no matter how outlandish, as Kirby matured, his stories were autobiographical. What was the last interesting character Jack created under his contract with DC? One funnelled onto the page direct from a nine-year-old boy’s consciousness: The Demon. The 1968 Silver Surfer comic book—made without Kirby’s involvement—failed. In 1970, Lee (somewhat insultingly) called Kirby to do a fill-in issue. It ended up being the last, or almost last, work Jack did for Marvel before leaving. And for eighteen of its twenty pages, it’s uninspired. Fight, fight, fight. Misunderstandings lead to more fights. But then, on page nineteen, depriving readers and management of the final confrontation they wanted to see, the Surfer streaks away. It’s hard not to read this as driven by Kirby taking his toys and declaring one last time ownership of a defeated, embittered Silver Surfer. Look at the gathering darkness on this page, how the tiers go from mostly white to mostly black, how the horizontal speed lines at the top become, as he slows, diagonal slashes and vertical mountain features in the middle tier. And that last tier! Accumulating Kirby Krackle, a full cosmic storm, as the Surfer sulks, finds focus, begins to stand. Look how the inking (by Herb Trimpe), though black enough, doesn’t even capture all the pencil work behind it— Kirby had turned this page into full graphite fury. And then, that final splash: look at the horrific anger of a

fully-betrayed face. Kirby’s last piece of art from his glory days of Marvel. There is no one in costume here, just a Kirby cipher standing in for all the hurt done to him. From nothing—from the dust of pencils, from a genre populated by blockheads, from a fill-in job on a book heading for the trash heap, from the dunghill of a career he felt none too good about—Kirby has made a mythic figure, and yet also made him personal. And that’s the kind of resonance that makes the artwork actually matter—the connection of the epic and the emotional. Kirby felt it, he had the Surfer feel it, and then readers felt it too. Kirby elevates all of us into a realm where we fly among the beating wings of the immortal and the omnipotent, the gods and monsters, so that we, dreamers all, can play host to the demons of creation, can become our own myths. ★

This essay was originally published in Masters of American Comics, The Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2005, under the title “Lo!!! From the Demon Shall Come—The Public Dreamer!!!” (Glen David Gold is the author of the novels Carter Beats the Devil and the forthcoming Sunnyside. He has written essays, short stories and memoir for McSweeney’s, Playboy and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. In spite of a successful experience with therapy, he still covets Jack Kirby artwork.) 9

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Fifty Best Kirby Stories Chosen by John Morrow, with the able assistance of a variety of Kirby experts 11

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n the surface it seems a simple question: “What’s the best Kirby story of all time?” But when I posed that query to an esteemed panel of Kirby afficionados (and asked them to include a description of why), the most telling response I got was from Glen Gold, who said, “There’s no answer to that question. And I bet that just about everyone who has an answer will look at the other answers when they’re printed, and say, ‘Oh yeah, I should have picked that one.’ Might I suggest this is why TJKC has run 50 issues so far?” Indeed, almost every response began with some variation of, “That’s like asking me which of my children is my favorite,” but most everyone gave it a shot anyway. Armed with their responses, I set out to compile a list of the best Kirby story from each year of his half-century career in comics. Needless to say, a lot of respondents’ favorite stories were

from the same year (1966 and 1972 were especially popular), so I had to make the final call on what was that year’s best story. I also factored in responses from our readers’ poll done in The Jack Kirby Collector #13 (way back in 1996), and made my own choices for years that weren’t represented by our guest judges, with plenty of help from Shane Foley and Adam McGovern—so if you don’t agree with a given year’s winner, don’t just blame me! The criteria for judging was simple: I’d allow story arcs as well as individual stories, and I included multi-year arcs in the year the first issue was dated. Also, I gave extra weight to first appearances and historically pivotal issues, but in some cases, a less key issue still won out. On the next page is the final tally, narrowing it down to one story per year. But what, you ask, is considered the #1 best story of Kirby’s 50-year career? That, dear reader, is for you to decide, and considering the wide variety of choices listed, your #1 might very likely not even be on this list. Still, what’s compiled here is a great starting point for anyone who wants to know more about the best work of Jack Kirby. You can’t go wrong with any story represented here, and since there were so many gems in Kirby’s career, I’ve also included some of the commentaries about the winners and runners-up for years where it was a close decision. Our panel includes: SHANE FOLEY regular contributor to The Jack Kirby Collector

BARRY FORSHAW columnist for The Jack Kirby Collector

MIKE GARTLAND author of TJKC ’s “A Failure To Communicate” series

TOM ZIUKO top pro colorist

DAVID SCHWARTZ Kirby family friend

ADAM McGOVERN columnist for The Jack Kirby Collector

RICHARD KOLKMAN caretaker of The Jack Kirby Checklist

RAY WYMAN author of The Art of Jack Kirby

CHRIS FAMA comic art restoration expert

CHRISSIE HARPER editor of Jack Kirby Quarterly

You can see examples of Jack’s art from these stories in the gallery on page 45. But now, on to their erudite comments: 12

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YEAR

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COMIC

TITLE

1938

Jumbo Comics #1

“Diary of Dr. Hayward” and “Wilton of the West” newspaper reprints, first comic book work

1939

Famous Funnies #62

“Lightnin’ and the Lone Rider” newspaper strip reprints

1940

Blue Bolt #2

“Blue Bolt”, first Simon & Kirby story

1941

Captain America Comics #1

“Case #1: Meet Captain America”

1942

Star Spangled Comics #7

“Newsboy Legion”, first mainstream Kid Gang

1943

Star Spangled Comics #19

“The Fuhrer of Suicide Slum”

1944

Detective Comics #83

“Triumph of Cholly The Chimp”

1945

Adventure Comics #100

“Sweets For Swag”, first post-WWII work, only actual story published in 1945

1946

Boy Explorers #1

“Talent for Trouble”

1947

Young Romance #1

“I Was A Pick-Up”, first romance comic

1948

Justice Traps The Guilty #4

“Queen of the Speed-Ball Mob”

1949

Young Love #1

“Woman-hater”

1950

Young Romance Volume 4, #6

“Different”

1951

Boys’ Ranch #3

“Mother Delilah”

1952

Strange World Of Your Dreams #1

“I Talked With My Dead Wife”

1953

Captain 3-D #1

“The Man From The World Of D”

1954

Foxhole #2

“Booby Trap”

1955

Fighting American #6

“Super Khakalovitch”

1956

Astonishing #56

“Afraid To Dream”, first Silver Age Marvel work

1957

Showcase #11

“‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’”

1958

Challengers of the Unknown #4

“The Wizard of Time”

1959

Adventure Comics #256

“The Green Arrow’s First Case”

1960

Tales of Suspense #11

“I Created Sporr, The Thing That Could Not Die”

1961

Fantastic Four #1

“The Fantastic Four”

1962

Fantastic Four #6

“Captives Of The Deadly Duo”

1963

Fantastic Four Annual #1

“Sub-Mariner Vs. The Human Race”

1964

Sgt. Fury #13

“Captain America And Bucky”

1965

Fantastic Four #39-40

“A Blind Man Shall Lead Them”, “Battle Of The Baxter Building”

1966

Fantastic Four #48-50

The Galactus Trilogy

1967

Fantastic Four #62

“And One Shall Save Him”

1968

Fantastic Four Special #6

“Let There Be Life”

1969

Fantastic Four #84-87

The Latveria Saga

1970

Fantastic Four #94

“The Return Of The Frightful Four”

1971

New Gods #6

“The Glory Boat”

1972

Mister Miracle #9

“Himon”

1973

Kamandi #11-14

The Sacker Saga

1974

OMAC #1

“Brother Eye And Buddy Blank”

1975

Our Fighting Forces #159

“Mile-A-Minute Jones”

1976

Captain America #193-200

The Madbomb Saga

1977

Eternals #8-10

The Karkas/Reject saga

1978

Silver Surfer Graphic Novel

“The Silver Surfer”

1979

Satan’s Six #1

“Satan’s Six” (not published until 1993)

1980

Thundarr The Barbarian newspaper strip

“Thundarr The Barbarian”

1981

Captain Victory #1-2

“Captain Victory”, “Death Hive, USA”

1982

Destroyer Duck #1

“It’s Got The Whole World In Its Hand”

1983

Argosy Volume 3, #2

“Street Code” (not published until 1990)

1984

Super Powers #5

“Spaceship Earth: We’re All On It”

1985

Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel

“On The Road To Armagetto”

1986

Super Powers II #6

“Darkseid Of The Moon”

1987-on

Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure

“The Menace Of The Mega-Men” (unused Fantastic Four #102 story, finally published in 2008) 13

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1964 antastic Four Annual #2, “The Final Victory of Dr. Doom.” Here, the FF and Dr. Doom all come of age and get to be as good as we all thought. Doom’s status as a master villain was finally achieved, no longer running round like any old bad guy; now he truly sat behind the scenes scheming and effortlessly manipulating events around him. He’d come closer to being a true ‘master villain’ in FF #23 with his scheming, mastery of robotics and use of the ‘solar wave’ (what a terrifying concept that was), but here, he was brilliant. As well as focusing on his scientific wizardry, his status as a king was revealed in his origin. His past/future was shown to be shrouded in mystery and linked somehow to Rama-Tut (in an exchange that actually made no sense at all, but sounded creepily credible to this young reader). And his despair over his imperfect (scarred? grotesque?) face rose to new levels, with his admission to himself that even defeating the FF would not relieve his heartache. Indeed, his inability to accept his defect became the turning point in the story, and the outcome, contrived by Reed Richards, was truly satisfying. –Shane Foley

1965 et’s see: FF #48-51, #57-60, Thor #154-157, X-Men #11-16, Cap (Tales of Suspense) #72-74, #79-81, #92-94, New Gods #7, #11, Forever People #5-8, etc... There’s too many, John—yer killin’ me! But if you insist: Journey into Mystery #118-119. I’d have to say, page for page, a perfect blend of Kirby action, drama and suspense, with all of the main characters involved in their own crisis. One of those stories where Lee’s scripting of a Kirby story definitely helps the drama; and for those who want to believe that this story came out of Lee’s “fertile” imagination, well then... congratulate yourself; your imagination is just as fertile. ‘Nuff Said, true deceiver! –Mike Gartland

1966 antastic Four #51 is my favorite Kirby story as well—because it touches on the timeless human themes of loss, greed, envy, sacrifice, honor, and ultimately redemption—and in doing so becomes the perfect synthesis of Stan and Jack at the peak of their powers. If you’ve read the story, you know what I’m talking about—if you haven’t, I won’t spoil it by going into the details. Find it. Read it. Long Live The King. –Tom Ziuko

1944 irby came back from World War II fairly tight-lipped about his experiences “over there”, as did many other G.I.s who experienced the atrocities of battle. But later in life, he did open up, and managed to tell some fascinating war stories—not the ones on a comics page, but one-on-one with friends and family. I think these are more riveting than anything he ever drew, so Jack’s own war stories get my vote. –John Morrow

1950 nlike other romances that I’ve seen, the Simon & Kirby romances are gritty and hard hitting. “Gang Sweetheart” from Young Romance Volume 3, #11 is an amazing glimpse into the desperate efforts of a young lady to keep her boyfriend from ‘the wrong side of the tracks’ from descending like so many others into a life of crime. There is hope at the end, but no promise of an easy life together. –Shane Foley

1957 howcase #11—the 3rd Challengers of the Unknown story: “The Day the Earth Blew Up.” All the creative elements of his ’50s work that would flower into what we see in Marvel were here in a story that would later take three or four issues to tell. Wild imagination spectacularly realized. Kirby was changing. –Shane Foley

1958 riginal American comics were a rarity in the North of England when I first saw Challengers of the Unknown #4 (“The Wizard of Time”) in all its full-colored splendor. The Challs’ best-ever story leaps across the centuries from ancient Egypt (where the Challs are co-opted into a little hard labor on the Pyramids) to a wonderfully realized far future. Three of the strongest splash panels in the King’s career, a riot of imaginative art, and (the icing on the cake) Wally Wood’s impeccable inks bringing out the very best in Kirby’s pencils. The very finest single Kirby story! –Barry Forshaw

y favorite Kirby story is “This Man, This Monster” from Fantastic Four #51. The humanity in that story had incredible depth to it. All of the elements to that story showed a deep emotional connection between the characters that I’d never seen before in comics, and have rarely seen since. –David Schwartz

antastic Four #57. Heavyweight guest stars by the ton (not walking in for bit parts, but with real lives and character); the day to day lives of the FF; the jail break by the Wizard and Sandman; Sandman’s subsequent breaking into the Baxter Building to steal equipment, but his leaving the most valuable stuff behind because he didn’t recognize it; and the magnificence and naivety of the Silver Surfer who became putty in the hands of the master manipulator Dr. Doom. By the issue’s end, a truly terrifying scenario was set up. Kirby’s art and inventiveness (together with Lee’s scripting and Sinnott’s inking) was never better. To me, this was the strongest of the story’s four chapters and easily one of the strongest issues they ever did. Maybe the best? –Shane Foley

hor #131-133: Amazing visuals and creativity by Kirby produced my favorite Thor story, with the character of the Recorder a typical Marvel/Kirby strong point of the time. Only the weak ‘let’s hurry up and go home’ quick ending marred these beautiful issues. (A common problem, even for the great King, was the ‘quick fix’ finish, the worst being, in my book, FF Annual #3.) –Shane Foley

ourney Into Mystery #125: Who but Kirby would take a plot that’s been developed for months and resolve it in a couple of panels, so that he could get on with one he found more interesting? Such was the fate of the Demon! At this stage in Marvel’s life, it all worked wonderfully. –Shane Foley

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1967 antastic Four #62: The coldness and other-worldliness of Subspace (not the Negative Zone, Stan!)—the helplessness and wonderful interaction of the FF—the Inhumans—always better in their aloof, god-like supporting role they had in the FF. –Shane Foley

1969 antastic Four #87: The greatest downbeat ending of all. The depth of Kirby’s villains’ personalities was rarely better. –Shane Foley

F F

antastic Four #84-87, “The Name is Doom,” “Within This Tortured Land,” “The Victims” & “The Power and the Pride”: Kirby’s famous for anticipating landmark movies (Star Wars above all), but he spent years remaking and even improving classic movies in comics form too (from the Newsboy Legion’s noirish Dead End Kids city onward). In the TV age he did the same favor, inventively incorporating the design of Patrick McGoohan’s artthriller The Prisoner into this four-parter. Dr. Doom’s Balkan dystopia gave Kirby a perfect analogue for the TV series’ weird theme-park dictatorship, and the show’s battle of wits between state and individual seemed to influence the intellectual challenge and moral ambiguities with which Lee and Kirby put the Reed/ Doom conflict many cuts above the usual comic-book fistfight and raygun battle, here and elsewhere. –Adam McGovern 1970 antastic Four #94: One of those mysterious little tales Jack does so well—where the heroes are pawns to what is happening around them. –Shane Foley

1971 ew Gods #1: Jack is superb introducing his concepts and characters and moving the story forward with a real sense of meaningful confrontation ahead! –Shane Foley

rue Divorce Cases, unpublished: Not a story, exactly, since no full segments of this unpublished anthology have ever been shown all together, but the untold tale of how this comic came about and why it disappeared before it could start is one of Kirby’s

most fascinating. Kirby co-invented romance comics, and the valuesquestioning ’70s demanded a breakup comic; DC got cold feet about their grownup magazine-comic line before they could commit to this one. The fragmentary pages that have surfaced are among Kirby’s greatest, and it’s only fitting that they’re distant from each other, essentially unsatisfied. The King of stuff blowin’ up tried to make a masterwork about post-’60s things falling apart, too. –Adam McGovern orever People #6: Like FF #57 or #62, this is just one event in the middle of a much larger storyline but which I feel has a special atmosphere all its own. Here the young heroes win, then are thrust into panic as their real enemy turns on them. The impossibility of their escape and the utter suddenness of their ‘extinction’ at Darkseid’s hands is expertly handled by Kirby. When Serifan is left standing alone and ignored at the climax, you can feel his emptiness and despair. It is gut wrenching. Apart from the ‘timetravel’ angle (which I feel was a bit of a cop-out! This would have been an excellent final issue of Forever People), Kirby produced a wonderful (terrible!) atmosphere. –Shane Foley

1972 y favorite Kirby story is, “Toxl, The World Killer” from Weird Mystery Tales #2. It was one of the two stories that blew my safe comic book life apart on a July day in 1972. At 10 years old, I enjoyed entertaining but predictable comics such as Peanuts, Superman and Batman. In February 1972, I became entranced by a mysterious DC book ad (in Superman #251) proclaiming that Kirby was Unleashed! Who were the beings on the dark, foreboding cover? Who was Kirby? And more importantly, where could I get $4? The first Kirby comic I ever saw was Forever People #8. It haunted me from the spinning rack. It was an invitation to a comics world that offered mature and sinister secrets far beyond familiar comic book antics. The spinner rack was a fickle mistress. 36 years ago, comics were a hit-or-miss commodity with a short shelf life in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I had to leave Forever People #8 behind. I obsessed over that comic. Apparently, there existed sophisticated, mature comics that overtly displayed the “next level” of comics evolution.

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One day, I finally purchased three Kirby comics: Weird Mystery Tales #2, The Demon #2, and Mister Miracle #10. In Weird Mystery’s “Toxl”, Earth explodes, barbarians invade a highly weaponized factory (complete with exploding power core, just like later in Star Wars), sexy women dance amid tribal violence, all wrapped in a gritty (but Royer smooth), realistic powerhouse of comic design. The story is accelerated in a way that makes reading comics effortless. Kirby’s visual design always flowed forward. Kirby art looked real. From the off-panel line arcs of the sexy dancers, to the molten chunks of a silently exploding Earth, it was simply the best story ever. And it was a pretty good comic, too. “Toxl” opened my mind that day to the concept of time as a contained loop. Our future might be in our past! I believed that it could be true. After all, Dr. Maas displays an ancient artifact that still has enough power to pull a metal box across the desk. In the final panel of “Toxl,” the artifact points directly across to the opposite page—a clue to the new direction. Two big arrows point to Swamp Thing #1 and Kamandi #1. A broader world of comics (and thinking) now beckoned, thanks to Jack Kirby’s magic key. My lemonade stand failed that day. I remember pouring free drinks and not caring about the money as I also read Demon #2. This supernatural comic featured battles in flames, living statues, and a fossil skull that crumbled to dust with the touch of age! “Hounds of Satan!” Right before my ears, it was here—a new medieval war cry. Mister Miracle #10 was okay. It was another superhero book, except with a floating head, and Female Furies. –Richard Kolkman fter rereading many stories I have in my archives, New Gods #7 (“The Pact”) still reaches me. It’s a bit like that sauce, everything is in there: family, love, hate, betrayal—on a godly scale with such universal consequences that it’ll make you pull the bedcovers over your head. This story triggered a few long discussions I had with Jack about the nature of God’s relationship with humankind. Few people know how deeply spiritual he was—and

how insightful he was toward other religions. He said some things to me about the commonalities between Jews and Christians that blew my mind. So I see this story as having many of those deeper qualities of spirituality that made him such a riveting storyteller. And I also believe that it clearly shatters any mythology that Jack—at any time in his career—only drew stories and left the writing to others. –Ray Wyman ister Miracle #7-8: “Beyond greyborders, towards night time, the real evil of Apokolips becomes evident.” When the prodigal finally returns and after Barda and Oberon hilariously show their affection for each other, Kirby waxes his most poetic and produces startling images of the characters of Apokolips. “And now, in long-shadow—on the road to night time—a new name emerges...” Amidst Kirby’s insane and outlandish scenarios, his characters live, and none more so than Kanto, the artist assassin. Never was there a better written villain, and never did characterization run so deep as when Granny, Kanto, Vermin, and Tigra sat together in Section Zero. (And never was Mike Royer’s inking better than in these issues!) –Shane Foley

ister Miracle #8, “The Battle of the Id”: I think the splash page panorama of Barda’s all-woman militia in various stages of dis-armor may have actually induced puberty in me. But it wasn’t that simple—where else in the history of art, feminist or pig, is there an image quite the equal of this? It’s like an Ingres harem meets the locker room of the 300 Spartans. It didn’t end there, in this series about a gentle male in perpetual bondage (Scott Free, Super Escape Artist) and his amazon soulmate (Barda). In this particular issue, the Russ Meyerish Female Furies and Orion’s magisterial middle-aged mom rescue Scott from a telepathic VR struggle with a super-intelligent, physically immobile and hideous foe, The Lump, who’s eventually defeated by the sight of himself (male ego turned toxic). Wonder Woman made the cover of Ms., but Kirby also knew which ways the ’70s were swinging. –Adam McGovern

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ew Gods #8: As Kalibak comes to earth and wreaks havoc, Turpin is forced to take him on and Orion’s true appearance is revealed. Kirby injects real meaning into his over the top battles! –Shane Foley

ister Miracle #9, “Himon”: The personal exodus of Scott Free from child soldier to prophet of inner peace and self-possession. This was the nightmare fairytale that encompassed all the horrors of the century Kirby witnessed and all the hopes he had for the generation that came next. Unprecedented for its artform, eternal in its truth. –Adam McGovern

amandi #1: What a crammed full origin story. Kamandi’s loneliness and the introduction to the mad animal world are full of action and character. –Shane Foley

orever People #7, “Lonar of New Genesis and his Battle-Horse Thunderer”: Kirby could see a planet in a grain of sand, and think up just as many, and his gift at expansive detail in economical spaces is never more evident than in this obscure backup story where Lonar, the freegan luddite who lives off New Genesis’ hightech grid, meets a pre-war Orion disporting on the planet’s undeveloped surface in a kind of ecotourism psychotherapy. Lonar and Orion discuss the Old Gods’ suicidal demise while one of the dead deities’ surviving warhorses communes with and then recoils from Orion’s troubled spirit. In two pages, we get priceless backstory on the characters and their world, philosophical mysteries and psychological insights. Only Kirby could do a filler story that fills out his saga and fills up his readers like this. –Adam McGovern

emon #1-2: Another fabulous introductory and origin story! A great sense of the strange and the mysterious. –Shane Foley

1973 amandi #9-10: Kirby’s wild, unfettered imagination was running riot here (to use Charles Hatfield’s words for ‘The Glory Boat’: “beautiful and insane!”). Jack was clearly having a ball playing with his post apocalyptic ‘NASA’. (There were no talking animals at all in this story, and it has made me wonder if it wasn’t a modified and revamped version of a Fourth World concept Jack had in his mind. The Misfit and mutant bats could easily have been an extension of the DNA Project. Only guessing of course!) The following story was nearly as good too! –Shane Foley

amandi #9-10, “Tracking Site” and “The Killer Germ”: Nothing makes the apocalypse scarier than the notion that it provides not a dreaded erasure of civilization but a desirable clean slate. Kirby wasn’t sure which was worse—his post-disaster hero Kamandi was continually struggling to start a new human civilization while living the consequences of the last one. An apex of this sad ambivalence was the Tracking Site story, which packs the dread of five zombie movies into the tale of a surviving high-tech horror from the lost world we’re supposed to be mourning. In Kirby’s universe it’s always clear who the goodguys are; their ability to do any good is what’s in question. Years before the one-dimensional darkness of many super-antiheroes, Kirby’s shiny surfaces held some of the scariest moral shadows. –Adam McGovern

amandi #11-14: The ebb and flow of this story, with Kamandi in control, then out of it again, was terrific. He refuses to race but ends up racing after all; he find’s Flower’s sister Spirit, but Spirit is tied to the horrible snake Sacker. Humans kill each other for the prize of a cake. Kirby has great action and symbolic human drama in this beauty! –Shane Foley

1974 MAC #1: A Clockwork Office—cubicle-drone Buddy Blank endures employee-abuse and considers therapeutic vandalism rooms and crying booths in a dystopian workplace that turns out to be producing exploding robot prostitutes to assassinate world leaders for the highest bidders. But that’s okay, since Buddy’s on track to be transformed against his will into a genetically-perfected

supersoldier by a sentient satellite computer to police the world. Soldier as working-stiff converted to human weapon? Human as expendable interface for electronic toys? Dubious sex as the first application for all new technologies? Kirby the absurdist saw it all, and was in full command of his delirious visions here. –Adam McGovern 1975 ur Fighting Forces (Losers) #155: Kirby always tells a good, solid story, but every so often one sits up and surprises! For me, “The Partisans” was one such story. Treading the balance between being mysterious and overly obscure, this is one of the most effective ghost stories I’ve read. Sarge is beautifully written throughout, totally out of his depth, alone and desperate. Kirby shows his artistic mastery in that though his Sarge is typically powerful in appearance, he never feels invincible. Before the oncoming tank, he has no chance. And the scene of him sitting totally shell-shocked and punch-drunk amidst the carnage on page 16 shows not a superhero but a strong man reduced to helplessness. –Shane Foley

y favorite Kirby story is “Panama Fattie” from Jack’s run on the Losers (Our Fighting Forces #157). This was one of the first Kirby comics I bought where I became fully aware of Jack’s awesome talent. How many guys would write a story where a chiselchinned war hero falls for an overweight criminal and traitor? Many of the books from this period hold fond memories as I was 13 and just starting to understand Kirby’s style and superior skills. I was living in Belgium, and American comics got little shelf space, but somehow we were graced with this title. –Chris Fama

ur Fighting Forces #159, “Mile-a-Minute Jones”: A black winner of Hitler’s Olympics now serving in FDR’s segregated army meets a former friendly competitor now in a Nazi uniform. The two men’s surreal reenactment of their rivalry and its downbeat denouement make for the most honest accounting of the Western world’s unreconciled racial realities seen in comics to that time. Emotional realism from the medium’s most notorious stylist. –Adam McGovern

1977 ternals #8: The intros to the Eternals’ world were over and Kirby now gets down to business. “The City of Toads”—one chapter in a longer story—is Kirby at his writing best. Very real human dilemmas dramatized beautifully in the conundrum of the Deviants’ condition. Kirby was in top philosophical form, but rather than this interrupting the story flow, it was an integral part of it and thrust the story and its motivations forward. This was thinking stuff. The paradox and difficulty of Kro and Thena’s relationship, her criticism of Lemuria’s ‘Purity Time’ and Kro’s retort (which boiled down to “Don’t judge until you know what you’re talking about”) were absolutely brilliant. The theme of who is the real ‘good’ character and who is the ‘monster’ continued with the introduction of Karkas, the ugly opposite of the handsome killer, the Reject. A powerful story of compassion in the midst of violence and horror. –Shane Foley

001: A Space Odyssey #6: Like Forever People #6, this is a little episode without much plot per se, but a concentration on one event: here—the rescue of an alien. No conversation with or by the alien (cause that’s how it would be if we were with one) and no explanation of what we were seeing (cause that’s how it would be if we were suddenly light years from home). Just a mad, wild chase through a strange and terrible space that only Kirby could visualize. And since there are no superheroes here, death for the hero is the most likely possibility. And so death comes. If one takes the time to get immersed in this ‘little episode’, it really takes you away to that strange, cold unknown. A journey with the Master’s touch. –Shane Foley

ternals #8-10, “The City of Toads,” “The Killing Machine” and “Mother”: Kirby’s cold-war heyday and high-contrast style

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1982 aptain Victory #7: Despite lines like “What in solar soap suds is it?”, I really enjoy this issue. Victory is tough as nails, yet thoughtful. The Wonder Warriors look a bit like vintage Kirby, with the character of Ursan the Unclean very well written (and with the secret of the ‘Fetus’ overlooked by Kirby in the story’s wrap-up). Kirby’s vision of the universe looks as wonderful and mysterious as ever. Mike Thibodeaux’s inking was nice and strong. And then there are those ‘meaning of it all’ lines that were discussed in The Jack Kirby Collector #26 (in “Life as Heroism”). All this and all the Dreadnought Tiger is doing is preparing to take off. The Master was still at work! –Shane Foley

1983 entimentally, I wanna pick Black Panther #11, for no rational reason except it was the first U.S. format Kirby comic I ever bought off the stands (I’m a bit younger than some of the fogeys round here, okay?). Intellectually, I wanna pick Mister Miracle #9, because it manages to stage so much key ‘background’ action for the Fourth World as well as packing in scene after scene of memorable, personal drama—of which, New Gods #7 was arguably less successful in the latter respect. But in the end, I’m going to pick the story Jack did that was entirely one-of-a-kind, never-to-berepeated, and as such amongst the most unique pieces of work of his whole career, and certainly the most unconditionally personal. I own the original art to page two, so I’m biased, if you’ll forgive the minor brag-fest. Da Prize goes to “Street Code”. –Chrissie Harper

make him known for black-and-white distinctions, but he was actually uncommon for giving comics’ four-color Clash of Civilizations gray moral shadings—never more so than in this three-part tale of a briefly rekindled romance between Thena of the godlike Eternals and Warlord Kro of the satanic Deviants. One part Meet the Parents to one part myth-of-Persephone, Thena follows Kro to his people’s undersea garrison state and the exes trade disapproval of their societies’ high-handed and hard-bitten “values,” respectively. While underground Thena meets an analogous odd couple, the vicious Adonis-like Reject and the gentlemanly gargoyle Karkas, saves them from a gladiatorial contest and becomes their single-mom/superior officer in a variation on Kirby’s “Pact” theme of family ties transcending political conflicts. Appearances can be deceiving, and in a skeptical decade Kirby provided a keen parable of what lies beneath the surface. –Adam McGovern 001: A Space Odyssey #8: Mister Machine’s origin—what a drama-filled origin. A robot wanting his identity and dreading his face being ripped away. Powerful stuff. –Shane Foley

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1985 unger Dogs Graphic Novel: One of comics history’s happiest accidents, with editorial meddling and structural confusion surrounding Kirby’s planned finale to his Fourth World saga pushing him to a resourcefulness that made every character act against type and every plotline unfold against expectation. After a 12-year hiatus, it just wasn’t the same, and that was its strength—a disillusioned, amoral Esak; a mature, family-minded Orion; a blandly bureaucratized Apokolips and more caught the bleak mood of late-Cold War anxieties just as the original energized cosmic conflict had mirrored Vietnam-era agitation. With a late burst of emotional depth and inventive design, Kirby left a final testament on the fluid responsiveness of popular myth to changing reality, and adventurous unattachment of artistic imperatives to franchise demands. One last giant step forward. –Adam McGovern ★

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Fifty Best Kirby Covers Intro written by and commentaries compiled by Jerry Boyd (with assistance from John Morrow, Paul Sager, John Fleskes, Mike Burkey, and Lee Hester) Simon & Kirby cover images provided by Harry Mendryk

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ou dash up the stairs to your best friend’s room and he proudly holds up a copy of Fantastic Four Annual #3—with a cover that shows an army of Jack and Stan’s characters in mind-boggling battle. You tentatively finger through a convention box of old books to discover a time-worn edition of Adventure Comics #78 depicting Manhunter, Sandman, and Sandy firing anti-aircraft guns aboard a carrier to meet an Axis air assault. You gingerly raise a copy of Daredevil #43 from the spinner rack sheath, and are pleasantly surprised to see a Kirby rendition of DD and Cap facing you. The King’s beautifully executed battle scenario of First Issue Special #1 compels you to trace Atlas the Great over and over again because it’s one of your favorite covers.

Top Vote Getter:

Noticing the compelling quality of a Kirby-designed cover that draws your immediate interest and makes you want to see more, not only shows favoritism but marks special moments on the timeline of your life. In Jack Kirby Collector #39, eighteen fans and/or collaborators searched their memory banks and produced their ideas on the topmost covers by the King. Here are more opinions by TwoMorrows’ regulars and comicdom’s top talents, and the fifty top vote getters in our survey. More terrific covers than we could possibly mention have also been done by many of the participants who contributed to this chapter, but we’d like to thank them all for sharing the memorable and sometimes magical moments in the timeline of their lives when they came across their favorite Jack Kirby covers.

MICHAEL T. GILBERT artist/comics historian/TwoMorrows contributor I finally decided on the cover to Fantastic Four #12, featuring the first battle between the Thing and the Hulk. Part of it is the fact that I was 12 when I discovered it (my golden age!). This and issue #11 were the first Fantastic Four comics I bought, and they hit me like a brick. Beyond that though, the cover is beautifully constructed. The action hasn’t happened yet, but in seconds... it will! The spooky, greytoned colors only add to the feeling of menace. As a long-time fan of Kirby’s monster comics, I loved the fact that these two heroes were both monsters themselves. It was like having the best of both worlds. And 40 years later, my opinion hasn’t changed!

Fantastic Four #12 (1963) chosen by Michael T. Gilbert, Mike Gartland, Chrissie Harper, and Steve Sherman

MIKE GARTLAND TJKC contributor Fantastic Four #12 appealed to me not just out of nostalgia, but because it’s an action cover without action. It’s a suspenseful cover, highlighting that fraction of a second before all hell breaks loose, not to mention the two main antagonists that fans wanted to see meet are front and center in all their Kirby grotesqueness. Sure, there are tons of Kirby covers and we all have a list, but you asked for my fave and that’s it.

CHRISSIE HARPER editor of Jack Kirby Quarterly They say never judge a book by its cover. Well, this is a great book, but what the cover depicts, inside, is a tiny panel that precedes a ‘battle royale’ lasting about five seconds. All told in very nicely drawn panels, granted, but the word anti-climax springs to mind. However, the cover itself rocks in the biggest possible way. The composition is genius and what it gives us isn’t a slug-fest or an explosion, but suspense and anticipation. 20

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Captain America Comics #1 (1941) chosen by Carmine Infantino

Captain America Comics #7 (1941) chosen by Bud Plant and Al Feldstein

Adventure Comics #76 (1942) chosen by R.J. Vitone

Adventure Comics #79 (1942) chosen by Roy Thomas 21

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Boy Commandos #1 (1942) chosen by Gene Colan

Star Spangled Comics #13 (1942) chosen by Roy Thomas

CARMINE INFANTINO • exemplary artist/art director/editor The original—Captain America #1. It made you buy it and that’s the whole idea, right? The cover helps you sell magazines. And that one sold, what—a half a million copies? Jack’s got a quality all his own. He sucked you in—his artwork’s got that special quality to it that made you want to read his stories. He was a genius. BUD PLANT • comics and art historian/retailer Faced with decades of superlative work, I finally came up with a criteria to help me decide—something to epitomize everything that means Jack Kirby to me. That cover is Captain America Comics #7. Why? Cap is Jack’s first great creation and certainly one of his finest, still popular after more than 60 years. Cap epitomized American patriotism during WWII and captured every young reader’s imagination. For action, it’s got it all—Cap swinging boldly into action in a classic Kirby pose. This bold, exuberant cover is pure Kirby and like nothing ever done in comics before. It’s got Bucky, and sidekicks were a part of Jack’s creations. It’s got a beautiful, helpless girl to be rescued. There they are, all the elements and yet so early in Jack’s career. Manhunter, Stuntman, Fighting American, Challengers, Incredible Hulk, the FF, Mister Miracle... Jack’s artwork for each hero and group continues a unique and special style that traces right back to his first, very earliest comics work! R.J. VITONE • TwoMorrows contributor Adventure Comics #76, my personal favorite Kirby Golden Age cover, full not only of nice S&K art, but lots of subtle touches... Sandman and Sandy creep up on a band of bank robbers... but look at that gang! A vulture holding a tommy-gun, a man-ape, and an old guy casting a very devilish shadow. Add the projected “Sandman” motto on the wall, and this is just great! (By the way, why does Sandy carry that “motto-projector” around?) GENE COLAN • creator/penciler without peer Boy Commandos. Pick any one of the early ones. I was about 15 years old when I saw that title and I wanted to break into comics. I felt if I could copy even one of those pages, it would help me to understand more of what I wanted to do. AL FELDSTEIN • writer/artist/editor of the highest caliber I was a Kirby fan back before the war (WWII). I heard some guy was making $22 a page drawing in the early ’40s and I was working at a bowling alley! I never 22

Airboy Volume 4, #4 (1947) chosen by Jim Vadeboncouer, Jr.

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Young Romance #8 (1948) chosen by Al Feldstein

Black Magic #7 (1951) chosen by Russ Heath

Bullseye #2 (1954) chosen by Joe Simon

Fighting American #1 (1954) chosen by R.J. Vitone 23

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Fighting American #2 (1954) chosen by Bill Schelly and Mike Thibodeaux

Foxhole #1 (1954) chosen by Mark Evanier and Bill Morrison

read a comic book before and never had a big interest in them. But because of the good money involved, I got up a portfolio and met Jack Kirby and Joe Simon at Timely. They looked at my stuff and laughed me out of the office! But it turned out to be a good thing because another editor there, I forget who, suggested I try out the Eisner/Iger Studios and I did… and that got me in the door. The way the comics industry was in 1949 or so... if you had paper, you could be a publisher. If you had the paper though, what do you put out? You look at the innovators. Simon and Kirby were innovators. They created heroes and titles and trends that the rest of the industry noticed and copied. I remember the early Captain Americas and the romance books were big sellers. My respect for S&K was that they were innovators... who set standards. I talked Bill Gaines into being an innovator. So, even though I can’t pick a definite favorite—I’ll go with a Captain America cover and a romance cover... because I loved those. RUSS HEATH • legendary draftsman/creator Whenever Kirby and Simon started a new series, they seemed to put all their eggs in one basket and the early issues of a title were particularly good, probably due to the energy and excitement they had for it. I liked their Black Magic covers a lot. I come from the school of illustration and the covers they did for that series were, to me, more illustrative and less “wild and free” than the earlier Jack Kirby superhero stuff. These books really jumped out at me back then and I looked forward to buying each issue after the first one came out and I picked it up after seeing it on the stands. There was no particular cover that really got me. I liked all of them, particularly the first eight. This was “regular stuff ” to me, more illustrative, very good, and betterthan-usual visuals from a great team. BILL SCHELLY • comics historian/TwoMorrows contributor The one that springs to mind is Fighting American #2. It’s obvious that Jack was inspired when he and Joe updated Captain America for a new generation of readers. All the FA covers are great, but this one stands out because it epitomizes the elements that went into the stories, both the headlong action and humor. But the main thing is how visually striking it is, with its circular layout, its vivid colors and the unique staging. It “reads” quickly and easily, almost startling the reader with the immediacy of the heroes’ dilemma. It grabs attention in S&K’s attempt to stand out on the crowded newsstands of 1954. Unfortunately, not enough readers bought it. Hard as it is for us to fathom, 24

Foxhole #3 (1955) chosen by Ray Wyman

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Challengers of the Unknown #1 (1958) chosen by Neal Adams

Race For The Moon #1 (1958) chosen by Barry Forshaw

Fantastic Four #1 (1961) chosen by Stan Lee

Tales to Astonish #34 (1962) chosen by Dick Ayers 25

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Fantastic Four #4 (1962) chosen by Danny Fingeroth

Fantastic Four #27 (1964) chosen by Steve Englehart

there really was a time when superheroes, no matter the quality of the writing and art—just didn’t sell. But what a colorful, inventive, fun oasis of costumed hero action in the mid-1950s! BILL MORRISON • artist/animator of Futurama and The Simpsons This is a tough call, but I guess I’ll have to pick Foxhole #1 as my all-time favorite Kirby cover. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Jack’s superhero covers. Every one of them hits you right between the eyes. But when I first saw this one it impacted me on multiple levels. With a note to Mom superimposed over the grisly D-Day scene, it’s horrifying, touching, and funny all at the same time. I don’t know how the King pulled it off, but there it is. A masterpiece! RAY WYMAN • author, The Art of Jack Kirby Foxhole #3. I never served in the army, but I have walked through a few deep mudholes. But when I saw this cover, I appreciated what Jack was trying to convey: the absolutely agonizing hardship endured by GIs during WWII walking through countryside after countryside of endless, bottomless stinking mudholes, with a full pack, a bandolier stuffed with ammunition, your carbine, and dead or injured buddy draped over your shoulders. Yeah. That qualifies as one sort of hell I hope I only see on this cover. BARRY FORSHAW • TJKC contributor Race for the Moon #1. I can shamelessly combine nostalgia with hard-headed artistic judgement: this wonderful piece may be the first Kirby cover I ever picked up (in its shilling English reprint—and Race for The Moon ran far longer in the U.K. than its three U.S. Harvey issues, mainly using DC Schwartz-edited SF stories), but the eye-catching, highly dramatic cover design demonstrates Kirby’s skill at hooking the potential reader. The spaceman adrift cover scene, incidentally, is not to be found in any of the interior stories, excellent though they are. STEVE ENGLEHART • writer/creator I looked through the covers I have available, which means this is probably not my ultimate selection, but of the ones I can check, I choose FF #27, because it’s a supreme example of Kirby at the absolute height of the mid-’60s Marvel Age. It’s dynamic, it’s fun to look at, and it has the appearance of being knocked off in about five minutes by a guy to whom five minutes was all that was needed. In addition, 26

Avengers #23 (1965) chosen by John Romita, Sr.

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Fantastic Four #39 (1965) chosen by George Pérez and David Schwartz

Fantastic Four #45 (1965) chosen by Jim Amash

Tales of Suspense #71 (1965) chosen by Jerry Boyd

Fantastic Four #49 (1966) chosen by Frank Brunner and Matt Groening 27

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Fantastic Four #51 (1966) chosen by George Pérez and Tom Ziuko

Fantastic Four #57 (1966) chosen by Joe Sinnott

it’s a slice of an era; FF vs. Subby, and what say we toss in Dr. Strange as well. It’s what Marvel was all about as it took over campuses worldwide. And finally, it’s got the great coloring from that era as well—including getting Subby’s pants the wrong color. It may not be Jack’s greatest technical achievement or cosmic epic, but it’s a prime example of what made him the King. JOHN ROMITA, SR. • art director/cartoonist beyond compare Avengers #23 was my first Kirby cover and will be a big memory charge for me always… close second is Daredevil #13. DAVID SCHWARTZ • Kirby art collector and family friend My favorite Kirby cover of all time is Fantastic Four #39. There’s something about Dr. Doom hovering over the buildings menacingly that is really powerful! I’ve loved that cover ever since I first saw it when I was about 12 years old. FRANK BRUNNER • artist/creator Here’s my take on one of my favorite Kirby covers: Fantastic Four #49 is a Kirby masterpiece! It’s got many of my favorite cover elements like a really imposing super-villain! And they don’t get more imposing than Galactus! Plus, it’s got all the classic Kirby-isms, gigantic hands reaching out blasting the diminutive heroes who look like they’re not going to have a nice day! This is called “Menace” (with a capital “M”, something lacking in today’s comic covers). Cosmic up-lighting and great coloring finish this wonderful piece. MATT GROENING • artist/writer/creator of The Simpsons Of course I’m a Jack Kirby fan! He’s the King! My favorite Kirby cover? I never thought about that before… there are so many. I’ll say the first Silver Surfer cover on the Fantastic Four series (#49)... with Galactus in the back. GEORGE PÉREZ • artist/creator The first one that comes immediately to mind is the cover of FF #51. “This Man, This Monster!” as a story also had a strong influence on me because it was the defining moment for the Thing. TOM ZIUKO • TwoMorrows colorist A daunting task, picking my all-time favorite Kirby cover. Do you choose from the ones with iconic imagery and characters, or the ones with the greatest story28

Journey Into Mystery #124 (1966) chosen by Marv Wolfman

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Strange Tales #142 (1966) chosen by Scott Fresina

Strange Tales #151 (1966) chosen by Jim Steranko

Fantastic Four #62 (1967) chosen by Mark Schultz

Fantastic Four #64 (1967) chosen by Bob McLeod 29

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Captain America #100 (1968) chosen by Dave Stevens

Fantastic Four #72 (1968) chosen by John Fleskes

telling technique that best reflect the stories within? Ultimately my choice is the perfect combination of the two—Fantastic Four #51. In the background, we see Reed trapped in some sort of cosmic peril, Sue pleading with Ben to save her husband—and in the foreground, the large figure of the Thing, obviously in the throes of some great internal conflict. Clearly he could do something, but for some reason can’t. The always incredible figure of The Thing isn’t being played up for his power in some action scene; instead here you can feel the pathos and drama from his body language in this moment of choice. This cover sets up a question—what the hell kind of tragedy has happened here, and more importantly, how is it going to be resolved? You have to read the story in order to find out. MARV WOLFMAN • editor/writer/creator I lean toward the Thor covers. Journey into Mystery #124—very powerful, singular imagery. The next two issues also had great covers. SCOTT FRESINA • art instructor/collector/Kirby family friend Strange Tales #142. It’s one of the few published pieces that hung in Jack’s hallway and seeing the original there floored me years later. The depth of field and the bad guys on the periphery and Fury, our hero, is in the background but still in the center of the piece. The blast lines, the hardware, and the shadows all lead your eye to the epicenter. And as a kid, the Man from U.N.C.L.E. show gave me a real gun fetish. And here, Kirby ‘out-Uncled’ U.N.C.L.E. From the guns that they’re carrying to the jetpacks and the helmets they’ve got on, it’s hardware heaven. BOB McLEOD • pro inker and editor of Rough Stuff magazine I’d pick Fantastic Four #64. It really says what Kirby’s all about to me. DAVE STEVENS • artist/writer/film designer My favorite (for the time being, since there are so many great ones) would be the cover to Captain America #100. It was the first “official” Cap issue, post-Tales of Suspense. He’s jumping right out at the reader, flanked by smaller, supporting characters from the series. I remember that one as a real gem. One of those perfect Cap images. MICHAEL EURY • writer and editor of Back Issue magazine Revisiting Jack Kirby’s covers is like viewing a slideshow of comic book history, and for me, my favorite “slide” is Fantastic Four #73. This poster-worthy image pitting 30

Fantastic Four #73 (1968) chosen by Michael Eury

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Fantastic Four #82 (1969) chosen by Rand Hoppe

Fantastic Four #84 (1969) chosen by Mike Royer

Captain America #109 (1969) chosen by Jon Cooke

New Gods #1 (1971) chosen by Michael Chabon 31

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New Gods #2 (1971) chosen by Steve Rude

Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #139 (1971) chosen by Daniel Clowes

the FF against Daredevil, Thor, and Spider-Man is simple yet strikingly dynamic, epitomizing the unbridled energy of Marvel in the superhero-frenzied late 1960s. And inked by the unmatchable Joe Sinnott, it’s Kirby at his best! MIKE ROYER • artist/animator I’ll opt for one of the remarkable Fantastic Four covers from the late 1960s: FF #84. It’s a frozen moment symbolically warning of the Hell-Hath-No-Fury-Like-Dr.Doom that will shortly befall our stalwart heroes. I won’t bother with reiterating the genius of Jack Kirby, the supreme comic book expressionist, but rather address the marvelous work of the master craftsman that inked this cover, as well as the contents of the issue. Everyone acknowledges the crispness and beauty that Joe Sinnott brought to Jack’s pencils, but I just recently came to appreciate his “gift” to Jack’s line work when commissioned to do a recreation of this page for a collector. I think it’s unfair to just label Joe Sinnott an inker. He was/is an embellisher of the first order. While laboriously trying to duplicate what Joe did to the walls and towers of this piece, as an example, I, as one who has put ink to Jack’s pencils, can see all the sparkling detail that Joe adds to Jack’s forms, which in no way deludes the pencils but completes them with a richness that did not exist in the pencils except by some non-delineated intent. The tile on the roof, cobblestone on the roadway, the suggested detail on the tiny faces of people in the street, the look of determination on Reed’s face. I could go on, but what we have here is a cover that was designed and drawn by a master so that the reader/onlooker sees things in exactly the order they’re supposed to, and delineated and made vastly richer by the pen and brush of another skilled master in his field. These things combined, for me at least, make this truly one of the great Jack Kirby covers. It’s definitely one of my favorites. STEVE RUDE • artist/creator Of the hundreds of possible Kirby covers that stand out, the one for New Gods #2 comes to mind. For one thing, they dispensed with the standardized “New Gods” logo used in all the other issues. That certainly caught my eye. I’ve always liked it when people do things differently once in a while. It helps to shake things up. You’ll also see by the layout that the logo itself conformed around the drawing. Thankfully, the production people at the time didn’t hassle him about that. I can just hear the nonsense they could’ve subjected him to about that. But that was Jack. Concept always came first, and things, in turn, always worked around that. New Gods #7 (1972) chosen by Adam McGovern 32

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Kamandi #2 (1972) chosen by Richard Kolkman

Kamandi #12 (1973) chosen by John Morrow

OMAC #1 (1974) chosen by Charles Hatfield

Sandman #4 (1975) chosen by Alex Ross 33

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Fantastic Four #164 (1975) chosen by Chris Fama

2001: A Space Odyssey Treasury (1976) chosen by Marie Severin and Neal Kirby

RICHARD KOLKMAN • caretaker of The Jack Kirby Checklist My favorite Kirby cover is Kamandi #2. That deep, vibrant red frames a glimpse into a pirate rat world that promises to astound. When I purchased it, I knew that I was finally on the ground floor of the “real comics”—the kind adults must read. And I knew Kirby would never fail to deliver. CHARLES HATFIELD • TwoMorrows contributor The most beautifully screwed-up of Kirby’s coming-at-ya covers, the one that epitomizes the fearlessness, the sheer vaulting weirdness of his work, is that of OMAC #1. Scott Shaw! rightly characterizes this cover as “one of the most disturbing sexual images in the history of funnybooks” (Oddball Comics, 10 April 2001, over at www.comicbookresources.com): the titular hero hurls his piecemeal robotic “friend,” Lila, her disembodied parts sticking out of a crate, directly at the reader, while the cover asks us if we’re ready for OMAC and his world. Hell no. This frankly disturbing cover fittingly introduces a comic that is chilling, dystopic, and just flat-out bizarre. (I have this fantasy that OMAC #1 could have been published by Last Gasp and gone down in history as a great moment in underground comix.) I don’t know if I was ready for the world that’s coming at age nine, but the cover looked, still looks, absolutely whacked, therefore great. ALEX ROSS • artist/creator For me, it would have to be the ’70s issues of the Sandman. Specifically, my favorite would be the fourth issue in which a boy was dreaming and the figure of the Sandman was posed in a “glory-shot” style and there were lots of monsters in the scene. Kirby’s interior work did a lot for me also, because it set the tone before Ernie Chua took the title over. It (The Sandman) was one of the first Jack Kirby series I saw when I was a kid and it stands out to me more because of the personal connection than composition. CHRIS FAMA • TJKC contributor and art restoration expert Asking me to chose my favorite Kirby cover is like asking me to chose my favorite child. I went with the cover of Fantastic Four #164 because it’s most important to me. Until I saw this issue, Marvel Comics was all about Gil Kane covers. I was already a Kirby fan from his DC work, but this cover made it very clear to me he belonged at Marvel. FF #164 came out a few months before Captain America #193 and it really whet the appetite for the awesome run which followed! ★ 34

Captain America #193 (1976) chosen by John Romita, Sr.

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Fifty Best Examples Of Unused Kirby Art Chosen by John Morrow, with help from Shane Foley and Adam McGovern

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ack Kirby was the most prolific artist in the history of comics, producing more stories, pages, sketches, layouts, covers, merchandising illustrations, and just plain art than anyone in the field. So it was only natural that he would wind up with a huge stockpile of material that ended up not getting used, for one reason or another. Over the course of fifty issues of The Jack Kirby Collector, I’ve had the luxury of enjoying a lot of Kirby’s unused art—so many pieces that it was quite a task to narrow it down to his fifty best examples and rank them. To make the task more manageable, I had to establish some basic criteria to go by:

1) I would consider any art that was not published in its original venue, time period, or as originally intended, even if it was eventually published later 2) Except for exceptional cases, I would give more weight to stories than to individual pieces 3) Where possible, I would group together pieces that served the same purpose or intent (otherwise, I’d end up with closer to fifty thousand pieces)! So here’s my best shot at it. You’d think that unused art would be the bottom-of-the-barrel stuff that no one would bother to look at. But as you scroll through this assemblage, you’ll find, more often than not, that Jack’s unused work could rival some of the best published work of anyone in comics. (The Gallery on page 45 presents larger examples.) The beauty of this list is, by the time it sees print, it’s likely I’d have to alter it. That’s the amazing, mysterious thing about Kirby; “new” unseen material seems to turn up when you least expect it, and never seems to run dry. That’s a pretty remarkable feat for an artist that stopped drawing in the early 1990s! But until I find Jack’s rejected sample pages for the first Spider-Man story, here’s my top choices:

Pulp Illos (1930s-1940s) Okay, so I violated my first criteria! But while these aren’t technically unpublished, they’re so obscure that few collectors have seen them, so they might as well be. There are great spot illos to be found in the pages of pulps like Marvel Tales from the late 1930s and ’40s, so seek them out.

Collages (1960s-1980s) While not everyone’s cup of tea, Jack made some amazingly complex works of art with only scissors, glue, and old magazines. He supposedly found it a relaxing diversion, and many of them ended up as backgrounds on key comics pages in the 1960s and ’70s. But you can’t fully appreciate their complexity until you’ve seen the originals in color. See page 104 in this volume for a beautiful full-color example.

“Astrals” (late 1970s) More prized for its scarcity than its actual story quality, this unused four-page promotional comic drawn for a Chicago radio station is an interesting oddity, and nicely inked by Bill Wray. (For the complete story, see The Jack Kirby Collector #16 or Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume 4)

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47 What If? #10 female Thor cover (1978) John Buscema got the nod for the published version of this cover, but it was fun seeing Jack revisit a character he co-created, even in female form.

Convention sketches (1960s-1980s) Jack didn’t draw at conventions often, preferring to spend his time meeting and greeting fans. When he did sketch, it was often at a “Chalk Talk” session, on stage in front of a crowd. So while these are usually by nature pretty loose, there are some gems to be found.

Commissioned Sketches (1970s-1980s) These were a nice supplement to Jack and Roz’s income throughout the 1970s and ’80s, keeping him busy as his comics work waned. With plenty of time to work on each drawing, these are often remarkable pieces, even if they sometimes lack some of Jack’s more spontaneous linework—perhaps due to laboring over them a little too much.

Thing Alter Ego sketch (1962) A telling, historically significant pencil drawing done for Jerry Bails, showing what Jack’s Thing character looked like at this early stage of the Fantastic Four’s career, before an inker altered the work, and the character had evolved toward its current “rocky” look. An inked version of this pencil drawing first appeared in Jerry’s 1962 mimeographed Alter Ego #4 fanzine, but didn’t appear in its original pencil form until Jack Kirby Collector #9.

Pin-ups (various years) There’ve been several of these over the years, which ended up as posters or were meant for fanzines or portfolios. All are worth a look, and the ones that appeared in 1971’s Kirby Unleashed and 1979’s Masterworks portfolio are especially nice. (TwoMorrows Publishing currently has a remastered version of Kirby Unleashed available.)

Toys for Tots unused poster art (1968) Created for the U.S. Marine Corp’s toy drive, Jack went through at least three versions before the final one was approved. They all look good to us! (For more examples, see Jack Kirby Collector #18 and #27.)

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Tribes Trilogy (1976) Like most of Jack’s hand-painted color work, you’ve got to see them up close to really appreciate them fully. Some nicely designed head-shots that really come to life when the Dr. Marten’s dyes were applied by Jack, these three illos beautifully demonstrate Kirby’s flare for depicting ornate battle garb.

Lord of Light art (1978) If you’re planning to build a science-fiction based theme park, who better to call in to create concept art than Jack Kirby? The park itself never broke ground; unbeknownst to Jack, the project ended up being used as a front for the C.I.A. to help rescue hostages held by Iran during Jimmy Carter’s term as President. (Kirby couldn’t make up a story as amazing as what really went on, folks!) But these thirteen plates (inked by Mike Royer, with the one above hand-colored by Kirby) still thrill fans today. (See Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume 2)

Kobra #1 (1976) Kirby’s last new DC Comics concept of the 1970s, and the only strip he ever conceived starring a villain (Yellow Claw was originated by someone else). Kirby assistant Steve Sherman contributed to the character’s creation, and Kirby took the basics and ran with it. Unfortunately, DC Comics heavily altered the art and story for publication, having Pablo Marcos redraw characters’ heads, and rearranging panels. (For more on Kobra, see The Jack Kirby Collector #22)

Silver Surfer Graphic Novel cover (1978) Apparently to lend legitimacy to it as a bookstore item, Marvel Comics had Earl Norem created a painted version of Kirby’s original inked cover (below). Fine on its own, the published version was a weird juxtaposition against the classic Kirby/Sinnott interior art. The powerful unused original version may not have met Marvel’s marketing goals, but it certainly would’ve made us want to buy it! (See Jack Kirby Collector #9 or Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume 1 for a full-size reproduction.)

Starman Zero (early 1950s) Kirby was a lifelong fan of science-fiction, and he apparently had high hopes for this compelling sci-fi proposal, considering the amount of work he put into the concept art and initial set of Sunday strips. (See Jack Kirby Collector #15 or Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume 3 for complete Sunday strips.)

Mister Miracle #10 cover (1972) A far superior cover to the one that was actually published, and frankly, we can’t think of any rationale for it being rejected. Many fans remember this piece from its eventual appearance as the cover of The Buyer’s Guide to Comic Fandom #19 (August 15, 1972).

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35 Fantastic Four Storyboards (1978) When Jack returned to Marvel in the mid1970s, many fans were disappointed that he didn’t return to Fantastic Four. But those clamoring for more Lee/Kirby FF stories need look no further than these mini-masterpieces from the late 1970s. While the penciling is a bit looser than his comic page art, there’s a vibrancy here that much of his concurrent comics work didn’t have.

Don Heck robot and city scene (1966) Done either as a wedding gift for Don Heck, or in exchange for Heck inking Kirby’s Gods/New Gods concept drawings (see #21 below), Don kept them until his passing. Adam McGovern describes the City Scene this way: “To Kirby reality was at once an immersion in the intangible and a graphic tapestry that set his imaginings in eternal balance. The space-city image surrounds you the moment your eye travels into it, yet also serves as an implacably-engraved mural made from ephemeral graphite.”

Moses Face (late 1970s) An enormous, haunting image that watched over the Kirby living room, and all who visited there. It features some strikingly sensitive pencil linework, showing that, while his comics work had become extremely stylized and simplified, he could still create the kind of realistic detail that he exhibited in his earlier illustrations of the 1930s.

Newspaper samples (1940s-1950s) Before landing Sky Masters, Jack made numerous attempts at syndicated newspaper strips, coming up with concepts dealing with subjects as varied as prehistoric cave dwellers meeting futuristic aliens (Kamandi of the Caves) to jazz musicians (King Masters), and professional golfing (On The Green With Peter Parr), and more. Perhaps the most promising of these was 1958’s Surf Hunter, lusciously inked by Wallace Wood.

Dream Machine (1970/1975) This gigantic color painting is actually a diptych, measuring over five feet wide—an amazing example of Kirby’s knack for creating elaborate machinery like no one else. It began life in 1970 as a line drawing (see page 151 for the entire piece) that served as the cover of the Marvelmania Portfolio, and Jack turned it into a full-color painting in 1975. (See the remastered Kirby Unleashed for the color painting)

Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen covers (1970-1972) DC Comics was constantly altering Jack’s Superman and Jimmy Olsen heads on this book, and required Jack to redraw the first issue’s cover (#133, shown above) and then employed Neal Adams to produce house-style covers for the next few issues. The editorial interference extended to Kirby’s covers for #138, #142, and #145, and likely others in the run as well.

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Fourth World tabloid cover (circa 1974) Mystery still surrounds this piece, which was rumored to have been done for a proposed 1970s book reprinting of the Fourth World saga. No real specifics back this up, so we’re left wondering if maybe Jack planned this as the cover to the conclusion he never got to produce for his opus.

Marvel layouts (1960s) To help new artists get a feel for the Marvel style, Stan Lee had Kirby do layouts to set the tone of a strip in the early 1960s. Jack came to resent doing what he considered the lion’s share of the storytelling work, for much less pay than he felt it deserved. Ranging from almost stick figures to tight pencils, it’s fascinating to see how various artists used what Kirby gave them.

DC concept art (1970s) Manhunter, OMAC, Kamandi, Dingbats, Atlas—all began life as a 1-2 page concept presentation to DC Comics. Jack included many plot nuggets that never actually made it into the strips. Of extra interest is “Death Fingers” a concept that wasn’t accepted; however, four supporting characters and a villain were eventually used in the Dingbats of Danger Street strip.

26 Marvelmania Posters (1970) When Marvel realized that their fan club had gotten Jack Kirby to create custom art for their entire line of posters, it stepped in and had other artists redraw the Hulk, Captain America, and Spider-Man posters, leaving Jack’s unseen lineart behind. It was probably wise to link the posters to the artists who were currently working on the characters’ books, especially with an increasingly disgruntled Kirby prepping to jump ship to DC Comics. Jack eventually applied color to the Spider-Man poster art, making one of the best examples Kirby ever drew of the character.

Marvelmania Portfolio plates (1960s) Composed of unused 1960s Marvel pencil pages, the Marvelmania Portfolio was released as Jack was transitioning to DC Comics in 1970. It was a fond look back, as Kirby was moving forward.

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Unused Thor covers (1960s) These unused covers range from masterpieces (#144, shown here) to mundane (#169), but all are worth a look.

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23 Unused Fantastic Four covers (1960s) Much more compelling than the unused Thor counterparts, particularly #20, #64, and #71.

Big Barda cover sketch (circa 1972) So simple, yet it holds the promise of a missed opportunity for DC Comics and Kirby fans. Nearly every Kirby fan who sees this for the first time says, “Wow, that would’ve been a great series.” Who knows what other proposed DC series were pitched in a similar manner, but never produced? Only time, and generous Kirby fans who dig this stuff out of their collections, will tell!

Gods/New Gods concept drawings (1960s) These color concept drawings were originally done independent of one another while Jack was still at Marvel Comics in the 1960s, with inks by Don Heck and Frank Giacoia, and possibly Jack himself. Kirby hand-colored them, and eight of them made up a black-andwhite, short-run portfolio that was released during Jack’s appearance at the Disneyland Convention of Nostalgia on April 9-11, 1971, just as six of the characters were beginning to appear in Jack’s Fourth World series. Four others comprised the 1972 Jack Kirby’s Gods portfolio. Literally as this book was on press, we finally tracked down the sole remaining concept piece (shown here) that had eluded us in the past, and it will be showing up in color in a future issue of the Jack Kirby Collector.

Sandman #7 story (1976) While the non-Kirby script is aimed strictly at younger readers, the art was top-notch, with Mike Royer’s usual stellar inking. This story was shelved when Sandman was cancelled with #6, and put in DC’s fabled Cancelled Comic Cavalcade, and later in a DC Digest comic.

The Horde (1969-on) Not art per se, Jack’s unfinished text novel is as lovingly crafted as anything he created with a pencil. Two edited excerpts have seen print to date, and hopefully the entire original manuscript will see the light of day eventually. (See The Jack Kirby Collector #32)

Soul Love (1971) So bad it’s good, this is the guilty pleasure of Kirby fandom. Perhaps nowhere did Kirby’s tin ear for realistic dialogue serve him worse. (For a complete story, see The Jack Kirby Collector #23)

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Galaxy Green (1972) As close to underground comix as Kirby ever came (other than perhaps the cover of OMAC #1), this two-page PG-rated romp would’ve been a lot of fun had it been continued. (See The Jack Kirby Collector #20)

Dingbats of Danger Street #2 and #3 (1974) The King’s last Kid Gang only saw its debut story in print in First Issue Special #6, leaving two complete issues unseen. #2 fares better with its superior Royer inks, while #3 is still an entertaining ride.

Unused Stuntman stories (1946) Three stories for the unpublished Stuntman #3 exist in various stages of completion: “The Panda,” “Sons of M. LeBlanc,” and “Jungle Lord.” All are prime Simon & Kirby, and deserve to be seen.

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Fantastic Four #102 pages (1970) With our help, Marvel recently reassembled this story (part of which ran in FF #108) and published it in 2008 as Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure, getting Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott to add dialogue and inks to Kirby’s unused pencils. But typical of Kirby; shortly after the book went to press, a heretofore unknown page surfaced, which fills in most of the missing panels.

Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel/ New Gods #12 (1984-1985) The controversial original version of Jack’s 1980s “conclusion” to his Fourth World epic, this story didn’t really end anything, which is likely why it was modified.

True Divorce Cases (1971) One last Kirby romance comic, and a dandy at that! DC missed the (love) boat on this one, as Kirby turned in some compelling stories. The concept morphed into Soul Love (see #18 above), which was rightly shelved. (For a complete story, see The Jack Kirby Collector #20)

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Interpretations of God (1970s) These stunning pencil pieces adorned the walls of the Kirby home for years, and finally saw print as part of Dark Horse’s Jack Kirby Portfolio in the 1990s. Kirby had them inked by Mike Royer at one point, but we’re unsure what the inked versions would have been used for.

In The Days of the Mob #2 (1971) After the first issue failed to sell, DC canned this book, but a couple of the stories have seen print. The Royer inks evoke the feel of the great Simon & Kirby crime comics of the 1940s.

Larry Lieber’s Captain America sketch (1941) How many people have a personal sketch from Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, featuring their greatest creation, and drawn at the time they were working on the strip in the 1940s? By being Stan Lee’s kid brother, Larry Lieber got to visit the Timely offices and meet S&K, and came home with this remarkable artifact.

Boy Explorers unused stories (1946) Cancelled after only one issue, the Boy Explorers didn’t get to fulfill their seven missions. But several of them were completed by Simon & Kirby, and the partially finished “Gulliver” story showcases gorgeous 1940s Kirby pencils.

Chamber of Darkness #4 “Monster” story (1970) One of the straws that led Kirby to DC Comics in 1970, this unassuming horror filler ended up causing Jack nightmares of his own, due to editorial tampering. (For the complete story, see The Jack Kirby Collector #13 or Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume 3)

Animation work (late 1970s-1980s) When Kirby left Marvel Comics for good in 1978, he went back to his roots in animation, which is where he’d begun his career, doing “in-betweening” on Popeye cartoons in the 1930s. After stints storyboarding, he ended up working almost exclusively for Ruby-Spears Productions, creating literally thousands of concept drawings for cartoons, ranging from the ingenious to the downright bizarre. He did so many illustrations, in fact, that it’s unlikely anyone will ever see them all, but the sheer volume of drawings he did ensures Kirby fans will be able to find unseen Kirby work for decades to come.

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4 Bound Volumes sketches (late 1960s) In the late 1960s, Kirby had his personal copies of his 1940s-1960s comics put in hardbound volumes, and drew detailed pencil art on the inside covers. These collections are all the more valuable due to the custom art they contain.

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X-Men #10 unused cover (1965) With inks by Chic Stone, this is the crown jewel of 1960s unused Marvel covers.

Hulk #5 unused pencils (1962) The jury’s still out on where these three unused pages were originally meant to go, but just their sheer existence has people talking. Thanks to Larry Lieber for keeping them safe all these years! (See Jack Kirby Collector #41 for full-size reproductions of all three unused pages.) Roz Kirby’s Black Book Sketchbook (early-to-mid 1970s) Done as a Valentine’s gift for Jack’s wife Roz, this pencil sketchbook featured 135 of Kirby’s most famous characters, making it the single largest collection of unused original Kirby art ever created. Pure Imagination did two printings of this one-of-akind sketchbook in the late 1980s, and a 1994 version showing pages inked by a variety of comics pros. But having gotten to thumb through the original, it’s clear that no printed version can capture the magic of this remarkable record of Jack Kirby’s penciling mastery.

Kirby Estate Xerox Archives (1960s-1970s) What Kirby fan wouldn’t love to see the uninked pencils from such key comics as Fantastic Four #49, Tales of Suspense #93, Thor #110, or unused pencil pages from New Gods #7? Thankfully, the Kirbys saved photostats and xerox copies of Jack’s pencils and inks from the late 1960s-on; more than 5000 pages exist, and are being scanned and archived by TwoMorrows Publishing and the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. For its sheer volume of unseen pencil work, and its historical significance, the Kirby Xerox Archives receive the top spot in this list of the 50 Best Examples of Unused Kirby Art. Our next chapter presents a large sampling of both penciled and inked images from this unprecendented collection of Kirby wonderment. ★

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Fifty-Page Kirby Art Gallery Presenting pencil and ink art from the Kirby Estate Xerox Archives

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resented here are 50 pages of Kirby art, taken from the Kirby Estate Xerox Archives, representing many of Kirby’s best stories and unused art as chosen in this book. Shown are both pencil versions of published comics pages, and inked versions of unused pages and stories. The image quality varies from stats (which reproduce Kirby’s pencil quality very faithfully) to “thermal fax” copies (Kirby had this now outdated type of copier in his home starting in the early 1970s, long before copiers were commonplace), but all serve as a remarkable historical record of unseen work, and what Kirby’s art looked like before it was inked.

BEST STORIES EXAMPLES (presented here in chronological order from choices in the section beginning on page 11, showing the evolution of Kirby’s art style from the 1960s-1980s): (page 47) Tales of Suspense #93, page 8, pencil (1967) This crisp photostat image serves as a good benchmark for Jack’s level of penciling quality during his 1960s peak. (page 48) New Gods #6, page 5, pencil (1971) Kirby hits his storytelling stride during the Fourth World saga. (page 49) Forever People #6, page 11, pencil (1971) Energy and vitality surge throughout these pencils; even his handwriting is energetic. (page 50) Demon #1, unused page, pencil (1972) During this unused introductory sequence, note how the macabre character draws closer to the reader in each successive panel. (page 51) Kamandi #1, page 8, pencil (1972) A rough and tumble action page. (page 52) Mister Miracle #7, page 17, pencil (1972) The title character is caught up in a high-tech version of the ways of the old West. (page 53) Mister Miracle #8, page 4, pencil (1972) Kirby (literally!) brings strong female characters to comics in the 1970s. (page 54) New Gods #8, page 16, pencil (1972) You can feel the tension as these characters struggle in battle. (page 55) Weird Mystery Tales #2, page 10, pencil (1972) This story was actually drawn in 1971 (for the never-published Spirit World #2), but didn’t see print until 1972. (page 56) Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #147, page 7, pencil (1972) Superman’s last Kirby-drawn connection to the Fourth World, as he finally travels to New Genesis through a Boom Tube. (page 57) Kamandi #9, page 14, pencil (1973) A frightening example of Kirby’s penchant for large-headed protagonists. (page 58) OMAC #1, page 4 (1974) Disturbing imagery, and a message that still applies over three decades later. (page 59) Our Fighting Forces #157, page 4, pencil (1975) The captivating Panama Fattie shows her stuff! (page 60) Our Fighting Forces #159, page 13, pencil (1975) Drama ensues as World War II rivals race for the ultimate finish line. (page 61) Captain America #195, page 1, pencil (1976) Part of the year-long “Madbomb” saga, which Jack launched upon his return to Marvel Comics. (page 62) 2001: A Space Odyssey #6, cover, pencil (1977) “Everyman” Harvey Norton meets the aliens in this striking cover image. (page 63) 2001: A Space Odyssey #8, page 17, pencil (1977) Mr. Machine/Machine Man is born, courtesy of the Monolith. (page 64) Captain America #212, page 15, pencil (1977) Two old adversaries in their final Kirby-drawn conflict. (page 65) Eternals #8, page 17, pencil (1977) Kirby leaves you asking which is the true monster in this battle.

posing as the Thing). (page 68) Satan’s Six #1, page 3, pencil (1979) The actual date this partially finished story was drawn isn’t certain, but we assume it was soon after he left Marvel Comics for good. Terry Austin inked this page when it was finally published in 1993 by Topps Comics. (page 69) Thundarr The Barbarian newspaper samples, pencil (1980) Kirby drew two weeks’ worth of dailies and Sundays, to be scripted by Steve Gerber. Shown here are strips 5-9. (page 70) Captain Victory #2, page 6, pencil (1981) The first two issues of Captain Victory were drawn as one Graphic Novel circa 1978, and finally published in 1981; as Kirby drew new pages for #3 in 1982, you can see a marked drop in his penciling quality from the four-year hiatus. (page 71) Roxie’s Raiders #1, page 7, pencil (1982) Kirby and writer Steve Gerber attempted to turn this animation concept into an ongoing comic book series, but work never progressed beyond the first issue. (page 72) Captain Victory #7, page 7, pencil (1982) Still solid penciling, and interesting character design. (page 73) Destroyer Duck #1, page 17, pencil (1982) Action, action, action (even though it involves a duck...) (page 74) Silver Star #1, page 12, pencil (1983) Lovely penciling, possibly done well before the publication date. (page 75) Super Powers #5, page 12, pencil (1984) It’s not every day you see Kirby drawing Batman and Robin; enjoy! (page 76) New Gods reprint series #6, page 39, pencil (1984) This prequel to the Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel was actually drawn after his 1983 work on the core story that made up the bulk of the GN, but health problems in the interim caused a decline in Kirby’s penciling. (page 77) Super Powers II #2, page 9, pencil (1986) A last hurrah, as Kirby pencils characters he’d rarely drawn before.

BEST UNUSED ART EXAMPLES (presented here in descending order from the survey on pages 35-44): (page 78) Captain America & Bucky commission drawing, pencil (1978) (page 79) Toys For Tots unused poster art, pencil (1968) (page 80) Mister Miracle #10, unused cover, pencil (1972) (page 81) Fantastic Four animated series storyboards, pencil (1978) (page 82) Tales of Suspense #70, page 9, pencil layouts (1965) Kirby not only sets the artistic tone, he directs the story with his margin notes. (page 83) Death Fingers/Dingbats of Danger Street concept art, pencil (1975) (page 84) Sandman #7, page 1, pencil (1976) (page 85) Soul Love #1, cover, pencil and wash (1971) (page 86) Dingbats of Danger Street #2, page 14, ink (by Mike Royer) (1975) (page 87) Stuntman #3, “Panda” story, page 10, ink (by Simon & Kirby) (1946) (page 88) Fantastic Four #102/108, page 1, pencil (1970) (page 89) True Divorce Cases #1, page 17, “The Twin”, pencil (1971) (page 90) In The Days Of The Mob #2, page 34, pencil (1971) (page 91) Boy Explorers #2, page 8, ink (by Simon & Kirby) (1946) (page 92) Black Tiger animation concept, pencil (1981) (page 93) Hulk #5, unused page, pencil (1962) (page 94) Fantastic Four #49, page 1, pencil (1966)

OTHER EXAMPLES

(page 66) Silver Surfer Graphic Novel, page 90, pencil (1978) A poignant parting in this beautifully rendered page.

(page 95) Fantastic Four #75, page 4, pencil (1968) Galactus never looked more imposing. A great example of the full-pagers that populated Kirby’s late 1960s work. From the Kirby Pencil Xerox Archives.

(page 67) What If? #11, page 31, pencil (1978) One last look back at the glory days of 1960s Marvel, as Jack draws the Fantastic Four (here, as members of the Marvel Bullpen, with Jack himself

(page 96) Superman personal drawing, pencil (1984) Thanks to Jack’s daughter Lisa Kirby for sharing this personal image for this book’s cover, and to Darwyn Cooke for his superb inking and coloring of it. ★

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(above) Chanukah at the Kirbys’, 1962. (top right) Jack and Roz Kirby, 1981. (bottom left) Jack with granddaughter Tracy in the mid-1980s. (bottom right) Jack in his backyard, late 1980s.

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From the sub-lime to the red-iculous: Jack Kirby’s sense of color was as individual as his art style. He could go subtle, as shown above (original color guide for the 1969 Fantastic Four Marvelmania poster, and the 1966 Black Sphinx concept drawing). But on some pieces (such as the 1982 Hulk commission at left, and the 1972 NFL Pro magazine illo at right), he would let loose with the Dr. Marten’s dyes. Fantastic Four, Hulk TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. Black Sphinx, NFL Pro art TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

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(this spread) Costume designs for a stage production of Julius Ceasar at Cowell College in San Jose, California in 1969. Jack’s son Neal Kirby believes that a student who was a fan asked him to do the costumes. Neal recalls, “I remember commenting to him, in a laughing way of course, that the only part of the costume actually being near accurate was the sword y Museum. te. Courtesy Jack Kirb ©2008 Jack Kirby Esta

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(seen in the side pencil view), and red scarf. He knew this, of course, but liked “spicing up” the Romans and wanted to give them that superhero touch.” Several more examples are archived at the online Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center (www.kirbymuseum.org ).

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(next page) Original collage art by Kirby, which was used as the background (in black-and-white) of this two-page spread in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #137 (April 1971). Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Newsboy Legion TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Collage art ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate. Courtesy Jack Kirby Museum.

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Fifty Best Kirby Character Designs Chosen by Sean Kleefeld, author of the “Incidental Iconography” column in The Jack Kirby Collector

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riginally, the prospect of coming up with Jack’s 50 best character designs for this celebratory volume sounded exciting. But doing some research— because I certainly didn’t want to exclude anyone due to a poor memory—I found a listing of characters Jack created for Marvel. (Special thanks to the guys at MarvUnApp.com) Not the ones everybody knows, like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, but the ones who wouldn’t warrant a footnote anywhere but in the most devoted and meticulous of fan web sites. Finding that list was invaluable, but it also scared the crud out of me since it listed over 600 named characters Jack created—for Marvel alone! And, like I said, that doesn’t include the ones you already know about. Needless to say, with that much output, there’s a fair chance I’ve overlooked some potentially incredible designs, but rest assured that I made an active effort to at least look at all the periods of Jack’s work. As they say, every character is somebody’s favorite, so feel free to add your two cents if you think I’ve skipped over your favorite Kirby creation. It may or may not have been intentional! With that short intro done, on to Jack Kirby’s 50 best character designs:

Giganto, Mole Man’s Monster. I’m starting off the list with one of Jack’s classic images, the cover to Fantastic Four #1. I have to admit that I’m not overly partial to the creature’s design per se, but the cover itself is iconic in nearly every sense of the word, and much of that has to do with the monster clearly depicted in the center of it. I figure that warrants inclusion in the list in some capacity, but that’s why he gets relegated to the end of it. For the record, this creature was not named Giganto until Avengers West Coast #54, long after that name had already been established for another giant monster that also fought the Fantastic Four. First appearance: Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961).

50.

Goozlebobber. Definitely one of Jack’s weird and wacky ideas, this guy I’ve got to include just for sheer inventiveness, even if the concepts and designs themselves are… unusual. (Don’t worry, folks! The designs get more and more impressive as we go through this list.) First appearance: Captain Victory #4 (May 1982).

49.

Impossible Man. Impy here falls somewhat in the same class as Goozlebobber; it’s just too inventive to not mention. That said, though, I’m somewhat reluctant to list him because of a decidedly unproven theory I have about his inception. But that’s a column by itself that I’ll save for the future! First appearance: Fantastic Four #11 (February 1963).

48.

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Orion. I have to admit to having problems placing Orion on the list. Jack’s initial drawing of him is spectacular, but I find that has more to do with his Astro-Harness than anything else. And while that is an accessory unique to Orion, he doesn’t always wear it. The spandex and spiked helmet don’t really seem to work nearly as well visually without the Astro-Harness so, while I see why Jack designed the character the way he did—that original design is very slick—the practical upshot of it in the storytelling leaves the character looking a little too visually top-heavy much of the time. First appearance: New Gods #1 (February 1971).

47.

Giganto, Sub-Mariner’s Mutant Whale. This Giganto I think is one of Jack’s more wellexecuted monster designs. It’s most easily described as an anthropomorphic whale, but the actual implementation works much better than it should. A whale’s natural body shape is decidedly not conducive to walking upright, but Jack was able to make this look surprisingly natural. First appearance: Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962).

46.

Metron. A character that really could only have been created by Jack, incorporating oversized computer circuits into a chest and headpiece design, naturally suggesting the character’s prime motivator: knowledge. Like Orion, Metron is frequently associated with a large piece of equipment: his Mobius Chair. I think that he visually integrates with it very well, but loses much of his impact without it. First appearance: New Gods #1 (February 1971).

45.

Prester John. As much as Metron is a character that had to come from Jack, Prester John is, too, in his own way, bearing no real similarities to most traditional images of the character. Flowing, fur-lined robes and a completely impractical helmet, and it somehow still works. I might have to do an “Incidental Iconography” on him just to give myself an excuse to research where that helmet design came from! First appearance: Fantastic Four #54 (September 1966).

44.

Thing, circa 1961. Ben Grimm is one of the characters most closely identified with Jack, but his earliest appearances belie that connection by portraying the Thing as a monstrous lump. Despite Dick Ayers claiming to have difficulty in figuring out how to ink Jack’s early Thing, the pile of somewhat amorphous rock is an interesting interpretation of a Jewish golem, minus the obvious inscription needed to traditionally activate one. Joe Sinnott helped refine the character’s look significantly once he began regularly inking Fantastic Four, and it’s noteworthy that Jack changed how he drew the character based on Sinnott’s inks. First appearance: Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961).

43.

Jemiah the Analyzer. The Celestials on the whole are pretty cool designs overall—not unlike the living machine approach Jack took with Galactus. I’ve singled out Jemiah specifically because he strikes me as the quintessential Celestial from a visual perspective: vaguely human, but lots of funky Kirby-ness to look strange and menacing. First appearance: Eternals #7 (January 1977).

42.

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Hulk. The challenge with the Hulk was creating a figure that was the living embodiment of physical power. Jack had to go far beyond the Charles Atlases of the world and effectively invent musculature for the human frame that didn’t exist. How many “ripped” comic characters have been drawn over the years that didn’t owe some debt of thanks to Jack’s ability to create a new form of anatomy? First appearance: Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962).

41.

Ikaris. This guy’s costume is like a living Kirby design. Really wonderful stuff. My only real complaint was that the color scheme ended up being too bold for the coloring technology of the time. Ten years earlier, and this guy would’ve been a huge hit visually. First appearance: Eternals #1 (July 1976).

40.

Ego the Living Planet. How do you make an entire planet look like its own sentience and carry the gravitas that ought to come with a living planet? You have Jack Kirby whip something up for you, naturally. For as many people who’ve drawn faces on moons and suns over the eons, Ego is really the only result that’s looked impressive. It’s not just an old man’s face shoved in a circle; it’s a planet that has complete control over its landscape. First appearance: Thor #132 (September 1966).

39.

Forbush Man. Sure, he’s essentially got the same costume as the original Red Tornado, but Shelly Mayer’s style on his character seemed a little too slick for the kit-bashed costume. Jack’s take on the idea with Forbush Man is deliberately clunkier and provides for broader comedic effect. It may not be a great costume in and of itself but, bearing in mind that it’s intended to be silly, I think it works extremely well for that purpose. First appearance: Not Brand Echh #1 (August 1967).

38.

Red Skull. If you name a character “Red Skull,” the iconic portion of his visuals are a bit obvious. But beyond that, Jack designed three costumes for him that all somehow worked equally well: the green Nazi jumpsuit, the smoking jacket and cravat, and the golden Red Skull Supreme armor. Maybe it’s just the blood red skull itself that makes them interesting/attractive, but all three were eye-catching and memorable in their own ways. First appearance: Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941).

37.

Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan. Of all the Howling Commandos, Dugan is really the only who stands out visually. While most of the members were immediately identifiable by race, Dugan stood out with his walrus mustache, derby and striped undershirt. He was the most unorthodoxlooking soldier of the group, but was probably the most conventional of them as well. He was a string of contradictions, as he never lived down to his nickname. But for all of the U.S. soldiers Jack drew over the years, wearing essentially the same uniform from WWII, Dugan showed originality that the others seemed to lack. First appearance: Sgt. Fury #1 (May 1963).

36.

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Uatu, the Watcher. In his original appearance, the Watcher appeared very gaunt with an oversized head. For someone who purported to watch everything, it was decidedly appropriate.

35.

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His body was alien enough to look disturbing, but his slight frame suggested an unthreatening benevolence. His proportions grew to something more approximating a normal human’s by the time Galactus appeared, but his slimmer look seemed more appropriate to haunt readers’ memories. First appearance: Fantastic Four #13 (April 1963). Brooklyn. Like Dum Dum Dugan, Brooklyn stood out from the Boy Commandos in part because of his chapeaux. What I find interesting about Brooklyn, and why I give him something of an edge over Dum Dum, is that his face was uniquely structured. His mouth was almost too wide for the rest of his head, and his cheeks and jowls seemed to stretch a bit to compensate. This gave him a somewhat more comedic appearance than his cohorts, and allowed him to stand out regardless of whether he was able to keep his trademark hat in place. First appearance: Detective Comics #64 (June 1942).

34.

Doombots. I would argue there’s a more than reasonable chance that Jack’s Doombots were based loosely on the original Cybermen who were seen in Dr. Who several years before the Doombots’ debut in 1969. And while the Cybermen were frightening, that had little to do with the costumes the actors wore. (Due in large part to budgets, the effects and costuming on the TV show were several years behind where the stories were trying to go.) By contrast, Jack’s Doombots are frightening for all the reasons those original Cybermen weren’t. First appearance: Fantastic Four #85 (April 1969).

33.

Bucky. Joe Simon is generally credited with the first sketch/character design of Captain America, but I think Bucky falls under Jack’s hand. Unlike so many kid sidekicks that were floating around at the time, Bucky’s costume is not just a variation of his mentor’s. There are similarities, certainly, but Bucky lacks Cap’s torso decorations and headgear. His costume doesn’t mimic Cap’s, but compliments it very well, very unlike how Robin’s compares to Batman’s or Tim’s copies Black Terror’s. First appearance: Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941).

32.

Uni-Mind. It’s basically just a stylized, floating brain, which isn’t terribly impressive in and of itself, but what I like about Uni-Mind is the way in which Jack rendered it gave the vague allusion of a face without expressly having to draw in actual facial features. First appearance: Eternals #12 (June 1977).

31.

Ruler of the Earth. Jack, in my opinion, was better at designing inorganic machinery than characters. The machines he gave Mr. Fantastic were some of the most striking images in Fantastic Four. So Ruler of the Earth, a giant A.I. computer, gets a spot here. Despite it still looking like a huge Kirby-esque machine, it also works remarkably well as a character. Also intriguing are the similarities between this design and ancient artwork from Central and South American cultures, making an additional interesting commentary on the story itself. (Oh, and if you’re digging through your collection looking for these guys, I recommend in Ruler’s case here to pull out an original printing in Journey Into Mystery #81. The reprints did a real number on the coloring!) First appearance: Journey Into Mystery #81 (June 1962).

30.

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Manhunter. The Manhunter visual Jack created in 1942 is pretty straightforward, just with the unusual coloring for the face. But then he was able to update the same basic design with a decidedly more robotic appearance in 1975. Interestingly, the addition of Kirby-tech stylizations, combined with Jack’s blockier illustration technique of the time, makes the character’s later appearance much more compelling. Of course, this is precisely the type of thing that people who don’t “get” Kirby point to when they say they don’t like him, but I think it works particularly well here. First appearances: Adventure Comics #73 (April 1942), First Issue Special #5 (August 1975).

29.

God. Although I don’t recall seeing Jack’s interpretation of God in any actual comic story, his illustrations were published in a portfolio from Dark Horse in the mid-1990s. I fear my writing abilities are not up to the task of even trying to describe any of it, if you haven’t seen the work, but it’s a complex design and really does look the sum total of everything. Unlike Steve Ditko’s design for Eternity (Marvel’s answer to the sum total of everything) which depicts “everything” in a more abstract sense, Jack seemed to take a more literal approach. Not surprisingly, “God” is as characteristic of Jack’s design sensibilities every bit as much as “Eternity” is characteristic of Ditko’s. First appearance: Genesis.

28.

Galactus. The curious thing in Galactus’ design, as I noted back in TJKC #42, is that he’s one of Jack’s few character designs that remained absolutely consistent whenever Jack drew him. I think this is, in part, because he was designed more as a walking machine than a character and Jack was able to draw the machinery of Galactus’ accoutrements more readily than the flourishes of a character’s cloth costume. Certainly impressive, if for no other reason than its complexity. First appearance: Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966).

27.

Big Barda. I talked about Barda in my last column and I have to say that if it weren’t for my doing research on the character, I don’t think she would’ve made this list. Barda’s uniform, like so many other Kirby designs, exemplifies why I enjoy studying Jack’s work. The more I’m able to understand what he was trying to do, the more appreciation I have for the results. I would’ve dismissed Barda earlier because of the unusual headpiece and hair styling, but by examining the figure more closely, and seeing how it all works together as part of a unified hole, I think there’s much to be said for Barda’s look. First appearance: Mister Miracle #4 (September 1971).

26.

Darkseid. The character of Darkseid was created as the embodiment of anti-life. As such, Jack needed a design that looked appropriate. What’s striking here is that, while Darkseid evokes the feeling of traditional death imagery with his stoney visage, his face and body structure really bear no obvious hallmarks of skeletons or other symbols of dying. Visually he conveys the feeling of anti-life: something not exactly life, but not exactly death either. First appearance: Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #134 (December 1970).

25.

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Gemini. Although following somewhat in Alex Toth’s lead on Thundarr, Jack’s villain Gemini was that property’s equivalent of Darkseid or Dr. Doom. The two-faced nemesis was cleverly designed, and I have to believe that Jack was thinking how cool it would be to see an action figure of that character with a sliding mask/rotating head effect. I’ve seen mention of some similarities to Darkseid, which is certainly credible, but I think his armor gives Gemini a visual edge. First appearance: Thundarr The Barbarian animated television series (1980).

24.

Thing, circa 1966. Under the inking of Joe Sinnott, Jack solidified Ben’s appearance, making him look less like a pile of clay and more like a craggy cliff side. This is the iconic Thing people fell in love with, and has more hallmarks of “classic” Kirby than his earliest appearances. One fascinating aspect about Thing’s design is the use of spotted blacks to show depth and shadow. The blocked shapes became an almost integral part of not only Ben’s design, but also the design of panels and entire pages. Another fascinating aspect is that it’s almost impossible to draw the Thing with the same rock configuration twice, and yet there’s never mistaking the character, even when drawn by other artists. First appearance (due to Sinnott’s inks): Fantastic Four #44 (November 1965).

23.

Him. I’m talking here about Adam Warlock in his first cocooned appearance. Another instance of Jack taking what could have been an ordinary visual—a cocoon—and making it iconic as all get-out with lots of knobby bits all over it. Seriously, can you forget the cover to FF #67? First appearance: Fantastic Four #66 (September 1967).

22.

The Fly. You might call this design “SpiderMan Without The Mess Of Figuring Out Who Gets Credit For Him.” The Fly has a more-orless regular superhero costume, except from the shoulders on up. The wings and eyepieces give the outfit an air of the strange, mysterious and (at some level) repulsive. Exactly what this character (and later, Spider-Man) required. First appearance: Adventures of the Fly #1 (August 1959).

21.

Rama-Tut. A simple design, based on what ancient Egyptian pharaohs actually wore. While royalty typically did not go bare-chested, it did suit the character as a super-villain, highlighting his light skin to set him apart from not only the heroes but also his subjects. Using a character design like that to suggest his place in the story reminds me of Orson Welles’ ongoing attempts to compose shots that would highlight the nature of relationships between/among characters. This is what you might call “mastery of craft.” First appearance: Fantastic Four #19 (October 1963).

20.

Unnamed entertainer of Mogul. As far as I know, this guy only shows up in “Tales of Asgard” from Thor #139. You can see him quite clearly on the left of the first page of that story, brandishing a dagger and a torch. He’s got quite an elaborate get-up, and it showcases best, I think, what Jack was able to do using Eastern influences. The ornate headpiece and shoes are vaguely reminiscent of Indian tapestries, but the bold linework and shadows make this design stand well apart.

19.

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Quite remarkable and striking, especially when you consider that Jack put that much effort into essentially a throwaway/background character. First appearance: Thor #139 (April 1967). Garm. A character that didn’t see publication until after Jack’s death, Garm is a floating, robotic, Galactic Bounty Hunter. Unlike some of Jack’s previous flying robots (like Herbie), Garm has a more organic feel, making him seem as much an alien as a piece of technology. The cloak adds a lot here, I think, shrouding the character in more depth than one might otherwise believe. First appearance: Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters #1 (July 2006).

18.

Invincible Man. I have always loved the Invincible Man costume, and have been disappointed it’s not used more. The billowy sleeves and flowing cowl, set against the armored cummerbund and boots just always stood out for me. It was a costume that could be used equally for heroes or villains. And while that wouldn’t necessarily work for a single, long-lasting character, it was perfectly suited to how it was used in the original story as well as the handful of follow-ups that brought it back into occasional use. First appearance: Fantastic Four #32 (November 1964).

17.

Mark Moonrider. I think this costume is a great example of what an adventurer’s garb should look like. It has a basic utility to it that prevents it from looking like a gaudy superhero costume, but there’s enough flair to make it interesting. It appears loose, without being billowy, and perfectly comfortable for whatever excitement might be on the other side of your Boom Tube. First appearance: Forever People #1 (February 1971).

16.

Ant-Man. I really like the original Ant-Man costume because of the subtle iconography of the ant Jack incorporated into the design. While that was modified significantly enough early on to no longer hearken back to the character’s namesake, the original still stands out as a clever application of a motif that could have been unnecessarily heavy in its approach. First appearance: As Henry Pym in Tales to Astonish #27 (January 1962); in costume in Tales to Astonish #35 (September 1962).

15. 15

Dr. Doom. ’Nuff said! First appearance: Fantastic Four #5 (July 1962).

14. 13.

Princess Zanda. A minor character from Jack’s run on Black Panther, but an eyecatching one to say the least. There’s a vague similarity to Big Barda, but mostly at the conceptual level. Zanda, appropriately, has a decidedly more African flare to her outfit, blending traditional cultural elements with more contemporary Kirbyish ones. First appearance: Black Panther #1 (January 1977). Zzutak. I haven’t listed many of Jack’s monsters because, frankly, I don’t think many of them were very inspired. Zzutak is one of the exceptions, though, as his Aztec-influenced visage stands significantly apart from the more classically European designs of many of Jack’s other Atlas monsters. First appearance: Strange Tales #88 (September 1961).

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Mister Miracle. If I were asked to design a superhero costume for an escape artist, I know I’d be hard-pressed to come up with something. I’d probably take my cues from Houdini and put the guy in a Victorian bathing suit or underwear. Jack went quite another direction, not surprisingly, and came up with this design that evokes a stage presence I have yet to see captured by a real magician. First appearance: Mister Miracle #1 (March 1971).

11.

Susan, Neal, Barbara and Lisa Kirby. Admittedly, this kind of goes against the intention of this list, but I think it’s important in the larger scheme of things. For all of Jack’s talent in drawing funny books, I think he was most proud of his kids. He was a family man, first and foremost, and I want to recognize that by putting his very real creations in the top ten, even if Jack didn’t have quite as much say in their iconography as anyone else on the list. But, hey, you could say that’s what was incidental about it! First appearances: Susan (1945), Neal (1948), Barbara (1952), and Lisa, shown in a recent close-up photo (1961).

10.

Kang. By all rights, Kang’s costume shouldn’t work. He looks like a futuristic mime that’s had a couple buckets of green and purple paint dropped on him. And yet, once again, Jack was able to make him look powerful, imposing and menacing. I’m continually amazed how he was able to do that. First appearance: Avengers #8 (September 1964).

Odin. Characters based on old legends are difficult in that you need to come up with something new, while still adhering to the original descriptions and depictions to keep them recognizable. I think Odin is probably Jack’s most successful character in that respect, looking exactly as you would expect the All-Father to look, but still looking impressively regal and powerful in the way that only Jack could seem to pull off. While I like the designs Jack did for the rest of the Norse pantheon, Odin is by far his most successful, in my opinion. First appearance: Journey Into Mystery #85 (October 1962).

Skrulls. The first Skrulls Jack developed were part of the Skrull armed forces. As such, he gave them an alien uniform: functional but not particularly decorative. Unlike many of his previous humanoid aliens, who only had one or two noticeable features altered from humans, the Skrulls have pointed ears, multi-cleft chins, ringed pupils and green skin. They’re able to look both terrifying and silly almost simultaneously. And, despite being able to shape-shift, Jack designed each one as a separate and uniquely identifiable character. First appearance: Fantastic Four #2 (January 1962).

Etrigan the Demon. I’m sure we’re all fully versed on how Etrigan’s look was inspired by Hal Foster’s work in Prince Valiant. That said, though, I think Jack still made the Demon unique, and brought a raw, fearsome quality to the character that Foster’s gorgeous illustration style could not. (If you Kirby-philes don’t get upset with my list here, I’m sure I can manage to offend at least a few of Foster’s fans with that!) First appearance: The Demon #1 (August 1972).

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Black Bolt. I rank Black Bolt pretty high because he really embodies all of Jack’s ideas about what a superhero’s costume should look like. The zig-zag stripes are iconic, certainly, but not blatantly symbolic in the way Superman’s “S” or Captain Marvel’s thunderbolt are. The “cape” has become a functional aspect of the design (allowing Black Bolt to fly) but the serrated edge provides a visual punch that’s missing in most flowing capes. And, other than a little flare on the gloves, ankles and forehead, the remainder of the outfit is fairly utilitarian. The overall effect is striking, but in a surprisingly understated way. First appearance: Fantastic Four #45 (December 1965).

Marvel Girl. I’m actually using Marvel Girl as an example for the original X-Men uniforms. While all the members shared the same basic concept, they were all minor variations of the uniform worn by Jean. It’s an effective jumpsuit design, not much more complex than what’s worn by the Challengers of the Unknown or the Fantastic Four, but the stark color contrast and the minor additional flares on the gloves and boots make for a much more impressionable visual. This is Jack’s first superhero uniform that I think really worked well for everyone who wore it. First appearance: X-Men #1 (September 1963).

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Warlord Kaa, the Living Shadow. Just a solid black form with yellow eyes. Simple and elegant, with his somewhat amorphous shape adding in an element of fear. First appearance: Strange Tales #79 (December 1960).

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Black Panther. With as much coloring trouble as Marvel had on The Hulk, it’s a wonder that Jack opted to try a character who was entirely black and grey. Somewhat surprisingly, it worked well, giving the character an air of stealth, like his namesake. But the pin-striping on the gloves and boots adds a nice subtlety that gives a dark, monochromatic costume some visual interest. It’s worth noting that T’Challa’s duds have remained essentially unchanged to this day. First appearance: Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966). Silver Surfer. On the off chance that I still have any credibility left by the time you’ve reached this entry, I expect many of you are claiming that the Surfer doesn’t have any design and that he’s just a naked human figure. The Silver Surfer, though, strikes me as Jack’s most elegant character design because he is not just a naked human figure; he is the naked human figure streamlined to the point of universality. Look at him more closely and you’ll notice that, despite looking basically human, the details that complicate the human figure have been eliminated. There are no nipples or fingernails; there are no eyebrows or pupils. Notice further, there are no toes and no ears. All of the complicated, fiddly bits have been removed. Jack has given us the human figure in what might be considered its pure form. The Surfer is the most simple, basic way for Jack to draw man and still convey every aspect necessary to be recognized as man. (“Man” of course in the more general sense of “mankind” since Surfer has no genitals, either!) Combined with the lack of color in the figure itself, any reader can project him- or herself into this genderless, nearly featureless being. A perfect receptacle for a storyteller’s audience. And isn’t that what Jack devoted his professional life to—telling stories? First appearance: Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966).

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Let me by finish by saying that I’m fully aware that I’ve left out a slew of great character designs. As I reminded everyone at the start, Jack was very prolific for decades and there were a lot of characters to wade through. But when I think of great Jack Kirby character designs, these are the guys that I think of first. ★

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Fifty People Influenced By Jack Kirby Leaders in many media comment on how the King influenced their work and thought, by Adam McGovern, author of the “Kirby As A Genre” column in The Jack Kirby Collector

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who confront their hidden selves and work to find the best way to express that. Kirby did it with comic books and we’re all the better for it. Even though the comic book medium is still very much in the ghetto, I’m not sure it would even exist today if not for Jack Kirby.

ack Kirby—he’s not for everybody, but everybody seems to have taken something from him. And not just everybody in comics. The “King” not only set the terms by which all comics afterward would be defined, but foresaw how a number of other artforms would evolve, from ambitious architecture to extreme fashion to blockbuster cinematic special effects. He also tapped classic roots of storytelling that run so deep many creators miss them, and which later artists in all media have followed to heights and complexities even he couldn’t imagine. On the following pages creators and thinkers from the worlds of comics, animation, design, prose literature, academia, criticism, gallery art, music and theatre describe how all their efforts connect in Kirby’s universe.

One source of this kind of storytelling, since we’re speaking cosmically, could of course be faith. Kirby was very conscious of his Jewish identity and you’re well into a graphic Book of Mormon—though only those who know this might see it in his work and your other stuff. And for some people their beliefs give them a cosmic perspective while for others it makes them hold off on questions or interpretations beyond their own holy text, so the two interests could be completely separate, but… are they?

Michael Allred is comics’ king of neo-pop, channeling the graphic simplicity and dynamic cheer of midcentury Kirby-hero and teen-romance comics through cosmic rays of contemporary sensibility on books like the media satire X-Statix at Marvel (with writer Peter Milligan) and Allred’s own The Atomics. He also is to inner space what Kirby was to galactic travel, with mindbendng compositions and metaphysical quests in Allred masterworks like Red Rocket 7 and Madman (not to mention handling heaven itself in his ongoing graphic adaptation of the Book of Mormon, The Golden Plates).

We all have our filters. Me, I’m always fascinated with what makes someone tick, what they believe and why. Or why someone lacks any intellectual curiosity. What makes our differences so... different. You could take any song, movie, book, etc., and it will have a personal impact on you through your own perspective or mood. If you make a study of the artist, you lose that personal interpretation as you see the inner workings of the artist. This can be disillusioning, or enlightening. I’m often torn between taking creative things at face value, and the mad urge to look behind the curtain.

You’ve built the dynamic scale and manic energy of Kirby into your compositions, yet your work has the innocence and specific human detail more common to comics from between the Golden and Silver Ages—did you feel those looks could use a little of each other, or is it just more of an intuitive mix that suits your personality?

I’d love to declare my genius, but honestly, it would have to be more intuitive. There have been phases in my work where I’ve intentionally, consciously, tried to bring my influences more forcefully to the surface—mostly because I didn’t think I even had a style of my own. I look back on those efforts now and shudder a little. When I’ve just relaxed and drawn with the love of drawing and telling stories, I’ve done my best work. And I acknowledge that my work, my style, is most definitely the sum of my influences mixed in with what uniqueness I bring to the party. Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who came before. It just so happens that I feel at home getting that boost from Jack Kirby. He created a language that I can understand and get excited about. And it took him decades to define it for himself as well. Kirby’s known as the definitive special-effects artist in comics, but in all his best cosmic ’n’ quantum epics people encounter all these spectacular secrets of the universe, but really end up confronting their hidden selves—did any of that dynamic find its way into the spiritual odyssey of Madman Atomic Comics, or is it from other sources?

I think that it’s all part of being a progressive artist. You have to ask the big questions. Kirby always asked the big questions. And as big and cosmic as all existence is, it ultimately has to come back to the self. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Do I have a purpose? Am I all there is? Is everything around me a detailed figment of my imagination? Is the greatest path to happiness serving others? It all begins and ends with the individual. The greatest art comes from the musician, the filmmaker, the painter, the sculptor, the writer, the illustrator, 116

Jean-Marie Arnon (www.arnon.fr) is a gifted sculptor and visual artist in France who produces vivid works based on prehistory, and memorable graphic albums and stories evoking comics creators’ common ancestor, Kirby. With the passing of time, it becomes more and more clear that Jack Kirby’s art is a huge monolith in the field of 20th century popular culture. Here are my personal Top Five aspects of his work, which explain why he still is a big influence on me (and I guess a few thousand others): 1. Cosmic Landscapes & Alien Technology

Think about it. It’s somehow frustrating to realize that the cosmic visions depicted in Kirby’s ’70s work such as 2001 or Eternals seem more alien and futuristic than anything done today, which mostly looks like ersatz Star Wars (which was ersatz Kirby anyway). 2. Primitive Life Forms & Prehistoric Tribes

Being born in the southwest of France, which is maybe the most important place for prehistoric sites in the world, I’m a fool for anything prehistoric. I was always excited to discover, lost somewhere in a corner of a Kirby story, a picture of prehistoric people or animals (and it happens quiet frequently). Of course, nowadays we know that prehistoric men didn’t look like that, but the feeling of savagery, primitive urge and sheer bestial brutality expressed in these Kirby drawings makes it work in a curious and iconic way, typical of his art. More real than the real thing, in short.

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3. Sensual Women

The sensuality of Kirby’s drawings has never been praised enough. For example, take the Young Romance story from the ’40s, done with Joe Simon, entitled “The Girl Who Tempted Me”. All the pages are literally dripping with eroticism. Female sensuality is shown as a primordial force, perturbing and transforming the characters’ lives beyond moral boundaries, beyond good and evil. Look at the girl dancing, the voluptuous hair, the curves… let’s move on to the next subject. 4. The Bodies in the Crowd

Kirby was a great crowd-drawer. Take most of today’s comics: there are no crowds, or they are at least very abstractly and hastily drawn. Today’s artists seem to have forgotten how the human background is important. Be it in a fight, a party or a disaster, Kirby’s crowds are very accurately drawn. The bodies’ attitudes are precise and there are lots of details, which reinforces the impact of a scene and the credibility of a story. The Devil is in the details, but not here. 5. The Aesthetics of Deflagration

You’ve probably noticed Kirby’s rubble, veritable works of abstract art bursting in every direction in his characters’ rumbles. The drama of this terrible destruction, as if real buildings (and their inhabitants) were annihilated, is given a greater impact and pathos from an artist who experienced WWII’s bombed battlefields. Nevertheless, in the end, they look like a healthy surge of energy! Fun and drama at the same time—quite disturbing, isn’t it? This visual trait proved sufficiently entertaining and dynamic to be swiped by the ’90s’ major blockbusters, throwing blocks of rocks at a protesting Bruce Willis with endless effects. Needless to say, it has inspired me too!

Photo: Silvia Acosta-Bendian

Jack Kirby, Composer

Composer/percussionist Gregg Bendian (www.greggbendian.com) is widely known for his innovative work in the arenas of jazz, classical, and rock music. He has collaborated with some of the strongest personalities in contemporary music including Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Pat Metheny and John Zorn. Gregg leads the ensembles Interzone (with whom he recorded Requiem for Jack Kirby), Trio Pianissimo and The Mahavishnu Project, and is featured in the book Percussion Profiles: Interviews, Articles & Discographies of 25 of the World’s Most Creative Percussionists.

Ever since my early childhood, the world of the imagination has been my preferred locus of residence. As a pre-teen living inside the vibrant 1970s, I was torn between ambitions of becoming a musician, a superhero, or a comic book artist. I spent long hours working at all three, but in the end it became obvious to me that I had little talent for drawing and no measurable superpowers, so ultimately musical talent won out. However my love of comic art continued and without a doubt the biggest inspiration for me both as an artist and yes, as a musician, would be the great Jack Kirby. I think that Jack Kirby would have made an amazing musician. He certainly possessed the vision, work ethic and “can-do” attitude of what I call “The Rugged American Individualist Composer.” Jack had much in common with self-made New York geniuses like Charles Ives or Edgard Varese, men who nearly singlehandedly gave birth to Modern American Classical Music in the 1920s and ’30s—much the same way Jack gave birth to the world of comic books around the same time. As well, Jack’s groundbreaking, adventurous work at Marvel rivaled that of a Modern Jazz-man, hitting right within the same time period—the early 1960s. Surely Jack’s fluid technique; his timing; his use of color

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of vibraphone, guitar, bass and percussion. And so I composed Requiem for Jack Kirby (Atavistic Records, 2001) not merely as a tribute to Jack’s genius, but also as an affirmation that great comic book art— and the world of the imagination that Jack spawned— can and does live on to inspire ambitious art in other realms of endeavor. Thanks to the folks at DC, I was lucky enough to have Kirby’s atmospheric “Fourth World” artwork laced throughout the Requiem’s CD cover, booklet and disc face—a collaboration with the King that I will cherish forever. Tom Brevoort is one of the leading keepers of the Kirby legacy in both the content and flavor of the mainline Marvel superheroes comics in his editorial domain. He spoke about the Kirbyesque feat of both building on the past and breaking with it. As the editor of some of Marvel’s most classic properties, you have to have a keen interest and knowledge of the canon you’re carrying forward. How do you see Jack Kirby’s role in that legacy?

Jack Kirby is one of the foundational pillars of the entire Marvel mythos, and virtually every book in the line reflects some aspect of his creative vision to one extent or another. Jack was an innovative giant when it came to creating characters whose continuing stories and adventures readers remain interested in to this very day, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. The Lee-Kirby era of Marvel defined much of how comics would be made from then on. They were always innovating as well, so the trick is to keep the kernel of what made their books artistic and sales successes while not standing still or just recycling. What’s the equation you encourage your writers and artists to work from?

(above) Kirby untold: Some of Jack’s FF #102 pencils, reconstructed with John Buscema’s, for FF #108 (March 1971), which appear with Kirby’s restored version in the Tom Brevoort-helmed Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure (2008). (right) Space Jam: Bendian and Kirby collide on the cover of the Requiem, with upper-left inset by Duncan Rouleau. Fantastic Four TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. CD cover art ©2008 DC Comics.

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and texture; his innovative manipulation of motion and stasis; and his effortless ability to work intricately, quickly and spontaneously, rivaled that of the finest improvising jazz artists of his day. Now that we’ve hit the 21st Century, it’s easy to look back and see that these qualities, coupled with his unbridled industriousness, allowed Jack to create what were essentially “feature films” on four-color newsprint. These explosions of creative imagination would go on to inspire a New Jersey composerman to brazenly cull a symphony from a mere jazz quartet

Reputedly, Kirby was much more interested in seeing young talent go forward and explore their own styles and their own voices than in trying to emulate his approach. There’s a quote in reference to an interview given by a creator who had taken over a title that Jack had helped originate, and indicated that he intended to do the series in the Kirby tradition. Jack’s response was, “He doesn’t get it. The Jack Kirby tradition is to start a new book.” So that’s a valuable point of view to hang on to—that trying to preserve these characters in amber doesn’t honor them so much as it chokes the air out of them, and turns them into something cold and plastic. The characters need to be able to live and grow and move in new directions—that’s what keeps them vital. There are probably some lines you shouldn’t cross, but even those aren’t cut-and-dried. Even I would have argued at a certain point that bringing Bucky back in Captain America would be a mistake, but we’ve found a way to tell that story that most readers found enjoyable and additive. So the lesson is that you need to examine even the taboos, to make sure that the reason that they’re taboos still holds water. Each generation builds on the innovations of the ones before them. And advances in technology have made things possible that Jack could only dream about. His comics were limited to a 64color palette, very simple four-color press printing, and the cheapest paper imaginable. Within those limitations, he worked wonders and pushed the boundaries (with things like his integrated collages). But imagine what Kirby could have done with the range of colors and the printing techniques we have today, not to mention the advantages that programs like Photoshop give us in terms of integrating computer-generated or computer-modified images into the work. I have to believe that, were Jack alive today, he’d be all over this stuff—he was a very forward-thinking individual.

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Marvel and the Kirby memory seem to be on much better terms these days—after the legal feuds of the ’80s and ’90s, Kirby’s credit is a point of prestige in the Gaiman/ Romita Jr. Eternals, the family has come back to the fold with Galactic Bounty Hunters, and projects like the “lost” FF issue have the full cooperation and good compensation of all concerned. Do you think this is a new era for Marvel embracing its architects, and what is the thinking behind it?

Well, there are always two elements to this issue; there’s the creative side and the business side. And even during all of the craziness of the ’80s and ’90s, I think you’d find that the creative side always loved and appreciated Kirby and his accomplishments. It’s just that those people may not have been in a position to affect the business side materially. For instance, I don’t really know Jim Shooter, but Jim maintains that during the controversy surrounding the return of Jack’s art, he was working behind the scenes within Marvel to reach a settlement that would be acceptable to all parties. Having seen how a company like Marvel functions (and having been a part of the Marvel that existed shortly after Jim’s departure) I completely believe that. That all said, probably the biggest unsung hero in terms of rebuilding a relationship with the Kirby family is publisher Dan Buckley. More than anybody realizes, Dan’s been instrumental in finding ways to work through the bureaucracy and get change to happen. And I think Dan feels a certain responsibility to Jack and the other creators of the past who laid down the foundation for the company Marvel is today. One of comics’ most popular mavericks, Joe Casey has lent his headlong, pop-savvy writing style to everything from classic projects like X-Men to idiosyncratic personal creations like The Intimates. He outdoes Kirby—and offers uncommon insights into the King as a wordsmith and not just an image-master— in the cult phenomenon Gødland (with artist and co-creator Tom Scioli). Casey helped us decipher Kirby’s cosmic glyphs. As a writer, you must have been conscious of Kirby’s prose, not just his signature visuals, when Tom and you convened to do Gødland. You seem to have embraced the hyperbole and grand scale of Kirby’s language as well as the energized structure of his storytelling. The latter is a lot less controversial than the former. How do you see Kirby’s writing serving his overall contribution, and what do you think is the proper standard to judge it by?

When Kirby finally began writing, with the Fourth World material, it was really like plugging directly into his brain. Uncut Kirby is really the best kind of Kirby. Personally, dialogue like “Be content with your ‘Mobius Chair’ which rides the dimension winds of space-time!” is pure genius. A line like, “I jammed Mother Box into the tormentcircuits—felt her power race

with vengeance toward their insidious source!” is technicolor poetry. I couldn’t get close to that kind of direct-from-the-id style of writing that Kirby excelled at. That was his voice, and I just don’t think you can judge an artist’s true voice when it finally emerges. I don’t think anyone should judge it... we should simply enjoy it. Was the Kirby voice always something you were waiting for a vehicle to unleash, or is Gødland just another step in a direction you were already traveling? Certainly Automatic Kafka and The Intimates had something of Kirby’s breakneck rhythm and information barrage, even in forms far afield of his.

I’m not sure I think of it as the “Kirby voice” in my own work; I’m just following his example of leaving it all out on the field. Kirby had his voice, Tom Scioli and I have ours. Kirby’s legacy is for all of us swimming in his wake to bring it, 100%, in every story, on every page, in every panel and every line. For me, as I get older and experience more and more in this industry, Kirby’s directness, the way his storytelling cuts to the heart of things with laser precision... that is definitely something I strive for in my own work.

(above) From Jack’s id to our ears: New Gods #6 (December 1971). (left) The Bigger Bang: Space-deity Iboga breaks through, from the first Gødland hardcover. New Gods TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Gødland TM and ©2008 Joe Casey & Tom Scioli.

It’s not often remarked that Kirby was to writing what Ditko was to drawing—there was this psychotropic free-association that Kirby 119

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seemed to access entirely organically (unless you count the inseparable cigar). You use that oracular voice a lot in Gødland—this sensational shorthand that acts like a stuffit file of revelation. In Kirby’s case it seems a function of his generation’s trust in intuition, though it also relates to perspectives we think of as either ancient or new-age; outside of his lifetime. Can this be picked up from reading comic books, or is there a certain source both he and you have tapped?

I think that Kirby’s comics—especially the ones he wrote as well—are the perfect example of the uniqueness of the comicbook medium, mainly because it’s such a total synthesis of everything Kirby was about, everything he believed in when it came to heroes and myth. I think it was completely intuitive on Kirby’s part, but he was really tapping into the tradition of classic myth. And I do think that Kirby had a belief in things outside of ourselves, the magic and the mystery of life. To tap into that in my own writing... if I was backed into a corner I would have to say it’s simply a part of my style, too. I’m just opening up my head—and sometimes my soul—and letting it spill out onto the page. The source that any artist taps is a combination of their own experiences and the depth of their heart. On the same tack as that last one, Kirby always seemed situated at the closing of a circle between quantum theory and mystical lore—onestep-ahead tech and a sheer fantasy element that suggests an animating spirit in all the hardware. This may be what people really mean by

“modern myth.” Is Gødland just another of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the staggering ideas our own advances uncover?

In a lot of ways, Gødland is written completely on the fly. The dialogue especially is very improvisational. I’m just vibing off the art and letting whatever comes into my head spill out onto the page. So, whatever its place may be in a wider context is not necessarily something we’re doing on purpose. But the improvisational nature of the writing obviously allows for a ton of my subconscious beliefs to surface in the text. You are correct about one thing... the book is definitely about how humanity confronts its own future. Are there things Kirby provided a model of how not to do in this day and age? For instance, the Archers’ family unit is like a matriarchal reversal of the FF’s three-guys-with-girl-sidekick dynamic, and there’s a lot of humor to go with the terror and tragedy of Gødland—are these ways to keep Silver Age bombast and the Silver Age hero in check?

That’s an interesting question. The last thing I would want to do in Gødland is to keep anything, as you say, “in check.” Without being too political, I do feel a kinship with Kirby’s career in one specific way... he was unafraid to dive in, create new titles and give them his all, no matter how long they lasted. Kirby’s New Gods lasted 11 issues. My Automatic Kafka series lasted nine. Eternals lasted 19 issues. The Intimates lasted 12. OMAC lasted eight issues. Who knows how long Gødland will last? No one looks at Kirby’s sales records anymore, what books got cancelled and why, etc. He knew that, ultimately, it was about the art, the ideas, the voice. That’s what I keep in mind with every new project I do. I look to other creators for what not to do. Never Kirby. [Kirby’s cultural children number much more than 50, but in the thematic interests of this book we present a few honorable mentions of creators who were too busy with their own worldbuilding to comment, but are great friends of TJKC and fittingly bring us to the magic Five-Oh. First up: In his Pulitzer-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon brought the Kirby era of comics to life, movingly compositing Simon & Kirby (as well as Siegel, Biro and Eisner) into his main characters. Few have done so much to raise comics’ reputation from the world of fine culture.] [Darwyn Cooke is an heir to the dynamics and simplicities of Kirby, with energized compositions and essentialist figure work that are redefining the medium like the King did before him. With masterworks like The New Frontier Cooke has also realized the kind of novel-for-comics that Kirby fought to establish. He generously agreed to lend his talents to inking and coloring Jack Kirby’s pencils for the cover art of this book.] Jean Depelley is a respected writer and critic of film and comics in France. He has done much to keep the Kult of Kirby alive abroad. I was raised by the Fantastic Four, not only the comic book but by the family they formed, in the turmoil of my parents’ divorce. I started with the episodes inked by Sinnott, when the FF came out in France as graphic novels in the early ’70s. Then came the Strange monthly (starring X-Men, Daredevil, Iron Man and SpiderMan) and I became a real “Marvel geek.”

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By the late ’80s, when the back-issue market exploded, I temporarily stopped collecting them as a student of modest means. It wasn’t until the end of my studies—with a PhD in chemistry, like the usual Kirby hero, and a job as a science teacher—that I came back to comic books. That’s when I read Captain Victory, and the lighting struck a second time and fired my brain. I finally realized that Marvel and its continuity were not the point, but the authors were: John Buscema, Gil Kane, Gene Colan, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee… these were my new heroes, and Kirby was at the top of the list! When Jack left us for good in 1994, I vividly remember that day. I had lost someone I really cared for, though we’d never met. With a few others (U.S. authors Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, or the French Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas, for example), Jack gave me an interest in popular literature; for the entertainment of it, the wild ideas (both scientific and metaphysical) that generally compensate for the clichés. The sensory aspects in Kirby’s art are quite impressive: his heroes are constantly confronted with the four natural elements. You really feel rocks, howling winds, droplets or sparkles “krackling” their way around you, giving his stories a sense of sheer power. Jack must have experienced them in his flesh as a soldier in WWII’s trenches and somehow had the talent to inject that in his art with proper authenticity. His storytelling is both extremely dynamic and easily readable, with opening splash pages (showing what is at stake), followed by double splashes (giving the context, as with camera-pans in movie direction), and climactic scenes in every panel, featuring veritable ballets of dancing characters. His art style, venturing toward abstraction, has been analyzed many times—suffice it to say that Kirby invented the medium’s grammar. Discovering and contributing to TJKC gave me the opportunity to get in touch with wonderful people, some of them becoming friends and collaborators (like artists Arnon and Reed Man). And when last year Reed Man relaunched the Strange monthly of our youth, giving it—guess what?—a Kirby-oriented editorial direction, I ended up writing scripts for him and Arnon. In my own work (be it for comics or movies), I try to produce dynamic character-driven stories, Kirby’s trademark, which to me is the essence of comic books, as much as Keith Richards’ riffs are for rock. Arnon and I are now working on Megasauria, a series loaded with dinosaurs and futuristic technology, while, with Reed Man (and thanks to Lisa Kirby’s benevolent authorization), we’re currently producing

further adventures of Jack’s Galaxy Green. A dream come true, and I sincerely hope Kirby fans over the world will have the opportunity to enjoy that work. Today I have the peculiar feeling of being part of a chosen family, and each time I stumble upon a new Kirby piece (which is quite frequently), it’s like visiting an old relative and having a good time with him. I’ve been very lucky. Thanks, Jack!

Junot Díaz has sparked one of the widest sensations in the literary world with his acclaimed debut story collection, Drown, and his phenomenal debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It is an intimate and epic story of expulsion from homelands and imprisonment within yourself, drawing equally on Díaz’s experience and research of his Dominican heritage and his observation and love of the pop culture that threads through the narrative like a doctoral thesis recited by an expert rapper. Comics and Kirby are prominent in the mix and his characters’ lives, which is why this prominent talent generously talked to TJKC about our shared comics legacy. Much of the makeup of the title character and main narrator in your book is influenced by comics, and some of the central metaphors are to Galactus, the Fourth World and the Watcher. Your geek-fluency is too thorough to be entirely un-autobiographical. How did you become aware of Kirby, and what was it about his (or others’) fantasy concepts that spoke to an immigrant kid with a somewhat different folkloric heritage? (Or might Kirby’s space-age myths form a kind of continuum with other supernatural traditions?)

You got me. I was a hard-core comic nerd when I was younger. (If the comic book industry only knew how many of us immigrants and kids of color padded its bottom line!) There was one kid in my neighborhood who was utterly obsessed with Kirby, who thought him a god. It was only because of this guy that I learned exactly what role Kirby played in the creation of the comic book pantheons that I so loved. At first when I saw those early X-Men I was like: this guy’s a god? But oh man did things change when I encountered Kamandi (which I could buy at the newsstand) and the Fourth World books (which I had to read in back issue). Those damn things just blew a hole into my cranium and drilled straight into my imagination. Until that time Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer and the Watcher were my favorite characters but then Darkseid took over completely for me. He was the baddest-ass dude ever. And Kamandi, which was part of my Planet of the Apes love-fest, had a level of invention, had a warpsmith kineticism that is still unmatched. While it’s never easy to draw a genealogical chart describing why or how a person falls in love with a particular narrative I will hazard to say that for an immigrant kid, who left one world and had to find a life in another, who lived through a whole series of extreme phenomena—immigration, learning a new language and culture, leaving a society that was almost un-electrified and arriving in one that seemed like the future—Kirby’s own compelling narrative extremity was irresistible. Certainly Orion’s arc spoke to me in a profound way; born in one world but raised in another and struggling to balance both legacies.

(above) Graphic literature: Díaz pictured by pop-art illustration firm extraordinaire Quickhoney.

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dictators and writers are each other’s “competition”), yet by the end, carrying on the story of what he’s seen becomes almost a holy mission (with an implicit ability to improve the world, unlike the comics’ Uatu, who can only speak once it’s too late). Writers depend on audiences, but are humans really cosmically condemned to just watch?

But it was Kirby’s basic poetics, his vision of a world that is not one but two or three or four, that in the end keeps me returning to his work. The son of immigrants himself, he must have struggled with the legacies of the Old World of his parents (which was also his in a small way) and the demands of this New World (which was the only world his body had ever known.) Look at the geographies he ends up creating: his Earth is never a discreet space; it’s always part of a larger continuum; it has the shadow of alien histories upon it; its fate is tied to places whose names human beings did not even know—why wouldn’t I be drawn to such realities? For me the U.S. didn’t exist without the shadow of another world, the Dominican Republic. (And even when I was in the Dominican Republic I was always aware that there was another world waiting for me, that I was not long for this Island.) Immigrants and children of immigrants understand very well (as Stevenson wrote) that “Man is not truly one, but truly two.” Kirby had a knack for creating these perfect metaphors, these immaculate lenses for understanding the world—lenses that for a kid struggling to understand a New World proved to be exceptionally useful. The Watcher is a core (yet shifting) model for the narrator throughout the book. At first it seems that witness alone, and not any kind of prescription, is all that’s noble (made explicit when the narrator says that

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I never took the Watcher’s noninterference mandate too seriously since he clearly didn’t: when we first meet him in the comic books he gets right into the mix with a quickness—f*ck the just-watching sh*t. Perhaps in my novel I gave the wrong impression but what makes a Watcher-among-us more dangerous, more (in effect) powerful than a Watcher-on-the-Blue-Area-of-theMoon is that the real Watcher, what he sees, what he witnesses, his truth, is available to no one and that’s why his power is so solipsistic. (And perhaps why the Watchers are forced to live on the margins.) A Watcher who lives among us would threaten everything, not because of his alien powers, but simply because he would do that one thing that is so dangerous to humans and to the myths they wrap themselves in: he would bear witness. Bearing witness as many scholars know is one of the greatest acts against trauma, against pain, against loss, against alienation, against calamity. (That’s why I love Kirby. When your metaphors have uses, important uses, outside of your initial invention—that’s when you know you got genius.) This bearing of witness, in the critical sense, is not foregrounded in the comics but for a writer like me, who knows that without bearing witness we can have no attempts at truth, we can have no end to tyranny, we can have no multiplicity of story... I just couldn’t resist appropriating the character. My narrator, Yunior, is also a character in the book, a player in the drama. At the beginning of his involvement in the drama he imagines himself as a hero, perhaps even the protagonist, but by the end it becomes clear both to the reader and even to Yunior himself that he’s no hero and in fact he’s probably one of the book’s villains (a minor one but a villain nevertheless). The real question that comic books tend not to delve into too deeply (and which is the human question that haunts most of these narratives) is: what do you do if after the battle’s over and the smoke clears you realize that you have failed? When the person you should have saved is dead and the love of your life, who you betrayed, is gone? Well, you can try to forget, to get on with your life, or you can try not to repeat your same mistakes, but even that’s not going to be possible unless you do the one thing that is hardest for those of us who have made mistakes, who have been in the wrong, who have fought battles no one knows or cares about. We can bear witness. In Yunior’s case by telling the tale of Oscar and of his family he becomes as a storyteller the kind of hero he was never able to be the first time around. Not by pumping up his role or by hiding his flaws. But by showing us how human he really was and showing us that it’s not evil or weak to be human. I think that people for the most part never bear true witness

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to their lives or to themselves. It’s far easier to go through life wrapped in your personal myths, downplaying your frailties and imagining for yourself all sorts of wondrous “powers.” Trying to see yourself as you really are, as you really have been to those around you, that’s the hardest confrontation you can have and that’s what Yunior sets out to do by telling Oscar’s story. In the process he comes clean with his own failings and frailties, integrates them into his vision of himself and becomes less prideful, less hurtful, more compassionate—in effect more human. Many of the characters in Oscar seem nourished, or at least comforted, by fantasy—the narrative of why Oscar’s grandfather disappeared (defiance of the dictator rather than an arbitrary, impersonal fiat); the creature that Beli and Oscar think they see at crucial crossroads. Can both novels and comics still provide this comfort and power? Is it something you’ve moved on from, or do they work side-by-side?

Narratives are what bind us together, what move us through the universe, the ships in which we travel. I don’t think we can exist without narrative. Books and comic books are great sources of these narratives. I mean, sh*t, look how I mined the narratives of my youth and attempted to make the most sophisticated devices possible out of them (you got to be your own Mr. Fantastic). The problem I see with narratives, their danger (which goes hand in hand with their power) is that you can use narratives to blind yourself, as blankets of consolation, to hide yourself from the world, and that’s what happens to a couple of my characters. But the same muscle we used to create those Matrix-like narratives can be used to create narratives which provide clarity and insight and information. What-we-want-a-thing-to-be can easily overwhelm what-a-thingis. It’s in storytelling that we run from ourselves and conversely that we can find ourselves. It’s stories that can isolate us or put us into communion with the past and even the future. For me it’s the power to tell stories, not the stories we choose to tell, that is our greatest strength, our real superpower. It’s certainly something Kirby believed in. Storytelling seemed for him to be the one unambiguous good.

way they do, one of the reasons his fight scenes are so top-notch is because behind their quaint pow-pow-pow there was a real insight as to what violence is, how absurd and random it is, how cruel and how at times necessary. Kirby was working in comic books. He knew there had to be a lot of conflict but my God did he make you feel it in your bones. The New Gods were locked in a generational struggle it seemed like no one might win, an escape from their destructive past that was far from guaranteed. We’ll never know if they would’ve made it since Kirby didn’t get to finish (unless you count Hunger Dogs, which I like to, because he broke the cycle by changing the terms from conflict to a kind of nurture). Your book is a generational saga too, though the youngest characters exist within long shadows. Will they win, or is the mercy that, with our lives eventually cancelled like the Fourth World, we never have to know?

Unless there’s some universe out there, like the one inhabited by the Ancients in Farscape, that is different, ours is an existence of constant battle, constant struggle. Like Doctor Manhattan (a man who would know a thing or two about underlying mechanics of reality) says: “Nothing ever ends.” Not conflict, not our attempts to vanquish what haunts us, not the shadows that darken our days. We might win in our own lives but our beloved children might lose: does that mean we’ve won? Or we might lose and our children, long after we’re dead, will win: does that mean we’ve lost? Beyond the simplicities of a millenarian worldview, winning

At a particularly vicious moment Oscar “swore never to write another fight scene.” This points up the difference between the wishful combat of comics and the ugly reality of violence. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with writing a fight scene (or a torture scene, or a war scene) that tells a truth. Did violence like Kirby’s count ’cuz it served as a kind of refracted history and autobiography (Armagetto his childhood ethnic warzone; the New Gods’ conflict his hitch in Hitler’s Europe, etc.)?

Look—no one can match the world for accuracy. Write about getting punched in the head and then get punched in the head and see which does it better. All of us artists have to deal with the limitations of our conventions. Kirby was working at a time when you couldn’t have the Thing knock someone in the head so hard that their brains would cavitate out one ear. He had certain obstructions. But like many men of his generation (and unlike many comic book artists) he saw real combat. He lived it. And one of the reasons Kirby’s characters fight the 123

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to me that novels about left-wing dictatorships (like Pablo Medina’s) unfold tragic events with an irrepressible undercurrent of comedy, and ones about right-wing dictatorships (like yours) are restlessly comedic with an unquenchable wellspring of tragedy. Maybe because left-wing despots appeal to principle, thus permeating life with an absurdity, while right-wing despots only appeal to the same old self-interest, with predictably depressing results for one’s worldview?

Kirby’s portrayal of Darkseid’s realm was unflinching and so unromantic. So many artists kind of get a hard-on for power; they succumb a little bit to the fascist romance of Empire. When they describe their dictatorships a reader can often be like: That’s pretty cool. (See Star Wars.) Not Kirby. He portrayed an Apokolips that was Hell Plus. Kirby had no illusions about Darkseid and never seemed to let his attraction to the character spill over into collusion. I certainly believe no two dictatorships are alike. And it’s not so easy to flense principle from self-interest; the Nazis were a hyper-principled dictatorship and profoundly self-serving. Left-wing dictatorships and right-wing dictatorships are never static, and often take on the characteristics of each other. But there is a caprice to that kind of raw power and an impunity (and therefore a cruelty) that unites both species of dictatorship. But to be honest: I suspect the only people who could answer this question are those who have died under these various regimes. They alone could give us a true account since they alone paid the highest price of these insane systems... It’s the tragedy of the human experience that the real witness are often dead. And nobody really listens to the dead.

is not possible, and part of the reason we love happy victorious stories is because they comfort the part of us that knows, knows deep inside, that winning just isn’t possible in a universe like ours. Victories are always provisional (which means that defeats are also always provisional). I’m not a philosopher but it strikes me that none of us did anything to get these lives; they were given to us for free and if there is a point to this motherf*cker in my view it’s to live your life as humanly as possible, leave more love in the world than you take, to leave maps for those that follow that will make their journey easier, less full of traps (which means of course that you have to bear witness to what you’ve experienced; if all you’re going to leave for your descendents is boasts and myths, you’re only going to make it harder for them to accept what it means to be human). Kirby’s stories were driven by the prospect of dictatorship as symbolized by Darkseid, and your characters are shaped by the reality as embodied by Trujillo (who gets compared to Darkseid as early as Page 2). Is there a difference in the texture of any two dictatorships? It seems

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Photo by Greg Watermann

(above) The absurdities and menace of dictatorship, from Forever People #8 (April 1972).

With meta-metal band System of a Down, drummer John Dolmayan has blazed new trails in a pop medium and— with some 20 million albums sold, three consecutive #1 albums on the Billboard charts, four Grammy nominations and one win for Best Hard Rock Performance—created a commercial powerhouse that’s also a model of artistic individualism. That’s a good comparison to Kirby, and Dolmayan is a big fan of the King and other comics—so much so that on System’s downtime he’s started an amazon.com for the artform, Torpedo Comics (www.torpedocomics.com), as a store for his vast collection and a community for veteran fans and new converts. He commented on the powerful team-up of his two passions.

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What inspired your enthusiasm for comics, and what part did Jack Kirby play in that?

When I got into comics it was the early ’80s, and I was about 11 or 12 years old. I was going to the movies with a friend, and he said, “Hey, before we go to the movies let’s go to the comic book store.” At that point I’d seen comics in, y’know, 7-11s, occasionally I saw them here and there and I may have picked up one or two. I said, “What’s a comic book store?” And he said, “Just come with me.” I walked into this store and I thought I’d walked into a different world. There were posters on the wall, and they displayed the books that were new on a whole wall. Back then the action figures and toys weren’t as dominant, but they still had some. And I thought I walked into a fantasyland. I bought my first comic book, Savage Sword of Conan, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Along the way I did discover great artists such as Kirby, Frazetta—you name it, Art Adams, for the newer guys Jim Lee, and Kirby was [there] from day one; I started with Kirby’s work on Fantastic Four, and that remains my favorite title. The way he would draw it, and make it come to life, and panel to panel you actually feel like you know what’s happening, and the action sequences look real; it’s just an amazing thing to do. I became a pretty big collector of comic art, which has become kind of a costly venture [laughs] but fun nonetheless. I have a complete Kirby story, Super Powers #1. It’s not as good as his early stuff but it’s still Kirby, and you can’t find too many complete stories nowadays, so I picked it up right away. I think his later stuff was still great, even if you look at the stuff he did with Pacific. He was an amazing artist, he was inspiring to a lot of people, and I don’t think that stopped with his death; he’s gonna continue to inspire people as long as the comic book medium exists. Without his style, the style that exists today wouldn’t exist. He and the other artists from that generation before helped to shape it. It’s much the same with music. There was a big difference between the blues artists and Led Zeppelin, but without the blues artists there would be no Led Zeppelin. Just like without Led Zeppelin, there wouldn’t be Nirvana, and Soundgarden, and— tons of examples. One of Kirby’s most ambitious innovations was to bring these psychedelic collages to comics decades before Photoshop. System of a Down’s sound is almost like a collage and collision of styles. Do you see any parallel with that kind of breaking of the mold of what people expected?

We definitely have striven to create something that is unique within us, and not rely on the trends that are taking place within the industry. Because we want to be remembered for our music long after we’re no longer around; that’s your true epitaph as an artist—are you still relevant after you’re gone? It’s one thing to be a shining star, and you shine for that small period of time and then you’re passé. But it’s another to make a real impact in your industry and help fashion the next wave or the next generation. In that way I think we have a lot of similarities to Kirby, in that we strive to do what makes us comfortable and what makes us happy and what we feel is artistic progression. And Kirby did the same. He created just about everything that we have now. There’s an overwhelming power to your music, but it makes me think of the strength of the individual rather than the force of the state. Kirby also brought an unheard-of explosiveness to comics, but it too was the energy of the underdog, the immigrant, the unsung everyday citizen who won’t give up. Do you see a common root in the message you get across in your music?

Well, there’s a lot of political commentary in comics, you just have to know how to look for it. Look at the late ’30s and ’40s; during WWII there was an abundance of political commentary before the United States took any kind of action; it was evident in comic books. It’s a great way to bring politics in a completely subversive way to people who normally wouldn’t get it. Music can have that effect also. We try to steer away from just politics or any particular kind of message; it’s more about opening peoples’ mind and eyes to discovering the truth for themselves. A lot of the time comics have the same mentality—what do they teach you, in comics? Try to do what’s right, fight for the underdog, fight for the weak, and do the best you can to be a good person. That’s predominantly the message, especially from the ’40s to the ’70s, of

comic books. And that’s a good message to teach our own children. Fight for what’s right, fight for people who can’t fight for themselves, open doors for people—simple, simple things that have a deep impact in society can be achieved, and a lot of these messages dominate the comic-book world. Common decency. You don’t really go out of your way to open a door for someone but that feeling lasts with you and lasts with them.

(above) Strength in Numbers: A Kirby Super Powers splash from series II, #1 (September 1985).

Perhaps the best Kirby story of all is one not told by him, but the epic his friend and biographer Mark Evanier has been adding to for years. An accomplished writer in comics and Hollywood and a favorite commentator and columnist among comics fans, Evanier was Kirby’s assistant in the early ’70s and has enlightened readers with the story of his life ever since—most recently with the long-awaited art book/biography Kirby: King of Comics. Did watching Kirby at work only help you as a historian—in deciphering how his unique creation came about—or, as a writer, are there things you’ve been able to apply in your own storytelling (and which anyone could)?

Watching Jack work didn’t tell me anything other than that what he did was magical and that it flowed from his powers of concentration. Writing or drawing something is ultimately about 125

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something that is, at its core, someone else’s idea or someone else’s character. Jack had to do that from time to time and he had a way of finding the aspect of the project—or inserting it, if need be—to make it meaningful to him. He never said this but I think his idea was that if the story didn’t matter to him, it wouldn’t matter to anyone. So he had to make it matter to him. Did Kirby’s experience with the marketplace (multiple innovations and just as many cancellations) teach you something about how not to get discouraged and keep the creative signal uninterrupted, so to speak?

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sitting down at the keyboard or drawing table or wherever and summoning it out of your brain. I’d like to think that if I learned anything from the man, it was the work ethic and the ability to take pride in the sheer accomplishment of finished work. Putting on my “historian” hat: I suppose it made it more credible to me to hear Jack say, “Oh, I just thought of that idea one day.” Because I was around when he thought up a lot of great ideas, almost out of nowhere, so I knew he was capable of that. I think the main thing I got out of Jack with regard to storytelling is most applicable in those occasions when I find myself writing something that doesn’t necessarily flow from my own personal yearnings or philosophies. [When] I’m assigned to write

In the comic-book industry of the early ’70s, there was a habit of pinpointing easy answers why some comic failed—”Kids are sick of Westerns” or “No one likes heroes who aren’t flawed” or something like what. I never thought it was that simple. It was not even a matter of whether a given comic was being enjoyed or not by the readership. In some cases, no one was asking if the target readership even knew the book existed or had ample time to find it. I think a lot of comics were cancelled that should have been given more of a chance. The cancellation was not a fault (or only a fault) of the creative folks. It was also, and sometimes mainly, a failure on the part of those making the decision to cancel. But of course, it’s easier to blame the talent. So I really don’t spend a lot of energy worrying about whether a given comic or TV show or project is going to find an audience. I do the best work I can and if it succeeds, great. My contribution will not be the only reason it succeeds, nor will it be the only reason for failure. What impact did Kirby’s experience with rights and credit have on how you protect yourself and treat others in the industry?

Well, I don’t know how anyone could look at Kirby—or at Siegel and Shuster or Bill Finger or several others—and not say, “If they could do it to them, they could do it to me.” One of the reasons I’ve never made comics my whole life, why I’ve always done other things, is because I saw what being trapped in one industry working for one employer did to Jack. In terms of treating others, it’s made me try—not always with total success, I’m embarrassed to say—to never, even inadvertently,

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usurp someone else’s credit. It’s why we made a joke out of my credit on Groo. Unless it’s one of those infrequent issues where Sergio has very little input into the story, we don’t say “Written by Mark Evanier” on the book and when people refer to me as the writer or co-creator of Groo, I try to correct them. Things like that.

Well, I wouldn’t have written 80 million articles about Kirby. I don’t think it’s that I would have become a bus driver or anything like that. The career I’ve had is pretty much the career I wanted before I met Jack. I just think I would have known a lot less.

You’ve said that Kirby considered other creators’ runs on his characters as essentially a different book, maybe even a different character. When you approached the New Gods series and the Mister Miracle Special, did you just think of them as totally separate, or did you try to tap into the essence of those characters and add to the canon—and if the latter, how do you define what their essential qualities are?

[Keith Giffen was perhaps the first artist to duplicate the Kirby look without just emulating his existing oeuvre. In books like the mid-’70s Defenders Giffen pointed the way for renewing Kirby, and is both a leading force in Kirby-style cosmic crossovers today as a writer, and a layout artist of Kirbyesque tirelessness on extended events like 52.]

I thought of them as separate entities. I’m afraid I don’t see most comics, even in “shared universe” situations, as collective works. At best, you have separate bodies of work that fit together nicely. When I did that Mister Miracle Special, I felt the goal was to do a good issue but not one that attempted to redefine or alter the character. I just wanted to be faithful to the material as I understood it. If Steve Rude and I had been doing the first issue of an ongoing series, things might have been different. In the case of that New Gods series... well, I hope I’ve apologized enough for it. I came on a book that was started by another writer… and continuing with a book that was wildly behind schedule before I even started on it and never got quite on, I never managed to get to the place I wanted to be with it. I think the essential qualities of those characters are distinctly Kirby. I was quite impressed with what Neil Gaiman did with that Eternals series he did for Marvel because I think he managed to do what none of us, myself included, have managed to do with New Gods. Which was that he started with what Jack did, respected it, understood it and then used the underpinnings to take it in directions that interested him. It’s one of the few times I’ve felt that anyone really built meaningfully on a Kirby foundation. Of course, I may just feel that way because I personally have less emotion invested in The Eternals than I ever did in The New Gods.

Glen David Gold collided the worlds of fine literature and pulp entertainment with his assured and acclaimed debut novel, Carter Beats the Devil, a fictionalized account of a real-life Roaring ’20s magician that was one part movie serial to many parts deep psychological portrait. Gold has continued making the world safe for adventure fiction and its potential dimensions with writings for everything from the respected journal McSweeney’s and the compendium of comics criticism Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers to a major museum catalogue and the introduction for Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus Volume 3—as well as his own triumphant turn as a comic writer in the most memorable story for Michael Chabon’s Escapist tie-in. The most approachable man in pop scholarship sat down with TJKC for a summer-full of emails, some of which is recorded here.

What’s the most important thing people don’t know about Kirby?

You mean, apart from the fact that he was born in Honduras? Or that he ate a raw potato every day of his life? Maybe—to get serious—how important it was to Jack to make a decent living and provide for his family. I am amazed, even more now in hindsight than I was at the time, that whenever the issue of Jack’s compensation came up when he was alive, there’d always be someone accusing him of being “greedy.” It was like he should be happy just cranking out comics that were profitable for everyone but him and not be selfish enough to think about paying his mortgage, sending his kids to college, being able to afford health care for the family, etc. Jack loved the fact that at the beginning of the day, he could sit down at his drawing table with essentially nothing—blank paper and a pencil—and by the time he went to bed, he’d created, in effect, money. Maybe it wasn’t a lot of money and surely it wasn’t enough, but he’d done an honest day’s work and produced something that would buy groceries or new shoes for Lisa or whatever was needed. Not that he didn’t care about creating great stories and expressing his ideas, but he couldn’t have felt good about that part of it if he didn’t feel he was fulfilling his responsibilities as the breadwinner. And the other thing I think some people don’t realize about Jack is how smart he was. The New York accent threw some people off and his rambling, disjointed way of speaking fooled some others. But the real distraction was that Jack was a little out of sync with the rest of us in terms of time. He was ahead of everyone else and even, on occasion, ahead of himself. I saw a sketch one time on a TV show about a man from the future. It was difficult for present-day people to communicate with him because, while you were asking him the first question, he was answering the fourth one. Eventually, if one looked back and matched them all up, the replies contained great wisdom but they didn’t at the time they were given. I think Jack was a lot like that. Jack liked to draw big pictures because he thought in big pictures. The more I learn about him, the more I believe that. How would your career have gone differently if you hadn’t known and worked with Kirby?

Did enjoyment of work like Kirby’s inspire you to look for the literary possibilities in pulpy subject matter, as in Carter’ s background of sensational spectacle and political intrigue?

I never really think of subject matter as pulpy—just execution. Here’s a secret: you know that road that diverges in the yellow wood? For a lot of young writers, that divergence occurs when reading, in ninth grade, the John Updike story “A&P.” I remember having to analyze that story and thinking it was everything I never wanted to do. I was coming off of a few years of reading comics, in which people with great powers were confronted with small human problems. I like characters capable of odd things who turn out to have Achilles’ heels rather than dull people who have dishwater lives with a smidgeon of greatness that ends up being smashed flat (and yet the story ends with desiccated optimism!). But that’s just me. It’s weird how role models overlap, though. Two books I love are Watership Down and The Once and Future King. Both of them defy characterization on that whole literary vs. commercial continuum: they’re vastly entertaining; huge, giant things happen; and yet they also happen to be very well-written and flush with meaning. When I get stuck I sometimes see how really good writers take care of problems and I—what’s the word?—mercilessly rip them off. There’s a scene toward the end of the second act of Carter in which he’s trapped in a sinking box in the Oakland slough. And I used The Once and Future King as a model for how he gathers up his strength to escape. It’s the same rhythm as the Wart pulling the sword from the stone, marshaling all the forces from all the lessons he’s learned, and applying them to the point where he’s almost blacking out with the effort. Anyway, a friend read the manuscript, and he said, “Great homage,” and I was like, “Yes!” and he said, “Great homage to Spidey #33.” And you know what? He was right. That’s the same thing, too. In Carter there’s a great economy of exposition; readers always know as much as they need to, but mere description never does the writer’s work of letting people get to know the characters. Kirby was good at this too, dropping you in the middle of whole worlds so rich in detail that they’d reveal themselves as you went along instead of needing to be explained at the outset. Pop culture—especially comics—is full of over-exposition, so might Kirby have provided a model of the concise version? 127

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how its roots are in religion—have you ever read Russian folktales? Or Japanese? The stories don’t generally start with a 47-year-old academe in a bad marriage pondering a glass of whiskey. Instead, it’s wizards and goblins and tricksters. They serve many needs—I’m a big follower of the classical divisions among folktales, legends and myths, all of which serve different purposes. People have falsehoods they want to believe and those they just like hearing repeated, no belief required. So illusion doesn’t necessarily equal the patently absurd. Your “absurd” might be my autobiographical. Does the progression of your essay in the “Masters of American Comics” catalogue [see this book’s Introduction] show an evolution in your thinking about Kirby, going from a statement that there was not much room for subtext in his dense, screaming surfaces to noting the way that family strife, the Vietnam War, etc., all found their funhousemirror way into the Fourth World? Because in some ways Kirby strikes me as the intuitive type of artist who’s virtually at the mercy of subtext. Your thoughts?

That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. You know that old pin-up of Reed (I think it’s in FF Annual #2) where he’s looking through some complicated device? There’s a caption, I swear it’s Stan’s sense of humor, where it says, “Just between you and me, I have no idea what this thing does, either.” I doubt Jack would have said that. He would have had an answer—it’s a gas spectro-inhibitor analysis diffuser used when charting inter-planetary warp jump fields so that water molecules don’t form on the undersides of the wing struts. One thing I learned was that you don’t actually need to know everything so much as you need to give the appearance of knowing everything. Going ahead with confidence is key. And what I liked about some of the first Kirby I saw, the Sinnott-inked FFs, is how confident and definitive everything is. You feel that every panel actually happened. So when you turn to writing fiction, you’re right, you can get caught in a million little details, or you can give the confident whistle: “Here we go, I’m leading you down this rabbit hole. We’re going to the Microverse. We’ll meet a guy there who controls emotions and we’ll hunt for this guy on a surfboard. And later the guy who controls emotions will have a sidekick who dresses for no apparent reason like a cowboy. Now come with me. Trust me, it will all make sense.” And even if it doesn’t make sense on a certain level, the pathfinder’s ability to lead will keep most of the safari happy. Carter in large part seems to be about the comforts of illusion, in many senses of the word. Is the patently absurd an underacknowledged human need, which superhero and space fiction serve especially well?

Find me a reader who doesn’t rely on illusions. And people smarter than myself have thought a lot about science-fiction and 128

My friend Rob Stolzer has a rap on subtlety in art that I can’t reproduce at will, but to paraphrase: a lot of poetry and grace comes with the guys who do everything chaotically, with fragile and shrouded figures in ambiguous poses. Herriman and Ditko for instance are on one end of the continuum. Jeff Jones, Muth, that kind of zen mastery. And Kirby is more like the Hulk. Like: everything is definite, it’s covered in chrome, and it’s polished and it’s fractal—you sense that if you carved into one of those Kirby machines, you’d find more machine inside. Your take on him being intuitive is exactly right, but most people can’t see that because what he presses your nose up against is his complete security in what he’s drawing. It takes some doing to realize that his strength is actually... a strength. One of my favorite double splashes is from Black Panther #8 [see next page]. It’s not inherently obvious why—it’s great action and it’s a great moment of motion and tension, jungle drums and all that—but the reason I love it is that it looks simple at first. Here’s the Panther leaping at an opponent, with some interesting “tribal” background. Take a closer look. There are 20 figures in there. And every single one of them is wearing a different costume. There are four drummers and every drum has a different skin, every clutching hand is in a different position, every shield and every spear is unique. And yet it doesn’t look cluttered. I’m sure that on some levels this is a massive confounded misreading of 800 National Geographics, but Kirby was about motion and mythology, and here it is. The subtext of this page, though Kirby might not have even known it when he started working in the upper left hand corner, is that the leaping figure isn’t T’Challa at all—that’s the dude with the bone on his mask. Appearances are deceiving. Yes. It’s clear from your references to Devil Dinosaur, Black Panther, etc., that you don’t summarily reject Kirby’s ’70s Marvel work like many do. Did you ever find Kirby bound to any particular time—did there ever come a point where he fell behind the speed of the medium’s evolution or the tastes of an era? What did he “mean” in the mid-to-late ’70s? Or did he stand aside from transient concerns of trend even then (as he much more seems to now)?

Well, at the time it was a disappointment. The books read like a man trying to ballroom dance in a parka and snowshoes. There was something square and ponderous about the whole affair. But I came back because of the [original] art. When I first went to Roz [Kirby]’s house in 1994, all they had left to sell were the 1970s books that “no one wanted.” So the first thing I saw when I got there was a complete Eternals book—#16—and the artwork is astonishingly good. I hardly remembered reading it as a kid and being severely disappointed by the Cosmic-Powered Hulk nonsense. All I saw was page after page of perfect drawing. So I repurchased (or purchased for the first time) a bunch of the 1970s books and realized that if you’re an art collector, the images in there really are heart-and-soul wonderful. Around the same time, as I was just getting into art, I was talking disparagingly about Devil Dinosaur to long-time fan Richard Kyle, and he really took me down a peg. “Don’t be so quick to judge Devil Dinosaur,” he said, and I realized he’d thought about it and I hadn’t. I was just rushing in with the same “Kirbyis-creaky” mindset I had as a 14-year-old. The fact is, Devil Dinosaur is kind of great.

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There was a period from the age of 13 to 27 or so where I didn’t read or think much about comics. I had stacks of them in a couple of Bekins boxes and I would only look at them when I moved. It dawned on me that Kirby was the pebble thrown in the lake; almost all the artists that were my byway into Marvel were the very talented ripples. I still didn’t have much interest in the ’70s stuff. But every once in a while, while hefting boxes between onebedrooms and studios, I would pop open, say, FF #61 and re-read it and find it corny and satisfying. I recall every few years that various literary organizations ask people what their 100 (or 50!) favorite books are, and there is always beard-stroking and browfurrowing when 95% of those books are what people read before the age of 12. So it is with comics. Kirby was working in a children’s medium but he did it so well (with Stan, of course) that older people were attracted to it again, as they had been in the 1940s when the rules weren’t established. When did it become part of the rules that Captain America was for kids? I always imagine that the 18- and 19-year-old guys in the gunnery in 1943 were reading Cap. Anyway, there might be a link between Kirby and Harry Potter, in that the medium is supposed to be for kids, and is for kids, but adults enjoy it just as much. It’s not just about escape but also possibility. Check out this timeline: Kirby was born in 1917. Which means he was 43 (my age) in 1960, when he was doing monster stuff. He was 49 when he created Galactus. He was 53 when he started the Fourth World. When comic book artists are honored, it’s frequently for work they did in their 20s and 30s. How many people are hitting their stride at 50? Not a ton. It makes sense that when Jack was 60, his ideas might have had age spots. I have this conversation all the time with other writers: What compels you to keep stretching? You create things for financial reasons or because you look to please your audience or because you don’t know what else to do or because you’re driven by demons. But making better things? That fire often goes away, particularly if you’re at all successful. Treading water, doing the safe thing, feigning innovation, trying to do what the kids do, rehashing—

those terms are more pejorative than what I mean, I guess. You just get tired and there are strengths you can lean into. I’m not sure that Jack really got at all tired until the rug had been pulled out from under him the 97th time, and even then, long afterward, he was still doing stuff like Silver Star, which turns out to be really good. And that was published when he was, what, 65? To an extent, Jack had to feed the family, but he could have just drawn books for The Man—drawn the FF for someone else to script, or whatever. Instead, he had some pride and wanted to keep shaking things up. If I’m still taking risks at 65, hooray. Geoff Grogan is an innovative collage artist who shows his large-scale pop-inspired works in New York City, and a studio art/ art history professor who teaches culture & comics at Adelphi University. His whimsical late-’90s indie comic Dr. Speck is wellremembered, and Part One of his Rat Pack-inspired graphic novel Nice Work is planned for publication this year and being serialized at http://www.moderntales.com/comics/nicework.php. He expounded on Kirby’s connections to art history and to Grogan’s own career during an afternoon wandering up and down the aisles of a Manhattan comic shop.

Kirby was the original impetus for my interest in collage. I must’ve been 8 or 9, and they were far and away the coolest and most daring thing any mainstream creator was doing. Kirby’s collage wasn’t about creating 3-D illusionism, it was about the materials used, and Kirby’s collages exploited the medium in a very overt way. Contrasting textures of comic art and photograph, illogical juxtapositions of scale—Kirby used collage to call attention to the potential of print. Opening a Kirby double-page collage was like being hit by a lightning bolt! And not because it was a way-cool space, but rather because Kirby was taking a risk to shake things up! His drawing, too, created a pictorial vocabulary very conscious of itself—not just as art, but language. His squiggles and “krackles” are each as indelible a mark on comics history as the speedlines of decades before.

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rather than a window into a world. You can enter into it, but not so far before you bump into something on the surface. It’s like a massive stone facade. But where all the other comic artists were working with little chisels, Kirby was working with a giant one—he literally was Thor, working in massive spaces and dangerous surfaces. Kirby wasn’t interested in believable reality so much as manipulating forms on a page. Hence all the square knees and fingers. Rounded edges take you out of the realm of mechanics, of his language of pictures, and into nature. Similarly, the looks on his faces signify expressiveness rather than illustrating expressions. He was working on deadline and had to create a shorthand. But this also points to his underlying strengths as a cartoonist rather than an illustrator—a storyteller, not a single-image artist. His brevity is like Chris Ware’s—they’ve slaved so hard to be able to draw so simply. (It makes my mind flash on something much older than cubism or other “modern art”: those wonderfully evocative Chinese landscape paintings—you know, “mountains and mist”— which seemingly have nothing to do with Kirby or Ware yet partake of the same spirit; the delight in distilling the essence of form.) Kirby’s conception of the comics medium is not solely that of a consummate storyteller, but of a visual artist with a deep feeling for the monumental, and a sense that comics might not just be something to be read but rather to be “experienced,” viscerally. That ties Kirby to the art and art-comics of today. But in the context of his time, he was designing for graphic line and flat color, which tended toward his form of abstraction. His weird geometry calls to mind that of late-’60s Frank Stella and hard-edged abstraction. Kirby exploded the constraints of whatever situation he found himself in—poverty, war, unfair work-for-hire—and that fills every mark he makes. He had a belief in the artform and an integrity in what he was doing—that’s a reserve of confidence I always draw on.

(above) The next leap forward: Kirby recreates collage, from FF Annual #6 (1968). (right) Tomorrow’s news: Grogan recombines a popart giant from some shredded New York Times (“Colossus,” 2004-05). Fantastic Four TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. Colossus TM & ©2008 Geoff Grogan.

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People compare his evolution to abstract expressionism, but it really comes out of cubism. His dynamic distortions of figure and form are not about gesture, but structure. There’s a chunkiness to his surfaces that recalls Picasso’s blocky figures right before cubism. And cubism progresses into flat spaces and collaged textures. A painting aware of itself as a flat plane. Kirby’s space felt different than anyone else’s—it’s almost like a relief (as many of Picasso and Braque’s analytic cubist paintings are). Everything’s right up against the surface of the picture plane, while still being conscious of volume and depth. His shapes all interlock so a Kirby page undercuts illusionism and announces itself as an art object

Warren Ellis called Dean Haspiel “the heir to Kirby” when Dino says Ellis was drunk, but he quoted him, and he’s right. A prodigy of indie comics with a scrappy style that updates the rough energy, angular lines, electric composition and kaleidoscopic grit of everything from Thimble Theatre to classic Kirby, Haspiel is one of 21st century comics’ toughest guys and goldest hearts. But let’s let him put it his way… “The Left Hand of Boom” ©2007 Dean Haspiel

After a mad binge eating bald eagles for breakfast and wiping his mouth with the American flag, the mythological demigod named OTTO BON is banished to the intergalactic borders of planet Earth by the Jury of the Space Gods so he can learn to respect other worlds’ cultures. And, with that decree, Otto Bon’s Apocalypse Fist, which can annihilate continents with one punch, is cuffed a few feet from his neck by a god-spell to stop him from ever employing his “Left Hand of Boom.” For if he is to use his arm for harm it will surely break his neck. Suspected of sinking the legendary city of Atlantis over an earlier heartbreak, Otto vies to rekindle romance with his old college flame, MIRTH QUAKE, only she has no designs to get back with her overbearing exboyfriend. Especially not if her current boyfriend, the superhero MAN-SIZE, has anything to say about it. Her rejection sends Otto

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discovered the power of girls and “The Left Hand of Boom.” Man-Size can sympathize and, with their combined will and might, unshackle Otto’s Apocalypse Fist from his neck. They play a game of one-on-one stickball. Otto hits a home run over the tops of ghetto tenements for Mirth Quake to see before facing the Jury of the Space-Gods for breaking his cuff. Lightening strikes from the skies and—POOF—Otto is reduced to an omniscient gas that floats about Earth’s atmosphere, wherever the winds will take him, never to touch Mirth Quake (or anything for that matter) ever again. The end. Story ideas like these flow freely for me yet would never happen had I not read and seen Jack Kirby comics. And, like some kind of 4-color contact high, my mind’s eye was set free to explore the emotional truths in my comix thanks to Kirby’s cosmic heart. My only regret is never having met Jack Kirby to say “thank you” and to watch him imagine on paper. From THE FANTASTIC FOUR to OMAC to THE FOURTH WORLD, thank you, Jack Kirby. Dean Haspiel (creator of BILLY DOGMA) As the youngest child of Roz & Jack, Lisa Kirby was literally co-created by the King. She inherited her father’s flair for storytelling, as co-writer (with the team of talented Kirby retainers Michael Thibodeaux on art and Steve Robertson and Richard French sharing scripting) on Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters, a fresh and fun space-opera based on concepts (and incorporating some artwork!) left behind by the King. Lisa shared some stories of growing up Kirby. into bitter depression and he declares that he will commit suicide in 24 hours and sink America into the sea if Mirth Quake doesn’t change her mind and marry him. Mirth Quake balks at Otto’s bluff as the clock ticks hours from imminent doom. Man-Size has a man-to-man talk with Otto who reveals that, despite his longing to rekindle romance with Mirth Quake, he wishes that he could play stickball once more, like he did when he was a kid before he

The Kirby gene for storytelling must have been at work in your eventually becoming a comics writer; did growing up in a creative household give you this interest from the start, or did it only come to the surface later?

Growing up in the Kirby household did help foster creativity. When you are immersed in a particular environment, in my case the arts, you can’t help but feel the urge to express yourself in some way. My sister Susan is a wonderful singer/songwriter, and my other sister Barbara is very artistic. I always loved to write

(below) Dino likes this, and that’s reason enough: A startling spread from OMAC #6 (July 1975), which was sadly reduced down to a single panel for publication, due to DC’s dropping page counts at the time. OMAC TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

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(right) Thibodeaux makes all the right Kirby moves for an upcoming series. (below) In the company of women: Mister Miracle and many Ms.’s, courtesy of Lisa’s dad (from Mister Miracle #10, September 1972). Inks by Mike Royer. Galactic Bounty Hunters TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate. Mister Miracle, Female Furies TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

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even at a young age, whether it was a story, poetry or music. (Much to my dismay I did not pick up any of my father’s drawing talent.) Both of my parents were extremely supportive of my creative endeavors, and were always a willing audience when I played a new song I wrote. Of course as with all parents, I was encouraged to get an education and find a profession that suited me (and paid the bills). I was a preschool teacher for many years. That also enabled me to be creative by bringing art and music into the classroom. My father actually made some guest appearances, and drew for the kids. He was always a big hit! Are there ways of looking at the world (or other worlds!) that might be different if you hadn’t been the daughter of a leading fantasist and innovator?

Absolutely! Anyone who has spent time around my father knows he had a special outlook and philosophy on life. My father was a creative genius. His thinking was far beyond what I could even comprehend! What I did glean from him was that there are infinite possibilities. You have to find what your niche is in life, work hard, and develop it to the best of your ability. He came from a very poor background, growing up in the projects of the Lower East Side of New York. His talent gave him an outlet to reach beyond his environment and make something of himself. His imagination helped him escape the restrictions of his reality. Growing up with my father gave me the opportunity to try and expand my imagination. I was a very shy kid, so being able to express myself through writing helped to boost my confidence. Most people think of your dad as an artist first, so it’s interesting that his most prominent descendent in comics is a writer; how do you see his role as an author (as opposed to a visual storyteller—if those can be separated), and what can you and other writers take from it?

I felt my father was an inspiration to others whether it was visually or through writing. I can think of an idea, but still need the help of an artist to make the image come to life. With Galactic Bounty Hunters, I was lucky enough to have the images already drawn. I could try to imagine what part these characters would play, and what kind of story could be weaved around them. My father had the great advantage of having an innate ability to draw

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and write, and do it very well. Growing up with Jack Kirby, family and friends alike got to hear a lot of storytelling! Fans would visit and hang on every word. Between his sense of humor and crazy concepts, Jack was very entertaining. A lot of times I would do the typical teenage eye-rolling: “Here he goes again”... another war story. It sometimes saddens me that I should have spent more time listening and observing. I can only hope some of it sank in. For a guy of his generation, Jack Kirby had a high proportion of strong women in his comics (only when preparing these questions did it hit me that almost all the superheroines at Marvel before the ’70s were in Kirby comics) and of course your mom was probably their model; did this mix have something to do with your decision to try your hand as a woman in a fanboy-heavy medium?

From what I understand my mother Rosalind was an inspiration for my father’s concept of women superheroes. My dad may have been the “King” of comics, but there was also a queen and that was Rosalind Kirby. She was the reason my father had the opportunity to be able to spend most of his time creating and working. She was not just a homemaker, but took care of the business side of things as well. They were two peas in a pod, and my dad would have been lost without her. My mother was softspoken but strong and independent. I feel she was an inspiration for me as well. She kept all the kids in line, while my father was a pushover. Growing up, it seemed comics were more of a male-oriented medium. I didn’t have much interest in it back then. Girls seemed to read the romance stories. Today, with other media getting involved in the comic-book field—movies, videogames, etc.—it gives women more of an opportunity to develop an interest. I know there are many artistic women in the field who have already broken the mold. [Ladronn is a legacy artist along time-honored lines, showing some of the strongest Kirby roots of any visual creator in recent years and maturing into wide-focused Metal Hurlant/Humanoids flavoring.]

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with few exceptions, didn’t really do it. It was kind of a frustrating thing all around. I’m surprised, ’cause I thought you really pulled it off well.

Well thanks! [laughter] I’m glad that there are people in the audience who thought that we were actually able to do that. It wasn’t a big seller, but I just thought that everyone else was wrong. [laughs]

I was reading Fantastic Four, the regular comics, to my kids as bedtime stories, and I tried to pull a fast one and when I got to issue #100 I swapped in World’s Greatest Comics Magazine… and they totally noticed. [laughter] If a 10-year-old can tell, then… Well, us 40-somethings loved it. [laughter] Even though for yourself you don’t think it would be attainable or even advisable to do a straight Kirby style, obviously you’ve been a champion of carrying on that style, be it Tom Scioli’s look in Gødland or Kirby’s own in the Silver Star reissue, so what would you say is still relevant in that look to comics today?

It’s always relevant—Jack’s stuff was enough ahead of its time that we still haven’t gotten there. [Marvel and DC] are making some decent scratch reprinting his stuff all the time; we’ve got how many different omnibuses that have Jack Kirby’s name on them? Quite a few. The guy’s putting out more books now than anybody in the industry, and he’s dead. [laughter]

(left) Larsen leaps into the fray with a fine “Kirbyverse” jam piece; (below) some of the flame-trails he’s following in, from the cover of Fantastic Four #99 (June 1970). Kirbyverse characters TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate. Fantastic Four TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Speaking of credit and the money he made for others, was not just his art but his life experience an example to you and your contemporaries in issues of rights and credit?

As a co-founder and current Publisher of Image Comics, Erik Larsen has carried the flame for comics’ classic virtues and pioneering spirit for over a decade. His muscular, adrenalized art and longrunning neo-Silver Age opus The Savage Dragon are clear descendants of Kirby, and Larsen is one of the King’s staunchest defenders, homaging him in Kirbyesque epics like World’s Greatest Comics Magazine, helming lavish restored editions of books like Silver Star, and taking on some of Kirby’s lesser known, creator-owned concepts in exciting new books due this year. Larsen spoke by phone from his L.A. stronghold about the shape of things gone by and to come. Did you set out to use Kirby as one model for your work, or did you just see his influence come out as your style developed?

The latter, I guess. I still don’t really look at my stuff and go, “Boy, I really nailed it.” I think with everybody they kind of take bits and pieces of what works for them and make of it what they will. There are things that I can’t even begin to do that Jack does, where he’s just got this crazy-ass imagination when it comes to doing weird machinery and insane space stuff and loopy characters and loopy ideas. So you just go, “Okay, well I can’t do that, I’ll just do the best I can in that regard, but I can do this other thing that Jack didn’t do.” And everybody has to bring something of their own to the table, try and make whatever work they’re doing as interesting as they’re capable of making it. And kind of instinctually your own identity comes out.

There’s different things here and there; Jack didn’t do a lot of crazy rendering and stuff, he tended to solve a lot of the problems in a similar kind of way, so I go, “Okay, I’m gonna render this stuff to beat the band, and that’ll be my contribution.” A lot of his storytelling and page layouts were fairly straightforward, so I can kinda go, “Okay, I’ll try something else to get people’s attention.” So it’s a catalyst to greater creativity.

I don’t think, for me anyway, just straight-out aping Jack would be that successful—I mean, I’ve tried. [laughter] When you were laying out World’s Greatest Comics Magazine you had to channel Kirby even more than the finishers since you weren’t just emulating his look but re-creating his decisions. Did you come away from that with any lessons on how he thought and where he got his ideas?

I’m kinda one of the guys who thought that was the World’s Biggest Failure. We tried and I really did give it a shot, but I wasn’t capable of pulling it off, and the people we were working with, 133

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establish what he’s all about, and then y’know, what else has he got? There’s so many characters where Jack would be doing a pin-up of Captain America and he’d put some new guy on there that nobody’s ever seen before or since. You could do a whole comic with these weird guys that he’s just dashing off. It’s easy enough to take a whole mass of Kirby characters that he’d just drawn on napkins and go, “Okay, I’m gonna make a new team of Avengers out of this,” but I’m trying to put this together in such a way that it doesn’t seem like it’s just completely cobbled together, in that I introduce these characters one at a time and have it be that it all kind of makes sense. There’s just so much potential to everything. Paolo Leandri is an artist tapped into what made Kirby, Colan and Ditko great and what keeps comics interesting today. Known in his native Italy for work in magazines like Skate, Wrestling and Fumo di China and in the States for the cult favorite Dr. Id (co-created with writer Adam McGovern), Leandri took a break from his latest work in Italian comics and upcoming U.S. ones like Nightworld and Idoru Jones to tell TJKC how it’s done. How did you first become aware of Kirby, and did he serve as your “tutor” in developing your own style, or did the influence just start showing itself as you went on drawing?

I was 7 years old and was reading the first Fantastic Four story sitting on the pavement outside my house’s front door—but probably the first that really hit me like something different was the last story of the Silver Surfer, when he battled against the Inhumans. It was the first technoKirby published in Italy; the characters seem to burst out of the page and you can almost feel the energy of the action and explosions. I’d never seen something like that before. I started to draw superheroes just a few years later, when I was 15. At the beginning I was influenced by many of the Marvel artists but the Kirby influence grew over the years.

(above) A jewel of Kirby archaeology: the never-developed Black Sphinx (1966). (right) A fight like hell—literally— from Leandri & McGovern’s forthcoming Nightworld. Black Sphinx TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate. Nightworld TM and ©2008 Paolo Leandri & Adam McGovern.

Sure, I’ll take that. I don’t think the group of us [at Image] was sitting there going, “We gotta get what Jack was trying to get toward the end of his career,” but we could all look around and see what happened and see the examples of what went on. We all know the stories of these guys not getting their due. And that’s why you don’t see a lot of people creating new stuff that can be owned by the Big Two. It’s nice at this point to be able to still do stuff with Jack Kirby’s characters but not have to do stuff over at a company that I’d rather not be working for. At this point I can sort of have my cake and eat it too; I can get that kind of stuff out of my system without creating some kind of homage to stuff that he’s done, but actually go and do Silver Star and Captain Victory, what have you. I want to do at least six issues of Silver Star to start with. Jack created a lot of stuff that really hasn’t worked itself into a comic book yet, stuff that he still owns, or the family still owns; my thought process with this book was to go, “Okay, what’s he got that hasn’t made it into print yet?” Oh, he’s got this… Thunderfoot? Is that the guy? Oh yeah—“Last of the Half-Humans!” [laughter]

Yeah, this guy hasn’t made it into print yet! Let’s work him into Silver Star, 134

How did the sensibility of Kirby mix with what you would consider an Italian look—in Italy was his art perceived as specifically American, or just one stylistic “flavor” for artists to mix in?

American culture was the leading one in the past century as Italy’s was in the Renaissance, so I never perceived it as something foreign; American movies and comics and music were just a part of our world. When something is good, what does it matter where it comes from? I’ve always seen in your work a blend of unlikely sources that work beautifully together—like the sleek spectacle of Kirby and the shadowy subtlety of Gene Colan—with your own uniquely suave design and kinetic staging. Is every artist the sum of what he or she has seen, and how does the individual style emerge from that?

Kirby’s style is something a bit dangerous for artists. At first I

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thought that Buscema and Hogarth were great artists in their own right and Kirby was someone who created a great style for everyone to take and use—its peculiarities are so strong and evident that it seems something easy to learn. After I tried to draw like him and just clone his style, I realized that the most relevant part of Kirby is his talent, not his style. Buscema and Frazetta are able to draw as wonderful warriors in battle as Jack, but I don’t think they could draw a man drinking a glass of water as well as he; Jack, despite ignoring classical anatomy, had the talent to catch the naturalism and psychology of any human gesture. So I decided it was wiser to mix his influence with others: Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, John Romita (and recently I’ve started to try and learn also from Golden Age artists like Jack Kamen, Matt Baker and L.B. Cole), in an attempt to attain something more personal (and avoid too frustrating a direct comparison with any of them!). Kirby is a bigger source than Buscema for learning about comics, but that doesn’t mean you can “learn” how to be like him. If you want to draw like Jack Kirby you gotta have a mother and father named Kurtzberg. How do you think comics in general and your career in particular would have been different without Kirby, and do you think there will always be some aspects of him that will be relevant to comics, present and future?

To me Alex Raymond and Burne Hogarth are the classical high art, and Golden Age books are the roots of the comic-book language; Kirby exploited much of its potential. In my opinion comics today have lost the grammar of the medium as visual storytelling; some of today’s books seem to ignore the sequentiality of the panels, and look more like beautiful but isolated graphic expressions put together. Everything that Jack did was at the service of storytelling. Kirby’s books were also easy to read, exciting and not intellectually pretentious. His and other masters’ lessons should be recovered. I also think that comics have lost their distinctive style, the brush line, to computer coloring and effects. I hope for a renaissance of the truest comic-book form, neither nostalgic nor postmodern but fitting for current times. Kirby would be a good starting point. Animator Mark Lewis is also one of the pillars of the Big Bang Comics universe, Gary Carlson and Chris Ecker’s pioneering line of postmodern retro comics as resonant as the originals they homage. Kirby’s mature style figures formidably in this fictional cosmos, but Lewis is one of the few (and the best) artists finding new possibilities in the roots of Kirby’s creativity by flawlessly refreshing the King’s 1940s style (and in fact doing it as one of the artists under the house meta-nym “Mighty Joe Kingler”). He spoke about reimagining Kirby from the ground up. What first made you aware of Kirby, and in your own art did you set out to apply his example in any ways?

When I was first buying comics as a kid, I don’t know that I picked up at all on the fact there were different artists. I think the point that idea first dawned on me was also the point where I happened to discover Kirby. I can even remember the specific image that burned itself into my brain: Mister Miracle strapped to a rocket sled. There was so much life, energy and excitement in that image. I tried to find more work like it, but since this was the days before comics shops, all you could get was whatever you were lucky enough to find on a spinner rack. It was a few years until I was able to find much more than that one book, and that was right around the time of Kamandi. I have a lot of affection for that book as a result. The second part of this is a little more embarrassing. When my interest and fascination with Kirby really took off (early high school, I think), somehow I realized that Jack was in his 50s and would one day be retiring, and it occurred to me that someone would have to pick up that torch, so why not me? So I went through a phase where I tried hard to emulate Jack, mostly picking up on surface detail (big square kneecaps, huge fists, squiggles everywhere). What can I say? I was a kid. It wasn’t really until

stepping away from it, learning more about basic drawing skills and then coming back to Kirby’s work years later, that I could really see and learn from what was underneath the surface. In some ways, 1960s Kirby was innovative for design (all the mindboggling machinery and space-scapes), and 1940s Kirby was innovative for composition (all those circular and lightning-shaped panels and border-busting battle scenes). Is there something to be learned from each phase of Kirby?

Absolutely. In a way, starting out looking at ’40s Kirby figure work is good because you get to see the beginnings of things he pushed even further later on, but you don’t have all the squiggles or other surface details that people tend to get stuck on and which can distract you from seeing those things. For example, in studying his ’40s work I picked up on what I came to think of as the Kirby “action arc,” where I realized that quite often you could draw an arc between a character’s legs when he had that character in motion. This translates in his later work to what people have sometimes referred to as the characters leaping about with their legs four feet apart. What I discovered was that if you worked out your figures so you had that arc going, the figures looked much more active and lively. It’s a lesson I’ve definitely taken and tried to apply to my own work as well. How do you get in the mindset of work that’s so old, and what’s the secret to keeping it fresh as well as authentic?

Whenever I’ve done one of these (whether it’s Kirby I’m trying to ape or anyone else), I try initially to kind of “steep” myself in the work. I pull out as much of it as I can find in my collection and study it. The broader the range of samples from that artist and that period that you can draw from, the better. There are swipes involved of course (unavoidable when you’re trying for something as close as possible to a forgery), but you have to be intelligent in 135

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(above) Spot the Simon & Kirby counterfeit! A new Golden Age from Mark Lewis (left); vintage S&K (right), from the cover of Star Spangled Comics #9 (June 1942). Note that Kirby forgot to draw in the Guardian’s mask—possibly confusing him with Manhunter in the rush of turning out so much work for DC Comics at the time. (right) Reed Man rescues obscure Kirby supervixen Galaxy Green. The Badge TM & ©2008 Big Bang Comics. Newsboy Legion and the Guardian TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Galaxy Green TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

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how you go about it. The storytelling, the sequence of images, have to flow, just like they do in the originals. Random stolen images sewn together won’t work. So it winds up being a variety: a swiped panel here, a panel drawn from scratch there, a stolen piece of a figure there, whatever it takes to get it to feel like Kirby really drew this thing. There’s a certain amount of instinct involved, I guess, in feeling when it’s working right. The mix of modern and period styles is greater than ever in mainstream comics as the medium recognizes its heritage and its evolving identity as pop folklore. You’re one of the artists the majors and indies alike call on to capture historic looks, and that the animation studios want for up-to-the-minute styles. What do you feel is the role and the value of older-fashioned aesthetics in modern comics?

There are always lessons to be learned from the past. Why re-invent the wheel? There are artists who came before you who tackled a lot of the same problems you face at the board and found solutions. To ignore that is to doom yourself to a lot of unnecessary flailing around. Standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before us gives you a leg up on your peers who choose to disregard their work as irrelevant. You can draw in any surface style you like, but it would be foolish not to benefit from their lessons in staging, storytelling, dramatics, clarity, etc. Looking around, I’d say we need those things now more than ever. Also: there’s something about Kirby’s work that I think fired up the imagination of aspiring comics creators of a certain generation in a unique way. You might look at the work of a Neal Adams (as a random example), and be awed, but your reaction might be to want to go break your pencil and just give up. Whereas Kirby would somehow inspire you to sit down and try to do this too. Not that you really thought you could equal him, but there was just a creative energy on that page that motivated you to at least try to do something on your own. Reed Man is a French comics publisher and accomplished artist in his own right, bringing new life to the medium and taking it in as many unexpected directions as Kirby dedicated his career to. As a lot of people born in 1968 did, I discovered Jack Kirby through his Marvel works. Contrary to many readers who only swear by characters, I rapidly identified the King’s style and the power in his art fired my imagination. Only punk rock, which I discovered as a teenager, could compete with Kirby’s disturbing

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energy. And in 1989, when my wife Elodie Ant and I logically tried to mix these two passions, Organic Comix was born! With its now-famous comics performances, Organic Comix’s sweating team accompanies numerous rock bands on stage, producing giant comic strips to the rhythm of saturated guitars. Concurrent with Organic Comix, I started working for Lug/Semic, thenpublisher of the Marvel series in this country (from 1969-96), adapting comics from the House of Ideas into French. Image courtesy Harry Mendryk Located in Lyon, this company produced numerous anthology magazines, such as Fantask and Titans, the most famous being Strange. It was with great pleasure that a few years later I relaunched this mythical title, producing our own creations and, thanks to Lisa Kirby and John Morrow, accompanying them with rare strips belonging to the Jack Kirby Estate (The Astrals, Star Cats, etc.) and recently developing our own Kirby series with Galaxy Green! This year, Strange has published Silver Star, to French Kirby fans’ delight. Kirby is eternal and comics must go on!

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Dwayne McDuffie expanded comics’ frontiers with the kickass concepts and racially inclusive roster of creators and characters at Milestone Comics (which he co-founded and contributed to), and strengthened comics’ foundations as head writer on the high-profile animated version of one of the field’s most iconic properties, the Justice League. He’s recently had a triumphant run on the JLA comic, while in the Kirby quadrant, he revitalized Lee/Kirby-era Avengers characters with his superhumaninterest backup stories in Avengers Classic and, over 12 issues in 2007, made it the best year to be a Fantastic Four fan in recent memory with a landmark run on that signature Stan & Jack title. The hardworking McDuffie found a 25th hour to tell us how Kirby figured into his own Year One. What are some of the lessons Kirby’s creative process set for your own methods of storytelling?

I actually don’t know much about his process, but if I had 10% of his work ethic, there’d have been a lot fewer people waiting around for me to finish a script over the years. It’s his results I’m enthralled by, his fecundity as he throws away five ideas an issue each so unique that you wish you’d ever thought of anything that clever, the unmatched power of his images, the crystal-clear storytelling. My first professional work in comics was in the Marvel Universe he helped create. My first DC Comics work was writing The Demon, which he created. My TV work on Justice League often involved working with his characters and concepts and now I’m writing Fantastic Four, a Kirby co-creation, guest-starring the Black Panther, a Kirby co-creation, in an adventure with the Silver Surfer, Watcher and Galactus, who are all Kirby co-creations. I guess I’m saying that without Jack, I’d probably be a greeter at Wal-Mart. In FF you seem to be tapping what made the Stan & Jack stories great without turning back to exactly what they were. A straight retro approach doesn’t fit with any time but its own, and a total departure from a series’ roots just feels shapeless and irrelevant. You’ve cracked the code of moving these concepts forward with their classic flavor intact—how do you strike the balance and decide what’s essential?

I just tried to remember how classic Fantastic Four made me feel, then distill the elements of those stories and re-create them in a modern context. I pointedly didn’t re-read the stories; the temptation to just copy would have been too great. I basically decided the franchise was a family of explorers, who while searching for knowledge, come across injustices and fix them, because it’s the right thing to do. Add big clunky science-fiction ideas and

a sense of humor, and that’s about it. The most important element to me was the sense of fun the early stuff had. Superhero comics are in an extended adolescent stage, where we confuse solemnity for maturity and are trying very hard to be too cool to smile. That doesn’t work with the FF. The Fantastic Four is about fun. In your Firestorm run you were one of the very few creators to “get” Orion’s and Kalibak’s voice. I think people understand the New Gods’ speech when they understand their nature—not a bunch of galactic superheroes, but these biblical hyper-beings who are kind of reciting their own saga as it plays out. How did you set your internal ear for that frequency?

Really I ripped it from the very talented writers who had solved this problem on Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League. There were lots of Kirbyphiles on staff, but Bruce Timm particularly deeply understands how these characters work, including their voices. I have a facility for dialogue, so if there’s a clear roadmap like this one, it’s not hard for me to get there. It seems you had ambitions to do more with the New Gods—anything on the horizon, or at least some “one of these days” ideas our readers would have fun chewing over?

I had plans, but DC already had bigger ones, so I set up something for Firestorm and the New Gods, but that will be resolved in other hands. Maybe I’ll get to play with them again someday.

(top left) Kirby’s chiseled contours reincarnated in a Mike Oeming Avengers Classic page, with McDufffie script, and (above) some classic Avengers of Kirby’s own, with John Romita Sr. inks (from Avengers #23, December 1965). Avengers TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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“example” they set for what you did in comics lie in what was missing?

Stan and Jack produced fantasies set in a world that was more naturalistic than most fantasy was at the time. Race is an element of that, and one that’s particularly important to me, so I ran with it.

Mike Mignola is comics’ leading folklorist, tapping time periods as diverse as Depression-era New York and Medieval Russia for atmospheres and lore that expand the imaginary palette of the artform. Best known for his Hellboy series and related titles, Mignola detailed his fantasy-gathering in Kirby’s corner of the universe. Kirby was a science-fiction artist who had a strong strain of the occult (Agatha Harkness, The Demon, even Satan’s Six); you’re a horror artist who regularly transgresses science (Screw-on Head, the Vril suit, and all of B.P.R.D.’s techno abominations). How formative was Kirby in your style and outlook?

(top) Taking adventure fiction seriously, in McGovern & Leandri’s forthcoming Idoru Jones. (bottom) Set in stone: A Kirby Darkseid sketch (left), and the myth recarved by Mignola (right). Idoru Jones TM and ©2008 Adam McGovern & Paolo Leandri. Darkseid TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

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Adam McGovern’s debut comic (with artist and cocreator Paolo Leandri), Dr. Id, Psychologist of the Supernatural, was nominated for an Ignatz Award as Outstanding Comic of 2006, and is in development as a TV series with Scout Productions. McGovern & Leandri are preparing their Nightworld and Idoru Jones comics, while McGovern co-translated Paolo Parisi’s forthcoming graphic novel Pitbull with Andrea Plazzi, and is at work on an American edition of Leo Ortolani’s hit Rat-Man. McGovern lectures on comics at conventions and museums, but can sometimes keep it short. Kirby’s limits were what really showed me storytelling’s possibilities. The common cancellation of his most important works imposed a closure and compression whose virtues were always apparent in Kirby’s concise practice, and which came in handy for satisfying, self-sufficient narrative at whatever point you entered or left his world. As a kid my tastes tended toward the TV show that was cancelled before the third commercial and the comic that was discontinued on Page 9, and this most likely instilled a sense of artistic mortality that influenced my own tendency toward eight- (or two-) page shorts. But the quality of novelistic completeness also became a hallmark of comics’—even superhero comics’ —renaissance in the mid-1980s, from Maus to Watchmen. Kirby gave you all you needed to know in any given issue, while leaving just enough unknowable to keep you fascinated. In his day there had been no comics to grow up with, so he followed the model of Greek myth, Arthurian legend, the Bible—canons of tales that edify as epics but make sense as isolated episodes. Kirby was also not a storyteller so much as a travel-agent to other worlds. You always got the sense that what you were reading was framed out of a broader canvas that only he could see. But if you kept looking long enough you would see it too. Prophets and bards unveil their secrets over time, and with enough concentration you can start the reaction going in your own mind. We call it revelation, vision, hallucination, or just imagination. Kirby was one of its eternal flames, a magic lantern that finally consumed him but will never stop lighting our way.

Now that you mention it, Kirby’s work was the first and biggest influence on what I do. I never read sci-fi books but my first favorite comic was Fantastic Four. I never really thought of it as science-fiction, but that’s where my idea of science-fiction came from—giant crazy-looking machines, other dimensions, robots and wild experiments gone terribly wrong. Science fiction without too much science but lots of explosions. My second favorite comic was Thor and I’m pretty sure that was my introduction to mythology—again more explosions than you’d get learning mythology in school. My view of the supernatural comes from novels and short stories—especially the Victorian stuff like Dracula—but there is so much Kirby energy blowing around in my head that I think anything that goes in there is sort of super-charged by it. Did you always dream of handling Kirby characters as you did in Cosmic Odyssey, or was it a coincidence, and in any case how did it

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relate to your admiration of his work and your understanding of his creative process?

I never thought of doing anything with the Kirby DC characters. I grew up reading Marvel so I never really knew anything about those guys—but the year I spent with that stuff on my drawing table, using it for reference, studying it, made a huge impression. If you look at my work before and after Cosmic Odyssey you see a dramatic difference. My work became more dynamic and much more impressionistic. I came to have a whole new appreciation of Kirby as an artist. With Hellboy and his extended family of books—including B.P.R.D. and Lobster Johnson—you seem to have realized Kirby’s original idea for the Fourth World as being a line of comics that he would oversee but not necessarily do every duty on. The quality level on all your books remains astoundingly high and surprisingly cohesive. Did you have his dream in mind?

There was no model for what I’m doing with Hellboy and B.P.R.D. I just have too many ideas. Unfortunately I lack Kirby’s ability to put those ideas onto paper fast, so they tend to back up in my head. Every story idea seems to lead to three more I didn’t see coming. I’m just having too much fun. [Eulogizing Kirby in “Melt,” mind-melding with MODOK for the lyrics of “Baby Götterdämerung” and naming a song after “Ego, The Living Planet,” Monster Magnet are among the leading poets of Kirby’s posterity in the universe of hard rock.] [Alan Moore occupies the same unequaled position of respect for his comics writing that Kirby does for his art; for imagination and daring in character and storytelling they’re at least evenly matched. Like Kirby, Moore’s CV is one composed almost entirely of landmarks, from Watchmen to From Hell to Promethea to Lost Girls. And yet, even Moore has paid respects at the Kirby altar, and with praise in this publication and stories like “New Jack City” in Supreme: The Return #6, no doubt done him proud.]

standards. In Morrison’s canon no small role is played by revisitations of Kirby’s own, in a way that recaptures their essence and revitalizes their innovations like no one could expect, from an updating of the King’s Depression-era icon the Guardian to a forthcoming resurrection of Kirby’s crowning opus the Fourth World. Morrison manifested in ours to show TJKC some of the connections. What did Kirby mean to you as an expression of Americanness, and what do you feel he has to say to the realms of culture and creativity worldwide?

I guess to me Kirby could be the apotheosis of a very positive idea of America, in the sense that he’s obviously from that “Greatest Generation” that went to war. Someone like Kirby came out of a very direct moral viewpoint and was able to articulate that as well. His books are the best popular expression of that type of pioneer spirit or immigrant spirit, even of an outsider America. We could talk about Captain America here; Kirby was America. [laughter] And the more you think of it, that kind of muscular, “let’s do it!” quality was what he really brought to his heroes. It’s a very positive vision of the country rather than some of the more nihilistic or militaristic ones that we’ve seen recently in comic books.

In the reigning royalty of comic conceptualists, it’s only right that Grant Morrison should have much to say about classic comics’ King. No one surpasses Morrison for superhero fiction of mythic resonance and literary merit, and he has followed Kirby as a wellspring of new ideas which change everything about the way readers see comics while achieving the commercial success of the artform’s most cherished

What do you feel about his view of individualism as expressed in those heroes? In a strange way, Captain America is as much a “non-state actor” as a terrorist, and yet, he’s kind of the free-floating embodiment of the American ideal instead of the state. That might make Kirby off the beaten path of most of the other creators of his generation.

Well, he was off the beaten path of almost everybody else on the planet. [laughter] Individualism may not be the sort of thing that’s popular now, when a collective consciousness seems to be desired by the president of his country, but for Kirby’s generation and their children, the idea of the individual was big, and in the 139

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was actually an immortal spirit of the country (there was that strange exchange in the Dead Men Running mini where the rogue American soldier tells Cap he can’t understand what “a man” goes through). Though of course then he was reduced to just this guy who fights Iron Man and gets shot.

It was Captain America quailing in the face of the military/industrial/entertainment complex as represented by Tony Stark. That was a very honest critique of the character in today’s circumstances. People have responded to it because it’s a very accurate way of approaching where Captain America currently stands as an archetype in the American psyche. Though I thought they trivialized it a bit.

It could have been handled better, but the actual sentiment, the notion of Captain America suddenly seeming to be ridiculous in the face of someone like Tony Stark who has money and power and women— Captain America once stood for the best we could be, but now everybody looks up to the guy who’s got the biggest skyscraper and the most money. Kirby always did keep one eye on those earthbound concerns and one on the cosmic. He dealt with mysticism and theoretical physics from The New Gods to FF to The Demon. Did that have any direct impact on your interest in scientific frontiers and the spiritual unseen?

cold war the threat was always to the individual; the idea that freedom would be taken away, our rights would be taken away, or that people would be dehumanized or lobotomized. Those fears informed a lot of the thinking of the post-war period; shows like The Prisoner came out of the same type of worldview—that existential, individual-against-the-void thing, which is quite different from the way people think now, which is a lot more collective thanks to the internet and thanks to the way governments have learned to manipulate people. The Kirby Captain America might be seen as much more of a rugged individualist or an outsider than the current self-image of America demands. Though I guess in some ways Marvel was picking up on that by having him be the rebel and then conveniently shot down—though that has more to do with commercial imperatives…

There’s the fairytale that America loves to tell itself, that somewhere, somehow there is the Dream; there can be an embodiment of the dream of America alongside the dark side and all the bad things that have to be done to achieve dreams, the nightmares that had to be gone through. It’s almost touching, the idea that there is someone out there who will always stand for that dream, even though it’s never quite been ratified by reality. As if there’s a Platonic America somehow, which is represented by these really positive qualities. It reminds me of your conception of Uncle Sam and The Heartland for the current Freedom Fighters comic. In the early 2000s I thought that Marvel was going in the direction of establishing that Captain America

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Certainly; Kirby was one of the first people I came across in comics who was even attempting to deal with anything like that. I have profound memories of those Kirby collages as being actual depictions of other dimensions. [laughter] That cosmic sense came to me quite young. As I’ve often spoken about, my uncle used to have a mural on his ceiling which was painted in the Kirby style by one of his friends. It was this amazing Kirbyesque character standing next to a spaceship with a bunch of primitive ape men carrying on in front of him. And he’s saying something like “I am thy man-god Elohim!” and there’s a whole speech below it in the Kirby style. That really stuck in my head; to me that stuff was much more appealing and meaningful than the Bible stories I was being taught at Sunday school. [laughter] That was my idea of religion; cosmic spacemen. Kirby really evoked a transcendent atmosphere that no one else did, and that got into me very young. Even when I didn’t like the work, that sense of vast celestial spaces always kind of stuck with me. And I’ve always worked to re-create that feeling. Are there any guidelines that Kirby’s pioneering of the cosmic epic and the crossover narrative has given you on books like 52 and Final Crisis?

The Fourth World laid the template for a type of big story with a lot of interweaving characters; I don’t know if anything like that had really been done before, unless you count the Marvel Universe itself. That’s always been the type of work I’ve loved doing the most, where you’ve got big ensemble casts and you can really weave a bunch of different types of stories together. Mostly because—and I’m sure Kirby did it for the same reason—it’s less boring to be able to jump from one character to another and from one completely different type of situation to another. I always responded to that radial narrative and dispersed cast though for many fans it’s the biggest drawback to the Fourth World. It always seemed natural to me.

Completely. But I find all forms of narrative natural as long as they have an impact on me. I don’t have trouble with David Lynch because I don’t expect it to be like anything else. I don’t expect Kirby to be anything other than Kirby. But at the same time, he had a really strong grasp of storytelling, and an unrivalled ability to put ideas on the page that make your mind race and keep you thinking and keep you engaged and stimulated until you come to the next page and get hit by a dozen more. [laughter] Comics should be like that; there should be some ridiculous surprise on every page if possible or some grand idea that you can think about, and turn over in your own mind and make into a story.

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Qui Nguyen is a playwright and fight director who started the Vampire Cowboys theatre company in New York six years ago to “bring the action and magic of comic books to the live theatre through stage combat, dark comedy and well-written stories.” In 2006, the company premiered its critically-acclaimed play Men of Steel, scripted and choreographed by Nguyen, which was dedicated to Simon & Kirby’s Captain America and made many agree that the best superhero movie of the year was in fact on stage. Kirby was the first comic artist to truly choreograph his fights, so much so that they seemed almost as much like dance as violence. It could be seen as a Western equivalent to the concept of conflict-as-artform (and allegory) in Asian martial arts. Your work seems to draw on the craft of the older tradition and the aesthetic of Kirby. Is there a link?

The first two forms of entertainment I ever experienced were comic books and chopsocky Kung Fu flicks. Growing up as an Asian American in the middle of Arkansas, my parents were always conscious that I be exposed to positive depictions of people of color both for my self-esteem and to let me know that even though I was growing up in a primarily white community, I wasn’t alone. So every weekend meant a trip to the local video store to pick up a stack of Shaw Brothers films and a stop at the newsstand for the latest issues of one of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s most famous creations, X-Men. These mediums were what first fed me my meals of pop-culture nourishment. This was my gateway drug into big storytelling. Jack Kirby’s style of creating cinematic-type action taught me so much about how to tell a fast-moving and riveting story, just as his intricately choreographed fights (which quite literally popped off the page) showed me the essence of creating powerful lines with the human body. Men of Steel confronts the homoerotic dimension of superheroics frankly. Kirby seemed to pioneer alternative options of male identity in comics with the once-startling long-haired depiction of Thor and characters like Thor’s Errol Flynn-like friend Fandral and the fearsome Orion’s flamboyant comrade Lightray. Kirby never said it directly, though his stuff seems more an assertion of gayness to Wertham’s accusation of it. Did either of these serve as a foundation for working the subject into your overview of the superhero mythos?

and movements were bigger-than-life since they had superpowers, I knew I had to make sure their fictional psyches were as richly drawn as a Jack Kirby creation. These had to feel like people, full and complete, who had lived for years. So along with making characters for my play that were black, white, Latino, and Asian in race, I also played with their sexuality to help further define their roles as living, breathing human beings. There’s an inherent physicality to theatre that could be said to match the visceral experience Kirby projected off the page. With genre subject-matter like yours (not just superheroes but horror, noir, etc.) this ends up influencing the cerebral act of scriptwriting, with punchy blocks of incident and interaction (almost like successive panels). Did the brevity of comics (Kirby’s or others’) teach you something about brisk yet perceptive dialogue and drama?

The reason why I think Vampire Cowboys gets the attention it does has a lot to do with the fact that my director and I have been perhaps more influenced by creators like Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller than guys like Ibsen, Chekhov, or Shakespeare. It’s given us a very specific voice inside our profession, which is quickly warming up to our new style of pop-culture-infused action theatre. Comic books taught me how to look at story as action. They showed me how to efficiently and effectively write brisk and precise dialogue. They ultimately taught me how to tell good stories. So even though I don’t work in the comic-book industry, it is comic books that have given me my career.

Revered in his native Italy and by fans in the know worldwide, Leo Ortolani stretches the boundaries of comics storytelling and explores the heights of humor and the depths of slapstick in the indie phenomenon he writes, draws and created, Rat-Man (slowly infesting the world with an animated series and international comic editions soon). Ortolani communes with Kirby regularly as both a stylistic model and a character in his stories, and spoke with us through translator, editor and friend Andrea Plazzi. So, you wanted to know about Jack Kirby’s influence on my work, and I’ll show you something. Look, down there. Yes, that small town, in Tuscany. It’s called San Piero a Sieve, in the Florence area. It’s summer 1978. Do you see that old country house, with a kitchen garden? Do you see that boy on a chair, reading a comic book while the grownups talk? It’s me.

Not directly. I was more interested in creating a landscape of superheroes as uniquely diverse as the city I inhabit. The homoerotic element came in as more of a comment on the character of Batman and how so many people joke about his relationship with Robin. What I can say I drew from Kirby was his utter seriousness with the work he did. Though the characters might sometimes say silly things (and in Men of Steel, they said a lot of silly things), the way they stood, acted, and moved never projected anything other than complete seriousness to their situation. Kirby made his characters three-dimensional in a medium that uses only two. When working on Men of Steel, I knew that it was important to make sure that I followed Kirby’s lead. Though my actors are living and breathing, when working on a show about superheroes, it is so easy to fall into making caricatures instead of people. Though I had to make sure my actors’ dialogue 141

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It looks like I’m reading a comic book but, as a matter of fact, my life is changing and I don’t even realize it. I’m 11 but I’ve already been into comics for years. At the age of 3 I was looking at images, at 4 I was trying to scribble them, at 5 I was reading them and at 11... That memory didn’t fade a bit, not even after almost 30 years, because I wasn’t reading a comic like any other, but a giant-sized collection of Fantastici Quattro. Yes, The Fantastic Four. I was reading a Jack Kirby comic. The first FF issues are drawn very quickly, in a simpler way, far from the Marvels inked by Joe Sinnott, or from the Wonders of Kamandi. But I’m 11 and it’s not the style, or the draftsmanship, that’s slapping me right on my face with that thunderous “WAKE UP! THIS IS WHAT COMICS ARE!” It’s something more. What is it, you ask me? Who knows? I’m 11. And that summer I had to grapple with yet another basic revelation, bound to mark my life forever: I really enjoyed boobs. But even at 11, this is something easy to explain. Unlike Jack Kirby. Thirty years after, things haven’t changed. When I read a comic book by him, or browse through TJKC... I stare at his drawings like a hare stares at the oncoming car’s lights. It’s not normal. For instance, there’s that huge hand from the Silver Star Graphite Edition, and I stared at it, spellbound, unable to understand how he possibly, conceivably figured out it could have those shadows, those lines... amazing. One single hand. Should I try, I’d scribble 76 sketches, weep half an hour, pick up sketch #54, which doesn’t look so bad in pencil, with regard to this and that, then I’d spoil it with my inks. It’s not normal. That’s why the only explanation I can find for Jack Kirby and his art, and the reason why he shocked me (“influenced” simply doesn’t tell the story) from Instant One, is that Jack Kirby had found Beyond. All these long years as a comics reader I have seen splendid pages, and I have read wonderful stories. However, with the typical arrogance of ignorant people, I convinced myself that, when all is said and done, the most beautiful pages and stories simply are not enough to tell a tale in comics. One must go Beyond. And Beyond is where they call Jack Kirby “King.” I simply can’t explain myself better than that. In part, because I really can’t; in part because I’ve been looking for the road to Beyond for 30 years. And for people like me this kind of research comes before anything else and, with time, a kind of jealousy for what we discover arises. And this jealousy keeps us from telling others. And even when we tell, it’s pointless, because only those who look for Beyond with that kind of fiery persistence would understand. I think I’ve seen Beyond, from a distance. I think I got close to it. That was It, at least a couple of times. I know it, because when you find yourself Beyond, it’s the end of storytelling laws as we know them, and all is Comics. All is storytelling in its purest state. It’s wonderful, because you become but a means through which it flows. This is exactly what happened when I read Jack Kirby’s stories. And for the first time I understood that a new dimension existed, there, Beyond the Page. Call it Shangri-La, if you wish, a Paradise Lost to strive for. Forever blessed and cursed by this discovery, I’ve never stopped looking for it since then. Because I know it’s out there, and each Kirby page is there to prove it. So, this is what happened to me. And I was 11. At that tender age, all my hopes for a dumb, happy life were swept away. I have to thank TJKC for the invitation to pay homage to Jack Kirby on its pages. Because on these

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pages, issue after issue, I came to know pieces and fragments of the life of a man who—across time and space—has changed mine forever. Just another reason why I keep looking for the road to Beyond, in the hope—one day—to meet him there.

Stefano Pavan’s re-creation of Kirby is faithful in both senses of the word; astonishingly true to both the King’s style and what you can imagine him having done next, and almost religious in its devotion to the design and conceptual principles of the master. Pavan is known in his native Italy for work in alternative-comics anthologies like Freak

City, Fulci: Poeta del Macabro and Monstars; for contributing heavily to a Kirby tribute art exhibit; and for a generosity of spirit that would make his model feel the legacy is in the most careful of hands. (Translator Andrea Plazzi handled Pavan’s heartfelt thoughts for TJKC.) I discovered Marvel’s superheroes at the age of 8: Kirby didn’t “exist” to me, yet. I didn’t know artists’ and writers’ names: there were the characters, and that sense of friendship every child shares with his favorite comic book. So, it’s with them that I started drawing. I was in awe before those powerful strokes, those pencils’ energy, those titan-like creatures—Kirby’s mechanics and geometries more than Colan’s or Romita Sr.’s graceful scenes. Then came the Fourth World, and Kamandi: then I discovered Kirby as an artist, realizing and understanding what he had done previously. Since then, my eyes have never left those pages. As a teenager I discovered French-Belgian comics, Moebius and the Metal Hurlant bunch, but it was just a kind of digression, partly as a reaction to what I had come to regard as children’s stuff: hormones were raging wild, driving me to other graphic ways of expressing myself. But in the end, Kirby’s powerfully portrayed scenarios and landscapes caught me back once again. During the ’80s I used to regard myself like a Mangog of sorts, the sole survivor of an extinct race, but TJKC brought new life to my never-forgotten lonely passion, opening me up to a new world of equally passionate people, and new friends. I admire so much Kirby’s synthesis, the way whole cinematic sequences fit into a single page. In those nervy, rough strokes, in those absolute blacks I see simple, gentle and daring pencils. Where others struggle to understand a technically supreme and totally concrete artist, I exalt an artist totally uninterested in fancy, decorative stuff, or in some reviewer’s approval. He only and always strove to reach out for his readers. And reach them he did. When I started to see myself as a comic artist, I felt a need to elaborate on Kirbyan themes, to mix what I could find in lost corners of his comics and his characters, striving to fill some hole I was feeling inside myself, or even to add something—in my knowit-all attitude—that Kirby himself didn’t do. I never had a pastiche plan; my inspiration was from his 360-degree approach to storytelling, where each and every element from everyday life was his to take and change, to give birth to new ideas, new stories, and then move on to something new.

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might have happened if I had picked some Power Pack issues instead). Back in Italy I started reading the Italian versions of Marvel comics (always more popular in Italy than DC), especially Fantastici Quattro, a 64-page magazine publishing John Byrne’s run on Fantastic Four and Frank Miller’s first run on Daredevil. In one of my first issues I read the latter-day Galactus Saga. It was very good, and the God-like Galactus really struck my imagination. But a few weeks later in a Genoa comics store I first encountered the King. I bought the Italian edition of the first Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks: the comics were old, sometimes a little naïve, but both story and art were very powerful. Discovering Kirby was like discovering the source of faith itself. I was like a Christian reading the Gospels in Greek for the very first time. I went back to that shop and bought many issues of Fantastici Quattro Gigante, a magazine-size comic book reprinting most of Kirby’s FF in chronological order. And soon I read the original Galactus Saga (in FF #48-50), discovering that Byrne’s version was just a pale image of Kirby’s and Lee’s. I lived in a Kirbyan world for many weeks, and I’m not sure I have come back to “reality” since then. Kirby created me, because he gave me the inspiration of doing different things, of putting passion in everything. This week I wrote a comics script, an article about Howard’s Conan, an interview with novelist Joe Lansdale, an essay on Alan Moore’s writing style, and a piece on TV’s House M.D. I wasn’t in a very good mood when I started to write, but thinking about the King made me feel much better. After all, I couldn’t disappoint my creator.

(above) A formidable Galactus image from the “Black Book” sketchbook Jack gave Roz one 1970s Valentine’s Day. (right) The last word on Nerd: One of Priarone’s recent volumes. (far right) A rawpowered Black Bolt painting by Regan, and (next page, bottom) one of Kirby’s commanding precedents, again from Roz’s 1970s sketchbook. Galactus, Black Bolt TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. Nerd Power ©2008 Stefano Priarone.

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Many tell me, “You should be more daring! There’s too much Kirby in your stuff!” This would mean new ways of expressing myself, and sure, I strive to evolve. But very often, when I try to think of how I should be working on a certain page, I feel attracted once again to those comic books, where the pleasure that he used to take in visual storytelling waits for me. And I try to make it live again on my pages. Kirby makes you love what you do, the cartoonist’s craft. Enough to try to improve, day after day. And Jack used to talk about his art with the simplicity only great souls possess. His art and his stories are hard work and fun; intelligence and expressive joy. Jack crossed our paths as a true artist. Timeless. Stefano Priarone (born in Ovada, Italy when Kirby was at DC doing his Fourth World saga) writes articles and comics for various Italian magazines and for The Comics Journal in America. He has published several books and wishes he were as prolific as the King, but he’s “too lazy.” But then, who isn’t? The King was just a distant deity when I first discovered superhero comics in a comics store in York, England. It was 1989, the Berlin Wall was falling down, Leo Ortolani was creating Rat-Man, and I had just seen the first Batman movie. The first superhero books I picked up were Alan Moore’s Batman: The Killing Joke and Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. They were the first of many; now I have thousands of superhero comics (I wonder what

Dom Regan has been busy transporting readers to other dimensions as one of the most promising colorists for DC Comics, adding otherworldly hues and textures to the alien environments of Omega Men and the psychological badlands of Infinity Inc. in a way that would make Kirby proud. He also traveled back to Jack’s prehistory for the Kirby/Ayers-inspired Marvel-Age-of-Communism spoof The Freedom Collective, illustrating Colin Barr’s script and El Sloano’s concept. Regan contacted TJKC to speculate on where the spaceship’s headed next. What could I add to the mountain of tribute heaped at the feet of the King? Like so many others, I can only aspire to do justice to the inspiration Jack Kirby gave us. For me this inspiration has come in many forms. The first Kirby story I remember reading was the epic FF/Avengers/Hulk

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slugfest in a Marvel Treasury Edition from the early ’70s. As a child I was in awe of the Fantastic Four, fighting on against an unbeatable savage foe to save their city and the people who lived there. I must have read that story hundreds of times over the years and the heroic perseverance of Ben Grimm still hits me like a gold brick. Years later it was Kirby himself rather than his creations that inspired me. His devotion to his craft and to telling a good story was one of the things that pulled me back into comics again. I often wonder what Kirby would be doing if he were at his creative peak now rather than 40 years ago. While I love to speculate about a Photoshop-savvy Kirby and the crazy comics he’d produce, I can’t help thinking that his talent for building worlds would quickly be snapped up by the computer games industry to create new realities in lifelike action-packed three dimensions. I can only dream of what he might have done. Unless, maybe, the DC Comics multiplayer online role playing game will have a corner that’ll be forever Kirby... I’ll need to wait and see. If they don’t go down that route I might have to learn a 3-D package myself and start building my own virtual giant futuristic temples dedicated to the King. Byron Roberts fronts the British metal band Bal-Sagoth, whose inspirations in comics and fantasy literature run wide and deep. The band’s orchestralstrength compositions have even starred Kirby characters in their lyrical landscape. Byron is working on comics versions of the band’s concepts (www.bal-sagoth.co.uk), and talked with TJKC about their solid Kirby foundations.

John Romita Jr. has established himself as a fan favorite with one foot in the Silver Age and the other taking ever-greater steps into comics’ future. He’s done distinguished work on industry-defining characters like Daredevil and Spider-Man, and embellished the Kirby canon with books like The Last Fantastic Four Story (with Stan Lee himself!) and an especially astonishing reinvention of Kirby’s Eternals with writer Neil Gaiman. Romita spoke with us about being a keeper of the Kirby faith. How were you aware of Kirby as a kid, and how did his influence relate to having another icon of comic art right in the house?

The first time I noticed Kirby was the first time my father began to work for Marvel (again) in the ’60s, and he did some inking over Jack Kirby. So I saw Kirby when I was very young. And then my father would show me the work and explain who this guy was, and then began to bring home books that Kirby was working on. And he was always explaining to me why it was great stuff. But my father’s style, to me, is not too dissimilar from Kirby’s, in that it was clean, and it was easy to understand. I equated them, because they were about the same age. While people might think that they’re completely divergent, I don’t; their styles aren’t similar, but their power and their storytelling was similar. There’s that kind of pop-art simplicity in both of them.

Exactly. I consider Alex Toth and Milton Caniff and Frank Robbins and my father and several other guys of my father’s generation to be similar in a lot of ways.

(left) Byron photographed by Elm Studios; courtesy of Cacophonous Records.

It’s a kindred approach, for sure. When you mention that your dad was inking over Kirby, what kind of stuff was that?

I first became aware of Jack Kirby’s legendary talents when I was a little kid, maybe about five or six years old, growing up in Canada. My brother had a big box of Marvel comics which a friend had given to him, and I always used to love to get them out and look through them whenever I could. In fact, those comics really helped me learn how to read! There were a lot of old Stan Lee and Jack Kirby issues of the Fantastic Four in there, and the dynamic art style and incredible, vivid characters instantly captivated me. I guess that was about when my love of comic books began. Later, when I started collecting comic books of my own, I always made a point of seeking out anything that Jack Kirby had written and drawn. Everything from The New Gods, to The Eternals, to Machine Man, to Atlas... either old or new. One of the things I loved most about JK’s creations was the unrivalled sense of cosmic grandeur with which he infused his works, and which energized his masterful storytelling, both in terms of his iconic art style and his prose. His most memorable stories and characters were on a truly epic pangalactic scale, and that love of such stories has stayed with me ever since. There’s certainly a great deal of Jack Kirby’s influence in my own tales of rogue demigods, cosmic titans, intergalactic wars and the like. In fact, I even called the fourth Bal-Sagoth album The Power Cosmic in honour of Jack and Stan’s enduring legacy, and wrote a song on it called “The Scourge of the Fourth Celestial Host” featuring the Celestials and the Silver Surfer! Of all the legendary comic creators throughout the decades, Jack Kirby and his glorious legacy continue to inspire me the most, and his work, which was so pivotal in shaping the industry as we know it today, will never be equaled. 145

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seams in them? As far as I’m concerned, the costumes should be part of their skin, more like a tattoo, and they should have no seam lines anywhere. Kirby’s way of drawing everyone from Odin to Mephisto was they all had loincloths, and shorts, and capes. That’s okay, but my thought was to have it skin-like. But then you separate yourself from the fun of Kirby. It ended up being we stayed where we were, close enough, and then we went off on tangents with the story. In some ways I think that seamless, skin-like quality came through, ’cause they were certainly streamlined and—in the same way that Kirby’s Eternals costumes were less like a superhero costume than like ceremonial garb—yours kept a lot of that but almost moved into athletic wear, which of course gives less of a feeling of regular clothing and almost of being merged with the character.

Exactly; I just don’t see someone like Galactus or Thanos putting on his shorts in the morning. [laughter] At least not one leg at a time.

Exactly. [laughs] In the overall look of that series, there was certainly the scale and scary grandeur of Kirby, but it’s almost as if you were going back to some of the same sources that he must have drawn on; everything from Aztec imagery to almost a Hieronymus Bosch kind of look for the Deviants. What were some of the range of references you had for that?

Kirby power (top left, for a 1960s Marvel T-shirt) meets the Romita Jr. principle (bottom right, from World War Hulk ). (right) Romita begins: The cover that started everything for JR Jr. (Daredevil #12, January 1966). Hulk, Daredevil TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

A couple of Hulk covers, Avengers covers, Daredevil covers—some of the great covers, and one that’s most vivid in my mind is Daredevil #12 with Ka-Zar up in the tree, and the Plunderer down below with Daredevil. That, I claim to this day, is the moment that I went head-overheels in love with comics. Because I saw it as he was inking it, and I remember as a very young boy asking, “How can this guy survive, he’s surrounded by all these badguys,” and my father went on to explain, “Well, this is Daredevil, he’s a superhero, and he’s blind”—“WHOAH [laughter]—you’ve gotta explain to me!” And he patiently explained what Daredevil was and how he came about, and the Plunderer is this guy, and Ka-Zar is this guy, and he’s got a saber-tooth tiger… and all of a sudden, I was hook, line and sinker—that was the pivotal moment in my life, watching him ink that cover. One of the hardest things to do in comics is improve on Kirby, but you did a really good job updating and streamlining the Eternals’ costume designs for the recent series with Neil Gaiman. Did you do anything to get inside Kirby’s head to access his design sense, or what was going through your head when you adapted those characters for today?

I wanted to stay as close as I could to the flavor of Kirby without feeling like I’m leaning on him. You walk a fine line; as you update, do you have to completely separate from it, and how much do you keep? I have a problem with gods, demigods, wearing material costumes. Y’know, when you’re that powerful, when you’re a god, do you dress in the morning, do you put on boots with soles, do you wear gloves with 146

I think it was the same thought process as with the costumes. Start with Kirby, find out what he was basing it on, get updated or more-historical reference—remember, Kirby didn’t have the internet to use, he only had bookstores and his amazing memory— so, start with Kirby’s inspiration, then go to the internet, or bookstores, and get the more extensive references on those, i.e., the Aztec warriors, and go a little further from there. So I tried to be as accurate with the Aztec nuance as I could, but it was all because of his flavor. In a book like World War Hulk, even as different as your styles are, I see a Kirbyesque sense of physical presence in your characters, where they have a quality of strength and even overpowering brutality, but it seems to come from within rather than muscles and tech ladled on from outside in the modern, early-Image manner.

If somebody reads my story and tells me that it’s a great story, “Oh and by the way, your artwork was wonderful,” instead of saying, “Wow, the art was amazing; oh yeah, and the story was okay,” I’d prefer the former, because it means that the overall package is looked at the way it’s supposed to be. It has to be a nice balance of both. I don’t pay as much attention to the detail and every little sinew and every little muscle tone; that to me is selfpromoting as opposed to being a team player. You forget that it’s part of a story. It’s adding scratches to scratches to scratches on a figure. There are a lot better draftsmen than me in the business, but I could tell a story better than them. Telling a story properly takes the eye away from the fact that I can’t draw a nose well or something to that effect. It’s a sleight of hand on my part. If I’m not “realistic” enough, so be it, but then I heard Jack Kirby had detractors for a while.

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John Romita Sr. is a comics icon, redefining Spider-Man in the mid-’60s for what is many fans’ favorite version of Marvel’s most successful character. Romita’s powerful, succinct style still embodies Silver Age pop artistry, but he was both a student of Kirby’s example as an up-and-coming artist at midcentury and a colleague and influence on the King himself as Marvel’s art director. Romita telephoned from his home to talk about what made Kirby matter. What was your impression of Kirby, how did you work together and what do you feel you may have learned from each other?

Working with him was like a dream, because when I was 10 years old and he came out with Captain America, it was the first time I could remember that I was aware of what was happening; as a 10-year-old I could see the difference in Captain America from everything else that was being done. And I remember telling my friends, and saying, “Can’t you see how much better this stuff is than the other stuff, can’t you see the excitement, can’t you see them poppin’ out of the page?” And they were just noddin’ their heads, they didn’t know what I was talkin’ about. [laughs] But I think I always had that, I could look at artwork and I could understand what was going on in the mind of the artist. So I was learning every time I read one of his things. Ten years later, I almost worked for him. I answered an ad, and I didn’t know it was Simon & Kirby. I met someone, but it wasn’t Jack Kirby; he probably was at his drawing table. [laughs] I went home and tried to do a page, and worked all night on it, and I tell ya I suffered and I sweated and I trembled, and I did the thing and hated it, and I never went back! So about 15 years later, when I met Jack up at Marvel I told him about it (’cause I found out later who it was that was doin’ that operation), and he said “Why the hell didn’t you bring it in? Yours couldn’t have been any worse than anything else the other guys were bringing in! [laughs] You would’ve been working for me from 1948!” I could kick myself around the block for losing guts; he probably would have been able to teach me more in one afternoon than I would’ve learned in the next 10 years. I still have a romance book that’s brown now, one of his romance books from I think 1950, and it’s still one of the greatest stories I ever saw in my life. It was a story about China, and everything I ever imagined I could put into a story, he did in that one story and he knocked it out. I still every once in while look at it. Down through the years, whenever I brushed with Kirby’s stuff, it was always like I was at a shrine. So when I met him, it was a staggering feeling. But I had already been in the business 15 years, so I tried to act like a pro, and not get silly over it; I didn’t ask for his autograph or anything like that, even though I wanted to. [laughs] So the first time I saw him, up at Marvel, he was touchin’ up a Ditko cover, believe it or not. And it’s funny, because he always used to say he didn’t like Stan’s idea of one artist touching up somebody else’s art; I know that he probably hated when I touched up some of his stuff. But most of the time what Stan

wanted was a change of expression or a change of mood. It was mostly story-oriented, it was nothing to do with the drawing. And I was always embarrassed by that, I never wanted to change Jack’s stuff. But, you’re in the office, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. But his impact on comics, that’s a proven point. He probably turned comics into a dynamic artform. Everybody else used to do sleeping figures before him. And everything that Stan used to espouse was basically what Jack used to do naturally, which was intensity, extreme action. Stan used to call it the silent-film school of acting; you overact in comics because you’ve got to drive the point home, you only have a split second to convince the reader and to get him excited. Jack Kirby just shook everybody up; when he started doing the FF, all the rules changed, and anyone who followed him has benefited from the example. It’s interesting that you talk of having a revelation from one of his romance comics, because I’ve found a lot of good old romance comics with art by you; did the course that your career took just follow whatever jobs were open at the time, or did that particularly inspire you to do romance comics?

No, [in the ’50s] Stan shut down almost the whole line and a bunch of us were out of work, and I was just blessed that DC wanted me to do something; I didn’t go up there and say “I want to do Batman”; I said “I’ll do whatever ya got.” I had done some romance for them before, and then it was like seven or eight years at DC,

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enliven romance comics, since I’ve looked at those old ones and also ones by Gene Colan and thought, “Wow, this is probably how these guys were later able to bring such subtlety and dimension to the superhero stuff.”

It was a round cycle. It made us much more dimensional artists. And it made me able to do things in the adventure stuff, in superhero stuff, that other guys were not adding. So it was just a lucky break—in other words, a terrible tragedy, losing work in the middle of the ’50s, and I thought I would never get back on my feet, turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. One difference between you and Kirby is that it’s almost as if Kirby was incapable of not idealizing people; is it a conscious thing for you to move away from some of the over-dynamics of comics?

full-time, and I ended up their major [romance] artist. I learned so much doing those, and it’s like the other side of the coin; Kirby at the time was doing dynamics and action and intensity on an adventure level, and I was injecting a touch of excitement in romance, which was nonexistent—because everybody was asleep in the romance books. Even when they were crying. And nobody shouted, and if anybody ran, they ran like a Barbie doll in still camera. So to keep my sanity, I made it a challenge to myself. I worked with the editor up there, Phyllis Reed; we started to come up with different settings, we’d do one story in the mountains, another story on the ski slopes, another story on the ocean, in a tenement and then in a mansion, a swimming pool, the beach. And I was starting to inject as much dynamic movement as I could. If I had a chance I would have long hair on a girl and I would have it blowing in the wind. And I’d have her clothes blowing in the wind, and I’d have leaves blowing around [laughs] and scarves and all those things, and when I had somebody going up a flight of stairs I didn’t have them going up tip-toe, I had them running up the steps. I added intensity to the comics without even realizing it. I had a feeling it came from that Kirby stuff. It’s funny you should say that it was the Kirby style that got you to

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I used to love Kirby’s women, and yet people don’t think of Kirby’s women as something special, but I used to love them, and it killed me to change them. But what Stan was imagining was different expressions, and different subtleties that Jack was not interested in. Because Jack was telling a saga, he was telling an epic. I used to go for the little subtleties. One of the things that Caniff always stressed is the gestures—you don’t have to know every knuckle on a hand; if the gesture is genuine, if it’s a gesture that everybody sees every day, [the reader] will buy the hand. Don’t worry about all the knuckles and all the wrinkles; put the hand in a gesture that’s natural. And put the hand in the right proportions. To me that was like learning the golden rule. Kirby, on the other hand, used to have a formula way to do the hand. In fact, he’s famous for sometimes adding a knuckle. [laughter] When he had a hand clutching something, he wanted more joints on that hand, to make it look like a trap. Like a spider. He used to tell me, he’d come in and, first, criticize me for erasing, he’d tell me to throw away my eraser, and say “What the hell were you erasing for? That was good!” And I’d say, “It wasn’t right,” and he’d say, “You’re too worried about it being right. If it tells the story, it don’t have to be perfect. Just make it intense and exciting.” And he would go for excitement, he would add extra tendons to arms and legs, all for the action and the power. Other guys could not make up their own anatomy, [laughter] but he could. Kirby’s stuff looked mechanically right. I learned how to make a clutching hand, but I always tried to make it right. That was a personal decision of mine that cost me thousands of dollars. Because I used to work extra hard at it; nothing came naturally to me, I used to have to struggle. I did learn from Kirby a lot of things on what not to worry about. Like Impressionist painting; a couple of dabs of paint and you think you’re seeing something. If I’d have known that I would have been a richer man. No one had previously seen any artist quite like Kirby or Alex Ross. With his painted comics and groundbreaking design, Ross has done for naturalistic fantasy epics what Kirby did for the abstract graphic blockbusters of the past. Like Kirby, Ross’ resume is one of classic

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after classic, from Kingdom Come to Earth X (each of which took Kirby characters to major new turning points). He was hard at work on a reinvention of the Nedor/AC Comics/Terra Obscura heroes for Dynamite Entertainment and the landmark Avengers/Invaders series for Marvel when TJKC called about the history that led up to him. Your reality-based style would seem to be the farthest thing from Kirby’s stylization, yet you both learned the rules as the basis for a dynamic departure from reality. What might Kirby’s other impacts on you be?

Father issues: Ross & Waid’s daring resolution of Orion’s fate (from the Kingdom Come collected edition).

There’s points of Kirby’s work that you can define as fairly decent realism within comics, especially his combination with Dick Ayers. One of the earliest stories I ever read was a reprint, I think from Fantastic Four #11, where there’s a backup story of the FF answering their mail. And that is very realistically conveyed artistically; there’s nothing exaggerated or what we think of commonly as the Kirby touch about it. So there is this drastic range of what “The King” was able to do in his style. I’m a huge fan of Ayers’ contribution in those years of Kirby. In any case, the reason I bring that up is to say there’s a common root there. But my influence by Kirby would be probably one that anyone coming into the field of dramatic fiction, superhero fiction, American comics particularly would have to owe to Jack Kirby. Because despite the fact that I was not ever focusing upon his draftsmanship or his particular comics as my source influence, obviously he had an enormous influence upon everything that I was reading, and he created most of the characters that make the largest impact upon the entirety of the comic business. I’m influenced by people who were influenced by him. What he started to do in the late ’50s, early ’60s—y’know, no one was ever gonna draw comics the same way again after Kirby [set] the manner of how to structure dynamics in modern comics. And in many ways nobody’s really gone past what he set up and what he laid the groundwork for. Mark Evanier has said that Kirby typically needed to have somebody that he knew in real life in mind when he designed a character; is it true that you model your looks for heroes on real people also?

Yes, and I first started with actors as a basis, and photos I had of models and that kind of thing, and I eventually evolved more into finding people as my group of friends and acquaintances would grow over time, and I could get a little bit away from the connection to a Hollywood source. It enriches any character if you can bring in elements of real life, especially when you’re trying to do realistic renderings, where you can get into anything from hair detail, skin detail, all the things that are elements in reality that most artists will try and brush out because they’re less than flattering. Those elements are humanizing, and if you’ve got a character like Superman, where he would gain a certain amount of extra weight around the face or the middle or whatever, just based upon the bulk of the person, those are elements that can enrich your characterization; worthwhile to incorporate. Do you see any contrast with Kirby’s idealization in this, or is there a certain connection in the idiosyncrasies of how he portrayed the human (and inhuman) figure and face?

It’d be inappropriate for me to accuse him of particularly focusing on idealization, because Kirby’s characters carried with them a lot of the, what may be somewhat the ethnic weight of his own background; there was a sense of rough-and-tumble kind of guys who filled his world, who looked like they were guys carved out of rough granite. And those represent a lot of people he grew up with and around in the New York area. Certain lead characters got to be more idealized and homogenized over time, but Kirby should never be isolated as being one of those artists with a common habit of making everybody they draw a certain idealized level. You’ve handled some of the Kirby characters that a lot of people seem to have the most trouble getting right, like even the fleeting looks that we got of the Fourth World characters in Kingdom Come (for instance, Orion taking over from Darkseid but turning into him a bit). These are among the few by non-Kirby creators that I’ve found to really ring true with what he was doing; in the case of Kingdom Come it rings true in that you and Waid actually decided to depart and move forward from what we’d seen before, instead of just recycling the old plots.

Different writers have ended the Fourth World drama or continued it in various ways. I just thought it was such a simple answer, dealt with in such a very passing way in Kingdom Come but just to show that, yes, son defeats the father, the great villain

father, only to find that, at the end of the day, he really has to replace the father, and even if Orion isn’t necessarily corrupted by all the same darkness that Darkseid would hold, he is in effect a mirror of some of that fate; you see sort of an inescapable fate scrawled across his frame. The fact that his silhouette would look like Darkseid was something that was such a fun idea to be able to accomplish in a comic, the idea that he sat upon the broken throne of Metron’s chair, making you ask the question, “What happened to Metron?!” [laughs] and it was such an awesome way to be able to do a little wink at the world of Kirby. When Kingdom Come came out, we were talking about the sequel that was intended then, called The Kingdom, and I had proposed that we were gonna establish this character, who would be a pivotal character tying into the villain Magog, called Gog, whose origin would be to come from the pre-New Genesis/Apokolips planet. And this was something I was shoving down my co-collaborator’s throat at that point, and our falling out ultimately led to that idea never making it into the final thing that they did do, which has no relationship to any of those concepts. But I’ve still lamented the need to sort of get back to that idea for the last 10 years. [And it is finally happening in the pages of the current JSA comic—Ad.] What I ultimately got the greatest chance to work with was, with Jim Krueger in the Earth X series, homages to [Kirby’s] entire conceptualization of the Celestials, the Eternals, and much of the Marvel mythology that was set up by him alone, and particularly his character Machine Man. We made our greatest tribute to Jack in the course of that series and that trilogy; particularly the first series, Earth X, is very much a [way] of [saying], if these things that Jack contributed back in the ’70s were fundamentally parts of the Marvel Universe that we all know, this is potentially how farreaching that impact runs. I was gettin’ my full Kirby on when I worked on that project. [smiles] That has to be one of my favorite projects ever, largely because of working with those concepts, those characters. For many people, Steve Rude is the first name that comes to mind as a successor to the Kirby style—and the first one major publishers call when they need that look brought to life, from Fourth Worldcollection book covers to Marvel Super Heroes cartoon video packages. Rude re-engineers the Kirby prototype with a sleekness drawn from high sci-fi illustration art, the storytelling innovations of Steranko and an 149

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elegant, energized sensibility all his own, for the Big Two and for his own intrepid indie enterprises, including over 100 issues of his widelyloved space opera Nexus. Rude gave TJKC a glimpse of his galaxy. How did the Kirby look find its way into your style? Did you long ago set out to use him as a model, or did the influence just start to pop up due to the interests you share and the places you each occupy in the progression of pop?

When I was a sophomore in high school, I began to draw from Jack’s DC comics. Kamandi had just come out, and I found several old Mister Miracles, New Gods, and Demons that I’d tracked down in the small town in upper Michigan that I lived in. I’d get out my mom’s typing-paper pad and start to copy. It was fun to see how close I could copy a real comic artist. By the time I graduated high school, I knew I had to get serious about my studies, so I began to practice with more urgency. My goal was to break into the comics field. I remember I gave myself seven years to break in. I would sit down in my basement/bedroom in Waukesha, WI, and copy all my favorite artists. Kirby is known for spectacular images within the classic panel-grid, though he also revolutionized page composition and panel-shape early on in the S&K days and right at the end with Hunger Dogs. Innovative page layouts are one of the things you’re most famous for—any Kirby Konnection?

In the days before I broke into comics, I used to save up for my annual trip to New York and visit all the publishers. At the Marvel offices, Jim Shooter gave me his “how to draw comics” lecture by using a Kirby-drawn Cap/Human Torch comic as the example to learn from (a reprint of Strange Tales #114). Shooter seemed to stock it in his office to go over with all the wannabes coming through his door. Kirby was mostly passé to all of us at the time. Other, newer artists had taken Kirby’s place as the guys to learn from, but I remember that critique pretty well. It was all based on the absence of fancy panel layouts, so you had to focus on how you composed within the panel. My new-fangled page layout attempts, then and now, were directly influenced by Paul Gulacy’s art in the Master of Kung Fu books. Later, I came to discover Steranko’s “At the Stroke of Midnight” as a masterpiece of innovation. In time, all the influences came together to form my own style.

Rude reawakens the Demon (right) from Kirby’s original cover for Demon #1 (August 1972, next page, top). (this page, column 2) Building-blocks of Kirby: “Sky Cathedral” by Louise Nevelson, 1982 (top); Art Deco motifs and an Aztec design (bottom right); and Kirby’s fullyassembled “Dream Machine,” 1970 (next page, bottom). Demon TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Design motifs ©2008 their respective owners. Dream Machine TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

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Arlen Schumer is one of the foremost historians of comic book art, named by Comic Book Artist magazine in 1998 as “one of the more articulate and enthusiastic advocates of comic book art in America.” His coffee table art book, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art (Collectors Press), won the Independent Book Publishers Award for Best Popular Culture Book of 2003. Under the name of The Dynamic Duo Studio (www.dynamicduostudio.com), Schumer has been creating award-winning comic book-styled illustrations for the advertising and editorial markets for the past two decades. The Graphic Designs of Jack Kirby

Growing up in the 1960s, I was a DC Comics fan: the Mort Weisinger Superman line, Julius Schwartz’s sci-fi superheroes, and, of course, Batman (the debut of the ’66 TV series was a seminal event in my childhood). Marvel Comics didn’t appeal to me; they seemed too complicated, too busy-looking (too many words!) compared to the somewhat banal simplicity of DC’s line. My brother, though, was a total Marvelite and an enthralled devotee of Jack Kirby (I was in awe of newcomer Neal Adams, who had every DC follower engrossed with his photorealistic work on Deadman; we would argue endlessly about who was “better”). So when the news broke in 1970 that Kirby was leaving Marvel for DC, my brother was just shattered. In the larger picture of popular culture, Kirby abandoning his partner Stan Lee was as monumental a breakup as Lennon and McCartney’s, and as much a signifier of the end of the Sixties. My brother’s dream was over; his favorite characters, The Fantastic Four, Thor and Captain America, would never be—or look—the same again. He couldn’t even bring himself to buy any of Kirby’s Fourth World DC books. And neither could I. I detested Vince Colletta’s inks, having looked over my brother’s shoulder at Kirby’s Thor and even then disparaged Colletta’s scratchy hackwork, being fully enamored of Joe Sinnott’s slicker inks on Kirby’s Fantastic Four instead. By the time Mike Royer replaced Colletta as Kirby’s more faithful inker, I was long gone; the Golden Age of Jack Kirby had passed me by. Or so I thought. I got older, and went to art school (Rhode Island School of Design), where, instead of majoring in Illustration (like recent RISD alum Walt Simonson, the reason I went there in the first place), I chose Graphic Design. As I sensed it at the time, illustration, painting, photography, etc., though undeniably important and difficult to master, were simply individual disciplines, while Graphic Design seemed to be about the very nature of visual communication itself—or more specifically, verbi-visual communication, for Graphic Design encompasses the synchronous relationship between words and pictures. Just like comics, at their best. The more I studied Graphic Design at RISD, the more I found myself drawn back to Kirby’s work. I began to see Kirby differently, more in the subtler terms of the graphic design of his work than in the overwhelming, overpowering superheroic drawing that is his hallmark and legacy. As I was learning in symbol and logo design classes to graphically portray abstract concepts like speed, power and energy, I studied Kirby’s mid-Sixties Fantastic Four work, his most fertile period, in which he developed the many artistic tropes and stylized delineations of the very same concepts that have since become graphic standards

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for generations of comic artists. As detailed in past pages of this magazine, Kirby was probably inspired by the first quasar photographs published in scientific journals around 1965 to create his patented energy field of patterned black dots that has become affectionately dubbed “Kirby Krackle.” One of the first major displays of Kirby Krackle emanated from Galactus’ hands in the full-page panel found in FF #50 (May 1966). But it was seven months later, in FF #57 (December ’66), that Kirby codified all of his graphic power and energy ideas (including his trademark background “burst” lines) in the four-panel sequence of Dr. Doom transferring the Silver Surfer’s “power cosmic” to himself, climaxing with the staggering full-page portrayal of a triumphant Doom, aswirl in Kirby Krackle, astride the fallen Surfer: the most dramatic definition, in a single image, of victory and defeat in the history of comics—if not art itself. Kirby’s machinery—a.k.a. “Kirbytech”—was never drawn to look functional; the Mobius strip-like masses of mazed metalwork that were a mainstay of his oeuvre were simply stylized designwork, as much a recognizable architectural motif as Alexander Calder’s mobiles or Louise Nevelson’s abstract, sculptural boxes. The endpapers of the Jack Kirby sketchbook (Jack Kirby’s Heroes and Villains, Pure Imagination, 1987) are perhaps the purest examples of the graphic design of Kirbytech, unfettered by figures and word balloons. Decorating Kirbytech—and everything else, whether it be flesh or fabric—was the omnipresent Kirby squiggle, a vertical stroke interrupted by, well, a squiggle. It could add shine to machinery or sinew to musculature; it was Kirby’s singular, graphic signature. The oscilloscope-like arrow shapes that Kirby frequently employed as well some say were influenced by the Art Deco designs prevalent in Kirby’s environment during his formative years, while others maintain they had an almost Aztec-like design quality—though how the son of European immigrants raised on the Lower East Side of New York City without a college education could’ve come up with those remains a mystery. Another recurring graphic device of Kirby’s that bore no relation to reality were his shadows and spotting of blacks: artfully placed circular, curved and arched shapes that served to balance the black and white compositions of each panel and page more than they delineated accurate castings of light. Kirby always bent and exaggerated reality, like his square fingers and blocky knees, to suit his wishes as an artist; yet when he wanted to portray the verisimilitude of real life— like in his autobiographical “Street Code” story (Argosy, 1990), or any of his Earth-interludes in Thor—the results were quietly breathtaking, the converse of his cosmic panoramas.

As a graphic storyteller, Kirby never really bothered with panel shapes and page designs that broke out of the traditional box format; he believed more in the proscenium-arch theory of comic book storytelling, in which what is designed in the interior of each panel is more important than the exterior shape of the panel itself. That stays constant— like a stage’s proscenium arch—so that the reader focuses more on what is happening within; the story itself. At a time when firebrands like Jim Steranko and Neal Adams (and Will Eisner before them) were radically redesigning panels and pages in the late Sixties to make them more “cinematic,” Kirby was content to let his drawing do the talking in standard four-, five- and six-panel pages, interspersed with random full-pagers and double-page spreads, which were often spectacular: the climactic full-page in “The Glory Boat” in New Gods #6 (December ’71) is one of Kirby’s greatest examples of 151

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in the FF and Ego, the Living Planet in Thor. These are among the graphic designs of Jack Kirby that rank him as high on the totem of 20th Century American Graphic Design as his hyperbolic drawing ranks him in the Comic Book Hall of Fame. To consider the latter without the former is to overlook some of the more uniquely artistic attributes that do indeed make Kirby “King.” As artist and co-creator (with writer Joe Casey) of Gødland, Tom Scioli has redefined what it means to be Kirbyesque, and as a commentator he’s added new schools of understanding for observers of the Kirby contribution. Scioli is also known for his Xeric-winning indie comic The Myth of 8-Opus, and is in demand for muscular and metaphysical stylings on everything from Elephantmen to The Next Issue Project. Comics create a world of their own, but Kirby supplied some of the least recognizable and most believable. There was always a logic to the way Kirby designed costumes and architecture, even if only he knew the rules; the successful Kirby follower has to kind of learn the language and form new statements in it rather than just rearrange the existing examples that can be swiped. How do you tap that; what process (or unconscious instinct) do you open up to do it?

Kirby made the familiar look slightly alien, but still credible. No one’s ever seen anything like it before, but it’s certainly very recognizable to anyone who reads comics because his worlds are still being used today. One of Kirby’s great strengths is the unpredictability in his designs. If you’re just lifting wholesale from him, then what’s the point? There are certain shapes that “feel” right. I try to allow things to be improvisational. I try not to be afraid of mistakes. I try not to be too precious. I try to keep things playful. I learned that from Kirby. Kirby believed in the standard panel as a window on astonishing action, and yet his simple grids can be deceptive considering how complex his compositions and amplified his action can be.

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speed, power, and foreshortening, as Orion and Lightray ride a cylindrical colossus right off the page, like a 3-D image without the glasses. The abstract photo collages that Kirby started to do in Fantastic Four around 1964 (his first collage cover was FF #33, December ’64) were startling to his readers, for they were unlike anything any artist had attempted in mainstream superhero comics before; astute comic historians could recall photo collages used by Eisner in his Spirit stories and Harvey Kurtzman in the pages of Mad years prior, but they were nothing like Kirby’s. His were freewheeling, frenetic photo-fests that often subverted average objects culled from consumer magazines into imagery as otherworldly as his own drawings. “Collages were another way of finding new avenues of entertainment,” Kirby said in an old interview. “I felt that magazine reproduction could handle the 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’s Krazy Kollages led to the development of groundbreaking original designs like the alternative dimension the Negative Zone

The thing I always tried hard to duplicate were the super close-up compositions of Kirby’s later work. They make it seem like there’s a shaky handheld camera barely keeping up with the action of the characters. When I first set out to “learn” comics, that was a big challenge: learning to crop things in a natural way that doesn’t look arbitrary. Kirby was a master of cropping. I don’t want the tableaux to feel too contained, too insulated. I always try to leave something partially out, to suggest a larger world outside the panel. Kirby did that in his drawing, but he did that in his writing, too. Everything suggested this living breathing world with real consequences going on just outside the panel. Maybe that was his way of dealing with the space limits inherent in the comic book format; having to tell an epic in 22 pages, you need to understand how to make things loom larger than the meager space a normal comic allows. How much anatomical distortion and foreshortening is too much, and do you start with Kirby’s principles as your model, or start with the real human body and try to figure out the ways (and not necessarily the style) in which he proceeded to boil it down to its essentials and blow it up to its absolutes?

At a certain point I made the very conscious decision: “If I’m going to do comics the Kirby way, I’ve got to stretch things as far as I can.” It meant pushing things beyond my comfort zone, beyond the point of what looks right to me, and just trusting that it will work. Looking back on it now, I think I might’ve gone too

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was my first color series. Coming from b/w comics, I learned a lot during that series about what works and what doesn’t. I thought I wanted old-school color duplicated exactly. But luckily our colorists managed to capture the “spirit” of old-school coloring without going for slavish duplication. I basically told the first colorist to keep doing what he was doing in his other comics work. To me his colors looked like candy colors, [so] that’s what I told him I wanted in my book. You should want to eat the comic. After the color pages started coming in, I was inspired by things I saw the colorist introduce, things I couldn’t have anticipated. It ended up being a very fruitful collaboration, and even to this day, I still adjust my art for an issue based on things that worked in the color art of the previous issue. You can’t help but be influenced by your collaborators. When people talk about how Kirby’s style changed based on his collaboration with Joe Sinnott and vice-versa, I can really see now how that kind of feedback-loop can occur. Kirby’s work generally gets a color treatment that’s based on tradition. But what Kirby created in his art was extremely versatile and can look great with a number of color approaches that haven’t been tried yet. The old color approach doesn’t work as well as it used to because you can’t print on newsprint, with the old type of machinery. People, myself included, go out of their way to simulate those effects, but a lot of times it seems like a lot of work for little reward. There are other ways to color it, that are better suited to the strengths of current technologies, rather than replicating a technology of a bygone era that had been a matter of convenience in the first place.

far. I think there’s a portion of the audience who, like me, really dig seeing things stretched beyond the limits, but I think the bulk of the comic-reading audience are a little more conservative. I’ve since tried to “reel myself back in” to reality. My artistic training was in realistic figure drawing, drawing from observation, but when I initially set out to do comics, I kind of threw all that stuff out the window. Now I’m trying to incorporate credible anatomy into my work. If I can pull off the distortion with credible anatomy, that would be a real accomplishment. I never wanted to be a slave to the rules. I was always more interested in figuring out how to depict motion and transformations in a static medium. I think I’ve gotten good at that, so now it’s time to focus my efforts on bringing other things into the mix. Issue #13 of Gødland is the one where I first decided to really go for broke with the foreshortening. [But] superhero comics are often pretty stiff these days. You only need a little bit of weirdness to stand out from the pack. Issue #19 is the first one where I deliberately tried to reel the foreshortening back in to reality a bit. Gødland collides the eras of Kirby’s graphic flatness and today’s computer treatments in a surprisingly successful way. One key may be that the coloring of your art concentrates on effects of light and energy; enhancing atmosphere, space and the range of perception rather than embellishing textures and steroid-injecting surfaces and solids. What do you see as being the right balance, and how much thought do you give to the color treatment in the way you prepare your pencils and inks?

It was something that was totally unforeseen, that organically came out in the process of the work. That’s one big thing that gives Gødland its distinctive look. I think that’ll be a big part of our legacy. Kirby’s work never got this kind of color treatment. It works really well with the bold lines. It’s a juicy, luminous kind of color that shines through the bold linework like a stained-glass window. It’s a good mix of the raw power and vibrancy of oldschool coloring, but with all the tricks and SFX that modern coloring allows us. I’d love to see that kind of color applied to “actual” Kirby in future reprint volumes. Often the modeling that modern colorists do contradicts the modeling that the penciler and inker give it. Our colorists concentrate not on modeling but on SFX and making important things pop. They give types of energy a distinct look, and make certain characters immediately identifiable. All with hardly any direction from me or Joe. I can’t really take any credit for the coloring. Freedom Force

(left) More Kirby than Kirby: art-rageous Scioli pencils and inks from Gødland #13 (2006). (below) Kirby exaggeration didn’t survive by brawn alone: A Beautiful Dreamer sketch with inks our publisher feels are quite Scioliesque by the great Mike Royer. Beautiful Dreamer TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Gødland TM and ©2008 Joe Casey & Tom Scioli.

For recent issues of Gødland you’ve announced an intention to vary your stylistic techniques; does the Kirby look have its limits, or does this just mean it’s a foundation from which any direction can be explored?

The Kirby tradition has no limits. The only limits are in the failings of his followers. I can’t pull off what Kirby pulled off. So I’ve given up. From now on I’m not going to deliberately say, “I’m going to do this like I think Kirby would.” Now I throw in whatever it takes. All the stuff that I get from Kirby, I’ve absorbed; it’s become a part of my process that I couldn’t shake if I wanted to. And the funny thing is, all those rules I thought Kirby followed, he always knew when to break them. That’s how I describe Kirby to the uninitiated. He’s the guy who spent the first half of his career creating the rules that superhero comics follow to this day, and spent the second half of his career breaking them. I’m trying to get better at the juggling act that Kirby did. I spent the first part of my career trying to capture the weirdness of the Kirby style. This new phase is time to try to learn to capture that other half of what Kirby did, the believability, the grounding in reality. What I do from here on is what’s going to define me as an artist. Succeed or fail, this is where the training wheels come off. It’s a scary time for me, but it’s also an exhilarating one.

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Marie Severin alchemized the atmosphere of the legendary EC Comics as their colorist, and as an artist became one of the leading humorists in comics history with books like Marvel’s self-satirizing ’60s classic Not Brand Echh. In addition to respected runs as penciler on fantasy heroes from Sub-Mariner to Kull, Severin was for many years the designer of hundreds of Marvel’s covers, setting the style and staging the excitement of some of the ’60s’ and ’70s’ most signature work in a way that both drew on and directed the defining creativity of Kirby, a frequent finisher of her designs. She reminisced on their connection from her New York home. What was it like composing for Kirby, and what was the nature of the influence in both directions?

My style fit with his work very well. I was lucky that I understood his design; he was vibrant and I felt I was that way too, so a lot of the stuff that I did, he followed pretty well. Because it didn’t interfere with his thinking of the subject. It saved him some time with design. I was not as dynamic as Kirby—who was? [laughs]—but I understood what Stan wanted, and Kirby’s thinking. I’ve read the legend of your creating the cigar shrine when Kirby left Marvel…

When he left I took his cigar and I pinned it up on the wall and everyone thought that was so a riot; I mean, I idolized him, we all did. How far back did the idolatry go—when you became co-workers and you saw what he could turn out, or had you known about him back in the ’50s?

I knew about him, but y’know, when you don’t handle the artwork, you don’t

appreciate looking at it like when you saw it from pencils to inks and so forth; I was aware of him but I wasn’t a big fan; I thought it was great, but… when I went to Marvel and I started seeing him and meeting him—what a nice personality he was—and seeing the stuff, sure. Who do you think of as your own influences in your art?

My father, [laughs] my brother, they were good. My mother drew too; the whole family was artistic, so I thought everybody drew until I went out into school and I discovered I was the only one in class that could do things for the nuns, y’know. [laughs] Were you and your brother [John Severin] the only ones who did it professionally, or did your parents do it too?

My father was a professional; early on, he was a designer and a portrait artist and stuff, but after WWI, and that’s how old he was, he was the package designer for Elizabeth Arden. He did very fancy, nice stuff. When he first went into Elizabeth Arden he was also—very unusual for an artist—a great mathematician, and he was doing a lot of the [accounting]. She used to run a lot of parties and stuff so he designed a party motif, and when she saw his stuff she went nuts; she says, “What are you doing in this department, you should be designing our stuff.” Did you call on comic companies, or like your father did you start in something else and then find yourself in your main career?

My brother was in comics so he knew I was a great colorist, ’cause I colored some of his stories—[affects cranky voice] “Ah, I don’t like the way they color them”—and then I got into EC doing their coloring, so from there on I sorta just scooted down the whole aisle. And then I did a little art, not much, but I was happy with what I was doing. As are many generations; I still think of Not Brand Echh as the humor standard.

Well that’s when I got into drawing. I had been reading the comics and working on them, coloring them, and I thought some of them were absolutely ridiculous, so it was fun to [draw] it. What did Kirby or the other artists think of these lampoons of their stuff? 154

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They thought it was fun. Y’know most of the guys that were really great in comics thought of the whole job as fun. It wasn’t like some of them today who take themselves so seriously. The rockstars of comics.

You can’t do that, because if you don’t think of all sides of it—there is a humorous side to the whole thing, but there’s also very serious storytelling; when you take something that’s serious, you’ve gotta make fun of it too. And I believe in that so much because I think that proves that the initial subject was good. If it can stand up to all kinds of interpretations.

Oh yeah. I had a lot of fun with it. I think that shows to a degree for people who have a sense of humor. Very much so. It always really communicated; the fun was infectious, and even in serious stuff like Sub-Mariner, there was just a liveliness to it that I think has an element of humor.

That’s a good word, liveliness, that’s the way I felt about it; I really enjoyed it. That’s why people like it, because if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing it’s gonna show. Kirby enjoyed his work. He was, oh, he was such an inspiration, the dynamics of his line—fantastic. He seemed inseparable from his drawing board, so he must’ve loved doing it.

Oh yeah—I don’t think he could have ever stopped. [laughs] And his wife was so nice, what a nice lady. She was a doll—she must have been, to put up with it. [laughs] I mean, he’s probably working 23 hours a day. He just kept creating; the stuff he did every day was something different, and wild and wooly. I used to love to see his work come in, I’d say, “Oh look at this, oy vey!” [laughs] So you were there when his DC stuff started to come in too, by way of Vince Colletta?

Well, we felt a little, “Eh”—[affects mopey voice] “that’s supposed to be our stuff…” [laughs] But it’s his stuff to do what he wants to. But he was such a part of Marvel—he was such a part of comics.

of DC’s old-school Atom and WildStorm’s new-model Gen13, Simone is one of the major creators taking comics’ canon into a truly fresh millennium. She’s also got a claim on the Kirby legacy with the pitchperfect characterization of latter-day Fourth World anti-hero Knockout in Secret Six and Kirby’s own Barda in Simone’s definitive run on Birds of Prey. She did TJKC the distinct honor of reflecting on the royalty that preceded her. Where does Kirby (and other creators) fit in the firmament of what first interested you in comics and set off your ambitions and development as a creator yourself?

Gail Simone is equaled only by Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Dwayne McDuffie in her ability to find new mythic possibilities and old classic flavor in the most recognized and long-running of mainstream comics characters. Like those writers, she can also be counted on for standard-setting takes on the more offbeat and obscure characters and for groundbreaking series all her own. From The Simpsons to Superman, Wonder Woman to Welcome to Tranquility, hit revivals

Bigger all the time, in fact. When I was reading comics as a kid, I thought the Marvel comics, especially the reprints, were simply too ugly, too blunt and cluttered. I liked the stories, but the art left me cold, including Kirby’s art. Oddly, it wasn’t his epic, lauded stuff that changed my mind. It was his little freaky sidebooks, like Devil Dinosaur and Machine Man. People scoff at some of that stuff, but they’re really missing the point—that a lot of kids would love to read a story about a kid with a pet T. Rex. That stuff left a big impression on me, and when I have something like a character in The All-New Atom who is no more than a floating head, a bit of that is directly attributable to the courage Jack had in putting insane ideas on the page. Grant Morrison is my favorite comics writer, quite possibly, but I think even he would admit that Jack was equally capable of throwing so many ideas on a page that it seemed like the comic was printed with nitroglycerin, decades before such a thing was common.

(above) Kirby gets around to Wonder Woman, in a 1980s animation presentation for a never-realized cartoon series. (left) Apokolips etiquette in Simone’s Birds of Prey #106 (July 2007) with artist Nicola Scott. Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

There’s a naturalism to your dialogue that feels much more literary than Kirby’s to most people, yet you were able to incorporate the stylization of his speech with great fidelity for Knockout in Secret Six and 155

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Barda in Birds of Prey—Kirby’s writing was literally rough, as if chiseled in Homeric tablets, but it seems that the most skilled writers, like yourself, can incorporate it rather than dismiss it. What problems do you see in it, and what do you feel you can take from it?

From Simonson’s much-revered run on the Thunder God’s saga (this page), and Kirby’s own image canon, from the cover of Thor #253 (November 1976, next page). Thor, Ulik TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

I don’t think anyone is going to go to Jack’s work for hints on producing naturalistic dialogue any more than they’d go to him for how to draw naturalistic fingers, but what Jack was fantastically gifted at was the language of bombast, the vocabulary of the outrageous. And I love writing that stuff, trying to weave in just enough real-world speech behavior to make it flow a little bit, but definitely trying to maintain that Shakespeare-onacid quality that the best Jack stories have. All of us working in superhero comics are standing on Jack’s shoulders to some degree, and it’s wonderful to play with his tropes and creations. I always try to be respectful, and it’s not something forced—I really do love and admire the scope and awe of his creations. I’ve said it before and I still think it’s true... Jack invented Cape Punk. For comics, Kirby represents a fascinating stage in the evolution of the male species—Barda and her lieutenants took cheesecake to new extremes yet were also unprecedented symbols of female power; she was based on a Playboy spread yet Kirby famously doctored Mike Royer’s first inks to de-prettify her; The New Gods was claustrophobically womanless while Mister Miracle (and for that matter, Hunger Dogs) was always based in the marriage dynamic that fanboys still howl over for Spidey & MJ or Lois & Clark. What kind of messages did you read in Kirby’s comics growing up, and how did it influence what you did and didn’t do as a writer in a male-dominated genre?

This is very interesting to me, because I’ve maintained for a long time, that until the ’70s X-Men, Marvel’s Achilles’ heel had always been that they had no interesting female characters. They were almost universally wet-blanket airheads without any of the zest and kick and brilliance that even the B-listers in the rest of the MU had in abundance. I’ve never quite understood it, but if you read those early stories, the females seem primarily shoehorned in, and are always the least interesting character on any team. Then he did the Fourth World and everything changed. Barda was years ahead of her time, a fierce and viciously powerful woman who loved a man unreservedly, equally. Just a beautiful character. And there were many more, and I think for the rest of his life, he continued to make interesting females. I love writing his women. You’re in a rare circle of comic writers who operate on an extraperceptual level where earthbound action and cosmic concepts are not contradictory; did Kirby show you part of the way, and how do you define that sensibility?

With me, the DCU is a tapestry, and I love the idea that it encompasses characters as diverse as Jonah Hex and, say, Darkseid. It’s a bit fannish sounding, I suppose, but I find that the strength of writing for Marvel or DC’s mainstream universes. And the Fourth World saga is something no one else has achieved, or even attempted, really. It’s a beacon of what can be built, if one has the tools and the will. Kirby invented literal new pantheons, and publishers like to say superheroes are the myths of modernism, but do comics really tap mythic frequencies? It seems most of your comics are mindful of ancient lore and persistent archetypes; is this so ingrained in human mind and culture that it can be accessed through any genre, with the right wideness of perspective?

Yeah, I love the mythic stuff, just as much as I love the back streets of Gotham. I think since most of the huge successes, commercially, in superhero comics recently have had a brutal aspect to them, they’ve sort of pulled in some of the light, like a black hole. Writers feel safer writing something closer to Dark Knight than they do something closer to, say, New Gods. And let’s face it, it’s easier to tell a story about one guy in a suit beating up another than it is to create something mythic about gods and demigods. But I love both, and I don’t see them as exclusive. Again, Jack was the go-to guy for that kind of wonder. I’m enjoying Jack’s work tremendously now, and have to give a big hand to all the companies working to keep his stuff in print, as it’s really invaluable, and above all, tremendous fun. 156

Fans knew that comics art had turned a corner the moment they saw Walter Simonson’s work on Manhunter, an eary-’70s set of seven short backup stories that revolutionized the medium with compressed narrative, high design, international techniques and a distinctive, tautly energized rendering. Simonson went on to memorable work on every character imaginable, from cult favorites like Dr. Fate and Metal Men to icons like the Fantastic Four and Thor. Kirby’s creations were always a strong thread, from Manhunter himself (a radical reinvention of a Simon & Kirby prototype by Simonson and the late Archie Goodwin), to the Orion series, the longest and most artistically successful sustained treatment of any Fourth World material by a creator other than Kirby. Simonson showed us along the shared border of his and Kirby’s cosmos. Your style is almost without precedent, and yet you have the greatest regard for Kirby, who had another of comic art’s most distinctive signatures. How would you define his impact on you, when it’s pervasive yet wouldn’t at first seem to be very direct?

I thought Jack’s work was masterful because he had such range. The thing that first captured my attention and made me want to emulate it was the vitality of his work. Jack’s art was full of untrammeled energy and power. Even on pages where no fighting was going on, pages where characters were simply standing around, everything seemed to crackle and exude life. Later, I came to understand what a wonderful storyteller Jack was. He had drawing ability, design sense, composition, and a facility for creating largerthan-life characters. He used all sorts of tools to achieve this, from his understanding of shape (for example in his costumes) to his use of perspective (the homeworld of Galactus comes to mind) to graphic effects to convey the feeling of energy and excitement. Then there’s the matter of the “acting” of his characters, a gift that I think is often overlooked. I refer interested parties to the character of Kanto in the Mister Miracle comic. In his rather brief initial appearance, Kanto affects the dress of the Renaissance and stands and moves and bows for all the world like a member of an Italianate dynasty of the period. In fact, his movements and poses are so specific that Jack is able to show Mister Miracle himself finally caught up by what Kanto is doing and imitating him with his own bow, a character interaction that helps define both men as well as their relationship, one professional to another. That’s a sophisticated use of body language, beautifully executed and completely clear, and nowhere near as easy to do as you might think. You’ve had influential runs on a number of comics that Kirby started, from Thor to Orion. In your Fourth World Omnibus Volume 2 essay you showed yourself to be a perceptive and sympathetic analyzer of Kirby, but did you gain any insights into his creative process as a successor that go beyond what can be gotten just as an observer?

Probably not in the way you suggest. Rather than emulate his working methods or his actual drawing, I tried to figure out what it was he was achieving—and then tried to achieve the same results by finding my own way. Naturally, I did borrow a little of Jack’s drawing. I loved his characters’ legs. I mastered the curved calves and wide stance I saw in Jack’s work as a way of both grounding a standing figure and giving it movement at the same time. And I used “Kirby Krackle.” Still do. (Those are the round dot forms Jack

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used to represent everything from chaotic energy to water!) I don’t use them as freely as Jack did but they’ve always been close to my comic-bookdesigning heart. And depending on what sort of story I’m telling, I might or might not still have characters standing with their boots 10 feet apart! The Fourth World may be the most difficult of Kirby’s comics for other creators to grasp and pick up with, since it was more than a set of external premises (a super-soldier; a spacefaring family; a modern Jekyll & Hyde) but a system of personal symbols (Kirby’s subconscious, shifting feelings on mercy vs. vengeance, individual vs. society, etc.). Still, in the Orion series you added characters and changed some others’ basics in a way that felt fully canonical and tapped Kirby’s freshness rather than trivializing or rehashing what he’d done. What’s your key to understanding the essences of these characters and how they can be carried forward with a faithfulness to his concepts?

Each of us who creates work that others read or watch creates children that have to make their own way in the world. Somebody who reads my work on Thor or Manhunter or Metal Men or Orion is liable to take away from it things I never thought about myself. The work, once it’s out there, has a life of its own. In the same way, I make no claims about understanding exactly what Jack’s deeper intentions with the Fourth World were. Those books were his children, probably more than most of his other work, but in the end, he sent them out into the world. However, the Fourth World work is very much a syncretic mythology of Jack’s creation, and one of my personal interests that began long before I’d ever heard of Jack Kirby or read one of his comics is mythology. I’m interested in how the symbols work, what they mean, how to reify them so that they can be used in stories. In this, I think my own interests are not so far from some of Jack’s. With luck and some care, the new work is in its own way the child of both Jack’s original work and my own creative thoughts and effort. Brent Staples is a powerful influence himself—his columns and editorials as a member of The New York Times’ editorial board help set the terms of the national discussion; his memoir, Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White, is a touchstone of perceptive and uncompromising autobiography and racial inquiry; and his writings are taught in school texts nationwide. He is an in-demand lecturer and holds a PhD in psychology, among many other honors and achievements in his career as an academic and journalist. He is at work on two new books, about the history of mixed-race identity in the U.S. and the Negro press. His cultural concerns are wide, and very much include comics as a subject of enjoyment and study; a recent tribute to Kirby on The Times’ editorial page (8/26/07) made the internet light up like a bank of Reed Richards’ machinery and helped carry the reputation of the King to entirely new heights and places. Staples spoke with TJKC about Kirby’s role in his life story. Your defense of Kirby assumes a legitimacy for pop artforms that is increasingly taken for granted but was very hard-won. How

does a creator like him fit in the firmament of your scholarly interests and literary tastes?

I encountered Kirby and the Marvel group at a lonely time in my development. I was probably eleven or twelve years old and growing up in Chester, Pennsylvania, a dying factory town just south of Philadelphia. The town was still pretty rigorously segregated at the start of the 1960s. There were black blocks and white blocks, black churches and white churches, black bars and white bars—and entire sections of the city where black people were informally forbidden even to appear on the streets. My family moved out of a black neighborhood and just across the dividing line into white land. The hostility was palpable— especially from many of the adults. I naturally ended up spending a great deal of time alone. Those comics came just in the nick of time. I retreated into them. They validated solitude and introspection—especially with characters like the Silver Surfer. My favorite panels of that book depicted the Surfer on his board cutting through space. That was me, no words needed.

(left) Illustrated man: Brent Staples pictured by photographer Lisa Spindler on the cover of The New York Times Magazine.

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The characters talked to themselves and struggled with their lives and ideas. As a reader, you eavesdropped on those struggles and identified with them. I absorbed them through my senses. In maturity Kirby is a childhood enthusiasm we can consider for his stylistic merit and historical rank, which you did in your recent column. But at the time (whether we’re aware of it or not) childhood stories serve as a social reflection and a contributor to character. You touch on this in your book. How, perhaps, do your aesthetics, politics and personality intersect with those old Kirby comics?

It’s difficult to know after the fact what shaped us. Like most adolescents, I guess, I was taken by the fact that the characters were outsiders. We moved a lot—my family had lived at seven addresses by the time I reached eighth grade. I arrived in neighborhoods after the local friendships had been cemented and quite often left before I could get to know people. I was both an outsider and a traveler; the characters were my companions. As such, I guess, I internalized them.

very out people. He was a scream. He’ll be one of the stars if Parallel Time ever gets made into a movie. What did your colleagues say when an encomium to Kirby came out? What kind of allies have you encountered or converts have you made to your genre interests in the “respectable” professions?

My colleagues have long since grown accustomed to my tastes as expressed in my columns and editorials. I published an editorial accompanied by the images of comic book characters way back in 1992. As far as I can tell, that was the first time that comic characters were depicted on The Times’ editorial page. The people who write columns and editorials read each other pretty closely—especially when they are learning something. The Kirby column got a lot of traction with male colleagues all around The Times; it spoke to their childhoods as well.

Writers like Danyel Smith talk about trawling the music and moviestar magazines in vain for a black face as mid-20th century kids. That goes for real people being hidden away, but for fictional characters a more symbolic standard seems to have applied—Dwayne McDuffie classically said of the anti-establishment superhero, “As far as we were concerned, Sub-Mariner was black,” and you write of sympathizing with the solemnity and solitude of heroes like Hal Jordan and the Silver Surfer. Kirby tried harder than most comic creators of his generation and background to reach out to readers of color (parables of intolerance; slightly integrated casts), but was there another basis of identification to which that was beside the point? (right) Four Worlds and a funeral: Starlin’s spectacular group shot from his recent series. New Gods TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

I was living race as a child at the time but had not yet learned to see the world through a racial schematic. I did not register the characters racially—even when I came across black ones. I identified with the moral ambiguity. The Marvel characters weren’t the well-scrubbed, goody two-shoes types. They had fits of anger, jealousy and rage that didn’t detract at all from the heroism quotient. As such, they were real people—just a little souped up on the physical side. Today Kirby so embodies a bygone era of optimism that it’s easy to forget he was something of a pioneer of ultraviolence in superhero comics. Some see this as an unconscious outlet for his professional frustrations; I tend to see it as a left-ish Jewish WWII vet’s cautionary overkill. How did this look to you as a kid touched by real violence and a leading intellectual now?

The Hulk was probably Kirby writing about himself. Anger incapacitated him, seized him up and made it impossible for him to think. The violence in the comics was what I might call fair violence. The people who got punched could generally take it— and quite often deserved it. The violence was also a kind of Kirybyan display of physics. He wanted you to see the force. I never equated the violence within the books with anything that happened in the non-comic world. In the real world, things were almost always unfair and way out of balance. The people who got punched often could not take it—because they were weaker and victims of bullies—and certainly didn’t deserve it. In an undeniably guy-ish medium Kirby seems to have presented an uncommon variety in models of maleness—not just all his tough-guy paragons but also flying philosophers like the Surfer and angelic sprites like Lightray; even the long hair of Thor was a shock in its day. Your book talks about not much fitting the jock, cool, or fighter roles as a kid, and solidly portrays gay characters in its spectrum—have I found an intersection or am I on a blind alley?

Those comics corresponded to the social reality that I lived as a child. Those of us who were born black at the start of the 1950s grew up in black communities at a time when segregation forced doctors, judges, lawyers, ditch diggers and the unemployed—be they straight or gay—to live in roughly the same geographic areas. A lot of gay people were out—way out—in the black community in the 1950s and ’60s. They were visible, too, because there was nowhere else for them to go. They drank in the same bars as everybody else. My mother worked as a cook in two bars when I was kid. When she ran out of chickens and pork chops, I ran down to the grocery store, got more and brought them right into the bar. The patrons included some very out gay people—both men and women—who were just accepted as part of the daily scene. My mother’s hairdresser, who stars in Parallel Time, was one of those 158

Jim Starlin has defined the cosmic epic in comics for over 30 years, reinventing characters like Captain Mar-Vell and Adam Warlock so vividly they seem his own, and creating in his Titans cast (Thanos, Drax, Eros and Mentor) a counterpart to Kirby’s Fourth World that has miraculously proven as enduring and original as its model. Starlin is still doing his best work, as writer on series like his memorable star-noir reincarnation of Captain Comet in Mystery in Space and writer-artist on a number of new creations like Cosmic Guard; he is also giving spectacular last rites to Kirby’s signature saga in Death of the New Gods. You had a unique style from the start, but there seems to be a direct line from your larger-than-life figures and cosmic-scale storytelling back to Kirby. What kind of a mark did he make on you?

My father worked in Chrysler’s drafting division and, as part of his pay package, he used to bring home all the pencils, masking tape and tracing paper he could jam into his briefcase. I used to trace Kirby figures out of the comics with the pencils onto the tracing paper and put them up on the wall with the masking tape. So in effect I learned to draw directly from Jack and a few other artists, on a scholarship from Chrysler. You’ve gravitated to a lot of Kirby’s characters, especially as a writer. Did editors (on books like Cosmic Odyssey ) just see a connection, or have you sought out these characters to add something to—and if so, what is the attraction?

Well, at Marvel it was extremely difficult to work on a character that Kirby didn’t create. At DC Paul Levitz approached me about the project that would become Cosmic Odyssey. They wanted a

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series that would map out the DC science-fiction universe. We never exactly got around to doing that. But the project, nonetheless, turned out to be great fun. Working on OMAC, again it was the editor, Al Milgrom, who asked me if I’d like to do the backup series in Kamandi. But if someone hadn’t come to me I would have eventually sought out such projects. Kirby and Ditko were my favorite comic artists when I was in my teen years. Maybe even more to the point, you created a cast of characters—the Titans—who are the closest anyone’s ever come up with to the Fourth World pantheon, and are just as interesting and distinctive. It seems you and Kirby were connected to a similar frequency of mythic types in this case; do you have any conscious idea of how that works?

My Titans were directly inspired by Kirby’s New Gods but in ways no one knows. Jack’s epic series had come out at the same time I was taking a psychology class in college (Thanatos/Eros). My original concept drawings of Thanos had him sitting in a futuristic-looking mobile chair, similar to Metron’s. They were about the same size also. When I showed the editor, Roy Thomas, the drawings, he told me to bulk up Thanos before using him in the Iron Man story I was about to start on. He also ordered me to lose the chair, because it was too much like Metron’s. And so Thanos went from looking too much like one Kirby character to looking too much like another. Then over the years Thanos and Darkseid continued to grow in size and so the comparison became more marked. Stan Lee made lots of heroes like Ben Grimm, who have some big flaws around the edges but are destined to do the right thing, but once Kirby was on his own he made heroes like Orion, who are flawed at their core and kind of will themselves to do the right thing. That seems a lot closer to your model— Warlock and Comet are damaged but they won’t let you down though their victory is not assured. Any Kirby connection, or were he and you just both listening to the times when you created your heroes for the ’70s and onward?

Well, Jack realized earlier than most that a character with rough edges is far more interesting than your perfect specimen. Compare Superman to the Hulk, and the Hulk’s more interesting. In perfection there’s no drama; no drama, no story. This I learned from Jack and other writers like Dickens, John D. McDonald and so many more.

Your cosmic characters are often more gritty and human-scale than Kirby’s, and their dilemmas can be as reminiscent of HAL the computer’s cold slaughter as they are of any blockbuster Kirby battle scene. Does Kirby sometimes serve as a model for what to go in a different direction from?

Kirby inspired much of my work but I started working in comics in the ’70s, while Jack began his career back in the ’40s. The times we came up in had a lot to do with what we were producing. When Jack was a novice cartoonist Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane was the movie everyone was rushing off to see. For me it was Star Wars. Jack came back from a war where everyone was greeted as a hero. My war wasn’t so popular. Maybe that brought out the darker side in my stuff. So many ifs and maybes. Who knows?

Caravaggio meets the WWE in this brutally beautiful Fourth World family portrait from the 1978 Kirby Masterworks portfolio. A clear ancestor of Starlinstyle bulk and body language. New Gods TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

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Starting in the mid-1960s and reverberating into the 21st Century, Jim Steranko revolutionized comics with formal experiments and storytelling innovations. He drew on the wellsprings of comics history (evoking and matching the Kirby legacy among many others), introduced cinematic, design, and fine-art sources virtually unheard of in comics—and set more than 100 precedents indisputably his own. SHIELD, Captain America, Chandler, Outland, Superman #400— he trails a long list of achievements and casts just as long a shadow. Steranko has had more identities than a team of superheroes, across the graphic and performing arts, and his influence encompasses more than comics—as a magician and escape artist, he was an inspiration for Kirby’s Mister Miracle, who in turn influenced the Joe Kavalier and Escapist characters in Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Adding indelibly to comics heritage, Steranko preserved it in the imagination of several generations with his History of Comics volumes. He remains a model of the autonomous graphic entrepreneur and the groundbreaking creative storyteller. Steranko spoke with TJKC about a career as panoramic as his fantasy landscapes and battle scenes, and about his connection to the Kirby legacy. Kirby set the terms for much of how comics would look, but you were the first artist who seemed to understand all his lessons while truly taking them forward. Did you have a theory for how you tapped this creative source, or was it just inspiration and intuition?

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Stan Lee instructed most, if not all, pencilers—including me— to “draw like Jack,” for the purpose of maintaining the Marvel house style. It was a sensible approach, but there’s only one Kirby. Besides, I wasn’t in the business to imitate other artists—even if I could. I was only interested in making a personal statement through the comics medium, just as I had done previously with magic, music, photography, advertising, theatrical performance, and other areas. I found it easy to adapt my vision to the four-color form, much easier than that vision was sanctioned by the rigid sensibilities of some of those with whom I worked. I was hired as an entertainer and I tried to fulfill that goal, layering my vision atop it. Jack had a superb design sense, but mine was already developed in another direction. His storytelling devices were derived from those used in newspaper comics; mine developed entirely from my cinematic experiences and observations. His figurework, of course, was a key element of his success and he set a high mark that all of us, from Wood to Frazetta to Buscema, recognized and honored. Through Kirby’s anatomical configurations, we were able to see how dynamic and explosive the human form can be—he took it to a level no one had discovered previously! Our challenge was to duplicate that quality, which, in certain aspects, is the quintessence of superheroic art. Some did it by swiping his figures. I tried to extract what made them work and reinterpret that essence in my own style, which, especially in the early days, was quite primitive. But even then, it was clear to me that my philosophy of the figure and his were diametrically opposed. Kirby’s figures were powerful, but often brutal,

almost to the point of being unhuman, almost always created for maximum impact. My figures are no less about power, but they embrace a certain kind of nobility and grace, a kind of elegance, such as in the way samurai swordsmen move in choreographed battle. Kirby’s figures move like juggernauts; mine are more like panthers. There’s no doubt that Kirby contributed massively to the success of many artists, especially me. But what was natural for Jack was unnatural for me. Perhaps my athletic training on the parallel bars and flying rings or my fencing and boxing efforts were instrumental in informing my figurework, but whatever it was, it kept me from imitating the Kirby figure. His heroes were triumphs of action construction and there’s no beating him at that game. He’ll always be the King! And in any case your references go beyond Kirby. Many people see elements of both him and Eisner—the Golden Age’s most definitive giants—in your work, yet you evolved one of the medium’s most distinctive and influential styles in your own right. How have you found that an artist is built by his influences, and how does the unique voice grow out of that?

It’s a matter of preferences, no different than, say, the kind of woman to whom we most respond: a certain mannerism, a hair color, a specific shape, a distinctive voice, an idiosyncratic spirit, a level of emotion. Each of us is naturally predisposed to certain sounds, hues, configurations, energies, a world of aspects that we engage, ingest, and respond to with actions and reactions. Art, in any form, is no different. I can supply you with a long list of my artistic inspirations—and Kirby would be high on that list. He showed me how animated comics in a two-dimensional format can be, but I rarely tried to copy him, especially as a kid, when imitation can be very instructive. Jack was simply too difficult to imitate with all those wild foreshortening tricks. As for Eisner, I’m very fond of The Spirit and all the creators who contributed massively to that strip—Jack Cole, Lou Fine, Wally Wood, Jerry Grandinetti, and others. But Eisner had less influence on me than Chet Gould, whose Dick Tracy I read every day as a kid, and certainly Frank Robbins, with Johnny Hazard, who often topped Caniff with his narrative techniques. The Spirit was not part of my childhood experience and the correlation to which I believe you are referring is a certain approach to storytelling. Unlike most comic artists from the past and present, I did not learn that approach from comics, but from movies, because film affected me infinitely more than any comic I’ve ever read. For every decent four-color storyteller, there are a hundred superb directors, which I realized as soon as I understood the components of the two forms. Film is much more powerful in creating emotional responses and that’s where I learned my narrative technique. As touched on before, you’ve been both a performer and an athlete; Kirby had a very physical upbringing on the rough streets of ethnic tenements. Do you think that that physicality (so much a part of the kinetic artform of comics) put you and him on a certain wavelength that not all creators might share?

I believe it goes much deeper than that; we shared a psychological platform predicated on romanticism, anger, curiosity, idealism, caprice, imagination, conflict, exhibitionism, and an unbridled passion for melodrama. Couple that with our interest in imagery, design, movement, visual relationships, and universal entertainment and you may discover a much more significant correlation. You’ve made an important distinction there that may also speak to differences. In what ways did you find Kirby a foundation, and in what ways was he a point of departure?

I began my career at Marvel at the top, collaborating with the world’s greatest comic artist on the cover of SHIELD #151—it doesn’t get any better than that! And I was really amped to work over his layouts on a three-issue span. But, after I got through the first book, I was so damned uncomfortable I thought my head would explode! I’d followed Jack’s career from Captain America to Young Romance. I knew and loved his work as well as any fan alive, yet something was driving an invisible wedge between me and the layouts he created. I was suffering through the second book, then finally realized what was happening: our narrative approaches were in opposition. Instead of a reverse-angle two-shot, he’d opt for an establishment

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shot, and when—in my opinion—it was time for a subjective close-up, he’d draw an objective medium shot. My penchant for cinematic storytelling was revolting against his Caniff/Raymond/Fostereducated direction. Essentially, Kirby opted for the explosion, the highest moment in the panel’s time frame. My inclination was to go for the moment before the explosion. He focused on action; I went for suspense. Anyway, I bit the bullet for three issues, until Stan felt confident enough for me to pencil my own pages—and the result was a different kind of SHIELD and, some say, a different kind of comicbook. This is just one way in which you were always an individualist. You’ve put a high priority on due credit and creative control. Did Kirby’s unfair treatment in the industry serve as a cautionary example to you?

Was Kirby treated unfairly? Far as I know, he was treated like anyone else and probably better than most because of the quality and quantity he produced for publishers. No comics creator I know of was an indentured slave; they were all in comics by their own choice. They all knew the terms and accepted them, as did I. The unfair treatment of which you speak is simply fanboy mythology. To prove the point, look at the terms Simon & Kirby gave their artists and writers when they published their own line of comics: identical to all other publishers; no rights, no residuals, no original art! Kirby had very public battles over this later on. Did you perhaps serve as an example to him instead?

Jack followed me on two levels. First, according to Stan, no one at Marvel had ever asked for their art returned before I did—and I did so after I had generated about a half dozen SHIELD installments. Every time I submitted a job, I became more adamant about it, until it became a major conflict between us. Finally, it got to the point where I threatened to make a call to the IRS regarding the fact that I believed Marvel paid no taxes on the art inventory they obviously held—which is against the law. Stan was furious and told me that the art belonged to then-publisher Martin Goodman, that he owned none, couldn’t release any to me, and that I should do whatever I needed to do, but to never bring up the subject again. I followed Stan’s instructions to the letter—and subsequently began exhibiting my originals at numerous conventions. Stan never questioned how I got them and I never told him. That’s another story I’ll relate elsewhere. But to confirm, Kirby never asked for the return of his work, during my entire tour at Marvel. I alone made an issue of it. And second, I believe Jack and others saw that I moved from writer-artist status to that of publishing my own work. Wood had done it previously, but strictly on an amateur basis and, exclusively, in the fan community. My publishing efforts, with The History of Comics and PREVUE magazine, for example, involved bookstores and newsstands worldwide, the biggest game in town. We’ve focused on the impact you and Kirby had on each other as artists and professionals. But you were also personal friends. What are

some of the most important things you’ve taken with you from having known him?

I was—and still am—impressed by the Kirbys’ warmth. As everyone who met them will attest, Roz and Jack would take fans and strangers into their home and, in ten minutes, they’d all be like family. That may surprise many Kirby followers who expected Jack to be an imposing creature with a stentorian delivery and gargantuan deltoids. He was a short, stocky guy chomping on a stogie, but, when it came to welcoming fans, the Kirbys responded with superheroic benevolence. They were neon beacons of genuine, warmhearted affection, deeply touching everyone who came to pay tribute to the King. Hard as we try, that quality may never be matched by any of us who experienced the real thing. They’ll always be my idols and an important part of my life.

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animation, and saw the results when the animation came back; it’s like, “Well hey, that works a lot better than when we were trying to ape reality.” So all of that came to a head when we were doing the Batman show and I was given free reign to incorporate a lot of these design theories. I wasn’t trying to crack the code for everybody, I was just trying to crack the code for our show. I certainly had no ambitions of trying to set the style for TV animation for the next 20 years; that was not my agenda, that was just an interesting byproduct. Even more so, it set the tone for comics. When you think of how many people who, as distinctive as they are, when I first saw them, I thought, “Ah, the Timm School”—Darwyn Cooke, Mike Oeming…

What’s interesting about that is that Darwyn has his own school now. [laughs] Don’t dare call it a pin-up: Timm’s classic Barda portrait from the cover of Comic Book Artist Special Edition.

I was intrigued when you mentioned drawing on anime inspirations, because one of the reasons I think your look has caught on so much across the comics world is that it was one of the earliest American answers to a manga look.

Even with all of that, my style is not really accepted in the mainstream marketplace. The trend there is still to go much more realistic. The model that everyone wants to follow is the Bryan Hitch model; as much like a photograph as possible. I literally can’t get work in mainstream comics. The few times it actually has been offered to me, I’ve turned in my work and they go, “Uh… this looks too cartoony for us.” [laughter] But there’s guys like Mike Oeming and Darwyn who get work, so I’m happy for them. [laughter]

Bruce Timm revitalized American mainstream animation with his Batman series in the early ’90s, and has set the standard for modern superheroes ever since, both on the TV screen and the comics page. His influence and inspiration spread far, into enduring hits like the Superman and Justice League cartoons, and the style of other artists who have generated just as many new ideas, from Darwyn Cooke and Michael Avon Oeming to Ryan Dunlavey and Frank Espinosa. He’s also introduced many Kirby heroes to whole new generations at TV’s mass scale. Timm took a break from his eagerly awaited direct-to-DVD features like Superman Doomsday and New Frontier to talk about keeping Kirby alive. You’re known for your knowledge and love of comics history, but you’ve spurred a whole school of comic art as Kirby did. Did you give conscious thought to updating the genre with a new simplicity and a more welcoming, good-humored cartoon look, or did this just spring naturally from going into animation and having to adapt your art to that medium?

A little of both. As a lot of artists do I was trying to develop my own style but I started by copying other artists’ styles, and Kirby of course was one of them. But all along I kept trying to—put it this way, my reach kind of exceeded my grasp; I wanted to be a “realistic” artist, and I just don’t have it in me to be that guy, my draftsmanship skills just weren’t there. So at a certain point I realized, “Well, every time I try to draw cartoony, it comes out looking better than when I try to draw realistically”; at a certain point that finally sank in, and I said, “Okay, let me actually actively develop that as a personal style, and forget about anatomy, forget about lighting, forget about all that other stuff and focus on making the stuff as designy and cartoony as possible and see if I can make that into a personal style.” This really dovetailed with my animation work. When I was working at Marvel Productions, the shows they were doing there were ostensibly very realistic; y’know, Russ Heath was their main character designer. And I’d see the cartoons come back and go, “Well, it’s really not workin’.” You really can’t animate that stuff. Especially when you’re asking guys in a foreign country who completely don’t draw that way to try and draw in that realistic style; it just comes out neither fish nor fowl. At that same time, I was looking at the Japanese animation, and going, “Okay, why does that work, and why when the Japanese guys try to work off of American designers does that not work?” So I tried to incorporate a little anime influence into my design work, and of course my bosses were not gonna have any of that. [laughs] But still, in the back of my head, I said, “Okay, there’s something there; there’s something about stuff that’s actually designed to be a cartoon that makes it translate into the actual animation.” And then when I worked with John Kricfalusi on Mighty Mouse, again I picked up a lot of his theories about simplifying design for 162

Had you set out to do comics, or did you always have your sights set on animation?

Oh no, animation was a complete fluke; I always wanted to be a comic book artist when I grew up. I got into animation just because it happened to be available, because I live out here in the San Fernando Valley where all the animation companies were. I just applied at Filmation one day and, y’know, it beat workin’ for K-Mart. [laughter] I fully intended to eventually get out of animation and go into comic books some day—but it didn’t work out that way. And I can’t complain. Even though you said you mostly forgot about anatomy and structure, etc., your style cuts to an essence of all those qualities. Kirby evolved that too—perhaps partly because of deadline pressure, but he certainly achieved this boiled-down essence of figure and form. Was that instinctual on your part, or do you look to him as a model of that kind of thing?

I certainly look to him as a model in that respect, in that I thought the weirder and more stylized Kirby’s work got, the better it looked. His early stuff was great, and the stuff he did in the ’50s, where he was probably at his “realistic” peak, things like Challengers of the Unknown and Sky Masters, that stuff was good, but to me he really caught fire at Marvel in the ’60s, when his designs started getting even weirder and more abstract and he started using squiggles, and straight lines instead of muscles. Occasionally when I’m drawing I’ll be trying to draw, like, an arm in a sleeve, I’ll get caught up in, “Okay, how do the folds fall,” and it’s like, I don’t wanna have to go out and find some reference or actually put a coat on somebody and have them hold their arm up a certain way. And I go, “Oh—forget about it; what would Kirby do?” And Kirby would just make this weird abstract shape, that’s almost completely counterintuitive, but the mind’s eye looks at it and goes “Oh, that’s an arm with wrinkles on it.” To me that’s actually better than realistic-looking wrinkles—if that makes any sense! It’s almost like the symbol for an arm, and it registers right on your subconscious.

And in a way, it’s stylized to a degree that it actually looks better than a realistically drawn arm in a sleeve. A lot of your cartoons like JLA and Superman have introduced many people to the New Gods who otherwise would never have known about Kirby. Did any of the reprocessing of those stories give you insight into his own creative process—was there anything you understood about Kirby after doing those shows that you hadn’t before?

No. Kirby’s unfathomable. [laughter] Especially in his New Gods stuff—I love that stuff; I don’t profess to understand a word of it. Over the years I’ve tried to read all of the Fourth World stuff, and at a certain point I just kinda give up—because even Kirby’s attention wanders through those books. He’ll seem to have a really great idea in one issue; two issues later before finishing off what’s

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on his plate he’s gone on to another main course. It’s really odd, but again, that’s just Kirby; he was just so full of crazy ideas that they controlled him, he didn’t control them, and he was a slave to his muse. He’s not an organized thinker, but in a way, you wouldn’t want to have him any other way. Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey co-created the surprise indie smash Action Philosophers and have distinguished themselves separately and together throughout comics and beyond. Ryan is a successful illustrator and animator whose credits and clients include Comedy Central and MAD Magazine; he also co-edited the important indie comics anthology Awesome. Fred is an accomplished screenwriter and is piling up credits as one of the most offbeat writers in mainstream comics, from The Scorpion to Super-Villain TeamUp/MODOK’s 11 to The Incredible Hercules (with co-writer Greg Pak). He and Ryan are collaborating on the irreverent, illuminating historical series Comic Book Comics, whose Kirby connection Fred details here (accompanied by a special Ryanengraved sample).

Courtesy www.comicbookcomics.com

I can’t remember when I first became fascinated by Kirby’s life story; a lifelong comics fan, I somehow managed to absorb enough about his basic biography to realize that its movements, from Fleischer to Eisner/Iger to Fox to Timely to DC to World War II to Harvey to romance comics to Marvel to Pacific, was a microcosm of the journey of the American comics industry itself. This remarkable man and even more incredible artist is everywhere! He’s like the Forrest Gump of comics. Only smarter. And he prefers cigars to shrimp. Around 2000, just for fun (all projects were “just for fun” for my psychological health back in those lean days of temping in Manhattan’s financial district during the day and mainlining coffee at dusk to write indie comics when I got home until I passed out), I started to write a prose biography of Kirby that was going to be about 100,000 words long. I did a ton of research (and highlighted many a Jack Kirby Collector article), talked to a bunch of cool people, and wrote about half the book… then stopped. Again, I don’t remember why. I got a lot of encouragement from my agent at the time, who shopped a proposal for

the biography to several mainstream book publishers, but no nibbles. Fast-forward just a few years, though, and I had an indie success on my hands in the form of Action Philosophers, and, even more mind-blowing, I was having a blast writing Kirby characters in the pages of Marvel Adventures Iron Man and Fantastic Four and Super-Villain Team-Up… and being paid real cash money to do so! At the New York Comic Con one year, my ActPhilo partner in crime Ryan Dunlavey and I were wondering what our next project should be. The end of AP was in sight—the history of philosophy is a finite thing, and one we had largely made our intellectual bitch—and it hit me: No one had ever really attempted a history of comics as a comic before! Sure, Scott McCloud had discussed the theory of comics in his landmark Understanding Comics, but a comic book about comics, done in the inimitable AP style, would not only expand our reader base beyond the lovers of moldy old thinkers, but at long last allow me to utilize the pile of research that had been taking up space in file cabinets since 2000! So, just as Kirby is everywhere in the history of comics, he’s everywhere in the history of my life and career as well. It’s only fitting, then, that The Jack Kirby Collector sees one of the first pages of Comic Book Comics #1, the first installment in our APstyle treatment of the history of the comics industry, featuring the early years of this magazine’s titular—and my personal—hero.

(above) From near the end of Kirby’s history, but still showing a krackle or two of compositional genius, this page from Super Powers II, #2 (October 1985). Super Powers TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Courtesy Heritage Comics.

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Rick Veitch is synonymous with both idiosyncratic vision beyond compare and channelings of classic artists’ styles that go beyond re-creation to suggest reincarnation. He outdid Eisner with Alan Moore on Greyshirt, communed with Kirby on Moore’s Supreme and 1963, and has stretched perceptions of comics’ possibilities with graphic novels like Can’t Get No and ongoing series like the endless-war burlesque Army @ Love. He explained to TJKC how Kirby’s all to blame. (right) Sometimes a cigar is so much more, as seen in Veitch’s pre-pub art from Supreme: The Return #6 (June 2000), paired with a suitably mystical (and unidentified) ’70s Kirby concept drawing (below). Supreme TM & ©2008 Awesome Entertainment. Pharaoh ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

What was the earliest impact Kirby had on you, and how did it help set the course of your career?

I began buying my own comics around 1961, first focusing on DC titles like Mort Weisinger’s Superman and the reintroduction of the DC superheroes. I remember at that time looking at Jack’s monster titles on the newsstand and at the barbershop and being entranced by how he drew. The monsters seemed to come straight out of the id so at first they seemed a little too authentically scary for a 10-year-old to buy. But the attraction to Jack’s art was such that I began getting them, beginning with one called “Mr. Morgan’s Monster.” Reading it was a completely different experience compared to reading DC comics and I became so absorbed by the visuals that I drew my own “Mr. Morgan’s Monster” comic. When the Fantastic Four and other Marvel superheroes were launched, I bought them all and began to really study how Jack drew. I’d always felt in my heart of hearts, even at that young age, that I was an artist. But living in a small town in Vermont I had no art education or encouragement to follow my calling. So comics, especially Kirby comics, became my art education. I can still remember gleaning basic art foundation concepts, like perspective, abstract shape and negative space, just from looking at Kirby panels. The power of the drawing itself and the depth of Jack’s creative vision were completely formative to my own art. But there were also the few hints I could pick up about how Jack structured his life, especially after he moved to California. The idea of living in a beautiful place, exploring the imagination by doing comics, became the model for how I hoped to live my life as an adult. Comics history is full of artists charged with replicating a successful style for commercial reasons, and these artists would typically just research the surface look and swipe it. When you “do” Kirby in a story like Supreme ’s “New Jack City,” or Eisner in the Greyshirt series, you seem to treat it like some foreign country you’ve been dropped into and pick up the language of, learning allnew things to say in that system. This gives you an eerie ability to get their compositional and design ideas inside your own head, not just the style. Pure instinct or some evolved method?

It’s mostly because I learned to draw copying the comics I was fascinated with, and I was especially enthralled with Kirby. Even though I later went to the Kubert School and got my first real illustration classes, I can still dip into that Kirby layer of my development and in fact quite enjoy doing so. When Steve Bissette and I told Scott McCloud we were going to do 1963, he created an experiment to prove to us that Kirby’s approach was so eccentric that no one could really pull it off. Scott would describe a random 164

Kirby panel and Steve and I were to quickly lay it out, then compare it to Jack’s. I had so many of Kirby’s licks buried in the back of my brainpan that even Scott had to admit I was in the zone. It’s a fair question to ask why any living artist might so completely immerse oneself in a previous artist’s style. For me, it’s like being a modern rock musician who likes to play Chuck Berry sometimes, you know? You’ll never get the exact sound but you might catch the true spirit. Jack Kirby is the Chuck Berry of comics and we need to keep playing his music. Did Kirby’s struggle for creative control, different formats and finite story-cycles set any example for you as a self-publisher?

As I got into my 20s I became more aware that guys like Kirby were being screwed financially and held back artistically. I especially got the sense that when the Fourth World titles were cancelled it broke Jack’s heart. It sure broke mine. I only wish the opportunities that were available to me and my generation had been available to Jack in his creative prime. Taking advantage of the new deals that publishers were offering in the ’80s, I’ve now got a rather extensive catalog of projects I own lock, stock and barrel. The bad old work-for-hire deal is surprisingly still around in some publishing houses, but the big outfits, like DC and Marvel, have evolved a much fairer royalty and profit-sharing approach which I’ve benefited from. When Jack was my age, he didn’t have a stake in his greatest creative achievements. So, yeah, I guess I did learn from his particular situation. At the same time, if I had been hemmed in by the same business practices Jack was, I would have done exactly as he did. Spending one’s life blasting out comics is an incredible way to live. Sure, the money’s important, but it’s secondary to the art and its effect on the audience. Anything I didn’t cover but should have?

I named my second kid Kirby. How’s that for hard core? [ Robb Waters co-created the Freedom Force computer games and produced some of the truest preservations of the Kirby style and evolutions of his imaginative story concepts and character composition, in a prime example of Kirby’s impact on other media and package design.] ★

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by John Morrow, editor of The Jack Kirby Collector magazine o there you have it; the 50 Best of Everything Kirby. Maybe you’re totally new to Kirby fandom, and your head’s swimming from what you’ve just seen. Or maybe you’ve been a fan since childhood, and just bought this book to get a good Kirby “fix” to tide you over until I get the next issue of The Jack Kirby Collector magazine completed. Either way, I hope you found the journey as enjoyable as it’s been for me to take you on it—with a lot of help from fellow Kirby nuts, of course. I’ve tried to paint an accurate picture here of many of the great things Jack was able to accomplish during his career. But as impressive as his output was, his life wasn’t all rozy. He grew up in abject poverty, participating in more than his share of fights in his neighborhood street gangs. He saw unspeakable horrors during World War II, and nearly lost his feet due to the frozen conditions he endured in the Army. He dealt with any number of unscrupulous publishers and business associates throughout his half-century career, who were always looking to take advantage of his talent, generosity and good nature (some would say, naiveity). His own company (with longtime friend and partner Joe Simon), Mainline Comics, went bankrupt as a result of anti-comics backlash in the late 1950s. He fought a protracted legal battle to get back artwork that was rightfully his from Marvel Comics in the 1980s—particularly galling, considering all he did for the company. And he suffered from health problems late in life, finally succumbing to a heart attack in February 1994. That’s a sad litany of events on the surface. But this man, more than any other comic book artist, was truly loved—first by his wife Rosalind, who was his confidant, protector, chauffer, and defacto business manager; then by his wonderful children and grandchildren. But also by his close friends and fellow professionals around the world, many of whom got to know him personally, and were influenced in one way or another by his work. You’ve heard from more than 50 of them on the preceding pages, and I certainly appreciate their taking time to offer comments to help us present a clear assessment of Jack’s career and influence here. But this book is really for the everyday, in the trenches, Jack Kirby fans like me, who bought every new Kirby comic that was released in the 1960s or ’70s, and mourned when Kirby left Marvel Comics in 1970, or when the Fourth World was cancelled in 1972, or when he left mainstream comics for good in 1978. You’re the reason this book exists. Since 1994, I’ve had the honor of regularly communicating with thousands of you—people who

only knew Jack through what he put on a comic book page, and who to this day will profess how much the man means to them, despite their never having actually met him. On October 14, 1991, a couple of months after my one brief opportunity to meet him, I sent my first ever fan letter in the mail to Jack Kirby. It was a typical, somewhat rambling fan letter, filled with comments about his influence on me, Chicken Pox (don’t ask!), and other heartfelt comments. The “P.S.” went like this: “I was always determined to go to the San Diego Comic Con and meet you. This past summer, we arranged a business trip to California during the week of the con, and I finally got to shake your hand! I realize you couldn’t possibly remember everyone you meet at conventions, but just know that it was a wonderful moment in my life, and one I’ll always remember. Thanks for yet another special experience; you have a devoted fan in me.” Jack replied with a simple, hand-written note that said, “Dear John, thank you. Jack Kirby.” Jack certainly got his own share of “thanks yous” in person during his multitude of personal appearances at comic book conventions, and while hosting visiting fans at his home. But he took the time to respond to me, a guy he wouldn’t know from Adam. That’s the kind of person he was; he always appreciated his fans, no matter how good or bad things were going in his personal and professional life. I wish Kirby would’ve lived long enough to see this publication, or even just one of the 49 before it; not so he could appreciate the work I’ve put into it to honor him—well, okay, maybe a little—but to see the amazing outpouring of love and generosity that’s come from so many other Kirby fans. Despite my few seconds in Kirby’s presence, I never forget: I didn’t know the man, wasn’t his personal confidant, never got to watch him draw. I did get to visit his house twice, at the invitation of his wife Roz, and I was as slack-jawed and astonished to be there as any first-timer would be. But I’m just a guy who loved the man’s work from afar. It took his death to get me to work spearheading a fitting tribute to him. And it took the same to get hundreds of other Kirby fans to do likewise, submitting their art and words to make it what it’s become. TJKC isn’t the glossiest, slickest, or most widely-read publication about comics, but I think it’s the most heartfelt. And if I’ve learned anything from reading Kirby’s work, it’s that you’ve got to be sincere in what you’re producing, and make it heartfelt. If nothing else, this book (I mean, magazine) is, thanks to you. ★ A percentage of proceeds from this book go to the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, a non-profit organization every Kirby fan should join.

Annual Membership with one of $ these posters: 40 In The US

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 In The U.S. 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 multi-faceted career • communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby • celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations • 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.

Marvel 14” x 23”

Galactic Head 18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation 24” x 18” color

JOIN THE JACK KIRBY MUSEUM: www.kirbymuseum.org Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center • PO Box 5236 • Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA • Telephone: (201) 963-4383 165

KIRBY COLLECTOR #1-5 (DIGITAL SET)

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERNS VIEWS WITH KIRBY and EDITIO BLE his contemporaries, AVAILANLY FEATURE ARTICLES, FOR O $3.95 RARE AND UNSEEN $1.95 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!

Long sold-out in print form, you can now get the first five issues as an 80-page digital set! Includes interviews with JACK KIRBY, JOE SIMON, MIKE ROYER, and others, Marvelmania Portfolio articles, original art auction results, Jack’s original concept sketches, unused pencil pages, published pages BEFORE they were inked, other rare art, photos and more!

DIGITAL

(80-page Digital Edition) $2.95

NEW!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #14

KIRBY COLLECTOR COLOR POSTER

Only a few left of our TJKC retailer’s poster—don’t delay! (17” x 22” color poster) $10

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with issues at HALF-PRICE!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #6

KIRBY COLLECTOR #7

KIRBY COLLECTOR #8

KIRBY COLLECTOR #15

KIRBY COLLECTOR #16

KIRBY COLLECTOR #17

KIRBY COLLECTOR #18

Thor issue! Unpublished Kirby interview, interview with CHIC STONE, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #101 PENCILS before inking, cataloging Jack’s original artwork for the Thor Journey Into Mystery issues, evolution of Thor and the Stone Men, WALTER SIMONSON on Manhunter, Thor & Kirby, examining the real Norse gods, pros and cons of VINCE COLLETTA, linking Thor to the New Gods, KIRBY/STONE cover!

Sci-fi issue! Rare interview with Jack by SHEL DORF, EC Comics legend AL WILLIAMSON interviewed, the story behind Sky Masters, why the Eternals didn’t last, MIKE THIBODEAUX interviewed, features on Machine Man, Captain Victory, 2001, Starman Zero, Silver Surfer Graphic Novel, and others, Jack’s pencils before they were inked, and much more! Cover by KIRBY & TERRY AUSTIN!

Tough Guys issue! Rare Kirby interview, interview with Sin City’s FRANK MILLER, WILL EISNER discusses Kirby, an examination of In The Days Of The Mob, a look at Jack’s tough childhood, features on Bullseye, Link Thorne - Flying Fool, War and Western Comics, 1950s comic strip ideas and others, unpublished art (including Jack’s pencils before they were inked), and more! KIRBY/MILLER cover!

DC issue! Rare 1971 Kirby interview, interviews with NEAL ADAMS, GREG THEAKSTON, and D. BRUCE BERRY, 1997 Kirby Tribute Panel featuring MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN, MIKE ROYER, MARIE SEVERIN, and AL WILLIAMSON, special features on the Fourth World, Kamandi, Manhunter, Challengers, Green Arrow, Sandman, unpublished art, and more! KIRBY/ROYER cover!

Marvel issue! Rare 1970 Kirby interview, 1975 interview with STAN LEE, interviews with every Bullpenner we could find, including: ROY THOMAS, JOHN ROMITA, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, HERB TRIMPE, FLO STEINBERG, & GEORGE ROUSSOS, special features on Ant-Man, The Eternals, Black Panther, and more! Kirby cover featuring Jack’s unused SPIDER-MAN MARVELMANIA poster art!

(52-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $1.95

(68-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #19

KIRBY COLLECTOR #20

KIRBY COLLECTOR #21

KIRBY COLLECTOR #22

KIRBY COLLECTOR #23

Special FOURTH WORLD theme issue featuring interviews with MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN and MIKE ROYER, Jack’s ORIGINAL ENDING FOR NEW GODS, Mister Miracle’s Female Furies, 1971 New Gods portfolio, the HUNGER DOGS you never saw, plus rare and unpublished art from the series, including Jack’s pencils before they were inked, and much more! KIRBY/SINNOTT cover!

Celebrating Jack’s Kid Gangs! UNSEEN 1987 INTERVIEW with Jack, overview of Simon & Kirby’s Kid Gangs, unpublished Boy Explorers, Dingbats of Danger Street; unsung kid gang the Boy Heroes, Boys’ Ranch unused pencils, Newsboy Legion old and new, unpublished art from X-Men, Jimmy Olsen and others, including Jack’s pencils before they were inked, and much more! KIRBY/STEVENS cover!

Transcripts from the 1995 Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con with SINNOTT, ROYER, EVANIER and ISABELLA, our traveling Kirby Art Show, rare 1975 Kirby interview, a look at Jack’s convention art, 1972 convention panel with KIRBY & TOTH, how Jack met PAUL McCARTNEY, unpublished art including pencils from Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D. before they were inked, and much more! KIRBY/RUDE cover!

“Art” issue! JOE KUBERT on Kirby & the Kubert School, an analysis of Jack’s dialogue, a Kirby thesis by GIL KANE, KEVIN EASTMAN discusses Kirby, Jack’s battle with Marvel Comics discussed by KIRBY, FRANK MILLER, MARK EVANIER, STEVE GERBER, and GARY GROTH, collecting Kirby originals, Jack’s stolen art, tribute to Roz Kirby, inker spotlight, “Squiggles” and more! KIRBY/ALEX ROSS cover!

Focus on Kirby’s women! Rare 1975 Kirby interview, interviews with DAVE STEVENS and LISA KIRBY, unpublished ten-page story from TRUE LIFE DIVORCE, a close look at Romance Comics, Jack’s original screenplay for CAPTAIN VICTORY, doublecenterfold of GALAXY GREEN, spotlight on Jack’s Women from the ’40s to the ’80s, Kirby pencils before they were inked, and more! KIRBY/KEN STEACY cover!

Kirby’s wackiest work! Unpublished Kirby interview, interviews with GIL KANE and BRUCE TIMM, comparing Kirby’s margin notes to STAN LEE’s words, Kirby’s work at Topps Comics, EDDIE CAMPBELL on Kirby, Jack’s wackiest dialogue and bloopers, special features on Silver Surfer, Black Racer, OMAC, & Goody Rickels, Kirby’s unseen screenplay for Silver Star, unpublished art, and more! KIRBY/WIACEK cover!

Villains issue! Unpublished Kirby interview, interviews with STEVE RUDE and MIKE MIGNOLA, Part Two of our series comparing Kirby’s margin notes to STAN LEE’s words, stunning UNINKED FANTASTIC FOUR #49 PENCILS, special features on Darkseid, Red Skull, Doctor Doom, Atlas Monsters, and Yellow Claw, the genesis of King Kobra, unpublished art, and much more! KIRBY/DAVE STEVENS cover!

Rarely-seen KIRBY INTERVIEW, more 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!), complete unpublished story from SOUL LOVE, unpublished art, pencil pages before inking, and more! KIRBY/ALEX HORLEY cover!

(36-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $1.95

(68-pg. magazine w/COLOR) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(68-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(68-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #9

KIRBY COLLECTOR #10

KIRBY COLLECTOR #11

KIRBY COLLECTOR #12

KIRBY COLLECTOR #13

Fantastic Four theme issue! Interview with veteran Marvel artist and Kirby inker JOE SINNOTT, Black Panther–Role Model for a Generation, The Inhumans–Jack’s Enigmatic Super Group, entirely inconsequential FF Trivia, UNUSED FANTASTIC FOUR #20 COVER, unpublished art including Jack’s FANTASTIC FOUR PENCILS BEFORE THEY WERE INKED, and much more! KIRBY/ SINNOTT cover!

Humor theme issue, exploring the lighter side of Jack! A funny and touching interview with Jack’s wife ROSALIND KIRBY, Fighting American, Goody Rickels, interview with Destroyer Duck creator STEVE GERBER, fans and pros tell Favorite Stories About Jack, unpublished art including Jack’s pencils from JIMMY OLSEN, DESTROYER DUCK and THOR before they were inked, and much more!

Hollywood issue! Stuntman, the Black Hole, Jack and JOHNNY CARSON, why the LORD OF LIGHT never saw the light of day, unfilmed movie ideas, Jack’s adaptation of “The Prisoner,” from Thundarr to Scooby-Doo: Jack’s career in animation, the “King” and a crazy Italian’s epic love story, NEW GODS vs. STAR WARS, unpublished art including Jack’s pencils before they were inked, and much more!

International issue! Two rare 1970s Kirby interviews (one in English for the first time), JOHN BYRNE interview, 1996 Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con featuring MARK EVANIER, ROGER STERN and MARV WOLFMAN, Around The World With Kirby, uninked pencils from Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles and Captain America #101, Jack’s personal sketches, KIRBY/ WINDSOR-SMITH cover!

Supernatural issue! Interview with Jack and Shadow creator WALTER GIBSON, unpublished seven-page mystery story, interview with Kirby inker DICK AYERS, the rhyme and reason behind The Demon, Black Magic, The Vision, Spirit World, 1960s monsters, Kirby costumes, overview of Jack’s Occult and Supernatural themes, Kirby pencils before they were inked, and much more! KIRBY/AYERS cover!

(44-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $1.95

(52-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $1.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #24

KIRBY COLLECTOR #25

KIRBY COLLECTOR #26

KIRBY COLLECTOR #27

KIRBY COLLECTOR #28

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!

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’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!

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!

THE KIRBY INFLUENCE, PART TWO! Interviews with more pros influenced by Kirby, including Star Wars’ MARK HAMILL, JOHN KRICFALUSI, MOEBIUS, GARY GIANNI, GEOF DARROW, KARL KESEL, and MIKE ALLRED, interviews with Jack’s grandkids, a look at the career of inker VINCE COLLETTA, and more! KIRBY/MIKE ALLRED wraparound cover!

(68-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(72-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #29

KIRBY COLLECTOR #30

KIRBY COLLECTOR #31

KIRBY COLLECTOR #32

KIRBY COLLECTOR #33

KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #46

KIRBY COLLECTOR #47

KIRBY COLLECTOR #48

1970s MARVEL COMICS! Interviews with JACK and ROZ KIRBY, KEITH GIFFEN, and RICH BUCKLER, ’70s MARVEL COVER GALLERY in pencil, a look inside the 1970s MARVEL BULLPEN, Mike Gartland’s A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE on Jack’s layout work, new KIRBY AS A GENRE column, tips for frugal Kirby Collectors, and more! KIRBY/KLAUS JANSON cover!

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!

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’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!

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’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!

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!

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’S SUPER TEAMS, from kid gangs and the Challengers, to Fantastic Four, X-Men, 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!

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!

(68-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(68-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY FIVE-OH! CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE “KING” OF COMICS

KIRBY COLLECTOR #34

KIRBY COLLECTOR #35

KIRBY COLLECTOR #36

KIRBY COLLECTOR #37

KIRBY COLLECTOR #38

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

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!

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, & JOHNNY CARSON) & more! KIRBY/MARSHALL ROGERS and KIRBY/STEVE RUDE covers!

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!

“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!

“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!

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, a complete 1950s story, wraparound Thor cover inked by JERRY ORDWAY, and more!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #39

KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

KIRBY COLLECTOR #41

KIRBY COLLECTOR #42

KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

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!

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!

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!

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 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!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

For its 50th issue, the publication that started TwoMorrows presents KIRBY FIVE-OH!, a BOOK covering the best of everything from Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular KIRBY COLLECTOR columnists have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 1938-1987! The BEST COVERS from each decade! Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre. This TABLOIDSIZED TRADE PAPERBACK features a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, helping make this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! Takes the place of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50. (168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: FEB084186

KIRBY COLLECTOR #54

KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

KIRBY COLLECTOR #51

KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

Bombastic EVERYTHING GOES issue, with a wealth of great submissions that couldn’t be pigeonholed into a “theme” issue! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JIM LEE and ADAM HUGHES, MARK EVANIER’s column, huge pencil art galleries, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS, and more!

Spotlights Kirby’s most obscure work: an UNUSED THOR STORY, BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, unaltered pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more, including a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING (with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby cover inked by DON HECK!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #56

KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

THE MAGIC OF STAN & JACK! New interview with STAN LEE, walking tour of New York where Lee & Kirby lived and worked, re-evaluation of the “Lost” FF #108 story (including a new page that just surfaced), “What If Jack Hadn’t Left Marvel In 1970?,” plus MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby cover inked by GEORGE PÉREZ!

STAN & JACK PART TWO! More on the co-creators of the Marvel Universe, final interview (and cover inks) by GEORGE TUSKA, differences between KIRBY and DITKO’S approaches, WILL MURRAY on the origin of the FF, the mystery of Marvel cover dates, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, plus Kirby back cover inked by JOE SINNOTT!

“Kirby Goes To Hollywood!” SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MELL LAZARUS recall Kirby’s BOB NEWHART TV show cameo, comparing the recent STAR WARS films to New Gods, RUBY & SPEARS interviewed, Jack’s encounters with FRANK ZAPPA, PAUL McCARTNEY, and JOHN LENNON, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a Golden Age Kirby story, and more! Kirby cover inked by PAUL SMITH!

“Unfinished Sagas”—series, stories, and arcs Kirby never finished. TRUE DIVORCE CASES, RAAM THE MAN MOUNTAIN, KOBRA, DINGBATS, a complete story from SOUL LOVE, complete Boy Explorers story, two Kirby Tribute Panels, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, pencil art galleries, and more, with Kirby’s “Galaxy Green” cover inked by ROYER, and the unseen cover for SOUL LOVE #1!

“The Kirby Vault”—rarities by the “King”! Personal correspondence from Jack, private photos, collage gallery, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers questions you would ask in ’69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER Graphic Novel, and more!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES Each book contains over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED!

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 3

VOLUME 4

VOLUME 5

VOLUME 6

VOLUME 7

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #10-12, and a tour of Jack’s home!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #13-15, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #16-19, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #20-22, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #23-26, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, plus new art!

(160-page trade paperback) $17.95 ISBN: 9781893905016 Diamond Order Code: MAR042974

(176-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905023 Diamond Order Code: APR043058

(240-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905320 Diamond Order Code: MAY043052

(224-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905573 Diamond Order Code: FEB063353

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490038 Diamond Order Code: JUN084280

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490120 Diamond Order Code: DEC084286

NEW!

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS

Celebrate the 50th ANNIVERSARY OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1 with this special squarebound edition (#58) of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, about two pop-culture visionaries who created the Fantastic Four, and a decade in comics that was more tumultuous and awe-inspiring than any before or since. Calling on his years of research, plus new interviews conducted just for this book (with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others), regular Jack Kirby Collector contributor MARK ALEXANDER traces both Lee and Kirby's history at Marvel Comics, and the remarkable series of events and career choices that led them to converge in 1961 to conceive the Fantastic Four. It also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby's working relationship, and their eventual parting of ways in 1970. With a wealth of historical information and amazing Kirby artwork, STAN LEE & JACK KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS beautifully examines the first decade of the FF, and the events that put into motion the 1960s era that came to be known as the Marvel Age of Comics! (128-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 (Subscribers: counts as two issues toward your Jack Kirby Collector subscription) ISBN: 9781605490380

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

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 for Pacific Comics in the 1980s, making it his final, great comics series. Now the entire six-issue run is collected here, reproduced from his powerful, uninked PENCIL ART, showing Kirby’s work in its undiluted, raw form! 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!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SPECIAL EDITION

Compiles the “extra” new material from COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES 1-7, in one huge Digital Edition! Includes a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, profusely illustrated with photos, and more than 200 pieces of Kirby art not published outside of those volumes. If you already own the individual issues and skipped the collections, or missed them in print form, now you can get caught up!

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905559 Diamond Order Code: JAN063367

SUPERHEROES IN MY PANTS!

MARK EVANIER’S old and new essays on JULIUS SCHWARTZ, bad convention panels, CURT SWAN, cheap comic fans, unfinanced entrepreneurs, stupid mistakes in comics, PAT BOYETTE, and other aspects of the Art Form, profusely illustrated by award-winning MAD cartoonist and GROO collaborator SERGIO ARAGONÉS, including new covers! (200-page trade paperback) $12.95 ISBN: 9781893905351 Diamond Order Code: FEB088013

(120-page Digital Edition) $4.95

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST GOLD EDITION

Lists in exacting detail EVERY PUBLISHED COMIC featuring Kirby’s work, including dates, story titles, page counts, and inkers. It even CROSS-REFERENCES REPRINTS, and includes an extensive bibliography listing BOOKS, PERIODICALS, PORTFOLIOS, FANZINES, POSTERS, and other obscure pieces with Kirby’s art, plus a detailed list of Jack’s UNPUBLISHED WORK as well. BONUS: Now includes a complete listing of the over 5000-page archive of Kirby’s personal pencil art photocopies, plus dozens of examples of rare and unseen Kirby art! (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 9781605490052 Diamond Order Code: MAR084008

Also available: WALLACE WOOD CHECKLIST

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

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! (52-page comic book) $5.95 • (Digital Edition) $2.95

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! (60-page tabloid with COLOR) $20 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT043208

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

CELEBRATE 50 YEARS OF THE “KING” OF COMICS IN KIRBY FIVE-OH! IRBY FIVE-OH! is a special look at the “best of everything” from the 50-year career of Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Marvel Comics Universe! The regular columnists from THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine have assembled to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORIES published each year from 1938-1987! The BEST KIRBY COVERS of all time! The 50 best examples of UNUSED KIRBY ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And commentary by 50 LEADERS from the worlds of comics, animation, design, prose literature, academia, criticism, gallery art, music and theatre, who were INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-page gallery of Kirby’s RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre. It features a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, a Foreword by MARK EVANIER, and an Introduction by novelist GLEN DAVID GOLD, making this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics!

19 95

In The US

ISBN 978-1-893905-89-4

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

ISBN-13: 978-1-893905-89-4 ISBN-10: 1-893905-89-6

51995

9 781893 905894