Jack Kirby Collector #56

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR FIFTY-SIX

IN THE US

$1095

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

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 3

VOLUME 4

VOLUME 5

VOLUME 6

VOLUME 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEW!

NEW!

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS

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

(128-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 (Subscribers: counts as two issues toward your Jack Kirby Collector subscription) ISBN: 9781605490380

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

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

Now the entire six-issue run is collected here, reproduced from his powerful, uninked PENCIL ART, showing Kirby’s work in its undiluted, raw form! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SPECIAL EDITION

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

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

SUPERHEROES IN MY PANTS!

MARK EVANIER’S old and new essays on JULIUS SCHWARTZ, bad convention panels, CURT SWAN, cheap comic fans, unfinanced entrepreneurs, stupid mistakes in comics, PAT BOYETTE, and other aspects of the Art Form, profusely illustrated by award-winning MAD cartoonist and GROO collaborator SERGIO ARAGONÉS, including new covers!

(200-page trade paperback) $12.95 ISBN: 9781893905351 Diamond Order Code: FEB088013

(120-page Digital Edition) $4.95

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST GOLD EDITION

Lists in exacting detail EVERY PUBLISHED COMIC featuring Kirby’s work, including dates, story titles, page counts, and inkers. It even CROSS-REFERENCES REPRINTS, and includes an extensive bibliography listing BOOKS, PERIODICALS, PORTFOLIOS, FANZINES, POSTERS, and other obscure pieces with Kirby’s art, plus a detailed list of Jack’s UNPUBLISHED WORK as well.

BONUS: Now includes a complete listing of the over 5000-page archive of Kirby’s personal pencil art photocopies, plus dozens of examples of rare and unseen Kirby art!

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 9781605490052 Diamond Order Code: MAR084008

Also available: WALLACE WOOD CHECKLIST

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

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

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

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

Reprinting the fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED PORTFOLIO, completely remastered!

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

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

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

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

Contents

THE NEW

Unfinished Sagas!

OPenInG SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (the Kirby Tradition) GalleRY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (Kirby’s unfinished business) JaCk F.a.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 (Mark Evanier, Esq.)

ISSUE #56, SPRING 2011

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r TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

OOH, la-la! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 (the French continuation of Kirby’s Galaxy Green) InFluenCeeS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 (Paul Kupperberg’s super powers) 2BCOnTInued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 (subploticus interruptus?)

TRIBuTe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 (the 2009 Kirby Tribute Panel) FOundaTIOnS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 (to the moon with the Boy Explorers) kIRBY OBSCuRa . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 (Barry Forshaw’s verdict on Titan’s recent Simon & Kirby volumes) CenTeRFOld: “Raam” . . . . . . . .40 (an unknown man-mountain) nOvel IdeaS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 (Ray Wyman and Peter Burke’s continuation of Kirby’s novel The Horde) GalleRY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 (this is one dedicated nurse) JOn B. COOke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 (TJKC’s associate editor is back, with an interview of Kobra’s Michael Netzer) InCIdenTal ICOnOGRaPHY . . . . .57 (Sean Kleefeld looks at the visual evolution of the Dingbats) TRIBuTe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 (the 2010 Kirby Tribute Panel) adam mcGOveRn . . . . . . . . . . . .68 (Adam interviews Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross about their upcoming series Kirby: Genesis) knOw PRIzeS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 (Jerry Boyd says it’s “back to the drawing board, Kirby!”)

JaCk kIRBY muSeum PaGe . . . .78 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) COlleCTOR COmmenTS . . . . . . .79 PaRTInG SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (grip these man-woman relationships) Front cover inks: mIke ROYeR (cover for the unpublished Galaxy Green #1) Back cover painting: aleX ROSS Front cover colors: TOm zIukO (based on original color scheme by Reed Man) The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 18, No. 56, Spring 2011. Published quarterly (yeah, sure!) by & ©2011 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher.

Single issues: $14 postpaid ($18 elsewhere).

Four-issue subscriptions: $50 US, $65 Canada, $72 elsewhere. Editorial package ©2011 TwoMorrows Publishing. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2011 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA. ISSN 1932-6912

(above) This 1971 story from True Divorce Cases spun off into yet another unpublished Kirby magazine, Soul Love. Inks by Vince Colletta.

COPYRIGHTS: Apollo, Aquaman, Atlas, Batman, Big Barda, Boy Commandos, Buddy Blank, Darkseid, Demon, Desaad, Dingbats of Danger Street, Dr. Strange, Dubbilex, Firestorm, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Guardian, Hawkman, Jason Burr, Jimmy Olsen, Kalibak, Kobra, Lump, Manhunter, Martian Manhunter, Mr. Miracle, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Randu Singh, Red Tornado, Robin, San Diego Five-String Mob, Spirit World, Steppenwolf, Super Friends, Super Powers, Superman, The Head, Witchboy, Wonder Woman TM & ©2011 DC Comics • Angel, Beast, Black Bolt, Black Panther, Blob, Bucky, Captain America, Crystal, Cyclops, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Gorgon, Hulk, Human Torch, Thing, Iceman, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Karnak, Lockjaw, Magneto, Medusa, Molecule Man, Mr. Fantastic, Professor X, Red Skull, Rick Jones, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Thor, Toad, Triton, Watcher, Wyatt Wingfoot, X-Men TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Bruce Lee art, Captain Victory, Dragon Boy, Dynamite Duck, Galaxy Green, Gods Portfolio characters, Images of God, Kirby: Genesis characters, Lightning Lady, Lionhead, Mighty Magon, Ninth Men, Prester John, Raam the Man Mountain, She-Demon, Silver Star, Soul Love, Sundance of Mars, The Horde, Tribes Trilogy, True Divorce Cases, “Y” Bikers TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate • Black Magic, Boy Explorers, Bullseye, Captain 3-D, Fighting American, Stuntman TM & ©2011 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estate • Bruce Lee © 2011 Bruce Lee Enterprises, LLC • Esquire magazine, Jack Ruby story ©2011 Hearst Communications, Inc. • The Avenger TM & ©2011 Conde Nast • Scooby-Doo TM & ©2011 Hanna-Barbera • Adventures of the Fly, Double Life of Private Strong, Shieldmaster TM & ©2011 Joe Simon

Opening Shot

(below) Page 10 pencils from OMAC #1 (Sept. 1974) depict some company employees blowing off steam on the job. Note that Jack made the boss’ name “Mr. Fox”; perhaps a reference to Victor Fox, one of his earliest employers?

OMAC TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

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by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

The Kirby

his issue’s theme is “Unfinished Sagas,” as we look at concepts Jack Kirby never finished, where others have taken them, and what the future holds. But documenting Jack’s life and career certainly falls under that category. Recently, Joe Simon wrote an introduction to DC Comics’ archive edition of “Newsboy Legion” stories from the 1940s. In it, he recounts that the strip came about because the S&K shop had way too many “Boy Commandos” artists and writers working to build up inventory before Joe and Jack were drafted into WWII. To keep them all busy and to use up extra inventory material, Simon & Kirby created the Newsboys— that was news to me. Also, Paul Levitz recently wrote a colossal book on the history of DC Comics, and in it revealed that the reason DC used Hampshire Distribution—a British company it owned—when distributing Jack’s In The Days of the Mob, was to keep DC’s name off such adult material. I’ve always wondered about the specifics of that. Kirby’s history is so rich, I (and hopefully you too, through this mag) am still learning new tidbits about it regularly.

I’ve always felt that OMAC (the One Man Army Corp, or just One Man Army, as he was originally billed by Jack) stands as one of his most promising, uncompleted series. From the totally whack first issue cover (with its pseudo-sexual image of a woman being tossed away by the hero, her various body parts stuffed into a shipping container), to that funky mohawk OMAC wore, to the faceless United Nations-like agency that was there to allegedly protect people, Kirby took George Orwell’s vision of the future, and made it that much more frightening and exciting. It’s such a shame his DC Comics contract didn’t run another year, so he could’ve expounded further on his fanciful take on “the world that’s coming.” Despite valiant attempts by Jim Starlin in the back of some post-Kirby Kamandi issues, and John Byrne on his 1991 mini-series, no one’s managed to capture the spark Kirby put into his original, short-lived epic.

What does it say about Kirby and his work, that so few have been able to follow him and tell stories of his characters in the “Kirby Tradition”? Sure, they’ve done very different versions that were outstanding (think New X-Men; same basic premise, but wildly different execution and direction), but who’s come along and done Jack’s stuff, Jack’s way, but better than him? I think it simply shows Jack was such an individualized talent, that in most cases, you’re better off not taking over one of his strips. As Mark Evanier quoted Kirby saying (in the 2010 Kirby Tribute Panel transcribed in this issue), “The Kirby tradition is to create your own book.”

Invariably, those who did fared the best.

However, there are a number of times others picked up the reins of Jack’s creations, and did a fine job continuing what Kirby started, maintaining a bit of the Kirby flavor, but managing to instill their own aesthetic to the work. Here’s my personal “top ten” list: #10: Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen’s “Great Darkness Saga” in Legion of Super-Heroes #290-294 (1982). After a long, Darkseid-free spell at DC Comics, Levitz and Giffen brought him back (albeit in the 30th Century) and helped cement the character as the major villain in the DC Universe. They even teased us with a glimpse of how the unseen Orion/Darkseid final battle shaped up, before Hunger Dogs. #9: Mark Evanier and Steve Rude’s Mister Miracle (1987) and Jimmy Olsen (Legends of the DC Universe #14, 1999) specials. This was some of the most satisfying Kirbyesque work ever done. Rude somehow manages to distill the essence of Jack’s art into his, but it’s still very much Rude. I’m totally befuddled as to how he hits that perfect blending of the two, but this is as close to “new” Kirby as we’re likely to ever see.

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Tradition #8: Jim Steranko’s Captain America (#110, 111, and 113, 1969). Steranko didn’t stray far from what Jack brought to the strip; he just gave a new visual vibe to it, and graphically blew its doors off. Within only three issues, he managed to make a run as memorable as any Kirby did. #7: John Byrne’s second Fantastic Four run (#232-293, 1981-86). After years of creative teams doing their own thing, Byrne got back to the sense of fun and adventure that made Lee and Kirby’s FF so great. Sure, I thought it was blasphemous to have Johnny and Alicia hook-up, but he kept me coming back issue after issue for a long while. #6: Jim Starlin and Mike Mignola’s Cosmic Odyssey (1988-89). Mignola’s idiosyncratic style perfectly fits the Fourth World characters; it’s “Kirby”, but not through any actual aping of Jack’s squiggles or exaggerations. Starlin’s story did a fine job of bringing together the Fourth World with DC’s major characters, in a much more successful and satisfying way than Jack’s own later Super Powers mini-series would. #5: Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD (and Strange Tales, 1967-68). This is one of the few strips that comes to mind, that I’d classify as someone doing a better version than Kirby. While Jack began the series strongly, he never got much of an opportunity to develop it fully, so there was plenty of room for improvement.

Steranko cranked on all cylinders, and moulded the basic premise into something remarkable. It never was very “Kirby” to begin with, and it’s justifiably remembered more for Steranko’s work than Jack’s. #4: Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson’s “Manhunter” back-ups in Detective Comics (1973-74). While this continuation of Simon & Kirby’s Paul Kirk ends up nothing like Jack’s work, you can’t say they weren’t faithful to the strip’s origins. In just a handful of short back-ups, they sculpted a fully-developed, award-winning, and memorable series that’s still some of the best comics work ever produced. #3: Roy Thomas and Neal Adams’ X-Men #56-65 (1969-70).

Roy and Neal hit a high point on the series, bringing back the Sentinels, Magneto, and Ka-Zar, while injecting some new characters to the mythos—a great example of taking Kirby’s core concept and running with it to great advantage. #2: Bruce Timm’s Superman: The Animated Series (premiered September 1996). This cartoon series had Kirby written all over it, once Darkseid was introduced as a recurring menace for the Man of Steel. The series conclusion let Bruce Timm and Co. toss in all their favorite Kirby riffs, including Terrible Turpin, modeled on the look of Jack himself. #1: Walter Simonson’s Orion #1-5 (2000). After years of misguided attempts at bringing the New Gods back to comics, somebody finally got it right. The final battle between Orion and Darkseid came off as authentically as if Kirby’d done it himself—perhaps too much so, as the book lost a lot of its impetus after that battle. Still, it’s a knockout series.

Sure, in comics, nothing is ever “finished.” But all these creators did an amazing job doing the near-impossible; following in Kirby’s shoes,

Join the NEW Jack Kirby discussion group, run by the Jack Kirby Museum. Go to: http://groups.google.com/group/jackkirby New & improved! More closely moderated, and strictly focused on Kirby, kirby, Kirby!

and creating work that doesn’t just mimic what Jack did; they continued his “unfinished sagas” while creating work that stands on its own. To me, that’s doing it in the “Kirby Tradition.” here’s another epic unfinished saga that’s playing out as we speak: the Kirby family’s efforts to reclaim Jack’s rights to the characters he created or co-created at Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, as allowed under copyright law.

Naturally, Marvel isn’t too happy about the thought of the Kirbys co-owning the rights to the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, and others, so they filed suit against the Kirbys—which inadvertently got me tossed into the mix.

Marc Toberoff, the Kirbys’ attorney, asked if I’d serve as an “Expert Witness” for the case. Now, I’m a very modest guy, and being called an “expert” anything makes me a little uneasy. But if there’s one thing I do know a lot about, it’s Jack Kirby. After 40 years of reading nearly every comic book story he produced, plus years interviewing and shooting the breeze with his family, friends, and co-workers— well, all modesty aside, the moniker fits. I had to give it some of thought, since I’d never given testimony in a court case, and didn’t know what to expect. But a big part of my purpose in life the last 17 years has been to make sure the record is straight about who Kirby was, and what he did on this Earth. If there was a chance I could help clarify the facts in this case, I figured the least I could do was write an Expert Report, and get grilled by Marvel’s legal counsel for several hours.

So after I received a subpoena (my first!), lawyers for both sides traveled here to North Carolina to take my deposition this past January. The two sides had previously agreed that I was on the hook from about 8am till 5pm, which made for a pretty long and stressful day. The whole thing was videotaped, and they had a stenographer there with this bizarre typewriter-like gizmo that looked like something Kirby would’ve drawn as part of Reed’s lab equipment in the FF. The Kirbys’ attorney was there to represent me, but while he was allowed to say “I object” to things that seemed wrong or unfair, there was no judge to say “sustained” or “overruled” like on TV. No matter what Marvel’s attorney asked, or how they framed it, I had to answer; any “objections” were basically meaningless.

If Marvel’s attorney didn’t like my answer, he could keep re-asking the question in any way he wanted, trying to get me to contradict myself, or trap me into saying something I didn’t mean to say. Best of all, the attorneys asking the questions have boxes of reference materials (including copies of lots of Kirby Collector articles, I might add!), and laptops hooked up to the Internet for quick and easy reference to anything they needed.

Me? I had bupkus. I wasn’t allowed to bring any notes or reference materials— it was just me and my memory. Real fair, huh? I’ll just say that the experience didn’t leave me feeling entirely optimistic about the odds of justice always triumphing in our legal system. The whole episode seemed more a matter of “how can we spin this to support our case?” rather than getting the facts straight.

How’d I do? I guess time will tell, but I felt like I did a pretty good job of answering all the questions accurately, and keeping my cool in a very tense situation.

Just today, I found out that Marvel filed a motion to try to get my entire deposition kicked out. I’m trying not to take it personally, as I assume it’s standard procedure to do that in these kinds of cases, but apparently something I said didn’t sit well with them.

As of this writing, the case has entered a stage called “Summary Judgment,” which as I understand it, means both sides have presented all their initial evidence to a judge, who can decide the case in either’s favor, or if there are enough facts still in question, it can proceed to an actual Perry Mason-style courtroom battle. I’m not sure how long that decision will take, but either way, you’ve got to figure the losing side at some point will appeal, unless they decide to reach some kind of outof-court settlement.

I hope we’ll all see an end to this unfinished saga sometime in our lifetimes.

Sadly, Joanne Siegel (widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel) died a few weeks ago at the time I’m writing this, and her similar case involving the copyright to Superman, while appearing to have an end in sight, wasn’t concluded while she was here to see it. But her family, like Jack’s, is still around fighting for what they believe to be right. No matter which side wins in either case, that’s a tradition that I think would make both Jerry Siegel, and Jack Kirby, proud. ★

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Gallery 1

Unfinished Business?

hen you spend 50 years producing comic books, you’re bound to leave behind

W a few series that either never took off, or never saw the light of day entirely.

The concepts presented here aren’t flops, exactly; any one of them could’ve gone on to be as fondly remembered as Fantastic Four or New Gods, had the timing been right. But in each case, Jack never got a proper opportunity to establish them as a hit. None of this, however, has stopped future creators from taking Jack’s foundation and running with it in their own way. (below) Here’s a page for Jack’s never-completed Bruce Lee comic from the mid-1970s.

We assume he didn’t do this on “spec”; more likely it was commissioned by someone (perhaps that rumored entrepreneur who was going to start a “Kirby Comics” line). Not only was the story unfinished, so were the backgrounds! But some of the Bruce Lee material eventually found its way into Phantom Force in the 1990s.

(page 9) Turning the concept of the romance comic on its head—a concept Kirby had pioneered with Joe Simon—Jack tried to make an anti-romance comic in True Life Divorce (alternately known as True Divorce Cases) in 1971. This is really one of the Holy Grails of Kirby’s work, quality-wise, as the stories he created for the one and only issue were all outstanding. But DC decided to instead only focus (what little they actually did) on Spirit World and In The Days Of The Mob, and Divorce eventually morphed into Soul Love, with the one story “The Model” serving as the template for it. (See this issue’s first page for the splash from “The Model.”) But Soul Love was never published either, leaving several more stories unseen by Jack’s fans. This example page from Divorce shows the marriage counselor/ narrator for the magazine, Mr. Miller. If nothing else, this shows how great Kirby was at taking a mundane page of “talking heads” and rendering it in a visually compelling manner. ★

(page 5) Final page pencils from Atlas #1 (which was published as First Issue Special #1, April 1975). From the last panel, you can see Jack had more planned for this character, even if a second issue was never drawn. James Robinson brought Atlas back in Superman #678, but his personality was more villainous than heroic. (page 6) Another First Issue Special (#5, Aug. 1975) that never got a second issue was Manhunter, an update to Simon & Kirby’s character of the 1940s (which was, in turn, an update to the original, non-costumed Manhunter in Adventure Comics).

Steve Englehart ran with the concept later in Justice League, turning out a whole league of Manhunters—sort of the antiGuardians of the Universe. It was all done shortly after Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson had updated Simon & Kirby’s (Paul Kirk) Manhunter in a series of awardwinning back-ups in Detective Comics, so the continuity gets a little confusing!

(page 8) Concluding page of Dingbats of Danger Street #1 (finally published in First Issue Special #6, Sept. 1975), showing the final panel announcing that subsequent issues would reveal the origins of each Dingbat. But unlike other tryout ideas, there were actually two more complete issues of Dingbats penciled and inked, but never published. (Kinda makes you wonder if there’s unseen Atlas, Manhunter, and Kobra stories floating around...) Karl Kesel brought them back in Adventures of Superman (beginning in #549, after a few cameos), where they were occupying the old hangout used by the Newsboy Legion in the 1940s.

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Art ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

(page 7) Final page of OMAC #7 (Sept.

1975) in pencil. Jack had gotten so caught up in the “World That’s Coming”, that he’d gone and forgotten about OMAC’s wimpy alter-ego since early in the series. In this scene, he finally reverts back (for the final Kirby time) to his Buddy Blank persona, where he’d stay through Kirby’s final issue (#8), ending with a cliffhanger (that Jack had planned to conclude, but never got to, due to leaving DC for Marvel when his contract expired). There was never an indication that OMAC was cancelled due to poor sales; more likely, it was just the fact that Jack was departing the company at the time. John Byrne eventually produced an OMAC mini-series to tie up loose ends.

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Atlas TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

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Manhunter TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

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OMAC TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

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Dingbats TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

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TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

by Mark Evanier (below) First page of Kirby’s “Jack Ruby” story from the May 1967 issue of Esquire magazine.

Inks by Chic Stone, colors by Kirby.

(next page, top) Now we know why Jack drew those amazing interpretations of God! (next page, bottom) Two-page spread and cover to the September 1966 Esquire, Jack’s first appearance in that mag.

Esquire ©2011 Hearst Communications, Inc.

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We start this time with a message from John Liff who writes to ask: What was the deal with that story Jack did for Esquire magazine, the one about Jack Ruby? Did Jack write it? Ink it? Color it? How did it come about?

The May 1967 issue of Esquire featured a three-page story by Jack about Jack Ruby and the events that led up to Ruby shooting accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963.

Jack kind of half-wrote the piece. Someone at Esquire sent him a rough script that he rewrote. They also shipped him a set of all 26 volumes of the report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, a.k.a. the Warren Commission Report, plus they sent about a dozen supplementary books. Jack said that about ten pages of the thousands he had in his studio were of any use to him.

Jack drew it. He hired Chic Stone to ink it and Stone arranged with Jon D’Agostino to letter it.

D’Agostino, who died last year by the way, was a penciler, letterer and inker who worked primarily for Charlton and Archie Comics. He did occasional jobs for Marvel including the lettering of Amazing Spider-Man #1. Some of his work was credited to “Johnny Dee”—and while I’m in the area, I might as well mention that he was not John Duffy, another letterer who did some work for Marvel in the early sixties. Separate person.

Jack did the coloring. He told me that the editors at Esquire requested numerous revisions.

A few of the word balloons in the published version are not the work of D’Agostino. I’m not sure, but they may be Jack’s lettering.

How it came about: Jack had a brief relationship with Esquire that flowed from the magazine’s decision to do a big feature on the then-current rise of Marvel Comics and the apparent interest in them among older, college-age consumers. He was called in (by Sol Brodsky, Jack recalled) and told that Esquire wanted him to do a number of illustrations for the piece itself and to draw a cover for the issue. Jack was quite excited about this, especially when (according to him) he was told that he’d be paid not at Marvel’s low comic book art rates, but at Esquire’s higher scale.

It didn’t work out that way. There was some confusion and for a time, neither Marvel nor Esquire paid him, each insisting that it was the other’s responsibility. Moreover, when the issue came out, the cover he’d created in consultation with an art director at the magazine was not used. Instead, the front of the September 1966 issue featured a photo cover done in connection with another piece in that issue. The cover Jack did was never returned to him and I have never seen a copy of it anywhere. He said it was a shot of many Marvel heroes on a college campus where everyone was sitting around, reading comic books.

There was a brief squabble over Jack’s compensation and I’m not certain I understand it completely, in large part because he didn’t.

Ultimately, Marvel paid him and he received comic book rates, which were a lot less than he believed he’d been promised. His contact over at Esquire apologized profusely for the mix-up and said, approximately, “Everyone here loved what you did and we’re going to be calling on you to work directly for us.” A few months later, they did. That was the Jack Ruby piece.

He was told the editors there were delighted with it and that they’d soon be in touch about doing another historical piece in the same format, as they intended to run a whole series of them. And that was the last Jack ever heard from Esquire.

A reader of my blog (www.newsfromme.com) named Greg Kelly recently asked if I could clarify just what it was Roz Kirby did when she “inked” Jack’s work, plus he asked if she’d ever colored any of it.

The part about coloring is easy: No, not to my knowledge. She once tried a little of it just for fun, but Jack actually liked to color his own work. He would have loved it if coloring had paid well enough that he could have done a little less drawing and used that time to color everything he drew.

What he didn’t like to do was ink, which is where Roz came in.

Jack inked a lot of his own work when he was just getting into comics, and continued to wield a brush at times after he was established. In the Simon and Kirby shop, it was not uncommon for either man to ink a story or to add shadings or texture to a job inked by someone else. I asked Jack once what he was fixing when he went in and did additional inking over another artist’s work. He said, “Strengthening.” Interpret that however you like.

His interest in inking seems to have atrophied as the Simon-Kirby operation fell apart in the mid-fifties and Jack began picking up freelance work from others. I’m going to guess that as he started drawing war tales for Stan Lee at Atlas and being assigned scripts for DC books like House of Mystery, he felt less proprietary about the material, even when he wrote, rewrote or plotted the story. Steve Ditko once told me that when he felt an

©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

A few months later, Stan Lee proposed a joint venture for the magazine. The way Jack told me the story was as follows. Stan was at a party in New York and he ran into some Esquire people he’d met due to the article on Marvel. They told him the periodical was undergoing some editorial overhaul and they were looking for something new. It was suggested that Stan get together with Kirby and submit something.

Stan had written a poem about God and he proposed that Jack illustrate it and then he [Stan] would send it over to his friends at Esquire. Jack agreed and so did three large pencil drawings of the Almighty. Taking no chances he would lose his originals again, Jack had large stats made of the drawings, Stan sent them over with the poem... and Esquire said, “Thanks, but no thanks” or words to that effect.

A few years later, Jack had the drawings inked by Mike Royer [example shown at right] and they were finally published, more than two decades after that and not long after Kirby’s death, in a portfolio by Dark Horse Comics.

One last thing about the Jack Ruby piece: Jack had a wonderful clipping from a newspaper, and I wish I had it so we could reproduce it here. It was published shortly after the material came out in Esquire and Jack thought it was hilarious. A political columnist lavishly praised the story for portraying the events accurately and in an easy-to-comprehend format. But the great part of what the columnist wrote was that he was praising Jack Ruby for delineating the tale of how nightclub owner Jack Kirby had shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Bet you didn’t know Kirby did that, did you?

He was on the grassy knoll too. You know the famous puff of smoke some people claim they saw there just after Kennedy was shot? Jack’s cigar.

intense personal connection to a story, he always tried to ink it himself. When he didn’t, it didn’t matter as much to him whether he inked it or someone else did.

Beginning around the time of his fifties’ stint at DC, Jack stopped caring about inking. If he needed work badly—and at times in the mid-to-late fifties, he often did—and they wanted him to ink, fine. He’d ink. It was honest work. But given the choice of penciling (only) two stories or penciling and inking just one, he’d opt for the former. Even if the money had been the same, penciling was storytelling to Jack and he was a storyteller. Another artist who hated to ink, Ross Andru, once told me he got bored spending more time working on a story that in his mind was already completed. This is not, by the way, a common view among comic artists... or at least it wasn’t among men of Kirby’s and Andru’s generation.

Most of them preferred to ink their own work.

Kirby felt as Andru did. When he had to ink his own work, Jack would turn to his beloved Rosalind. She’d had experience wielding a pen back in her late teen years, working in a studio that did lingerie design and illustration. To help Jack out, she’d take a pen and ink, and go over his pencil work with a largely-static line, tracing it all. She did not put in large black areas and her pen line did not have much in the way of thick-and-thin weights.

Then it would go to Jack.

Jack would use a brush to thicken up her lines where appropriate, plus he’d drop in large black areas and textures. I gather very little of what Roz did survived to the printed page but it did help Jack to have her underdrawing there.

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(this spread) Various Kirby-drawn illos that appeared in the September 1966 issue of Esquire magazine. Unlike the image on our previous page, all these images appeared in black-&white.

Characters TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Roz did not do very much of this after Jack stopped working for DC back then. She occasionally helped ink (and once in a while, inked on her own) a few drawings Jack did for fanzines and convention program books. When Jack began working for the Ruby-Spears animations studio, they co-inked the first presentation drawing he did for the Thundarr the Barbarian show and the results did not please the art director. At my suggestion, Alfredo Alcala was brought in to ink the next few and then artists in the studio took over.

Things like Jack’s “Green Arrow” work often credit Roz as the inker, and Jack in interviews would sometimes say as much.

That more or less shows you how little he cared about inking. She was very valuable to him in so many ways and helping with the inks was just one of them. But she did not ink his work the way a Joe Sinnott or Mike Royer inked his work.

Geoff Berman writes to ask... (center) Joe Masserli’s logo for The Twilight Zone TV show—a clear inspiration for Sol Brodsky’s Amazing Fantasy and FF logos.

Twilight Zone TM & ©2011 CBS-TV.

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In your wonderful book about Jack, you revealed that Amazing Fantasy #15 was not intended to be the last issue as has so often been claimed. Can you tell me a little more about that? What was supposed to be in #16?

The story as it’s usually told is that Marvel publisher Martin Goodman decided to cancel the comic called Amazing Adult Fantasy, and so Stan Lee could do anything he wanted in the last issue, which was to be #15. Stan has said many times that he and Ditko decided to have some fun and do Spider-Man, knowing it would be the final issue. I don’t think this is how it happened.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that Goodman at the time was operating under a limitation from his distributor, Independent News (a.k.a. DC). The deal said that they would only distribute eight comics per month from him... and while he managed to occasionally push it to nine or even ten, he usually had to cancel one comic to start another. This made him very quick on the

trigger... quick to ax a low-selling title and replace it with another. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky all told me they thought Goodman was too quick; that he’d cut a book based on one preliminary sales report on Monday... then on Thursday, he’d receive more data and put the book back onto the schedule. Sometimes, he already had the replacement title in the works so he had to look for an opening to bring back the one he wanted to “uncancel.”

Amazing Adventures started with a June 1961 issue. It did not sell quite as well as other, similar books the company was publishing.

This led Goodman to the conclusion that he was oversaturating the newsstands with that kind of material.

In the back of that and some of the firm’s other ghost/s-f anthology titles, Stan Lee had been developing a different kind of story with Steve Ditko—short, quirky, thought-provoking tales.

It always seemed to me that a big point of inspiration for these was the TV series The Twilight Zone, which had debuted on CBS in 1959. When I’ve asked Stan about this, he has told me that while he watched and was a fan of that series, he never made a direct connection.

Anyway, the Zone-like stories Lee and Ditko were doing brought what was then considered a flood of fan mail... two or three letters. They didn’t get a lot back then and Stan had a tendency to regard any letter received as indicative of the entire readership.

He suggested to Goodman that an entire comic of that kind of story might catch on. Goodman thought it was worth a try.

As of #7, Amazing Adventures became Amazing Adult Fantasy featuring that kind of story. Sol Brodsky, who designed the title logo (executed by Artie Simek), confirmed my suspicion that he was aping a lettering style used in the credits and some advertising for the Twilight Zone TV show. That logo, by the way, was designed by a gent named Joe Messerli who was then on staff at CBS but who also worked as a cartoonist.

When I wrote Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker comics in the seventies, Messerli was often the artist and he later did some work for Marvel’s Star line and on some related puzzle and coloring books.

It also may be interesting to note that a few months later when Sol sat down to design a logo for a new comic called

Fantastic Four, he used pretty much the same style. When I pointed this out to Stan once, he registered surprise, said he hadn’t noticed this before and then added, “Well, it was appropriate because I always thought of those two comics as the launching point for a new era in comics.”

The new format of Amazing Adult Fantasy lasted eight issues before Goodman pulled the plug on it. It is at this point that things get a bit murky and we have to engage in a bit of speculation and weighing different accounts. What follows is my theory and I reserve the right to modify it in the future, though I don’t think it’s far off.

As you all know, Spider-Man began with a story that was drawn by Jack Kirby.

Jack was a few pages in when, for reasons I discuss in Kirby: King of Comics, the decision was made to reject Kirby’s pages and Lee started more-or-less anew with Ditko. Obviously, some of what was in Jack’s version—the name, the walking-onwalls, the orphan living with his aunt and uncle—carried over. Jack even said, though I believe Stan has disputed, that the first version had the plot about Uncle Ben being killed by a burglar the new spidery hero could have stopped.

The main thing here is that Jack’s version was not completed and Ditko’s was. My friend Will Murray (whose fine research work helped unearth some of this) and I have discussed whether Kirby’s hyphenless Spiderman was even intended for the book formerly known as Amazing Adult Fantasy. It’s possible, for example, that it was planned for Tales of Suspense. We don’t know.

What seems likely though is that Stan had to come through quickly with a new format for the failing Amazing Adult Fantasy. They were adding super-hero features to some of the other fantasy anthology books so he decided to put the new strip in there. We have two possible scenarios here and I don’t know which is the more likely: 1. Jack’s version was always intended for Amazing Fantasy.

2. Jack’s version was intended for Tales of Suspense (or some other book) and because Amazing Fantasy was in more dire need of a new format, the material was redirected there.

I believe that at this point, Stan had already assembled or almost completed Amazing Adult Fantasy #15 featuring five of the Twilight Zonelike non-series stories he was doing with Ditko: “The Bell-Ringer,” “Man in the Mummy Case,” “There Are Martians Among Us,” “Prophet of Doom,” and “My Fatal Mistake.” The five tales totaled 23 pages.

Then along came the order to revamp the comic. Stan put the last two stories on the shelf, renamed the book Amazing Fantasy and they produced the 11-page Spider-Man origin to kick it off with the other three stories filling out the back. Amazing Fantasy #15 then went off to press.

Lee and Ditko immediately commenced on Amazing Fantasy #16. Stan had the two leftover stories— “Prophet of Doom” and “My Fatal Mistake” to put in the rear. For the front, he and Ditko did a new 14-page Spider-Man story... this one about Spider-Man rescuing an astronaut in a space capsule. The plan at this point was that Amazing Fantasy would be a comic featuring a 14-page Spider-Man story in the front and two 5-page non-series fantasy tales in the rear.

I suspect they started on a story for Amazing Fantasy #17 featuring a villain called The Chameleon and may even have begun work on one for Amazing Fantasy #18 with a foe called The Vulture.

Then the ax fell.

Goodman got in some sales figures on Amazing Adult Fantasy #14 or even an earlier issue and decided not to wait to see how the new Spider-Man thing would do. He had already told Stan that he didn’t think it was a good idea; that readers wouldn’t want to have anything to do with spiders. So Amazing Fantasy #15 became

the final issue, despite the blurbs inside promising more SpiderMan next time. All the material intended for Amazing Fantasy #16 went onto the shelf and they stopped work on future issues, perhaps leaving one or even two Spider-Man stories still in pencil and possibly scripted.

And that was the end of Spider-Man. But not quite.

A few months later, an array of factors coalesced to summon the character from the dead. Sales figures on the last issue of any comic are notoriously unreliable, but the ones that came in on Amazing Fantasy #15 did suggest some interest out there. So did the fan mail that arrived. Stan was still enthusiastic about the idea and he pointed out to Goodman that the super-heroes were catching on in their other comics. Plus, there was the fact that they had all that Spider-Man material sitting on the shelf, already paid-for. Goodman always did hate to let anything go to waste.

So Goodman decided to give the idea another try and Amazing Spider-Man #1 was scheduled. The lead story in it was the already-completed 14-page story about the astronaut. For the back, they finished off that Chameleon story they’d begun for Amazing Fantasy #16. (I suspect that this story was 14 pages when originally drawn and that they dropped out pages to make it fit.)

In Amazing Spider-Man #2, the first half was the 14-page Vulture story which, my theory would have you believe, was at least started for Amazing Fantasy #17. To fill out the issue, they created a new 10-pager to bring up the rear— the story of The Tinkerer. And then in future issues, since there were no more 14-page Spider-Man stories to deal with, they could do book-lengthers, though they would occasionally experiment with shorter formats.

Is that everything? No, not quite. You’re probably wondering what became of “Prophet of Doom” and “My Fatal Mistake,” the two stories that were originally supposed to be in Amazing Fantasy #15 and which were then moved to #16, which was never published. Well, that’s easy to answer...

“Prophet of Doom” was used in Tales of Suspense #40. “My Fatal Mistake” was used in Tales to Astonish #43. Like I said, Martin Goodman didn’t like to throw anything away.

And that’s how I believe Spider-Man was born.

I should again credit Will Murray for ferreting out some of this information.

I’m not sure he agrees 100% with everything I’ve written here so I’ll take the responsibility... and like I said, I reserve the right to amend this a bit if and when additional information comes to light. But I think this is right.

Next question? ★ (Mark Evanier welcomes your questions which are best conveyed to him via his website, www.newsfromme.com. He would slip in a plug here for his book on Kirby but he figures that if you read this magazine, you already have a copy.)

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Ooh, La-la!

The French Episodes of Gal

by Jean Depelley (below) Two pages of Jean Depelley and Reed Man’s continuation of Galaxy Green, translated into English for our readers. (next page) A rare find: Jack’s original proposal for a Female Furies comic, done before Barda, the Lump, and the Head were incorporated into Mister Miracle, along with Apollo into OMAC #7-8.

T

Shieldmaster TM & ©2011 Joe Simon.

Galaxy Green TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

he world of tomorrow! Four beautiful women team up as the Galaxy Green. Their mission: finding men across the galaxy to preserve the human species from extinction, men having disappeared after a viral epidemic…

My venture into the spatial realms of Galaxy Green was rather unlikely. I discovered Kirby’s pages reading this excellent publication (issue #20, to be precise). And, as many readers, I was rather surprised to see Jack—one of the most respectful man when it comes to representing women in his stories—going into that unusual erotic and provocative direction, which was—to my mind—coming more from the minds of his younger collaborators Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman. But it was fun, even though

the story—originally intended for Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix, an underground project pitched to DC Comics—was discontinued after two pages and was never completed.

A few years after, in 2007, my friend and artist Reed Man, publisher of independent comics company Organic Comix, contacted me for a very exciting project (at least for French comics fans): he was ready to relaunch—for one issue at the beginning— Strange, the most famous US comics magazine in this country, the one which popularized Marvel and Jack’s work back in the early ’70s. Reed Man and I share the same interest for Kirby and comics in general. Logically, the first thing we did was interview Lisa Kirby (as she was just finishing her Galactic Bounty Hunters run). And naturally, we wanted some Kirby material in our magazine. That’s when I remembered Galaxy Green. Reed Man was

Shieldmaster, a full-color hardcover 44-page graphic novel by Depelley, Reed Man and Arnon, will soon be published in France

by Organic Comix (www.organic-comix.fr). A US edition will follow.

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axy Green hot with the idea and, after having Lisa’s green light, he produced beautiful colors on Kirby and Royer’s wonderful art. [Editor’s note: Reed Man’s original coloring of Jack’s Galaxy Green illo was created for comic-book size, and wouldn’t enlarge clearly for this issue’s cover, so we had Tom Ziuko recolor Jack’s work, based on Reed Man’s original coloring.]

Our first issue was an instant hit and it is a collector item today. And we ended up as frustrated as our readers, not knowing the conclusion of this weird story. So we asked Lisa, Mark and Steve if they were okay to let us finish this adventure. I submitted my ideas and a story treatment and they agreed to let the French guys go. You can imagine my pride! So two episodes, four pages long, were made that concluded the story, published respectively in Strange #3 (October 2007) and #6 (August 2008).

Now concerning our approach to the story and characters, we didn’t want any sex or vulgarity. An adult comic would have been inappropriate for several reasons. First, Jack wouldn’t have done it and we wanted to do it his way. Second, we wouldn’t want Strange to have problems in its first installment with some X-rated material. We wanted it PG at the very most. Basically, the story had to be fun, as exciting as any Jack would have produced. Knowing Reed Man’s art (a beautiful expressionistic Kirby-ish style), I had to come up with a script both entertaining and moderately provocative. But how? For the story, the answer was obvious: humor… thanks to sexual insinuations, combined with straightforward adventure. As for the characters, the Galaxy Green were rather nonexistent so far, as Jack, Mark and Steve didn’t have the time nor the desire to develop them further. The Galaxy Green were also very sexy and some postures were quite hot for the time. So, first, we had to develop them into full characters Jack could have come up with. I fixated on another girl gang left over by Jack—The Female Furies—and Stompa proved a logical choice. There’s a little of the Fantastic Four in our “Galaxy Green” as well!

Second, the sexual aspect from Kirby’s work was replaced by sexism; another provocative approach, less risky visually speaking, and one that could prove humorous (at least for a male audience), if moderately utilized. So, not being “green” anymore, Reed Man and I decided to make fun of some typical feminine behaviors.

So here are the French Galaxy Green: • Friga: a cool-headed officer, the brilliant leader of the team.

• Mecca: a scientific genius. She always comes up with new machines that prove crucial saving the commandos.

• Felina: the sensual and impulsive member of the group.

• Stompa: the strong woman of the pack. She is black. She always wears her seismo-boots, smashing their opponents with a kick of her high heels!

After “Galaxy Green,” Strange has continued publishing rare Kirby material (The Astrals, Star Cats, King Kong, Spider Spry, the lost Fantastic Four pages…), along with Jack’s Silver Star series, and our magazine (available at www.organic-comix.fr) is considered by some as a French Jack Kirby Collector.

Looking back at it, it was a real pleasure playing with these beautiful dolls, and I hope our version will eventually be published in the USA, after Jack’s pages. I am happy to see Galaxy Green coming back at Dynamite (under Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’ tenure, with Ross respecting Reed Man’s color guidelines). No doubt, they will be treated very well! ★ Go to www.twomorrows.com/media/GalaxyGreenFr.pdf to read the entire French Galaxy Green story, translated into English.

Jack’s top notes read: “Barda and gals bring Lump to Earth with them. [illegible...] powerful, the Lump has an inferiority complex--and the gals try to help him overcome it, while the Lump helps them out of scrapes... traps...

Barda and gals run “Beauty Rock” island we talked about--which is center for spy activity--and paid for by free nation govts.

Island is cover for military training base for gals--” 15

Influencees

The Super Powers of Paul An interview with one of Kirby’s final writers, conducted by Jerry Boyd INTRODUCTION: The war of the gods was “over.” (See The Hunger Dogs.) Darkseid, enraptured by his technological counterpart, Micromark, had destroyed New Genesis, the home world of his nemeses. However, the immortals of that realm had eluded destruction by moving their orbiting city away in time. Moreover, Orion, Bekka, and the newly-rescued Tigra made their escape from the dread lord and the world of Apokolips. The evil gods’ planet housed silos filled with Micro-Marks at that point, and too late, the elite of the shadow planet realized that they were facing a peril similar to that of their hated rivals.

Apokolips shook and wavered. The people rose up, killed their tormentors, and rioted. Darkseid was ignominiously forced to… flee.

A new world had to be his… because of his need to rule and to subjugate other beings. A few of his warriors met him on the Moon.

W

Paul Kupperberg

(top) A late 1970s Kirby concept drawing done for the Super Friends cartoon show. The Super Powers comic was the first time fans had seen Jack draw a lot of the major DC characters, but he was doing illustrations like this with any number of those characters, while working behind the scenes in animation. (right) Kirby’s pencils from the two-page spread in the sixth (and final) issue of the second Super Powers comic book series (Feb. 1986). This is some of the final comic book work of his career.

Super Powers, Super Friends, and all characters TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

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THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Paul, how’d you get into comics? What titles, genres, creators, and characters were your favorites when growing up?

PAUL KUPPERBERG: I’ve always been into comics, as far back as I can remember. I was reading the Disney titles, DC’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Kanigher and Andru & Esposito Wonder Woman before I could actually read them, at 4 and 5 years old. I couldn’t tell you who brought them into the house, likely my older brother, or my uncle, who was only 10 years older than me. I went total geek on comics early and was publishing fanzines by the time I was in junior high, along with Paul Levitz, who I met in 1967 when we were

ith that opening, writer Paul Kupperberg began his “finishing mini-series” to Kirby’s “finished graphic novel.”

And now, Paul will tell us about Super Powers (1985) and his other work in the field. This interview was conducted by e-mail on June 8 and 9, 2010 and transcribed by an unemployed para-demon.

Kupperberg 11, and another friend, Steve Gilary.

I read practically everything on the newsstands starting in the mid-1960s that wasn’t romance or kiddie comics: DC, Marvel, Gold Key, Dell, Charlton, (or) Warren… although I was and remain a diehard DC fanboy. Whatever I didn’t buy, my brother or one of my friends did. I loved the whole National line-up, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, JLA, Supergirl, Flash, Green Lantern, and just about anything edited by Julie Schwartz, especially once people like Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams, and Dick Giordano started coming into the business and started shaking everything up. 1967 and 1968 were particularly great years, launching a whole slew of short-lived but interesting series, like Ditko’s Hawk and the Dove and The Creeper.

I also love so many of the second- and third-

string artists who worked for Dell, Archie, and Charlton, the journeyman cartoonists who had more heart than talent and skill. I still go back and reread the Archie Comics Mighty Heroes books of the mid’60s, the ones written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Paul Reinman. They are terrible, truly, but so incredibly pure and well-intended, by guys who started in the 1930s and couldn’t keep up with how fast things were changing in the 1960s. Dell published a comic called Super-Heroes that lasted just four issues, and was drawn by Sal Trapani. It was about four teens whose brains get transferred into superpowered androids. It was terrible. I love it still.

Charlton’s pay was so pitiful that you only worked there if you were just breaking in (me), wanted to be left alone to do your work without editorial interference (Steve Ditko), or weren’t so good (I’ll be kind and not name names). But I like the bad stuff.

My favorites were Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky’s Justice League of America, Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani’s Doom Patrol, the original Supergirl run in the back of Action Comics by Otto Binder, Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney, the 80-Page

Giant line (I still collect those), and Showcase.

I also read Marvel and remain, to this day, sufficiently proficient in my knowledge of the first 15 years or so of the Stan/Jack/Steve/Roy et. al. era to hold my own in a fanboy discussion. By 1967 or so, when I was really accelerating into the only recently discovered world, Marvel was cranking on all cylinders and I was headed into my teen years, their prime audience.

TJKC: Since you were a Kirby fan, which titles of his did you purchase or enjoy the most?

PAUL: Oh yes, I was a Kirby fan, and how could you not be? As much as I loved the DC artists, the solid realism of Curt Swan, the cartooning of Dick Sprang, the fluid design sense of Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane, even an uninformed punk like me could see that Kirby was king, and that he had all those traits wrapped up in one, explosive package.

My brother collected the Marvels so I didn’t have to buy that many, reading his instead.

But I read them all! Fantastic Four, Captain America, Sgt. Fury, Avengers… I was never a big fan of Thor, although that was just the character and had nothing to do with Jack’s work. In fact, Thor was probably some of his best art; I just didn’t care for the strip itself.

TJKC: How’d you get a job at DC? Did you do fanzine work before that? What were some of your early projects at DC? PAUL: Paul Levitz and I met in junior high school and made several attempts over the years to publish a fanzine. We started on a Xerox machine and worked our way to real printing in 1971 with the first issue of a news fanzine called Etcetera. Being New York-based, we had access to the comic book companies to gather news which we used to our advantage when we learned that Don and Maggie Thompson were editing their fanzine, Newfangles.

We published our first issue, Don and Maggie Thompson favored us with a good review and called us their worthy successors, and we were off. With the fifth issue, Etcetera merged with The Comic Reader (TCR), the first newszine started by the legendary father of modern comics fandom, Dr. Jerry Bails in the early 1960s. TCR also featured work by a young fan, Roy Thomas, prior to his leaving Missouri to head to New York to work first, and for mere moments, for Mort Weisinger and then Stan at Marvel. We were, I believe, the sixth or seventh editors of TCR, which we inherited in the form of a shoebox full of subscribers’ names and some subscription money from our immediate predecessor, Mark Hanerfeld.

Etcetera went from a hundred subscribers to several thousand as TCR, and we did the fanzine throughout high school. We also published a few other titles, including three issues of Etcetera as a separate article fanzine, True Fan Adventure Theatre, the photo-offset of a very funny mimeograph CapaAlpha ’zine created by Dwight Decker; Tony Isabella was the editor of that. For several years, we also produced the program book for Phil Seuling’s annual New York July 4th Comicon, distributed other people’s fanzines from around the world… all the stuff Paul would need to know for his future as publisher of DC Comics!

Paul broke into the business in 1973 in a summer job filling in [for] Michael Fleisher, who was taking the summer off, as Joe Orlando’s assistant. Fleisher 17

apparently never came back from that vacation and Paul didn’t leave DC until just a few months ago, in 2010. I broke in as a writer in 1975 with a handful of horror stories for Charlton, including one that was drawn by Steve Ditko (under a cover by Pat Boyette; I was a happy neophyte!). That summer I sold my first story to DC, a 10-page “World of Krypton” story for Superman Family, edited by Denny O’Neil.

I followed that up with a lot of similar kinds of stories. [There were] lots of short stories for House of Mystery and Weird War Tales, back-up features of Aqualad and Mera in Adventure Comics, the framing sequences or introduction pages for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Weird War Tales. And letters columns—many, many letter columns… I was the “voice” of Cain and Abel in the mid-’70s for all those letters columns, as well as Weird War Tales, Secrets of Sinister Something-orother, not to mention a goodly chunk of those “Coming Attractions” and “DC Profiles” stories that ran on the Daily Planet page with Bob Rozakis’ “Answer Man.” I learned a little bit of everything in those early years, including picking up the ability to write fast and good promotional copy, as the assistant PR guy for the company from 1976 through to the DC Implosion.

TJKC: Just before Super Powers began, Jack did his “big finish” for the god-war, the Hunger Dogs. Did you have to read this and his other New Gods lead-ins prior to scripting Super Powers, or did you already have a vision for your mini-series?

PAUL: I read Hunger Dogs, but not in connection with Super Powers.

Super Powers was based on the toy line and had nothing to do with DC continuity whatsoever, except for those bits and pieces we chose to use and make part of the Super Powers storyline. But nothing in Super Powers was in the DCU continuity and while I was writing it, I didn’t bother all that much to make it match.

At any rate, I never would have presumed to have done anything with the actual New Gods continuity. That was Jack’s territory; I was just going to do a big, universe-spanning story using a lot of action figures…”vision” is too grand a term. I had a buttload of characters,

from down-to-Earth Batman to cosmic-spanning Darkseid that I had to fit together in something resembling a story. It was a given that Darkseid was the villain, so we just went from there.

And, of course, the big reason I didn’t give any thought to the where and how this might fit into Kirby’s epic was because I had no idea that Jack would even see this story, let alone be the one to draw it! When I got the assignment, there was no artist attached to it and, frankly, it didn’t matter. Super Powers wasn’t a book that needed a super-star name, or any name at all; it just needed an artist. The toys were the stars of the book, not the creators.

Of course, had I known Jack was going to draw it, I would have frozen in my tracks. How the hell would I have been able to write Jack Kirby’s own characters for Jack Kirby to draw? It would have been intimidating enough to know he was working on any script of mine, but that? No, I would have felt like a Murphy Anderson head pasted over a Kirby Superman in an issue of Jimmy Olsen! Just wrong!

TJKC: You did a very good job on Super Powers, which could be described as a “finish” to Kirby’s finish, since you “killed” Darkseid in the concluding sixth issue. Kirby did the pencils for all six issues. Did you collaborate as co-writers to some extent, or did Jack ever tell you what he originally planned to do to end his storyline (on the war of the gods)?

PAUL: I had absolutely no contact whatsoever with Jack during the creation of this series! I wish I had, but there was nothing! Again, I didn’t know Jack would be drawing this when I started writing it, so I plotted the story with Andy Helfer, who edited the mini and turned in a full script from which—as I recall but no longer have scripts to back me up—Jack didn’t deviate.

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I wasn’t trying to “finish” Jack’s story, just tell my own. And, as it was set in this offshoot “Super Powers Universe” that had no bearing on anything else anywhere, I could easily off Darkseid for my own dramatic purposes, knowing full well that I, or whoever wrote the next Super Powers mini-series, could easily bring him back to life with patented ‘Handwaveyem’ science to menace anew. Death in comics isn’t permanent, especially for the gods.

TJKC: We fans know now that the DC brass graciously set up Super Powers to create a toy line of Jack’s characters so he could profit from them. Did you share in those profits, as well? Also, why were the costume designs for the Para-Demons, Desaad, Kalibak, Mantis, and Steppenwolf changed by the King?

PAUL: Nope, I was strictly Work-Made-For-Hire, getting my page rate and royalties on the comic book sales. In that sense, it was no different than my writing an issue of Superman or any other DC property.

I don’t think Jack changed those costumes so much as he forgot what they looked like and made it up as he went along. I’ve seen dozens of pages from Jack’s pencils from this project and he was constantly getting costume details wrong, even on Superman and Batman, putting the wrong boots on this character, giving that guy gloves or leaving off a belt. Having to stop to reference something would have just slowed him down!

that time, I’d had stories of mine drawn by Steve Ditko, Curt Swan, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, George Evans, Irv Novick, Kurt Schaffenberger, Win Mortimer, Bob Oksner, Al Williamson, Don Heck… a lot of really great artists, many of whom I’d grown up being a fan of, but I never dreamed Jack Kirby would be on that list.

Would the story have been much different had I known Jack would be drawing it when I started on the project? I don’t know, but however it landed, I got to have my name next to his in a comic book credit box, and for me, that made it one of the best experiences I’ve had in the business! ★ The Kupperberg/Kirby concluding panel from Super Powers #6 depicted the still-taunting spirit of the “departed” Darkseid (following Desaad’s betrayal) laughing at the DC heroes. Paul finished his mini, but like Jack, there was still some “unfinished business” left, obviously, to be handled. Our thanks go out to Paul for his cooperation on this interview.

(previous page) Splash page from Super Powers II, #2 (Oct. 1985). Due to health problems, Jack’s penciling was weak by this point in his career, and inker Greg Theakston did an admirable job of tightening up the work.

But Kirby’s strong sense of design still carried through. (below) Jack’s pencils from the penultimate page of Super Powers II #6, as Darkseid bites the dust. Since he was working from Paul Kupperberg’s full script, Kirby didn’t add border notes or hand-drawn word balloons.

TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

TJKC: Did you ever meet Mr. Kirby? If so, what were your conversations like?

PAUL: I met Jack three times in my life, always briefly, always at a convention. And always with the same approximate conversation: “It’s such a pleasure to meet/see you, Jack! You’ve been an inspiration to me and… !” only to be interrupted with a gruff but polite, “Naw, naw, the pleasure’s mine! You kids today, you’re the ones doing the great work!”

Super Powers was, really, just another gig for both of us at the time. Jack and I were both hired guns, doing the job. As I recall, this was the last, or near last, regular comic book work that Jack did and I think he was tired and not thrilled by the banality of the material he was working with… and I don’t blame him. My scripts were perfectly serviceable toy tie-in stories, but they were about selling action figures to 11-year-olds, not creating an epic miniseries with the King of Comics!

TJKC: Did you ever say to yourself, “Orion, Lightray, Highfather, The Forever People, and/or Mr. Miracle should be in this thing somewhere”? Were you tempted to bring them in as the storyline progressed?

PAUL: Oh, good grief, no! I had more than enough characters to juggle as it was. I may be stupid, but I’m not a masochist!

TJKC: Greg Theakston was the inker for all six issues. He and Jack were good friends. Did he ever share any insight on the way the evil gods were to be handled, or did he share any Kirby story developments or unused characters/ concepts Jack told him about that you remember?

PAUL: No, not a one.

TJKC: Were you pleased with the way Super Powers turned out? How would you sum up the experience?

PAUL: I’d been in comics about a dozen years when I did the Super Powers mini-series and in 19

2bcontinued

Subploticus Interruptus?

See a video of this panel at: http://kirbymuseum.org/2009SDPanel

by Shane Foley (below) Splash page for the Inhumans back-up in Thor #150 (March 1968). (right) Fantastic Four #59 detail (Feb. 1967), as the Inhumans look for their place in the sun. (bottom) Those Inhumans sure got around in the 1960s, and often without Kirby drawing them!

All characters TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

hen I heard about a theme of Jack Kirby’s ‘aborted/unfinished’ sagas, my first thoughts, like many others I guess, were of the Fourth World, OMAC, “Atlas,” The Eternals, etc. But very quickly, my mind also went to one of my nostalgic favorite periods: the later 1960s. I find the period around Marvel’s expansion when the split books disappeared (early months of 1968) to be continually interesting, not least because it’s at this time that Jack Kirby clearly lost his zeal for Marvel. Even as a teenager I could see it, with his move to longer and less polished plots, less and less panels per issue coupled with needless, extra splash pages (no matter how well crafted artistically) and so forth. Today, with so much more history written about those times, we know some of why this was so.

It is from around this time that we know Kirby had an origin for his Silver Surfer character that he was forced to jettison due to Stan’s alternate version. I think there are a number of other ideas and sub-plots that were also jettisoned.

Were they aborted because of decisions by Stan Lee? Or because Jack lost interest and decided to produce his allotted pages and little more? Or am I reading too much into it all?

See what you think. I have four examples.

W

The Inhumans Sub-plot in the Fantastic Four Beginning in FF #44, the plight of the Inhumans continued in the FF for about 18 months. As at FF #59, after being on the run, then imprisoned, the Royal Family were roaming the world, now looking to see if there be a place for the Inhumans amongst the human race. FFs #60, 61 and 62, then FF Annual #5 showed them doing just that. But then, their appearances suddenly stopped. Beyond Triton’s visits in #63 and 64, nothing more about them appeared in the FF until #82, when they are clearly living back in Attilan. Huh? What happened to their search? The non-Kirby appearances of the Inhumans between Annual #5 and #82 began being consistent with their status as wanderers. First, they were seen in Sub-Mariner #2 and 3, scribed by Roy Thomas. Next, in Spider-Man #62, Medusa appears, citing orders from Black Bolt to check out mankind. At the end, she firmly and angrily states there was no place for them with humankind. Was this it? Did Stan mean to tie up the FF’s sub-plot here, without Kirby, in Spider-Man? The next appearances seem to bear this out.

In Medusa’s solo outing in Marvel Super-Heroes #15, appearing the same month as Spidey #62, the story has them in their home again (in an ‘island sanctuary’, rather than in the Andes/Himalayas/Alps—no doubt just a point showing scripter Archie Goodwin’s unfamiliarity with the characters). A note on page 3 places the tale after her Spider-Man #62 outing, so readers would have known for certain that the Inhumans have returned to the Great Refuge.

However, when the Inhumans guest-star with Hulk in his first annual a few months later, the Royal Family are again absent. Probably, that Hulk Special was prepared months earlier when things were still unsettled. Here, Black Bolt arrives ‘from far-off lands’ (page 3—in a word balloon added after the rest of the lettering by the look of it) and on page 4 mention is made of ‘the absent Black Bolt’s rule’ (also in a later-lettered speech bubble). Only Black Bolt and Gorgon of the regular Inhumans make appearances, underscoring the idea that the Royal Family weren’t living there.

Perhaps this story was meant to be the Inhumans’ homecoming, after the verdict based on Medusa’s experiences in Spider-Man #62? And perhaps chronologically it

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occurs before the MSH story (not that being so meticulous with continuity would have been in any of the creators’ minds back then)?

Nevertheless, the fact remains that a month or so later, in FF #82, the Inhumans are living in the Great Refuge, with Kirby having had no involvement in resolving the plotline set up in FF #59. There is no mention of their wanderings or disappointments in the world of men. Kirby even draws the villains created for the Hulk Special by Friedrich and Severin. It’s a light-on story, where (as one letter writer put it) the “FF seemed strangely unnecessary and intruding in someone else’s strip.” Its only real saving graces were beautiful art and a truly magnificent new uniform for Maximus.

So why did this sub-plot disappear from the FF? And why was the plot resolved without Kirby’s input?

Did Jack not want to do them any more, with Stan having to make do elsewhere?

Or did Stan decide he wanted them in Attilan, rather than wandering, and decide to resolve the issue in a book that he had more control over (as he’d done with the Silver Surfer’s origin tale) and thus present Jack with a fait accompli?

There is one other tale that is possibly an answer to this. I refer to the final story in the “Origins of the Inhumans” series.

Knowing how Stan had turned the motivations of the second origin segment on its head (exposed in TJKC #21), I wonder if something similar hasn’t happened here. My main reason is the notion that Triton was ‘the first Inhuman to leave Attilan’ to spy out the world outside. This seems odd to me. The tale is clearly drawn as a modern day saga, complete with modern New York, movie cameras and advanced stun guns, and to suggest that the prehistoric Inhumans had never been among men until the 1960s, seems unlikely to me. Could perhaps we see this tale as originally conceived by Kirby not as an origin at all (despite the series’ premise) but as his conclusion to the Inhumans’ FF subplot? Maybe Kirby’s story was that Triton gets a violent reception by mankind and is treated like a monster, so he reports this back to Black Bolt, who decides they must return to Attilan—exactly the same theme as in the Medusa issue of Spider-Man the next month. Stan on the other hand, has scripted the Triton story as a kind of ‘origin’—the need to move Attilan from its island position to high in the mountains. Admittedly, without access to any notes Jack left on the original art boards, I have no way of knowing if Jack’s intentions were altered or not.

So perhaps Jack did ‘finish’ his Inhumans subplot after all?

(Interestingly, there’s no clue from the way Jack drew Triton.

In his first appearances, Triton could not stand being out of water without his protective suit, to a far greater degree than Stan scripts his limitation in these Origin episodes. And later, Jack got very careless showing the system devised in FF #54 to allow him to walk freely out of water. So for nit-pickers of accuracy, the Triton shown here isn’t accurate for any time in his life, and thus, is no help for this question.)

The Inhumans “Origins” series, appearing in Thor

(above) Pencil detail from Fantastic Four Annual #5 (Nov. 1967). (below) Notice the giant-size lettering in this last panel from Thor #152 (May 1968), indicating Kirby originally included a “next issue blurb” in the story, but Marvel relettered it to end the series.

Apart from the possibility of the above, I wonder if at another point, the Inhumans’ “Origins” series was cut short by Kirby. I wonder, had things had been different, if Jack wouldn’t have put in more stories between Episodes 2 and 3.

Episodes 1 and 2 were full of mystery and potential, integrating the Kree in a very ‘Celestials’ kind of way.

Then suddenly, the series skips straight to Black Bolt and the pain of his childhood.

Perhaps it was always the intention to quickly get to Black Bolt and the Inhumans that readers were familiar with. But I can’t help but wonder if it is sheer coincidence that this happened right when Jack backed off in every strip he did. I can easily imagine Jack originally wanting to introduce a whole host of different Inhumans from pre-Marvel time—a plethora of Eternalstype beings, introduced into whatever drama Jack envisaged. For instance, what was the next encounter after the second episode between now super-powered Inhumans and ancient man? What was the first evil Inhuman like and how did he rise? How did ancient encounters with people change human history? Yes, very much like the Eternals strip of the ’70s. I think something—whether a directive to cut to the chase and get to Black Bolt and family, or disillusionment and a decision 21

to give away no more potentially great characters for nix—cut off this particular creative arc and that it wasn’t resurrected until Jack did the Eternals nearly ten years later. Instead, after two explosive chapters in prehistory, we get two episodes with Black Bolt that were not bad, followed by a fairly lackluster Triton outing (which, as stated above, I feel may have had another purpose), followed by nothing! Not even an account of Medusa’s problems leading to her becoming a member of the Frightful Four! The whole series was suddenly gone.

And was Thor better for the extra 5 pages? In my opinion, not at all!

The Kree When we meet the Kree in FFs #64 and 65, then in Thor #147, they are otherworldly beings, like Kirby’s later Celestials. Their servants are humanoid— the Sentry and Ronan the Accuser—but we get the distinct impression they themselves are not, especially when we behold the awesome Intelligence Supreme.

Then suddenly, in the first Captain Marvel in Marvel Super-Heroes #12, a Kirbyless tale conceived by Stan Lee and drawn by Gene Colan, we are introduced to ‘human’ Kree, complete with human ambitions, jealousies and love triangles. Is this how Kirby saw them? Or, in a similar way to what I suggested above, did he intend to present them more in the vein of his ’70s Celestials? Kirby himself doesn’t touch the Kree again until FF #98, when they are again otherworldly and mysterious, with no hint of anything ‘Captain Marvel’.

I’m not suggesting that Jack wanted to do a fully blown Celestials/Eternals saga in the FF. But as many have noticed, there are so many similarities between them and the Kree/Inhumans, that they seem to me to have suddenly stopped being developed. And it’s because this whole episode happens at this particular period of Jack’s relationship with Marvel that I can’t help being suspicious.

(I’m not convinced that David Hamilton’s memories written on page 6 of Collected Jack Kirby Collector, Volume 5—about the ‘Kree’ warrior with a conscience that Jack felt was turned into Captain Marvel—are totally at odds with my ideas here. Couldn’t it easily be that any such warrior Jack envisaged could be a race in servitude to the inhuman Kree or something like that? Sure it could!)

Reed and Sue Are Cutting Out!

(above) It says “lower and finish art” on this Inhumans splash from Thor #152. Jack left room for a page 1 indicia on this story, and on the Black Bolt splash in Thor #149. So these 5-pagers must’ve been meant as the lead story in a “split book” like Tales to Astonish or Tales of Suspense. But those titles generally had two 10-pagers, and during the mid-1960s (when Kirby would’ve drawn these stories), Marvel couldn’t add new titles due to their distributor.

Legend has it that the Inhumans were created to capitalize on the Batman TV show craze, and Black Bolt does bear a resemblance to Batman. Was Marvel planning to convert Astonish or Suspense into a title with four 5-page stories at one point, and the Inhumans leading off some of the issues? (Sidenote: On the back of his page 2 stat of this story are Jack’s handwritten notes about the 1960s Toys for Tots poster he drew, as shown at right.)

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In FF #71, page 20 (shown below), Reed says, “Sue and I are cutting out!”

Sue’s expecting, and Reed won’t jeopardize her safety any longer. Wow! Great story climax! FF #72—the two of them are on a train out of New York, while Ben, Johnny and Crystal are despondent back home. “Don’t worry, Johnny!

Your problem will soon be solved! And wait’ll you see how!” reads Stan’s blurb on page 1. The Watcher and Silver Surfer appear, and while Sue stays behind, Reed returns to help deal with the factors that de-power the Surfer (in readiness for his own book). All well and good; but the issue of Reed and Sue leaving is hardly resolved!

FF #73. There’s Reed, back in the Baxter Building. Page 2, he says “With Doom about to strike, I’m glad there was time to get Sue safely out of town!” Huh? But she was already ‘out of town’ and on the basis of the previous issues, he was supposed to be ‘out of town’ with her. At the end of the issue, Sue turns up from somewhere to help. Then in FF #74, they are all in the Baxter Building and Reed is trying to persuade Sue to leave for safety. So when did Reed go back on his decision at the end of #71? That was a pretty big cliffhanger there! And since he was so adamant then, how come, after the train trip in #72, Sue is continually still in the Baxter Building? It’s never mentioned again. Truly great tension in the FF’s life just quietly goes away. Sure, real life can do that. But this is comics! I find this subplot very poorly and disappointingly resolved. With Stan’s sudden increase in workload with the comics line expanding, it was probably entirely up to Jack to handle it properly. But it was the wrong time—and he didn’t. It was like neither of them noticed.

Another ‘aborted/ unfinished’ plot that seems to me only too common in Lee/Kirby’s output in the early months of 1968. So Reed and Sue were “cutting out!”?

No—they didn’t.

But it seems Mr. Kirby, in spirit at least, did. ★

Tribute When the Dingbats Omnibus comes out, we’ll be the first in line to buy a copy. Till then, enjoy these pencils from the still unpublished Dingbats of Danger Street #3.

Dingbats TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos for this article are

by Chris Ng.

2009 Kirby Tribute Panel Held Sunday, July 27, 2009 at Comic-Con International: San Diego. Moderated by Mark Evanier, and featuring actor Bill Mumy, editor Steve Saffel, inker Mike Royer, Kirby Family attorney Paul S. Levine, and the reunion of the San Diego Five-String Mob: Mike Towry, Scott Shaw!, Barry Alfonso, Roger Freedman, and William R. Lund.

Transcribed by Steven Tice, and edited by John Morrow.

MARK EVANIER: It’s 10:00 AM at the San Diego Convention. Let’s do a Kirby panel. [applause] You know who I am. An apology to anyone who got the wrong room number off my website. I don’t have to say this every year, but I’ll say it every year. We do these panels each year because we spend—at least, I do, probably everyone in this room does—we spend a lot of time talking about Jack. I get asked about Jack, we talk about Jack all the time, we think about Jack, and it’s nice to get all of us with a shared experience together for an hour and talk about Jack, and to continue to, no pun intended, marvel at the continuing presence, Mark Evanier influence, and reprinting of Kirby. It feels somewhat like a State of the Kirby Address every year. Every year we get to tick off a new list of things that are going on with Jack. On the way up here, I was walking with Paul Levitz, and I said to him, “I’m going to the Kirby panel.” He went, “Oh, novelty night.” And I can announce that he said, “Yeah, well, we’ve got the Sandman hardcover coming out.” I said, “I know, I wrote a foreword for it.” “So just tell them that the only decision we have to make at this point, on the next one, is Newsboy Legion in three volumes or two.” [applause] People keep e-mailing me, asking me, “Is this going to be reprinted of Jack’s? Is that going to be reprinted of Jack’s? When are they going to reprint this?” The answer is, darned near everything; everything that can be reprinted of Jack’s is going to be reprinted in the next few years. That’s not an official announcement from anyone. It’s just they keep coming to me and saying, “Where do we find this,” or “which issues should we include,” or “will you write the foreword?” or whatever it is. And there may be a few selective things, because they’re on a licensed book like 2001, or because there was some obscure company in the forties that nobody’s ever heard of and such. Those they can’t reprint, but everything else can be reprinted.

DC is going to reprint everything Jack ever did for them if they can possibly reprint it. So I don’t know if Justice, Inc. will be included, but everything else will be, that’s not licensed.

SCOTT SHAW!: So we can look forward to the Dingbats of Danger Street Omnibus? [laughter] EVANIER: Well, if you call three issues an omnibus, yes. [laughter] And, you know what?

With Jack, three issues kind of was an omnibus. [laughter] Anyway, the reason you don’t get it as fast as you would like is that they perceive, they are aware, that these are very expensive items, and they don’t want to put out $300 of Kirby reprints next month. We’d buy them, but a lot of other people wouldn’t, so they’re spacing them out. If it ever seems like it’s a long time since the last Kirby reprint, that’s not because they’ve lessened their commitment to Jack; it’s just because someone there has assessed the market as not being ready for so much product at such a price point.

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(l to r) Mike Towry, Scott Shaw!, Barry Alfonso, Roger Freedman, William R. Lund, Steve Saffel, Mike Royer, and Bill Mumy

If you were around Friday evening at the Eisner awards, you saw the book I did, called Kirby: King of Comics, win the Eisner Award for Best ComicsRelated Book. [applause] My acceptance speech was that I said people kept coming up to me and saying, “Wow, this book is full of fabulous artwork, Mark.”

And I go, “Yeah?” [laughter] Even I couldn’t muck that up. How difficult is it to fill a Jack Kirby book with fabulous artwork? Well, one of the ways it was easy is that Kirby fans are really good people, and everybody was volunteering. I had so much that people offered me, “I’ve got the original art for this,” “I’ve got a stat of that.” The hardest part of the book was—one of the hardest moments of that book was me deciding, “I think Fin Fang Foom ain’t getting in.” I had a choice between that monster crawling around the ledge, and Fin Fang Foom. I opted for the monster. I’m sorry. [laughter] There’s still one Kirby fan who is very angry at me, the book will never be complete without Fin Fang. But I wanted to thank everybody, some of whom are in this room, who contributed, whose names didn’t get into the thank yous. I wanted to thank the Kirby estate, as always, for their continuing support. And there will be another Kirby book from the Abrams people shortly. You will find various things which I’m not at liberty to announce yet.

PAUL LEVINE: You could give a hint, if you want to.

EVANIER: Um… would it have anything to do with Jack’s animation art?

LEVINE: Yes. [laughter] EVANIER: Okay. Anyway, let me introduce a few people before I go any further. The gentleman I just talked to is a lawyer who represents—I think I’ve said this before, one of the continuing frustrations of working with Jack was that, for a long time in his life, he did not get the best legal advice or business advice. I think there were times where even the absolute most brilliant would not have helped him, but I sure wish he’d met Paul Levine many years ago. This is Mr. Paul Levine. [applause] And I always liked the fact that Lisa Kirby is never less than seven feet from Paul Levine. This is Lisa Kirby sitting in the front row. [applause] For the dais this year, I asked a couple of people to be here. We have with us the reunion of the greatest rock band that never existed, [laughter] the San Diego Five-String Mob. You can applaud the San Diego Five-String Mob. [applause] Paul Levine

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And it is appropriate to have them here this year, because not only were they in a memorable four pages of Jimmy Olsen #144—this was, I think, the only real issue of Jimmy Olsen that Steve Sherman and I really wrote a plot for, and Jack followed none of our plot, which did not even have the San Diego Five-String Mob, as I recall. But these gentleman… this is the fortieth San Diego convention, and Jack loved the San Diego convention, and these gentlemen, in addition to being part of this band, were also very instrumental in the founding of this convention. And we’ll talk about that later, but first I’d like to introduce Mr. Mike Towry, Mr. Scott Shaw!, Mr. Barry Alfonso, Mr. Roger Freedman, and Mr. William R. Lund. [applause] The sixth member—and of course, with Jack, a five-string mob would not be complete without a sixth member [laughter]—could not be here. John Pound is with us in spirit, I suspect, and he will be here at the convention next year, and we will make him tell his part of the story there.

SHAW!: John sends his best wishes.

EVANIER: You have all probably purchased a lovely book called The Best of Simon and Kirby—hold it out so we… yes, that one. [applause] What’s the exact title?

STEVE SAFFEL: The Best of Simon and Kirby. One of the hardest things to choose in the history of man.

EVANIER: This is the gentleman who edited, packaged, sold, mounted, probably went down and ran the presses, Mr. Steve Saffel. [applause] If there ever was a room where I did not have to give an explanation for who he is—this is Mr. Mike Royer, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] I also asked this gentleman to be on the panel.

I have known Bill since ’66 or—he was doing Lost in Space when I met him, and a lot of “young actors” never go beyond that moment. That’s the peak moment in their life. They never do anything else of note. They go to autograph shows for the rest of their lives and say, “Hey, I was in a sitcom in 1953,” or whatever. But some of them go on to have fabulous careers. Bill is not only an accomplished actor, he is a writer, he is a musician with… how many albums?

BILL MUMY: Lots. [laughter] EVANIER: This is Mr. Bill Mumy, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Bill is here because he was a good friend of the Kirby family and had a nice relationship with Jack, which he will tell you about when we get to that step. Let me also introduce to you my former partner when I was working with Jack, Mr. Steve Sherman, who is sitting down here. [applause] Now, unfortunately, I have to make a sad—it’s not an announcement, it’s a recognition. When

Steve and I were working for Jack, we were like a trio, and for several years here you heard me introduce Steve and also introduce his younger brother, Gary, who was like the third musketeer in this, and would go with us. Gary is the guy who arranged the famous Jack Kirby/Paul McCartney meeting. He was a close friend of the Kirby family.

We lost Gary in January of this year. He died way too early. There’s no good age to die, but some people just go way too early, and Gary Sherman it was a very touching memorial service full of Kirbys. Just by one of those weird coincidences, Gary was buried about twelve yards from my father, in the same memorial garden.

It was a very emotional moment. And Steve’s had another—Steve’s had a terrible year. A week or so ago Steve lost his mother, who was a lovely woman, and who has a Kirby connection. If you’ve read Spirit World #1, there is a photo feature in the front of a woman who saw a UFO, who’s screaming.

That’s Steve Sherman’s mother. Steve took the photo, and dragged his mother there. How much did we pay her for that?

STEVE SHERMAN: Nothing.

EVANIER: Nothing. [laughter] She was a lovely woman, and she gave us two really good friends of the Kirby family. Now, let me see if I can recover from that downer here, and talk about a few other things. Oh, let me also introduce the publisher of the magazine we all love, the Jack Kirby Collector, Mr. John Morrow. [applause] This is where I ordinarily introduce Mike Thibodeaux, but I don’t see him here. Is Mike here? No? Okay. Mike loses his introduction for this year. Fine. [laughter] Anybody else have a Kirbyrelated announcement they’d like to make before we get…? Paul!

LEVINE: Yes, sir. Dynamite Entertainment, or Dynamic Forces, will be publishing, in the next few years, all of the characters owned by the Kirby estate. That is to say, characters not owned either by Marvel or DC, characters like Captain Victory and Silver Star. [applause] SHAW!: I have someone here who definitely has a Kirby connection. When he was still in his mom’s tummy, we told Jack and Roz that we were naming our son “Kirby,” and Jack pronounced that he will be a man of action. [laughter] And, true enough, here is my son Kirby, who is a man of action. Stand up. [applause]

MIKE ROYER: Mark, I have a slight Kirby connection. In the front row over here is my son Michael, his nephew, my grandson. But people ask me about working with Jack, and I don’t remember the nuts and bolts.

What I remember is Jack and Roz, and how you were made to be family, sitting and having cake and milk in Mike Royer the kitchen, or going over a book with Jack, and looking out the window, and there’s my son and his sisters, swimming in Jack’s pool. So he has a Kirby connection. [applause] EVANIER: Just out of curiosity, how many people here swam in the Kirbys’ pool? [laughter] LISA KIRBY: I cleaned it. [laughter]

Lisa Kirby

EVANIER: You cleaned it? After some of these people… yeah, it was probably necessary. [laughter] Yes, Rand?

RAND HOPPE: We’ve got the Kirby posters down at the TwoMorrows booth, if you join the Kirby Museum. I’ve got some stickers, and a mini-comic.

EVANIER: Yes. If you are not visiting the Kirby Online Museum often, and supporting it, and going by the table and talking to Rand about it—Rand just gave me a copy of this. I don’t know how many people have seen it. This is the Italian edition of Sky Masters of the Space Force.

bit of a Kirby connection, and he wanted to talk to you guys. So hang on just a second.

JOE SIMON (on tape recording): Everybody in San Diego, hello and greetings. This is Joe Simon. If you remember, Jack and I were together, Kirby and I were together for 25 years, and it’s really great that you’re all remembering Jack and all the wonderful things he did. Jack was the best. I’m sure he would be flattered

(above) Jack sketches at home in 1971, beside his nice, clean pool. Photo by Bill Bridges. (below) Steve and Gary Sherman’s mom, from Spirit World #1 (1971).

Spirit World TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

HOPPE: It’s Spanish.

EVANIER: Spanish? It’s in Spanish? Oh, okay. I’ll have Sergio read it to me. [laughter] Isn’t an Italian version coming, too?

HOPPE: I think so. Yes, there is.

EVANIER: (Opens Sky Masters book to a large photo of Jack Kirby.

Audience oohs and aahs.) At the front of my book on Jack, there’s this full-page photo, on the fifth or sixth page in the book, and Jack’s standing in his studio, posing with a Silver Star drawing he did. It’s a very good photo; a man named Greg Preston did it, a photographer who goes around the country photographing cartoonists and artists in their studios. Very, very fine work.

When I was assembling the book, I had to leave certain things out, and one of the things I left out, I have this great photo of Jack with Sergio Aragonés. And at one point Sergio saw the rough layouts of the book at my house and saw that the photo was in, and later I had to decided what to leave out, as it happens, and I dropped the photo from the book. When I gave Sergio his copy, I said, “I’m sorry I did not use your photo.” A day later, Sergio calls me and says, “Ah, I see my photo is in the book.” And I said, “No, I’m sorry, I had to leave it out.” He said, “No, my photo’s in the book.”

I went, “No, I’m pretty sure I took it out.” And he sounded so convincing. I went through the book page by page; nope. And I called Sergio back, and I said, “Your photo is not in the book, Sergio.” He says, “Yes, my photo is in the book. I will bet you $25,000 my photo is in the book,” [laughter] which is something I say to Sergio; I bet Sergio $25,000 when I know I’m right about something, and he’s wrong. So I went, “Okay, your photo’s in the book. Where is it?” Jack is posing in that photo I just described in his studio. On the wall behind him are framed photos, and in one of the frames, there’s a microscopic picture of Sergio. [laughter, applause] SAFFEL: So he always manages to get into the margins somewhere. [laughter] Hey, Mark, there’s one other slight Kirby connection that I thought might be kind of fun, because there’s another guy that I was hanging out with a couple of weeks ago who has a little 25

out yet. Mark was saying that basically everything will eventually be in print. Well, our publisher, Nick Landau, is in the back here. He has championed these books from Minute One, and if he has his way, everything that Joe and Jack did together will end up in print, and you guys will have it all.

EVANIER: Steve, give Nick a proper introduction.

SAFFEL: Nick Landau, Titan Books. [applause] Nick and I went up to Joe’s the other week, and Joe was just getting his day started. And when you’re visiting a friend of yours who’s 96 years old, you’re sort of thinking, “I hope Joe’s doing okay today.” We walked in, and about three hours later, after continuously throwing stories back and forth, to the point that I pulled this thing out and just hit the button— it was just astonishing. The only thing that happens is Joe will occasionally forget a name, and my wife Dana and I will then go home that day, and there will be a message on the machine with Joe going, “I remember that name! I got it, it was…” [laughter] He is astonishing. I’d like to be that lucid yesterday. [laughter] So I just thank Joe, because he’s been so great. He does everything that he can to support the program. He signed fifty books so that we could just bring them out here to sell at the Titan booth, so we actually have Joe Simon-signed copies of the Best of Simon and Kirby, maybe one or two left. But he’s incredible, and you can look forward to a lot of cool stuff coming out.

EVANIER: Bullseye?

SAFFEL: We don’t have Bullseye scheduled yet. We didn’t put him in the super-hero book, because when we do the Western book, we need something to make that a thick book. Just like Blue Bolt will be in the science-fiction. Believe me, choosing the best of Simon and Kirby, if you think it’s tough rolling a rock uphill so it can roll down the other side, try choosing the best. We just did the best we could.

But, luckily, we don’t have to worry about it, because we’ll just print all the rest.

that you all appreciated him so much, and I hope that his work lives forever. I sure it will. [pause] I think they called me here to sing, didn’t they? [laughter] Okay, I’m very sincere about Jack. I miss him so much. And hello Lisa, and all the Kirby family. God bless you, all of you; be well.

EVANIER: Joe Simon. [applause] Mike?

ROYER: One more Kirby connection. Do you all remember the Bob TV episode that Jack was on?

Well, there is a young man in the audience who was a member of that show’s cast, and did all of the paintings that Bob Newhart supposedly drew. He proposed and made it happen, and that’s Paul Power. [applause] EVANIER: Thank you, Mike, I didn’t see Paul there.

Why don’t we continue. Steve Saffel will tell us about what’s coming up in the Simon and Kirby Library world.

26

SAFFEL: Well, it’s kind of interesting. A lot of people in the industry hate Joe passionately because, at 96 years old, he has a seven-book deal. [laughter] Occasionally, he talks about leaving me to do it on my own, and I say, “Not even an option.” But we are just at this show announcing that the next book is going to be The Simon & Kirby Superheroes, and the reason that we delayed it until next summer is that we’re going to do a 480-page book that is going to feature all of the non-Marvel-and-DC super-heroes, starting with the, what is it, the Black Owl? And running through Stuntman, Captain 3-D, Fighting American, the Vagabond Prince, the Fly, and Private Strong, all of it restored by Harry Mendryk, who is an amazing man responsible for the reason that this book looks as beautiful as it does. So that will be the next book, next summer. I’m helping Joe out with his definitive autobiography, and then we’re going to be doing the romance, the horror, and the detective, not necessarily in that order. We haven’t figured it

EVANIER: Steve and I spent a day or two up at Joe’s place last year just kind of looking through boxes of stuff he had filed away. Joe really saved a lot of stuff.

It’s amazing how much he saved. If he doesn’t have the original, he usually has a good photostat of it.

And we spent a lot of time, and Joe was in the next room, and we kept running in to him going, “What is this?”

SAFFEL: You’ve got to be really careful. You can’t hold the artwork like this because you don’t want to get drool on the artwork. It’s gotta be like this. And, oh, I’ve got to say, in the Superheroes book, it looks like we’re going to be able to run an entire unpublished Stuntman story in part because of the generosity, also, of John Morrow, who is just supporting us. John and Rand are fabulous friends of this publishing program, and they are wonderful people and support everything we do. You should basically join the Museum and buy the magazine as soon as we leave here.

Steve Saffel [applause]

But I can’t thank them enough. And I will just say one other thing, because it’s absolutely true. Working with the designer, and the head of production, and all the people up at Titan was so much fun on this book. We took the book up to Joe; Dana and I actually got to hand him the first copy that we got in New York after it came back from Singapore, and Joe’s looking through it, and he’s going, “Oh, my God. The color is so beautiful. Oh, my God, this looks so good.” And then he pointed, looked at us, and said, “There’s love in this book.” And we looked at him and said, “You’d better believe it.” It’s just amazing. It’s wonderful to see a guy like Joe that happy.

EVANIER: And Joe’s a bit—Joe’s just delightful, and you understand a little bit about what made Simon and Kirby work when you meet him, because he is so sharp, and he gets it. He understands things very quickly. He’s a little slow in speech now, at his age, occasionally, and like Steve said, he’ll—

them to give to him. It was an original Jack Davis. And how many people can go through Al Roker’s office building going, “Oh, yeah, I loved Jack! We worked together a lot.” And Al Roker’s standing there, going “wow,” because he’s meeting Joe Simon, which is very cool. I mean, Joe’s fabulous.

EVANIER: He absolutely is. Anybody else have a Kirby-related announcement? Mike, what are you up to these days?

ROYER: In a way, I’m lucky, because I still get to ink Jack. There are some fans who are fond of what I did with Jack, and what Jack allowed me to do. And, of course, I owe it all to Mark and Alex Toth that I even got a call from Jack. But there are fans who commission me to slavishly reproduce something that was done 35 years ago. And the most fun is when someone like Tom Kraft

(far left) A page from Bullseye #4 (Feb. 1955). (below) There’s still a couple more unpublished Stuntman stories out there, as evidenced by this unused page from “The Evil Sons of M. Leblanc,” meant for Stuntman #3. If you have any unused pages, send ‘em in, and we’ll try to get the stories reassembled for a future Titan volume.

Bullseye, Stuntman TM & ©2011 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estate.

SAFFEL: Until he gets started, at which time you can’t stop him.

EVANIER: Right, yeah, once he—he’s a little slow sometimes to grab the first part of something, and once he gets ahold of it, he’s all there, and he understands it, and he understands the new kind of publishing. He’s not sitting there saying, “Well, this is how we did it in 1943.” He understands the marketplace today. He’s wise enough to trust Steve where I would trust Steve, at a certain length. And here’s a guy who’s been screwed over by a lot of publishers over the years.

One of my favorite quotes from Joe to me—don’t listen to this, Steve—is, we were talking about Al Hirschfeld, the great caricaturist. I sat for him; Al Hirschfeld drew me when I had hair.

And Al Hirschfeld was, like, 92 years old back then. He lived to be 99. And Joe said to me, “Now, Al Hirschfeld, there’s a guy I always admired.” And I said, “Because he was such a great artist?” And Joe said, “No, because he was 96 years old and suing his agent.” [laughter, applause] I assure you, he will never have cause to sue Steve Saffel.

SAFFEL: I will say this. You heard Joe’s sense of humor when he threatened to sing. You heard that. I once was talking to his daughter Laurie, who said, “People think that he does these weird things because he’s so old. Trust me: he’s always been like that.” [laughter] But it’s also so wild.

We went up recently and got a chance to visit with Al Roker, and Al has animation art and original cartoon art all over the walls. And we’re walking out, and Al had to take his daughter somewhere. And we stopped, and I say, “Joe, a friend of yours is here.” And we looked on the wall, and there was this picture that had been given to Al by these two women. Their father had given it to 27

holds four shelves of eleven books. It’s, like, 44 books. So there’s one shelf of all of Jack’s covers, and there was a shelf with Bob’s covers, and there was a shelf of Superman and some Bernard Baily stuff for Jerry, and then the top shelf is all the Marvel books that Jack had done through the Marvel age. And to see these guys look at these books, it was so interesting, because they were so completely different.

And Jack was such a mensch, such a gentleman. The first thing he did, he looked at this display, and he just said, “Ah, look at Joe’s work. Look at Joe’s work.

If it hadn’t been for you and Joe, Jerry, none of us would have had jobs. None of us would have been here. Isn’t it beautiful to see Joe’s work?” And Jerry was just touched to see all of it, because he hadn’t seen those books, and he was such a gentle soul.

And he was just admiring everything, just kind of being very humble. And then Bob was like, “Look at my books! I did that! Yeah!” [laughter] EVANIER: Bob said, “I did that cover by Jerry Robinson.” [laughter, applause] MUMY: Absolutely true. He was the Dr. Smith of comic books. [laughter] But our children jumped into the pool up at Jack and Roz’s many times, and Jack would sit and be so patient. He was just a hero of mine. Jimmy Stewart and Jack Kirby were the two greatest men I knew, outside of my father. They were completely different kinds of people, but just so straight, and so strong, and so inspiring, and so positive. Just hero worship, here.

EVANIER: Bill, by the way, worked with Jimmy Stewart in a movie called Dear Brigitte.

of the What If Kirby? web page will commission me to ink something that I never inked before. And he’ll find something from Fantastic Four, or Thor, or some early book before my tenure with Jack. And that’s really fun, to put myself in the mindset of now 35 years ago, and hopefully make it work. So I’m lucky, I still get to ink Jack Kirby.

EVANIER: Mike, shove the mic over near Bill. Bill, tell us how you met Jack. First of all, tell us how you discovered Kirby’s work in your life.

BILL MUMY: I started passionately reading comic books when I was about four or five, which would have been the end of the fifties, so the first stuff I was probably exposed to was maybe Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino. But, as soon as the Marvel books started coming out, there was just lightning bolts from Jack’s work. And he was so prolific, which I don’t need to remind anyone here about, that you kept getting it weekly, and it was just so exciting to me, and I was a huge fan. When I was on Lost in Space, I used to write and draw my own comic books, Captain Panther and the Fox, Bill Mumy and I used to just copy Jack’s pages every day. It was one way to get through work when I wasn’t on camera. But I didn’t really meet Jack until the mid-eighties. I started writing for Marvel in ’85, and Julie Schwartz—God 28

rest Julie Schwartz, I loved Julie. Julie introduced me and my wife Eileen to Jack and Roz, and we became friends with them. And the coolest thing I think I’ve ever done, I must say, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with a lot of so-called big, famous celebrities in my life, and that’s great. But what impressed me the most was Jack, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, those guys. Those were my idols. So having been introduced to everybody by Julie Schwartz, my wife Eileen and I said, “Well, why don’t we invite these guys over?” And we invited Jack and Roz, Jerry and Joanne Siegel, and Bob and Elizabeth Kane, over for a dinner.

And it turns out they all just went, “Oh, sure, we’d love to.”

And they came over.

They hadn’t been in the same room together for, like, 25 years.

They’d never really just socialized as that group of people.

I have a comic display cabinet that

MUMY: Yup. [applause] I wanted to do Dear Brigitte Part Two [laughter], but it didn’t happen. And I will say, the first song that Seduction of the Innocent ever did, it was an original song, it was a song I wrote for Jack called “King Jack,” and we played that here many times. And one of my fondest memories of the San Diego convention for me—if you’re familiar with Seduction of the Innocent, it was a pretty loud, sloppy rock ’n’ roll band. But, for Jack and Roz’s anniversary, we did our best to work out a version of Gershwin’s “Our Love is Here to Stay,” and we opened a set here at the convention with that, and Jack and Roz danced along, and it was an

honor to be part of that.

EVANIER: Lisa’s got a photo.

LISA KIRBY: It was just presented to me. Chris Ng over here presented this beautiful picture of my parents dancing. [applause] EVANIER: When the Jack Kirby Collector prints a transcript of this, I assume that photo will be in there. Give it a full page, John. [laughter] There will also be a wonderful photo I’m sure will be reproduced, taken at Bill’s house the evening of that dinner, with them all sitting together, and you just look at that photo and you go, “Wow.” MUMY: That was one of the highlights of my life.

EVANIER: It’s a photo of the history of comics, ladies and gentlemen. I knew Bill when he was doing Lost in Space, and he was coming around our comic club. And we, of course, hated him because he was famous, he was not mowing lawns to earn money to buy comics and things like that, and you don’t want somebody in roughly your age bracket to be doing that well. [laughter] And then I didn’t see him for many years. The next time I saw him— this is one of those bizarre ways that fate works—we were on the set of a live-action Archie Comics pilot we worked on. He was one of the cast members on it, Bill Mumy, circa 1965 playing a rock musician.

What a stretch. [laughter] And I just thought, it’s eight years later and we’re doing a TV show about comics together.

Bill, what’s your favorite, enduring Jack Kirby work?

What’s the one thing you would take to a desert island?

that, because, in his intro to the book, Joe mentioned that he and Jack were like the Beatles before the Beatles. And I was doing an interview recently with Wired, and they asked, “Why did he say that?” And I said, “Well, my guess is that the Beatles didn’t create rock ’n’ roll, but after the Beatles, rock ’n’ roll was never again the same. It had evolved to something greater, and they sold millions of records. And if you look at it, Joe and Jack didn’t invent comics.

But, after Simon and Kirby, comics changed, fundamentally. Joe talks about the time that they went up with Martin Goodman to talk to the guys at Archie because the guys at Archie didn’t like the shape of Captain America’s shield, because it looked like The Shield, and they basically said, “Don’t do that.” And they agreed, and Joe thought, “Well, cool, the disc can be thrown like a Frisbee, anyway, it’s cool.” Although before Frisbees. But the thing is, after Simon and Kirby, everything changed. And, if you look at it, their first million-seller is a super-hero book. Their second million-seller is Boy Commandos. It’s a war book. Their

(previous page, top) A nice ’70s Hulk sketch by Kirby. (previous page, bottom) Yes, that’s Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill in the front of that photo from Bill Mumy’s dinner party. Bill’s on the back row, and the center row, left to right, is Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Bob Kane, and an unidentified friend. (below) We didn’t have room for a full page, but here’s the photo of Jack and Roz dancing, by Chris Ng. Hulk TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MUMY: My favorite of Jack’s work… it’s awfully hard to beat the first fifty Fantastic Fours. It’s really hard to beat that. [scattered applause] That would probably—there’s so many characters in there, and they’re all developed so beautifully, and they all look so great, and they’re so fluid, and so alive. So I think I’d go there. But I’m a big fan of Hank Pym, as well, that’s the early “Ant-Man” stories. They’re all great. I mean, you see those covers, and with all respect to everybody else, if I got a Jack cover, and I opened it up and it was somebody else doing the interior pencils, I was always disappointed.

And I don’t mean that with any disrespect to any of the great talents that did those books, but if Jack was on the cover and I didn’t get Jack inside, I thought, “Okay, what’s happening?” But, yeah, I’m going to go with the first fifty FFs. EVANIER: I’m going to ask you to talk a little about Jack’s influence on your writing, but I want to mention that some of the work that Bill has done as a writer has been in conjunction with a very fine writer who has snuck in. Peter David is sitting over there. [applause] MUMY: Well, you know, honestly? Jack is like the Beatles, or Bob Dylan, so you take in a little, tiny bit, maybe, of their greatness, and you’re just inspired by it, but they’re the sun in that solar system. You’re just a little satellite floating around it. I don’t think I could ever consciously say, “I’m going to do something of that level.” You can’t help but absorb some of it because it’s so great, but, in terms of the actual influence, I would never think to approach that level, myself.

SAFFEL: You know, it’s interesting that you mention 29

third million-seller is when they create the romance comic. After them, everything changed. And that’s why I think the Beatles thing totally works, because they changed the nature of comics, and the two of them together far exceeded the sum of the parts.

EVANIER: Steve, I’ll give you one other aspect. I agree with everything you’re saying, but I think also what Joe probably meant was, Joe and Jack were both very conscious their whole lives of the need of someone to make a living in an industry, so they both grew up in environments where you had to go out and earn a living for your family. After the Beatles, there were 75 million rock groups. A lot of people looked at the Beatles and said, “That’s what I want to do to make a living.” They invented an industry for people, and Joe and Jack, in the same way. And that’s one of the reasons Jack, as you pointed out earlier, respected Joe Shuster so much.

Jerry and Joe invented an industry for others, and Joe and Jack were both very proud of all the people that got work, not necessarily at the Simon and Kirby studio, but because Simon and Kirby had helped the industry out. They had broadened the industry and created work for all these people. Two men who both had enormous respect for any other comic book artist or writer, even someone who they maybe personally didn’t like, or didn’t care for.

They didn’t make a lot of value judgments about people’s work, necessarily. It’s like, “That’s a guy who’s out trying to feed his family. I respect that.”

MUMY: Absolutely. He was so generous. The Comet Man, which was our first project for Marvel, came out relatively close to the time we had this dinner, and we were very excited to show him our work. And Jack took so much time to really give us positive feedback about it. He sat and spoke to us that

evening, that dinner at our house, he sat and spoke to us about things beyond this world that you knew he believed in. You know, really deep kind of metaphysical things about demons and other dimensions.

It was fascinating to hear him relax and speak like that. Jack and Roz brought us a bottle of brandy that night as a gift, and Eileen and I, we still have that. We’ll take a little sip every year in honor of them. And the really funny thing, this was before everybody had a GPS system, and they lived about 35 miles away from where we lived. And we’re up in the canyon, it’s not the easiest place to find. And Jerry and Joanne Siegel admitted, early in the evening, that they had driven to our house the day before to find it, so they knew where they were going and could get there in time. And Jack and Roz said, “Yeah, we did that, too.” [laughter] EVANIER: Thank you, Bill, for sharing all that with us, very much. [applause] We made the leap to talk about Seduction of the Innocent, we made the leap to the Beatles. I want to make the next obvious leap to the San Diego Five-String Mob. Did Steve Sherman leave? I was going to have Steve help me tell this story. When Steve and I were working for Jack, we used to go out usually on Saturdays. One day Roz called and said, “Instead of Saturday, could you come Sunday? Shel Dorf is coming by Saturday with some people from the San Diego convention.”

What year was this now, guys? This visit?

SHAW!: ’69 was the first visit, when they were in Irvine.

EVANIER: What was the visit where you guys got into the comics?

SHAW!: The first one I went to was in Thousand Oaks, up that hill where I thought my car was going to flip over backwards.

EVANIER: Had there been a San Diego convention at this point?

SHAW!: No. EVANIER: There was no San Diego convention. It was just an idea that was being talked about. So Saturday morning, Roz calls me at 11:00 AM, I guess, and says, “Mark, can you and Steve get out here?” And I said, “Yeah. Is something wrong?” She said, “Yeah, Shel Dorf is here with me. He said he was going to bring the people from San Diego.” I said, “Well, what’s wrong?” She said, “I think he brought San Diego.” [laughter] So I called Steve, and we cleared our days, and we drove out there. We got there, and there were cars parked all outside the Kirby home. It was like a parking lot outside. We went in, and how many people were in that group that he brought?

SHAW!: Probably a dozen kids, and (to Barry) your mom, and Shel. Yeah, I’d say it was about a dozen kids. Wouldn’t you guys?

BARRY ALFONSO: It’s a hard thing to remember because there were a number of trips, but often the groups could be, would you say 12-18 at a minimum?

Something like that.

EVANIER: So there’s about nine cars outside, by the time you figured all the parents. Someone pick up the story.

ALFONSO: Well, I’ve recently, through the auspices

30

2

1

1) William R. Lund

3

4

1) Scott Shaw!

3) Roger Freedman

5

4) Mike Towry

5) Barry Alfonso (not shown: John Pound)

of Mike Towry, gotten to hear recordings that we made at Jack’s house in 1970 and ’71, and separating the visits, one from the other, they kind of blur together, but I think what was consistent is they were kind of almost like guru sessions in the sense that we would sit around Jack, we would ask him questions. Some of them would be about comics he had done, some would be about comics he was going to do, but the tone of them was amazingly philosophical. He would talk about the really deep background behind these books. And what was interesting was that you could hear that his view of the world was colored by a lot of reading. It would seem like he had done reading in philosophy and religion, but also, in growing up in the streets back in New York, it was sort of a kind of an old-fashioned, street kid gangster mentality creeping behind this cosmic view he had of things. And he would go off on these long discussions, and he was very willing to do a give-and-take even on that level, with the kids. And he made no distinction between older people and younger people. I could pipe up with something and it would be just like a peer of his was talking. So it’s that tone of the interviews that stands out the most for me.

EVANIER: I’m going to ask each of you and tell me how old you were when you visited Jack, what you wanted to be when you grew up, and then tell me what you’re doing now.

MIKE TOWRY: I was 14 when I first visited Jack. Our little group, when we first visited Jack in 1969, I was 14, and Shel Dorf had moved out here from Detroit where he worked on the Triple Fan Fair, and through Barry, he’d gotten ahold of Richard [Alf], and me, and a load of kids, and we all got together. He was talking about the convention, and maybe we could do something like that in San Diego. It sounded good. We didn’t know if he was for real or not. But then one day he said, “Hey, would you guys like to talk to Jack Kirby?” And it was like, “Would you guys like to talk to God?” [laughter] It didn’t seem like it was something that you could really do. And so he actually was able to call Jack up on the phone, and, tongue-tied, we each got on and stumbled through some kind of question with Jack. And then, after that, he said, “Well, would you like to go visit him?” And it was like, well, sure. So Shel rented a station wagon, we all piled in, and we went up there. And I remember the first time, Jack loved Barry, and I think Barry’s first question to Jack, or one of the first ones that won him over, he said, “Well, should we called you ‘King’ or ‘Mr. Kirby?’” [laughter]

(previous page) The FiveStringers cameo in panel one of these pencils from Jimmy Olsen #144 (Dec. 1971), but we really ran it because of what an awesome visual Dubbilex was! Hey, DC: Get Walter Simonson to do a “Dubbilex & the Guardian” comic! (above) The San Diego FiveString Mob, then and now (alas, sans John Pound). The inset pencil drawings, and the old photos, are from a feature in the 1971 ComicCon program book.

All characters TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

ALFONSO: I will insert this. I had the temerity to say, “Jack, I don’t like the way, when you draw Iron Man, you can see his eyes.

It’s better when you just have, like, little black slits.” And I actually made him explain why he did this. So imagine the atmosphere of 31

I was a comic fan, and I probably would have been a better dealer if I hadn’t been such a fan, but I liked to read them, look at them for myself. So I didn’t have thoughts about being a professional, in that respect. Later on, I became—I’m a software programmer now.

EVANIER: Scott, what interested you when you went there that day?

SHAW!: I wasn’t there on the first visit when they lived in Irvine. I was up for all the subsequent visits in Thousand Oaks, and I was 17 at the time.

EVANIER: And you had already wanted to be a cartoonist.

SHAW!: Like most cartoonists, I think I was born with what I call the “cartoonist’s gene,” and I had just started doing underground comics at that time.

EVANIER: And that was the day that I met Scott for the first time.

SHAW!: That’s right. And Mark and I immediately bonded, because, when I found out that he worked for Western Publishing, I was immediately asking, “Well, who’s the guy that, when he draws Mickey Mouse, he does feathering on the nose instead of a highlight?”

And he’d go, “Well, that’s Jack Bradbury.”

And I’d say, “Well, who’s the guy who kind of draws them so they aren’t quite looking like the characters, but they look real zippy?” And he goes, “That’s Jack Manning.” Mark was able to connect all these styles as a cartoonist— and Western stuff was always anonymous— and Mark was like my conduit to finding out who all these guys were, that I had no idea on. And we worked together many, many times.

EVANIER: What Scott is telling you is that, even at that age, I was doing panels. [laughter] Jack took an interest in Barry because Barry was kind of a sickly-looking kid, then. He was a skinny little guy.

ALFONSO: I’ve been eating since. [laughter]

trust this man established that I could say that to him and that was, like, perfectly cool. Amazing. (above) Barry Alfonso’s likeness is somewhat apparent in these Witchboy pencils from Demon #7 (March 1973). (next page) Far-out indeed!

Cover pencils from Jimmy Olsen #144.

All characters TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

EVANIER: Mike was one of the founders. All of these gentlemen were responsible that this convention exists at all, but Mike, the first couple years, did an awful lot of the heavy lifting, grunt work—I can’t begin to tell you how important this man was to the founding of this convention. [applause] We have to go quickly, here, because I’ve gotta stop on time.

Mike, when you went to see Jack that day, were you just as a fan, did you think about getting into the business? What was your interest in comics at that point?

TOWRY: Well, I was a—before we even met Shel, Richard Alf and I and Bob Sourk were all friends in the same area, and we were all comic dealers, so we had kind of a commercial interest in it. And

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EVANIER: But Jack might have been worried that Barry was going to fall over that morning or something, and he just kept this paternal feeling for him, which is why Barry wound up in the role he did in the San Diego Five-String Mob as the mascot, kind of. And then he later came back and inspired a character; Klarion the Witch Boy in Demon was kind of based—the visual was kind of based, not exactly, but you could see a lineage there of what Jack had in mind.

SHAW!: And he was the only one of the Five-String Mob that had a name. He was Barri-Boy. EVANIER: Roger, what age were you when you went up there that day?

ROGER FREEDMAN: I was 16. At the time, I was a college undergraduate who wanted to do science, but Jack drew one of the very few super-hero comics I can remember reading as a child, Private Strong. I’ll always remember that. But it never really occurred to me, up to that point, that I could do something in the comic book industry. And, in fact, as it turned out over the

next few years, I had a chance to do a small part for my good friend Scott Shaw!, and my other good friend Mark Evanier, as a letterer. It was one of the high points, really, of my career. It’s something I’ll never forget having the opportunity to do. But I think Jack helped, in so many ways, for so many of us. And, because of Jack’s cosmic perspective, I think I stuck with it, which is why I now teach Astronomy and Physics at the University of California Santa Barbera, and try to actually convey to my students a sense of the cosmic in a rather different way than Jack did, and probably a less successful way. [laughter] ALFONSO: What are the physics of the Negative Zone? [laughter] FREEDMAN: That’s a panel for next year that Mark is already setting up.

remember, I guess Shel must have sent him some photos of us.

LUND: No, we took our own pictures, and we sent them up.

ALFONSO: One day there was a photo session, where we all got our pictures taken.

LUND: Originally, he wanted to put us in Forever People is what he was telling us, when he was devising this whole concept of what the San Diego Five-String Mob were. He came up with a name right then and there and said he was going to put us in Forever People. So we all went back and had our photos taken, we sent them up there, and I still have my hair always falling down in front of my face, so if you look on the first page where we’re all featured, there’s that hair falling down in front of my face. [laughs]

SHAW!: They were pretty good likenesses, I thought, except for mine. You would never know that was me. I looked like Rob Reiner in All in the Family in those days. Only now am I really a meathead. But I had the long hair, and the droopy mustache, and the standard-issue hippie look. So I’m the guy in the background playing what I always called the cosmic oboe. [laughter] I don’t know what it is that I’m playing, but I’m definitely playing something.

EVANIER: I think it’s wonderful that finally, after all these Kirby panels, we’ve finally brought you actual Jack Kirby characters. [laughter, applause] I’ll beg them to make this 90 minutes next year.

We are out of time. Thank you very much, and please exit as quickly as you can, because we’re running late. [applause] ★

EVANIER: I’ve gotta rush here; give Bill the microphone. Bill, how old were you that day?

WILLIAM LUND: I was 20. I was in the Navy. That’s how I ended up in San Diego. I just got back from Vietnam and was there on shore for support activities.

And the other part of your questions is what did I want to do. When I was growing up, I always wanted to do just about everything. I wanted to draw, I wanted to write, I wanted to be an actor. Today, I’m not doing drawing so much, although I did a little bit during my fanzine days. Today I am acting on stage, a little bit of film and TV work, and sometimes I do write. I’ve written articles. My favorite one was interviewing Bil Keane.

EVANIER: Thank you, Bill. Scott, would you tell the story of how the San Diego Five-String Mob came to be?

SHAW!: Well, this was a very exciting time because, first of all, Jack was starting what would come to be known as the Fourth World books, and just the fact that Jack had gone from Marvel to DC was absolutely mind-blowing to us. It was like, that was all we’d ever known, those of us that’d scoured out older comics. We were fascinated by all this stuff, so we were rapt to everything. And, at one point, Jack said—and he wasn’t speaking literally. In fact, in an interview that you have, he specifically said that he didn’t base his characters on his friends or other people he knew. But he told us, he said—you know, we were like, “Where do you get your ideas?” or something like that. And I remember he said, “I can turn anybody into a character, even you guys.” And I was 17 years old. I mean, I’m not real bright now, I sure wasn’t real bright then, [laughter] but I remembered the look on his face, and it was a very subtle one, but it was essentially, “Holy sh*t, what have I done?” [laughter] Because we went, “Well, do it, Jack!”

And he went, “…okay.” [laughter] So, after that, he’d said he was going to put us in Jimmy Olsen, and I remember every issue—of course, I was buying them anyway, religiously, but you’d flip it open. “No, we’re not in here. Well, maybe we’re this background guy here.” [laughter] Next issue, “No, we’re not there.”

Next issue, no. And when that thing finally came out—I love this cover, too, because it’s typical, wild, anything goes. I love how, above it, it just says “Far Out.” [laughter] And I’m sure that was Jack’s blurb, right? It was “Far Out.” It didn’t say, “Don’t ask, just buy it.” [laughter] But, anyway, this issue finally came out, and he really caught us all. I don’t 33

Foundations

The Boys Are Back In Town Commentary, art reconstruction, and color by Chris Fama

his Boy Explorers story is from Joe Palooka #5, published by Harvey Comics, and cover-dated July 1946. Jack hadn’t been back from Europe long before Joe Simon began efforts to publish S&K titles away from DC Comics. Jack still penciled Boy Commandos and “The Newsboy Legion” for DC, but those stories—paticularly Boy Commandos—often featured inks by others artists, and had a different feel to them compared to pre-war efforts.

The same can’t be said for Boy Explorers and Stuntman, which both began brief runs in 1946—these are pure S&K efforts! “A Trip To The Moon” is a bit of an oddity to my eye.

It reads as a cross-promotional effort with its boxing theme, but why does the story appear to have a cover included? Had this splash been used as a cover, it certainly would have been one for the “unintentional humor comic cover” web sites.

[Editor’s note: Since only one issue of Boy Explorers was technically published in May 1946, this was probably meant for issue #2, which ended up being a black-and-white half-size, singlestory issue sent only to subscribers in September 1946 after the title was cancelled.]

By the end of 1946, S&K’s attempts to bring a new superhero and kid-gang book to market had fizzled, and they would begin a re-branding of their studio, producing some of the most excellent adult-oriented crime and romance books ever to grace a newsstand. ★

T

(Check out the Digital Edition of this issue to enjoy Chris’ great color work on this story.)

TM & ©2011 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estate.

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TM & ©2011 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estate.

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TM & ©2011 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estate.

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS STORY, DON’T MISS THE

SIMON AAND ND KKIRBY: IR RBY BY: SUPERHERO SUPERHEROES OES • Thrill to Stuntman, Fighting American, The Black Owl, Captain 3-D, The Fly, Private Strong and many more!

• Including never-before seen stories and brilliantly restored masterpieces.

• Featuring a brand-new introduction

by Neil Gaiman!

THE BEST BEST OF SIMON AAND ND KIRBY KIRBY BY • Spans the entire two-decade partnership of The Dream Team.

• Covers every genre from Superheroes to Wartime to Horror to Romance.

• 240 brilliantly restored full-color pages and deluxe large format.

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TM & ©2011 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estate.

SIGNED AND AN ND NUMBERED SIMON AND D KIRBY KIRBY

BY PRINTS Titan Books presents exclusive, high-quality limited edition numbered prints signed by Joe Simon, available at www.titanbooks.com © 2010 Joseph H. Simon and the Estate of Jack Kirby

Obscura

Barry Forshaw

THE BUMPER BOOK OF SIMON & KIRBY ollectors these days just don’t know how lucky they are. If you purchase a copy of The Simon & Kirby Superheroes (and if you haven’t, you should), I suggest that you pick up this impressively armstraining volume and just appreciate its sizable dimensions (11" x 8" and over 1⁄2" thick). Then flick through the eye-catching pages (of which there are very nearly 500, all in ravishing fullcolor) and consider one thing: whatever you paid for this, imagine what you would have had to pay for the highly collectible individual comics assembled within. And what an assembly of pre-Bronze Age gems! There are the quaint, eccentric 1940s adventure characters Stuntman and The Vagabond Prince (the latter a bizarre costumed hero, not a refugee from an operetta); the glorious one-shot Captain 3-D (here stripped of its muddy 3-D incarnation and rendered in flat full color; a massive improvement, and something that many Kirby enthusiasts—this writer included—have wistfully hoped for over the years); a complete run—and I’ll repeat that—a complete run of the glorious tongue-in-cheek commie-basher Fighting American (which has already enjoyed a lavish reprint, but without all the other tempting items on offer here), and—yes, there’s more—all the (too few) pages that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created for their late-1950s super-hero initiatives for Harvey, The Double Life of Private Strong and The Adventures of the Fly. And if that’s not enough, there are several illuminating essays from a variety of intriguing sources, including my countryman Neil Gaiman (there’s even a namecheck for the illustrious editor of this very magazine, John Morrow).

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

by Barry Forshaw

The Simon & Kirby Superheroes offers some of the finest reprints ever of Joe and Jack’s work; don’t miss it!

Captain 3-D, Black Magic, and Fighting American ©2011 Joseph H. Simon and the Estate of Jack Kirby. The Double Life of Private Strong and The Adventures of the Fly ©2011 Joseph H. Simon

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SUMPTUOUS STUFF The previous volume of Simon & Kirby material published by Titan was a deluxe job, but (as you might have gathered from the foregoing) this book is a truly sumptuous production and a perfect way of gathering together some of the most cherishable material from one of the most dynamic teams in comics (and, it has to be said, it’s wonderful that Joe Simon himself is around to see this once-disposable material treated with such respect—equally, it’s a shame that Jack Kirby did not live to see these celebrations of this talent by the exemplary design team at Titan).

It has, of course, long been a cause for complaint from grumpy comics aficionados that the bright, glossy paper used in previous archive editions did few favors to the artwork, rendering everything in too-aggressive poster colors—and it’s good to report that this entire book is printed on matte paper that is far kinder to the splendid re-coloring of the plates rendered here. And what exemplary work has been done by Harry Mendryk in terms of the art restoration and new coloring work (under the editorship of Steve Saffel); the bizarre surrealistic world of Captain 3-D is an absolute revelation, as is the revivifying work done on the magnificent (if short-lived) The Double Life of Private Strong and The Adventures of the Fly, which look positively eye-opening here, particularly in terms of those memorable double-page spreads, now showcased to great advantage.

(Ah, those spreads... etched on my memory since I first saw them at the age of twelve at a dockside newsstand in Liverpool, the smell of salt in my nostrils—even the boats on the River Mersey lost their interest for me. What’s more, the doublepage spreads in Playboy—also on sale at that long-vanished Liverpool newsstand— had less appeal, despite my ever-more-active hormones.)

But in case you are thinking that much of the above is reading like a publicity blurb put together by the book’s publishers Titan, let me (reluctantly) register a few caveats.

Not serious ones, it’s true, and hardly enough to affect any potential punter’s buying decision (as for the latter, I would say to any reader of this magazine: even if you have the original books, get out that much-abused credit card and buy Simon & Kirby Superheroes!). But back to those caveats: firstly, wonderfully sympathetic though the recoloring jobs of the original plates are, the previous archive edition collecting the complete run of Fighting American made different decisions in terms of the new colors chosen, and at many points the earlier book sports more imaginative and vivid options than those chosen here. Secondly, although it’s an understandable decision to utilize only the Kirby and Simon material created by the team for The Double Life of Private Strong and The Adventures of the Fly (as opposed to the back-up strips featuring the same characters from such illustrators as George Tuska), it is perhaps a little churlish not to have included them here—collectors will still need to buy the original books to see exactly how Joe Simon put together tempting packages such as these for Harvey. Still, the omission of such material means more Simon and Kirby could be included here, and, frankly, who is going to complain about that?

If I have one final nagging reservation, it’s one that I’m sure will alienate most admirers of Golden Age Jack Kirby: just how good were such creations as Stuntman?

Of course, The King’s talent leaps off the page, but those strange, gangling figures with their undernourished-looking limbs of this period are largely of academic interest these days as a pointer to the wonders that would come later (I bet Mark Evanier is sharpening his pen even as he reads these heretical opinions). The stories, too, though quirky, have none of the prodigal invention of later material by the team.

But—in the final analysis—perhaps one shouldn’t mention these reservations. As an entity, the book itself is absolutely unmissable, and certainly the material from the 1950s onwards show Simon & Kirby achieving the total mastery of the art which made their names so legendary in the field. And the fact that Titan are producing further reprint volumes in this series is absolutely wonderful news. I’m sure I’ll have every

original book that Titan will be reprinting, but I’ll be beating down the publishers Thames-side doors for any future entries in this reprint initiative.

A PRIZE COLLECTION OF KIRBY Despite the fact that the British bumper reprint editions of Simon & Kirby’s Prize title Black Magic enjoyed a respectable run, UK admirers of the King—who painstakingly collected the series—were aware (as this writer was) that there was probably a mass of Kirby material which had not made its way into the reprints. However, when Joe Simon oversaw the reprinting of some classic Black Magic material for DC in the 1970s, the situation was somewhat different. Surely, collectors like myself reasoned, we now had almost all the Jack Kirby pieces he had done for this quirky and offbeat horror title (although, of course, Kirby subsequently tried to play down the horror elements of the book—despite the heavy dollops of grotesquery and freakishness).

But no, we were to learn, we didn’t yet possess reprints of everything the best artist in comics had done for the title—there was still more delicious Kirbyana to be reproduced, and this magazine, to its credit, is filling some of those gaps. But if you can afford it, you should really splash out for a copy of an original issue of Black Magic.

Why not, for instance, Vol. 1, No. 2, which boasts a striking Kirby cover and two—count ’em, two—stories by The King?

The cover shows a terrified figure being manhandled by arms that have sprung out of the earth, while others monstrosities look on—one of whom is dressed in colonial garb and appears to be reading from the Bible. The cover story is, in fact, Kirby’s “The Scorn of the Faceless People”—and the splash panel for the piece itself is actually better than the cover, even though the faceless people aren’t actually faceless. A figure shivering in pyjamas is gesticulated at by a similar group of freakish figures to those of the cover. They are, of course, completely different to the latter horrors—as ever, Kirby would rather create something new (so prodigious is his imagination) than bother repeating himself.

The story itself is basically the interpretation of a dream, and would probably have been more appropriate in the pages of Simon & Kirby’s companion book for Prize, The Strange World of Your Dreams.

Despite all its striking imagery (such as a wonderful realization of a snowbound colonial town which takes up a whole page), the piece is basically a version of a risqué travelling salesman joke—in which a cynical city slicker takes advantage of a naive country girl to the annoyance of her uptight father. But as in The Strange World of Your Dreams, Simon & Kirby pussyfoot around the sexual implications of their tale (although the girl in the story is seen several times in a revealingly torn dress). But this cautious avoidance of the erotic implications doesn’t matter a jot: it’s Kirby’s unique imagery that makes this such a collectable issue—that and Kirby’s other piece in the issue, “The Cloak” (the balance of the book is handled by such stalwarts of the Kirby studio as Mort Meskin and Bill Draut).

Magic, indeed.

A KEY KIRBY CONTEMPORARY: JERRY ROBINSON Let’s stretch the remit of this column just a little by talking about another first-rate comics talent, who was a friend of Jack Kirby’s: Jerry Robinson—still, thankfully, with us, and the subject of a handsome hardback tribute. For many years, the publisher Abrams has been celebrated as one of the most respected purveyors of upmarket art books, with a quality of image reproduction that puts most of its rivals in the shade. So it is particularly encouraging to note that (along with the customary sumptuous volumes focusing on the Old Masters) the company has shown similar dedication to the art of the comic strip. And here is Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics, a truly impressive volume detailing the art and career of one of its most protean talents. Robinson is, of course, best-known as one of the essential elements in the early creation of Batman, and along with fellow Batman artist Dick Sprang, he was undoubtedly a better draftsman than the man whose name is on every appearance of the character, Bob Kane—not to mention the fact that Robinson created the visual appearance of such key elements in the mythos as The Joker, Robin and even the striking logo which adorned the comics for so many years.

But Robinson has several other claims to fame: as an artist, he excelled in virtually every field of comics, including crime, horror and fantasy (I first encountered him in one of his splendidly inventive SF outings, a British reprint edition of Mystic— #10, priced at a now historic ‘shilling’), where his story of alien invasion, “The City that Vanished,” appeared, drawn from the US Mystic #5 (intriguingly, elements of Robinson’s eye-catching splash panel were redrawn for the cover of the British edition).

As an illustrator, Robinson was comfortably streets ahead of most of his rivals—except, of course, his friend and colleague Jack Kirby, who is namechecked here; there is even a nice color photograph showing these two with fellow legends of the comics industry Will Eisner and Burne Hogarth. There is a welcome retelling in N.C. Christopher Couch’s celebratory book of how Robinson (along with Neal Adams) agitated for justice (and a decent financial settlement) for the impoverished Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

But in a book as handsome as this, the art is the thing, and admirers of the comics field will be in seventh heaven. There is also a strong representation of Robinson’s work in other fields, such as commercial illustration, caricature and photography (frankly, the latter is the least interesting of Robinson’s accomplishments) and even fine art.

This is the sort of book that makes you hope the publisher Abrams will continue to produce a host of similar books celebrating the popular arts. ★ [Barry Forshaw is the author of The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (available from Amazon.com) and the editor of Crime Time. He lives in London.]

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Raam TM & ©2011 the Jack Kirby Estate.

From 1972: a prime, unused Kirby concept. The other “Raam” presentation piece is on page 66 of this issue.

Novel Ideas (below) Jack and Ray Wyman made a 1993 appearance at Comics & Comix, a Los Angeles comic book store.

Photos by Curtis Wong.

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The Horde, Book 1

An introduction to Ray Wyman and Peter Burke’s graphic novel continuation of Jack Kirby’s novel The Horde n a previous installment [TJKC #16, June 1997, “Kirby’s Nightmare”], we reported on the tale of two writers who were given a unique task by none other than Roz Kirby herself. The writers are Ray Wyman Jr. and Peter S. Burke. The task: “Finish Jack’s novel.”

The first surprise, of course, is really no surprise at all. One must expect that Jack Kirby—the consummate storywriter and storyteller—would write a novel. The only question we ask: What would he write? Answer: A novel called The Horde!

Although he is known for a pantheon of ‘super’ characters in long underwear and a penchant for exclamation, Jack was preoccupied with nothing less than the fall of human civilization.

Many people have imagined how the world of humans might end: atomic Armageddon, plagues and pestilence, zombies, robot wars, maniacal villainous plots, asteroid, supernova, black hole—and of course, the occasional tale of cataclysmic wars between super-heroes. Jack’s Horde imagines something more insidious.

His story lays out a tale of the oldest civilizations degrading into huge migrating populations, moving from one place to another like a devouring cloud. “Humans are their worst enemy,” Jack explained in an interview by Wyman. “It is within our nature to balance our ambition to build with our urge to destroy.”

This is the essence of what was called “Kirby’s Nightmare.”

For the record, there are several versions of Jack’s solo novel attempts dated 1970, 1972, 1976, and 1977. Jack continued working on the project with writer/editor Janet Gluckman-Berliner through the early 1980s, then ceased all work due to health problems in 1982.

No matter how much time separated Jack from his story, he sensed impending catastrophe. “I could see it happen before my eyes,” he said to Wyman in 1992. “It was right there on the news, every night. It was a nightmare I couldn’t escape.”

We’ve mentioned Wyman and Burke before. Wyman wrote The Art of Jack Kirby (Blue Rose Press, 1992). Burke is a music writer/producer with several plays and musical hits under his belt—notably “Dora Hand” (Mark Turnbull, Douglas Rowe), Keola & Kapono Beamer (well known to fans of Hawaiian music), and Quarterflash (“Harden My Heart”).

Wyman recounts the day he found the nearly forgotten manuscript in a closet while he was working on The Art of Jack Kirby.

“My first reaction, of course, was astonishment. ‘Jack wrote a novel? Wow, this is going to be great!’ But then I started to wonder why it hadn’t been published and why a well-known editor like Gluckman was unable to publish it,” said Wyman.

“Jack told me that the story was on a different level than any personal experience—and by that he meant historically. He wanted to transcend the individual response to war and put a story out there about a human tragedy like nothing ever written before. The concept was on a grand scale—a huge undertaking.”

After reading the several versions of the manuscript, Wyman concluded that Jack’s immense vision was simply too immense.

“Jack had a gifted way of looking at things and describing them,” said Wyman. “His dialogue and character interaction, at times, was very good. But he failed to link the scenes and the descriptions together in a cohesive way. Jack did a great job of this for a dozen or so pages at a time, but a true novel proved to be too great of a task.”

From 1989 to 1992, Wyman says that he and Kirby spent

I

many hours talking about the attempted novel. “I wanted to get past the manuscript and find out where Jack intended to take the story. We compared experiences, talked about philosophy, about God, about war—I can’t tell you how many different topics we covered—but it all boiled down to his nightmare.”

A year after Jack passed away in 1994, Roz presented Wyman with an unexpected challenge.

“Roz said to me, ‘Ray, I want you to promise that you will someday complete the story. Don’t let it sit in your closet.’ That got to me; Roz and I had some pretty deep talks along the way— stuff about Jack, stuff about her, stuff about business—but this, this was different. That’s how The Horde became my personal mission.”

Burke remembers being surprised by Wyman’s proposal to join him on the project. “I thought he would do the job on his own, but once we started working on it together, I could see that I had a role to play here,” said Burke.

Now going on 15 years, Wyman and Burke have finally completed the storyline. And according to Burke, after a number of fits and starts, they’re finally confident enough with the ‘first draft’ (9th edition) of a proposed graphic novel to show it around.

“Whatever ideas we have had, whatever we added to the story, Jack’s original manuscript has been our guide,” said Burke.

“The big strokes really belong to Jack.”

The impressive thing is that Wyman and Burke—self-admittedly nascent to the art of writing novels—have stuck with it for so long and produced something that we, at TJKC, believe is a compelling and exciting read. (By the way, we have read the original manuscript and can truthfully say that the new story is true to the spirit of Jack’s original concept.)

It seemed fitting to end this introduction with a clip from Jack’s original manuscript, between the main character Tegujai and a lesser character named Nurgojai: “Will you carry out the directives inspired by these words?”

Tegujai bore into his disciple.

“Do you doubt that I will?” Nurgojai was resolute, back rigid, eyes focused on the future.

“No,” Tegujai sat back with hands folded. “I never doubt a fanatic.”

THE HORDE Book 1:Original “Virtue and Courage” story by Jack Kirby.

Written by Jack Kirby, Ray Wyman Jr, & Peter S. Burke.

Copyright © 1970, 1972, 1976, and 1977 by Jack Kirby.

Copyright © 2010 by Jack Kirby, Ray Wyman, & Peter S. Burke.

Printed with permission, all rights reserved.

The setting is China, 2072 CE. It is nearly 100 years since Nixon’s celebrated visit to China. The People’s Republic has achieved world dominance. China is the greatest military and economic power in the world and the world’s most populous nation—two of the Earth’s nine billion inhabitants live in China.

As predicted, the progress of global warming has also continued unabated. All of the central Asian glacier packs have melted away.

Huge swaths of once verdant farmlands from Tibet to the shores of Southeast Asia are becoming arid desert. Reports of persistent food riots and anarchy are more frequent. China struggles to hold onto the last vestiges of civil control as it mobilizes its mighty army.

(Note: the story is written in a hybrid format that combines graphic novel script with prose.)

GRAPHIC SETTING: 2072 AD, Morning. Somewhere over the PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC of CHINA. 1. FRAME: A LONE FALCON soars over a barren land.

NARR: “Ancient teaching says that virtue and courage are better weapons than strength and warrior skill.

2. FRAME: FALCON’s POV: Sunlight creeps across arid fields of dead grasses and other plants.

NARR: A well-trained mind enjoys being virtuous not from the challenge and not from threat—but by what is right.

3. FRAME: (GROUND POV) Brittle stumps of agriculture and dead trees are all around. CROWS fight over a patch of moistened ground where feeble sprigs of rice have sprouted.

NARR: To be virtuous, one must possess a clear sense of right. To be courageous, one must possess clarity of mind.

4. FRAME: Ribbons of orange dust gently roll along an abandoned street and into abandoned windowless city buildings.

NARR: On this path of virtue and courage, a child can grasp the entire world with one hand.

5. FRAME/SPLIT: a. Into a red orange sky, FALCON soars higher; b. beyond the dust; c. beyond the clouds and into blue sky.

6. FRAME: The FALCON glides into billowing clouds. Beyond we see a massive city with immense buildings. Peaks of the buildings soar high into a thick layer of haze that envelops the city.

7. FRAME: The FALCON’S EYE looks into a window of one of the tallest buildings.

NARR: As virtue suppresses fear, courage causes us to stand firm against danger. In this way, virtue is a test of wisdom and a strong will, courage is a test of character and self-control.”

8. FRAME: CENTRAL MILITARY COMMISSION HEADQUARTERS, BEIJING—0830 HRS—A young Chinese female officer in full military dress uniform looks out the window.

TEXT Gen had a hard time muffling a broad grin that was threatening to erupt ever since their arrival. She found refuge in front of the large window at the end of the broad hallway that separated the executive offices from the executive clerical offices of Central Command. Here she could savor the satisfaction of her own reflection in the window and, without fear of discovery, release the joy of a great smile. This day was a day of fulfillment; a goal that she set when she first saw these buildings in a brochure. In some respects, the world-renowned five-spired complex was an inspiration for her to enlist in the army.

Not only was she filled with the sense of national duty, she wanted to stand in the very heart of Central Command Headquarters in Beijing, the most powerful military in the history of the world!

And now, here she was, on the 88th floor and standing outside of Army Commissioner Liweii Sun’s office, no less!

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” her mother asked when she burst out with the news on the

phone. Gen pursed her lips to stem a prideful burst of laughter. She was always the trouble-maker; always making the other kids cry; always an exasperation to her teachers and parents.

“Look at me now,” Gen muttered privately.

Aloft in the clouds, figuratively and literally, she imagined herself consorting with the gods.

With the heavy cover of haze below, the network of towers and skywalks that comprised the complex appeared to be suspended in the clouds. The spires and peaks of nearby buildings occupied the billowing white hills that encircled the complex. In reality, the rest of Beijing lay some 300 meters below, choking in the thick and barely breathable air.

She peered down at a web of skywalks that connected four towers to the center cylindrical tower she occupied. Each tower represented the four major branches of service: intelligence, army, navy, and air, which also included space command. The center tower housed the civilian administrative and political offices that managed all military activity.

Bubble-shaped vehicles traversed the skywalks, which carried tracks that guided passengers from tower to tower. Only the highest rated members of the party and military command knew the full extent of this marvelous facility, rumored to be the largest of its kind in the world, plunging hundreds of meters below street level; a massive complex rumored to rival the city itself.

She took in a deep breath of the filtered and purified conditioned air and stood at ease, shoulders squared and hands folded low behind her back—a proper officer’s stance. Despite her closecropped hair, slight build and total lack of make-up, Gen was an attractive woman. And she was among the most highly decorated officers in the army. Next to her commanding officer, Major Tegujai Batir, she was the youngest officer so highly decorated in PRC history. It seemed suitable to her that the gilded portraits of prominent heroes that hung on the wall behind her were now reflected around her image: Mao Zedong, astronauts Yang Liewei and Fei Junlong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping.

“And General Dai Wu Gen,” she concluded playfully. “The youngest Senior General in Chinese army history.”

She snuck a quick look over her shoulder as a low-level clerk passed.

“Why not?” she muttered to Chairman Mao in the window.

Preterition however could not hold long against the question that nagged Dai ever since Tegujai announced that they had an appointment to see the Commissioner.

cial summons from the Commissioner’s office. And she doubted any chance that this was a reprimand or anything else that could be negative. She had no choice but to take Tegujai’s word that there was important business to attend here—important for them both.

She let the audacious specter of the Central Command offices carry her away from her unease.

The CCO was second only to the marvelous power structure and global responsibility that emanated from this place, and out of which millions of personnel were deployed in China and all over the world. It took nearly 1.5 million active military personnel to ensure security for China’s population of 2 billion civilians. There were another million soldiers and technicians deployed elsewhere in the world to ensure global peace and stability in the unsettled regions after the Great War. Consistent with other modern military organizations, there was near equilibrium in terms of clerical and support staff, most of them officed here in Beijing. And despite the equal nature of responsibility, the shared duty to the motherland, and the fact they wore the same uniform, it was as though the warriors and the administrators occupied wholly separate societies.

Gen belonged to the society of warriors; the boots that led and followed and that made the military branches like the army an armed force. Without an ounce of conceit, Gen could claim that she was the image that people held in their mind when they said the words “The Army of the People’s Republic of China.” The others? To her and other soldiers who shared her view, military administrators and clerks were deserving of the uniform, but not much else.

These ‘soldiers’ belonged to the administrative society; a subculture steeped in number crunching record-keeping. Their warfare was limited to keeping the flow of information needed to run the massive military apparatus. But nobody ever died from a paper cut.

A uniformed man briskly pushed open the huge mahogany door leading into the inner office.

She noticed his rank, a Major, as he jotted something down into a glowing panel that he held in one hand. Gen assumed that he was one of the Commissioner’s executive aides.

The officer scowled at Gen when he noticed that she hadn’t saluted him.

She straightened her shoulders, then leveled an unassuming stare back at the senior officer. His eyes fell on the full regalia of metals and campaign ribbons that adorned her military tunic. Her message was clear: you may outrank me, but you are not my superior. The Aide’s scowl quickly evaporated into a polite nod as he invited her into the office.

Time for answers.

Why am I here?

She hated unanswered questions. As a child, she would raise such a tantrum if her mother ever tried to keep a secret. Despite a lifelong ambition to visit this grand building, despite the tremendous view of the city and rubbing so closely to the center of power, she was unhappy with her station outside the Commissioner’s office; unsatisfied by the open question. She wondered about her role. Was it to keep Tegujai company? Just the thought of that idea made her scoff. He could be such a Mongolian when it came to these kinds of things—stoic, enigmatic, self-reliant—and secretive. She would have asked, but knew that there was no point. She wondered if it was a promotion or commendation, but if that was the case, she would have received an offi-

Light banter floated from the open door as she approached.

“I won’t argue with you, Major,” from the voice she deduced was Commissioner Liweii’s. “You have served our army and mother China well. I’m just sorry to see you go at this great time of need. We need more people like you running our army.”

The Commissioner’s revelation did not have a chance to make its full effect on Gen before she automatically snapped into a sharp salute to her superiors at the open door.

“Captain Dai Wu Gen, sirs,” she announced.

“At ease, Captain! Please, come in.”

Commissioner Liweii Sun stood up and made his 43

way around his desk. Liweii was an elder man, rotund and completely bald. He was prone to joyful bursts that curled his cheeks into hard balls of reddened flesh. But his underlying seriousness was revealed by a total distain for self-commemoration and mementoes. Liweii wore the standard grey “Mao” tunic and trousers, and in sharp contrast to the outer office, his office was lightly furnished. One might mistakenly say that the room was “Spartan”—but it was thoroughly Chinese. Except for the dimpled projector arrays that were now dark, his desk was clear. The chairs were comfortable, but not at all what one might call opulent.

Window coverings were absent and the dark red fabric walls were completely bare. In fact, there were no symbols or pictures to be found anywhere in his office or on his person.

Liweii’s office clearly telegraphed the metaphor of simplicity and strength, but Gen’s mind was occupied with the stunning revelations of the moment. She kept her eyes locked on the commissioner, and in keeping back any sign of emotion.

She bowed with a quick “Thank you, sir,” then obediently occupied a space near Tegujai.

Gen was taller than most Chinese, but she was no more than a dwarf standing next to Tegujai. At nearly 2 meters and 95 kilograms, he made everybody appear dwarfish, aside perhaps another large Mongolian. The wild shock of raven black hair made him another hand or so taller still. Even the spacious office seemed smaller with Tegujai’s hulking frame occupying its center.

“So… the inestimable Captain Dai,” bubbled Liweii shaking her hand. “You two have made quite a pair. I’m sure that you are also sorry to see your commanding officer go. But I have plans for you, Captain. Yes, big plans.”

“Thank you Commissioner, sir,” she replied.

“First, formalities.” Liweii waved at the Aide, who entered the office behind Gen, and who now presented envelopes and two leather-bound boxes.

“Immediate promotions for you both and with commendations from the motherland,” said Liweii as he distributed them, first to Tegujai, then to Gen. He paused, nodded gravely, then bowed. “China owes each of you a deep debt of gratitude.”

“Thank you, sir.” They returned the bow.

Gen found it difficult to focus. She was floating somewhere between shock and surprise; hurt and joy; awe and despair. She opened her box and found a pair of epaulets with the familiar double bar and star worn by Majors for more than a hundred years.

Now she truly was the youngest, high-ranking officer in the entire army.

“I’ve also taken the liberty to rush through your new assignment, Major Gen,” said Liweii as he handed her another envelope. “You will take command of your unit when Maj… I mean as Lieutenant Colonel Batir departs for his sabbatical.”

Gen returned to attention. “Thank you sir,” she saluted.

Liweii returned her salute then handed Tegujai a second envelope.

“And I trust that this one last assignment will not be too much of an inconvenience.”

“No sir,” Tegujai rumbled. “It will be my pleasure.”

44

The appointment ended with a quick exchange of niceties, well wishes and firm handshakes.

Tegujai’s mood eased once he was back among fellow warriors. He found comfort from the drone of the helio’s propellers, the smell of gun oil, the unadorned ambiance of the helio’s interior. He was also relieved to be out of his dress uniform; he could never find one to fit his frame properly and disliked the softness. He settled comfortably into his jump seat and enjoyed the feel of firmness from his field uniform rubbing against his skin.

GRAPHIC

Without an influential sponsor in the political bureaucracy, without the right religion or the proper family name, it was a miracle that Tegujai wore an officer’s uniform at all, let alone command a combat unit. In a China dominated by Cantonese, Mongolians were often relegated to logistical and administrative tasks. Professed Buddhists usually never made it to the officer’s academy. But the ongoing crisis so thoroughly melted away the old biases that any soldier with a modicum of talent for tactics and skill in leadership rose quickly to command. In that way, one could say that Tegujai was a survivor of his own making and was so successful in that regard that he grew to become somewhat of a pariah to both the military and political hierarchy.

He held such a high degree of loyalty among the soldiers in his own unit—nearly all of which were Mongolian—and such high esteem throughout nearly all services that some in the bureaucracy found his rising star troubling, even dangerous.

And yet, Tegujai proved himself a highly effective and quite useful military resource, and wholly loyal to the present regime. His company was the highest decorated in the Republic Corps. His soldiers were extremely well trained and loyal. Military command chose to make his service record a very public matter. He was a hero. Now it was time to cash in and they had no choice but to grant his request for leave. But even that was not quite as simple as one could hope.

TEXT

Tegujai winced inwardly at the compliments heaped on by Liweii during the meeting. Few of Tegujai’s contemporaries demonstrated any talent whatsoever. Some possessed huge deficits that proved problematic for China; fatal mistakes were being made and there was an unsustainable level of waste. The Commissioner wanted to tug on Tegujai’s sense of loyalty, both to his country and his soldiers. That deep bow, the choice of a private meeting place, the promotions, the commendations—these were all expected. But putting Gen in command of the company—that was a nice touch, thought Tegujai; completely unexpected and well played by a master. Liweii’s message was both congratulatory and threatening: you deserve a break, but if you don’t return, your precious followers will be put in danger’s way without you.

Tegujai opened his mouth in surprise. Another reaction he did not anticipate.

And while he recognized the administrative side of the service as a vital function of the military apparatus, Tegujai despised politics. The visit to the commissioner’s office was the height of politicking—of posturing, of angling for advantage—probing for weaknesses and making clever moves to ensure that your wishes came through by way of every decision that was made. Although Liweii was himself never a soldier, he knew well how to handle warriors—deftly, seamlessly—with that shell of joviality and that disarming smile. Under the Commissioner’s deft stewardship, war itself was an expression of politics by other means, and this was particularly so in the management of warriors.

SETTING: Late afternoon, high above the PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC of CHINA, en route to Tibetan territory.

9.

FRAME: AIR MILITARY TRANSPORT—A fleet of “Helio” military transports bolt toward their destination.

10. FRAME: INSIDE THE LEAD TRANSPORT: Soldiers sit in jump seats with their gear.

11. FRAME: Tegujai sits in the rear of the helio with Gen.

Although helios were the most efficient heavy lifters in the world, the one disadvantage was that the counter rotating propellers tended to vibrate everything: the ship, the seat, your body, your thoughts. People who were sensitive to constant high-speed vibration found the vehicles uncomfortable to fly, but soldiers who were accustomed found that the constant drone possessed a lulling, calming effect. Tegujai was asleep as soon as the ship reached cruising altitude. He awoke when air turbulence caused his new epaulettes to jab at his chin and then recalled the events of the day. He turned to the seat next to his and found that Gen was sleeping as well. He nudged her awake.

Gen, also donning her new epaulettes, looked at Tegujai and remembered her earlier frustrations.

“You haven’t said anything since we left Beijing,” said Tegujai.

Were this a typical military relationship, the junior officer might ask permission to speak candidly. As long as the situation was right and the criticism or comment wasn’t insubordinate, Tegujai expected complete candor. Gen looked around the cabin and saw that most of the accompanying soldiers were asleep.

“You can be such an ass sometimes.”

“Gen…,” he mouthed.

“After all we have been through and all the years we have served together, why didn’t you tell me?”

He wrinkled his brows, which might have been misread as irritation but in this case, Gen knew him well enough to read it as confusion, even befuddlement.

“It was a private decision,” he replied defensively.

Gen scowled. “Oh. So, shock me with something I didn’t know.”

“I wasn’t even sure that they’d let me go.”

“Even still, this is a decision that affects me and everybody in the company.” Then she thought of another irritating unanswered question. “And whose idea was it to put me in command?”

“That was Liweii’s.” This he said with a nod of regret.

“You didn’t expect that…”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh. How wonderful. Now I’m a true pawn between you and the Commissioner.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. She was mercurial sometimes, but always a quick learner. “I didn’t

think that you were paying attention.”

“How could I not? “ “Gen, you’re not a pawn.”

Gen cast a wary glance at Tegujai and plucked at her new epaulet. “Are you sure about that? He’ll use me and the rest of the company as leverage to get you back in.”

The brows furrowed deeper this time, and this time it was irritation; not at Gen, not with her question, both of which were reasonable. He was irritated at the way he underestimated the warfare of politics and how it pushed its way around. When Tegujai didn’t answer, Gen put a reassuring hand on his arm.

“I will do my best to keep everybody safe, sir.”

“I know you will.”

“But, don’t leave us hanging out there for too long.”

Tegujai nodded. Politics touched the very sinews of warrioring and that was something he should have realized by now.

GRAPHIC SETTING: Early the next morning, somewhere in the midlands of Tibet.

12. FRAME: Orange dust rolls gently along a road.

Dusty, dilapidated farms and buildings line either side of the road.

13. FRAME: A lone electric scooter enters the scene—raises a tail of dust.

14. FRAME: The rider is a girl. Her clothes are tattered and faded (t-shirt, tattered jeans, oversized bright blue plastic boots). Her nose and mouth are covered by a dirty yellow headscarf.

15. FRAME: She is sweating. She is anxious. She grips the handles tightly—she is going as fast as she can.

16. FRAME: AHEAD SHE SEES something.

17. FRAME: It’s an ONCOMING BUS, tossing up a huge parabola of dust.

18. FRAME: THE BUS is overloaded with a cargo of PASSENGERS. 19. FRAME: THE PASSENGERS; Men, Women and Children packed inside; nearly all are wearing bright orange and black scarves that flutter in the wind from open windows.

20. FRAME: THE SCARVES flutter in the wind.

21. FRAME: The scooter tunnels through the dust cloud as the two vehicles pass each other.

22. FRAME: The rider is SURPRISED TO SEE in her path…

already beating down on Mida. Hot air buffeted her and penetrated her tattered clothing. Sweat streamed from every pore in her body. The Wuhe Compound was still a glimmer in the distance. She did a quick calculation based on her speed and hoped that she would arrive in time.

For all her 14 years of life, desert-like conditions was all that Mida knew. Her grandparents and other adults from her neighborhood told her stories about what it was like before. The stories sounded like legends of a far away land; a paradise that she could barely imagine: lush greenness, wet and cool air, and prosperous farms that flowed with so much rice and grain that it fed the people of Tibet for generations. The stories were intended to inspire her and the other teens, but wound up making her feel sad that she was not alive when things were better; when life was happy and full of future. All that remained were plots of brown and grey fields, dried out and long dead, bordered by defoliated trees that swung stiffly in the wind like decaying corpses.

Occasional patches of vegetation sprouted along the network of irrigation ditches that serviced the fields. People were harvesting these scraps for whatever nourishment they could bring. Mida’s scooter whined past two men fighting over just such a prize as their hunger-crazed wives and children screamed at each.

Mida’s father was killed in one of the first big food riots that erupted in nearby Lhasa when she was two years old. Two years later, her mother, a baker, was killed in another food riot—this one in her own town. Angered by years of deep rationing, the neighbors acted on a rumor that her mother was hoarding flour. They dragged her into the streets by her hair, beat her senseless and raided her store only to find her shelves as bare as theirs. Since then, Mida and her brother lived with their grandparents and on the good graces of sullen neighbors who were racked by guilt for the agonizing circumstances that led to that terrible day. And now, ten years later, things were even worse.

She gunned her little scooter as the road traversed down a slight ravine. She backed off the throttle when the motor sputtered as it struggled to climb the other side. She reached the top and was relieved, seeing that her journey was nearing an end and that the road was all downhill from here. From this vantage, she briefly saw that the compound was comprised of modern looking buildings, bare metal warehouses, grain silos and communications towers. Railroad tracks entered the compound and formed a large cargo yard, but there hadn’t been cargo trains in Wuhe in quite a while. Rumors estimated that most of Wuhe’s 50,000 people were there. Soon she would join them.

TEXT

Just outside Mida’s destination, a sign (in Cantonese) read “Wuhe Regional Collective.”

Nearby, a sun-bleached billboard promoted the headline (also in Cantonese) “Welcome to the Fruitful Valley.” Under the headline was an idyllic scene of the stoic faces of men and women overlooking a community of farms. Around the billboard and the buildings were sun-bleached husks of trees and bushes. Burnt stalks of dead grasses lap up against the steel fences that encircle the immense compound of the Wuhe Regional Collective.

Thinning rubber tires kicked up a boiling cloud of fine red dust as they bounced precariously against the rocks and potholes on the road. It was only nine in the morning and high noon heat was

Metal roofs and solar panels shimmered in the desert heat as thousands of people rushed between buildings, warehouses and other places around the complex. Dozens of men worked on the huge road-

23. FRAME: A toppled truck, crates, furniture…

AND DEAD HUMAN BODIES! 24. FRAME: The scooter narrowly misses the obstacles, weaves around the bodies.

25. FRAME: The girl is relieved.

26. FRAME: She sees something in the distance.

27. FRAME: AHEAD… a glimmer of steel buildings. THIS is her destination.

block welding, hammering, moving supplies and equipment. The roadblock was an impressive structure constructed of modern work vehicles, cars, buses, farm equipment, all piled on top of each other. Steel poles formed a network of scaffolding around the roadblock with wood and metal used as catwalks. There were shielded areas at certain intersections within the works.

Despite the large collection of civilians, the ongoing work appeared efficient and well organized. A group of young women helped several men climb the cross beams of one of the communications towers to hoist up several long black cases.

Men and women covered with sweat and dirt exited from a nearby building with shovels and picks. In another area, a long line of men emerged with wheelbarrows full of dirt. More people carried long tools and other large objects wrapped in canvas.

Many of them wore orange and black scarves tied to their bodies or outer clothing.

Amid this orchestrated activity, an entourage of people followed a bare-chested man whose skin glistened with sweat.

“The project is complete, Dorje,” said one.

“Everything will be ready in minutes,” reported another.

Dorje possessed the profile of a true leader. He gave each report careful consideration. “Good,” he said. Then he stopped and turned to the entourage.

“Then, it is time. Spread the word: everybody to their assigned positions.”

He is about to give additional instructions when he is interrupted by somebody calling his name from behind.

“Dorje! Please!”

A young woman with a walkie talkie nodded to the approaching voice. “It’s your Grandfather again,” she said, barely masking her irritation.

Dorje bowed his head in exasperation. “Yes. Leave us.”

As the others left, an old man caught up, breathless and drawing up quite a sweat in the oppressive heat. He wore dingy work clothes that were patched in many places. The only brightness on him was the orange and black cloth that was draped over his neck like a stole.

“Please listen to me!” Minzhe gasped. “You are leading our people into a terrible danger!”

Dorje gritted his teeth and kicked the gravel under his threadbare shoes.

“Grandfather, what do you say we should do?

Wait for death after they take all our food?” Dorje gesturing at the nearby grain elevators that towered over them.

“Confrontation will only make matters worse.”

Dorje softened at the sight of his beloved grandfather in such turmoil. He withdrew a spare hankerchief from his waistband and gently dabbed his brow.

The old man was nearly 100 years old and though bent from years of toiling over rice fields and threshing pads, he held the venerated position as a town elder. Conflicting thoughts rushed through Dorje’s mind. Behavior nurtured by thousands of years of cultural grooming and societal reinforcement proved to be a far stronger impetus for communal order than any of the early commu45

nist edicts. He wanted to obey his elder, his grandfather, but his deep resentment of the government was forcing him to turn his back on all his instincts to follow this most ancient and highly valued tradition. If only we could be saved by our good manners, Dorje thought bitterly.

“Do not continue down this path!” Minzhe continued. “This most dangerous path!”

Dorje’s face softened. “It’s too late, Grandfather.”

“No…” Dorje engaged his grandfather’s eyes. “Do you remember what you said about the three methods to attain wisdom?”

Minzhe winced as though struck by a hot poker. “First by reflection, which is noblest; second by imitation, which is easiest…”

“And third, by experience,” Dorje added.

“Which is… the most bitter.” The old man winced again. The elder blinked as he looked deeply into his grandson’s eyes. He realized that he lost the debate long ago and for all of his efforts, delayed nothing.

Dorje embraced Minzhe. “Keep safe, Grandfather,” he said into the old man’s ear. “I must go now.”

Dorje stepped back and bowed deeply.

The old man stammered. “But…” Then Dorje abruptly turned and hustled into the surging crowd.

The boy was stubborn, determined and bound to get himself killed, sighed Minzhe. You can change water, but you cannot change blood. Tears trickled into the deep crevasses that line his face and laid trails of fine red mud over his boney features.

You are your father’s son!

Defeated, the elder man bowed his head.

Fatigue leached into his bosom. He pulled down his hat, bared his thinning grey hair to the scorching sun, and began to sob. Such bitter experiences! The bitterest of all! He cried for the brave son-in-law who died at the outbreak of civil war in Lhasa. He cried for the beloved daughter who was mercilessly murdered by a mob in his own hometown. He cried for his poor orphaned grandchildren and for his feeble wife who could barely walk. He clutched the orange and black cloth and pulled it down with all this strength against his neck until he trembled. Anger welled up inside of him, but not for earthly foes who threatened his friends and family, but for the hated Jinni who brought this terrible scourge upon them. The Jinni, the demon of all times, the harbinger of death and destruction; she was to blame for it all.

Meanwhile, Mida arrived at the roadblock some moments earlier and was unquestioningly permitted into the makeshift fortress as a comrade in arms. She made her way through the throngs and found Minzhe where her brother left him.

“Grandfather!” she shouted.

Stirred from his sad reverie, Minzhe looked up and was instantly alarmed at the sight of his granddaughter coming towards him. “Mida! What are you doing here?”

“Grandmother was worried,” she piped. “You 46

didn’t answer your phone.”

“Child, this is not a place for you. Now go home.”

Mida tugged on Minzhe’s arm. “Come with me.

I brought my scooter.”

Just then, a young women who climbed the cross beams of one of the towers shaded her eyes from the intense sunlight when she noticed a cloud of dust rise from behind the last hill before reaching the complex.

The dust cloud broke open and a phalanx of heavily armed military vehicles emerged.

“They’re coming!” She pointed to the North.

Commotion in the main yard behind the roadblock abruptly ceased as all eyes were thrown into the direction of the pointing finger. Those who held a vantage point on the roadblock quickly confirmed the young woman’s sighting. Tension hung thick over their heads as the distant mechanical rumble of the approaching vehicles finally reached their ears. Like sheep suddenly spooked by a sudden sound, everybody sprung into action. Very few withdrew into the relative safety of the office buildings located deeper in the complex. Most of the people rushed to the larger warehouses carrying various weapons. Others rushed to the roadblock and went into the scaffolding. Mida and Minzhe went with this group and found cover behind a bulldozer that was welded to the structure. There Minzhe prayed.

GEN (into comlink): Company! Wuo-Long! 30 meters.

38. FRAME: TEGUJAI’s ATC stops a stone’s throw from the roadblock.

39. FRAME: The other ATCs stop to form a “V” formation, the apex—Tegujai’s vehicle points at the middle of the roadblock.

40. FRAME: The back hatches of the ATCs open and about 400 heavily armored and armed soldiers (very sophisticated, advanced weapons) rush from the vehicles and deploy around the vehicles with weapons drawn.

41. FRAME: Tegujai’s eyes remain fixed on the roadblock.

42. FRAME: Dust eddies whirl in the space between the ATCs and the roadblock.

43. FRAME: GEN narrows her eyes.

GEN: (comlink) I don’t like this, sir.

44. FRAME: Tegujai’s jaw tightens.

TEGUJAI (comlink): They’re awfully quiet in there aren’t they?

45. FRAME: A LOUD HORN BLARES BEHIND THE ROADBLOCK! 46. FRAME: TEGUJAI’S EYES—narrowing, ready for battle.

47. FRAME: BANNERS UNFURL. 48. FRAME: GEN’s EYES—surprised, but ready.

49. FRAME: Banners unfold.

50. FRAME: SOLDIERS—astonished.

GRAPHIC SETTING: On the road to Wuhe Complex.

28. FRAME: Low and heavily armored troop carriers (ATCs) armed with high-powered, small caliber chain guns (very modern, sophisticated equipment). A large uniformed male with a crop of wild black hair rides on the top of the lead vehicle.

29. FRAME: LT COLONEL BATIR is the rider, casually sitting astride the lip of the open top hatch of the vehicle. His black shock of hair trails behind.

TEGUJAI (into comlink): Gen, how much further?

30. FRAME: In the second ATC, MAJOR GEN rides within the open turret.

GEN (into comlink): 10 minutes, sir. The Wuhe complex is that large group of buildings just ahead.

31. FRAME: TEGUJAI contemplates the grim landscape around him—dry and desolate; obviously once a verdant farmland.

32. FRAME: From TEGUJAI’S POV, dry irrigation ditches and dead trees, blackened, barkless limbs creaking in the wind.

33. FRAME: From TEGUJAI’S POV, abandoned, windowless buildings.

34. FRAME: TEGUJAI’s VEHICLE turns at the sign for Wuhe Collective.

35. FRAME: …Toward what would be the front gate.

36. FRAME: But the roadblock looms before them.

TEGUJAI (into comlink): Wuo-Long formation, Gen. Get us to about 30 meters from that roadblock.

37. FRAME: Standing in her turret, Gen flags the vehicles behind her.

SOLDIER: Great humping dog!

51. FRAME: Dozens of colorful banners hang from the roadblock and other structures within the complex; most written in Mandarin.

52. FRAME: The occupants of the roadblock are in a festive mood now—celebrating and making noise.

53. FRAME: Fathers, Mothers, Children yell and wave placards and Orange scarves.

54. FRAME: Tegujai jumps down from his ATC and stands in front of it with his enormous arms folded.

55. FRAME: The occupants chant “Qaracha Arad meh Gukar” with exuberant whistles and drumming.

56. FRAME: ONE BANNER is written in the vertical script of a Mongolian battle flag.

57. FRAME: GEN has joined TEGUJAI. GEN: “Qaracha Arad meh Gukar”?

TEGUJAI: An old Mongolian battle cry. “The masses shall rise and fight”.

58. FRAME: GEN ponders.

GEN: They knew WE were coming.

TEGUJAI: It seems that way.

59. FRAME: GEN and Tegujai grin at each other.

GEN: Our last mission had to be a circus.

TEGUJAI: No other way Gen. 60. FRAME: DORJE climbs to a platform on the top the roadblock.

61. FRAME: He raises his hands. The ruckus stops.

62. FRAME: DORJE raises a bullhorn. a. DORJE: Brothers and sisters from great Mongolia, we welcome you! Consider that, like mighty Mongolia, Tibet has

suffered greatly under Chinese tyranny.

TEGUJAI: Where is your representative now?

b. Like you, they have denied us of our true culture. They have denied us of our true language. And now they wish to deny us of our food. Listen to this plea.

We will starve if you plunder our meager supply of grain. This is all we have left. We cannot grow any more.

CHAI: He is safe. They let him go yesterday.

c. We salute the mighty people of Mongolia, but we stand here resolute in our determination to protect ourselves from an unjust government. Please respect our right to protest and consider that among us are women and children.

When you decide to act, be mindful of their safety and yours!

63. FRAME: The ruckus in the roadblock begins anew.

64. FRAME: A PAIR OF SLEEK BROWN LEATHER BOOTS exits one of the rear ATCs and hits the ground.

CHAI (OS): That’s not true…!

65. FRAME: THE BOOTS RUN toward the front.

CHAI (OS): Lies, all of it…!

66. FRAME: THE BOOTS belong to People’s Advocate CHO WIN CHAI, a perturbed, bottleshaped man—a little shorter than Gen. He jabs his finger at the roadblock.

CHAI: They are liars!

67. FRAME: TEGUJAI and GEN exchange shaded glances.

CHAI: They are thieves and slanderers!

68. FRAME: People behind the roadblock drop an effigy of CHAI from the roadblock.

69. FRAME: They set fire to the effigy.

70. FRAME: CHAI is shocked, clutches his chest.

71. FRAME: CHAI is red-faced with anger.

CHAI: Greed drives this… insurrection.

72. FRAME: Chai jabs his finger at Tegujai.

82. FRAME: Tegujai leans closer to Chai.

TEGUJAI: And his assistant?

CHAI: Released as well.

83. FRAME: TEGUJAI locks eyes with Chai.

TEGUJAI: So you want me to slaughter innocent people because somebody burned down a shack?

84. FRAME: Chai shrinks away from Tegujai.

CHAI: You misunderstand. I... I cannot fail this mission. The grain in that warehouse must be on the next shipment to Hong Kong by tomorrow. The order comes from the highest levels of the Party.

85. FRAME: TEGUJAI looks back at the roadblock.

TEGUJAI: And we shall do that with a minimum of bloodshed.

GEN: Sir… 86. FRAME: A partition in the ROADBLOCK opens and…

CHAI: Defenseless? Look at them!

76. FRAME: The effigy smolders as the “rebels” make obscene gestures, yell, laugh, and wave at the soldiers.

77. FRAME: The effigy falls to the ground in a heap of embers.

78. FRAME: Chai is smoldering.

CHAI: Insurgents! Rebels!

79. FRAME: Tegujai and Gen press their case.

GEN: Advocate Chai, let’s call their elders.

TEGUJAI: Yes. Better to negotiate.

80. FRAME: Chai waves his hands dismissively.

CHAI: We tried that. They kidnapped my representative, beat his assistant, and burned the counting post.

81. FRAME: Tegujai shows concern.

LIWEII: Old fool! You are wasting my time!

104. FRAME: LIWEII produces a handgun…

105. FRAME: Liweii SHOOTS. 106. FRAME: THE POINT BLANK SHOT enters just below Minzhe’s right eye.

107. FRAME: MINZHE crumples to the ground as an astonished Tegujai and Gen look on.

108. FRAME: A LOUD DARK NOISE erupts from the roadblock.

109. FRAME: ASTONISHED FACES become hateful.

110. FRAME: PLEASED FACES become furious.

111. FRAME: HAPPY FACES are screaming.

113. FRAME: Tegujai’s left shoulder is hit as he and Gen dive for cover.

89. FRAME: DORJE is alarmed.

114. FRAME: Gen urgently calls into the comlink.

90. FRAME: MIDA is alarmed.

GEN: Company! Hold fire! Hold fire!

MIDA : Grandfather…!

115. FRAME: TWO SERGEANTS help Gen pull Tegujai behind an ATC.

91. FRAME: MINZHE cautiously makes his way toward Tegujai, holding up an ORANGE AND BLACK CLOTH. MINZHE: Please, sirs. Peace.

92. FRAME: MINZHE hobbles toward Tegujai.

MINZHE: Spirit of the Maidari. Peace.

93. FRAME: MINZHE bows deeply and hands the cloth to TEGUJAI. MINZHE: The spirit of the Maidari...peace.

TEGUJAI: You honor me, Elder. What is your name?

75. FRAME: Chai is incredulous.

103. FRAME: LIWEII’s eyes bulge with contempt, his hand digs inside his tunic.

88. FRAME: MINZHE’s POV, an intimidating phalanx of soldiers and machines.

73. FRAME: TEGUJAI’s eyes darken and Gen’s forehead is creased as they look at the pointing finger.

GEN: They’re practically defenseless.

MINZHE: We want to comply. We want to support our mother China, but this is all the grain we have. If you take it, we will starve, our children will starve.

112. FRAME: The flash of GUNFIRE erupts from the roadblock.

94. FRAME: Tegujai bends to accept the cloth.

LIWEII sizzles with anger in the background.

TEGUJAI: They’re just making a lot of noise.

102. FRAME: MINZHE’s face is filled with anguish.

87. FRAME: MINZHE steps outside.

CHAI: I demand that you take action immediately!

74. FRAME: Tegujai smiles patiently and gently pushes the finger away. Gen smiles too.

TEGUJAI: Tell me why, Elder.

MINZHE: My people call me Minzhe.

95. FRAME: TEGUJAI and GEN bow to an astonished MINZHE. TEGUJAI: And I am Lieutenant Colonel Batir, at your service. This is my second-in-command, Major Dai. 96. FRAME: AT THE ROADBLOCK are many astonished faces, many pleased and some are cautiously happy.

97. FRAME: LIWEII is seething with anger.

98. FRAME: TEGUJAI keeps his head low to Minzhe.

TEGUJAI: Tell me, Elder Minzhe, why are your people so angry?

MINZHE: They are angry because...

99. FRAME: Liweii cannot contain himself—he bursts in anger.

LIWEII: Because they think they’re better than the rest of China!

100. FRAME: “Bad” Tegujai stabs a menacing glare at Liweii. LIWEII withdraws.

101. FRAME: “Good” Tegujai returns his deference to Minzhe.

116. FRAME: THE SHOTS suddenly stop; all is quiet.

117. FRAME: Tegujai, Gen and Sergeants peer around the ATC. GEN: They’ve run out of ammunition already?

118. FRAME: Tegujai bolts out from behind the ATC. 119. FRAME: Gen rushes out in pursuit.

GEN: SIR! 120. FRAME: Tegujai looks down at Minzhe’s crumpled body. Liweii’s bullet-riddled body lies nearby.

121. FRAME: Haze darkens the roadblock.

Silhouetted figures stand on the ramparts— the scaffolding, the vehicles, through holes in the fencing—quietly watching and glaring.

122. FRAME: TEGUJAI stands over the old man, holding the yellow scarf. Gen is looking at the Roadblock with concern in her eyes.

GEN (whispers): Sir... ?

123. FRAME: More threatening silhouettes appear amid the roadblock. Gen’s concern grows.

GEN: Sir? 124. FRAME: The roadblock erupts in a vicious, riotous cry.

125. FRAME: Gen and Tegujai and other soldiers look up!

126. FRAME: People burst out from all over with murder in their eyes.

127. FRAME: They CHARGE toward the soldiers with clubs, knives and sharp farm tools.

128. FRAME: TEGUJAI has profound sadness in his eyes.

TEGUJAI: Suppressing fire, NOW! 129. FRAME: ALL SOLDIERS SHOOT. 47

130. FRAME: A withering fusillade from all of 1st Company’s guns—from the ATC turrets and the soldier’s guns.

131. FRAME: THE FIRST WAVE of attackers are quickly mowed down—blood, shredded flesh and severed extremities fly into the air.

132. FRAME: But MORE attackers come!

SOLDIER: Why won’t they stop?

SOLDIER2: What has come over them?

133. FRAME: THE SKY IS DARK over no-man’s land—a 30-meter wide smoky, muddy bog of blood and body parts.

134. FRAME: MORE civilians charge the soldiers.

135. FRAME: TEGUJAI and GEN are astonished.

GEN (into comlink): Company! Fall back!

136. FRAME: THE LINE of armored vehicles and soldiers maintain their steady fire against the clamoring mob as they roll back...

137. FRAME: AND BACK… 138. FRAME: BUT MORE civilians climb over the carcasses of fallen comrades and scream at their executioners with their last dying breath!

SOLDIER: The whole town must be here!

139. FRAME: AND MORE ATTACKERS! SOLDIER: What kind of evil is this?

140. FRAME: Tegujai, Gen, the Sergeants yell orders.

141. FRAME: The Soldiers are visibly shaken. Some vomit, a few faint.

142. FRAME: Crosshairs of a scope pierces the haze with infrared. The formation of army vehicles is clearly visible. The crosshairs glow when a target is acquired.

143. FRAME: A STREAK and EXPLOSION HITS one of the ATCs spreading shrapnel and great chunks of earth in all directions.

144. FRAME: Tegujai and Gen hit the dirt.

GEN: They have rockets!

145. FRAME: TEGUJAI uses a set of ‘Nocs to survey the complex.

146. FRAME: He catches a second STREAK and EXPLOSION. TEGUJAI: The local militia must be working with them!

147. FRAME: GEN shouts into her comlink.

GEN: Somebody subdue those humping rockets!

148. FRAME: BEHIND THE SOLDIERS, hidden by the haze of battle, THE SAND MOVES! 149. FRAME: THOUSANDS of DIRTY HANDS emerge from the dirt and quietly push away planks…

150. FRAME: THOUSANDS MORE vengeful Civilians emerge from deep tunnels and attack.

151. FRAME: A SURPRISED SOLDIER reports just as the mob cuts him down.

SOLDIER (into comlink): Ordu! Ordu! <GACK!> 152. FRAME: Tegujai and Gen look back.

GEN: We’re surrounded!

153. FRAME: A Falcon soars in the sky above.

154. FRAME: From the Falcon’s POV, the mass of civilians converging on the soldiers is huge.

The soldiers are pinned down in the middle of a murderous vortex.

155. FRAME: Tegujai sees the hawk and a spare 48

ray of sunlight erupting through the haze.

156. FRAME: Tegujai grabs Gen’s arm.

TEGUJAI: Gen, dismount and fall back. Form a circle staggered by squads. Rorke’s Drift!

Now! 157. FRAME: TEGUJAI turns to Sergeants.

TEGUJAI: You two, with me... now!

158. FRAME: TEGUJAI runs into one of the ATCs with the Sergeants behind.

TEGUJAI: You, keep them off our backs!

161. FRAME: And points to the other.

TEGUJAI: You, drive!

SERGEANT 2: Where?

TEGUJAI: Through that roadblock.

162. FRAME: TEGUJAI takes the gunner’s position and checks the cartridge—ammunition is low.

159. FRAME: The hatch closes just as the Mob closes around them.

163. FRAME: GEN assembles the surviving soldiers (about half of the original company of 450 soldiers) into concentric rings.

160. FRAME: Safe inside, Tegujai points to Sergeant 1.

164. FRAME: The soldiers shoot at the cyclone of bodies that converge on them from all

176. FRAME: They quickly regain their footing, with side arms drawn and SHOOT in the general direction where the rocket came from.

177. FRAME: A SHADOW of a person drops about twenty meters and hits the ground.

178. FRAME: TEGUJAI and SERGEANT No 1 cautiously approach and discover a rocket launcher and a small lifeless body. A sack containing a half dozen unused rockets lies nearby.

179. FRAME: The body is dressed in a tattered tunic and patched pants.

180. FRAME: As Tegujai looks on, Sergeant 1 pulls away the broken goggles to reveal the face of the teenage girl. It is Mida.

SERGEANT 1: She’s only a kid!

SERGEANT 2: Looks like they set fire to the grain, sir.

Tegujai: Zero gain. They weren’t in this for the protest…

181. FRAME: TEGUJAI shifts his attention to the battlefield.

TEGUJAI: Shooting has stopped…

182. FRAME: Ghostly FIGURES approach.

183. FRAME: TEGUJAI and SERGEANTS brace themselves for possible attack—weapons drawn.

184. FRAME: THE SILHOUETTES crunch over the gravel of the equipment yard in silence.

185. FRAME: Smoke clears, the silhouettes are soldiers.

GEN: Sir? Is that you?

186. FRAME: Tegujai and the sergeants are relieved.

TEGUJAI: We’re here...

187. FRAME: Gen is bloodied, but it’s difficult to tell whether it’s her blood or not.

GEN: Good to see you, sir. That was a brilliant call.

188. FRAME: Tegujai, Gen, the Sergeants and other survivors look over the grim scene.

TEGUJAI: Not nearly brilliant enough.

189. FRAME: A falcon soars overhead.

It has nothing to do with The Horde, but it’s cool: “Mighty Magon” is another unused Kirby concept.

See TJKC #43 for more.

Mighty Magon TM & ©2011 the Jack Kirby Estate.

directions.

165. FRAME: GEN is in the center of the cyclone.

Her FACE is dirty and splattered with blood.

She shouts orders, fires shots from her sidearm.

166. FRAME: She watches as the ATC lurches into action with RIOTERS clinging to the hull.

167. FRAME: The ATC is a low, hardened vehicle with the strength of an earthmover. It crashes through the roadblock, peeling off clinging rioters.

168. FRAME: TEGUJAI peers into an infrared scope that peels back the smoke—he can see the outlines of the compound. The interior of the complex appears abandoned.

169. FRAME: A FLASH of light from the WATER TOWER; a rocket explodes near the ATC. 170. FRAME: Tegujai yells to the men.

TEGUJAI: Set to autopilot, get out! Get out now!

171. FRAME: Tegujai throws open the emergency hatch at the rear of the vehicle and pushes the Sergeants out.

172. FRAME: and jumps out after them...

173. FRAME: The vehicle lumbers into the smog for a dozen meters…

NARRATOR: “I once made the mistake of assuming that a warrior stands firm because he is afraid of being seen as a coward. A good warrior will be quick to deny this; he will say that a good warrior is courageous because he allows himself no other choice; that he strips himself of the urge to flee and resolves himself to fight, to the death if necessary. Thus he trains. Thus he conditions himself to embrace this as his only reality so that in times of great trial, only one response is possible. And yet, I have found that the monk’s training—with an emphasis on benevolence rather than on combat—is much like the warrior’s. The truly benevolent man believes it is right to help others because he has a deep affection for his fellow man—to alleviate his suffering and dispel the source of his fear. Trained with this sense of self-sacrificing love and balanced through enlightened wisdom, the trained monk faces any danger on behalf of others.

Therefore, by the warrior’s definition, if courage is a conditioned response to face danger, the monk shares in that noble axiom—even though he fights, not with a sword, but with his heart and his mind.”

END OF BOOK 1

174. FRAME: …it is hit by a rocket!

175. FRAME: The shock sends Tegujai and the Sergeants flying into the gravel.

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Gallery 2

Dedication TO KIRBY

here are series Jack did that are almost universally loved, or at least respected,

T by his fans (Fantastic Four and New Gods to name a couple). And then, there’s

TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

Soul Love, which is an acquired taste for only the most dedicated Kirby fans.

Many dismiss it as just a weird, one-shot oddity that, if not for the fact of it being unpublished, wouldn’t register on anyone’s radar. Having spun out of True Divorce Cases (another unpublished one-shot—you can see the splash page of the Divorce story “The Model” on page 1 in this issue, for a taste of why someone felt it had

50

more promise as a blaxsploitation romance mag instead), no Kirby historian should dismiss it without further examination. So here we present “Dedicated Nurse,” inked by Vince Colletta, and planned for that ill-fated romance magazine.

If you get past some of the goofy dialogue, it’s a solid romance tale, especially for only seven pages. The plot is pretty original, if not exactly tactful by today’s standards. Perhaps if Jack weren’t shoe-horned into trying to write “hip” dialogue, this material would be held in higher regard today, and wouldn’t remain unpublished. ★

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52

53

Jon B. Cooke (below) We covered the evolution of Kobra #1 (Feb. 1976) in detail back in TJKC #22. Below is original art for page 11, showing both the published lettering, and Jack’s original wording in panels 4 and 5 (and Kirby’s original version of Jason Burr in panel 5).

All characters TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

In The Kobra’s Lair

An interview with Michael Netzer, conducted by Jon B. Cooke (Michael Nasser—now Netzer—appeared on the 1970s comic book scene like a bombshell, perhaps the best of the Neal Adams protégés up until that time, and his most notable achievements during his stint at DC Comics were the three full-length Kobra stories he drew (Kobra #6 and 7, and “The Dead-On-Arrival Conspiracy” for 5-Star Super-Hero Spectacular, a.k.a. DC Special Series #1, 1977—the latter featuring his remarkable rendition of The Batman). Currently, Michael is collaborating with Gene Colan for Clifford Meth’s Aardwolf Signatures (http://www.aardwolfsignatures.com). He is also working on a graphic novel, Wave, which is excerpted at http://michaelnetzer.com/mnop/?page_id=94, but the creator is keeping busy with his petition for the Campaign to Save the Comics, to be found at http://michaelnetzer.com/mnop/?cat=258. The following interview was conducted via Facebook in January 2011.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: When do you first recall encountering Jack Kirby’s artwork and what was the impact?

MICHAEL NETZER: Most likely soon after returning to America in late ’67 when the world of comics began revealing itself beyond the few DC titles I’d seen in Lebanon. The Marvel line was amazing to me, but unlike DC, it took some time to become comfortable with. In time I became aware of Kirby, Steranko and Colan among others, but Jack’s art grabbed me immediately. Something about the raw power and serious diversion from realism made it intriguing to a halt. As fate would have it, the Adams influence/obsession was overshadowing everything else. It wasn’t until I started breaking away from comics in 1978 that I could give myself fully into the wonder of Kirby’s art.

TJKC: Overall, do you have thoughts on Jack’s work and his influence in comic books?

MICHAEL: Looking back at Jack’s early days as an artist and following the progression that led to his art for Marvel and how that evolved, paints an amazing picture of innovation and creative spirit, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in comics since.

Not to that degree, at least. His influence on so many artists may not always be apparent but it was clear to me that no one, regardless of how seemingly diverse, was indifferent to the influence.

So many giants were inspired by him that it boggles the sensitivities when thinking about it. Colan, Buscema, Adams, Smith, Simonson, Miller, only a few of the countless others, could not be who they became were it not for Kirby’s influence. They all absorbed the essence of the comics form from Jack’s simplified abstraction of shape, design, thrust and basic storytelling, even though they didn’t emulate his style. No one could, actually. It seemed to be too profound for that.

Jack Kirby scoffed at the illusion of realism and struck at the heart of its core essence. His was not a style; it was his manifesto on the power and grace he saw in the world that surrounded him. It ultimately laid the foundations for all of the fabulous diversions we see in the medium today. A king in the true sense of the word. I grabbed every issue of the Fourth World and couldn’t let them go… and it wasn’t only the art. Years later when I read criticisms of his writing, it was hard to believe they spoke of the same stories that took me right to the heart of our human experience and mythology. His profound words never fell short of the prolific art they adorned.

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Like a humble king dwelling among his people, in their service, so did the warm and unpretentious nature of Jack Kirby almost make us forget what a benevolent leader he truly was… and remains.

TJKC: Did you ever meet the man?

MICHAEL: I saw him once at a New York convention in the first or second year of working there. He was overwhelmed with fans and it was difficult to approach him. Never followed through or pursued it but regretted it later when chances dwindled. From all the hearty stories that Greg Theakston told about him and Roz, it was still as if I’d always known him. His autobiographical piece in Streetwise added a dimension that was a natural extension of the affinity I’d had for the man and artist.

TJKC: How did you come about getting involved in the Kobra series?

MICHAEL: I had only drawn a Kamandi back-up and a “Legion of Super-Heroes” story when Jack Harris or Paul Levitz offered me Kobra #6. Jack was walking me through the company then, but Paul and I had already met and also struck a good chemistry. I was still a little wet behind the ears as an artist, just enthused to be drawing comics, let alone a full book. I didn’t hesitate to take anything offered from DC and had no inclination to pick and choose… or try to get something else. I also didn’t know the Kobra series very well until then. I’d thought it was mostly a Kirby creation and was given the first four or five issues to look over along with the script for #6.

TJKC: Did you ever meet with Martin Pasko for story conferences, and can you share memories of the writer and working with him?

MICHAEL: Not really. I think Martin and I talked about the finished script in the hallways but it wasn’t a story conference, such as let’s say, what Paul and I had over the later “Legion” stories we collaborated on. That was a somewhat tighter and more engaging artist/writer relationship than how Martin and I worked. Martin was a chipper and witty personality at DC. He exuded self-confidence of the type that didn’t need to consult too much with the artist. There was a clearer line between both our

responsibilities. I hadn’t yet had enough experience to assess such a working relationship. We’ve recently re-connected over an article I wrote for my site about the Kobra reprint. I drew a portrait of him for my creator portrait sketchbook and Wikipedia. He’s still the same Marty we knew and loved, hasn’t changed much since the good ol’ days.

TJKC: In retrospect, what were the high and low points working on the series and its impact, if any, on your career?

MICHAEL: Kobra seemed more like a training ground for me then. I was not able to be as engaged in it as a comic book, as I was, let’s say, towards projects in my second year. So, it carries an aroma of something unfulfilled, at least by any standards I’ve been able to achieve since. That said, I remain somewhat surprised at the extent my name’s been attached to it in fandom.

It’s one of the books that come up often when I hear readers talking about my work. The recent reprint yielded a well-appreciated royalty payment from DC that came as a total surprise.

None of this touches on the content or essence of the series, really. It did not turn out to be that type of a project for me.

TJKC: Was it fun to get to work on Batman in the Kobra team-up?

Had it taken any length of time to see print?

MICHAEL: That was another story entirely, certainly also due

(above) Michael Netzer (then Nasser) worked on more than one Kirby character in Kobra #6, as scripter Marty Pasko managed to shoehorn The Demon’s Randu Singh into what became a very compelling detective story. (left) Michael graciously drew this fabulous new Kobra illustration just for us to use with this interview. While his earlier work evoked the feel of Neal Adams, this piece really captures the Kirby look nicely. Thanks, Michael!

To see what Mr. Netzer’s been up to lately, check out his website, where you’ll find his amazing hand-drawn likenesses of several comics creators: www.michaelnetzer.com

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(this page) More of Kirby’s unused Kobra #1 dialogue.

to my first shot at Batman. It was a turning point, actually. I’d already drawn a Wonder Woman story and began the Green Arrow/Black Canary backups… even the Martian Manhunter ones. Getting to Batman was a peak. And Kobra seemed to have been written with a more serious tone than the previous issues I drew. I was already secure enough as an artist to be able to take liberties with the storytelling that I hadn’t attempted in the original series. It was another animal entirely and I basked in every moment of drawing it. I don’t remember it taking any more time to see print than anything else I did then.

TJKC: What is your appraisal of the concept and, particularly, Jack and Steve Sherman’s initial story in Kobra #1?

MICHAEL: I simply loved Jack’s writing on everything he did at DC. He took his stories and worlds seriously and drew me into their grandeur with the talent of a wordsmith who understood the impact of the simplest syllables. His concepts were larger than life, delivered with an often profound yet accessibly human vocabulary. I suppose it wasn’t DC’s cup of tea, for the most part. But I later discovered that first Kobra issue barely had anything left of the original Kirby/Sherman script and the art was rearranged to accommodate a reworked storyline.

I’ve never seen the original story as Jack and Steve produced it, so I’d have a difficult time commenting on it. I can only imagine that by this time, from what was circulating around the industry, DC seemed to be trying to rein in Jack’s work and bend it closer towards the house style, which was somewhat of a disappointment for me to hear about.

I’ve since read Steve’s account of his collaboration with Jack in The Jack Kirby Collector excerpt at TwoMorrows’ website. It paints a familiar picture of editorial control which has never made too much sense, really. DC was beginning to emerge from the campy ’60s era, yet there seemed to have been a lot of forces there trying to pull it back. Just looking at the covers today—and I know they’re not entirely representative of the interiors—it’s painfully clear why Jack Kirby didn’t feel at home there towards that later stretch. It seems inevitable that by the time Kobra was to launch, the general buzz in the hallways was something like, “We’ve gotta do something about this.” So, the events are understandable within their contexts. Somewhat sad, 56

revealing and frustrating… but understandable.

I don’t remember what Kobra was selling then, but it doesn’t really matter. In the long run, it seems that none of the sales really matter much in comics. The profits have been made elsewhere since before I began drawing them. The perpetual frenzy to improve sales seems ludicrous at best, in retrospect. DC and Marvel are selling about a quarter of what they did in the mid-’70s. Sales have been in a fluctuating decline since. More stable at times but it seems no matter how bad things get, DC and Marvel don’t really care much. Why should they? They don’t appear to need better sales because they make the overwhelming majority of their profits outside of comics publishing. I think the present situation helps them protect the intellectual properties a little better because what creator in their right mind will ask for anything more in that department when the industry is always floundering? Jack had already had a taste of this at Marvel, with the comics he partnered in creating, that essentially made the company.

TJKC: Do you think Jack should have been rewarded like Stan Lee for what they did together?

MICHAEL: I think that Jack Kirby has perhaps paid the highest personal price for the inequity towards creators by DC and Marvel. Maybe even more than Siegel and Shuster because of the sheer volume of characters he co-created and the essential role he had in making Marvel what it is today. He was there with Stan from the beginning and the history shows that the chemistry between them allowed Stan to gain inspiration from Jack and spread his wings. I have no doubt that Marvel would not be what it is today were it not for Jack Kirby.

If you’re a creator, even second on the totem pole, then it seems you could pretty much write off any measure of simple fairness from the corporate cogs. It’s a sad reality that we’re still not able to come to grips with as creators, especially knowing that DC and Marvel have never created a property themselves as publishers. I do believe this is bound to begin taking a turn. It cannot continue like this forever. The voice of discontent grows daily and DC/ Marvel cannot really afford to be publicly vilified beyond a certain point. The creator community and fandom are at the edge of exploding about it.

The implications of this situation are staggering.

There has been a lot of talk recently in the comics web community about how to go around the dominance of DC and Marvel over the Direct Market.

Unfortunately, most of the discussions are coming from Indie creators who would rather just ignore DC, Marvel and the comics shops. When one of them, Eric Powell (creator of The Goon), spoke out against the Big Two, he was quickly persuaded to silence by his own indie colleagues. Most frontline comics journalists are not really willing to take a blatantly confrontational stance with DC and Marvel. And I believe this renders a great disservice to the comics industry and to the historical role of journalism as a watchdog of democracy, or in this case, watchmen of the industry. The question this raises is: Who watches the comics?

I recently wrote and posted a petition calling on DC and Marvel to turn their attention back to helping their publishing divisions grow and be more fair with creators. http://www.ipetitions.com/ petition/save_the_comics/

I sent press releases and links everywhere. As of now, the only sites to mention it are Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter, Pulse, and First Comics News (which also published an in-depth interview conducted by Rik Offenberger). Aside from these and many fan blogs and forums, most of the major sites are all but ignoring it, even though it’s proving to be a growing grassroots voice, just like the indie creators who dominate industry talk on the subject, profess to be.

I’ve lived long enough to see that there will be no other way to save the comic book publishing industry from itself than to show DC and Marvel that their strategy will not be tolerated forever by the buying market. The comics industry does not belong to them alone though they clearly think so.

Their policies and negligence are literally bringing comics to their deathbed. Everyone who loves this medium and has a stake in it should have this issue uppermost on their mind. Without a thriving and growing comics publishing market, everything else related to it will eventually disappear. Web comics and the digital age are not by any longshot a replacement of the printed comic book. These are new markets altogether. The comics publishing industry will grow and thrive again.

This unfortunate situation where DC and Marvel have effectively taken the entire industry hostage will eventually boomerang right back at them. It will extend to all their IP venues as well. As creators, professionals and fans begin realizing how DC and Marvel are destroying the comics business for themselves and everyone else, the uprising and public pressure that are ready to burst, can eventually cost them much more than the meager comics sales they still have.

It will ultimately threaten profits they make outside of comics as well.

That’s why it’s important for everyone who understands this to stand up and have their voices be heard. ★ (NEXT ISSUE: Jon B. Cooke uncovers the behind-thescenes details of Kobra, Atlas, and Jack’s other final ’70s DC series. Don’t miss it!)

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Non-fat turned

nonblack!

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

by Sean Kleefeld

T

All characters TM & ©2011 DC Comics.

he Dingbats of Danger Street are one of Jack’s last concepts that went to DC, and the last of his comic book kid gangs. They debuted in First Issue Special #6 and that was the last time the characters saw print, until a decade-and-ahalf later when they made a brief cameo in Hero Hotline #6. So they’re perhaps an unusual crew to look at in this column, since it wouldn’t seem as if Jack drew them very much to trace their visual evolution. However, Jack wrote and drew two more complete issues of Dingbats stories that have never been published in full!

But let’s back up a bit first and look at Jack’s original concept drawing, compared to First Issue Special. In his first sketch, the four figures come out essentially full-form as far as Jack was concerned. His notes make direct reference to the group as an “updated Newsboy Legion type gang” and the basic figure drawings could almost double for the opening splash page of First Issue Special #6. In fact, the only discernable design difference is that Non-Fat loses a single stripe off the bottom of his “Skinny Power” shirt.

That, and Non-Fat changes race.

Jack’s original sketch identifies Non-Fat as “an eager beaver Black kid...” but throughout the published story, he’s colored as a Caucasian. This does not appear to be Jack’s doing at all, as he continually draws Non-Fat with the more pronounced facial shadowing that he typically used on dark-skinned characters. Though NonFat is absent through much of their published story (as a prisoner of the Gasser), the two unpublished pieces feature a number of close-ups on his face showing distinctly African-American features. In fact, he bears more than a passing resemblance to Mushmouth from the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids cartoon that premiered on CBS a couple years earlier.

However, comparing copies of Jack’s original pencils against the published cover [see top of this page], we see that Non-Fat’s face has been largely redrawn (most notably the nose and mouth) and the shading on his hands and neck has been toned down somewhat. This doesn’t seem to be the case throughout the interior pages at all, but it’s clear from the cover that there was a conscious and deliberate decision to alter Non-Fat’s ethnicity. The inking job on Non-Fat’s face seems to me crude compared to inker Mike Royer’s work throughout the book itself, so I’m 57

inclined to think this was redrawn after it left Royer’s hands.

Seeing the obvious white-washing of Non-Fat, I initially assumed the same might be said of Bananas. His squinted eyes and large teeth on the opening splash are reminiscent of some of Jack’s less than politically correct depictions of the Japanese from the 1940s. That Bananas’ skin was also colored the same as everybody else’s and his eyes were otherwise unseen through his glasses, my thought was that he too had been part of a deliberate attempt to make the book more “marketable” to a Caucasian audience. Deeper study reveals that is not the case here, though.

Jack’s pencils for all three stories indicate that Bananas was, with that single exception on the splash, never drawn with eyes in the first place. Furthermore, John Morrow pointed out back in Kirby Collector #7 that Bananas looks more than a little like Royer did in the late 1960s, including the over-sized watch band and off-center widow’s peak. It would seem that the unfortunate similarity to a Japanese stereotype on page one was accidental, simply a by-product of an enthusiastic grin. Indeed, the notion that Jack intended the character to be Asian holds less and less weight as you get into the unpublished comics and see the character from more angles.

It wouldn’t be atypical of 1975 to simply assume that all characters were white unless told otherwise, and the coloring of the issue might be chalked up to a limited world-view by the unidentified colorist; however, the police officer on pages 11-12 of First Issue Special #6 is depicted as an African-American, which suggests Non-Fat’s coloring was intentionally done against Jack’s wishes. Coupled with the art modifications on the cover, and it strongly points to the late editor E. Nelson Bridwell making the decision to avoid including a Black protagonist.

Krunch retains his basic look from the initial sketch, but Jack does tweak the face and head a bit before his printed debut. The difference seems to be mostly one of a refinement, making the nose a little more pronounced and the hair a little wavier. Royer’s inks seem to be very faithful to Jack’s pencils throughout the three stories, so the refinement was on Jack’s part.

He further enhances Krunch’s nose as he gets into the third story, which spotlights Krunch, but it tends to be most noticeable only from certain angles. Since Krunch’s prior appearances mostly were from straight on, it’s possible that it only becomes noticeable in the third issue because of the story’s focus.

I find the Dingbats an interesting study from a visual perspective because of how little Jack changed from his initial sketch, but how radically different the NonFat character appears once his artwork got published. DC had already done that with Jack’s Superman, but that wasn’t Jack’s design in the first place. With Dingbats, they took the iconography Jack himself developed and changed it to suit their corporate interests. ★ Sean blogs at http://kleefeldoncomics.blogspot.com, and is the author of Comic Book Fanthropology available from www.comicbookfanthropology.com.

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Tribute

2010 Kirby Tribute Panel See a video of this panel at: http://kirbymuseum.org/2010SDPanel

Photography in this article is

by TwoMorrows staff photographer Chris Ng. (below) Courtesy of Nostalgic Investments, Bechara Maalouf, and the Jack Kirby Museum’s digital archive comes this original art for Captain America Comics #6 (Sept. 1941). Cap was, of course, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee’s first published work wasn’t until a text feature in Captain America Comics #3. (next page) Cap #101 pencils (May 1968).

TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Held Sunday, July 25, 2010, at Comic-Con International: San Diego.

Moderated by Mark Evanier, and featuring Marv Wolfman, Kurt Busiek, Joe Rybandt, and Paul Levine.

Transcribed by Steven Tice, and edited by John Morrow.

MARK EVANIER: Good morning, I’m Mark Evanier. We’re going to get started right now, because we’ve got lots of stuff to cover.

Every year I tell them to give me 90 minutes for this panel, every year they go, “Oh, sorry, we scheduled it wrong.” And so next year I’m going to ask for three hours, and I might get 90 minutes.

I’m Mark Evanier, as I said. This is the Jack Kirby panel. We do these every year; you know why we do these. How many people were here last night for the Stan Lee documentary? I’m in the Stan Lee documentary. I actually have three or four different cuts of this film that I’ve seen over the years. I’m in less each time. The documentary was fascinating, in its own way, and interesting,

and Stan comes off adorable. We had a panel afterwards, and I wish you had been there to hear the things Stan said in the panel about Jack, because they were very nice, and very wonderful.

And I held my tongue pointing out that, at Mark Evanier the end of the documentary, there is this list of, “The following characters were created or co-created by Stan Lee,” and it had Captain America in it. [groans, laughter] It’s a mistake that gets made all the time. In Jack’s files that I have, I’ve got a folder with a title like, “Stan created Captain America,” and it’s got about 35 of those newspaper clippings, and a couple that said he drew them.

You have to either shrug these off, or maybe we can send Joe Simon over to beat him up or something. [laughter] But one of the nice things I keep reassuring myself of is that Jack’s name goes on.

Everybody knows who he is, everybody knows what he did. There was a time when I didn’t feel that way, and Jack didn’t feel that way. There was a time when Jack was very worried that—he used to liken it to how when Khrushchev fell, they wrote him out of the history books in Russia. One of the very traumatic things, I think, for Jack, was when Marvel in the sixties began reprinting the Golden Age Captain America stories in Fantasy Masterpieces, and they took the credits off. Joe Simon did not exist. There was a period there when Joe was having some legal action against Marvel, when Joe did not exist in Marvel history, just as, for several years, Siegel and Shuster did not exist in DC history. There’s a book that DC put out in 1970 or ’71 called The Amazing World of Superman, which was to commemorate the founding of Metropolis, Illinois. A man named Nelson Bridwell, who worked for DC Comics as the in-house historian, was charged with the phenomenal duty of writing a book on the history of Superman without mentioning Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. And that kind of thing Jack was always worried about.

We’ve gotten past that. That’s not going to happen. You all know what Jack did. The world knows what Jack did. I have people stop me—I swear to you this is a true story. About a yearand-a-half ago I was in a Costco in Tustin. Don’t ask me why I was in Tustin. I was in Tustin because my girlfriend Caroline’s doctor lives in Tustin. And to show you the way my life works, her doctor’s name is Dr. Skrenes. A year of so later, when we were helping deal with Steve Gerber’s burial, I was talking to his old partner, Mary Skrenes, and she happened to mention to me that her brother was a doctor in Tustin. [laughter] What are the odds?

So I had purchased the CD or DVD of the

first ten issues of all the Marvel characters on disc. I figured, “I’ll buy this, it’s $9.95” or whatever. At Costco, everything is $9.95. You can get snow tires at Costco for $9.95. [laughter] And this little Hispanic kid, who was packing up the stuff in boxes, looks at this thing I purchased, and he has no idea who I am. I swear to you, he says to me, “This was drawn by Jack Kirby. He got screwed by Marvel.” [laughter, applause] And I was looking around for hidden cameras. I thought I was on Penn and Teller’s show or something.

So one of the nice things about these panels is that we manage to all get together and remind ourselves of how ubiquitous the Kirby influence is. You can see it all throughout the exhibit hall downstairs, you can see it all throughout the lines at various publishers. Half the people in this room are running around this convention wearing Galactus hats this gentlemen just held up in the back. And I’m sure that when Jack designed Galactus, he thought to himself, “Ooh, this will make a really good, cheesy cardboard hat someday.” [laughter] Anyway, we are going to spend this hour talking about Jack. At least for the first half, I’m going to ask a lot of people who have announcements to make, to talk about Kirby projects. Let me introduce you to our dais, here. To my left is my friend of 40 years and four weeks. We figured this out. I met this man in the hallway at DC Comics. Steve Sherman and I—first of all, this is my friend Steve Sherman over here. You know Steve. [applause] Just before the July 4th weekend of 1970, Steve and I went back to New York, a big trip to go to DC and Marvel and all that.

Mike Royer then came and joined us, and the three of us were cramped into a hotel room about the size of my iPhone. Steve and I went up to DC Comics that day, and there was this kid in the hallway being screamed at by Robert Kanigher. And I thought to myself, that must Marv Wolfman. [laughter] And, sure enough, my friend for 40 years plus, Mr. Marv Wolfman, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Next to Marv, I could have invited lots of people into this hall who have been influenced by Jack, who are carrying his work on in many ways. I chose to invite to this panel a gentleman whose work I think is phenomenal, and whose ability to take his own characters—that’s all impressive enough, but he’s shown an ability to take other people’s characters and understand the core of them, and to take them in new directions while still respecting the original.

And he’s got a new project he’s going to tell you about where he’s going to do that with some of Jack’s creations. This is Mr. Kurt Busiek, folks. [applause] Sitting down there: I never go any place without my attorney. [laughter] He is also the attorney for the Kirby estate and has done wonderful things, some of which Paul Levine attorney/client privileges prevent us from discussing here, but he watches out for them in a way that I wish people had watched out for Jack at an earlier time. This is Mr. Paul S. Levine.

[applause] The project that Kurt is working on, that we’ll be talking about in a little bit, this is the gentleman who is the editor of that project, and I’ll let him tell you a little more about it when we get to it.

This is Mr. Joe Rybandt. [applause] PAUL LEVINE (pointing to empty seat): And you have to use your imagination. We have Nick Barrucci right here.

EVANIER: Yes. Nick is doing the kind of thing that I like a publisher to do: not be in the room. [laughter] Nick’s a good guy. If he does show up, we won’t say nice things about him.

Let me introduce you to a few other people.

Sitting in the front row is a gentleman who has done as much to carry on Jack’s name as anybody.

This is the publisher of the Jack Kirby Collector, Mr.

John Morrow. [applause] Who else do I need to introduce? He won’t like me introducing him, but Steve Rude is sitting out there, folks. [applause] Speaking of people who are good at carrying on Jack’s working without imitating him, Steve and I have done a few projects with Jack’s work. I just always was amazed that he managed to do Kirby without doing Kirby, that he managed to understand the thought process, and the energy, and the innovation. You have probably all heard the quote that I’ve cited very often. Steve Sherman was there when it was said, so he’s my witness that Jack said this. He was talking about some fanzine where some kid said he was going to take over doing Captain America, or maybe it was Fantastic Four, I don’t remember which. And he said in the interview, “I’m going to do stories in the Kirby tradition.” And 59

Jack said, “The kid doesn’t get it.

The Kirby tradition is to create your own book.” [laughter] I made a mental, “Oh, I’ve got to record that one, folks.” And Steve Rude is an example of one of the guys who have contributed a lot of what Jack did without ever imitating him, understanding the core of the guy. There’s a handful of other people we could name, but some of the ones I’d exclude are my dearest friends, so I won’t.

Marv has done a couple of wonderful things, too. Marv is one of my dearest friends, despite all the abuse I give him. Anyway, let me introduce a couple of people. Most of you have probably bought a fine book last year, The Best of Simon and Kirby. There’s another volume out. I’d like to introduce you to the editor of that book, Steve Saffel, sitting over here. Steve? [applause] Why don’t you come up to the podium here?

STEVE SAFFEL: I had the pleasure the other day of calling Joe Simon from the floor and saying, “Joe, in 48 hours we sold out.” Every single one of the copies that we brought of this book, we brought, like, eight cartons, and they’re gone. You guys have been incredible this year. And I do want to publicly thank John Morrow, because he helped us a lot with this book because we actually reconstructed a never-beforepublished Stuntman story that we couldn’t have done without John. What Mark said about John is true, he has done so much to carry on the tradition.

Thank you very much. [applause] EVANIER: Tell us what’s next.

SAFFEL: What’s next? Well, we’ve got three other volumes under contract. We’ve got romance, we’ve got horror, and we’ve got detective, and at the moment we’re leaning towards the detective stories, because people just haven’t seen those before, and they don’t realize how much they seriously kick butt. So I think we may do detective next. But, frankly, I’m open to everybody’s opinions, and I’d love to hear what you guys thought. We also are working on Joe’s expanded autobiography, which I’m hoping to have out in time for the show next year. But this book is actually the compilation of the Steve Saffel

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two super-hero books we were going to do. We decided to put it into one 480-page volume, to simply do all of the non-Marvel-and-DC super-hero books that Simon and Kirby did. I think it’s a cornerstone for any building you could possibly want to build. [laughter] But I want to thank Mark also for giving me the chance to show it to you, and come on by the Titan booth and we’ll talk more about what we’re going to be doing with the Simon and Kirby Library. Thank you, guys. [applause] EVANIER: To answer a question that’s probably on many people’s minds, yes, DC has more Kirby reprints coming out. All convention I have been talking to Bob Wayne at DC here, saying, “Can you clear it for me to announce something here at the panel?”

And he said, “I’m trying to.”

And on the way here I literally passed him, and I said, “Anything?” And he said, “Sorry, we can’t announce it yet.” So there’s nice, frustrating news for you, folks. Everything Jack did at DC is going to be reprinted eventually, it’s just a matter of when they get around to it, how it fits into their overall master publishing plans. Maybe we won’t see Justice, Inc.,

or some of the things that are encumbered by other legal problems, but everything else they can publish, they will, because it sells quite well. They’re not republishing this because they just think Jack was a great guy, although they do. They’re republishing it because people buy it. And that’s a testimony to Jack’s longevity, especially when they’re reprinting comics from the seventies. They don’t reprint very much from the seventies. Not much from the seventies people want anymore, but they want what Jack did during that period, which gladdens my heart greatly.

KURT BUSIEK: The book that I really want, is the one that’ll be the last one they do, that has the horror stories, the war stories, and stuff that really is just not part of any particular continuity, all crammed into one book. Every time you turn the page, there’s another great story never seen.

EVANIER: Kurt, why don’t you tell us about the project that you and Joe have.

BUSIEK: Okay. I’m going to be writing a project called Kirby: Genesis, that is the launch series in a line of Kirby-created material.

Dynamite Entertainment has made a deal with the Kirby estate, so, basically, if

Jack owned it, we can use it.

LEVINE: So, to say it in a different way, if Marvel and DC don’t own it, we can use it.

BUSIEK: So Silver Star, Captain Victory, the Ninth Men, little known characters like the Astro Girls of Galaxy Green. Jack did two pages of that; we’re using it. [laughter] When I came aboard the project, one of the first things I did was to make sure I had a complete run of the Kirby Collector. And going through, it’s like, “Hey, there’s a picture here of a really cool barbarian riding a pterodactyl that Jack did for a program book for some sciencefiction convention. Did Jack own that? We can use him? Okay!” [laughter] So we have everything from characters that Kirby did full stories on, characters that he just had drawn for his own Kurt Busiek amusement and it stayed in a drawer somewhere. Alex Ross and I are working on this, with Joe and with Nick, and we’re putting together, I guess “a new universe” is the phrase, out of this. Kirby: Genesis is going to be an eight-issue series. Originally, when I was asked to come aboard, I thought, these are great characters, I’d love to see someone do the characters, but I always have a problem with those series that feel like a costume party, where you’ve got 97 different characters all standing around a room while the biggest of them says, “There’s the bad guy. Let’s go get ’im!” So I wasn’t sure what approach; how can we do this?

And Alex, as Alex often does, mentioned to me this one image that he’d like to paint, “Here’s this one idea.” And he said that, and I said, “Oh, good. Now I have a story.” [laughter] For Alex, it was just a visual image, but I realized that’s the instigating event that starts the whole story from the point of view of an ordinary guy who’s seeing all this Kirby wonderment unfolding around him, so it feels more like Marvels or Astro City or something, but still introduces all of these cool Kirby concepts and characters, some of which we have seen, some of which we’ll be seeing for the first time. And I wanted to mention one thing—most of these guys have seen or talked to Kirby more than I have, far more. I met him at a convention once, and I have a photograph to prove it. But I also talked to him on the phone once, and he gave me a

(previous page) Justice Inc. #2 cover pencils (July 1975).

piece of advice that is true for any piece of writing, but it’s also very, very Kirby. He said that it doesn’t matter how cosmic or far out you get, as long as your characters react to it like real people.

If your characters react like your audience would react, the audience will go with you anywhere. I think Kirby proved that over the years, and we’re going to be trying to show you that again in Kirby: Genesis.

JOE RYBANDT: I’ll just add that we’re working with Kurt and Alex right now to form everything; we’re actually going to get it together in the next couple of weeks. I don’t know how quickly we’ll have that issue together, but I know that once Alex starts working, covers will start appearing, so possibly by the end of the year, we’ll have something to show.

EVANIER: Let me ask if there’s any questions about this.

LEVINE: You’re being way too modest.

EVANIER: Moi? My lawyer is saying that?

LEVINE: We have two other announcements, at least. Two years ago, if you remember, we had Ruby and Spears here on the panel. As a result of that, my meeting with them, and on behalf of the Kirby estate, we have now made a deal with Abrams Publishing, which Mark Evanier’s going to write the text for, on Jack’s work during his time at Ruby-Spears. [applause] It’ll be published probably Fall of 2012.

MARV WOLFMAN: If you haven’t seen any of that stuff, when I was at Ruby-

(above) Here’s another one for Kurt and Alex. We don’t know what Kirby had planned, so let’s just call him “Lionhead.” (below) The special #0 issue of Kirby: Genesis leads off the series in May; here’s the final cover and Alex’s pencil art for it. After seeing this amazing painting, we decided to feature it, sans logo, as this issue’s back cover, in full-color. Enjoy! (previous page, bottom) DC Comics, let’s talk. We’re so glad you’re reprinting all the classic Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion stories. But two things: 1) You might want to consider sending review copies, or at least press releases, to TJKC, so we can let our readers— some who don’t frequent comics shops anymore— know they’re coming out. A lot of fans (editor John Morrow included) didn’t know about them till months after they were released.

2) Much as we’re happy to see them, please, please, please devote more time and expense to the reproduction quality. While the Titan S&K books have lavish art reconstruction by Harry Mendryk, the DC volumes are downright weak in comparison, taking raw scans, and inexplicably masking and whitening only the word balloons, but leaving the art murky.

Joe and Jack deserve better; at least set your white and black points in Photoshop!

Avenger TM & ©2011 Conde Nast. Others Newsboy Legion, Boy Commandos TM & ©2011 DC Comics. All others TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

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phone he’s been talking about it, and he’s got another idea for how he can do more of it. When he explained it to me, I start going, “Okay, all those words form sentences, but I don’t know what they mean.” [laughter] My experience with Alex is, he’s going to show me a sketch at some point and I’m going to go, “Oh! That’s great!”

But right now it’s these concepts, and I go, “These are concepts that make sense in Alex’s brain, and it sounds like whatever it is, it’s going to be really cool.” But, yeah, Alex and I are co-writing, and he’s going to be doing covers and some interior art, and to what extent I don’t actually comprehend.

So more on that will come out later.

(this page) More pencils from Kirby: Genesis. This series looks like a ton of fun! (next page) Jack added some fun to the early X-Men comics, even if Stan didn’t always pick up on what Jack was drawing in those premargin note days. Shown are details from X-Men #1 (Sept.

1963) and #4 (March 1964).

X-Men TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All others TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

Spears working on the Superman show, they brought all that Kirby stuff out for me to see, and it is utterly unbelievable. Wait until you get a chance to see it, because they kept trying to figure out how to make it work, and I’m glad now it’ll finally be able to come out, because it just totally blew me away. And I had known Jack’s work from when I was this big, so this is some of the most incredible stuff you’ll ever see.

LEVINE: One of the difficulties of making this deal was the logistics of figuring out how to get these huge pieces of artwork to scan at a reasonable price so they could be reproduced in a coffee-tablebook-sized format. And we’re still trying to locate a place that’s suitable to do that. But that’ll get there in the next few weeks.

EVANIER: Let’s go back to talk about Kurt’s and Joe’s project. Do you have any questions about anything we’ve covered to date in this panel? John?

JOHN MORROW: Could you tell a little bit about Alex Ross’s involvement? Is he doing design?

BUSIEK: I can tell a little bit about Alex Ross’s involvement. Alex is certainly going to be doing the covers for the project, and Alex and I are working out the story together, so it’s very much like back when we did Marvels, where we hammered out the story together, and I’d go off and write something and send it to Alex, and we’d talk over it and make revisions. So it’s going to be very much the two of us together on the story.

Alex will be involved in the interior art to some degree, and when I say “to some degree,” I know part of what he’s going to do, but on the

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RYBANDT: Alex and I have been working together on Project Superpowers for about four years now, and he is hands-on pretty much everything, not just doing covers. When he gets involved in a project, he gets really juiced about the project, and he chose Kurt because they’ve worked together before. So he’s been working on this Kirby thing with us for quite a while Joe Rybandt since we put the deal together, and he’s got a ton of ideas.

We’ve already got a ton of sketches. I think you can see online some pieces of art that he did for the announcement, so I’m really looking forward to what he’s going to do, and we’re hoping that we can get as much out of him as he is willing to give.

LEVINE: One of the incentives for Lisa to authorize me to make this deal was the fact that Alex and Kurt are going to be involved in this project. So, on behalf of Lisa, who couldn’t be here today, I would like to thank you Kurt, and Nick, who is not here, and Joe for putting all these together.

EVANIER: Any other questions out there? Scott?

SCOTT SHAW! (from audience): I was fascinated by this. I love all the oddball Kirby stuff. How deep are you going to go? Are we going to see people watching a game show on TV hosted by Uncle Giveaway from Win-A-Prize? Are we going to have cartoons of Earl the Rich Rabbit and Lockjaw the Alligator? Are we going to see Sky Giant as some sort of advertising character? Are there ways you can populate this world with obscure tertiary concepts, but still use them?

BUSIEK: It’s all about which characters are owned by Kirby, and which characters are owned by Simon and Kirby, because we get the Kirby characters. I think there was an unsold comic strip Kirby did called Animal Hospital. I think that, we can do. I think Uncle Giveaway is Simon and Kirby. That’s the universe next door.

LEVINE: That’s the distinction, it has to be just something that the estate owns, not with anybody else’s involvement.

SHAW!: May I suggest—well, maybe Marvel owns this, but Jack wrote a little autobiography for the first issue of the Merry Marvel Marching Society book, and in it he mentions a character called the Human Roadblock.

BUSIEK: We’ll definitely look into that. [laughter] When I say “we will definitely look into that,” it sounds like I’m saying, “Yeah, right.”

But, no, seriously, we’re pulling characters from convention sketches Jack did. If we could use Earl the Rich Rabbit, I guarantee it, then—I wrote Marvels. We had Xemnu the Titan on his TV show in the background of that, so the idea of doing something like what Scott suggested here, yeah, we’d do it in a second.

EVANIER: Any other questions about topics covered here today? Does anyone have something that qualifies as an announcement? Yes, Rand? This is Rand Hoppe, everyone. [applause] RAND HOPPE: I’m from the Jack Kirby Museum. A few announcements: I recently got non-profit support from YouTube so I can put hour-long videos on YouTube of seminars and presentations about Jack Kirby. It’s good news to be able to do that. I have an archive of these things, and I didn’t really have a place to put them on, and I didn’t really want to edit them.

We recently had a change on the Board of Trustees. We used to be Lisa Kirby, John Morrow, and myself, and Lisa decided to leave the board, and now we have John Morrow, myself, David Schwartz, and collector Tom Kraft, who’s done an amazing Kirby website that’s going to be online in about two weeks, right? Three weeks! Four weeks! But we’ve been scanning a lot of Kirby original art, and what do we have, about a thousand scans at this point? And those will be slowly going online. Go to kirbymusuem.org and whatifkirby.com to be able to see the Kirby scans.

Also, back in May there was—there’s a building in Lucerne, Switzerland that usually has Picasso in it. Well, they took the Picasso down and put up 150 Jack Kirby original art pages. [applause] A couple of US collectors, Tom Kraft and Tom Morehouse, and two collectors in Europe, contributed to that, also.

EVANIER: Thank you, Rand.

BUSIEK: I could make another announcement that just happened. We were talking about characters we have to use for Kirby: Genesis, and Marv leaned over to me and said, “Did you see the drawing that Kirby did for me? It’s a character, he gave it a name and everything.” And I said, “Can I use it?” [laughter] “Yeah, I’ll send you a scan.” So add another character of Jack’s that we can use right now. [scattered applause] EVANIER: That was one of the amazing things about Jack. Marv had to run an errand for me, but when he comes back, I’ll get him to tell the story about a time when he and Len Wein went to Jack’s house with an idea they had, just kids starting out with an idea for a comic, and Jack gave them eleven other ideas.

Characters, and props, and machinery, and such. He walked around with these ideas in his head, and I don’t know where they came from. You would just mention something to Jack, and he’d tell you an entire concept for a book based on that idea. And we thought, “Was he working on that for months, or did he just come up with that in the last eleven seconds?” And it almost didn’t matter. I don’t think he even knew the difference, because he always had all these places he was going with things buzzing around. I am convinced that a lot of times when Jack would start drawing even one page of a comic, he would invent something; sometimes in panel three or panel four there, he would invent a whole new character. When he started drawing the page, he didn’t imagine at the end of it he would have a guy on a surfboard or whatever it was on it, that it just came about.

Kurt, tell us what your favorite Jack Kirby work is. What’s the body of work or the character in a book that you like the best?

Boat” is just such an amazing work of operatic heroism, that’s got just so much humanity in it, that I just am constantly impressed by it. I think it’s the high point of the New Gods series. There’s “Mother Delilah” in Boys’ Ranch. But, at the same time as these great, emotionally involved and compelling stories, I remember things like, in an early issue of X-Men—it might be in X-Men #1, somewhere in there—Iceman walks up to the Beast and says, “I want to show you this little trick that I learned to do with my ice,” and he put ice all over the Beast’s arm. And the Beast said, “Get this off me!” And there’s just so much humanity in this two- or three-panel sequence of these characters doing this goofy little super-hero slapstick. And it’s the fact that in every line, and every panel, and every bit, there’s approachable humanity. If you have to nail me down, I’ve got to say “The Glory Boat.”

But that sequence with the Beast and Iceman, I don’t even know what story it’s in, but that just shines as “that’s Kirby.”

BUSIEK: I can’t boil it down to just one.

EVANIER: One thing that Stan said on the panel last night, we started talking about Jack, and he talked about how he could give Jack just the barest bones of a story, and he would come back with 20 pages of story all penciled out. My research over the years, looking at Stan’s surviving outlines and notes to Jack, and reading all of the marginal notes that you’ve seen in photostats, that Jack was taking the barest bones of a plot. “Let’s have Dr. Doom come back and do something evil.” But a lot of people assume that somehow Stan came up with the human end of it, and Jack came up with the cosmic end of it, and they came together. And I found that that wasn’t the case, that sometimes the cosmic stuff came from Stan, and a lot of times the human stuff came from Jack, and a little bit like that. Jack was describing stuff that Stan would never have put in a plot outline, even one of his more detailed ones. That had to have come from Jack.

EVANIER: You have to. [laughter] We’re going to sit here until you boil it down to one.

BUSIEK: I can boil it down to five different ones.

EVANIER: No. I’m sorry. [laughter] BUSIEK: So the finalists are… “The Glory Boat.”

“The Glory Boat” in New Gods [#6]. “The Glory

BUSIEK: And there’s all this stuff where you look at the artwork, and you look at the script, what Jack put in the artwork isn’t quite what Stan’s script—. There’s another X-Men bit that I really like where the Beast is climbing up the wall of a castle, and he’s ripping stones out of the castle, and he’s throwing them up at the Toad, who is bouncing around, dodging. But Stan was scripting it in a hurry, so he has the Toad going, “I’ll just bounce these rocks down at him.” So 63

Stan didn’t come up with that bit. He didn’t understand the bit. (next page) Splash page pencils from Captain America #197 (May 1976). Though Kirby’s listed as editor on the printed book, Marv Wolfman was also listed as “Exec.

Editor”, undoubtedly reflecting the company’s feeling that Kirby needed some editorial guidance on his 1970s work.

If you’re viewing the Digital Edition of this issue, roll your mouse over the pencil art to compare it to the published version. (below) Kirby drew this animation character design of a “Squire” for a Super Friends episode in the late 1970s. (bottom right) “Scooby-doobydoo!” Jack did some concept art for Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo series in the late 1970s.

Squire, Scooby-Doo TM & ©2011 HannaBarbera. Captain America, Falcon TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

EVANIER: Marv just returned, obviously, and I believe we were going to talk about how a kid could take Jack an idea, and Jack could expand on it and add 105 different nuances and amplify it.

Talk about that, if you would.

WOLFMAN: The thing that I was always amazed—because I did work with Jack, not as a writer, but as an editor, sort of, on Captain America—is that you could have the simplest idea, and then it gets expounded on, expounded on, expounded on to such a degree, and the one that hit me personally was—. Actually, when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I had come up with this idea for a character, and I was visiting Jack Kirby when he lived in East Meadow, I think it was? And I told him—why he was speaking to a 13 or 14-year-old, I don’t know, but he was that courteous to all of us. He and Roz were just incredible to any kids. They treated us like adults. And I said, “I came up with a comic book idea, and I’m trying to make it work,” and all of this. Jack said, “Describe your character,” and I described it in a few sentences. And he spent a half-hour telling me more about the character that I came up with, and all the possibilities that I had never dreamed of, all of which made sense, and then did a little sketch. And I’m going, how does he do that? [laughter] How does he do that? I mean, I came up with this thing. I told him, like, a sentence, and he was just going into all these different directions and all these different worlds, and it was one of the most incredible things I’d ever seen because it was coming off of the top of his head. Everything was exactly what that character was about, and somehow he instinctively knew that, but was able to see all these—like, I had the tree limb, the center of the tree, and he just had all these branches blooming out. And I’m going, at 13, “Oh, my God. That’s why I’m visiting his house and he’s not visiting mine.” [laughter] LEVINE: I have two answers to the question about my favorite Jack Kirby work.

BUSIEK: One. [laughter] LEVINE: I first started representing Jack in 1981. When I got out of law school, I went to work for a law firm in Century City in Los Angeles, and one day my boss came in to me and said, “I’d like you to meet our client, Jack Kirby.” I looked at him and said, “Who?” and then was introduced to Jack and Roz, and Mark was there, of course.

And I confessed to Jack that, as a kid, I’d never read Marvel Comics, and didn’t know who people like Spider-Man were and are. And he, to his credit, never held that against me. My favorite Jack Kirby work, of course, was a check with his signature on it, made payable to me. [laughter]

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WOLFMAN: You’re talking about favorite works and stuff, there’s one, only because it was more influential in many ways for me than even all the old Marvel stuff, which just blew my mind because nobody had ever done anything like it before. When you start seeing that stuff, if you were from that time period, you’re going, “That’s not what comics have ever been.” I was a DC fan, and there were no Marvels at the time, of course. And I’m reading the stupid back-ups to Adventure Comics, which included Green Arrow, and they were pretty bad and lame stories. And then suddenly there was this story, out of nowhere, and this giant arrow smashes itself down into the Earth, and it starts filling up with all these weird concepts. I’m going, “Green Arrow’s interesting! Green Arrow’s interesting!” I had no idea who Jack Kirby was, I didn’t know who drew the book, I Marv Wolfman didn’t know anything until years later, when the story was reprinted. I tried to describe this, and nobody really knew the story, and then suddenly they reprinted it. At one point I go, “That’s Jack Kirby’s stuff.” I was a fan of the Challengers of the Unknown, and at that point Marvel had come out. But, as a kid, that was the first time I went, “Wow!” I had been reading this stuff for years and not even knowing who, what, or anything about who Jack Kirby was. That story was probably more influential.

You could think big, and Jack did.

BUSIEK: I have a similar story. I started reading comics regularly in 1974, and it took me a while before I figured out that people wrote and drew them, and that there were differences between the various writers and artists and I should seek out certain names and follow them. But I bought Marvel comics, I bought everything that Marvel produced at the time. And I bought Fantastic Four, and I bought Marvel’s Greatest Comics, which was reprinting the Lee/Kirby stuff. And I remember one afternoon trying to figure out, how did they know that they’d have the really great ones in time to put out in Marvel’s Greatest Comics? I mean, if a really good story came in for Fantastic Four, would they say, “No, we’re saving that for Marvel’s Greatest”? [laughter] I had no idea that these were reprints. I just knew that the ones in Marvel’s Greatest Comics were the greatest ones! They really were! [laughter] EVANIER: And the other stuff was stuck being in the “world’s greatest comics magazine.” Did you ever find—Lisa has all these canceled checks. Did you ever find a copy of that check that Jack wrote you that meant so much to you, Paul?

LEVINE: No, I haven’t.

EVANIER: I want to find out if your favorite work of Jack’s was

We would repeat to Ditko a story that Jack had told us about the early days of Marvel, and Ditko would go, “Yeah, that’s pretty much how it happened. I think it was a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday,” that would be the extent of the differences between their two versions. The core substance would be correct. Of course, Ditko would say, “No, Jack got that backwards. That wasn’t on Hulk, that was on Fantastic Four that happened.” But the core of the story was always correct and valid. And then, years later, I did a long interview with Sol Brodsky, who was the production manager at Marvel through all of this, and, again, everything just backed up. And you could see it. You could see Jack’s creativity. If anybody took him any idea, he’d go, yeah, that’s how he operated. And if he was that way with everybody else, he was that way with Stan. He couldn’t not do that.

Jack could not—he even had trouble withholding ideas. His last year or two at Marvel, when he felt he was not getting the contract he deserved, or that promises were not being kept to him, he made a conscious effort to not give them a—“I’m not giving them any new Silver Surfers,” that was the phrase. And he couldn’t do it. New ideas just kept leaking out of him—he couldn’t stop creating, which was amazing.

We’ve got a little more time here.

endorsed on the back by Stan. [laughter] Marv was talking about his visit to Jack and seeing how Jack used to come up with ideas like this. Steve Sherman and I had much the same experience. You gave Jack an idea—Steve is nodding in knowing agreement.

And then, when we made that trip I spoke of earlier, we went back to New York, it was kind of a whirlwind thing. We got to meet everybody who was in comics, in about one week. We spend the first day up at the DC offices. We met Joe Kubert, we met Julius Schwartz.

Julie Schwartz took us to lunch at a restaurant where the food was lousy, but the waitresses wore very short skirts. [laughter] We met Carmine, we met Murray Boltinoff, and Neal Adams, and all those people. Then the next day we went over, spent the morning at the MAD magazine offices, spent the afternoon at the Marvel offices. We met Bill Everett, we met Herb Trimpe, and we met John Romita, and

Marie Severin. We spent the next day over at Steve Ditko’s office and heard Ditko talk with passion and love and respect for Jack. And we heard a consistent portrait. Everybody, once they knew we were Jack’s assistants, that was a way to open doors. Everybody wanted to tell us how much they loved Jack, and it was kind of like, can you top this? We’d say to Bill Everett, “Oh, John Romita’s told us that Jack was the best artist who ever lived,” and Bill Everett said, “Ah, he was better than that.” [laughter] And there was a consistent portrait. In this business you meet people frequently who tell you things that sound self-serving about themselves, and you go, “Yeah, right, okay, that’s the way he views it.” And Jack had told us a lot of things which, if they weren’t backed up by everybody else who had worked with him, would have been conceit and exaggeration and such.

But we found they were always backed up.

SHAW!: I just wanted to make this plea, before we all leave. At last year’s convention, I talked with a fan, and I don’t want to reveal too much, but I had an idea for an iPhone application that would be useful to every Kirby fan with an iPhone, but isn’t really a Kirby-sanctioned property.

So we wanted to—over the year, I storyboarded out what this thing would do. What we want to do is make this available, I’d like all the profits to go to the Jack Kirby Museum, but I need to work with a Jack Kirby expert who can also do that kind of technology to create an application with me. Is there anybody here who does that sort of thing? Or if you know anybody that does that sort of thing, please contact me, give me your card or something, I’ll give you mine. I’d love to have this out. It’s Scott Shaw! something that could bring in money on a fairly consistent basis.

There’s the clue for you, but don’t tell DC about it.

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EVANIER: That’s Scott Shaw, one of my oldest friends, whom I met at Jack Kirby’s house in 1970, and another one of many, many artists who were encouraged by Jack and went on to a very amazing professional career. And Jack saw the talent in Scott’s now, to us, primitive work, and encouraged it. Scott, what was your son’s name, again?

SHAW!: Kurtzberg. [laughter] He’s one of the oldest Kirbys out there. There are enough kids now of cartoonists who respected Jack, that they can form their own club.

EVANIER: I know of, like, six kids named Kirby, and a couple of Jacks.

SHAW!: Rick Veitch’s son is named Kirby.

EVANIER: We’ve got time for another question or two. Anybody else want to ask anything?

AUDIENCE: How are you progressing on your big book? Is there an estimated date for completion?

EVANIER: Things are progressing wonderfully on that book. It is quite lovely and coming along fine. And there’s an estimated date of completion of the next year or two, but I don’t know when it would be published. I think that would be a question best directed to my attorney. [laughter] LEVINE: I can make the deal in 24 hours, I just need to know when to do it. [laughter] BUSIEK: So 24 hours before the deal is done.

AUDIENCE: How did Jack end up at Atlas?

All characters TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

EVANIER: How did Jack end up at Atlas? The comic book industry was in recession, and he needed work someplace. And he held off as long as possible. He went to every other publisher. He didn’t want to go back to Atlas because he felt he had not been treated fairly there by Martin Goodman.

The number one thing a man had to do with his life was to provide for his family, and Jack did a number of things in his life that he might have preferred not to do. He might have preferred not to go back to Marvel once or twice in his life, but Job One was to have that paycheck on Friday to buy groceries, to provide a roof over your head. And all the fights over, like, original art and such, that wasn’t Jack just fighting because he wanted the money, that was Jack fighting because he wanted to leave his family something if he dropped dead. And, actually, when he did drop dead, Roz Kirby paid her mortgage with those pages that we all fought to get Jack back. That was the core of this man, the soldier with the compassion to be a mensch, to be an individual who functioned as a human being, to be socially responsible, and responsible for your own life and your own family, and it’s one of the things that I came to understand about Jack, and admire maybe as much as I admire the ability to come up with the Silver Surfer or that sort of thing.

One more question.

AUDIENCE: I have a 16-year-old daughter who is the first one out of the kids who actually is beginning to appreciate and do things we’re doing together, which is really cool. But I start to talk to her about Jack Kirby and I find myself babbling. Is there a primer; this 66

is who the man was, and go from there?

EVANIER: I published it last year. [laughter] LEVINE: Lots of copies are still available from Abrams Publishing.

EVANIER: Yes. Go down and frisk Charlie Kochman and you’ll get one. But the reason I did that book, people over the years have come up to me to write books on Jack. I said, “No, I’m going to write this big, huge one.” And the book gets more complicated, I’m learning more things, I find out more stuff all the time, and I don’t want to do it wrong and have to do an amended version three years down the line. And I kept people dangling too long.

There needed to be a primer out there for Jack, there needed to be an overview book, and that’s what I was trying to do, and Charlie Kochman just happened to call me when I was thinking that and said, “Hey, come on, let’s do it.” What happened was, I think that they had lost a book on Picasso. I think Jack would like to have been published by the leading art book publisher in the world. That alone was a statement that mattered to me, that Jack was important enough to be in the Abrams catalog.

Okay, last question.

FRANK JOHNSON (from audience): Would it be possible to do a documentary, like they did of Stan Lee, but of Jack Kirby? [applause] EVANIER: One of the things that happens in the comic book business these days—Marv will attest to this— we get called about once every week Frank Johnson by someone who wants to do a documentary on the history of comics, and I’ve done five interviews at this convention for them, and I get called about once a month with somebody saying, “I want to do a Jack Kirby documentary.”

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s that many people around, enough people around left to interview. I don’t believe there’s that much footage of Jack. If somebody could do it, fine. I’d love to see it. But it’s not a new idea. There’s probably a hundred people who have approached me over the years, and nobody’s ever been able to put it together.

We are out of time, here. We will do another one of these next year. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] ★

(previous page, bottom) More of Raam, the Man Mountain. (this spread) Here’s one for the road: Jack’s concept drawings for an unknown teenage motorcycle gang (date unknown). What does the “Y” on Turkey’s shirt and motorcycle stand for?

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c

Adam M Govern (below) A page from Kirby: Genesis. Layouts by Alex Ross (shown elsewhere this issue), pencils and finished art by Jack Herbert, color by Vinicius Andrade.

Characters TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

New Genesis

Interview with Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek conducted on January 10, 2011 by Adam McGovern (Kirby is legendary for the new universes he took readers to—but for some, most fascinating of all are the territories he never reached himself. Boundlessly prolific, the King left behind—and left forward—a still uncounted trove of sketches and ideas that never made it to comic page or cartoon screen. Discovery was the essence of the Kirby ethic,

Ross & Busiek are present at the re-creation of Kirby’s cosmos

and two of the more intrepid creators in contemporary comics are taking up the trails he mapped out, in an industry where everyone already follows in his footsteps. Kirby: Genesis from Dynamite Entertainment reunites artist Alex Ross and writer Kurt Busiek—who first teamed on Marvels, which made fans see Kirby’s marquee concepts in an utterly new way—to show a new generation Kirby creations they’ve never witnessed. It’s often been as much a surprise to Ross and Busiek as it will be to Genesis’ intrigued audience; the Kirby archives have been opened more extensively than ever before by the Kirby Estate itself, and the rights to their many treasures brought under one roof with unprecedented range by Dynamite. Busiek and Ross have brainstormed the eight-issue story that reintroduces Kirby’s newest world; Busiek will bring his singular gift for a spectrum of heroic voices to the script; and Ross (in addition to painting specific interior pages himself) will art-direct and lay out the series for the project’s principal artist— the phonetically fortuitous Jack Herbert, most dynamic and accomplished visual contributor to the breakout Black Terror book from Ross’ Project: Superpowers line, and well-suited to the blockbuster energy and emotional atmospherics the new series promises. In advance of Genesis’ May debut, TJKC went on-location in hyperspace to ask Ross & Busiek to describe what they were seeing so far.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What was the genesis of Genesis; did the Kirby Estate folks approach you, or did one of you have the idea that you’d really wanna do this, or was it Dynamite that thought they would really be a good home for it?

ALEX ROSS: Well, Dynamite’s been pursuing it for a number of years, getting all the stuff together under one house, anything that might fit into one giant Kirby Universe. A lot of that has really come down to things we’ve discovered with the full blessing of the Estate, going through various artworks of Jack’s that had never before been given any kind of anointing of being part of any project. Concept drawings, paintings, even just simple works of art that would make wonderful additions to an actual story project.

TJKC: Are any of those works going to be incorporated, like in Galactic Bounty Hunters? Or is it all newly generated?

ROSS: You mean actually recycling a piece of [Kirby’s] artwork?

No, it would then be a sort of pantomime of trying to reproduce the specific talents of the one man; we need to show how it can be translated in the hands of the artists. If you think about it, the history of Marvel and DC, for what they’ve used of Jack’s concepts, when something’s successful as a design, it can easily be handled by other artists with great, distinct qualities of their own that they bring to it. That’s why something like Spider-Man or the Hulk are great designs, because it almost doesn’t matter who draws them, they still come off looking fantastic.

TJKC: And you’ll obviously be going for a more modern-day, modeled-color approach rather than the kind of heavily blackplated, Kirby-era look. I guess you just feel that his designs are strong enough to burst into that third dimension?

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ROSS: When you consider that I’m involved in this at all with my heavily rendered approach, there has to be that kind of sense given to the material; it’s not gonna be traditional flat two-dimensional renderings. Given the almost twenty years that’s passed now since the last time this was tried through Topps Comics, we have an advancement in the artform, and we can take full advantage of that.

There’s an artistic value to saying that there’s no limitation to put upon the Kirby stuff; it should never be marginalized to say, it only belongs in this one, kind of two-dimensional graphic world.

His artwork has the fullest extrapolation of what can be conceived.

KURT BUSIEK: Keep in mind that something like Silver Star, which Kirby did as a comic series, he originally created as a screen treatment. So he was intending for that to be photographed rather than drawn. He didn’t limit his imagination to one particular style, and there were numerous times that Kirby either worked with other artists, or intended to—the Fourth World, when he originally started it, he intended to write and have other people draw. So my feeling is it’s a mistake to try to simply replicate what Jack Kirby would’ve done, because… Jack Kirby was a genius. Jack was

the best there ever will be at doing what he did. So trying to replicate Kirby is reaching for a target you’ll never hit. Whereas, what Kirby did in principle was, he tried to take the ideas, whether they were his own ideas or he was working with somebody else’s ideas, and do the best he could with them. So we need to do the best we can with them, rather than try to be second-rate Kirby. Because second-rate is as far as you’re gonna get if you’re not Kirby.

ROSS: At the same time, we’re not slamming anyone who has done that artistically; I’m a big fan of all artists that have done that in their work, artists that have taken Kirby’s influence and extrapolated that further; you could include even Mike Mignola amongst those.

BUSIEK: Sure, but they’re not trying to replicate Kirby.

ROSS: In some cases they are; I mean, people like Steve Rude and Bruce Timm have done so as a pastime, as something that they enjoy, physically living in the skin of those squiggles and tiny brushstroke marks.

(above) Alex Ross’ explosive painting within a Jack Herbert doublesplash in Kirby: Genesis.

Inset on these two pages are Kirby’s original concept drawings for many of his unused characters; how many can you find in Alex’s painting?

If you’re viewing the Digital Edition of this issue, roll your mouse over Alex’s painting to see the original pencils for this piece.

Characters TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

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BUSIEK: But they’re incorporating those techniques to say something of their own.

(above) Unused “Dragon Boy” concept by Kirby, dated 1979. Will young Tyree show up in Kirby: Genesis? (below, left) In 1972, Jack drew this piece as his idea of what the Pioneer spacecraft should carry into outer space, to give other intelligent life an idea of what earthlings are like. NASA chose a more basic line drawing of a man and woman, but Kirby felt that was a mistake: “I see no wisdom in the eagerness to be found and approached by any intelligence with the ability to accomplish it from any sector of space.

In the meetings between ‘discoverers’ and ‘discoverees,’ history has always given the advantage to the finders.”

Jack felt we should stack the deck in our favor, and portray our race as having the ability to defend itself.

That’s interesting forethought on his part, and based on this initial art from Kirby: Genesis (below, right), it looks like Kurt and Alex are set to explore whether or not Jack was right!

Characters TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

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TJKC: I agree, it’s gotten so embedded in their artistic DNA that a lot of it comes out, but it’s not as if you can imagine Mignola’s stuff as having existed before, or Rude or self-described “Kirby clone” Scioli; it’s not a one-for-one thing. I think you’re both right; the people who do him more closely... a) it’s impossible to do him closely, and b) the artist’s own personality comes out in it.

ROSS: Yeah, that’s really what should happen.

BUSIEK: And I don’t think Gødland is an attempt to do what Jack Kirby would’ve done, it’s an attempt to work from Kirbyesque roots and do what Joe Casey and Tom Scioli would do. Kirby would not have done that. (laughs) Those ideas are way too Joe Casey; he’s obviously not trying to be Kirby, (laughs) he’s trying to build on the power of Kirby.

ROSS: Actually I think in a way, Joe’s kind of tapped into this bizarre evolutionary path that Jack was on himself creatively and that Joe is somewhat communing with; I know that’s what he intends, and I do think there is a lot of truth to that in what comes across.

BUSIEK: But that’s still a matter of responding to Kirby rather than trying to imitate him. There are places that Kirby himself,

being someone who was born in 1917, wouldn’t have gone, (laughs) that Joe, being someone who’s born many years later, will gleefully go. He’s incorporating Kirby as an influence more strongly than a lot of us do, but even a lot of the guys who do Kirbyesque stuff aren’t trying to replicate Jack, they’re being inspired by Jack.

ROSS: At that point we’re starting to be too nice. (laughs) There’s definitely some imitation going on, and we’re just trying to say, “That’s not bad, that’s just not exactly what we’re doing.” But even as I’m redoing a given design or even trying to emulate figure-pose styles, for what I’m going to ultimately turn into a fully-realized painting, I’m crossing over the DNA of the way that Jack thinks in terms of physical body strokes, which is maybe much more than he would ever expect of anybody interpreting his work, but it’s the fun of living in the skin of it. I’m getting that chance, along the journey to probably producing a final piece of artwork that might bear no immediate [resemblance to] his work. I’m not just simply putting the clothing of one of his character designs on a completely unrelated human figure.

TJKC: You get to step in his shoes but go in directions he wouldn’t have.

ROSS: And I’ve spent much of my adult life doing this, working with things that are from his hands; I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed each time I’ve gotten a chance to spend any kind of time trying to emulate whatever that creative vision is.

TJKC: In terms of making subject matter as well as style flow together, Kurt, I know that everyone from stonefaced Captain Victory to farcical Galaxy Green is going to be part of the series.

Are you going to try and give this a consistent tone, or instead revel in the different flavors of the strips and characters?

BUSIEK: I’m telling a story, so the story is going to have a particular tone. Within that story, though, a character who is consistently grim will be grim, and a character who is consistently jocular will be jocular.

But I don’t want to make it feel like this is a patchwork, I want to make it feel like this is a coherent story that’s being told because it deserves to be told.

And I’m not going to be trying to make the characters sound like Kirby wrote them, any more than we’re going to be trying to make the characters look like Kirby drew them. We’re going to honor the concepts, and try to use the power of those ideas as best we can.

TJKC: To that point, Kurt, I thought your Silver Star for Topps had just the right breakneck, bombastic flavor without being anything like a straight Kirby pastiche, so from that example I can see where this kind of thing will go.

BUSIEK: Even if I’d wanted the Victory mini-series [Busiek’s more wide-ranging crossover story for Topps] to have been a straight pastiche, I couldn’t have done it, because when the art came back from Keith Giffen, all of a sudden it was nine-panel pages and there was only room for a certain amount of dialogue, so the pacing of it, of necessity, changes.

Keith paced it his way, rather than, again, trying to be Jack—he tried to tell the story, but powerfully using his particular skills and instincts.

TJKC: Only one issue came out; is all of that scrapped, and you’re starting fresh with any of the characters who were used in it, or can any of that find its way into Genesis?

BUSIEK: First off, we’re doing exactly what I did when I started on Conan; we’re saying, “If Jack Kirby wrote it, it happened; if anyone else wrote it—up to and including me—sorry, it’s apocryphal.” So, the Topps material “didn’t happen” in the story we’re telling. We want to get back to the pure Kirby and build forward from there. That said, part of the story I came up with for the Victory project is finding its way into Genesis. There are elements of that story I worked out that didn’t actually see print, that I now can say, “Well, that was a good bit, so I’m gonna use it here.” (laughs) [Note: See Kurt’s proposal for the unfinished 1990s Topps Silver Star mini-series below.]

TJKC: So does that mean you guys see this as what might stand, at least for some time, as the “official” Kirby Universe? Is this a project to establish these characters in a way that will be definitive?

BUSIEK: I certainly hope so. Again… I was just going to claim a lack of arrogance, which would make Alex fall over laughing, but to my mind, the definitive stuff is everything Jack did. We are building something out of it that I hope will be successful, that I hope will please a lot of people, that I hope will continue for a long time; but if there’s any question as to who got Jack Kirby’s characters the most right, it’s Jack. Let’s say we build it and it lasts for thirty years, and then twenty years further down the line somebody scraps it and starts over with the Kirby stuff? Well, they went back to the roots, that’s what we’re doing. And honestly, that far in the future, I’m dead, so I’m not gonna really worry about it. (laughs)

ROSS: We’ll probably live long enough to see somebody throw out everything we did.

BUSIEK: It’s not like we haven’t seen enough of that at Marvel and DC; it only takes about two weeks for somebody to throw out what you did.

ROSS: At this point we should only want to boast that we are unifying the most compelling assembly of his independent material, and also we’re putting a spotlight on the designs and concepts that are just as attractive and compelling as any that he conceived for the Big Two publishers.

that we’ve got eight issues (plus a lead-in #0), we’ve got a certain amount of room, we’ve got a story we want to tell. We’re going to bring through the characters and concepts that we think will best build a foundation for an ongoing world that’s got room for lots and lots of stuff, and if there’s characters we only see for a panel or don’t see at all, at least we’ve built a structure where they can crop up later.

TJKC: You always had that feeling of there being a lot beyond the frame with Kirby’s worlds, waiting there to be used.

TJKC: Are there any parts of that assembly that you’re consciously leaving out? Are there any points at which you’re saying, “Hmm, Thunderfoot, Last of the Half-Humans? He just doesn’t fit in with Lightning Lady.”

Or are you just throwing in as much as possible?

BUSIEK: Thunderfoot, Last of the Half-Humans is in there, baby! (laughs) ROSS: Oh, yeah! And I’m very much for any of the humorous stuff also being added in, just because we can acknowledge its existence in this overall tapestry we’re laying out. Not necessarily that we have to put too much thought or time to it, but just to say, “Hey, it’s all under one roof.”

And of course we don’t have every single independent thing that Jack worked on because there’s properties that are with other people who hold them. And maybe this will prompt them to jump up and start doing more with what they’ve got.

This is probably the widest swath of everything to be put out there. And the most notable; he spent several issues doing Captain Victory and Silver Star and such.

If we could have put in Destroyer Duck I would have, but that wasn’t an option for us.

BUSIEK: Although there is a character that Kirby designed called “Dynamite Duck,” and if we were to put him in, there’s nothin’ wrong with that. Again, we’re telling a particular, individual story; it’s not simply a catalogue. So there are characters like, for instance, Satan’s Six. That’s an inherently funny concept; it’s a humor adventure series, where humor is probably more important than the adventure.

We’re going to have a nod or two to Satan’s Six in this story; they’re out there, they’re part of things. But they’re not a major part of this story. It doesn’t mean they can’t be part of the universe, it just means

BUSIEK: Late in the process, within the last month, Mike Thibodeaux sent us something like 11 or 12 Kirby drawings, some of which we’d seen before, and some of which were completely new to us. Two of those ideas, we said, “These are great”; we found places to put them into the story that we’re already telling. And there’s at least one idea in there that I think could support a [spin-off] series really well, but just doesn’t fit into the structure that we’ve already built. And I’m sure that when we’re done with the story, somebody’s gonna turn up Kirby stuff we’ve never seen, (laughs) and there’s gonna be a way that that can fit in and that a big structure like this can contain all of it.

TJKC: What is the balance for you between working on your own characters and getting a chance at ones like these?

BUSIEK: It depends on the character. There’s definitely a huge charge to doing this project. It’s a middle 71

ground between working on one of the established characters at one of the major companies and creating your own stuff, because we’ve got characters who are really well fleshed out, like the Captain Victory cast and Silver Star, and then we’ve got characters who are nothing more than a drawing, where we had to come up with the rest. Asking ourselves “Who is this guy?” based purely on how the drawing feels, “What’s his name, what’s his background?” So there’s a lot of creation that’s going on here. We’re kind of, I dunno, bouncing off the Source Wall in that we’ve got an image from Kirby that’s got emotion and power and direction to it, and we have to figure out what the details are that will set that concept in motion.

ROSS: The things that really attracted me are some of the ones he did in color, that people have seen a lot of, especially through the Kirby Collector, that make us realize a fully fleshed-out concept, like the New Gods concepts that didn’t make it to the final series. We’re the first ones to use them, and I think that’s kind of unique, to think that there’s stuff left on the cutting room floor for something that’s one of his most well-known properties. And then of course there’s things like the retooling of his Norse mythology that he did for another portfolio in the early ’70s; we’re very lucky to get a chance to be the first to adapt that. I look at those as really premier pieces that deserve to get a really good spotlight put on them, because I feel like by his doing those fully inked drawings and the color on top of it, that he really had that much passion, whereas a lot of the other stuff that we’re adapting is coming from sketches; a doodle here, a doodle there. So I feel that there’s a pecking order of those things, that he maybe had more inside himself to contribute for.

And one of the things that needs to be noted is that Kurt has a remarkable instinct for design. So it’s a real joy to develop things visually with Kurt. In this [project] we’re just taking things and elaborating further, but in the case of, say, [Kirby’s oft-proposed and never-realized concept] “Tiger 21,” we’ve gotta take pencil drawings, of which there’s only one, and elaborate to, “What are the colors?”

And you can go a million different ways. So that’s the kind of fun we can have together. I’ll also say that some of the things we’re adapting from those sketches too, when they’ve been handled in the Collector before, sometimes as fully colored images on the cover—like I’m looking at the image of, What’s-his-name of Mars— BUSIEK: Sundance!

ROSS: Sundance of Mars, I don’t know why I didn’t… I was just drawing him while we were on the phone here (laughs)—figuring that the wonderful piece Ladronn did on the cover was a perfectly good color choice here, so why not? It doesn’t seem that out-of-step with the way Kirby might’ve colored something himself, so let’s go with it; let’s keep in symmetry with what this other great artist did as his own instinctive interpretation. We make the same kind of choices.

TJKC: What do you envision for the spin-off series?

BUSIEK: Kirby: Genesis is going to work on its own, but it’s also going to work as a platform for, “Here’s Captain Victory and his Galactic Rangers; aren’t they cool, wouldn’t you like to see them in their own series? Here’s these great Norse Viking characters; wouldn’t it be cool—particularly this year? (laughs) Let’s do that.” These characters have a huge canvas; if we tell a story about Galaxy Green in Genesis and that same month there’s a Galaxy Green book coming out, it could be taking place 30 years earlier, or 20 years later—or the origin of Galaxy Green centuries earlier.

ROSS: People will never need to read these things just to understand the main series. But [the spin-offs] can still pull from the same well of characters.

BUSIEK: We’ve got a character we’re calling the Wanderer—we may change that later—and if he has past history with Captain Victory, why not? There’s no reason we can’t cross-pollinate if these characters exist in the same universe. At the same 72

time the characters are so strong that it’s not something we have to do.

ROSS: Given the song connotation I can hear in my head, “The Wanderer” seems so perfectly appropriate for this character. Just so you get a context, the name is being used for a painting—as it appeared on the back cover of The Jack Kirby Collector issue #37, the painting’s referred to as “Space Chariot.”

BUSIEK: There’s another project that was also referred to as Space Chariot, so I’m not sure that’s the name that Kirby attached to it. The other project looked a little more like a chariot.

ROSS: Yeah this, I mean, it’s a bike, (laughs) the guy’s riding a big, crazy, psychedelic, almost flowery-looking bike.

BUSIEK: And he’s got scarves, he looks like the Jim Morrison of outer space.

What I love about this character is you look at this guy and he does not look like your standard… a lot of Jack Kirby’s characters are soldiers, and they have this very strong forward drive—they’re full of purpose and command and mission— and then you’ve got characters like the Forever People who very much aren’t soldiers. And they’re less strongly directed; they’re searchers. And the Wanderer strikes me as very much that kind of counterculture, searching character rather than the focused soldier character. And in a book where we’ve got so many of these soldier guys around, it’s great to have a character who just looks like he comes from a very different place and has a very different motivation. The Wanderer is not what you’d expect Kirby to come up with. But that’s Kirby for ya; he tapped into something that speaks in yet another way.

I also want to throw out that Jack Kirby is one of the voices, one of the imaginations that created the superhero genre, but Kirby didn’t think like the people who are now doing super-heroes.

[With them] there was this distillation of all of these pulp and science-fiction and genre ideas that kind of boiled down into the “super-hero” genre as we know it today. And Kirby never went through that boiling process himself. So he draws from pulp, he draws from myth, and he draws from fantasy, and he draws from legend and from science-fiction; his characters are coming from the roots, the pieces of what went into the super-hero. And that leaves us with a world that does not fit the traditional Marvel/DC super-hero world because there are very few characters in [Genesis] who feel like traditional super-heroes. They feel like pulp heroes, they feel like science-fiction heroes, they feel like heroes of myth, but they haven’t been sort of sanded down through the decades of evolution that created what we think of as the standard super-hero genre; they’re still back in their raw, pure roots, and I love working with that.

ROSS: We don’t really have your traditional guy who’s got this dual identity of “I go put on this costume to fight crime.” Captain Victory or Silver Star or these other godlike concepts, they are what they are to their particular universes.

BUSIEK: And when you look back at Kirby’s other creations, some of them are super-heroes with secret identities, but his major projects with Marvel during the ’60s, the ones he stuck with the longest, were the Fantastic Four, who didn’t have any secret identities, and Thor, where the secret identity was almost vestigial.

When Kirby did stuff that was more traditional super-hero, like when you bring these characters he created together into the Avengers—he didn’t last very long on that series. And I think part of the reason is, “Well, here they are; they get

together at this house, and something happens and they go have a fight. And then they go home.” And it was up to other people to dress that up; Kirby would rather go off to Thor, where there was this whole world, or Fantastic Four, where they had reasons for using their superpowers that weren’t, “Oh, a bad guy has shown up.” That gives the world we’re building in Kirby: Genesis a very different, a very raw and powerful feel, because there’s so much that’s got one foot in the super-hero camp but is leaning in a very different direction. Nothing that’s got both feet planted in the comfort zone of the super-hero.

TJKC: So is there anything else we haven’t covered that you guys are particularly excited about or proud of—and you can talk about?

ROSS: As we discussed what protagonist to put in the middle of it, and what kind of human interaction we had, I fought for the idea of making Jack Kirby just star in his own series, (laughs) and didn’t quite get my way, but actually got a very nice compromise, and I think the first issue—the #0 issue—has a very wonderful, lyrical acknowledgment of that goal on my part. And then of course we take it into the next stage right away, of elaborating further an avatar for Kirby, and the reader, in the story. We spent a lot of time breaking down what was reasonable and what was the best use of our platform.

BUSIEK: To go at least a little bit into the set-up of the story, I won’t say much about the plot, but about something that triggered it for me. When Alex and I first talked about this, I was concerned that I didn’t want to do something that just felt like a big superhero pajama party. And finding a way to bring together all of these Kirby characters and concepts, there didn’t immediately seem to be a way to do it that felt like there was something more going on. And Alex mentioned one image that made me all of a sudden say, “I see the story now, I understand what’s happening here,” because Alex gave me an image that was this big, powerful image, but it was big and powerful because we saw it from streetlevel, from a human perspective. And I said “That’s what we need this story to be about—all of this crazy Kirby stuff going on, but a human perspective on it.”

The one piece of writing advice Jack Kirby ever gave me was, “It doesn’t matter how far-out or weird you get, if the characters

react to it like normal people would, the audience will follow you anywhere.” And I’m taking that a little bit more literally, not [just] having the characters react to it like normal people, but having our viewpoint character be a normal person. That’s very much an example of me bringing my particular instincts to it; I want Kirby’s concepts to come through, but I’m using one of my more traditional techniques to do it. Once I had that idea of, “This is a normal person’s journey through this universe of imagination and pulp craziness and wild action and conceptual cacophony,” then I thought, well, this is a story that I could write, that could sit next to Marvels and Astro City on the bookshelf as a complete work. And a universe can spill out from that. That was what Alex gave me that made me say, “I know where I’m standing now.

Once I know where I’m standing, I can take this journey, I can make this story.” ★ (Adam McGovern makes comics with fellow Kirby creation Paolo Leandri, from their “Alias the Spider” story in Image Comics’ Next Issue Project to surreal broadsides in the indie newsprint funnypaper pood. Adam also translates seven comics on barbarians, ghostly puppets, nasty fairytale characters, dystopian adventurers and reality-show redlight districts for Italy’s GG Studio. His “Kirby as a Genre” column appears here regularly, but who can think about that right now?)

(previous page) Sundance of Mars and the Wanderer, both of whom will appear in Kirby: Genesis. (left) More pencil layouts for the interior of Kirby: Genesis. (above) Another unused Kirby concept that looks to make an appearance in the series. Dated August 13, 1979.

Characters TM & ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

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Know Prizes

Back To The Old Drawing

Written and compiled by Dwight and Jerry Boyd here’s a nice book out now by TwoMorrows about a ‘fast and furious’ cartooning ace by name of Sal Buscema. ‘Our Pal’ Sal, as his Bullpen nickname reminds us, remains a friend to many a writer and editor he helped out during his long and distinguished career. He was counted on to make deadlines and take over strips that needed a dynamic artist. ‘King’ Kirby made lots of friends in the editorial and writing circles, also, because he too was a speedy illustrator and met

T

his deadlines (and then some!), as well.

However, at this removed date, we Kirbyheads can get a chuckle at some ‘unfinished panels’ (so to speak) that the King did in his 1960s and ’70s haste to complete certain assignments. Jack changed some of his subjects from panel to panel, page to page, or from book to book, in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Here’re some panels that might’ve made Jack’s co-plotters and editors say, “Hey Jack, you’re not finished with this one yet—back to the old drawing board, Kirby!”

Wardrobe Malfunctions!

The famous Mister Miracle collar was prominent as always in this splash from his 10th issue. Scott Free’s costume always sported a high-rise collar that somehow got swallowed (or forgotten by Kirby) in this beautiful pencil of MM and his supporting cast. It’s tough to see how that big and tall collar didn’t show up at all for this pin-up style illo! (above) Magneto’s cape came and went during his battle with the Mighty Thor in Journey Into Mystery #109. In the first panel shown it’s clearly visible, but one panel later….

Seeing as how Spider-Man was first introduced to the comics world via Kirby’s cover for Amazing Fantasy #15, it’s tough to understand how ‘Jolly’ Jack forgot the spider chest emblem for this Marvelmania cover in 1970.

(below) Later in JIM #109, Maggie gets a call from Mastermind and his cape is clearly hunched up (as usual) behind him but a few panels later…

Every good Marvelite knows that Daredevil always goes ‘strapped’— that is, he keeps his billy club holster on his left leg, as the King delineated in this cropped panel from FF #40 and on this unforgettable DD cover (inked

by Romita), but on this Marvel Super-Heroes #27 cover (right), the scarlet swashbuckler’s holster wasn’t around; and above this illo, the Leader’s humanoids on the left side were missing their head circles that their mold-buddies on the right got equipped with.

Iron Mania!

Iron Man got lots of different looks and additions throughout the ’60s, but if you look closely at this cropped splash from Avengers #7 and the following panel, you’ll see Jack gave him two decidedly different ear attachments!

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Ol’ Shellhead’s ear attachments are all gone in the far left panel copied here from Avengers #8, but they came back in the next panel and at the end of the story.

Iron Man was affectionately called ‘Bullethead’ by Hawkeye and others over the years, but in this splash from the classic JIM #105— he really was closer to being a ‘bullethead’ because Kirby forgot his helmet earpieces and adorned him with lots on helmet rivets on his face!

Board, Kirby!

More Marvel Madness!

Lockjaw’s got one of those crazy tuning forks the King was so adept at incorporating into the look of his “wilder” characters (like Black Bolt, for instance). See the panel on the left from FF #56 and compare with the very next cropped panel... did Lockjaw eat that, too?

The master storyteller usually draped the young Human Torch with flames that burned outward from his frame (like the upper detail from FF #9’s pin-up), but in the other panels—the one on the left with the Molecule Man from FF #20 and the other from FF Annual #1—the flames must’ve failed to ignite!

Mr. Miracle, Jimmy Olsen TM & ©2011 DC Comics. All other characters TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Close Shaves!

Okay, we’re nitpicking here... but at least we can admit it! It seems Jack was unable to decide early on if he wanted the Hulk to have chest hair or not... see the left panel for hair... hair is gone one film frame later! This sequence comes from Hulk #3.

Even Jack knew he was capable of making a mistake or two as he made his daily page count! In this nice self-portrait from the ’70s, the King smokes with a pencil and pencils with a cigar.

The Blob had a full head of hair in his first outing in X-Men #3, as the panel on the left shows—but the King forgot that (for one panel) and gave the evil mutant a clean-shaven scalp shortly afterwards. Back to the old drawing board, Kirby!

More bad hair days (?) for ol’ Greenskin in Hulk #5—Kirby and Ayers gave him some stubble fuzz and then removed it. And don’t say Rick Jones said (in the interim), “Hulk, remove chest hair!”

Jack drew Jim Harper’s killer cleanshaven and balding in Jimmy Olsen #142, but one issue later, the dirty rat got a mustache and a full head of hair!

But we’re just happy he did so much artwork that we can appreciate, minor mistakes and all! It just adds to the enjoyment that Jack didn’t ‘finish’ these pages completely—and to be fair, neither his inkers (Colletta, Ayers, or Royer, etc.) or his editor/ co-plotter, Stan Lee, caught them either!

Are there others? You bet your sub-space transit ticket there are! So if you want a project to ‘finish’, start looking around for those ‘unfinished’ Kirby panels. And when you find one, say quietly, “Back to the old drawing board, Kirby!” ★ Special thanks to Aaron Sultan for researching assistance.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #1-5 (DIGITAL SET)

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERNS VIEWS WITH KIRBY and EDITIO BLE his contemporaries, AVAILANLY FEATURE ARTICLES, FOR O $3.95 RARE AND UNSEEN $1.95 KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and presentation of KIRBY’S UNINKED PENCILS from the 1960s-80s (from photocopies preserved in the KIRBY ARCHIVES). Now in OVERSIZED TABLOID FORMAT, it showcases Kirby’s amazing art even larger!

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

DIGITAL

(80-page Digital Edition) $2.95

NEW!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #14

KIRBY COLLECTOR COLOR POSTER

Only a few left of our TJKC retailer’s poster—don’t delay!

(17” x 22” color poster) $10

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

KIRBY COLLECTOR #6

KIRBY COLLECTOR #7

KIRBY COLLECTOR #8

KIRBY COLLECTOR #15

KIRBY COLLECTOR #16

KIRBY COLLECTOR #17

KIRBY COLLECTOR #18

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

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

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

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

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

Kirby cover featuring Jack’s unused SPIDER-MAN MARVELMANIA poster art!

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

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

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

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

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

KIRBY COLLECTOR #19

KIRBY COLLECTOR #20

KIRBY COLLECTOR #21

KIRBY COLLECTOR #22

KIRBY COLLECTOR #23

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

KIRBY/SINNOTT cover!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KIRBY/ALEX HORLEY cover!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #9

KIRBY COLLECTOR #10

KIRBY COLLECTOR #11

KIRBY COLLECTOR #12

KIRBY COLLECTOR #13

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

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

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

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

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #24

KIRBY COLLECTOR #25

KIRBY COLLECTOR #26

KIRBY COLLECTOR #27

KIRBY COLLECTOR #28

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

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

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

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

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #29

KIRBY COLLECTOR #30

KIRBY COLLECTOR #31

KIRBY COLLECTOR #32

KIRBY COLLECTOR #33

KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #46

KIRBY COLLECTOR #47

KIRBY COLLECTOR #48

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

KIRBY’S TWILIGHT YEARS (1978-94)!

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

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

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

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

KIRBY/LARSEN and KIRBY/TIMM covers!

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

Kirby cover inked by MATT WAGNER!

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

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

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

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

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

KIRBY COLLECTOR #34

KIRBY COLLECTOR #35

KIRBY COLLECTOR #36

KIRBY COLLECTOR #37

KIRBY COLLECTOR #38

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

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

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

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

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

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

Two UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #39

KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

KIRBY COLLECTOR #41

KIRBY COLLECTOR #42

KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

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

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

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

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

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

For its 50th issue, the publication that started TwoMorrows presents KIRBY FIVE-OH!, a BOOK covering the best of everything from Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular KIRBY COLLECTOR columnists have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 1938-1987! The BEST COVERS from each decade!

Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre. This TABLOIDSIZED TRADE PAPERBACK features a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, helping make this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! Takes the place of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50.

(168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: FEB084186

KIRBY COLLECTOR #54

KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

KIRBY COLLECTOR #51

KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

Bombastic EVERYTHING GOES issue, with a wealth of great submissions that couldn’t be pigeonholed into a “theme” issue!

Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JIM LEE and ADAM HUGHES, MARK EVANIER’s column, huge pencil art galleries, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS, and more!

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #56

KIRBY COLLECTOR #57

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

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

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

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

“Legendary Kirby”—how Jack put his spin on classic folklore! TONY ISABELLA on SATAN’S SIX (with Kirby’s unseen layouts), Biblical inspirations of DEVIL DINOSAUR, THOR through the eyes of mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, pencil art from ETERNALS, DEMON, NEW GODS, THOR, and Jack’s ATLAS cover!

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www.kirbymuseum.org Kirby Museum at three New York Metro events!

Since our last newsletter, the Kirby Museum has appeared at the New York Comic-Con and the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. The Museum’s scanning project, the Original Art Digital Archive, also set up at Comic Art Con in Secaucus, New Jersey.

Dan Gallo and Joe Veteri’s Comic Art Con in Secaucus features only comic art, and Bechara Maalouf once again graciously offered Tom Kraft space for a scanner at his table at the show. Rand Hoppe attended as well, and we scanned thirty-seven Kirby pieces for the OADA. Many are featured on Tom’s amazing WhatIfKirby.com site.

At NYC’s Javits Center in mid-October, the Museum shared a booth with Montilla Pictures’ Andy Cooke. We had a video projector set up that alternated between Montilla’s “Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist”, which was newly available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and various archival footage of Jack Kirby. NYCC also saw the debut of the first edition of the Museum’s small SPQR Portfolio, containing Kirby’s Julius Caesar costume designs. In addition to my scanner being at the Museum’s booth on one side of the large space, Tom Kraft was set up at Bechara Maalouf’s booth on the other side. Many wonderful pieces were scanned for the Original Art Digital Archive, including the cover to Forever People #1, thanks to Joe and Nadia Mannarino, and a colored spread from Boys’ Ranch thanks to Pete Koch. We met a lot of wonderful Kirby (and Eisner) fans, of course!

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival was held in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in early December, where the Museum was next to Jason Little, Gary Lieb, Doug Allen and Charles Burns. Since admission to the show was free, and the tables were curated (available by invitation only) by organizers Dan Nadel (Picturebox), Bill Kartapolous and Gabe Fowler (Desert Island), the BCGF was a unique and thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding festival.

Newsletter TJKC Edition Spring 2011 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

Board of Trustees Randolph Hoppe rhoppe@kirbymuseum.org David Schwartz Tom Kraft John Morrow twomorrow@aol.com All characters TM ©2011 respective owners.

2011 Plans Tom Kraft will be at Wondercon with his trusty scanner at Bechara’s booth (#1015). If you’re planning to attend and have some great Kirby original art, bring it by!

E-mail the Museum or Tom, or look for “Nostalgic Investments” in the program.

The Museum’s also planning booths and events for Miami’s Supercon in early July and at San Diego’s Comic-Con: International in late July. Stay tuned to our website/Google Group/Twitter/ Facebook for details as they emerge.

These pieces were scanned from a stapled photocopy of a 25-page presentation gifted to the Museum

by Greg Theakston.

Produced by Kirby and cartoon writer Ted Pedersen, the document, entitled Three Presentations, included “Prester John” with these two illustrations, “Raam” with the illustrations shown in this issue of TJKC, and “Time Diver”, which did not include Kirby art.

Peter Buxton, Melvin Shelton, Kasra Ghanbari, Tom Brevoort, Philip Miller, Bill Kruse, George Khoury, Tod Seisser, Scott Rowland, Lois Dilivio & Fred Snyder, and Mitch Jomsky.

Questions about membership? New e-mail address? E-mail membership@kirbymuseum.org The Kirby Museum would also like to thank these people for their generosity: Matt Brendzel, Andrew Denton, Joseph Sowinski, Alex Jay, Margaret Kranz, Claire Kranz, William Vila, John O’Toole, and our Board Members, of course!

Log on to see examples of Kirby pencil pages, and join the Museum to get access to even more exclusive, members-only art!

Annual Membership with one of these posters: $40*

Membership News The Kirby Museum welcomes its new members and thanks renewing members for their continued support: Bernard Brannigan, Christopher Horan, Adam McGovern, Jose Medina, Dusty Miller, Steve Coates, Garry Fehily, Scott Schaefer, Keren Form, Eric Hetherington, John Coyne, Gary Pannucci, Antonio Iriarte, Ray Owens, David Schwartz, Lawrence Maher, Richard Pineros, Don Rhoden, Christopher Harder,

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*

*Please add $10 for memberships outside the US, to cover additional postage costs.

Posters come “as-is” and may not be in mint condition.

Marvel—14” x 23”

Galactic Head— 18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation—24” x 18” color

Collector

Comments

Send letters to: THe JaCk kIRBY COlleCTOR c/o Twomorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown drive • Raleigh, nC 27614 e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com If your letter is unfinished, send it anyway, and we’ll complete it for you.

[We’re tight for space this issue, so only one page of letters. Let’s get to it, with limited commercial interruption!]

Back in 1972, Dave Cockrum designed a new TRex model that was produced and sold soon after. It was mostly molded in red plastic. When you hold a model in your hand you are essentially holding a Devil Dinosaur model. I can imagine Jack doing the same thing and having a light bulb go on.

Michael Ryan, Cleveland, OH

(If you’re viewing the Digital Edition of this issue, you can see the above T-Rex model is bright red; sure looks like DD to me!)

I spoke to you on the phone months ago and related my story to you about my correspondence with Jack Kirby. I was the one that he sent a personalized sketch of Kamandi as well as a letter which included a questionnaire that he filled out, answered and returned. This was about the time of his ending of the Fourth World saga and expressed a lot of his thoughts at the time that were very revealing. It was similar to what was featured in KIRBY COLLECTOR #55. Is there anyway you could mention it in your column to see if it might have turned up in a private collection? I was only 12 at the time, but it was my most cherished possession for a long while. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I’m a Kirby fan and a regular reader, but I’m not a letter writer. However, I had to write after picking up the latest KIRBY COLLECTOR while I’m on a business trip here in the States. The “Casting Call,” in particular, was superb! Orson Welles as Odin! Robert Redford as Captain America!

Superb! And of course, Guy Williams would’ve been sensational in the mid-1960s as Tony Stark/Iron Man! Great job by the casting department of Jerry Boyd and associates. The rest of the issue was outstanding! Please keep up the good work, and I wouldn’t mind more of the Kirby-Hollywood connections in another issue.

Leo Souza, UNITED KINGDOM I have just finished reading your article entitled “Casting Call At Kingfilms Productions.” I found this to be a very entertaining article. Some of your casting ideas where quite good—Lorne Greene as Highfather and Linda Carter as Big Barda, for example. However, you completely missed the boat on your casting for Reed Richards. Robert Horton? Really? Since I was a little kid, I always felt that Russell Johnson (The Professor on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND) was the perfect chose. Grey up the temples and he looks just like Mr. Fantastic. Today you’d have to use George Clooney; right age and looks. Ioan Griffin was too young. By the way, Lee J. Cobb as “Thunderbolt” Ross? Perfect.

J. Bjorklund, Connecticut (And now a word from the gent that wrote that great Casting Call article:)

(See the JACK KIRBY MUSEUM NEWSLETTER on the opposite page for details and art from one of Ted Pedersen’s presentations with Jack.)

#56 Credits: John morrow, Editor/Designer lily morrow, Scanning John morrow, Proofreader Rand Hoppe, Webmaster Tom ziuko, Colorist Chris Fama, Art Restoration SPeCIal THankS TO all OuR COnTRIBuTORS: Barry Alfonso • Jerry Boyd Dwight Boyd • Peter Burke Kurt Busiek • Jon B. Cooke Jean Depelley • Mark Evanier Chris Fama • Shane Foley Barry Forshaw Roger Freedman • Mike Gartland David Hamilton • Chrissie Harper Rand Hoppe • Sean Kleefeld Peter Koch • Tom Kraft Paul Kupperberg • Paul Levine William R. Lund • Bechara Maalouf Reed Man • Adam McGovern Bill Mumy • Michael Netzer Chris Ng • Nostalgic Investments Steve Robertson • Alex Ross Mike Royer • Joe Rybandt Steve Saffel • David Schwartz Scott Shaw! • Steve Sherman Greg Theakston Mike Thibodeaux • Mike Towry Marv Wolfman • Curtis Wong Ray Wyman • Tom Ziuko and of course The Kirby Estate If we’ve forgotten anyone, please let us know!

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I would like to point out that the “unused” Warfront cover in TJKC #55, page 60 was actually the printed cover of WARFRONT #28, dated January 1956 (and what a great cover at that!).

Bret Mixon, Los Angeles, CA

I guess I wasn’t clear about my caption in the Hollywood issue about Turpin being based on Jack’s look. I was referring to the Turpin in TJKC #16, page 61. The ‘character design’ favored Kirby.

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. Now get writing, and send us copies of your art!

GOT a THeme Idea?

PleaSe wRITe uS!

And for anyone who enjoyed my Casting Call (and wanted more), here are two others I cut because of space considerations: Van Williams (TV’s Green Hornet) as Private Strong, and Vince Edwards (Ben Casey on TV) as Unus, the Untouchable.

Jerry Boyd, Torrance, CA

I’ve also attached a Photoshop file with the drawing of Ajax from TJKC #55 which I colored myself. Kirby’s art inspired and continues to inspire me even today through your great achievements.

Earl Dickens, Toledo, OH

several pieces for CENTURIONS and some of my other projects.

“In regards to CENTURIONS, I was on staff at Ruby-Spears at the time and Kenner Toys was developing a new CENTURIONS toy line and they asked us to create a TV series. I created the show and ended up being story editor and associate producer on the series. Jack did much of the background art for the presentation. The show was sold in syndication. None of the artists, including Jack, got screen credits.”

Shaun Clancy, Kenmore, WA

Ted Pedersen was the writer that lived next to Jack Kirby in the 1970s. Ted passed away last year, but he did write me the following in two emails that I condensed into this short piece: TED: “Jack Kirby was my writing partner’s neighbor in Thousand Oaks, which was where I first met him. Jack did some original drawings and I tried to pitch a series with him and my good friend, science-fiction author Jack Vance. CBS was interested but never bought it. I introduced Jack to Ruby-Spears where he worked for several years mainly doing art to sell series. He did

neXT ISSue: #57’s “Legendary Kirby”— how Kirby put his own spin on classic folklore to immortalize it in the comics realm, with TONY ISABELLA on SATAN’S SIX (with Kirby’s unseen layouts), Biblical inspirations behind DEVIL DINOSAUR, THOR through the eyes of mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, how the JFK Conspiracy affected Jack, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, a rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, pencil art galleries from ETERNALS, DEMON, NEW GODS, THOR, and more, behind Jack’s original ATLAS cover! The deadline for contributions is May 1 and it ships in July 2011!

COmInG In TJkC #58: “STan lee & JaCk kIRBY: THe wOndeR YeaRS” (128 page tabloid-size Trade Paperback, $19.95 cover price) This book traces both Lee and Kirby's history at Marvel Comics, and the remarkable series of events and career choices that led them to converge in 1961 to conceive the Fantastic Four. It also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with plenty of Kirby art, plus previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby's working relationship, and their eventual parting of ways in 1970. Written by TJKC contributor Mark Alexander.

79

Parting Shot

80

The cover of Soul Love #1 features Kirby inks and washes, and as Jack stated, it was the first and best (and only) of its kind.

Love it or hate it, who else in 1971 but Kirby could’ve dreamed up such a concept, and risked presenting these kinds of gripping, man-woman relationships? Art ©2011 Jack Kirby Estate.

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DRAW! #21

Discover the world of stop-motion LEGO FILMS, with brickfilmer DAVID PAGANO and others spotlighting LEGO filmmaking, a look at the history of the medium and its community, interviews with the makers of the films seen on the LEGO Club show and LEGO.com, and instructions on how to film and build puppets for brick flicks! Plus how to customize minifigures, event reports, step-by-step building instructions, and more!

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, design-inspired work, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews writer/ artist DEAN HASPIEL, TRACY BUTLER discusses how she produces “Lackadaisy“, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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STAN LEE UNIVERSE

CARMINE INFANTINO

SAL BUSCEMA

MATT BAKER

PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR

COMICS’ FAST & FURIOUS ARTIST

THE ART OF GLAMOUR

Shines a light on the life and career of the artistic and publishing visionary of DC Comics!

Explores the life and career of one of Marvel Comics’ most recognizable and dependable artists!

Biography of the talented master of 1940s “Good Girl” art, complete with color story reprints!

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The first dedicated book about the Golden Age publisher that spawned the modern-day “Freedom Fighters”, Plastic Man, and the Blackhawks!

Unlocks the secrets of Batman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, following the Dark Knight’s progression from 1960s camp to 1970s creature of the night!

EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE

THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE

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Fox Comics of the 1940s with art by BAKER, FINE, SIMON, KIRBY, TUSKA, FLETCHER HANKS, ALEX BLUM, and others! “Superman vs. Wonder Man” starring EISNER, IGER, MAYER, SIEGEL, and DONENFELD! Part I of an interview with JACK MENDELSOHN, plus FCA, Comic Fandom Archive, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by SpiderMan artist DAVE WILLIAMS!

Spotlight on Green Lantern creators MART NODELL and BILL FINGER in the 1940s, and JOHN BROOME, GIL KANE, and JULIUS SCHWARTZ in 1959! Rare GL artwork by INFANTINO, REINMAN, HASEN, NEAL ADAMS, and others! Plus JACK MENDELSOHN Part II, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by GIL KANE & TERRY AUSTIN, and MART NODELL!

The early career of comics writer STEVE ENGLEHART: Defenders, Captain America, Master of Kung Fu, The Beast, Mantis, and more, with rare art and artifacts by SAL BUSCEMA, STARLIN, SUTTON, HECK, BROWN, and others. Plus, JIM AMASH interviews early artist GEORGE MANDEL (Captain Midnight, The Woman in Red, Blue Bolt, Black Marvel, etc.), FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and more!

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and the birth of Marvel Comics! New, never-before-published STAN LEE interview, art and artifacts

by KIRBY, DITKO, SINNOTT, AYERS, THOMAS, and secrets behind the Marvel Mythos! Also: JIM AMASH interviews 1940s Timely editor AL SULMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and a new cover by FRENZ and SINNOTT!

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MARVEL COMICS

AGE OF TV HEROES

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Covers how Stan Lee went from writer to publisher, Jack Kirby left (and returned), Roy Thomas rose as editor, and a new wave of writers and artists came in!

Examining the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes, featuring the in-depth stories of the shows’ actors and behind-the-scenes players!

20+ volumes with in-depth interviews, plus extensive galleries of rare and unseen art from the artist’s files!

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

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Shows step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and art, to printing and distribution!

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IN THE 1970s

BACK ISSUE #47

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(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Thrilling Days of Yesteryear!” The final DAVE STEVENS interview, Rocketeer film discussion with DANNY BILSON and PAUL DeMEO, The Phantom, Indiana Jones, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ heroes, Dominic Fortune, Sherlock Holmes, Man-God, Miracle Squad, 3-D Man, Justice, Inc., APARO, CHAYKIN, CLAREMONT, MILLER, VERHEIDEN, and more, Rocketeer cover by DAVE STEVENS!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Dead Heroes”! JIM (“Death of Captain Marvel”) STARLIN interview, Deadman after Neal Adams, Jason Todd Robin, the death and resurrection of the Flash, Elektra, the many deaths of Aunt May, art by and/or commentary from APARO, BATES, CONWAY, GARCIA-LOPEZ, GEOFF JOHNS, MILLER, WOLFMAN, and a cosmically cool cover by JIM STARLIN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “1970s Time Capsule”! Examines relevance in comics, Planet of the Apes, DC Salutes the Bicentennial, Richard Dragon–Kung-Fu Fighter, FOOM, Amazing World of DC, Fast Willie Jackson, Marvel Comics calendars, art and commentary from ADAMS, BRUNNER, GIORDANO, LARKIN, LEVITZ, MAGGIN, MOENCH, O’NEIL, PLOOG, STERANKO, cover by BUCKLER and BEATTY!

Special 50th Anniversary FULL-COLOR issue ($8.95 price) on “Batman in the Bronze Age!” O’NEIL, ADAMS, and LEVITZ roundtable, praise for “unsung” Batman creators JIM APARO, DAVID V. REED, BOB BROWN, ERNIE CHAN, and JOHN CALNAN, Joker’s Daughter, Batman Family, Nocturna, Dark Knight, art and commentary from BYRNE, COLAN, CONWAY, MOENCH, MILLER, NEWTON, WEIN, and more. APARO cover!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “AllInterview Issue”! Part 2 of an exclusive STEVE ENGLEHART interview (continued from ALTER EGO #103)! “Pro2Pro” interviews between SIMONSON & LARSEN, MOENCH & WEIN, and comics letterers KLEIN & CHIANG. Plus JOHN OSTRANDER, MICHAEL USLAN, and longtime DC color artist ADRIENNE ROY! Cover by Englehart collaborator MARSHALL ROGERS!

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IMAGE COMICS

All characters TM & ©2011 their respective owners.

ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL (AE #100)

A/E celebrates 100 issues, and 50 years, of ALTER EGO magazine in a double-size BOOK! ROY THOMAS interviewed by JIM AMASH about ALL-STAR SQUADRON, INFINITY, INC., ARAK, other DC work, and more! Art by PÉREZ, McFARLANE, BUCKLER, ORDWAY, MACHLAN, GIL KANE, COLAN, GIORDANO, and more, plus Mr. Monster, FCA, BUCKLER/ORDWAY cover!

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