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

Contents

THE NEW

Everything Goes! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (with hopefully no reruns...) UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . .3 (behind the scenes of covers for this issue and last) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (Mark Evanier on Jacks Schiff and Kirby, plus Schiff discusses Kirby, and Roz discusses Schiff)

ISSUE #51, FALL 2008

FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 (Jack served two Masters) SEARCHABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 (Tom Stewart, our Comics Savant, looks for & finds a Kirby Planet) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . .14 (the 1970s Sandman really woke things up, design-wise) TOOLTIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 (a pointed article on Jack’s pencils) KIRBY ENCOUNTERS . . . . . . . . . .16 (a close call with Jack) COVER STORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 (Kirby cover redux) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 (Atlas monsters, before & after) ADAM McGOVERN . . . . . . . . . . . .44 (robots and zombies both love brains...) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . . . .47 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) COVERING IT ALL . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 (a Timely decision about when S&K had Hitler covered) STREETWISE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 (Kirby debunks some urban legends) ORIGINAL ART-IFACTS . . . . . . . . .52 (Thor #149 cover original art) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 (Barry Forshaw on some Atlas Monsters) INFLUENCEES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 (short but sweet interviews with Jim Lee and Adam Hughes) GRINDSTONES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 (examining the Kirby work ethic) NUTS & BOLTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 (dancing the Kirby method) LEGAL-EASE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 (the legal standing on Kirby and copyrights) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 (the 2007 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring Neil Gaiman, Darwyn Cooke, Erik Larsen, and Kirby attorney Paul Levine) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . .76 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Front cover inks: FRANK GIACOIA Front cover colors: JACK KIRBY (with thanks to John Fleskes) Back cover paint: PETE VON SHOLLY The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 15, No. 51, Fall 2008. Published quarterly by & ©2008 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Single issues: $13 postpaid ($15 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $44 US, $64 Canada, $91 elsewhere. 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. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA. ISSN 1932-6912

(above) Jack drew this portrait of Connie Fox, reporter for local Los Angeles television station, KTTV, in 1976. Captain America TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. COPYRIGHTS: Bombast, King Masters, Sky Masters TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate • Roxie’s Raiders TM & ©2008 Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby • Stuntman TM & ©2008 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby • Arnim Zola, Bucky, Captain America, Captain Terror, Dangerous Doll, Daredevil, Destroyer, Devil Dinosaur, Dorma, Dr. Doom, Dr. Droom, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Goliath, Goom, Herbie, Hulk, Hulk, Ikaris, Impossible Man, Iron Man, Jocasta, Ka-Zar, Krang, Loki, Machine Man, Magneto, Moonboy, Mr. Morgan’s Monster, Odin, Primus, Professor Xavier, Rawhide Kid, Robot X, Sandman (villain), Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk, Skrulls, Spider-Man, Sserpo, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Toro, Torr, Warriors Three, Wasp, Watcher, Wrecker, X-Men, Young Allies, Zuras TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. • “The Pact”, Atlas, Batman, Big Barda, Boy Commandos, Challengers of the Unknown, Demon, Forever People, Kamandi, Kliklak, New Gods, OMAC, Orion, Sandman, Superman, Witchboy TM & ©2008 DC Comics

Opening Shot

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

ver the course of nearly 15 years of producing this magazine, I’ve gotten an awful lot of submissions—probably 70% of them have actually seen print in one issue or another. I’ve got a box for each upcoming issue set aside, and if a piece comes in that nicely fits a theme issue we’ve already got scheduled, I’ll immediately put it in the appropriate box, and then proceed to forget about it until it’s time to start work on that issue. But if a submission doesn’t fit something we’ve already planned, it goes in a box labeled “Unused” for later use. That box includes quite a few that

I Hope I Haven’t Used These Yet...

(above) Pete Von Sholly surprised me with this charming illustration of Jack and Roz, which perfectly captures how I’ve felt all these years, having Kirby art constantly dropped in my lap. That even looks like the top of my head! (But I gave up wearing a watch years ago; do your research, PVS!) Superman TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Other characters TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

didn’t make the cut, for various reasons. Some covered ground that we’d already covered by another author, and a few, while always heartfelt, just didn’t quite reach the professional level I strive for in the magazine. That’s not a slam at the writers who sent them in; it’s just that, not everyone who’s ever read a Jack Kirby comic book is necessarily capable of writing something that the general Kirby crowd would enjoy reading—or at least in my estimation. As editor, it’s my job to try to make each issue as compelling as possible, using whatever materials I have on hand. However, the vast majority of these unused submissions are actually quite good, but don’t fit any of the planned theme issues. And in fact, I plan upcoming themes based on material that’s been sent in (so, for instance, if I’ve got a few submissions about Limited Kirby’s FF work, or New Hardcover: Gods, I’ll probably use $ 34 95 those as themes). This issue is a good example of why I even plan theme issues; it’s being released very late largely because, without a theme as a “hook” to get me focused, I tended to meander around the process of assembling the issue, and it was really hard for me to pull together. But it finally came together. So good or bad, this issue’s theme is “Everything Goes,” and thus features some of the best submissions that didn’t fit a prior theme issue, or had to be cut for lack of space. However, even though I’m a fairly organized person, as I’ve added and subtracted to my “Unused” box over the last decade-and-a-half, a few pieces that have already run in a previous issue may have been left in the box. In the course of roughing-in this issue, I found two such pieces (thankfully before I finished re-laying them out) and replaced them with something else. But I’ve got this sneaky feeling that somewhere in this issue is an article I’ve already run in a prior issue. If I did, please let me know, but be kind. And I’ve got plenty of unused submissions still left, so if you didn’t see yours, know there’ll be another issue like this sometime soon. Lastly, I wanted to mention two items of interest to Kirby fans who aren’t subscribers to our Yahoo mailing list, or don’t have e-mail access. The first (shown above) is still available in limited supply; a deluxe hardcover version of Kirby Five-Oh!, our previous fiftieth “issue,” which was released as a 168-page book instead of the usual 84-page magazine. At the last minute, I decided to offer this hardcover edition (limited to 500 numbered copies), the first 50 of which went to the 50 people who’ve helped me the most on TJKC over the years. It includes a “wrapped” hardcover, and a Silver Surfer pencil bookplate, but otherwise is identical to the softcover version. It’s $34.95 plus shipping, but only a few are left. The other is Kirby Deities, a limited edition (200 copies, shown at right) full-color portfolio done to coincide with the release of Kirby Five-Oh! at this year’s New York Comic-Con. It includes ten plates in an illustrated envelope, and was limited to just 200 copies. It’s a full-color reissue of Jack’s

1971 black-and-white Disneyland portfolio of 81⁄2" x 11" 1960s concept drawings, and includes two color plates that weren’t in the original version. I mention it here so Kirby Kompletists will know of its existence, and since we didn’t sell all our copies at the New York convention, I sent out a message to every subscriber we had an e-mail address for, and to our Yahoo mailing list. But alas, the remaining copies sold quickly, and it’s sold out now. So be sure to sign up for our Yahoo mailing list (details are on our home page at www.twomorrows.com) to make sure you don’t miss out on future special editions like these. ★

Under The Covers by John Morrow ince last issue was a book (Kirby Five-Oh!) instead of a magazine, we didn’t feature an “Under The Covers” section, where the artists that ink our Kirby covers can elaborate on their working process. And this issue, since our front cover was inked and colored by Frank Giacoia and Kirby respectively, they’re obviously not here to offer any comments. But the big Five-Oh! sports an amazing cover inked by Darwyn Cooke (who’s also one of the panelists on this issue’s presentation of the 2007 Kirby Tribute Panel). When Darwyn agreed to ink a cover for us, I immediately thought of this image. It’s a later Kirby piece Jack did for his daughter Lisa, and while the pencil version suffers from some of Jack’s later drawing oddities, it’s still a very iconic image. I felt it would benefit from someone who’s a great draftsman, but has a clean style that wouldn’t overwhelm what Jack laid down. So Darwyn seemed perfect for it, and jumped right into it immediately after I sent him the pencils. Darwyn commented: “There was something great about the pencil art, but something very goofy as well. After studying it, I found if I cropped it, the goofiness of the legs disappeared. I added some mass to the sides of his torso, and shrunk the head slightly. Also, the foreground gunman had to be moved to accommodate the crop. I hope you like this, but if you don’t no worries. If I’ve tampered too much with the image, let me know... but for my money, the tweaks make it a Superman image worthy of the Marvelmania posters.” A full-size version of the pencils (below) was shown last

issue. Needless to say, I was thrilled with it, and his incredibly graphic coloring only enhanced it even further—a job really well done. Thanks again, Darwyn! For the back cover of this issue, my pal Pete Von Sholly, a much in-demand storyboard artist in Hollywood, pleaded with me to let him tackle the unpublished cover for X-Men #10. Not wanting to see a grown man cry, I relented, and he offers this insight on painting the King’s work: “The unused cover to X-Men blew my mind when I saw it. I fondly remember buying and reading (and re-reading) the original comic and loving it ’cause it was primo Kirby and primo early Marvel where it seemed every issue of standalone titles like the FF, Avengers and Spider-Man was an epic event. Plus this issue featured dinosaurs and related relics, which I also loved and still love! What could be better, right? “So a finished cover was a real treat to see and I simply thought it would be fun to “paint,” so I went to town rendering it as a color piece, my main concern being to be as faithful as I could to Kirby’s lines and not get carried away trying to “improve” anything. Hope you like it and... I wonder—could that red tyrannosaur be someone we know who survived in the strange conditions that prevailed in the Savage Land...?” You can see the original, Chic Stone-inked version of that X-Men #10 cover on the last page of this issue. Two great images, two different approaches, and both spectacular! Then, there’s that amazing illo by Pete that adorns the opposite page. It showed up in my e-mail box unannounced, and I was floored by it, so asked Pete what prompted it: “The ‘Kirby in heaven’ piece is just a comment on the titanic cache of unseen Kirby art that has filled TJKC lo these many years and still seems to pour forth from time to time? Did Jack ever stop? Sometimes it seems like he’s still at it somewhere, somehow... and aren’t we lucky? And I wonder who that young man with upstretched arms might be?” ★ 3

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier ohn M. suggested I devote some of this column to my recent book, Kirby: King of Comics. This is not a plug for it since I figure if you buy this magazine, you’ve already bought a copy. Thank you, by the way, for that. I’m very happy with how it came out... not with every little thing, of course. There are designs I wish I could redesign, phrases I wish I could rephrase, scans I wish I could rescan. That happens every time I have anything published and among writers, it’s a not uncommon feeling. (When the issue of The Jack Kirby Collector containing this piece comes out, I’ll probably think of ten ways I could have put that better...) Still, as a man with the initials J.K. taught me, you always have to look at the Big Picture. The Big Picture looks pretty good to me. No book that size is going to do full justice to the man. You’d need another thousand pages and each would have to be the size of a movie one-sheet. But given the realities of publishing, I’m satisfied... ...for now. The “big” biography of Jack, the one I’ve been promising since half past forever, is still coming. I don’t know when, but it’s coming. Getting back to the book that’s out: I agree with the occasional criticism that it should/could have been longer, but the big bio will take care of that. I’ve also received a couple of irate comments or e-mails from folks who have their pet theories about Kirby and his life, and are indignant that I don’t accept them. One guy was especially rankled that more space was not devoted to his all-time

favorite Kirby creation—and to hear him tell it, everyone’s—OMAC. The compliments have been nice, but the biggest upside has been all the Kirby fans I’ve met because of it, and all the time I’ve been able to spend talking about Jack to eager audiences. He really is my favorite topic. Why do you think I do this column? On to other matters... Column-before-last here, I was asked to speculate on what might have happened if artist Joe Maneely had not been killed in that train accident. How might that have impacted Marvel in the sixties? As I said then, this kind of fantasizing can take you in all directions at once. Once you change one teensy thing in history, infinite possibilities appear... and while some are more likely and reality-based than others, the sheer volume makes it hard to even guess. That said, I decided to address this question from Joe Banuelos: Let us imagine that Kirby had not quarreled with Jack Schiff at DC in the fifties and had remained to work at that company. What do you think would have happened? Would there ever have been a Marvel Age of Comics? Well, if Jack had not wound up at Marvel, I think not. I also don’t think for a second there would have been a Marvel Age or anything like it without Stan Lee in the precise place he occupied, and maybe not even without Steve Ditko. Others made important contributions, too. The Marvel Age of Comics was a function of several people being in the right place at the right time and creating the right work. However, I think there still would have been a Marvel Age and I’ll tell you why. My speculation starts with the recognition that Jack never fit in that well at DC. I can’t imagine them ever really knowing how to use him or how to let him do what he did best. It’s possible, of course, but it doesn’t seem likely to me. Challengers of the Unknown was a modest hit for the company at a time when hits of any magnitude were greatly appreciated. An interesting article someone else should write is to address the extent to which the success of that comic spawned other DC series like Rip Hunter, Time Master or Sea Devils or even The Doom Patrol. (And an interesting article I should write is how, after much consternation and research, I came to the conclusion that the startling similarities between Doom Patrol and Marvel’s concurrent X-Men were honest and true coincidence. So were the many parallels between Sea Devils, especially in its early issues, and Marvel’s subsequent Fantastic Four.) Still, Challengers did not give Jack any special standing at the company. To the extent the folks in the office viewed it as a success, it was a DC success, not a Kirby success. That’s kind of how they thought there then: Comics were sold by editorial expertise, especially in coming up with exciting covers. Who wrote and drew the insides mattered, of course, but it didn’t matter that much. One of the reasons the Marvel Age happened was because Stan Lee recognized the unique and valuable skills of guys like Steve Ditko and Jack. He did not hand them

completed scripts and tell them to go home and draw what was on the paper. He involved them in the creative process, encouraged them to suggest character and plot ideas. They didn’t really treat anyone that way at DC back then. I’m hard-pressed to think of many artists at DC pre-1970 who ever even contributed ideas to the writing end. There were very few writer-artists and they were mostly on the humor books. (The one significant one that leaps to mind is Sheldon Mayer, who both wrote and drew most of what he did for the company, like Sugar & Spike. But Mayer was a special case. He had a long history with the firm, including being editor, and there was a lot of personal affection and respect for him on the managerial level.) At DC then, writers wrote and artists drew and rarely did the ’twain meet. There’s no reason to suppose they would have made an exception for Jack... and of course, if you only had Kirby drawing, you were only getting a part of what he had to offer. Some might in fact argue that you were missing the best thing about Kirby—his ability to throw out ideas for worlds and characters and storylines. Remember the famous example of Jack

just adding in that Silver Surfer character to an issue of Fantastic Four as he was penciling it? That kind of thing didn’t happen at DC, at least back then. Artists did not contribute to storylines or add new characters. Even with Challengers off and doing well, the company did not pounce on him to come up with something else. They didn’t even try to get his art into more books. He was underused his entire time at DC then, drawing about a third as many pages as he could have. In fact, the only editor there who seemed particularly interested in employing Kirby—and in letting him write or contribute at all to the writing—was Jack Schiff, who supervised Challengers and pretty much everything else Kirby did for DC during this period. I never met Mr. Schiff but will take at face value the descriptions I heard of him from Arnold Drake, Mike Sekowsky, George Kashdan, Julie Schwartz and others. Here’s something that writer Alvin Schwartz wrote about him on an Internet message board that is not atypical: I worked with Schiff for years. I found him intelligent, caring, fair and literate—a combination which Mort Weisinger, who took over from Schiff, was thoroughly lacking. Schiff could write as well. None of the other editors at DC except Kanigher could write, not even Jack Miller who started as a writer and got a job as editor. Schiff was not easy to work with in the sense that he wouldn’t swallow a bad plot. But he could plot himself and I remember with pleasure some of the plotting sessions we had. But more than that, Schiff went out of his way to see that writers and artists were treated fairly within the limits of his role as an editor. I remember him fondly, and was supposed to visit him a couple of years before his death and some years after his retirement, while traveling from Florida to my New Brunswick, Canada summer home. Unfortunately, I was unable to make that stopover, so while we had some correspondence, I never saw Jack again after I left DC in 1958. He was the man mostly responsible for the quality of writing and grammar at DC. He always had a Fowler on his desk, and he alone of the editors knew that a subordinate clause containing a subject and

predicate, even when it was the object of the whole sentence, did not use “whom” but “who.” He was, for the comics business, the only quality editor I ever came across. Naturally, since the viewpoint on those in power anywhere is rarely unanimous, some would quarrel with some of that. Strictly as a reader, I would argue Alvin’s view that Jack Miller was not a pretty good writer. I might also argue that even if Schiff treated most freelancers fairly and knew the difference between “whom” and “who,” that did not always yield great comic books. He was, after all, the man who presided over the decline of DC’s Batman franchise, both in terms of sales and quality, to the point where it required a new editor and a massive reboot. I was certainly not impressed with most of the later books that bore his credit as editor. (Schiff retired in 1968 and passed away in 1999.) Still, he seems to have been a decent, honest guy. In researching Mr. Kirby’s dispute with him on the Sky Masters newspaper strip, and trying to get a solid overview, this kept coming up; that both

Jacks were decent, honest guys and that the whole dispute was one of those unfortunate business arrangements when too many people try to divide too small a pie. I think Kirby blundered into a bad deal and was then unable to get himself out. It ended in a lawsuit with Schiff—one that Kirby lost—and with our Jack finding himself more or less banned from DC for more than a decade. That, in turn, led to him feeling trapped at Marvel for all that time. (For what it’s worth, Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia both believed that some of the other editors at DC were more adamant about not hiring Kirby after the verdict than Schiff was.) For the purposes of our little “What If?,” we’ll imagine that Schiff and Kirby somehow settled their differences and Kirby was able to keep working at DC. I doubt, by the way, that was possible. But let’s say it was. What do I think would have happened then? Probably not that much. Kirby might have participated in the creation of another book or two for them... but I feel like that would not have happened. My hunch is that he would have done little more than draw comics that Schiff edited. Kirby didn’t get along with the other editors there and even if he had, freelancers who worked for one DC editor back then usually didn’t work for another. Each had his own little stable of writers and artists and there wasn’t much interchange. Someone else who speculated on this topic recently envisioned Kirby drawing Flash or Green Lantern or Justice League or even Superman. I can’t imagine any of that ever happening, at least not in that era. DC was quite happy with the folks they had doing those books and some at the firm were not infatuated with the eccentricities of Kirby art. They might have tolerated it on a new book or one like House of Mystery with no recurring characters but would not have wanted to see “their” established properties drawn like that. When the position of drawing Superboy came open, Kirby applied for the slot and was flatly turned down. As I’ve related on several occasions, the first time I visited the DC offices—in 1970 as Jack’s assistant—DC Production Chief Sol Harrison made clear to me that he wished Jack Kirby would draw

After the war, Mort made certain that it wouldn’t happen again. Simon and Kirby were not going to package work on the outside for DC and neither was anyone else. He wanted everything we published to be under strict editorial control, especially his.

more like Curt Swan or other artists who had what he called “the DC look.” That sentiment could only have been stronger back in the fifties and sixties. Back then, Harrison had more power over the look and feel of the DC product. (His influence was lessened in the late sixties as Carmine Infantino increasingly took command in that area and tried, among other things, to get rid of the old “DC look.”) Also of course, if Harrison and others there didn’t appreciate the joys of unrestrained Jack Kirby art in 1970 after the success of the Marvel Age of Comics, they sure weren’t going to appreciate it in this parallel world we’re positing wherein Kirby remains at DC in 1958. So my speculation is that Kirby would have continued to work there, getting less work than he wanted and being pressured to tone down the dynamics of his work and to hew closer to the DC “house style.” Which means his work wouldn’t have been as popular as it might have been. They seem to have disliked everything that he brought to the look and feel of sixties’ Marvels. Moreover, way back when, Kirby had a powerful detractor in Mort Weisinger, who was the most influential editor at DC. Weisinger did not like Kirby—an antipathy that dated back to the days when Simon and Kirby were doing strips like “Boy Commandos” for the firm. Joe and Jack had a fair amount of independence back then and Weisinger didn’t like it. As his fellow editor Julie Schwartz told me once in an interview: 6

That adherence to strict editorial control was the main reason Joe Simon didn’t stick around to do Challengers with Kirby. It’s why I doubt that Kirby would ever have done anything up there that would have cut him away from the herd. He would have remained, I believe, just a guy who drew comics for Schiff... and there wasn’t even that much work there. So my Imaginary Story—“What if Jack Kirby had stayed at DC in the fifties?”—goes roughly like this: Kirby and Schiff patch up their differences. Schiff keeps him on Challengers of the Unknown and the “Green Arrow” strip and keeps giving him occasional work on books like House of Secrets. Alas, there aren’t many openings for him on those titles or on the other books Schiff edits—nothing on Detective Comics or Batman, certainly. Short Green Arrow stories continue to appear in the rear of World’s Finest Comics but neither Weisinger nor Harrison would have tolerated the Kirby style on the SupermanBatman strip in the front. In the meantime, the “Green Arrow” strip in Adventure Comics is dropped when Weisinger assumes complete editorial control of that book. Blackhawk has an established art team and I can’t see why they would be replaced. Perhaps Schiff assigns Kirby to draw Rip Hunter, Time Master but even then, all Kirby can get from Schiff is about a book-and-a-half per month. None of the other editors have much work to give Kirby and what there is amounts to just drawing scripts he’s handed on minor books. There’s no room for Kirby to create, to expand, to distinguish himself. Through this period, Jack continues to draw the Sky Masters strip but it’s losing popularity and therefore pays him less and less each month. It ends in early 1960 but even before that, Kirby is scrambling elsewhere for more work in order to meet family expenses. Where can he go to get it? The same place he did—from Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas Comics. Stan is no dummy. He realizes the value of Kirby and gives him as much work as he can. At some point, that makes it difficult to continue working for DC. Some in the office don’t like “their” people working for the competition. Even when DC doesn’t have enough work to keep a guy busy, working for other companies is frowned upon and pressures are applied. (It’s also not good for the page rate. DC generally pays more than Stan Lee... and if they find out a guy is working for Stan, they see no reason to give him the top DC fee.) Suddenly, instead of being near the end of the line for new assignments, Kirby is at the end. He may also notice that the one editor giving him work, Schiff, is losing stature at DC. By ’64, Schiff will be taken off the prestigious Batman books but even before that, he’s not editing as many comics as others there and new projects are not being

assigned to him. At some point, Kirby decides he has no future at DC and he goes full-time with Stan... ...and you can figure things out from there. It might have happened a little later—and Kirby might not have felt quite as unwelcome at DC and therefore stranded at Marvel—but if I had to speculate, I’d say it would all have turned out the way it actually did. The more things change... ★ Mark Evanier welcomes all questions about Jack Kirby and suggests you ask them via one of his two websites, www.POVonline.com and www.newsfromme.com. He is the author, as you must know by now, of Kirby: King of Comics and three books from TwoMorrows, two of which just sold out. The third, Superheroes In My Pants!, is probably shown somewhere close to this block of text.

Jack Schiff On Jack Kirby by Will Murray Longtime DC Comics editor Jack Schiff is known to Jack Kirby fans primarily as the editor who employed the King drawing fantasy and science-fiction stories for anthology titles like My Greatest Adventure, Tales of the Unexpected, House of Mystery and House of Secrets over a two-year period in 1957-58. This of course was also Kirby’s critical Challengers of the Unknown period. During this time Schiff and Kirby put together the newspaper strip Sky Masters, over which they had a falling out that ended up in court, with Kirby coming out the loser. Schiff, a kind and decent man who was considered one of the most significant and professional editors in DC’s long history, has sometimes been made to appear as the bad guy in that disagreement, perhaps unfairly. I was aware of this history when I interviewed Jack Schiff in 1984, and the subject of Jack Kirby came up. While we didn’t go into those details, Schiff’s opinions and observations on the King of Comics are extremely illuminating. So in fairness to both Jacks, I thought it was appropriate to share them with readers of The Jack Kirby Collector. WILL MURRAY: Jack Kirby. You worked with him on some early stuff. JACK SCHIFF: Yeah. You see, I hesitate to talk about Jack because we had a whole to-do about that strip. MURRAY: Sky Masters. SCHIFF: So I hesitate to have any personal—I’ve really have been nicer to him than he has been about me. I still regard him as one of the finest artists in the business. Both as a writer and an artist, he has enormous talent. No question about it. But again, he would be bull-headed about it. Now Joe Simon was a great part of that team. Most people don’t realize it because Jack came to the fore all the time. Joe was in the background. Joe did the business arrangements. Joe did the inking and so forth. They separated later. I personally think that Joe had in some ways the better story sense. MURRAY: There’s some confusion about the Simon and Kirby team. How much of the writing was really Simon’s and how much was Kirby’s? SCHIFF: I would say that Jack was more creative, but was wilder. Joe was the guy who would pull it together. MURRAY: Sort of like the way Kirby and Stan Lee worked in later years. SCHIFF: Yeah, yeah. MURRAY: So Simon was doing some of the writing? SCHIFF: Oh, no question about it. “Newsboy Legion” and the “Boy Commandos,” two great features we had for quite some time. And they were very popular. MURRAY: When you think of early Jack Kirby, a young guy new to the field, what kind of mental image comes to mind? SCHIFF: He was—I don’t want to say pushy, but it was more dynamic. Joe was always the quieter one. Jack was in there bubbling and so forth. I told you about his talent. We once had a sort of race in the front office. We had a big artist room. Jack and Mort Meskin were sitting next to each other and there was some copy we needed pretty quickly from both of them. Each of them turned out five pages of pencils. Beautifully. It was really something. After a while, people began to crowd around, watching. And they would both go ahead undisturbed. I’m just trying to compare Meskin and Kirby. Meskin was a more careful artist than Kirby. And that’s where Joe Simon came in, and in a sense taming or correcting some of Jack’s stuff. Jack was exuberant, outgoing and [had] a flair. MURRAY: Was it Joe’s business to ink Kirby and work on his pencils? SCHIFF: Yes! Oh, no question. They collaborated on stories. I still remember when they’d come in, and we’d discuss stories like Boy Commandos. I will say that quite often, very very pleasingly, they’d come in with an idea for a Newsboy Legion or a Boy Commandos, and that was it. It was great. We didn’t have to discuss much. Other times of course, they’d have to be corrected. ★

Roz Kirby On Jack Schiff From “Conversations With Jack” by Ray Wyman, Jr. • Interviews conducted on October 10-13, 1989 (Editor’s Note: After I first ran a feature on details of the Sky Masters lawsuit back in TJKC #15, Roz Kirby called me extremely upset, saying it felt like someone had been “digging through my garbage.” Needless to say, I was pretty devastated to have hurt the wife of the guy we’re honoring with this magazine. So the following piece gave me pause when Ray Wyman first sent it in several years ago. I’ve struggled with whether or not to print this interview, since it can be perceived as painting Roz Kirby in a negative light, depending on your point of view. But as I learned, Roz deeply and honestly felt Jack Kirby got a raw deal from Jack Schiff, and this piece conveys how protective she was of her spouse, and her feelings on the situation. So I felt it was important to present it here, to complete this discussion.) RAY WYMAN, JR: And then you went to DC and you did a few things like the.. ROZ KIRBY: Challengers. RAY: And what was the other strip? JACK: We did The Fly. Oh, we did work for Al Harvey too. RAY: That's right, Alarming Tales. CATHERINE HOHLFELD: Western Tales, War Front... ROZ: You two have done a lot of work. I forgot about those. RAY: After the war, you did work with Harvey, and then you went to Marvel. Then there was that strip... JACK: Sky Masters... that was a great one. RAY: Yeah, then right into Marvel... why did you leave DC? JACK: Oh, there were complications... RAY: This is that thing with... the other Jack. JACK: Yeah. He was an editor at DC. RAY: Schiff, right? JACK: Yeah. ROZ: But we don’t need to get into that.

Ray Wyman and Jack Kirby, circa 1990. (photo by Susan Skarr)

RAY: But this is a pretty damn significant move. Jack is humming along at DC, doing all sorts of work. CATHERINE: (reading from a list) House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Tales of the Unexpected, Adventure Comics—of course, World’s Finest... RAY: And Greg [Theakston] told me that you were making... CATHERINE: About eight or nine dollars a page. RAY: That was a pretty good rate back then, right? Then, all of a sudden, boom... after around 1959 you stopped working for DC, and back to Marvel’s rate... CATHERINE: About six dollars a page. RAY: Right. So what happened? ROZ: There were some problems... RAY: Come on Roz. He sued you guys, right? ROZ: This book doesn’t have to go into that. It’s really nobody else’s business. RAY: We agreed that I was going to get the full story. Now maybe this doesn’t go into the book, but I need to know what happened. Now, something happens with this editor, uh... CATHERINE: Jack Schiff. RAY: Right. He doesn’t like something so he basically had Jack fired? Is that it? ROZ: That’s oversimplified. RAY: Well, fill me in. ROZ: Can we shut off the tape? RAY: This time let’s leave it on. (pause) I’m not going to release this Roz. I promise. I just need this conversation for my notes. I’ll burn it after I’m done. ROZ: You can do anything you want with it after I’m buried. Just don’t get this into the book. RAY: I promise. ROZ: Okay. I’ll take your word. JACK: Whatever she says. RAY: Okay... okay. I’m thinking that Greg [Theakston] is right. There was some overlap in your work between Challengers and Sky Masters. A bit of borrowing perhaps? JACK: Well, we borrowed from other strips all the time... RAY: But, this time between two projects each with their own owners... not quite the same thing as you and Joe back at Mainline... ROZ: Sounds like you got the whole story... RAY: And now this infamous napkin contract. JACK: What? RAY: Well, that’s what Greg called it. You and Jack Schiff signed a deal on a napkin over dinner. You were supposed to pay him something for the Sky Masters stories that were borrowed from Challengers... that’s how you got... JACK: I never borrowed from anybody! All my work is original. ROZ: It’s all right. He knows that. 7

(above) Sky Masters Scrap Book (August 2, 1959), an extra tier of art on Sunday strips, that could be eliminated by some papers for space reasons. Note the resemblance to Jack in panel 2.

RAY: Jack, I’m not trying to put you on the spot and I know you would never borrow work from anybody else. If anything, you borrowed from yourself. But you and Schiff worked on Challengers together, right? ROZ: Maybe you should do this another time.

RAY: But, couldn’t Jack go to Liebowitz and complain? I mean, here’s an editor that’s essentially blackmailing him... ROZ: I didn’t say that he was blackmailing him. All I said was that Jack used... oh, I’m not doing this right. Schiff used Jack.

RAY: Okay Roz. (tape is turned off)

RAY: Yeah. Gets confusing with all these Jack’s. So, you think that Jack Schiff thought that he could make a buck because Jack [Kirby] used bits of story material from his DC job, but what the heck. Jack [Kirby] created the story to begin with. That’s weird. ROZ: Comics are weird. All of them are a bit... you know... meshuga. Hebrew for crazy.

At this point, Jack left the room. He was so angry with me that he did not talk to me for several days. But Roz and I talked about the responsibility of reporting an accurate story (or at least, having their side of the story on record). She agreed and asked me to come over alone. She made me promise that this interview would not see the light of day—as she put it—until “long after she and Jack were gone.” I have kept this promise. The following is a transcript of my private interview with Roz Kirby regarding the Jack Schiff affair. I’m not certain about the precise date of this follow-up interview, but I think it was October 13. ROZ: So, what do you want to know? RAY: Jack Schiff and the napkin contract. ROZ: You ask me questions and I’ll tell you if you’re right. RAY: I’m not doing that Roz. You and I... we agreed that you would tell me the story. ROZ: Well, tell me what you know. RAY: Jack is writing and drawing one comic book and one comic strip, but they have similar stories. Jack Schiff, the editor of the book, notices and takes Jack aside and says ‘hey, you’re using our story...’ ROZ: No, no. That’s where you’re wrong. Jack [Schiff] never wrote that story. He didn’t have anything to do with writing the story. He was an editor and all he had to do was to check Jack’s work when it came in. It was just like Stan, you know. They were all taking credit for what Jack was creating. RAY: Schiff says they collaborated on the stories. ROZ: Oh, on this and that maybe, but Jack was doing all that work by himself. He worked in the basement until he finished. I never saw Jack [Schiff] come over and visit and Jack never worked anywhere else. They never socialized with us. So, when did [Jack Schiff] write the story? RAY: So why did Jack sign a contract with Schiff? Why all that contract nonsense? ROZ: Jack... I love him dearly, but he never had a mind for business. I think that Schiff intimidated Jack. RAY: That’s a pretty tall order there Roz. How did Schiff accomplish that? Did he have something else to hold over Jack’s head? ROZ: The way they did things over there was that the editors made the assignments. If the editor didn’t like you, then you didn’t have a job. 8

RAY: So, your contention is that Jack Schiff basically held the assignment thing over his head. “If you don’t give me this money, then you’ll never work at DC again.” ROZ: If Jack really was doing something wrong, then [Schiff] should have gone to the publisher. RAY: So he makes a secret deal with Jack, twists his arm so to speak, and gets this napkin contract based on theoretical joint credit. ROZ: That’s the way I look at it. RAY: Do editors always feel that they own joint credit for the work that artists bring in? ROZ: I don’t know. But it seems that way. Now, you promised that nobody would hear this. RAY: Not even Catherine [Hohlfeld, co-researcher of The Art of Jack Kirby]. Well, not until... you know. ROZ: Until I’m pushing up the daisies. RAY: I hate it when you talk about it like that. ROZ: Why be afraid of death? Everybody goes there. RAY: Now you sound like a travel agent. (laughter) It doesn’t look like Jack thought that that napkin thing was serious. If he signed a real contract, you’d think that he would have honored it some way. ROZ: Well, money was tight then and we had the kids, so maybe Jack wanted to, but we kept putting it off. RAY: Hmm. Interesting way of putting that. And Jack Schiff didn’t care about excuses. ROZ: See what I mean? He wanted blood money. He didn’t care that it was going to harm our family. RAY: The settlement, as I understand it, was for $8,000? ROZ: I forgot how much it was, but it was a lot of money back then. RAY: In 1959 dollars, yeah. Anything over four digits was a chunk of cash. So you forgot the dollar amount because... ROZ: It was painful. But Jack had a way. He always found a way. RAY: To make money. ROZ: Right. He never gave up.

RAY: What do you think about Jack Schiff now? He’s alive still, you know. I talked to him. ROZ: You mentioned that. I don’t care about that any more. RAY: But you see why this is important for fans— well, hell—why anybody studying comics would want to know what happened. This is the deal that sent Jack to Marvel. ROZ: He was blacklisted there [at DC] because of this thing. RAY: You sound a little embittered by the whole thing. ROZ: Well, bitter sounds like I’m holding a grudge, which I am not. But I think those guys play dirty. RAY: Okay. Let me ask another question. If you had it to do all over, would Jack be drawing comic books for a living? ROZ: Well. I don’t know. So many good things happened too. RAY: Such as? ROZ: Well, the fans. You know he loves the fans. RAY: It’s what keeps him going now, isn’t it? ROZ: Oh yeah. He becomes absorbed by them. RAY: Literally. So, if he didn’t have the fans now, where would he be? ROZ: You see? So, I can’t say that it was all bad. It isn’t bad now. Final note: I suggest that readers acquire an edition of Greg Theakston’s splendid compilation of the Sky Masters strips and compare them against the early Challengers stories. In my own cursory comparison (I own only a few of the Challengers reprints) I can see some vague similarities (both deal with weird situations and the team hero model), but there was nothing that would pass the test of plagiarism or infringement in today’s court. Jack Schiff (whom I interviewed over the phone in September 1989) refused to identify a specific story where he thought that Jack Kirby had infringed his rights as a co-author of any of the Challengers stories. Greg Theakston showed me a copy of the original court record for the lawsuit, as filed in the New York magistrate. I did not see the titles Challengers or Sky Masters mentioned, only Jack Schiff’s contention that Jack Kirby owed him money (ergo the infamous ‘Napkin Contract’). I asked Schiff if he still had the contract and he demurred. Roz and I talked about the whole Schiff affair off and on after this conversation. Off the record she told me that she thought that certain people in the comic book industry were used to doing things under the table. It was a different world back then, she said. Well, maybe not so different. One thing is absolutely clear: this event—regardless of how you frame it—is very significant to the Kirby annals. My only regret is that I was bound by contract not to report it to all of you earlier. ★

Foundations

This issue, instead of our usual complete Golden Age Kirby story, we’re presenting Jack’s presentation for his unused “Career of King Masters” comic strip. Enjoy! Career of King Masters TM & ©2008 Jack Kirby Estate.

Serving Two Masters

rior to landing the syndication deal for Sky Masters, Jack pitched numerous other newspaper strip ideas without success. Back then, the goal of many a comic book artist (especially ones dealing with the Wertham-inspired backlash of the 1950s) was to make the jump to the world of the syndicated comic strip artist. It was customary to prepare 2-3 weeks worth of daily strips to present, and the following is Jack’s take on “The Career of King Masters,” whose title character is a nightclub jazz musician by night, and (believe it or not) a professor of Accounting by day. This strange juxtaposition of vocations must not’ve connected with the syndicate heads he presented it to, but the remaining strips are an interesting look into Jack’s 1950s style. Since Jack had ghosted the strip “Johnny Reb and Billy Yank” for Frank Giacoia, it was a natural choice for Jack to ask Frank to ink his first week of daily samples. Perhaps Frank was Jack’s syndicate connection for presenting this concept as well. So, enjoy looking at these prime 1950s Kirby pencils, and the finished, inked strips by one of Jack’s finest, and most underrated, inkers. And if you have any of the missing strips not shown here, please send them in. ★

THE CAREER OF KING MASTERS

by Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia

MISSING STRIP GOES HERE 9

MISSING STRIP(S) GO HERE

SearchABILITY

(below) Jack’s pencils to his “Beautiful Dreamer” entry in DC’s Who’s Who #2 (April 1985). (next page, top) Mike Royer’s recreation of the cover to New Gods #7. (next page, far right) The new, updated Jack Kirby Checklist: Gold Edition is now available from TwoMorrows. It’s expanded and now in deluxe trade paperback format; perfect for tracking down your own Kirby planet. Forever People, Pact TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

Hunt For A

An Excursion Into the World of Post-Mortem Market Gouging by Tom “The Comics Savant” Stewart t was in late winter of ’93 that I decided to tackle a short tour of my comic boxes. I had been threatening for awhile to sort the things out, and as we had just moved, I figured now was better than never. That tour turned into a weeklong sort-and-file mission, with many promises to my wife that the ever-growing mounds of comics would soon be back out of her sight. As the categorizing went on (and my ‘to read’ stack grew threateningly), I came to the shocking conclusion that my Fourth World collection was noticeably lacking. In fact, aside from reprints and a few Jimmy Olsens, the Fourth World was nonexistent anywhere in my short white boxes. This could not stand. I was going on a mission to complete the Fourth World, to complete the Kirby planet... as soon as I finished putting away my comics. My wife’s penetrating stare could beat Darkseid’s any day. You know, I could have sworn I had all of those Kirby books, but my sorting didn’t find the little buggers. I thought I picked them up in the mid-eighties, after I got over my irrational fear of Kirby (hey, I spent hours tracing Neal Adams and Will Eisner; I thought Kirby drew—you know— funny... the story of my Kirby rebirth will have to wait for another time). Ah well, they were pretty recent and should be cheap. Lots of stores in the area, should be no problem. So I thought. Just finding them turned out to be a big problem. First, I had to find a store that knew what I was talking about. Then I had to get past the look of clerks who would raise an eyebrow, as if to say, “Why would you want that stuff?” The most common response was that they just didn’t have any, no one asked for it, so they didn’t carry it, didn’t buy it, had tossed “a bunch of those things” in the quarter bin, or had sold them by the foot along with boxes of Caspers and Archies to “some guy in New York, just to get the dang things” out of the door. After about two

months and seven or eight stores, I had a goodly pile of Jimmy Olsen; these the stores had a few of because, “you know, Superman’s in them. The market is heating up on those old Olsens. Yep, you’re lucky I haven’t gotten around to raising the prices on those. I’m sure Wizard listed them last issue, and had ’em in one of those colored squares. Goin’ up. In fact, is there any left in the box...?” I had also managed to find a few of the other titles; a few New Gods, a Forever People #1, a couple Mister Miracle issues, a few Kamandis, so the hunt wasn’t a total loss. And in the process, I discovered something odd. I had read some of these before. I don’t mean back when I was a kid, but back when I was a kid! I remembered some of the earliest issues as comics that my older brothers had, hidden away in their rooms to keep my hands (I was the very definition of “little brother”) off them. (Does this ever really work? I mean I always found them, my little sisters always found mine, and my mother always found the magazines that I really didn’t want her to see. Ah, the original exercise in futility.) I didn’t realize that my brothers had even heard of Jack Kirby, much less had introduced me to him. Man, I had to find the rest of these issues. In the last shop I checked, all the way in the back, past the hot comics, in the corner, under the back issues, were the “oddball” comics, a buck apiece. There they were, or at least some of them. “Oddball” indeed. There sat quite a few of the ones I needed. A few more Jimmys, more New Gods, and Mister Miracles, and the rest of the Forever People. I grabbed as many as I could afford and ran to the counter. Was there some mistake? Were the comics somehow in the wrong box? Or would the clerk think that maybe he should check to make sure I hadn’t snuck these “cool” comics in with the cheap old worn Archies and Harveys? But the worry wasn’t really necessary; I had gone nowhere near the high-priced “cool” stuff anyhow. (Notice the use of Kirby “quotes.” More “official” that way.) He just rang me up, nodded when I said how cheap they were, and said, “Yeah, they been kicking around in the boxes forever. We just want to get rid of ’em.” I still had about ten to fifteen issues to find. Now most of the comics I found were not in the greatest shape, were not “mint.” I didn’t care. I’ve had this argument with many collectors, who can’t understand why I would buy less then perfect copies. “How are you gonna put your kids through college with those ratty books that you buy? That’s just selfish...” Well, I just want to read them, to have the originals, and still have some money to buy more comics. I own some of the worst, torn and taped comics in any collection, but I have them, complete and readable. I read them, then use the money I save to go buy more. (Sidebar: I once took some of my beat-to-heck Brave and Bold Justice League appearances to San Diego to be signed by Julie Schwartz. He signed them, frowned, and told me I should “take better care of your books, young man.” Ah well.) In February of ’94, Jack died. I couldn’t believe it. I think we all remember how we felt that day, like part of the world had suddenly gone away. A week or so later, after getting over the shock, I resumed the search. This time, there was a difference. The stores that I had gone to before—the ones that had either not heard of the comics, or didn’t have them—now were “experts,” ready to give me a summary of the entire Fourth World, and sell me the ’80s reprints (which they had at the front counter, in bagged sets, for twenty five dollars a pop). One owner, who remembered that I had bought some Kirby comics a month earlier, offered to buy them back, at twice what I paid for them. He couldn’t understand why I said no. I wasn’t “much of collector” he told me. I did notice that he had already raised the price on his Kirby back issues to at least double what

they had been. I also noticed that he had several more issues then he had last time I was in. He said he had found them in the back room—the same back room he said he’d “looked and looked through” when I was last in. “Well, you know, with Kirby gone, these puppies are worth a lot more, you know.” The owner leaned against the counter. “I even looked through my comics, at home and stuff, to see if I had any Kirby, but no, just some crispy FF books, and like no way are those seeing the light of day, not till they go up in the Wizard, at least. Nah, I got rid of that ’70s Kirby to make room for the cool stuff that I picked up in the last few years. I mean, who knew anyone would want that stuff?” “Anyone besides me asking about Kirby books,” I asked. “Oh, you know, a few maybe, but it really hasn’t had a chance to really sink in yet. We lost one of the greats when Kirby passed, you know. Not anyone else like him, though people like, maybe, Liefeld come close, in sales anyway.”

I thanked him (my mom taught me to always be polite), took his card (so I’d remember where not to go, except in case of extreme emergency), and headed for the door. “Hey, I’m also looking for Devil Dinosaur, and that other kinda Kirby stuff from Marvel too.” “Are those going up in price?” I asked. “I’m betting they will, you know... he ain’t making any more...” He happily went back to perusing ‘the Wizard’, and shaking his head over the many undervalued book listed therein. There we have the crux of the problem. This dealer (and some collectors) use what, to autograph collectors, is the defining scale of value: “He ain’t making any more.” How this applies to a twenty-five-year-old comic is beyond me. I know several collectors who don’t start collecting a title until it’s canceled. “Easier to pick up if you don’t have to worry about new product.” Here’s the thing. Is this a case of people playing cultural catch-up, of guilt? Saying, “Man, I feel bad that (Elvis, John Lennon, Jack Kirby, etc.) is gone, I have to have everything they ever touched, regardless of price”? Or is it just store owners making a quick buck, or maybe investors trying to catch a piece of a good investment—or is it, in my learned opinion, just plain, darn silliness? I hit the other stores. I found the same thing there, to varying degrees. Either they still didn’t have them, but were now looking, or they suddenly had the comics, but the prices were at least twice what the guide listed. Even the store that had the comics in the bargain bin had pulled them out, marked them up, and proudly displayed them by the register. The clerk there frowned when I mentioned the prices. It seems they had a “whole bunch, but some jerk bought them a month or so ago out of the bargain bin. Now they’re hot. That guy got some bargain.” Yes I did, but I decided not to enlighten

him, just add the store to my ever-growing list of places to avoid. It looked as though I was out of luck. The stores that still charged reasonable prices didn’t have the books. I would have to scour the upcoming local convention. On the day of the show I hit several tables and encountered lots of gouging of Kirby materials. One dealer seemed to be charging for sentimental value, plus the usual mark-up over guide. His books were kept in stacks, under sheets of plastic that were draped like shrouds over them. He paced back and forth behind his tables, stopping every now and again to pat his pockets as if looking for something he couldn’t remember, hitch his belt, and scan the hall. This dealer refused to price any of his books, in the vague fear that between pricing the day or so before, and his arrival at the show, the prices would skyrocket, leaving him with seriously undervalued comics. I picked out a couple Kamandis, being careful no to choose the best copies (it was early and I had a long list), and handed them over. He squinted at me, and then pulled out his copy of the Overstreet guide, cross checked with Wizard, and then announced a price that made me wonder if he was using just this transaction to make back his table fee. I also got the “He ain’t making any more” argument again, like Mr. Kirby had made any Fourth World comics in the last ten years. Sad. I moved on. I finally bought the last of the books I needed from an out-of-town dealer. I now had them all (except for some Kamandis and a couple Jimmys that I’m still looking for). I pointed out to the dealer that he had somehow forgotten to mark them up. He looked at me as if I was an exhibit in Superman’s Interplanetary Zoo. “What, you think just because Kirby died that I’m gonna raise my prices? That’s kinda sick, don’t you think?” Why, yes; yes I do... ★

Kirby Planet! 13

He Awoke

As him?!

Incidental Iconography An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld

he name “The Sandman” will undoubtedly conjure up a variety of different images for different comic fans. Many Golden Age comic fans will recall Wesley Dodds in a fedora and gas mask. Others may have Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man villain spring to mind. Personally, I tend to go to the spandex-clad Wesley Dodds that followed in the footsteps of Captain America, going so far as to have his and sidekick Sandy’s adventures laid out by Cap’s great creative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. As the notion of a Sandman goes back quite a ways in Western folklore, it’s hardly surprising that, like Thor and Mercury and Frankenstein’s monster, so many interpretations of the character have cropped up over the years. What is curious, though, is that Jack Kirby only gave a shot at a Sandman character design once in his entire career, and even then, not until 1974.

Despite a solid and memorable association with the 1940s Sandman in Adventure Comics, Simon and Kirby actually inherited the character redesign from Mort Weisigner and Paul Norris, who had retooled the character as a Batman clone (complete with cape, “wirepoon” gun, and a young sidekick) in issue #69. Kirby did make some immediate costume modifications when he began drawing Sandman stories in #72—most notably losing the cape—but the design was still mostly Norris’. It’s interesting that, for his own take on Sandman, Jack Kirby would team-up again with Joe Simon 20 years after their last collaboration. But, as the debut issue of The Sandman in 1974 was designed and developed as a one-shot, it should hardly be surprising that it does not feature one of Jack’s better character designs. Jack’s initial design, seen quite clearly on the cover on #1, is a relatively generic 14

superhero costume, the type one might expect to see on a background character among the Eternals or the New Gods. The only two aspects that strike me as interesting are the hexagonal pattern on Sandman’s belt—which Kirby later utilizes as pouches containing a dream dust—and the way the cape is attached at Sandman’s shoulders instead of around his neck, as is more customary among the superhero set. But things take an interesting artistic turn after the first issue. Reader response was extremely positive, and DC seized on the opportunity to turn the one-shot into a series. However, both Kirby and Simon were busy on other projects already, as it had been probably six months between when they completed their work on the book and when sales numbers began coming in, so a new creative team was called in. Ernie Chua and Mike Royer handled the art duties until Kirby could return with issue #4. This meant that, aside from two quick covers, it was about a year between when Kirby drew #1 and when he took a look at Sandman again. Chua seemed to only make one design change to Kirby’s design, and that seems to me most likely unintentional. The hexagonal pattern on Sandman’s gloves, originally mirrored from his belt, was rounded off to circles. Kirby picked this up quickly, as is evidenced on his covers for #2 and #3 (see left). Kirby himself then simplified the costume further by omitting the yellow circle on the side of Sandman’s mask beginning with the cover to #3, and his work starting within #4 drops the cleft in Sandman’s boot cuffs. One would think there’s little else that could be altered and still remain recognizable as Kirby’s Sandman design, but we are all familiar with Kirby’s poor memory which is on display throughout the last three issues of the series in the form of Sandman’s stylized zipper, that vertical stripe down the front of his chest. For his remaining work on the book, Kirby altered his implementation of it repeatedly, often from panel to panel. It would alternatively show up as a simple, vertical red band; a series of two or three red bands; and a series of short, horizontal blocks. Not infrequently, Kirby dropped it altogether, leaving Sandman’s chest entirely blank. It’s likely that this inconsistency allowed Vince Argondezzi to later modify it further to an hourglass for Sandman’s return within the pages of Infinity, Inc. The Sandman is by far not one of Kirby’s better designs. It very much seems the type of design he might whip out without putting any thought into it whatsoever, and I am quite surprised in fact that he kept it as consistent as he did for as long as he did. I suspect that if he were able to hook into the character more, and the book proved to have some longevity, he would have put some more time and effort into re-designing the character again. But, as Mark Evanier has noted, “When he was forced to draw Sandman as a regular comic... he hated both the assignment and the final product.” It’s easy for us to gravitate towards, and discuss and debate Kirby’s best work ad nauseum. It is, after all, great work. But I think it’s worthwhile to spend time looking at his less successful work as well to get a better understanding of the man himself. What The Sandman shows us is that, even in work that he really didn’t have his heart in, he applied the same working methodology that he used everywhere else, even if it was for an idea that had only been rolling around in his head for ten minutes instead of a few years. ★ You can see Sean Kleefeld’s website at www.FFPlaza.com.

Just An Old Pencil...?

Tooltime

by Phil Frances (right) Another pencil, said to be at Jack’s drawing table when he passed away—this one with an HB lead, the kind Jack was known to use. It was a gift to Dr. Mark Miller, a close friend of the Kirbys, who’d had it framed and kept it for years before foolishly giving it to this magazine’s editor, on whose wall it proudly hangs today. Thanks, Mark!

o, I’ve got this pencil. Hmm—perhaps I’d be better starting at the beginning. As a kid, I loved drawing—wax crayons were a favorite, and I’d spend hours covering yards of paper with colorful pictures of exotic wildlife, while my friends waited impatiently outside in the sunshine, eager for more physical games. Generally, I found drawing more stimulating, in my own basic way: animals were definitely my thing. That is, until one of my friends got hold of two UK reprint Marvel comics from somewhere—an uncle, perhaps. Whatever. As soon as I caught sight of these guys that stretched, flamed, punched, leapt, vanished or swung, I was really hooked! (So much so, I persuaded my pal to let me have these two comics—and ruthlessly cut them apart once I got home to form some primitive collage of my own.) Sorry, Lee! I never did thank him once for the gift either, as far as I know. Some weeks or months later, Lee turned up with a copy of FOOM #1, received direct from the USA, and we were both floored by the poster that came with it—our comics were generally black-&-white, and this was in full-color! Wisely, Lee kept tight hold of this prize, and my scissors were untroubled on this occasion. I started reading Marvel reprints with devotion—although still in black-&-white only—and I copied whatever picture took my fancy; generally fairly poorly, I guess. Aside from a period of fascination with Star Wars, I stuck with superheroes on and off until the mid-1980s, when the direct market really started to establish itself in the UK—and the Marvel Masterworks hardback series reprinted those early stories in luxurious detail. Of course, I wanted each volume that was published, but I found the ones I enjoyed the best were those with Jack Kirby art. This was powerful, dynamic, almost primal stuff—the essence of the Marvel Universe, distilled from the talent of one man, and infused with the joy of drawing I’d felt in some measure so many years ago; almost a reawakening of those childhood years. To be fair, I’d neglected Jack’s work for too long, discounting it as simple compared to the efforts of the more “flashy” artists of the day, whilst also decrying it for its forced perspective and exaggerated poses. I realized I’d been terribly wrong—there was a real reason this guy was called “King.” Here was a talent I could only aspire to—my scribblings looked very tame in comparison. I looked for more Kirby work in its original form—Fantastic Four #12, 25, 26, and the OMAC series in particular—anything to slake a thirst for the King’s output. Since then, I’ve gained access to the Internet, and its many contacts, including this magazine and its sterling work. I scoured many sites, over long hours, looking for Kirby’s art, to satisfy my need. And there was this pencil. It claimed to be from the drawing table of Jack Kirby. The listing said it had been given away by Roz Kirby before Jack’s table had gone to the Smithsonian Institution—they didn’t want the contents, supposedly. Of course, I asked whether it was genuine. Mike Thibodeaux was said to be there when it was given away, and many of the other drawing materials have been auctioned for charity, apparently. It cost—well, it cost. It’s just an old pencil, round in cross-section, colored gray, and worn down so there’s virtually no lead showing. Rather disappointing to look at, really. So, now I’ve got this pencil. Is it really Jack’s? Could this have sketched some of the work I’ve grown so fond of? Might the King have used it in his work? I guess I’ll never know, but there does seem to be some indefinable magic to it, nevertheless—some echo of the hand that directed it, perhaps—and something that stimulates the imagination of the simple child who once marvelled to the work of its possible owner. Then again, perhaps it’s just an old pencil.★

Kirby Encounters

A Close Call

by Chris Tamura ost comics fans who grew up with Jack Kirby say they are the #1 Kirby fan in the world, and I’m no different. I talked about Kirby’s powerful style to my brother so often that he converted from DC to Marvel. Then in the 1970s, when I was in high school, I saw a full-page ad stating that various artists were coming to Santa Barbara for a weekend televised event called “Arts In Media” (it was a fundraiser for local artists, I believe). Scanning the list of numerous artists I’d never heard of, I hit upon one name that startled me: It was the King himself! Could it be that I would at last see and hear Jack live on TV? It seemed like the weekend would never arrive, but when it did, I sat and watched vigilantly, waiting endless hours for just one sign that Jack would be the next guest! Nothing. Zero. Naught. Saturday was now gone, but my spirits lifted Sunday morning as I watched the artists show their works for sale. “Come on,” I thought, “Where’s Jack?” I just had to be patient; he would be coming up any minute now. By 4:00 pm, I was sitting on my bed, dejected and miserable. How could the newspaper have lied? Suddenly, I recognized something on my TV screen. The host held up some Marvel Comics covers, and introduced Jack Kirby! My heart was now beating a mile-a-minute. After a brief chat with Mr. Kirby, the host stated, “For a contribution of $20, Jack will sketch any Marvel hero you choose! And not only will he draw and sign it, you can briefly talk to Jack via phone!” The first caller asked for a drawing of a super-hero I’d never heard of; neither had Jack, who politely recommended Captain America (the caller agreed with some reluctance). Callers two and three asked for “Silver Surfer” and “Thor” and received some sagacious advice from the King. As I watched Jack draw, my brother kept telling me, “You better hurry and call! He’s your idol! You can even talk to him!” I froze. Talk to Jack? What would I say? I finally got the courage to call, but as I started to dial, I could hear the TV host speak: “Thank you, Jack. It’s been a pleasure talking to you!” “Thank you for inviting me,” said Jack, and he was gone. I put the phone down and sat by the TV for what seemed like hours. A stupid, morose look came upon my face as I stared blankly at the TV screen. My one chance to talk to Jack Kirby was gone forever. Whenever the name Jack Kirby appears, I think of the exciting time I had collecting his comics as a kid; but as long as I live, I’ll always remember the time I almost spoke to Jack Kirby. It still kills me to this day.★

M (right) 1975 Captain America sketch. (below) A Big Barda sketch, penciled by Jack, and later inked by Bob McLeod. (bottom right) Jack sketches during a “chalk talk” session at a mid1970s San Diego Comic-Con. Captain America TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. Big Barda TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

Cover Story

hen one views the hundreds of covers and thousand of pages Jack Kirby produced in his nearly half-century career, several things become apparent. In addition to the astonishing power of the art, and seemingly endless inventiveness to which he applied his craft, there is one other aspect worthy of amazement: how little he repeated himself. Counter to his rare, albeit well-documented use of art and photographic reference (a standard practice in the industry), he would continually offer up something

On close examination, the figures of Reed and Sue are direct swipes from FF #29, while the Torch appears to be lifted from FF #4 (lower left). I was unable to locate the origin of the figure of The Thing, and indeed he looks the least organic as well as disproportionate and awkward, perhaps the result of not being sized correctly when added into the mix. With that said, this cover is the more interesting of the two Lancer Marvel editions published that year, the

Kirby Redux by Steven Brower

fresh and exciting for the potential reader—which makes it all the more surprising when he created a visual that strongly resembled another. Yet that is exactly what occurred on the covers of Fantastic Four #29 and FF #39—inexplicable considering the proximity in which these two issues were released. On the cover of Fantastic Four #29 (above), published in August 1964, the foursome are seen walking wearily towards the viewer down a city street with the looming figure of The Watcher emerging above the cityscape. Ten short issues later, on the cover of Fantastic Four #39, (top right) dated June 1965, you have the Fantastic Four, led by guest-star Daredevil, walking wearily towards the viewer, dwarfed by the towering figure of Doctor Doom looming over the cityscape. Perhaps this is a street they should have avoided? Instead, the group actually took a trip down that same road one more time, on the cover of The Fantastic Four Collector’s Album paperback book, (above center) published by Lancer in 1966. Did Kirby create the artwork for the cover? The Jack Kirby Checklist refers to this as a “pastiche” without any further detail, and within the book itself no separate credit appears for the cover other than an “illustrated by” credit on the title page. While it is most likely the painting was not done by Kirby, the rendering is done in a convincing wash style, similar to Vince Colletta’s wash technique employed in Spirit World and In The Days of the Mob in 1970 for DC. The Lancer editions were the first reprints in book form of Marvel’s relatively new and successful properties. They featured black-and-white line art interiors, most likely shot from the original stats, greatly reduced to fit the mass-market paperback format, with as few as one to three panels per page, a precursor of the Maximum Fantastic Four book of a few years ago which broke FF #1 into single panels across 224 pages. The material in the Lancer edition was a pastiche in and of itself, culled from FF #s 1, 2 and 6, and placed in a new order in an attempt to create a novel sequential story.

Incredible Hulk being a simple cut-andpaste job of existing art from Tales to Astonish #67, (below) although here too the art appears to be re-inked, the landscape altered, and tones added. Since the same approach for the FF covers was utilized three times within the space of less than two years, it is doubtful this was the result of happenstance. Was FF #29 so successful that an editorial or publishing decision was made to try to repeat that success, not once but twice? We will never know for certain. The only thing we can be sure of is that these covers stand as an anomaly. Kirby continued to reinvent the comic book cover going forward, with little or no repetition, just as he had the 25-plus years prior. ★ (Steven Brower is an award winning writer and graphic designer. His latest project is a book on the life and art of comic book artist Mort Meskin, due out from Fantagraphics.)

Gallery

BEFORE & AFTER

by Shane Foley

“For Michelangelo, the objective reality of the skeletal and muscular form of man was just a starting point. He used his mastery of anatomy to produce larger-than-life figures, with huge limbs and torsos resembling landscapes. His figures have their own anatomy, based on reality, but transformed into a new, heroically grand and gigantic reality. Although they sometimes involve anatomical impossibilities, they have a structural completeness which convinces and makes the impossible believable.” (John Raynes, Human Anatomy for the Artist, page 14) TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

irby fan Mark Muller sent me that description years ago, saying, “Sounds like he’s describing Kirby, doesn’t it?” Exactly. Following are pages arranged so that an early ’60s Atlas/Marvel monster book art page is juxtaposed by a theme (of a kind) to pencils from the later ’60s onward. We can see both Kirby’s amazing skill for doing what is described above, while in the space of a couple of decades, radically evolving his own style. (pages 18-19) Atlas Monster vs. Atlas, Monster 1961 (Tales of Suspense #15) faces off with 1975 (First Issue Special #1, page 16) (pages 20-21) Creature vs. Creature 1962 (Strange Tales #92) – 1973 (Demon #10 cover) (pages 22-23) Magneto vs. Magneto 1961 (Strange Tales #84) – 1977 (Captain America Annual #4, page 22) (pages 24-25) Hulk vs. Hulk 1960 (Journey into Mystery #62) and 1977 (Eternals #14, page 14) (pages 26-27) Tyrannosaurus vs. Tyrannosaurus 1961 (Amazing Adventures #3) and 1978 (Devil Dinosaur #1, page 16) (pages 28-29) Talking Heads vs. Talking Heads 1961 (Amazing Adventures #3) and 1980s (unpublished – Roxie’s Raiders) (pages 30-31) Doomsday vs. Doom’s Day 1962 (Strange Tales #99) and 1978 (unpublished Fantastic Four cartoon storyboards) (pages 32-33) Humanoid vs. Humanoid 1962 (also from Strange Tales #99) and 1977 (Captain America #209) (pages 34-35) Mummy vs. (sort of) Mummy 1962 (Tales to Astonish #31) and 1972 (Forever People #9, page 17) (pages 36-37) Robotic Man vs. Robotic Man 1961 (Amazing Adventures #4) and 1978 (Machine Man #9, page 12) (pages 38-39) Mohawked warrior vs. Mohawked Warrior 1962 (Strange Tales #98) and 1974 (OMAC #1, page 20) (pages 40-41) Tough Scaly hide vs. Tough Scaly hide 1961 (Amazing Adventures #6) and 1969 (Fantastic Four #91, page 5) (pages 42-43) Hairy Guy vs. Hairy Guy 1961 (Amazing Adventures #1) and 1976 (Eternals #5, page 10)

Adam M cGovern

Zombies vs. Robots

Interviews with Fred Van Lente and Ralph Macchio conducted by e-mail on June 14 and 16, 2008. (below) Zombies love brains, and what Kirby creation could be more fitting to lose his than this issue’s numerical namesake, X-51? A vintage Kirby splash page of the mechanical Marvel from Machine Man #4 (July 1978). (next page, center) Stack-sploitation— Greg Land looks to more than Kirby for inspiration in this cover image for Marvel Zombies 3. Machine Man TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(Kirby may have defined comics, but at the same time he drew some battle lines between stylized and “realistic” art and between action and indie genres. Legend or not, Kirby fans can find themselves defending their hero’s eccentric vision and singular contribution in the face of modern styles and corporate assembly lines. Still, it’s rare that one of his characters has to be defended by some Kirby fans against other Kirby fans, but Machine Man (a.k.a. Aaron Stack, X-51 and Mister Machine) is a case in point. A late entry into the Kirby canon from the King’s last run at Marvel in the mid-’70s, this retro-modern machine in search of a soul holds embarrassing kiddie associations for some and wacky appeal for others. He has flown low through the Marvel Universe for much of the 30 years since his introduction, but he’s about to rocket right into another dimension on the dragging, tattered coattails of one of the company’s hottest franchises, as a star of Marvel Zombies 3. Starting this October, Machine Man (with fellow robot and ’70s second-stringer Jocasta) will be fending off an undead plague under the able watch and twisted view of offbeat rising star Fred Van Lente as writer (with Kev Walker on art). TJKC spoke with Van Lente and editor Ralph Macchio about just what makes Machine Man and the zombie craze so, erm, deathless...)

Food for Thought on Machine Man’s Macabre Makeover, by Adam McGovern

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: We’ve seen a few different kinds of X-51s this decade so I’ll get perhaps the most important question right upfront: Synthetic flesh or purple spandex? FRED VAN LENTE: Yes, then yes. MZ3 takes Aaron on a complete arc from where he was in Nextwave to his further development as a part of the Marvel Universe. Although is that purple spandex, or is that his actual “skin”...? “Hull?” “Siding?” For Machine Man, perhaps skin is the spandex. TJKC: I guess it’s easy to see how Machine Man and Jocasta figure in—as mechanical characters, they’re among the only Marvel heroes who have a built-in immunity to flesh-eating creatures... or do they? What kinds of perils can we expect to see them put through? FVL: Even if they can’t be converted into zombies, once they arrive in the Marvel Zombies world, they can certainly be blown apart by the sonic blasts of Zombie Black Bolt, melted by the spells of Zombie Dr. Strange, and be chased down and pummeled at super-speed by Zombie Speed Demon (or Zombie Quicksilver, or, in the most disturbing name of all time, Zombie Whizzer), so not getting infected isn’t even half the battle. TJKC: Sometimes I think Aaron is less of a Robot Man archetype than a Plastic Man one—all the extending stilt-legs and endlessly morphable pop-out gadgetry. Is it fun writing for such a fanciful character? FVL: It is, particularly since we’ve “matured” him (if that’s the right word) to morph out grenade launchers, flamethrowers, and railguns. I’m from the Quake generation, I’m afraid, and Aaron’s ability to sprout innumerable weaponry (which was a part of the original Kirby concept that was literally written out when Wolfman and Ditko took over the book, unfortunately) appeals to me. It also allows him, as a zombie-slayer, to out-Ash Ash and his puny boomstick and chainsaw hand. Bah, humbug! Aaron Stack has 100x more stuff up his sleeve than that! TJKC: Even as a kid it slightly bothered me that Aaron existed in the Marvel Universe since we’d already been through the whole robots’-rights melodrama with the Vision for years. Though looking back, it makes sense that the MU would have as many different AIs struggling to find themselves as the real world has immigrants and gays and comics fans. That seems to be the case with Jocasta too—she just kinda showed up in Avengers one day with the same identity issues and was made no big deal of. What makes these two characters unique and interesting for you (or, maybe, how did you make them unique and interesting for this series)? FVL: One of the treats of being at Wizard World Philadelphia, where MZ3 was first announced, was going from dealer to dealer and amassing an all-but-complete Kirby and Ditko run of the original Machine Man series. And I’ve got to say, I don’t think MM gets enough props from Kirby fans. That first #1-6 arc, where Aaron has to

decide whether or not to save the humans who hate him from Ten-For and the Autocron invasion, is some of Jack’s best character work ever and certainly the most impressive work he did at Marvel during his return in the 1970s. (Next to Eternals. I do love me some Eternals, and it’s a blast to be working with them now over on Incredible Hercules... the Marvel Herc being another underappreciated Jack creation, cough, cough.) TJKC: There’s something about even the most marginal Kirby character that people come back to again and again. Is it just ’cuz people who were kids when Machine Man came out are now in charge, or is there something all the naysayers weren’t seeing back then? RALPH MACCHIO: It’s something about the character most people didn’t see back then, as is typical of so many Kirby characters. While the New Gods was Jack’s big concept [at DC], look at how prominent certain characters Jack created [there] such as OMAC and Kamandi have become. Likewise, at Marvel, the Eternals, Deviants and Celestials have become firmly ingrained as linchpins of the Marvel Universe. While Machine Man hasn’t achieved that status, he’s a fascinating concept with so much any writer can take and build upon. FVL: I was also impressed at how much of what Jack was originally doing with the character Warren Ellis managed to put into Nextwave. Referring to humans as “fleshies”... the toupee! That all comes out of the first run.

(above) Adam’s been waiting four years for the perfect excuse to run some images from indie icon Scott Mills’ and Kirby Clone First Class Tom Scioli’s as-yet unfinished Zombie Kamikaze project and start drumming up an inexorable, singleminded horde to get some publisher to pick it up. Feast your eyes, so to speak... Zombie Kamikaze TM & ©2008 Scott Mills and Tom Scioli.

FVL: As for Jocasta, at first she seems like the robot-next-door, but don’t forget Ultron created her using the personality of Janet Van Dyne/the Wasp as an imprint. So she may have some quirks and foibles to overcome if she’s going to get back from the Zombieverse in one piece... TJKC: For all the talk about the comics companies’ “universes,” there’s relatively little sense of their geography—you don’t often feel how the various parts of the world connect, as if four-fifths of the planet’s population lives in New York where the superheroes are. MZ3 sounds like it will make savvy use of the Marvel map, with the zombies crossing over through the cosmic nexus point in Man-Thing’s swamp that Howard the Duck once came through (there goes the neighborhood, I guess). MODOK’s 11 and The Scorpion had a real globe-trotting scope too (though for the new book we better make that “globe-rotting,” badda-bing). Is the presence of locale important to your work?

So in MZ3 we’re playing with the idea that because Aaron was born, more or less, fully grown, that he’s still going through a process of maturation. His ‘70s series depicted his innocence, his infancy. Nextwave represented his adolescence—rebellion against authority, etc. His experiences in MZ3 will set him down the path to adulthood—with all the trauma and hardships that entails. RM: We’ll be exploring Aaron’s psyche a bit here as a followup to what he’s been undergoing in Marvel Comics Presents. He’s going to face his demons and strive to overcome them to save our world. As wild as what you’ve seen Machine Man put through before, I think we’re going an extra mile to make his appearance in MZ3 truly memorable. This is the series in which he’ll begin to get back to the heroic robot we’ve long known and loved. It’s a personal journey for him as he delves into his own identity—while kicking major zombie butt!

FVL: It’s very important. I think setting is an underappreciated part of superhero stories, which have a tendency to take place in generic urban environments. But to me where you are, where you choose to be, is a very important part of who you are. I’ve long thought the reason the political map is split up into red and blue states is because the cities are largely made up of people (like me) who fled the suburbias and rural areas of the country, [which are] filled with people who couldn’t stand the city anymore. That said, however, MZ3 takes place almost entirely in Zombie New York. [laughs] Except for the first issue, which is largely in Florida, and... well, a location, The Hollow, that is literally so top-secret I can’t tell you where it is, but it is the headquarters of the agency charged with facing the zombie threat, a sister to S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Alternate Reality Monitoring and Operational Response directorate, a.k.a, that’s right, A.R.M.O.R. TJKC: Why are zombies the dominant genre of the moment? Is it a metaphor for scary conformity and phantom armies of the religiousright or radical-terrorist type, or for the seemingly inevitable spectre of 45

pandemics? And if the latter, which is scarier, zombies or chickens? FVL: I have a unique perspective on that, as one of my best friends in the world is one of the country’s premiere zombie novelists, David Wellington, and he actually wrote his big breakout hit Monster Island sitting across from me when we both worked at, of all places, the United Nations together. (I was working on Scorpion: Poison Tomorrow, my first Marvel graphic novel, at the same time, so I wasn’t about to rat him out to Kofi Annan.) When I got the MZ3 assignment, he’s one of the first people I called up: “I’m invadin’ your turf, brutha!” Now he’s going to start writing superheroes. I feel threatened. But anyway, over the course of the last few years Dave and I have had a lot of conversations about this. The simple litcrit explanation would be it’s anxiety

about terrorism, and the end of people’s belief in technology to save us, that there’s something appealing about the survivalist/apocalypse aspect to the zombie genre. (We’ll be exploring a lot of that in MZ3, by-the-by.) Also, in a world with MySpace and YouTube, where we’re supposed to be shoving our individuality down the world’s collective throat 24/7, what’s a better Other than a homogenous mass of groaning, unhygienic humanity, all united under one goal to eat your brains? ★ (Adam McGovern writes TJKC’s “Kirby as a Genre” column and will be helping remake a much lesser-known character than Machine Man with artists Paolo Leandri and Dom Regan in an “Alias the Spider” story for Image Comics’ Next Issue Project early next year.)

www.kirbymuseum.org Jack’s alive and well at the Kirby Museum! Kirby Documentary As Rand announced at the 2008 Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con International: San Diego (video available on our website), the Kirby Museum is starting fund-raising and preproduction on its feature-length Jack Kirby documentary with Jon B. Cooke and Andrew D. Cooke. You may know the Cooke brothers by their work as Montilla Pictures on the wonderful Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, and Jon from his exceptional Comic Book Artist magazine. The Museum, now a fully recognized non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, is going to be funding the production. In fact, we are seeding the movie with funds from our members’ Annual Dues. Have no doubt, this we’ll be premiering a new blog titled “Kirby documentary will be a powerful tool Kinetics,” written by Norris Burroughs. The focus of Kirby in getting the word out about Kirby Kinetics is the analysis of Kirby’s art. Norris was inspired by Greg Theakston’s article “That Old and his work, as well as a valuable Jack Magic” in Amazing Heroes #100 from 1986, which Greg has given permission to post as well. resource to aid in funding of further Also in the queue are an article on the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic by Stan Taylor, videos from Museum projects. Please consider San Diego, and audio files from Jack Kirby Quarterly’s Chrissie Harper. lending your support to this project. We have set up a special Documentary Special thanks Fund and have updated the DocuThe Museum would like to thank Dez Skinn and Chrissie Harper, publisher and editor, respecmentary’s web page with more details. tively, of Jack Kirby Quarterly #15, for committing to donate a percentage of their revenue to the Museum. Also, thanks to our friends in New York and San Diego for all of their help with our Our Collection Original Art Digital Archive. Our archive of scans grows! And thanks again to Trustee John Morrow Also through the generosity of our for the support at San Diego, the percentage of Kirby Five-Oh! and Kirby Checklist: Gold Edition, members’ dues, and mentioned at and this page in the Kirby Collector. Heartfelt thanks also to Lisa Kirby, Tracy Kirby, Jeremy Kirby the CCI:SD Kirby Tribute Panel, the and the whole Kirby family for their support, too! Museum has started a small original art acquisition program. (We’ve Online Resources already had one piece of original art Bob Heer’s Jack Kirby Comics Weblog: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/ in our collection, donated by Greg Bob’s New Kirby Announcement page: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/new-kirbyTheakston—see above. Problem is, announcement-page/ we can’t determine if it was published. Bob’s Kirby In Print Guide: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/kirby-in-print-guide/ It looks like Frank Giacoia inked it Harry Mendryk’s Simon & Kirby blog: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/ for a Captain America origin recap. Contact curator@kirbymuseum.org Kirby Pencil Art Archives if you have any information on it.) See numerous examples of Kirby pencil page photocopies (like the ones presented in this The first piece purchased through magazine) at http://kirbymuseum.org/gallery/v/Pencil+Photocopies/ and be sure to join the the support of our membership is a Museum to get access to even more exclusive, members-only art! page from the 1970s Black Panther. These pieces will form the foundation of our Traveling Retrospective, $ as well as being helpful resources when we are queried by our peer educational, cultural and literary organizations looking for Kirby assets. Again, we hope you will consider supporting our efforts.

Newsletter TJKC Edition Fall 2008 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, and • building understanding of comic books and comic book creators. To this end, the Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study, teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays, publications and cinematic, theatrical or multimedia productions.

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

Annual Membership with one of these posters: 40*

Web Site and Kirby Kinetics We’re upgrading the Museum’s web site, which should be live upon publication of this issue of TJKC, to the open-source Drupal Content Management System with all kinds of non-profit organization-focused modules and add-ons under the hood. We hope these tools will improve some of the day-to-day functions of the Museum. Also, when the new site goes live, *Please add $10 for memberships outside the US, to cover additional postage costs. Posters come “as-is” and may not be in mint condition.

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

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

Annual Membership with one of these posters: $50*

Marvel—14” x 23”

Galactic Head—18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation—24” x 18” color 47

Covering It All (below) Marshal Josef Stalin in 1937. (right) The published cover of Young Allies #1 (Summer 1941). (bottom) The unused Young Allies #1 cover. With “Old Glory” draping their title logo, Bucky Barnes and Toro got center stage as Cap’s battling buddy got to tackle the “Big 3” of the Axis, the Red Skull, and presumably Joe Stalin moments later!

A Timely Decision

An unused S&K wartime cover analyzed by Jerry Boyd n 1941, the world’s governments and its citizenry marked time with great uneasiness. The swift, successful invasions of the Axis partnership gave rise to the myths of Japanese and German ‘supermen’—modern-day conquistadors who couldn’t be halted on the battlefield. President Roosevelt waged an unofficial war with Nazi Germany’s Fuehrer by sending much-needed supplies across the Atlantic past waiting U-Boats to the courageous, determined holdouts in besieged Great Britain. Across the Pacific, saber rattling between the US and Imperial Japan intensified as the Emperor’s forces hurried toward Burma, Malaya, and Indochina. Young though they were, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby could hardly have hidden away from the bad news in the relative comfort of their New York studio offices. To their credit, the team poured out their animosities toward Prime Minister Tojo, Mussolini, and Hitler in comic magazine covers and stories long before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. For their proposed cover piece for Young Allies #1, the pair decided to launch this kid gang (which, sadly, they’d only produce a few covers for) with a scenario outdoing Captain America’s knockdown of Hitler on his very first cover. Bucky Barnes was depicted in a flurry of motion punching and kicking the Red Skull

(who seems to be in disagreement with his leader over the ownership of a “Dictator of America” sash), the Italian Duce, Tojo (possibly the Emperor Hirohito?), and Hitler. Overhead, Toro, the blazing boy pal of the Human Torch, was shown soaring toward the ‘regular’ boy allies who were threatened by an insidious torture device. Also of special interest is the looming presence of Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, positioned above the cover caption at lower left. By the time this cover was featured in Captain America Comics #7 (cover-dated October 1941), Russia was already at war with Germany. (The end of connivances between the two bloodthirsty dictators reached a climax on June 22, 1941.) This unused cover was undoubtedly prepared months before Hitler stunned the world by attacking the Communist nation, but almost immediately after the attack, Stalin left the enemy camp and became an ally of England and, by extension, America. So a new cover had to take the place of this one! On the published version, Bucky got to plow into the Red Skull and der Fuehrer. The Flame Kid and the other boys were drawn larger. Finally, Bucky and Toro’s names got marquee status, playing on their popularity. Still, this rarely seen, unpublished version represents not just a spectacular moment for Cap’s little buddy, but a pivotal moment in history as recorded by two of the Golden Age’s greatest creators. Britain’s Churchill had long denounced Bolshevism as a “plague-bearing infection” and most Americans were leery of it as well, but the invasion of the Soviet Union changed everything. ‘Uncle’ Joe would join Roosevelt and Churchill as one of the “Big Three,” and thanks to Golden Age comic collectors, Captain America #7 would survive the wartime era’s paper recycling with its inside cover promo of the Simon & Kirby cover that might have been. (Special thanks to Dick Swan and John Fleskes for photoscanning the Young Allies covers.) All characters TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

When Simon & Kirby Had Hitler ‘Covered!’ Written and compiled by R.J. Vitone Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was a real-life villain “covered” by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon well before America entered WWII. They used (and abused) him a few times in stories as well as on covers. Their treatment of “der Fuhrer” was always less that reverent…

Hitler sternly addresses some of his officers on the Russian Front at the height of their successes by the Summer of ’42. The Nazi warlord’s expression probably wouldn’t have changed much if he’d seen how Jack and Joe were treating him on their comics covers!

(above) Years before teaming with Joe Simon, Kirby (under the pseudonym “Jack Curtiss”) got plenty of experience lampooning Hitler, as these 1938 editorial cartoons demonstrate. (clockwise from right) More Timely cameos by Der Fuehrer: Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) “POW!” Captain America Comics #2 (April 1941) “Lookout, Adolf!” USA Comics #2 (Nov. 1941) “Adolf attacks!” (looks like an S&K layout at least) Mystic Comics #7 (Dec. 1941) “Unleash the horrors of war!” Boy Commandos #2 (Spring 1943) “Give ’im the gates, boys!” All characters TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc., except Boy Commandos TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

Urban Legends

Streetwise (below) O’Ryan’s Mob squares off against Country Boy and Intergang. Original cover art from New Gods #4 (Aug. 1971).

The big, bad city—Kirby-style, by Dwight Boyd eave it to Jack Kirby to not only revolutionize super-heroes but to revolutionize their fellow city dwellers and the city they lived in as well. During the King’s page production in the ’60s and ’70s, New York and Metropolis denizens came to life in ways they’d never been depicted before, based on urban realities. Kirby’s coplotting played on urban legends and the results, as usual, added to the entertainment value found in his magazines.

Urban Legend #1 “Get an apartment on the upper floors of the building. That makes it tougher for second-story men to rob you.” Ever heard of the Wrecker? He became more than just an elusive apartment burglar when he unknowingly barged in on the God of Mischief (see Thor #148-149). The Wrecker got the powers Loki wanted from the Norn Queen and he’s been giving Thor, the Defenders, and others headaches ever since. (The Cat from Amazing Spider-

Man #30 had no powers, but Lee and Ditko made him a lot of fun, anyway.)

Urban Legend #2

“Travel in groups when you have to cover a lot of ground in the big city. Muggers look for people who walk alone and the muggers are everywhere!” In the neo-realism Stan and Jack were proposing, the realities of street gangs, neighborhood bullies, and muggers fit in perfectly. (Though for all we know, the Yancy Street Gang never bothered anyone except Ben Grimm and his teammates!) Bullies were done to death in the Western books so, in the Marvel Age, the only bruisers who made good—er... bad—were Flash Thompson and Whitey Mullins (see Fantastic Four #51). The muggers, like the bullies, always got what they deserved in the end (see FF #48), however. The best example of this occurred when a group of classless individuals tried to put the hurts on a “rich-lookin’ geezer” who was approaching their corner in one unforgettable Lee/Kirby/Stone yarn (below). The geezer turned out to be Odin (!) on his first visit to Earth since he created it (!) and considering his temper, the muggers got off easy! I’m betting they went straight after that (Journey Into Mystery #104). C’mon, attempting to mug Odin—SHEESH!!

Urban Legend #3 “Big city cabbies are rude and obnoxious. There’s no way around them, though. Just deal with it.” Dealing with life in Fun City, the Marvel Bullpen probably ran into more colorful cab drivers than the ones they incorporated into their stories. And to be fair, a lot of their fictional cabbies

could be pleasant and even encouraging. For comedy relief and a little realistic big city attitude, it’s scenes like the Impossible Man (see FF #11, above) hailing a taxi and scaring its ill-tempered driver off that stands out.

Urban Legend #4 “Keep clear of gangsters at all costs. They control certain parts of the city!” Give Intergang credit for ambition. It wasn’t enough for them to run some of the rackets in Metropolis; they had to throw in their lot with the crowd from Apokolips, also. Kirby got to revisit his old, rough neighborhood hoodlums by way of Steel Hand (see Mister Miracle #1), Sugar-Man and Country Boy (see New Gods #3 and #4), and a number of other no-goods (from Jimmy Olsen). For the good guys’ side, Orion decided to ante up

as a mighty-muscled ‘Eliot Ness’ and a faction of Intergang got interjailed. Crime boss Slugger Sykes (see Thor #141), the Maggia (see FF #101 and Tales of Suspense #75-76,) and too many toughs to mention found it much harder to ‘do business’ with Jack’s heroes all over the Big Apple. (They should still consider themselves lucky that the Hulk had no mind for crime detecting and the X-Men lived upstate.)

Urban Legend #5 “Jack Kirby’s comic magazines kept thousand of readers in the cities and rural areas the world over entertained and happy.” That’s not just a legend. That’s a fact. ★ (Thanks to Jerry Boyd for researching assistance.)

(previous page, top) Cap battled gangsters in the ’40s (Captain America Comics #4) and in the ’60s under Kirby. (above) Taxi drivers (like this guy from FF #11) had it rough in a New York filled with super-powered characters. (below) “To Mug A God!” might have been the Stan Lee title to this story from Journey Into Mystery #104 (May 1964).

Original Art-ifacts

(above) Original cover art for Thor #149, featuring the Wrecker. It’s odd that a multi-panel image was used for the cover, but it does appear to have been one illo, not pieced together. 52

Obscura

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

hose of us who have tried to explain to sceptical friends the considerable virtues of such comics professionals as Jack Kirby often encounter something of a stone wall. “Well, I suppose it’s well enough done—for what it is—but it’s hardly Art, is it?” It’s more difficult to persuade those friends who know something about fine art and illustration; the response is: “It’s slick stuff—has impact—but it’s a sort of clever shorthand for real art, isn’t it?” The comics illustrators who these naysayers will give house room to are usually Bernard Krigstein and Alex Toth— two artists whose sense of design and composition is often almost abstract, and whose work seems to persuade even the sceptics who regard comics as a somewhat debased popular art form. All of which brings us to the work of Jack Kirby, a man who combined the abstract design sense of these masters with a storytelling ability that is absolutely second-to-none. The very fact that Kirby has such great popular appeal almost works against him when trying to persuade the sceptical; he so unassailably does his job well (i.e. he makes the reader turn the page) that a little effort is needed to look beyond the simple (and to be applauded) fact that Kirby is always at the service of the narrative (unlike such recently acclaimed talents as, say, Jim Lee, whose

Looking for inexpensive reprints of the stories featured this issue? The “Goliath” story was reprinted in Where Monsters Dwell #10 (July 1971, retitled “Gigantus”) and “The Dangerous Doll” was rerun in Monsters on the Prowl #20 (Dec. 1972). Goliath, Dangerous Doll TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

work draws attention to itself rather than the story). Ironically, examples of Kirby’s use of composition within the frame (what the French call—when referring to films—mise-en-scéne) can be found in some of his 1960s work that is not only not taken seriously by the sceptics I referred to earlier, but even disregarded by many a comics fan—the Marvel Monster series which kept bread on the table for Kirby and Stan Lee in the distant days before the Fantastic Four, Thor and company transformed their lives. That’s not to say that a little detective work is not in order to seek out the best stuff—but, come on, which reader of this magazine is not prepared to exert themselves a little? You know it’s worth it! Take Journey into Mystery #63 for instance, from December 1960. The cover, however eye-catching, is standard monster fare—a gigantic amphibious creature wrecking property while terrified humans scatter in panic. And the tale that it illustrated, “Goliath! The Monster That Walked Like a Man!” is very much Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on autopilot, with a truly preposterous resolution to one of their weaker stories. The second tale, as so often with Marvel/ Atlas comics of this period, is by second-stringer Don Heck and is perfectly serviceable (if not much more than that). But then we come to the interesting item in the issue—remember how I said a little detective work was necessary to find the more intriguing obscure Kirby work in this period? Buried as the third story in the issue is “The Dangerous Doll,” not (refreshingly) yet another gigantic monster on the loose tale, but something of a throwback to the more diverse fantasy tales that Lee, Kirby and Ditko had dispatched in those cherishable early issues of books like Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. The splash panel immediately grabs the attention and (unusually) evokes memories of another master artist of the period, ACG’s Ogden Whitney, who (prior to the far less inspired but more popular Herbie tales) executed the splendid cover art for Richard Hughes’ Adventures in the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds, often with a gigantic hand grasping some unlikely small object. The hand was either that of a titanic alien holding a human being, or (more often) a normal-sized human hand looking gigantic (by contrast) as it held some correspondingly tiny item—such as a small struggling mermaid. The latter concept is what Kirby delivers here, as a human hand grasps a highly malevolent-looking, robot-like thing which glares at the reader. The design of the creature itself is another example of a skill that Kirby alone seemed to possess: the ability to convey his ideas with maximum economy. The eponymous Dangerous Doll has virtually no face beyond a few lines, but is just as unsettling in its simplicity as many a panel over which another illustrator has labored for hours with crosshatching and detail. The tale itself is nothing special (and there is a SPOILER coming now which you might want to avoid if you plan to read the story), and is basically a riff on two of the most overused SF concepts of the period: the seemingly malignant alien that turns out to be benign, and the menacing alien creature that turns out to be a child, ultimately to be found by its even larger scolding parents and taken back to their home world (probably the best example of Kirby’s reinvention of this theme is the cover story in Challengers of the Unknown #1). But it’s the very fact that a crippled little girl is the only other protagonist here that gives the piece its charm, and the effect of the tale is definitely preferable to the warmed-over mass destruction of the first Kirby entry in the book. The wind-up item in Journey into Mystery #63 is one of the more stylish Steve Ditko items, but as this magazine is not called The Steve Ditko Collector, we won’t linger on that. Oh yes, that earlier business about getting people to take the art of Jack Kirby seriously—people, that is, outside the readers of the magazine—what do you think? I’d really like to know. Should we bother? Or just be content with the fact that a great many of those who take comics seriously know how important Mr. K is? Personally, I always feel a nagging desire to convert... but then I hate people who try to convert me to something, so.... ★ Barry Forshaw is the author of The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (available from Amazon.com) and the editor of Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk) 53

Influencees

Jim Lee Speaks

A brief interview conducted by Jean Depelley

(Jim Lee was born in South Korea in 1964. In the late eighties, while attending medical studies in Princeton (New Jersey), he began his artistic career at Marvel on Alpha Flight, Punisher War Journal, and Uncanny X-Men. In 1991, his X-Men #1 sold one million copies and turned out to be the best-selling comic of all time. He then started a new career as a manager for Wildstorm Productions up until the mid-1990s, when the company was eventually sold to DC. There he developed many titles, including WildC.A.T.S., Stormwatch, Deathblow, Union, Blacklash, Team 7, and Gen 13. In 1996, Lee returned to his first job as an artist for Marvel and, then, DC. At Marvel, he had complete control (both script and art) over the Heroes Reborn concept, working on Kirby co-creations such as Captain America, Avengers, FF and Iron Man. For DC, he teamed up with the other Lee (Stan the Man!) on Wonder Woman (2001), then went on to Batman and Superman. Jim was kind enough to answer a few questions by email. Thanks to Thierry Mornet (from Sémic Publishing) for making the contact possible during the Festival of Angoulême (France) and naturally to Jim Lee for his time!) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What was your first exposure to Kirby’s work? JIM LEE: I am not exactly sure, but it was probably one of those Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprints of the Fantastic Four when I was too young to remember. Also, back in fourth grade, I remember reading Origins of Marvel Comics and Son of Origins in the library and loving those incredible stories, and Jack drew most of those. So that was when I first saw his work. Of all the Marvel characters, I loved the X-Men the most. After getting hooked on the all-new, all-different X-Men back in the mid-’70s, I made it a quest to find back issues. I had a smattering of back issues of those and some Fantastic Fours that he did with Sinnott. My favorite X-Men issues were the ones where the X-Men battled the Avengers and also the one where they met Ka-Zar [#9 and #10, January and March, 1965, respectively]. TJKC: In WildC.A.T.S., Mr. Marlowe looks like Kirby. Is it a coincidence? JIM: Hmm, good question. I would say yes, it is a coincidence in that it was not my conscious intent to draw Marlowe as Kirby. I have had family members ask if Marlowe was me (laughs) so I think people are reading too much into it. I can see where the connection comes from though... both are short, stocky, with salt-and-pepper hair and an affinity for cigars. TJKC: What was it like working with Stan Lee on Just Imagine Stan Lee’s Wonder Woman? JIM: Well, it was a highlight of my career. Like I said, I think my love for comics started at a very young age when I read the classic Silver Age Marvel books that Stan wrote—thank God for Origins and Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. Stan had a way of telling a story in one issue that gave you such a sense of who the character was and made him or her so sympathetic that you were dying to know more after just one sampling. He really had and still has that gift. When we worked on the issue, we collaborated and it was both really cool and nerve-wracking as well! I mean, this is the guy who worked with the greats—and I mean the greats. Kirby, Ditko, Buscema, Romita; the list goes on and on, and luckily for me, I get to be a tiny little footnote on that amazing list of co-collaborators. We worked Marvel-style after we reworked the initial plot over the phone. I wrote little sidenotes in the margins of the panels like in the old days and was thrilled to see how he improved and brought life to my drawings and shorthand dialogue. Getting to work with him as an adult is probably every fan’s dream come true. In many ways, it still hasn’t sunk in. I have hung out with him socially now too, dinners and whatnot, and he is as great a person as he is a creator. TJKC: What is it about Kirby that really works for you, as far as Jack’s characters are concerned? JIM: Well, he was the King of action and power, and I think any artist who wants to bring dynamism and energy into his figurework and layouts and designs need not look past this giant. Jack made your teeth rattle around when Captain America crashed into the hordes of Hydra, made your hair stand on end when Doctor Doom entered the room, and made you hear the crackle and thunder of Thor’s powers. He had a way of making two-dimensional images feel even beyond 3-D; he was one of the rare ones who brought a fourth dimension to the art and the stories. You could smell and hear the action when Jack brought it to life with his pencil. He isn’t called the King for nothing. ★

The Hughes X-citement Adam Hughes interviewed by Jerry Boyd (As the sales figures of hundreds of comics will attest, Adam Hughes is one of the industry’s most dazzling young talents. In-between doing convention sketches, signing books, and watching his sketchbooks sell by the bushel, Adam was kind enough to answer a few questions put to him on August 3, 2002 at Comic-Con International. Our thanks to both Adam and Jerry Boyd for their patience in waiting for this short interview to finally see print!)

(top right) These neverbefore published illos come from a Hughes sketchbook purchased at a convention. (Art provided by John Fleskes.) (below) Three Marvel-ous ladies, made even more stunning by Adam’s linework, welcome conventioneers to the 1992 San Diego Comic-Con. (bottom right) This bust of a pensive Professor X was done in the early 1990s. All characters TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What was your first exposure to Jack Kirby? ADAM HUGHES: My first comic ever was a Jack Kirby comic: Fantastic Four #81, where Crystal joins the team. Later, I was given FF comics from cousins. My first experience going through #81 was incredible! I loved it. TJKC: Your style is very different from Jack’s. Is there anything you got from him? ADAM: Sometimes the best influences are the ones that don’t directly influence your style. Even as much as I loved the FF, the Tales of Suspense series had the best fight scenes in the universe! As I get older, I’m understanding the depth of the man’s talent. TJKC: As far as...? ADAM: His pencils are bulletproof! You can’t mess him up with [bad] inking! It’s so strong, so universal, no inker can foul it up. TJKC: Do you feel his influence is still around in comic art today? ADAM: Kirby’s stuff permeates everything. I have a real handsoff attitude to Kirby though, because so many people have aped him over the years. If I’d keep anything alive of his, it would be his pioneer spirit.

TJKC: It’s an irony that the X-Men was the Marvel super-team the company tried a little of everything to keep going, including a lot of different artists; and over the long run the book’s probably had the finest roster of talent ever to do a team book in the business: Kirby, Steranko, Windsor-Smith, Adams, Byrne, Pérez, Cockrum, Romita Jr., and you. Do you consider yourself to be an X-Men artist based on your covers and one-shots? ADAM: I didn’t know there was a club. (laughter) I enjoyed doing the X-Men Classic covers. They weren’t Jack’s X-Men, but it was a great assignment. The one-shot with the WildC.A.T.S. and the X-Men was a lot of fun. TJKC: It was a gorgeous issue. Can you pick a couple of your favorite Kirby comics? ADAM: That’s easy. Tales of Suspense #66, with the origin of the Red Skull, and again, FF #81. TJKC: Thanks for your time, Adam. We appreciate it. ADAM: No problem; glad to do it. ★

Grindstones (this page) In addition to his regular chores drawing at least three concurrent full issues a month, Jack was called upon by Marvel to produce layouts for other artists to follow. Here’s layouts for page 10 from Tales of Suspense #70 (Oct. 1965, below) and George Tuska’s finished art (right). ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. (next page) Jack managed to find time to construct collages to incorporate into his work, like this one from the 2001: A Space Odyssey Treasury Edition (1976). 2001: A Space Odyssey TM & ©2008 Turner Entertainment, Inc.

The Kirby Work Ethic

by Gary Picariello he concept of “work ethic” has changed dramatically over the years. A shift in priorities based on what each individual needs to live comfortably is counter-balanced with the need to feel good, spend time with family and friends, or just relax. Likewise, the typical 40-hour work week that society has adjusted to has given way to countless variables as well: for example, the chance to produce more work in less time, do so in a 10-12 hour workday instead of 8, and cram it into three days instead of five! For the comic book artist, however, the options are limited. One page of art equals “x” amount of dollars. And how fast that page can be completed so that the next page can be started is what makes life so challenging for the artist. Since comics’ inception, one or two pages of complete ready-to-be-inked pencils seemed to be the norm. Imagine then, how the industry’s foundations were shook when Jack Kirby came along and distinguished himself for not only being able to pencil two pages a day, but as many as four or five and sometimes more! How did he do it? And better yet—how did he manage to work at such a blistering pace for

almost 50 years? It all comes down to work ethic and the principles that drive men and women to do the things they do in order to earn a living and provide for their families. Much has been written about Jack Kirby’s ability to produce page after page of mind-boggling adventure and fantasy. So much so, that many fans tend to imagine Jack literally chained to his drawing table—churning out pencils at a furious pace, oblivious to the world around him. Although such a description makes for great melodrama, the reality is a little different than the fantasy. Comments Jack’s youngest daughter Lisa: “...My dad did spend a lot of time working. His schedule was usually from mid-afternoon and he worked all night. My mom would usually get up at 2:00 or 3:00 am to check on him, and try to convince him to go to bed. He enjoyed working during those hours because it was quiet and he had fewer interruptions. He had the TV on for company or a movie, usually Charles Bronson, or Clint Eastwood. Since he was up all night, he slept in and had a leisurely morning, till he started again. My dad’s studio pretty much had an open-door policy. We just came and went and it didn’t seem to bother him. I think he enjoyed the fact he could take a break and hang out with us for a while, and then go back to work. I’ve had other people mention that they couldn’t believe how much work my dad could put out, and that he was unbelievably fast. When I would visit him while he was working, it never really dawned on me to pay attention to how he actually laid out his story. He would sometimes stop to show me what he was working on and how the story was developing. What does stick in my mind was how fast he could sketch something out. He could have a blank piece of paper in front of him one minute, and while you are standing there asking him a question, a character would suddenly appear! I thought that was pretty amazing...” The fact is, Jack Kirby had a tremendous work ethic. But more than that, he was driven—driven to get out of the projects as a young man; driven to earn a living and provide for his family. That Jack was/is considered one of the best, if not the best comic book artist in the business, was only a by-product of that drive and desire to succeed. Consider: Jack’s contract during the ’60s 56

and ’70s paid him between $65 and $85 a page for pencils. Add in additional page-rates for writing, editing, covers and layouts and multiply that amount by three books, multiplied by twelve months a year, and Jack was earning a better-thanaverage living (at least with respect to the comics industry). But it goes without saying that in order to earn that living, Jack was also locked into a schedule that most artists couldn’t even dream of maintaining. Keep in mind however, that it was a pace dictated by Jack himself and based on the necessities of Marvel’s production schedule. But the numbers speak for themselves. Jack may have been exaggerating when he said Marvel was literally closing its doors when he showed up, but it’s no lie that Jack was producing pencils at breakneck speed from 1960-1964. Between story art, covers and breakdowns, it’s no surprise that the “Marvel style” was “Jack Kirby” and remained so for years. In fact, that house-style created a standard that wasn’t eclipsed until Image Comics came along decades later. But the person with the pencil was— at the end of the day—still just that: a person. Counters Jack’s daughter Lisa: “...What people need to remember, is that he was my father first, artist second. I get asked a lot of technical questions, and my answer has always been the same: “I can’t tell you the technical aspects of how he worked, but I can tell you what he ate for breakfast!” (Corn flakes, by the way!) Family was a very important factor in his life. He came from a poor background and I feel that was a driving force on his work ethic. He wanted to earn a decent living for his family. I do believe his work was well thought-out before he went to the drawing board. My dad was in his head a great deal of the time. That’s where my mom comes into play. She was able to relieve him from everyday responsibilities so he could just work and create! Even though my father worked a great deal of the time, he did manage to take the time off for family get-togethers and outings. We always seemed to have guests over at one time or another. He loved people and entertaining. People would just gather around him and listen to him tell his stories, my friends included. Our annual 4th of July pool parties come to mind. It seemed to get bigger every year. I still have people coming over to me and saying how much they enjoyed our parties! I guess he made up the time by working all night. I remember that he never missed any of my horse shows, and he loved to take time off to be with his grandchildren. When they were babies, he could walk with them, it seemed, for hours. I do believe that the time he spent with family and friends was special to him, and was his way of taking a break and relieving stress.” Fast-forward to the here and now: The comic book industry has changed. It’s a different dynamic and you don’t necessarily see the kind of intensity displayed by Jack Kirby anymore. Or do you? To say that many of today’s artists don’t have the same spark as their Golden or Silver Age counterparts may be doing them a disservice. Steve Rude—popular artist of Nexus and his new character The Moth—feels that a “happy medium” needs to be settled on by the illustrator; one that satisfies economic needs and also aesthetic concerns. With regards to keeping pace with Jack or maintaining the type of Herculean pace Kirby was known for, Rude says: “... I, for one, could not. I’ve had many years to find what pace is best for me, and it seems to come down to about a page, to a page-and-a-half a day. Sometimes slower, but rarely faster. Were I to produce work back

when they knocked them out fast, then I would probably resort to just doing layouts. I could turn out about 4-5 nice looking layouts a day. I would just draw basic shapes for cars, buildings, people, things like that. It might be fun for a while, but I probably wouldn’t develop much as an artist, which requires the discipline of finishing. There’s a huge difference in the time involved. Drawing a horse, for example, requires research and practice and I don’t them know them well enough to draw them blind. Jack could draw them perfectly, as he could virtually anything, and had this amazing aptitude to draw things from just the image in his mind to work from. For other artists, like myself, it takes time to make the ‘illusion of effortlessness’ look easy...” Rude has been fortunate during his career— juggling “mainstream” assignments for Marvel while keeping true to his indie roots with more personal projects. Each has their pluses and drawbacks. “...My most recent work, the Moth, is still new to people, and to get an audience beyond the one I have, I’ve got to dig. I’ve had massive degrees of success throughout my career, and I don’t mind the effort of continually earning or proving it, just as Jack himself had to. [For now] doing a creator-owned book like the Moth

pays poorly, but producing the Moth is a very important, personal mission for me, and the challenge of its success seems to rest squarely on my shoulders.” Other artists in the mainstream share the same connection—if not with Kirby’s ability to work round-the-clock, then at least with the sensibilities of his work ethic. The effort an artist puts into the job will hopefully pay dividends later. Former Marvel Conan artist Rafael Kayan thinks that freelancers like himself are under an extreme amount of pressure to produce—not unlike the kind of pressure Jack dealt with his entire career. “The pressure,” explains Rafael, “is all on doing good work and making sure you work for people who also respect your work and you. That soothes a lot of the headaches. If you have a publisher or editor who is good at communication and returning calls, then it is easier to get work. I’ve always been a freelancer, so I consider comics work as important as any outside illustration work for films, advertising, etc. I have a website, keep in contact with other pros in the biz and generally seek out the jobs I find worthwhile.” Kayan stresses a point that today there are more options available to illustrators than during 57

Jack’s heyday, adding that it’s crucial for today’s young comic professionals to understand the limited sources of viable income available to them. “...If they are not educating themselves in new media like digital technology or other possible jobs like games, books, storyboarding, advertising—then they corner themselves in the market. “I have been pretty good on deadlines, especially monthly books I worked on. I never missed a deadline for Dark Horse Comics (who I’m currently doing a project for), DC, Marvel, or First Comics. When I worked on Conan the Adventurer for Marvel, I made sure to let the editor know that I would need a break in the middle of the run, so that they could find a replacement for those issues. It wasn’t because of one book slowing me down, but because I knew three different books I was working on were going to overlap. So at one time, I was penciling two monthlies, and inking a book. However, I would never compare my output to people like Kirby, John Byrne, Gil Kane, John Buscema and others who have done so consistently for many years...” It’s been said that Jack’s work ethic was a product of the times in which he lived. I’d venture to say that his work ethic was rooted in his need to succeed. In this respect, Jack Kirby had it in spades and displayed it in a manner that few will ever match and fewer still will probably ever eclipse. Having said that, I’d wager to add that it’s a rare illustrator working in comics today who hasn’t learned something from the sacrifices Jack made—to not only improve and take the art form to its next level, but also to support and provide for his family. Certainly comic books have the ability to teach us many things. But we can learn a lot more by studying the man behind the pencil who produced the many four-color parables that have helped shape our lives. ★

(above) In addition to doing layouts for others, Jack was called upon to pinch-hit complete stories when other artists missed their deadlines, such as the Sub-Mariner story from Tales To Astonish #83 (Sept. 1966). Here are Jack’s handwritten plot notes for that story, likely from a phone conference with Stan Lee. This was the second story of a two-parter (continuing from his fill-in on issue #82 the month before, when regular artist Gene Colan caught the flu after completing two pages). Jack jotted these notes on the back of stats from Strange Tales #146 (July 1966), which he also laid-out for Don Heck. All characters TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

NutS & BoltS

Dancing the Kirby Method by Dave Plunkert was seven years old in 1972 when my mother dropped me off at the neighborhood barbershop while she ran some errands (this was years before children’s faces started appearing on milk cartons). I passed through the paneled interior filled with cigar smoke, watched the glass bird wearing a tophat take a few swallows from his shotglass, and settled down on a vinyl seat near a rack of tattered magazines and comic books, awaiting my turn in the “chair”—or in this case, the woodcarved brown horse that served the barber’s younger clientele. I proceeded to rummage through the comic books. The book I picked up was coverless but contained two stories; one about a creature called the Hulk and the other about a guy in swimtrunks called the Sub-Mariner. It would be years before I would realize the similarities between my first encounter with the SubMariner and that of a young Johnny Storm in the historic Fantastic Four #4—the major difference being that Johnny gave Subby an impromptu shave and a haircut with a flaming finger while I got the Little Buckaroo cut from Mr. Gus. Keep in mind that at this particular point in time my knowledge of comic book history was limited to Archie, Richie Rich, and various Disney fare, so I was hardly prepared for the story I encountered while I passed the time on that Saturday afternoon over thirty years ago. The first two pages of “The Power of Iron Man” from Tales to Astonish #82 are wonderfully drawn by Gene Colan, but nothing prepares the reader for the third page where Kirby takes over. Twin repulsor rays flash from outstretched hands, framing a grim metallic face that features a pair of dark but determined eyes. Has Iron Man ever seemed more powerful or confident than he seems in that panel? His repulsor rays succeed in knocking Namor off his pins, if not shutting him up. Namor’s best moment in the story is at the top of page four, knocking Iron Man through a wall of bricks and Kirby gadgets with so much force his fist disappears with the impact! Diving onto his fallen opponent, the SubMariner is driven into the pavement by a pair of clasped armored fists. The scene that for me underscores the key

difference in the two combatants is the second panel on page six where Namor attempts to remove Iron Man’s helmet. No words could heighten the anxiety of the moment greater than the picture of Iron Man’s single eye staring wide back at Namor: one panel, and I was an Iron Man fan for life. Here was a hero powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with anyone, but who was, for all his power, just an ordinary human being. Roy Thomas’ dialogue reinforces the grudging respect that both enemies feel for the other and at the same time comes close to matching the scope of Jack’s art. However, Kirby’s work here is so clear and direct that the pictures barely need words at all. Dick Ayers’ inking gives the artwork a crude finish that is surprisingly effective here, and also gives the story a vintage Marvel aura. The battle rages for four more pages with Iron Man and Subby matching blow for blow until one begins to weaken. You see, Iron Man was able to trick Namor into letting him recharge in the middle of the battle while Namor continued to dehydrate. Namor sees Warlord Krang’s battle cruiser and breaks free in pursuit. I would come to recognize the unresolved outcome as a trademark of Marvel comics, but to this day I’m impressed with how skillfully Kirby managed to excite the reader panel after panel, all the while saddled with the burdensome task of having this colossal fight end in a draw. Eventually I would complete the storyline that began in Tales of Suspense #79 and #80, and although initially disappointed that Kirby hadn’t drawn all three chapters, I would come to appreciate Gene Colan as well. While the change from Colan to Kirby is jarring, it nonetheless makes for an appealing visual contrast. Storywise, the first two installments build up the tension nicely, but hardly show either character at their fighting best: Iron Man is depicted weaker than wet tissue while Namor embarrassingly falls for the old Bre’r Rabbit Okey-Doke (thank God he doesn’t have shoe laces). Admittedly, the reason given for these two having at it so furiously is a bit lame. While not a classic “Marvel Misunderstanding,” it becomes apparent that Namor doesn’t subscribe to the notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” considering his temper is directed at Iron Man for driving off the villainous Warlord Krang. What one would have to do to get on Subby’s good side is beyond me. Flimsy plot contrivance aside, we need only assume that Namor is a hothead spoiling for a fight and Iron Man is in the wrong place at the wrong time and protecting bystanders. In much the same way that dancers need no pretext to perform, the story is essentially a no-holds-barred ballet choreographed by the greatest action artist of our time. ★ (David Plunkert is a graphic designer/illustrator and a partner at Spur Design in Baltimore, Maryland.) 59

Kirby & Copyright: The Leg

Legal-Ease

by Adrian Day “I’ve always believed that the Marvel Method strips were true collaboration between writer and artist in the most literal sense.” Stan Lee, Excelsior!: The Amazing Life of Stan Lee

e’ve all heard the stories of Jack Kirby’s struggle with Marvel, in his latter days, for the return of his original artwork, and their attempt to obtain, from him, a signed statement relinquishing any possible claim to the characters he created with Stan Lee under “work for hire” status in the ’60s as a precursor to any such agreement. Marvel’s prerequisite in that instance, much like the “work for hire” arrangement itself, has always carried strong legal implications that a lot of folks seem to miss. However, before we discuss those implications here, we should first lay the groundwork by demystifying a topic about which a great many people have misconceptions: copyright. Once we consider the basic principles of copyright protection, hopefully a number of things about Marvel’s legal position or Stan’s philosophical position over the years concerning the Marvel characters, should become evident.

What Exactly Constitutes a Copyright Claim? To answer that question we should start by explaining what is not protected under copyright.

Copyright law does not protect ideas. Did you get that? Let me repeat it. Copyright law does not protect ideas. It only protects the expression of ideas in a fixed or tangible form. Does that surprise you? Allow me to elaborate and you’ll quickly understand why this must be so. In popular music, just to give you a “for instance,” certain chord progressions are seen over and over. It’s just the nature of the beast. For this reason, if I write a song based on a three-chord structure, I cannot copyright that three chord progression itself, as many songs are based on that same pattern. When George Harrison lost a lawsuit maintaining that his song, “My Sweet Lord” was taken from an earlier song called “He’s So Fine,” he did not lose because the underlying chord structure was the same. In fact, he probably wasn’t the first to repeat it. He lost because the song he came up with using the “idea” of that chord sequence was not sufficiently different from the complainant’s. This illustration holds true for art and writing as well. Superficial similarities do not constitute copyright infringement, or as a judge in the Harvey Comics vs. Ghostbusters case once observed, “There are only so many ways to represent the figure of a ghost.” Ideas are a dime a dozen, and a truly original idea is hard to come by. If you think you were the first to think of it, chances are you weren’t. Another for instance—consider two recent movies, The Others and The Sixth Sense, two totally different stories that originated from the same idea; someone dies but they don’t know they’ve died, and the drama that ensues leads them to the discovery of the terrible truth. So then, when and how does your idea become copyrightable material? Simply put, it’s all in the expression. As you write, or draw your idea out and elaborate in greater detail, what distinguishes it from other similar ideas will make it unique, just like the two examples above. That unique work is what copyright law protects and it is considered copyrighted the moment it is completed! Registration of that copyright is merely a formality to avail you a legal remedy should someone steal your work, and you’ll note I said “work” here, not “idea”!

“Work for Hire” and the Early Days of the Comics Industry Now that we’ve got copyright under our belt, let’s examine “work for hire,” what it is and why it became the modus operandi of the comic book business. “Work for hire” is simply an agreement under which a creator surrenders his inherent rights in creating a property (hint: inherent is an important term here) for immediate monetary compensation by another party. That said party, then, has full license to exploit that creation as they see fit, under the terms of the agreement. It’s an arrangement as old as Jacob and Esau, although casting comic book publishers as the crafty brother wrestling the claim to his brother’s inheritance in a vulnerable moment is perhaps a bit heavy-handed. Though it may appear so in hindsight, no one, back in the day, saw any value in comics beyond a 60

al Standing On “Who Did What” way of keeping their presses busy in order to compete for the same dime at the newsstand. For Depression era aspiring writers and artists, any job was a good job, and cold hard cash for some bit about guys in colored tights probably left them feeling like they were the ones exploiting the situation. The comic book, like rock ’n’ roll later on, was not something that had any perceived longevity. It would not be until the late ’60s that any of the properties created for this market would show real signs of permanence. Along the way, talents like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko must certainly have had the savvy to recognize what they were giving away. They knew there was a greater value in their creation than what the publishers were paying out, but it was still a gamble and, with families to provide for, quite possibly those stakes seemed too high. Not even Will Eisner, who managed to avoid the “work for hire” arrangement, could have guessed that a strip like the Spirit would still be of interest to people 60 years later.

The Spider-Man Question There are two points I hope to have made clear by now. The first being this; that the expression of an idea in a concrete form and not the idea itself is copyrightable. Secondly, the “work for hire” arrangement, by its very nature, is an acknowledgement that the “hiree” has inherent rights in the creation of a property that it becomes necessary to “buy out” in order for the contractor to free themselves of future obligations in compensating the creator. Now let’s examine a specific case. Many people in the intervening years have insisted that Spider-Man was their idea. Stan Lee has always maintained that Spider-Man was his idea alone. Steve Ditko, C.C. Beck, Joe Simon, and Jack Kirby himself have all insisted at one time or another that Spidey was their child. Jack’s first public claim was made in the second issue of Comics Scene in March of 1982. On the record there, Jack claimed that he “did a mess of things. The only book I didn’t work on was Spider-Man, which Steve Ditko did. But Spider-Man was my creation.” Jack’s position appears to be largely lodged in a proposal he offered Stan in the developmental stage, based on ideas he worked up a few years earlier with Joe Simon for the unused “Silver Spider.” C.C. Beck had submitted a proposal for a character of the same name to Harvey Comics back in 1954 only to have it rejected. In his recent autobiography, Excelsior: The Amazing Life of Stan Lee, Stan Lee dismisses these claims as the inevitable attempt of others to ride on the coat tails of his own success. He devotes a significant space within the book to address his differences with Steve Ditko over the character, explaining, “I’ve had a long-running, philosophical argument with Steve Ditko over whether I created Spider-Man or ‘we’ created him. Steve feels that, although the original idea, the original story, and the original description of the characters were mine, it would never have come to fruition without his illustrations. Well, despite my own opinion of what

constitutes a character’s ‘creation’, my respect for Steve is so great, and his contribution to the strip so important, that I’m willing to share the credit and call myself the co-creator.” Stan can afford a certain amount of magnanimity at this point in his career. A public declaration in his biography will not seriously impact 40 years of public perception. Also, so far as I know, he has never directly profited from the perception that he is Spider-Man’s sole creator. That is to say, he wrote his scripts under the same “work for hire” arrangement. He is not, therefore, guilty of robbing Ditko financially by claiming sole authorship. But is he the sole author? Consider it from the perspective of copyright law. Remember that bit about ideas versus tangible expressions? Weigh it against Stan’s own position in Excelsior: “As I’ve mentioned before, I really think I’m being very generous in giving him ‘co-creator’ credit, because I’m the guy who dreamed up the title, the concept, and the characters. But, to be fair to Steve, here’s his point of view. He feels that all I had was an idea. Until it was put down on illustration board and given form and shape, it was nothing more than an idea. An idea in a vacuum is just an idea until the artist brings it to life, sayeth Mr. Ditko. Personally, I still think the idea is the thing, because an idea can be given to any artist to be brought to life. However, even though I feel he has confused the ‘creation’ of a strip with its ‘execution,’ I’m more than willing to say that Steve co-created the webswinger with me, and I hope the matter will now be peacefully laid to rest.” Steve Ditko laid out his own case in an essay written for Robin Snyder’s History of Comics Vol. 1, No. 5 in May of 1990. There he waxed philosophical about what exactly constitutes a creation, arguing the distinction between ideas and actual creations. Interestingly enough both Stan and Steve have approached the question from the same consideration; that is based on nothing more than personal opinion. The difference is that Steve’s argument is supported by copyright law. Stan’s position that “the idea is thing” is in flat contradiction to copyright principles. Ditko effectively demonstrates in his essay that giving an idea to “any” artist can widely vary the outcome. Per Steve, Jack Kirby did indeed draw a version of his vision of Spider-Man and it was unrecognizable from the Spider-Man of Amazing Fantasy #15. So, who created Spider-Man? Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were clearly co-creators and not because Stan has generously capitulated to Steve’s objections, but because copyright law supports that contention. Neither Jack, nor Joe, nor C.C. Beck even has a horse in this race. Their part is nothing more than a fascinating sideboard on the origins of the character.

Jack’s Artwork and the Slippery Slope Oddly enough, while Stan does touch upon the acrimony that existed between he and Jack in his book, he somehow reduces it to a contention on Jack’s part that Stan never exercised any editorial

authority over his penciled pages. His book asserts that “Jack went as far as to say Stan would never dare edit any of his artwork or ask him to redraw anything.” Stan follows this with a quote from John Romita about how rejected Kirby pages were often used to try out new inkers. Of course, it is true that Jack made asinine statements of this kind from time to time and also true that some of his rejected pages were used precisely as Mr. Romita suggests, but it is ultimately a straw man argument. Confronting the dispute over Spider-Man, Stan is very direct, so why does he totally sidestep the same dispute in Kirby’s case? Perhaps the answer to that question, and the question of why Marvel turned a simple request for the return of artwork into a battle over authorship, are one and the same. Though Jack was very vocal in later years about the part he played in creating Marvel’s characters, he never pursued legal action personally, despite a show of support for others who followed that course. You might have expected Marvel to cooperate fully with Jack’s request as a show of good will toward Jack and his fans. What exactly was the harm in returning Jack’s art, and why the need for a written statement disavowing any claim to the Marvel Universe? I believe that Marvel’s legal team, for whatever reason, viewed the return of Jack’s artwork as tantamount to recognition on their part that Jack’s claims were true and that the return of that work would create a slippery slope that could unseat their legal standing. Ultimately, however, it seems to me that requiring Jack to sign over the characters a second time, since he had already done so via a “work for hire” contract while employed by Marvel, would only strengthen his position. One cannot sell copyright control of a property, if the ownership does not originate with them in the first place. “Work for hire,” in simplest terms, is a creator surrendering the copyright that the act of creation affords them, for some form of compensation. Asking Jack to contractually disavow ownership again seemed to broadcast the notion that Marvel felt its position was a weak one. By the same token, Stan’s assertion in his biography that “the Marvel Method strips were true collaboration between writer and artist in the most literal sense,” seems to be in full conflict with his stance on the creation of the Marvel characters. Imagine Ira Gershwin suggesting that he alone was the creator of all those great Gershwin tunes, because he came up with the words. He could, after all, have given them to anyone to put to music. It’s not a perfect analogy, granted, but it does spotlight the problem. Neither oxygen nor hydrogen is the sole author of water. It took both to arrive at the final creation. Leave out the oxygen, or decide to collaborate with a different atom, and you’ll end up with something, but it won’t be water—not what we know as water at any rate. If copyright law reveals anything, it is that an idea doesn’t amount to anything until it is fleshed out as a tangible entity. Even Kirby had an idea called “Spiderman.” ★

Tribute

(right) Moderator Mark Evanier, and (below, clockwise from left) Neil Gaiman, Darwyn Cooke, Erik Larsen, and Paul Levine. Photos courtesy of Chris Ng. (next page) We hope that any Simon & Kirby book deal will finally print the three unpublished Stuntman stories done in 1946; good stuff! Here’s a page from “Jungle Lord.” Stuntman TM & ©2008 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estate.

2007 Kirby Tribute Panel Conducted on July 29, 2007 at Comic-Con International: San Diego Featuring Neil Gaiman, Darwyn Cooke, Erik Larsen, and Paul Levine Moderated by Mark Evanier • Transcribed & edited by John Morrow (Editor’s note: This panel took place more than a year ago, and since that time, books discussed like Mark Evanier’s Kirby: King of Comics and Image Comics’ Silver Star collection have already seen print. So if you missed them, be sure to seek them out at your local comics shop, or on Amazon.com.) MARK EVANIER: I’m probably Mark Evanier, so this must be a Jack Kirby panel, right? (laughter) This is my eleventh panel of this convention, and it’s the one that always means the most to me every year. Earlier this month, I was a guest of honor at a thing called the AnthroCon in Pittsburgh. This is a gathering of people who are into funny animals. They wear these giant furry costumes around; it’s a beautiful, lovely convention, and I have a great time there. It’s where people were asking me to autograph Yogi Bear instead of DNAgents. On the last day of the convention, I was wandering through the dealer’s room, and something felt odd to me about it. And I suddenly realized, no one at that convention had asked me about Jack Kirby. It was the first time in my entire life that I’ve ever been at a convention and no one has come to me and said, “I want to talk about Jack Kirby.” It was

fascinating; I don’t necessarily approve of it, (laughter) but then, within 30 seconds of my realization, someone came up to me and said, “So what was the deal with the Black Racer?” (laughter) Jack is everywhere; it’s true, and it’s amazing that we’ve been able to do these [panels]. We could not fill this room every year for anybody else at this con; this is even a larger room than we had last year. I’ve been to a lot of memorial panels; you know, you’re not really dead until you’re dead on my weblog. (laughter) I’ve done a whole bunch of these, and we’ve had trouble filling the room, even to a not embarrassing degree, some years when the person has just died. Now here it is, many, many years after Jack left us, and not only do we have this big crowd here, I’m going to be spending a big part of this panel talking about upcoming Kirby projects. Jack’s in print more than he’s ever been in his life. It’s just stunning, and he’s in print in quality, beautiful editions meant to be kept and treasured, often collecting books that people once told him were flops. Kirby’s failures are now $49.95 hardcovers; it’s amazing. Let me introduce our dais to you here. We may have one or two other people joining us before long. (cell phone rings from audience) And I will wait till the cell phone stops. (pause) And I’ll turn off mine so I don’t embarrass myself. (laughter) The gentleman to my left has been a friend of mine for many years. He came up to me night-before-last at the Eisner Awards, where he won 104 of them, (laughter) and was the hit of the evening, for reasons he would probably not want to discuss. [Editor’s note: Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Ross brought the house down at the Eisners with a hilarious, ad-libbed presentation speech that is available for viewing on YouTube; it literally had tears streaming down this editor’s face from laughing so hard, so check it out!] And he said, “Thank you for putting me on the Jack Kirby Panel; I always wanted to do something like that”; a fine writer, Mr. Neil Gaiman, ladies and gentlemen. (applause) Jack lived long enough to see the phenomenon that was Image Comics. He got to see a group of young, energetic, creative people making a lot of money off their work, which mattered to him, but also taking control of it, becoming publishers, being the stud duck in the game, as it were. He loved that; Jack did not really have a jealous bone in his body. He wished it had happened earlier, that kind of opportunity, but he was very happy that it happened for all the Image guys, and they were in turn very, very nice to him. He was very impressed with the work of one of my favorite writer/artists, Mr. Erik Larsen. (applause) If you were watching, you just saw me meet Darwyn Cooke for the first time, but I have admired this man’s work for many years. And when they said to me, “Hey, Darwyn Cooke might like to be on the Jack Kirby Panel,” I said, “Then I want Darwyn Cooke.” Mr. Darwyn Cooke’s on the Jack Kirby Panel. (applause) The gentleman on the end is the lawyer for the Jack Kirby Estate, and he’s also my attorney, and I feel it’s important to

always keep my attorney within about eight feet of me. (laughter) Over the years, Jack got some very, very bad legal advice, very bad business advice; he had a lot of problems that many of you know about. But he was often rescued by, and his career put on much better track and his life was put on much better track, and now the Kirby Estate is in the very capable hands of, Mr. Paul Levine. (applause) Now I’m going to come down there and play Phil Donahue for a minute. We have a number of people in the audience that are involved in Kirby-related projects, and I thought we’d get them all together rather than make them all schlep up on the stage. I’d like to introduce you to an editor, publisher, agent, packager, writer; it’s Mr. Steve Saffel, ladies and gentlemen. (applause) By the way, these historicaltype panels here are preserved for posterity through the work of two men; this is Mr. Marc Svennson, ladies and gentlemen, and running one of the other cameras is Mr. Mike Catron. (applause) If you see these gentlemen, thank them, because otherwise all these wonderful panels where we get to hear the greats of the business, would be lost. For some reason, they even record my panels. (laughter) Steve, you’ve got a letter. STEVE SAFFEL: I do. Of all the strange things I’ve done, this is probably one of the most important. I’m a messenger. I have a statement that I want to read, and I’m going to do it slowly, because I get really nervous like this. “The years that I worked with Jack Kirby were some of the most exciting years of my career in comics, and that’s saying a lot. Jack and I got into the business when most of us were just trying to make a decent living. Yet we got to work in just about every genre; super-heroes, kid teams, war books, westerns, horror, and plenty more. Even romance comics; who’d have thought we’d be the guys who did the first romance comics? But we got to try just about everything. Jack Kirby was the guy who could do it all, and do it brilliantly. “For years we lived across the street from each other on Long Island, each of us with a studio in the attic. There we doubled the pleasure, as we made comics and watched our families grow—me with my wife Harriet, Jack with his wife Roz. Other times we rented

space in Manhattan, working with other great artists like Mort Meskin and Bob Powell. Wherever we were, when Jack got ahold of the story, the page could hardly contain the action, the excitement, and the drama. His pencils were solid gold. “Put simply, Jack was the finest storyteller the comics ever had. It was a privilege to know him, to work with him, and to call him my friend. “Best, Joe Simon.” (applause) MARK: Now Steve, you are working with Joe Simon on a couple of projects, and he asked you to come in. Are you working with Joe on any upcoming

project that would excite this room greatly, and cause them to spend lots of money? (laughter) STEVE: Yes. (laughter) MARK: Can you tell us about them? STEVE: No. (laughter) Actually, we’re coming very close. The happy thing is Joe Simon, at age 93, is back in publishing. What you don’t realize is that, Joe with Jack was truly the renaissance team. If you really go back to the early 1940s, Joe Simon and Will Eisner were probably among the few renaissance men would could do every aspect of comics. Joe 63

him, so I thank everyone for being here. I have to thank Mark Evanier, who puts this on every year; it’s amazing. He’s such a big help to me, even during the year. If I have questions, I can call Mark, and he’s always there for me. And John Morrow with the Jack Kirby Collector, Mike Thibodeaux, there’s so many others that are behind the scenes that definitely deserve my thanks. I thank the lovely distinguished panel that is here today, and I hope everybody enjoys themselves. Thank you for being here. (applause) MARK: Thank you, Lisa. Speaking of John Morrow, if there was ever a room where we didn’t have to do a sales pitch for the Jack Kirby Collector, this is the publisher, Mr. John Morrow. (applause) Is Anton Kawasaki here? Anton is the editor of DC’s reprint volumes, and I’m sure you’ve all got the first volume of the Fourth World book. Anton’s not here; I’m going to poll the room. How many people loved the paper stock in the Fourth World books? (very minor applause) How many people don’t like the paper stock in the Fourth World books? (even less applause) Okay, how many people have no opinion whatsoever about it? (laughter) It’s been very controversial. Bob, would you like to talk about this? This is Bob Wayne, who’s in charge of everything at DC that matters. (applause) BOB WAYNE: I could barely see you from back there; how could you see me? We’re really pleased with the response to the first volume of the Fourth World book. Everything’s moving along just fine on the subsequent three books. Don’t tell anybody, but this is just the pilot; if this does well, there’ll be more of the Kirby DC material in nice hardcover collections as well. (applause)

maintained that ability as an editor, writer, artist, packager, deal maker, for his entire life. And I can say that comfortably because he’s still doing it. So all I can say is, keep an eye out over the next few months, and I think you guys are going to be really happy. (applause)

What do I always tell you when you tell me you have nothing to say in front of these people? LISA KIRBY: I’m speechless now. (laughter)

MARK: Thank you, Steve. And I know what that project is, and you guys are going to be really poor after it comes out. (laughter) I phoned Joe a week or two ago, and we got on the subject of him being in his nineties. We got started on Al Hirshfeld, the great caricaturist, and he said, “Y’know, I’ve always admired Al Hirshfeld in his old age.” And I said, “Oh, because he was still drawing?” And Joe said, “No, because he sued his agent.” (laughter) Let me introduce to you another Steve in the room, my partner when I was working for Jack. This is Mr. Steve Sherman, ladies and gentlemen. (applause) Say a few words for the Kirby intelligencia. STEVE SHERMAN: Thank you all for coming. I think Jack would really be pleased to know so many people would still show up, even though he wasn’t able to make it. (laughter) He would always kid about that. But thank you for coming. (applause) MARK: Would you do me a favor, and make a lot of noise for Lisa Kirby? (sustained applause) Lisa is always shy about participating in these things. 64

MARK: I tell you that this crowd loves you. (applause) They consider you one of Jack’s finest co-creations. (laughter) Joe Simon and Stan had nothing to do with this one. (laughter, Lisa laughs) Roz never mentioned it anyway. (laughter) You are running the Kirby Estate at this time, working with Paul [Levine]. Is there anything upcoming that especially excites you? LISA: First of all, as nervous as I am, I have to just thank everyone for being here. I’ve been here for a few years now, and I’m always really amazed how this is filling up a room. It means a lot to me and my family that people out there still remember my father, and enjoy his work, and that would mean a lot to him as well. Because his fans, he was so grateful, and so happy that he did the work that he did. He loved it, and he loved talking to people, and I know he was one of the first artists to come to the San Diego Convention. I was real young at the time, and they had to drag me here. Once we got here it was a lot of fun, but he loved it. My mother would have to drag him away from people, going, “You’ve got to rest!” But he loved it, and it meant a lot to

MARK: This is not an official announcement, but I think within about five years, DC will have everything Jack ever did for them in print, in hardcovers, full-color lovely editions. It all seems to be selling well, including, like I said, the books that at the time were considered failures. Whereas a lot of books that were considered hits at the time, are not being reprinted and not remembered that way. I’m getting a little emotional about this, the fact that Jack was always proven right. He was ahead of his time, sometimes he was ten years early with his material, but it seems to always click with people. The last thing I’ll mention briefly is, I have a book coming out this Fall, God willing, from Harry N. Abrams Publishing. They called me around February and said, “Our big Christmas book,” which I think was something full of Picasso folios, or something of that nature, “fell off the schedule. We have a hole in our publishing, and we need a big, exciting book to go there. Can you put together a Jack Kirby book quickly?” And I, foolishly on some levels, said, “Sure I can.” The book is still not to press, because as happens with Jack, we keep finding new things. We have found some amazing artwork to go in this. This is not necessarily a book of rare Kirby art. You will have seen much of this work before, although we have a couple of unpublished covers Jack did at Marvel that have never been seen, and some sketches he did as a kid. Lisa has been enormously helpful; is Mike Thibodeaux here? Mike’s been tracking down stuff, and a lot of people have given me wonderful stuff. At this convention, people are coming up to me, offering me pieces of artwork that have to be in the book, which is very exciting. We’re still redesigning it, we’re still

laying it out, and it will be out very soon. As you exit the room today, there are posters, and what they call a “blag,” which is an 8-page sample of the book, so take copies of it. I don’t think the book is going to look very much like those, but it’s a piece of paper with Kirby art on it; how bad can it be? (laughter) If anybody else has an absolute treasure of Jack’s artistry—we just scanned the other day, this double-page spread from Boys’ Ranch, with the bear attacking the two guys. But Jack took the original and handcolored it, and it’s going to be a double-page spread in the book. And you know the reproduction quality Harry N. Abrams’ books always get; you’ll be stunned by how good this is going to look. I’m very pleased about it, and I thank everyone here who’s been helping me with it; you’ll see it soon, and I hope you’ll enjoy it. The follow-up book, which is my definitive—I hate the word “definitive”—biography of Jack is now crossing 450,000 words and still growing, and that’s still a few years away. I’m hoping this book will tide you over until that book comes out. So thanks for your support on that. Now I’m going to ask each of the panelists my traditional question, which is, “What was the first work of Jack’s that you were aware of, that had an impression on you, and what was your favorite Kirby work if it wasn’t the first one?”

is probably in the Demon, the sequence where Klarion the Witchboy has vanished Jason Blood, and they come into this cool spooky apartment, and they’re walking around, and there’s the toad, and the cat—he’s turned that Teela girl into a cat; it’s just one of the weirdest, spookiest moments. At which Guillermo says, [again in heavy accent] “You know, we must make the Demon movie. We’ll put that in there, just like that, shot for shot.” (laughter, applause) My other favorite moment of Jack’s—which is a pretty odd little one; I’m not sure if it’s been reprinted, I’m not sure if anyone much else ever saw it—was about the first 8-10 pages of Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles where he’s inked by Barry Smith. (audience murmors knowingly) I always loved that, the idea that you have this underlying sense of amazing Kirby power and design, and then you’ve got Barry Smith—who once in a letter,

(previous page) Mike Royer-inked Kirby art for a 1970s Mattel puzzle game. (below) Neil Gaiman’s favorite scene, from Demon #15 (Dec. 1973). Yeah, we’d go see that Demon film! All characters TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

NEIL GAIMAN: Let’s see. The first Jack Kirby work I ever saw would’ve been an English reprint of X-Men #1 in a comic. There was Oddham’s Power Press line, and they had titles like Wham, Smash, Power, Fantastic, and Terrific. (laughter) I was about seven years old, and it would’ve been X-Men #1, printed in black and white, and one weird extraneous color, which could’ve been blue, or could’ve been red, randomly put on. That’s the first I remember, and the first I was aware of. The first time I was aware of Jack as Jack, I would’ve been about 11 or 12, and would’ve been picking up—I’m not sure if it was Jimmy Olsen, or something like Mister Miracle, one of those. I’m just going, “This is that guy who did...”; and it’s that weird moment you get where everything all falls into place, and you recognize something stylistically, and a name that up until that point was just one of the names on the comics, and it all changed. Favorite? Probably two; I was having this conversation two weeks ago in Budapest with Guillermo del Toro on the Hellboy set. (laughter) MARK: Isn’t that the most impressive sentence you’ve heard at this convention? (laughter) I was sitting with Sergio at a delicatessen... (laughter) NEIL: In Budapest? (laughter) MARK: No, no, but the language was similar. (laughter) NEIL: We were walking around the Hellboy set, and the conversation got on to, [in heavy accent] “So Neil, what’s your favorite Jack Kirby page?” in the way that it does, (laughter) and we talked about two. I said one of them 65

shorthand beauty!” (laughter) And just for that 13 pages, I thought, “This is what Jack would’ve been like in that alternate universe, in which he was a pre-Raphaelite.” (laughter) But it gave me an insight that then worked back into the rest of the Jack stuff. MARK: Recently Marvel put out a beautiful hardcover collecting the Eternals series that Neil wrote. I wrote the foreword for it, and I meant what I said in it; I’m not impressed by a lot of continuations of Jack’s work. A lot of them are these slavish, hollow imitations that to me are basically George Lazenby. (laughter) [Editor’s note: Australian actor George Lazenby temporarily replaced Sean Connery as James Bond for one film in 1969.] And a lot of them are so far from what Jack had in mind, that I don’t connect them with Jack, and I’m kind of offended by the notion that someone thinks they are an extrapolation from his work. Neil managed to split the difference on that book; he managed to take the basic concept, to perceive what had stimulated Jack about the premise, and take it and put it into his own context, his own views. Can you talk a little bit about the challenge of doing something like that, what you faced?

(above) Splash page from Eternals #14 (Aug. 1977), as Jack is forced to use the Hulk in the series. (next page) The Last Boy on Earth discovers Kliklak on the last page of Kamandi #11 (Nov. 1973). Ikaris, Hulk TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. Kamandi TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

when I told him how much I loved that, wrote me this long, heartbreaking letter about being in England for medical reasons, and he’d gone back from America because he couldn’t afford American medical stuff, and was in some horrible little back room, getting medical treatment, and sitting in this tiny little cramped flat, inking this Kirby stuff. All he remembers is the pain and the misery. (laughter) And just talking about how much I loved Jack with this weird, beautiful, pre-Raphaelite line. And it gave me a whole other insight into what was going on with the pencils underneath, because it was sort of Jack with added beauty. I sort of saw an inherent beauty in Jack’s work; I always understood the sense of composition, of power, of design, of all of that stuff. But I always thought Jack shorthanded beauty. It was like the way Jack would shorthand flames, where he’d get big black dots with squiggly things around them, and that’s flames. It didn’t look like any flame you’d ever seen, but it was flame, it was shorthand. Sometimes Jack would draw some woman with an enormous jaw, and everyone’d go, “She’s beautiful,” and you’d go, “Oh,

NEIL: There were two huge challenges involved in Eternals. First was going back and reading what Jack had done, and bleeding for him. Just watching the way that Marvel would not let it... you could see he had this vision, he had this thing he was trying to do, he had an idea about gods and men and monsters and the coming together of these things, and the old legends in sciencefiction terms. And you read it and watched him obviously fighting editors. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where you can almost sense the editorial interference, and the fact that someone’s saying, “Jack, this is part of the Marvel Universe, isn’t it?” And Jack understanding that if this is part of the Marvel Universe, the entire thing doesn’t work. So he’s desperately trying to... at one point, there’s a Hulk crossover, but it’s a Hulk robot, and somebody gets turned into the Thing for a moment, but it seems to be a comic character they’re turned into. He never actually gets to finish, which is the great tragedy of Jack’s stuff, because it always felt like it was going somewhere. And it always felt like nobody would ever let him get to the end of this specific story he was trying to tell.

So initially what I wanted to do was just try and do a nice story that would’ve been very, very much that thing. And then I got to read what Marvel had done with the Eternals following that, and it was absolutely bizarre. It was like watching people try to cross-breed a prize greyhound with a bottle of wine. (laughter) And you’ve got something that would neither win races, nor was particularly drinkable. (laughter) They just sort of grab things from the Eternals, and stick them in willy-nilly, and change them up. The reason Marvel asked me to do it is they knew they had a Jack Kirby world, with wonderful 1976 prime Jack Kirby creations, and they’d broken them, and stuck them in the corner, and the cat had peed on them. (laughter) And nobody cared. And when Joe Quesada said, “Neil, remember the Eternals? Would you be interested?”, it was like, “Oh, actually, I would.” And then it was a matter of trying to take what they’d done, clean it up, polish it, and try and make it— obviously not the way that Jack would’ve done it, but try and give it back that kind of feel, and restore the characters, and the basic equations, because Jack understood storytelling, and he understood stories that worked, and he understood characters that worked. And then people’d come in and change them, and they’d stop working. So a lot of what I was doing was just trying to chip the muck off. It was meant to be six issues of chipping the muck off, but by the time I chipped the muck off, I realized I probably needed a seventh issue just to set things up and start again.

ERIK LARSEN: My dad bought comics when he was a kid, so when I grew up, we had all his comic books, so the first Kirby work I ever saw was Boy Commandos. That was from his collection, and the first Kirby work I actually paid money for on my own was Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth, which kicks all kinds of ass. (laughter) And actually, I think my favorite Kirby work is probably Kamandi, and in particular the Kliklak story [#11-14]. (applause) DARWYN COOKE: Oh, you’re gonna make me cry. (laughter) NEIL: The Superman costume one [#29].

ERIK: Good stuff. MARK: [hanging up] I’m sorry, one of the panelists on my 12:00 panel was calling to say the train is stuck; he’s at Oceanside. I’m apologize. Command is a lonely vigil. (laughter) Did you all answer my question? (laughter) ERIK: It’s actually really tough to pick one when it comes to Jack, because I love the Fantastic Four, I love what he’d done on Thor, I love the Demon, I love Mister Miracle, I love the New Gods stuff. I like Kamandi a lot, because I think Jack got to say what he wanted to say on it before he moved on.

MARK: I was very impressed with that book, and I’m not very impressed with very many continuations of Jack’s work, especially some of the ones I’ve done. (laughter) I just thought it was amazing. NEIL: Having said that, I probably would’ve said “no” [to others]. I once put the Demon into Sandman, I put Mister Miracle into Sandman, because I love them. But really, if somebody had turned to me and said, “Do New Gods,” I’d have probably said “no,” because I feel like New Gods is Jack, and he did it, and it was right, and it was the best thing there was, and what could I really bring to it? Whereas with the Eternals, I felt like, okay, it was this thing that Jack wanted to do, and they kept stopping him from doing, and I could see where he could’ve gone with it. He could’ve gone further with it. MARK: Well, I wish I’d have thought that way when they asked me to do New Gods. (laughter) I want to ask Erik the same question: First Kirby work, and most impressive Kirby work. [Mark Evanier discreetly answers his cell phone.] 67

the last couple of issues were all painted, and it just wasn’t pretty. So we took the first four issues and the last two, and just reconcile them and try to make it work. I ended up coloring the last two issues, and it’s actually really nice looking stuff at this point. (pause) I’m happy! (laughter) Then on the new ongoing stuff, I want to get a couple of issues in the can before we start releasing this stuff. I want to make sure it actually does come out on time. Yeah, I know Jack would have it out on time, so... (laughter) I’m not going to be that guy. MARK: Erik mentioned the name Janice Cohen, who colored a lot of Jack’s work in the 1970s at Marvel. This is almost irrelevant, but I can’t resist throwing this in. I had this woman working for me, an assistant named Janet Parker, helping me with typing and filing for several years. One day I was out, and she answered the phone, and it was somebody at Marvel calling, saying, “We’ve got to talk to Mark Evanier; we’re trying to locate Janice Cohen.” And she said, “I’m Janice Cohen.” She’d divorced and changed her name. So he had other names they were trying to locate, and said, “We’re trying to locate the Sol Brodsky Estate.” And she said, “I’m the Sol Brodsky Estate; I’m Sol’s daughter.” (laughter) And he went, “Wow, he must have everyone there.” (laughter) Darwyn, same question: First work of Jack’s you were conscious of, and favorite work of Jack’s.

MARK: Erik, you have some Kirby projects coming up; can you tell us a little about them? ERIK: First, we’ve just collected Silver Star, and then we’re going to be collecting Destroyer Duck in its entirety, recoloring that. And then we’re going to be doing Captain Victory, and taking all that stuff and recoloring that. And then we’re going to be doing two new series: One called Silver Star, which I’m going to be writing and penciling, and Mike Royer will be inking. (applause) And then there’s Captain Victory, which we’ll also be continuing; I’m not sure how we’re going to pull that one off, but a lot of people are interested in being part of that. So there we go. It’s really great to be able to jump in and do Kirby stuff at a place where there’s care, and I get to be in control, and I don’t have somebody saying, “Can you stick in something from SHIELD?” or whatever. MARK: Erik, talk about the attention you’re paying to the recoloring of these books. You’re being very diligent and serious about it. ERIK: Well, the problem with the coloring of these original books is, nobody agreed with anybody else on it. The first six issues of Captain Victory were 68

colored by Steve Oliff, and Jack had him fired because he didn’t like what he was doing on it. And then it was colored by Janice Cohen, who did a commendable job, that was fine. And actually, Steve’s, I quite like, but he tended to go, “Instead of red, let’s go with brown” and “Instead of blue, let’s go with teal.” Jack didn’t react positively to that. And then the last few issues, Marvel and DC at the time had discovered that, “Hey, we can do something other than flat color; we can paint things.” And it reverberated around the industry, and everyone was like, “Oh, let’s get stuff painted. Hey, you look like a painter,” (laughter) and they would just get people who were horrible to paint this stuff, and so the last few issues were just destroyed. So what we’re trying to do is take all this stuff that was done, and just go, “Can we just color this well?” and chip off what’s been added to it, and make it somewhat consistent. So that’s the goal of all this, to find the beauty that was hidden underneath the ugliness. DARWYN: Are you coloring it? ERIK: Yeah, this guy. It always ends up being me, because I’m like, “I just can’t let somebody else screw this up.” We did the same thing on Silver Star;

DARWYN: I’m Canadian; I grew up in Canada, and as a child in the 1960s, the first work of Jack’s I remember seeing— and again, I didn’t know it was Jack’s at the time—would be the Gantray-Lawrence Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons. (applause) They were on the air at 4:00 in the afternoon from a station in Buffalo, and it was a cartoon after school, so I would make my little brother go out and jiggle the aerial [antennae] on the side of the house to get the signal, (laughter) so I could watch these cartoons. All I can remember is how terrible I thought they were. They were terrible. At that point, I was used to Jonny Quest, and linear storytelling with at least some form of animation. I remember just thinking they were terrible, and I was so let down. I didn’t really pay much attention to that type of art for a while, and as I got a little older and got into comics as an art form or to appreciate the actual work in them, I was definitely one of those “Neal Adams babies.” So at that point, Jack’s work to me looked like it was for kids compared to Neal’s work. Now keep in mind, this is coming from a 12-year-old, and in my head, that’s how I’m picturing it. And one day, there was absolutely nothing to buy at the store, and I picked up a Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprint of the first part of “Blastaar, The Living Bomburst” [#44, Sept. 1973, reprinting Fantastic Four #61]; wow! For the first time in my life, I sat down and read one of these books, and it just blew my head apart. It was just the most incredible book I’d ever seen. I had to go to three stores the next month, because you know, back then, you don’t just go into drug stores or whatever and find comics. I had to go all over town on my

bike to find part two of that story. (laughter) From that point on, I was hooked, to the point where, four years ago, I was walking with a friend at this con. This is a true story. We were talking like you always do: “What’s your favorite Kirby?” And I said, “I can tell you my all-time favorite drawing; the Sandman’s being sucked into the Negative Zone with Johnny Storm, and there’s a panel where Johnny’s head is a close-up, and he’s screaming, and his hair’s doing that beautiful Kirby thing it did, and it’s all the debris sailing through the panel. Everything’s so kinetic and exciting,” and as I’m describing this, we walk by a booth where a guy’s selling comics, and he has one piece of artwork up for sale— the page from that story. And I just stopped dead with my friend and said, “Look, this is karma, man. I’ve gotta buy that.” (laughter) So I’m proud to say that my favorite Kirby page is from that story, and for sentimental reasons, that’s certainly one of my favorite [stories]. But I’d have to side with Erik; on an emotional level, Kamandi was the book I really responded to, and it came out, I could buy it on the newsstand. And yeah, I’d say that story “Flower” [Kamandi #6]; as a young boy, I didn’t care about girls, I didn’t care about matters of the heart, but I remember I cried at the end of it. He really got me with the story. I’ll leave it at that, because you could go on forever. MARK: Darwyn, you’ve been following some pretty large footsteps doing the Spirit. Is there a Kirby project that you’ve yearned to do? DARWYN: Wow. I’d have to admit that I think I’ve already done it. When I was trying to put together New Frontier, I knew from a story angle what I wanted to do with the book. But visually, I always wondered—and this is just me, I play this “what if ” game with Jack all

the time—I try to imagine what it would’ve been like if Stan, Jack, and Joe Sinnott had been doing Superman for 110 issues. Think about that for a minute; if all those ideas, all that imagination, had been poured into that title. I stop to think about that sometimes, and that was a big part of what spurred New Frontier, in terms of where I wanted to go visually. I actually spent like three months trying to convince DC that I should be drawing it like Jack, which was of course a huge mistake, because I can’t. Then Mike Carlin finally straightened me out. (laughter) But I have literally dozens of fake covers I’ve done for New Frontier that were drawn in the Kirby style. And I’ve gotta admit, the one I really wanted to do was the Challengers. They really were the characters I wanted to do, because I love those guys. To me they were like modern-day Vikings; just “Let’s go, let’s do it.” There was no plot; they’d get a letter, and they’d go to an island, and there’s a magic box, (laughter) and a freezing sun. So I think, in New Frontier, I got to play with that as much as I’d like to, and also I was lucky enough, right around the turn of the century, I was working with living legend Bruce Timm, and we got to work on a Fourth World series for the Superman animated series. We did several episodes. (applause) Yeah, it’s magnificent, and I was lucky enough to work on the very last episode, “Legacy.” I worked with Bruce on the third act of that, and we boarded it together. It was a really wonderful experience. I guess the only guy that’s left that I haven’t done that I’d really like to do is plain old Captain America, probably.

(this spread) Jack’s Rawhide Kid drawing from the 1970s Valentine’s Day sketchbook he drew for wife Roz, and Darwyn Cooke’s recent inks of the same piece. (left) Darwyn Cooke’s favorite Kirby page, from Fantastic Four #61 (April 1967). All characters TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MARK: Paul, way down there...

(above) Original art from Challengers of the Unknown #7 (April 1959), a major inspiration for Darwyn Cooke on his New Frontier series. (next page) Kirby cover for First Love #68 (Sept. 1956), and Darwyn’s promotional art for his upcoming Parker series. Note the stylistic similarities to Jack’s earlier work. Parker TM & ©2008 Richard Stark and Darwyn Cooke. Challengers of the Unknown TM & ©2008 DC Comics.

PAUL LEVINE: I’m going to have a very different kind of story, because I’m as far from knowledgeable about comic books as you can imagine. So my first awareness of Jack was when I started working for the very first law firm I worked for, right out of law school. One day my boss said, “Come in my office, I want to introduce you to some clients of ours.” I came into his office, and he introduced me to Jack and Roz, and Mark, back in 1982. So that’s the first time I became aware of Jack; I have to admit that as a kid, I never read Marvel comic books, and didn’t know much about his work. But I got to learn. MARK: Was that the meeting where Jack and I had the big fight, and started yelling at each other? PAUL: No. That was a little later on. (laughter) My favorite Jack Kirby work would be his signature on a contract (laughter) for a deal I had negotiated for him. (applause) MARK: I don’t know if I can phrase this question properly, but have you found that in representing Kirby or his family, that the people you have to deal with that are lawyers and agents, and other life forms, (laughter) have a different attitude because it’s Jack Kirby? PAUL: Absolutely. It’s a great pleasure to represent the Estate, and to deal with people like Erik and other people on new projects that are coming out; things that people want to do to honor Jack

and continue his legacy. The negotiations are always a great pleasure. I never, ever have any difficulty dealing with anybody when it comes to a Jack Kirby project, and I can’t say that about any other client that I have. MARK: And he is my lawyer, please note. (laughter) He just had to negotiate a contract for me that was in French, and he did it; it was amazing. PAUL: That’s because I grew up in Montreal, and I speak French. (laughter) DARWYN: It’s like they have a different word for everything. (laughter) For Evanier, they say “E-Von-Yay.” MARK: That’s classier sounding. (laughter) Neil, I asked the other gentlemen; is there a Kirby-related project you yearn to do? I’m hoping not, because then they won’t ask me. (laughter) NEIL: Actually, as of two weeks ago, if Guillermo del Toro was actually serious about doing a Demon movie—we got to the end of this conversation which started out of our heart, and then went on to Klarion the Witchboy, and then went on to, [heavy accent] “You know, it would make a great companion to Hellboy, because the Demon would be so different.” And he got to the end of that, and I said, “If you are going to do this, I’m writing it, and I will kill anybody else who tries.” (laughter) I don’t know if he’s serious, but I would do that. The idea of a Jack Kirby Demon, actually getting Jason Blood and doing all that stuff, I would love to do that.

I don’t know; one of the things that fascinates me is that Jack was such a remarkable storyteller, and his abilities as a storyteller and a writer. There is that Loser’s story Jack did about the science-fiction fan. (laughter) I remember, you’d take it out, you re-read it, and you cry at the end. It was that weird little place where Jack was given “The Losers,” this war comic, and I never picked up any DC war comics; I didn’t know I was missing some good stuff, but suddenly Kirby’s on it, so I’m reading “The Losers.” And there was this amazing, heart-rending little story about a science-fiction fan, which all of the big butch Losers made fun of, and then used, essentially, to win a small battle. It’s this weird, wonderful story, and I also felt it was pretty personal. MARK: One of the things that’s amazing to me about the Losers is it was a case of DC putting Jack on the book that nobody else wanted to do, and a book that Jack did not want to do. Jack had a personality conflict, like everyone else in the business, with Robert Kanigher, who was the editor and founder of that. Mr. Kanigher had, not long before that, stopped Jack in the hallway of DC and told him how much he loathed everything Jack had done, how awful he thought it was, and that included everything Marvel had ever done; Marvel had never ever done a worthwhile comic book. Kanigher also felt this way about most of the DC line as well (laughter) and was not shy about voicing it. And now they gave Jack a book set in World War II, and Jack loved that, because he had an endless repertoire of World War II anecdotes, and his personal experiences. Given the number of stories [he told], Jack was in World War II for about 32 years. (laughter) And he had these wonderful vivid anecdotes; many people in this room heard them. And he had other ones which sounded the way Ronald Regan used to turn war movies into his own experiences. They were on the edge of real. But he also visualized these stories, and he infused them with reality and personal experience. So he took “The Losers,” a strip he didn’t want to do because of the name— Jack would never call a strip “The Losers,” especially a strip about guys fighting World War II—a strip full of Robert Kanigher creations; they were the worst things Kanigher every did. DARWYN: There’s a reason they were called the Losers. (laughter)

MARK: Yes. And he turned it into not only a very good book, but a very personal book. Every one of those stories was embedded with Jack’s personal experiences, personal recollections. Everything Jack did was from his personal recollections; as I read them over again, every time I read a Jack Kirby comic, I suddenly go, “Oh, that’s Jack. And there’s Roz; I didn’t notice her before, she’s in there.” All his work is autobiographical to some extent; frequently on such an obscure level, I’m not sure he was fully cognizant of it. If you read back on Thor stories in the 1960s when Jack was plotting those things almost completely by himself, the in-fighting between Thor and Loki for the affection of Odin, is Stan Lee and Larry Lieber fighting for Martin Goodman’s approval on various projects. DARWYN: Which one’s Loki, Mark? (laughter) MARK: Do you remember the story where Loki got the hair transplants? (laughter, groans) But that was from Jack’s point of view, not necessarily my point of view. A lot of the things he did were his fantasies about the people he knew; not necessarily Jack saying “This is how these people are,” it was Jack fantasizing. When I was a kid, one of my first jobs—before I even knew enough to write this, I wrote a dirty book. What I did was, I just took the girls I went to high school with, and changed their names, and wrote what I had wished they’d done. (laughter) And Jack did that frequently with the people around him. DARWYN: He wrote dirty books? (laughter) MARK: No, Jack did not do dirty books—to my knowledge. (laughter) But “The Losers” was a strip where Jack managed to write World War II his way, and one of those unrealized projects that I wish someone had done, was to give Jack something like what Sam Glanzman did with his strip “U.S.S. Stevens,” where he wrote unadorned reminiscences of his wartime experiences, and didn’t have to mask that with other people or other names, or the gimmicks of the Robert Kanigher characters. In this Kirby book I’m doing, we’re reprinting in full the “Street Code” story that Jack did. Richard Kyle, who commissioned it, dug into the warehouse, and found the original negatives which weren’t even used the first time it was printed. 71

it. And I got mad, and walked out of there, and didn’t talk to people in the lobby. And I’m pleased that now his name is much more prominent, and he’s mentioned much more. I still don’t think it’s enough, personally. (applause)

It’s a story you’ve all seen, it’s a story that’s been other places, but I can’t write about Jack’s childhood as well as printing these nine or ten pages of story, so I insisted that they be in the book, because they take the narrative up in that section where I am inadequate to describe his growing up. I wish that we had commissioned another dozen stories like that, and the publishers had let Jack just do whatever he wanted, without gimmicks, without having to hide his autobiography in super-hero contexts. I would like to throw this open to questions from the floor. What would you like to hear these gentlemen talk about? Over here. AUDIENCE: Even with all the Marvel movies and the increasingly steady stream of Kirby books and merchandise, in the back of my mind I get this nagging feeling that Jack Kirby still doesn’t get enough credit. Could you talk about that? DARWYN: I agree. PAUL: In getting to know Jack, I quickly came to realize that he never cared about money. What he cared about was credit. And when Spider-Man was in development back in 1982, the thing he wanted me to make sure of was that he would receive credit on the screen. And if you watch the Spider-Man movie, you’ll see that, twenty-five years later, I accomplished that goal. MARK: And Paul did that at a time when companies 72

were not sensitive to that, and I think didn’t understand why he wanted it. I don’t think Jack’s gotten enough credit for anything over the years. I have not seen the Marvel movies; I don’t want to go see them, because I decided I’m not a fan of the Hulk or Spider-Man, I was a fan of Spider-Man as done by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko or Stan Lee and John Romita, or the Hulk as done by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. To me it’s still George Lazenby time again. I went to the first X-Men movie; I did not like it. I would’ve walked out on it, except that I was sitting next to Stan. (laughter) I was at this screening full of industry people, and at the end of the movie, as the end credits started rolling, everyone else got up and started leaving. And I always stay to the end, no matter whether I have a personal interest in the movie. I want to see who catered the movie, and who did the completion bond. But I wanted to see Jack’s name; I knew it was in there someplace; I sat there in this theatre watching the credits roll and roll, thinking, “Where the hell is Jack?” And there are ushers around me picking up popcorn boxes, and I’m sitting in the movie all by myself, and they’re running the end of the movie just for me. And finally at the end, Jack got a credit; I think it was after the parks department that had let them film someplace. I got so mad; my God, they gave him the absolute smallest, most meaningless credit they possibly could. They could not put that man’s name on the screen and make it mean less than where they put

NEIL: I think it’s frustrating, and practically criminal. Jack co-created all of the Marvel stuff—except for the stuff he didn’t. (laughter) But most of that stuff that means something, that’s Jack. Right at the beginning or for a long time, you’ve got all of this stuff getting turned into movies, and having more and more coming from that. I don’t begrudge Stan, and I don’t begrudge Marvel their prominence, and their names associated with this stuff. The fact that Jack is, like Steve Ditko, somebody where you have to explain who he is sometimes—you get to the end, and they say, “Oh, you mean Stan Lee,” and you go, “No, I don’t.” My friend Jonathan Ross, who I will one day, many many years from now, forgive for his performance at the Eisners as my co-presenter, (laughter) just did a documentary called “In Search of Steve Ditko” which some of you may have seen; some of you played it here at the convention, and it’s going to be on British TV, and probably surface on the Internet 20 minutes after that. And there was a strange, revealing moment there for me, where he’s interviewing Stan Lee, about Stan’s famous falling-out with Ditko, and how Stan wrote Ditko when the first Spider-Man movie was coming out, to sort of try and make peace between them, and how he didn’t make peace. And Stan is saying, “I really don’t understand why Steve didn’t accept my gracious apology; I wrote a letter saying I was perfectly happy, I was delighted for people to consider Steve Ditko the co-creator of Spider-Man.” And Jonathan, who is a lot sharper than he looks, (laughter) asked a question I don’t think any other interviewer has asked. He said, “You’re perfectly happy for people to consider Steve Ditko the co-creator of SpiderMan. Do you consider Steve Ditko the co-creator of Spider-Man?” (audience murmurs) And there’s a beat, and then Stan says, “No, I created Spider-Man.” (audience murmurs) And I thought I understood the Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko/Stan Lee relationship an awful lot more from that moment, and the nature of what’s happened. Because at the end of the day, I think Stan really does consider he made all this stuff up, and those other people were—if it wasn’t Ditko, it would’ve been somebody else. If it wasn’t Jack, it would’ve been somebody else, completely missing the fact that what was happening, this was Marvel Method, these guys were going off and creating this stuff, and building it, and making it happen. Anyway, that’s a “yes,” I think Jack deserves more credit. (laughter, applause) AUDIENCE: I’ve been reading Jack’s work with an eye toward storytelling, and I love the way he tells a story through the image. I wonder if any of the creators can mention or share any “nuts and bolts” things they’ve picked up from him. DARWYN: One thing; he always used to say “just keep that story moving,” okay? If there’s a hole or an inconsistency, just keep it moving, and people won’t notice it. (laughter) Keep it exciting, keep it moving forward, and the power will overwhelm those little things. MARK: I met Erik at a comic convention in Victoria, British Columbia, when he was just starting out. He’d done one job for Marvel; it was a Hulk/Thor story if I’m not mistaken.

ERIK: Oh, yeah. (laughter) MARK: And he showed this to me, and it took me a long time to decide I wanted to work with this man; it took about eight seconds, and I said, “Let’s do a comic together,” and we did. And I looked at this story, and I saw the pencils to this story, and what I saw was—to use a much-maligned term—the Kirby Tradition. The Kirby Tradition is not a slavish imitation of Jack Kirby, the Kirby Tradition is you have your own distinct style, and it’s got energy and thought and power behind it. And I didn’t realize at that moment that that story would truly be in the Kirby Tradition, because it was ruined by Vince Colletta. (laughter, applause) ERIK: And it was scripted by Stan Lee. (laughter) MARK: And I don’t think Stan ruined it probably, but the thing was... ERIK: Well... (laughter) MARK: Erik was new, and if you laid those pencils against his later work, you’d think the original work was very crude. But still, from Day One, he understood that he had to take every panel, and make it interesting, and energetic and exciting, and you had to be interested in it, or the reader would not be interested in it. And I said this when Erik wasn’t around, that I think Savage Dragon is one of the best super-hero comics done in the last 25 years. (applause) ERIK: Awww, shucks. (laughter) MARK: And it’s a book I just think is wonderful, and it’s more in the Kirby Tradition than a lot of people who have done these slavish, traced replicas of Jack’s art. I’m not a big fan of Jack Kirby swipes. If you Google on the Internet right now, you’ll find this quote on fifty web sites. It’s a quote I took from Jack one time, when somebody said in an interview, “I’m going to be doing Captain America stories in the Kirby Tradition,” and Jack said, “The kid doesn’t get it; the Kirby Tradition is to create a new comic.” (laughter) Steve Sherman was there when he said it, and was a witness to that. And that statement, to me, summed up Jack better than almost anything he ever said. ERIK: When we did that Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics Magazine twelve-issue tribute to Stan and Jack, we made all the details and what was going to happen, and lined up all these guys, and as soon as we started, it was like, “Oops.” (laughter) You’re not going to do it, because they would not have ended it that way. Jack would’ve done what he did, which is create a whole bunch of new stuff, not dwell on what had happened in the past. And it was a huge failure. DARWYN: Can I jump in for sec? As creators, we always get swept away with the actual work that Jack produced. And I think one of the most important things I learned as I got into the business relatively late in life—most of these guys started a lot younger than I did—was the incredible example he set to me, just as a man. He was a guy that did what he had to do for his country, a guy who did what he had to do for his parents, a guy who had family and he never let them down, he never missed a deadline, he was a total professional. As creative and as brilliant as he was, he understood the world he lived in, and he knew how he had to sort of harness or marshall that in service of what was most important to him, which is his family. And you look at the loyalty and the character of this guy outside his work, and I mean—he could’ve been a golf caddy, and he would’ve been an inspiration to the people around him. I remember coming into this at 35 and reading about his experience in business; you’re gob-smacked by the man’s depth of character and integrity, and the emotional strength that guy must’ve had. In that regard, the example he set for us is probably more untouchable than the quality of his work. I know that, for me, that’s the biggest lesson I’ve taken away from Jack Kirby. (applause) NEIL: The thing I want to throw in here quickly is so much less than that, (laughter) but one of the things I learned is, it’s just really interesting to look at how Jack handled the boring bits. If

you want to get into the sheer nuts and bolts of technique, you’ll find that in the Demon—in the first part of the “Howler” story [#6], Jack’s werewolf story—look at what Jack had to do when Jack had Jason Blood and the Howler in human form, on an airplane in adjoining seats for six panels. (laughter) Jack was somebody who never wanted to have two characters sitting and talking, and they can’t move. And look at how Jack frames that, and look at how Jack achieves that. We all tend to think of Jack as being all about action and people bouncing out of panels, and worlds colliding and double-page spreads of huge weapons and things, but look at how he did the boring bits, because you will learn so much. MARK: Jack’s first fan was probably a man I mentioned earlier, Larry Lieber. Larry to this day has a sketch of Captain America and Bucky that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby did for him up at the Timely offices when they were doing Captain America #1; I don’t think anyone predates that. And Larry once said to me, “The amazing thing when I was working with Jack in the late 1950s/ early ’60s was, I’d look at his art and go ‘The rocks he draws are more interesting than the people I draw.’” (laughter) We have time for one more question. AUDIENCE: It’s interesting about Vince Colletta, because with all these beautiful hardcover collections coming up that are recolored, is there any talk about perhaps reinking some of these books that Jack wasn’t happy with, if the pencils still exist? MARK: The pencils generally do not exist, and when they do exist, they are faded Xeroxes, which someone then traces. I don’t believe you can reink someone’s work if you don’t have the pencil art there. You can do a forgery that replicates roughly the composition and trace it and such, and pose your own guess as to what Jack would’ve done there if you had the whole pencils. Jack generally did not want that; he wanted his work left alone when he was done. The single exception might be the coloring, because the coloring was not his, and he didn’t like the coloring he got on a lot of his work. But I don’t think, if we could magically go back and take the Colletta-inked issues and magically make them Mike Royer or Joe Sinnott, I don’t think Jack would’ve wanted that. I think Jack would’ve said, “I didn’t do that book, I did the book inked by Vince Colletta.”

(previous page) 1970s Hulk drawing; yeah, we’ve run it before, but not at this level of reproduction, so enjoy it again! (below) Jack Kirby in the mid-1980s. Photo by and courtesy James Van Hise. Hulk TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

AUDIENCE: For the record, I liked his inks, by the way. It’s not a put-down of Vince Colletta. MARK: Well, it should be. (laughter) No, I’m sorry I said that; we dump on this man too much. All he did was do what he was assigned to do. DARWYN: I blame Stan. MARK: Well, for everybody he worked with, he did the job and he handed it in, and they said, “Great, Vince. Here’s the next issue.” So the person who said, “Here’s the next issue” is the one deciding that was sufficient or good enough. In some cases they thought it was very good, and their tastes—I know some people who love Vince Colletta’s inking. I happen to be appalled by it. I’m also appalled by the fact that we’re out of time here. Will you join me in thanking Mr. Paul Levine, Mr. Darwyn Cooke, Mr. Erik Larsen, and Mr. Neil Gaiman? (applause) And we’ll see you next year for another Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. ★ 73

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 INTERVIEWS WITH KIRBY and his contemporaries, FEATURE ARTICLES, RARE AND UNSEEN KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and presentation of KIRBY’S UNINKED PENCILS from the 1960s-80s (from photocopies preserved in the KIRBY ARCHIVES). Now in OVERSIZED TABLOID FORMAT, it showcases Kirby’s amazing art even larger!

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

KIRBY’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 superhero 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!

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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!

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!

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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!

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!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

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!

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!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

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!

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!

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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!

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!

Spotlights KIRBY OBSCURA, uncovering some of Jack’s most obscure work! Learn about an UNUSED THOR STORY, his BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, unaltered versions of KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING! Color Kirby covers!

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Comments

Send letters to: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR c/o TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 E-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com If I like what you write, some of it stays. If not, everything goes. That’s why I’m called “editor.”

(Since there was no letter column in Kirby Five-Oh!, I’m doing a double-length column this time, to cover missives on issues #49 and #50. But first, a word from our sponsor:

At the 2007 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, Kirby fan Charlie Underhill unveiled his own version of Kirby Krackle, in the form of this new breakfast cereal. It made the rounds of the convention hall, as various comics luminaries took time out to pose with his box. Boy, I’d like to see what kind of publications we could come up with if I started every morning with a bowl of that! Great work, Charlie! Now, to letters:) I realize that Top Fifty lists are, by nature, highly subjective. Some, in fact, seem intended to provoke spirited debate and prompt perplexed readers to indignantly write in noting their favorite was inexplicably absent. Okay, it worked. How is it, in discussing Jack’s fifty best character designs, Thor was overlooked? While, as a reader, the FF was more to my liking, no denying—for design—Jack initiated something wonderful with THOR. I liked— and still do—that he wasn’t drawn like some ancient warrior. Jack modernized him. No beard, armor or fur; just a colorful, instant attention-getter of a costume. The winged helmet and hammer harkened back to legend, but the rest seemed sleek and modern. Jack had done the traditional Thor— twice—in other stories, but this ’62 design was an entirely new, far superior visual slant on the character. One look told you he was more superhero than Viking. Even if you had to bump Giganto the whale, Thor should have, easily, made the list. Joe Frank, Scottsdale, AZ You still want art changes on Jack’s work? I just noticed another. I’ve always known that Thor’s raised arm on the cover of THOR #159 was by Romita. But ESSENTIAL THOR 3 has the Kirby version— with a lower arm and a rock that was removed! (Wish we could see Kirby’s version of Him on the cover of #166—there’s a lot 76

of Romita in that one!) Shane Foley, AUSTRALIA I would like to take the time to give you a short note on how much I like THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. I am living in Germany near the city of Hannover and am working as a teacher of philosophy and German literature. In Germany there are not many fanzines about superhero comics and none at all about Mr. Kirby, so it is really interesting to read about the life and work of one of my three favorite comic book artists in your mag. First time I bought a Kirby book was somewhere around 1969 when I was eight years old, and it was the German edition of one of the last FANTASTIC FOUR issues that Mr. Kirby did (with Giacoia inking), in which the Mad Thinker created doubles of the FF to defeat them. I liked it from the start and stayed a fan of his work, Stan’s work, and the FF ever since. OK, you can say I became a German Marvel Zombie—now that sounds ugly, huh? Whenever one of your magazines arrives through the mail from the comic shop where I am ordering my US comics, the rest of the evening belongs to your mag. I also would like to give you some additional information about special appearances of Jack’s work in Germany that would fit into your magazine, but really there is not much I could tell you, even though I followed Jack’s work closely for nearly the last 40 years. There was once a two-part article about Jack in a fanzine called COMIXENE (issues #17 and #18) circa 1977 with some art but no interview with him, and somewhere around 1976 a one-page article in the German Marvel editions of that time called “Jack is back” with a photo of Jack, which I believe was taken from a FOOM issue. The pencil art of the COMIXENE article was a very nicely done illustration of Captain America surrounded by some ordinary kids Cap was protecting. This art I have not seen in the JKC yet, but it was once printed in the English fanzine about Jack a few years back. Speaking of Captain America, I hope I have some Kirby related info you might not know about, so this mail might be of some interest to you. In 1972, Jimmy Buffett (of “Margaritaville” and “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” fame) wrote and sung a nice song called “Captain America” and it was definitely written about our Comic Book Captain. I found the song on the 1993 MCA Records CD JIMMY BUFFETT—BEFORE THE BEACH, and it might be out there at some used record store. Thank you again for your excellent mag and I wish you, your family and all of your contributing friends all the best from Germany. Hope to see issue #100 of the JKC! Frank Müller, Langenhagen Godshorn, GERMANY Issue #49 of TJKC arrived safely in Dubai and I feel compelled to write about Mike

DeCarlo’s “More ’Bout Inkin’” article. Kirby didn’t use realistic anatomy; he was all about action and dynamics. His best inkers were those that embellished his pencils, not those that added to or deleted them. Mike’s recreation of the cover of THOR #126 is a fine piece of inking, but for me it is not suited to Kirby’s pencils. There is too much muscle definition, and as for Hercules’ face—well, it just doesn’t look like Kirby drew it. Sinnott and Giacoia inked Kirby perfectly and although I’m neither a fan nor a detractor of Colletta, for all of his faults, at least you knew it was Kirby he was inking. I wonder if the same could be said of Mike’s work if he were to ink a lesser known piece of Kirby’s magic? Go back a few pages in the same issue to the Jerry Ordway article. Jerry sums it up perfectly in his interview. When you start correcting Kirby’s pencils, you lose what he put there. Clive Hitchcock Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Congratulations on KIRBY FIVE-OH! I pick up most JKC’s and enjoy them, but this was extra-special. I really liked page 30-31 on Best Covers. At six years old I bought CAPTAIN AMERICA #109 because Cap seemed to be leaping out of the cover, and FF #82 because Black Bolt appeared to be flying off the newsstand rack. That began my Kirby fever. I was surprised that no one mentioned THOR #153, 154, 160, DAREDEVIL #43 (unexpected Kirby), FF #33, 70, 74, FOREVER PEOPLE #5, SGT. FURY #17 or X-MEN #14, but perhaps in KIRBY SEVENTY-FIVE! The only thing missing was 50 Best TwoPage Spreads and 50 Best Splash or FullPage Panels. (Maybe in KIRBY 100!) I will continue to digest the issue, but here’s a minutiae question for Mark Evanier or any of your many intelligent contributors. Why did George Tuska ink several panels of Maximus in FF #82 and 83 (as well as his cover image on #83)? Notice the trademark Tuska circular eyes, and teeth rendered like a mouth-guard. We all know Romita would do most touch-ups (Severin and Giacoia once in a while). Although I’m a fan of Tuska’s Iron Man, his style was never considered the “Marvel look” of the late ’60s. And then Kirby helped out on the cover of IRON MAN #13! The mystery deepens... Mac Talley, Santa Barbara, CA The Grant Morrison interview in issue #49 was great stuff, but I found one thing he said puzzling. He stated that “If we make it about Goth, and make it a little darker and ultraviolent, then the Forever People would work again, but Forever People always has to be about whatever the teenage current is at the time.” I never thought of The Forever People as parroting current fashions or trends. I figured that they simply fit the Hippie look, and appreciated that humans were trying to be “with it.” Were they to be brought back today, I’d assume they’d embrace the Bollywood aesthetic and reject Goth. And as for making the Forever People darker, I found their book to be very dark already... It had death cults, perversion of religion, distortion of ’70s consumerism... No ultravi-

olence, but still pretty dark. It was the contrasting of their positive spin on communalism vs. the Apokolips brand of conformity that brought this dark edge to light (so to speak). I figure it’s ready-made to be transplanted to today’s political climate, but I guess DC, with DEATH OF THE NEW GODS, has other plans. I’d also assumed that Grant Morrison had already done his own version of The Forever People with THE INVISIBLES. I read it as a take on The Forever People in the same way WATCHMEN was a take on the Charlton characters. It’s a bad day for my various figurings and assumptions. Can’t wait for the big, fat issue 50! Brad Hodges, Ontario, CANADA If possible, please pass on the attached links regarding issue #175, page 17 of THOR to Angel Gabriele for his reference. These

show that Bill Everett did sneak in the initials J-A-T on page 17. I thought he would want to add this to his list of hidden letters. Don Emery, Chicago, IL I’m a U.K. Kirby fan. I’ve been enjoying his work since my very first Kirby comic, CAPTAIN AMERICA #112, all those years ago! I’ve read TJKC since issue #8, and shamefully enough have never got around to letting you know how much I enjoy the magazine. However, your request in issue #49 for comments on the future direction of the mag has spurred me into action. What I would like to see is a greater emphasis on complete reprinted stories such as are run in your “Foundations” series. The restoration on these is unbelievable. More per issue, please. Also, what are the chances of you obtaining the rights to run unused material from the Marvel and DC archives as complete stories—items we have seen pages from in the past such as IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB #2, DINGBATS #2 and #3, THE PRISONER, SOUL LOVE, etc. The Big Boys have been sitting on these for years now and presumably have no intention of using them. Perhaps they would let you run these stories. It seems almost a crime to me that full, complete Kirby stories still languish in the

archives after 30+ years. Fair makes my blood boil! Light a fire under these ass-draggers if you can. I do love the articles and of course wish to see these continue, but more full stories would be welcome to replace some of the less consequential pieces of which there were a few in #49. Definitely keep the Evanier column running; it’s fascinating. Kirby Obscura, too. By the way, I do a little writing for my other great passion, Robert E. Howard fandom, and you might be interested to know that I have a letter in the upcoming REH: TWOGUN RACONTEUR dealing with the similarities I find in my two favorites, using the classic “Toxl The World Killer” from WEIRD MYSTERY TALES as an example. I thought a little cross-fandom promotion couldn’t do any harm so TJKC gets a plug, natch! Chris Green, UK

Bonjour, I am a French scientist, fan of Jack Kirby, living now in Atlanta, GA. I discovered THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR only two years ago and since I can’t wait for the next new issue, I even bought online all the previous tabloid issues. Anyway, as I said before, during the day I am a scientist (PhD in Organic Chemistry) but when I’ve got time I try to use Jack Kirby as a source of inspiration to achieve my passion for plastic art. Basically, I use Jack Kirby’s art (from old comic books) to make collages, coloring, and a mix of painting and collage. [above] In addition to that, I recently “built” my version of the Mother Box inspired from Jack’s FOREVER PEOPLE. [below] If you are interested in my work or if you want more information, you can contact me at famblar@yahoo.fr Franck Amblard, Atlanta, GA

I have a new book of BEST CRIME COMICS that came out this past June and it includes a previously unreprinted Simon and Kirby crime story: “The Money-Making Machine Swindlers” from JUSTICE TRAPS

THE GUILTY #6, September 1948. You can see the cover here: http://www.paulgravett. com/books/crime/crime.htm Paul Gravett, London, ENGLAND Kudos! KIRBY FIVE-OH! (a.k.a. TJKC #50) was fantastic! I especially enjoyed the massive load of interviews with people as diverse as Grant Morrison to Jim Steranko to Junot Diaz. Everyone had something fascinating to say about The King and his work. The “50 Best Character Designs” was a great piece too, except for one thing: How

did the Living Shadow end up at #3? That was baffling, as it’s simply a silhouette— was Kirby actually the first person to create a character who was nothing more than a living silhouette? Anyway, I was glad to see that Black Bolt was in the Top Five. In my book, he’s the coolest Kirby character ever. The “50 Best Covers” was terrific as well. Most all of these are true gems—especially the FOXHOLE #1; if ever a comic book cover could make someone weep, this is the one. Also really glad to see FF #72 (“Where Soars the Surfer”) made the list, as well as SANDMAN #4—a true classic to rival even the iconic SANDMAN #1 (however, since #4 features more Kirby monsters, I’ll tip the hat to Alex Ross’s choice). As great as these choices were, I was surprised that nobody had these amazing covers on the list, as they are definitely some of Kirby’s best, for various reasons: ETERNALS #12—For the sheer audacity of doing a cover featuring the Uni-Mind... I wonder if Jack’s editors at Marvel insisted he add the extra bit featuring Ajax at the bottom, because otherwise this cover would have been too weird. But this gigantic brain-thing seething with cosmic energy... it’s just Kirb-tastic! OMAC #6—This cover spun my head as a kid, and it still “gets” me when I study it. Someone must feel the same because they used it as the cover for the new OMAC hardcover collection. The amazing Kirby monsters, the post-apocalyptic subway environment (smacks of

“Beneath the Planet of the Apes”) and the hero leaping over the devastation with the damsel in his arms... wow. Just an all-time classic cover. JUSTICE INC. #3—While not one of Kirby’s most memorable series (he only did a few issues), this cover was another that just branded my psyche as a kid. There are NO monsters like Kirby monsters. And here is a feast of monstrous delight, combined with the all-out action of a speeding automobile as the Avenger battles evil forces. “The Monster Bug” was an amazing little story that most of Kirby-dom ignores. This cover should be on the Top 50... Fantastic 50th issue! Here’s to fifty more. John R. Fultz, Aliso Viejo, CA By the time this sees print, fans everywhere will have been treated to a second installment of the wonderful movie, HELLBOY. But to my knowledge, nobody has ever brought to our attention what appears to be a Kirby tribute from the first movie. In the movie, a comic book is used to iconify Hellboy’s historic past. Depicted in the grand M.M.M.S tradition (a.k.a. late-’60s Marvel) as Hellboy #14, what movie viewers are actually blessed with is genuine Kirby art—or at least a faithful reproduction thereof. Down to the very sinews, down to the very chunks of brick and rock, this “comic book cover” is a highly faithful replica of THOR #142. Except for the obvious changes to the faces and costumes, the art is as perfectly Kirby as this Kirbyphile could ascertain after enlarging the stilled image on his TV and comparing it to the original cover! I could call it a swipe, but given the context, this has to be viewed as a tribute, albeit one aimed solely at Kirby fans who might recognize it. To pay homage to the King in such a way tells us that whoever is responsible for the cover is obviously a great Kirby fan. And apparently THOR #142 has some personal meaning to this artist as well. Did Mike Mignola furnish the ersatz cover himself? Mike Trehus, Lino Lakes, MN (Mike, if you’re out there reading this, please drop us a line and let us know how that cover came about.) Over here in a cold and rainy UK, I have a complaint other than the weather. I read in TJKC that the extended edition of the first FF movie would contain the documentary, JACK KIRBY: STORYTELLER. This report was confirmed on numerous websites, and I was, of course, eager to get my hands on this rare and wondrous artifact. So I pre-ordered the DVD and sat back to wait. It duly arrived and I ripped off the wrapping. Unfortunately, that’s not where the ripping-off ended. There was no Kirby documentary. Nada. Rien. Zilch. You see, along with the rest of Europe, I live in DVD Region 2. JACK KIRBY: STORYTELLER was only included on the Region 1 release and is, therefore, not available to us. The documentary was my sole reason for buying the DVD, hence the ripped-off feeling. I’m sure I can’t be the only deeply disappointed Kirby fan on this side of the pond. Since even Stan the Man admits that Kirby created the Silver Surfer, I thought maybe one of the versions of the FF Surfer DVD might include the doc. They don’t. Not in Region 2. And none of the five DVD players I own (two stand-alone and three on computers) will play Region 1 disks. Any ideas as to how I might get to view the elusive doc would be greatly

appreciated. On a far more positive note, TJKC continues to be the best magazine in the known universe, and I’m hugely looking forward to the double-sized issue #50. Philip Shallcrass, Wiltshire, UK p.shallcrass@btinternet.com (How about it, readers? Can anyone help Philip out?) Just to add my two cents on the Vinnie Colletta debate, I loved Vinnie’s inking over Kirby on THOR. Vinnie made Sif a beauty and Thor powerful and regal. When Vinnie left the book, the art suffered. But let’s look at what happened to the industry in the following years to really hurt Vinnie Colletta’s quality of work. The switch was made to smaller original pages. Less image reduction in the final product allows every fault to show up (remember those half two-page spreads in Marvel’s books for a while; the art was printed almost full-size and it looked terrible). Then to add insult to injury, they switch to flexo printing plates. Any inker at this time who used fine lines saw the work get mangled at the press; fine lines just dropped out and others got all wavy as the poly plates flexed, distorted and broke down during the print run. To top that off, these plates just couldn’t print a dark black line for love or money; everything looked gray. If you used fine lines, your work suffered from a process that just could not handle the quality needed to reproduce those lines. So artists like Vince Colletta and Tony Dezuniga just looked terrible for years, through no fault of their own. Vince Colletta may not have been 100% faithful to the pencils, but I never noticed anything missing. Jack Kirby’s exciting action-packed storytelling always came through. Vinnie on THOR, at least to this reader, added more than he took away. Bruce Dodge, Greenfield, NH I would like to ask a couple of questions about some things in JKC. In issue #45, pg.29, “Jack F.A.Q.s,” there was mention of the “Solar Legion” comic strip with Adam Starr and his sidekick DALEK!? Now, being a big Doctor Who fan as well as a Kirby fan, I would like to know if the name was right. Dalek? Where can I see Mr. Kirby’s Dalek on the Internet or anywhere? The cover of issue #32; wow! Can you please tell me if there was any information about Sundance of Mars—about his powers, history, or anything about what the character was going to do? Patrick Powell, Collins, GA (Sorry, I have no idea of just what Sundance of Mars was planned for. But on the one “Solar Legion” strip I could lay my hands on immediately, the character’s name was “Darek”—which is not to say it wasn’t “Dalek” somewhere else, but I couldn’t readily find such an instance. Anyone?) KIRBY FIVE-OH! jams. Man, what a treat. It’s a soul thrill to know that TJKC exists— that such a remarkable and never to be matched body of work is being preserved, promoted and honored. Kirby really kicks me in the butt. Whenever I open an issue and see the waterfall of creativity, and the ease with which he did it, it cranks me up to pick up a pencil and draw something amazing. Stu Kilgour, Huntington Beach, CA PS: Seriously, Goozlebobber instead of Cap, Thor, Lightray, etc? Gotten any letters on that? (As you can see from this letter column, we’ve gotten just a few!) 77

I have no idea if you noticed or not, but if you haven’t, a point you and other Kirby fans may find interesting deals with what I believe is the destruction of the original art, to the Kirby cover of THE INCREDIBLE HULK #1, 1962. While studying the original (well, a photo on eBay or the comicartfans.com site; I honestly don’t remember where) to the pastedup house ad in ASTONISH #59 (letting the readers know Hulk would be a regular feature starting with #60), I noticed how odd the paste-up seemed, until I realized the Hulk figure was CUT from the art of HULK #1! Bruce Banner was pasted over, much white-out was used AND art added to make up for what was originally covered by the Banner figure. Of course, it MIGHT be a STAT of the Hulk figure from #1, but when sold on eBay (I THINK that’s where I first saw it) it said the Hulk was an original drawing. Angel Gabriele, Wabash, IN (Sounds plausible, and would explain why the art to the cover of Incredible Hulk #1 hasn’t surfaced. Likewise, there’s a theory going around art circles that, when Marvel reprinted the FF’s origin in Fantastic Four Annual #1, instead of spending money to stat the pages from FANTASTIC FOUR #1, they just chopped up the original art and pasted them on new boards for the Annual. If so, whoever owns those “reprint” pages from Annual #1 is actually sitting on some of the originals from the book that started the Marvel Age!) I was thumbing through K-5-OH! and wanted to give my two cents’... ah? I mean 50 cents’ worth. A fine concept, but I feel a lot of meat was left on the bones. Kirby’s 50 best covers? I find it hard to believe that nobody picked FF #59. That has to be the best action pose ever for Mr. Fantastic. If there is a shortcoming of that great Lee and Kirby run, I’d say that they never focused on how powerful and fantastic Reed Richards 78

actually is or can be. Stretching is considered, by most, to be a cliché power. So Kirby and Lee focused on his mind over his power. Reading Mister Miracle’s “Battle of the Id!” vs. the Lump shows how formidable an adversary with stretching powers can be and provides more proof, if any be needed, that Kirby had the ability to unleash that side of Reed Richards. It’s only seen in bits and pieces throughout the 1021⁄2 issues. Brief examples include Reed using his body to replace a blown-out tire in FF #3. He was Sue’s parachute in FF #60 and Wyatt Wingfoot’s Bazooka Shell in FF #80. Reed has the ability of limited flight, comparable to the Falcon and Black Bolt. Reed used it in FF #18 to escape the Super Skrull and in FF #68 to avoid an enraged and mind-altered Thing. Like the Lump, Mr. Fantastic’s elasticity makes him a lot more invulnerable than how he has been portrayed. A punch from a normal human like Johnny Storm, the Trapster/Paste-Pot Pete, or the Mad Thinker should bounce right off of him with no effect. Reed might even be elastic enough to shrug off a blow from, say, Spider-Man, or the Beast in his non-mutated state. I think there are a lot of loopholes in the 50 Best Character Designs. I don’t see how one can waste time and energy on the Goozlebobber, while Mantis of the New Gods and Annihilus, the Living Death that Walks didn’t rate. Angel of BOYS’ RANCH should have also been included. He’s probably Kirby’s first, or one of his first, long-haired characters (and it certainly stands out in a western strip). Angel fits the Kirby Mold with Brooklyn, Dum Dum, OMAC, and even the Black Racer. They’re all fine examples of Kirby touches to get a character noticed. Another major oversight is displayed in the Orion entry. Orion’s Astro Harness is mentioned as the compelling part of his design. So missing from this list is any of Kirby’s gadgetry save for perhaps Orion’s Harness. None of Reed’s fancy gadgets, no Mountain of Judgment, Whiz Wagon, Anti-

(Actually, those weren’t MY favorite character designs; the piece was written by Sean Kleefeld, and while I took issue with a few of his choices, I didn’t want to impose my sensibilities on his article, so let it run as-is.)

I just wanted to drop you a quick line and let you know that TJKC #50 was outstanding. I was most impressed by the 50 best Kirby stories; on one hand, I agree with all the selections—on the other hand, it was too short. Maybe it should have been “50 x 2,” but then I’d been complaining that it should have been “50 x 3.” Thanks for reminding me how fascinating Kirby’s twopage spread in MISTER MIRACLE #8 is, and acknowledging one of the many “obscure” Kirby classics, in this case “Mile-A-Minute Jones” from OUR FIGHTING FORCES #159. Every now and then Kirby would write some of the most moving closing panels in comics. OFF #159 has one of them. I’m sorry that the inspired madness of DEVIL DINOSAUR and some of the pure horror of THE DEMON didn’t make the cut. Personally, I think DEVIL DINOSAUR #4 depicts one of Kirby’s most bizarre two-page spreads, and the King’s take on “The Phantom of the Opera” was even better and more chilling and tragic than the classic Lon Chaney movie. But I realize it’s hard to include them all (also, Kirby’s breathtaking and intensely relentless 1973 run on KAMANDI is simply the most awesome run of adventure comics ever). Congratulations on an amazing 50-issue run, and keep up the great work. Jim Kingman, Pasadena, CA

I’m looking for a Kirby expert, and the foremost Kirby publication seems like a natural place to start. I’m wondering if the Kirby art for THOR #175 is art that’s known to collectors. Here’s the background: I’ve collected comics for 34 years and used to own a comic book store, so I’m certainly a Kirby fan and quite familiar with his work... but I’m no expert to the extent that somebody from KIRBY COLLECTOR would be. The published cover of THOR #175, from late in Kirby’s run on the title, was one of the few early THOR covers not by Kirby. However, I’ve met somebody who owns a World Color Press production photostat of a cover to THOR #175 that is clearly drawn by Kirby. The published cover (by somebody else) was obviously based upon the original Kirby cover. It appears to me that at some point late in the production process, Marvel decided to replace the Kirby cover with the redrawn one (by Romita?). What I’m curious about is: Are Kirby fans in general aware of the fact that this Kirby art to THOR #175 exists? Or is this art that is otherwise lost to the collecting community? Any info you might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated. Stephen O’Day, Holyoke, MA (We ran that unused cover back in issue #18; the published one’s by Marie Severin. Maybe Stan wanted more action, or perhaps the art got lost, like on THOR #179, where pages had to be reinked by John Verpoorten, working from stats of Jack’s pencils. Strange that it got as far as a World Color stat, though...)

Issue #50 is a beautiful book—you and your staff and guest writers did a wonderful job. Only two quibbles with your 50 best Kirby character designs list. First off—leaving off Lockjaw. I have always thought that Lockjaw was a wonderful abstraction of a dog—the mustache, the huge head. He has so much personality, even though he hardly ever even barks. What else would the Inhumans’ dog look like, yet who else but Kirby could design it? Also—leaving off the Fantastic Four’s uniforms, but including the X-Men’s. I understand that the X-Men’s uniforms are personal favorites of yours, and you deserve to put your personal favorites on the list— but the FF’s basic uniform design has lasted, with only minor tinkering, since the first time they appeared forty years ago. True, the X-Men basic design has kinda hung around, being used for specific characters—but the FF uniforms have been in continuous use. Steve Tenerelli, McKinleyville, CA

Gravity Disks or armed Para-Demons. Kirby Tech and character designs and props go hand-in-hand. Machine Man is a great integration of this, but alas, he didn’t make the list. Where would the Surfer be without his board or the Black Racer without his skis? In my opinion, the most disappointing omission is of the Enchanters, from THOR. The close-ups of their Talisman is somewhat similar in design to Ego’s face and that was only a small portion of their overall design. Forsung, Magnir and Brona were so-oooo awesome that it was a disappointment that Thor and the good guys actually had to win. Also, it’s a lot more than Ego’s face that makes his design compelling. Like the Lump, he could adapt his form as well as his environment, and his fighting anti-bodies also made a compelling design. Speaking of Ego, the Rigellians and the Recorder (all part of that storyline) didn’t rate, either. Unused artwork—what happened to the unused cover to Atlas in FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL? The villains catch the eye more than Atlas and that cover was/is far more dramatic than the published one. David Jefferson, Pittsburgh, PA

You note in your latest issue (one of the best, by the way—really terrific mix of stuff there, John) that it’s unknown why Jack didn’t really finish out the Marvelmania piece used on the cover—my understanding is that Marvelmania originally commissioned Jack to do pencils that they would then have someone else (Frank Giacoia, maybe?) ink. But once they’d spent their dough, they found out they didn’t have it in the budget to get them inked. So Jack—knowing they were going to be run in the magazine as pencils—went back in and added some level of detail. On the Doctor Doom piece in particular, you can see where he erased (Kirby—erasing?) some weaker lines and added machinery,et al. You should probably double-check that with Mark Evanier. Glen Gold, San Francisco, CA

Sometimes you just have to have an expert opinion—so for his feature on Jack’s 50 Best Covers in Kirby Five-Oh!, Jerry Boyd went to Springfield’s Comic Book Guy and he—while dazzling Bart and Milhouse with his vintage collection—said... that Matt Groening’s pick was the same as his! Thanks to Matt and Jerry for this great piece, and their patience waiting for it to appear in TJKC. Enclosed are a couple of scans of a few pictures of “the King” and I. I’ve enclosed a little background information about where and how I met Jack and Roz Kirby. To me, it was one of the most exciting days of my life! It was 1991, and I had been going to local conventions (in western New York) for about 7 or 8 years. I had seen many great writers, artists and inkers at these shows, but the main person that I hadn’t met, and forever wanted to meet, was Jack Kirby. I heard that Jack was going to come to the 1991 New York Comic-Con (I don’t remember the actual formal name of the convention), and I knew that I HAD to go there! This would be my best chance to meet him and shake Jack’s

hand. Hopefully, if possible, I could get an autograph on one of my beloved FANTASTIC FOUR issues (I think that I brought FF #60). One thing led to another, and my buddy Marty and I entered the Con. My first thought was to find out where Jack might be, and prepare to get in line to finally meet him. Marty and I were walking down one of the aisles, and Marty spotted Jack talking to a fan in the aisle. I was in shock! I didn’t know if I should “just go up to him and say hi,” or if that wasn’t allowed. Marty, who had been to many big Cons, said, “Go up and meet Jack, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.” That’s exactly what I did. After Jack had finished talking to the fan, I walked up to Jack and extended my hand. I blithered something like, “It’s great to meet you Mr. Kirby. I love your work, and I’ve always wanted to meet you!” Jack was super! He treated me like we’d been old friends. He shook my hand, looked me square in the eye, smiled and said, “Thanks. It’s good to meet you, too.” I had a camera with me, and I asked Jack if I could take his picture, He chuckled a little, and said, “Sure... but don’t you want to be in the picture with me?” I, of course, was floored! How great was this? Not

only would I get a picture OF Jack Kirby, but I was going to get a picture WITH Jack Kirby! Jack, then, suggested that I give my camera to Roz, who was standing right behind me, to snap a couple of pictures. I didn’t even notice her behind me. Again, as if it was nothing, Roz said, “Go ahead and sit down with Jack, and I’ll take your picture.” She smiled and seemed excited for me. Roz took a few pictures of Jack and me, while my buddy Marty looked on. I was grinning from ear-to-ear and couldn’t help it. Jack even put his arm around me for one of the pictures. After the picture taking, I asked Jack if he was able to autograph anything, and he told me that he couldn’t. He said that his hand was bothering him a little bit, and that he wouldn’t be doing autographs at the convention. He did, however, point out to me that he had autographed some copies of LAST OF THE VIKING HEROES, for sale at the next table. I thanked Jack and Roz for their time, and they walked off. I bought one of each of the LAST OF THE VIKING HEROES comics (I would have bought more, but then others would not have the thrill of having a comic autographed by Jack “King” Kirby). Later during the Con, I caught Jack involved in a couple of group panels. I sure enjoyed his yarns and insight. At the end of the day, I just sat down, and I wondered what had just happened? It was almost like a dream. Yes, I am a Kirby fanatic! I started buying Marvel Comics in the ’60s, and I loved Jack’s artwork. My friends did, too! The name “Kirby” didn’t mean much to me at that time. I was very young. All that I knew was that I liked that guy’s artwork. A few years later, I became old enough to begin to understand “artists” and what the word “Kirby” means. I’ll always continue to learn more about Jack and all his different works, but for one day I got a chance to meet this great man face-to-face. What a day! Jay Nigro, Greece, NY

#51 Credits: John Morrow, Editor/Designer Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington, Proofreader Rand Hoppe, Webmaster Tom Ziuko, Colorist Chris Fama, Art Restoration SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Jerry Boyd Dwight Boyd Steven Brower Darwyn Cooke Adrian Day Jean Depelley Mark Evanier John Fleskes Shane Foley Barry Forshaw Phil Frances Neil Gaiman Heritage Auctions Rand Hoppe Adam Hughes Sean Kleefeld Tom Kraft Erik Larsen Steve Leaf Jim Lee Paul Levine Ralph Macchio Adam McGovern Thierry Mornet Will Murray Doug Pearson Gary Picariello Dave Plunkert Tom Scioli Tod Seisser Tom Stewart Dick Swan Chris Tamura James Van Hise Fred Van Lente R.J. Vitone Pete Von Sholly Ray Wyman, Jr. and of course The Kirby Estate If we’ve forgotten anyone, please let us know!

Contribute & Get Free Issues! The Jack Kirby Collector is a notfor-profit publication, put together with submissions from Jack’s fans around the world. We don’t pay for submissions, but if we print art or articles you submit, we’ll send you a free copy of the issue it appears in. Here’s a tentative list of upcoming themes, but we treat these themes very loosely, so anything you write may fit somewhere. So get writing, and send us copies of your Kirby art! GOT A THEME IDEA? PLEASE WRITE US! #53: STAN & JACK! We celebrate the greatest team in the history of comics!

NEXT ISSUE: #52 spotlights “Kirby Obscura,” uncovering some of Jack’s most obscure work! Learn about such littleknown projects as an unused Thor story, his unseen BRUCE LEE comic, his animation work, his stage play, and see original unaltered versions of pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more! It also includes a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series before editorial tampering (complete with lots of surprises)! There’s also the 2008 Kirby Tribute Panel (featuring Jerry Robinson, Joe Ruby, and Ken Spears), Mark Evanier’s regular column about his former boss, a huge Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, a color Kirby front cover inked by DON HECK, and a color back cover inked by PAUL SMITH! The deadline for contributions is December 1, 2008, and look for issue #52 in February 2009!

#54: KIRBY GOES HOLLYWOOD! An issue all about Jack’s career in animation and film! #55: ROUGH STUFF! Inspired by the TwoMorrows mag of the same name, we’ll focus on never-before-published pencil pages, sketches, layouts, roughs, and unused inked pages from throughout Jack’s career! SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Submit artwork as: 1) Color or B&W photocopies. 2) 300ppi TIFF or JPEG scans 3) Originals (insured). Submit articles as: 1) E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com 2) ASCII or RTF text files. 3) Typed or laser printed pages. We’ll pay return postage and insurance for originals—please write or call first. Please include background information whenever possible.

Parting Shot

JACK KIRBY BOOKS

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

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOLUMES 1-7, EDITED BY JOHN MORROW REPRINTING THE FIRST 30 ISSUES OF THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, PLUS NEW MATERIAL

NEW FOR 2008

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST: GOLD EDITION VOLUME 1

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 3

VOLUME 4

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

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

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

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

(240-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905009 Diamond Order Code: DEC032834

(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

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781605490052 Now Shipping!

NEW FOR 2009

VOLUME 5

VOLUME 6

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

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #23-26—Jack’s “Greatest Battles,” “Gods,” and his Golden Age work with JOE SIMON! Features rare interviews with Kirby himself, plus new ones with comics pros DENNY O’NEIL, JIM SHOOTER, JOHN SEVERIN, and WALTER SIMONSON! PLUS: see a complete ten-page UNPUBLISHED KIRBY STORY! Jack’s ORIGINAL PENCILS to FANTASTIC FOUR #49 (the first appearance of the Silver Surfer)! Kirby’s original concept art for the Fourth World characters! An analysis comparing Kirby’s margin notes to Stan Lee’s dialogue! Plus a NEW special section with over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, and a Foreword by MIKE GARTLAND!

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

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490038 Now Shipping!

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! 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! (52-page comic book) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN042759

VOLUME 7 (NEW FOR 2009!)

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, with looks at Jack’s 1970s and ‘80s work, plus a two-part focus on how widespread Kirby’s influence is! Features rare interviews with KIRBY himself, plus Watchmen’s ALAN MOORE and DAVE GIBBONS, NEIL GAIMAN, Bone’s JEFF SMITH, MARK HAMILL, and others! See page after page of rare Kirby art, including a NEW SPECIAL SECTION with over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, and more!

First conceptualized in the 1970s as a movie screenplay, SILVER STAR was too far ahead of its time for Hollywood, so artist JACK KIRBY adapted it as a six-issue mini-series for Pacific Comics in the 1980s, making it his final, great comics series. Image Comics recently collected the printed comics as a full-color hardcover, but 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!

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 US ISBN: 9781605490120 Ships February 2009

The most thorough listing of JACK “KING” KIRBY’s work ever published! Building on the 1998 “Silver Edition”, this NEWLY UPDATED GOLD EDITION compiles an additional decade’s worth of corrections and additions by top historians, in a new Trade Paperback format with premium paper for archival durability. It 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!

17" x 23" JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR POSTER Only a few left of our TJKC retailer’s poster! $10 US

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

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 Diamond Order Code: OCT043208