Jack Kirby Collector #69

All characters TM & © Simon & Kirby Estates.

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #69 FALL 2016

$10.95

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Contents PARTNERS! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (watch the company you keep) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 (Mr. Scarlet, frankly) START-UPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 (who was Jack’s first partner?)

C o l l e c t o r

ISSUE #69, FALL 2016

2016 EISNER AWARDS NOMINEE: BEST COMICS-RELATED PERIODICAL

PROSPEAK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 (Steve Sherman, Mike Royer, Joe Sinnott, & Lisa Kirby discuss Jack) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 (Kirby + Wood = Evolution) FANSPEAK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 (a select group of Kirby fans parse the Marvel settlement) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . . . .29 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 (Kirby sees all!)

CLASSICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 (a Timely pair of editors are interviewed) RE-PAIRINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 (Marvel-ous cover recreations) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 (some Kirby odd couplings) INPRINT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 (packaging Jack) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 (Jack & Roz—partners for life) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . .60 (Sandman & Sandy revamped) OPTIKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 (Jack in 3-D Land) SCULPTED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 (the Glenn Kolleda incident) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 (Mark Evanier moderates the 2016 Comic-Con Tribute Panel, with Kevin Eastman, Ray Wyman Jr., Scott Dunbier, and Paul Levine) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . .92 (as a former jazz bass player, the editor of this mag was blown away by the Sonny Rollins letter...)

PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94 (never trust a dwarf with a cannon) Cover inks: JOE SINNOTT from Kirby Unleashed Cover color: TOM ZIUKO If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

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Direct from Roz Kirby’s sketchbook, here’s a team of partners that holds a warm place in our hearts—the Boy Explorers.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 23, No. 69, Fall 2016. Published more or less quarterly by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher.

Single issues: $14 postpaid US ($18 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $45 Economy US, $58 Expedited US, $67 International. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate.

First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912

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COPYRIGHTS: Blue Bolt, Boy Explorers, Boys' Ranch, Captain 3-D, Fighting American & Speedboy, Race For The Moon, Strange World of Your Dreams, Stuntman TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Incredible Science-Fiction TM & © EC Comics • Space Ghost TM & © Hanna-Barbera • Johnny Reb & Billy Yank TM & © New York Herald Tribune, Inc. • Abdul Jones, Battle For A Three Dimensional World, Beast Rider, Galactic Bounty Hunters, Jacob & The Angel, Lone Rider, Micro-Car, Secret City Saga, Silver Star, Sky Masters, Socko the Seadog • Batman & Robin, Blue Beetle, Boy Commandos, Challengers of the Unknown, Darkseid, Demon, Dingbats of Danger Street, Dubbilex, Flash, Forever People, Goody Rickles, Green Arrow, Guardian, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, OMAC, Mister Miracle, Mr. Scarlet & Pinky, Newsboy Legion, Oberon, Orion, Sandman, Sandman & Sandy, Shazam, Super Friends, Super Powers, Superman, Tales of the Unexpected, The Losers TM & © DC Comics • Avengers, Black Musketeers, Black Panther, Captain America & Bucky, Daredevil, Devil Dinosaur, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Hulk, Hulk, Iron Man, Machine Man, Mad Thinker, Mole Man, Moonboy, Odin, Rawhide Kid, Red Skull, Sandman (villain), SHIELD, Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner, Taboo, The Nightmare, Thing, Thor, Warriors Three, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Opening Shot

The Company You Keep by editor John Morrow

hey saw you’re judged by the company you keep. So this issue, I’m focusing on Jack Kirby’s partners, collaborators, and close associates. While Stan Lee and Joe Simon immediately spring to mind (and both are discussed in this issue), it goes way deeper than that.

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Jack was a solitary creator, preferring to be left alone to let the myriad ideas in his brain materialize through his pencil, onto paper, in collage, and via watercolors. But he was directly or indirectly “partners” with every writer, editor, inker, and publisher he worked for or with. I’ve tried to represent as many of Jack’s artistic collaborators as possible this issue, including Joe Sinnott, Mike Royer, Mark Evanier, Steve Sherman, Dick Ayers, Chic Stone, Stan Goldberg, Mike Thibodeaux, Wallace Wood, Martin Goodman, Frank Giacoia, Ray Wyman Jr., and even daughter Lisa Kirby.

Not to be forgotten are Jack’s fans, who through their dedication to Jack and his work, are de facto collaborators.

Some have gone on to work with Jack in a professional capacity, both while he was alive, and posthumously. Ray Zone and Glenn Kolleda both worked with Jack on projects near the end of his career, and sadly, both are no longer with us—but we’ve got the stories of their work with Jack here.

Fan collaborations continue today, through the work of the Jack Kirby Museum, and this very publication.

Jack’s publishers are represented here as well, from Marvel and DC, to Topps and animation studios like DePatie-Freleng and Ruby-Spears. Some of those collaborations went really, really well. Others... well, no partnership’s complete without some drama, and Jack’s sure had their share.

While Stan and Joe are probably Jack’s foremost creative collaborators in people’s minds, you can’t sell Roz Kirby’s contributions to Jack’s oeuvre short. Without her, it all would’ve

fallen apart for Jack, and we’re delighted to feature her in an interview this issue too.

Throughout this issue, I’ll also endeavor to show plenty of examples of Jack’s characters that were “partners,” from Fighting American & Speedboy (don’t you just love our cover image?), Captain America & the Falcon, Sandman & Sandy, Batman & Robin (don’t forget Super Powers!), the Forever People—and my personal favorites, the Newsboy Legion and the Dingbats of Danger Street!

To get started, let’s take a look at the early foundations of Jack’s work, at a company most people don’t think of when considering Kirby’s history: Fawcett Publications.

Knowledgeable scholars recognize that Jack drew one of the Big Red Cheese’s first outings in Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (1941, detail at left). But many forget Jack also drew the first appearance of Mr. Scarlet in Wow Comics #1 that same year.

While he was created by Ed Herron and Kirby, his partner Pinky the Whiz Kid didn’t come along till later (in Wow #4, above). Still, I felt this story perfectly fit the bill for our “Foundations” feature this issue. Special thanks to Harry Mendryk for supplying the raw scans for us—and to you, dear readers, for partnering with us for 23 years and counting.

And here’s to my own life partner of thirty years (as of this January 16), my wife Pam. Like Jack’s work, you just get better every year. ★ 2

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Kirby’s First Partner?

Start-Ups

Bob Farrell’s role in Kirby’s development examined, by Jean Depelley (below) Some of the “teaser” strips Jack did for Lone Rider. (next page, top) Comicscope ad from Daring Mystery Comics #7 (April 1941). Farrell and Victor Fox would’ve gotten this image of Cap and Bucky at least a month before Captain America Comics #1 hit the stands. (next page, bottom) Blue Beetle 1/15/40 strip by Kirby, under the house name “Charles Nicholas.”

e know that between late 1937 and July 1938, while Jack was working for Eisner & Iger’s Universal Phoenix sweat shop, he was also searching for publishers and syndicates—to finally succeed with Associated Features Syndicate in 1939, where he drew The Lone Rider strip. Knowing Jack’s lack of ability to communicate with publishers, how did he end up at Fox in early 1940? It appears someone helped him.

After leaving the Max Fleischer Studio in early 1937, Jacob Kurtzberg was still working for the Lincoln Syndicate. In late 1937, he showed his portfolio and got a job at Eisner & Iger’s Universal Phoenix Syndicate, at the corner of Madison Avenue and 40th Street.

At Universal Phoenix, while producing Diary of Dr. Hayward, The Count of Monte Cristo and the western Wilton of the West, Jack was to meet a freelance writer who must have had a great impact on him. His name was Bob Farrell. The man was educated, confident, and

determined to be rapidly successful. Our 21-year-old artist was hooked.

Born Izzy Katz in 1908, Farrell was a former attorney, as Joe Simon writes in his Comic Book Makers book. Actually, Farrell had to stop his studies in Law, as his father lost his job. He started a new career as a freelance writer, scripting for Eisner & Iger. But he was ambitious enough to consider launching his own syndicate, which he was to do in 1938 with Associated Feature Syndicate (according to Ron Goulart’s The Funnies). And he likely dragged Kirby along with him—probably thanks to his work on Wilton of the West, Jack followed Bob Farrell and left the Eisner & Iger Studio in July 1938.

He signed with Associated Features Syndicate and, under the pen name Lance Kirby, started the Lone Rider western series, which was to grace newspapers’ comics sections starting January 3, 1939. The strip was sold to a limited number of newspapers. After six “teaser” strips, it started in earnest on January 8, scripted by Robert W. Farrell (who also wrote the Yankee Girl comic strips for his syndicate).

A few weeks later, on February 18, 1939, Jack lost his assignment on Lone Rider, as Farrell preferred young Frank Robbins’ art to his. Robbins would eventually leave the art one month later (the equivalent of 24 strips) to the mediocre Geo Brousek.

Jack’s involvement on the Lone Rider could have ended there, but the strips were collected and published six months later (retitled Lightning and the Lone Rider, certainly to avoid problems with The Lone Ranger’s copyright holders) in Easter Color’s Famous Funnies, successfully sold to the comic book publisher by Bob Farrell. The series was published in colors, two pages with four strips per issue, starting with issue #61 (August 1939). Kirby’s daily strips were reprinted up through #66, followed by Robbins’ (but Brousek’s strips seems to have been ignored). It’s worth noting that Famous Funnies publisher Max Gaines had Kirby’s zip-atone removed along with the coloring, damaging the art in the process.

Quite surprisingly, Jack was given the opportunity to continue his adventure strip in early 1940, from issue #72-76 of Famous Funnies, with nine full-pages of beautiful new art, having Lightning and the Lone Rider redirected toward science-fiction, with weird Doctor Chuida from an ancient race, one of the first (if not the first) big-headed Kirby characters. Then, with no explanation, the series was discontinued, Jack’s workload at Timely Comics at that time being the most likely cause.

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But let’s go back to early ’39 and to a disappointed Jacob Kurtzberg, dismissed from Lone Rider and still looking for a job…

In a 1976 interview in Italy, reprinted in TJKC #48, Jack stated: “I did assist Frank Robbins for a while, doing Scorchy Smith, in which I wrote and drew several sequences.” The Jack Kirby Checklist Gold Edition (p. 86) 10

states that Jack ghosted the Johnny Hazard series for six weeks in 1956 for Robbins.

Assuming Jack didn’t confuse 1939’s Scorchy with 1956’s Hazard, it’s possible that to make amends for his dismissal, Bob Farrell had Jack assist Frank Robbins on their new venture at Associated Press Newsfeatures: the continuation of popular adventure strip Scorchy Smith.

Created in 1930 by John Terry, and popularized from 1933 to 1936 by the great Noel Sickles, Scorchy Smith was continued by Bert Christman (up to his being drafted in 1938) and by artist Howell Dodd and writer Frank Reilly. In February 1939, Bob Farrell and Frank Robbins were assigned the strip, which was to start in May. But Robbins was probably busy with The Lone Rider and might’ve needed some help (which he’d eventually have with Brousek replacing him). Thus, Jack may’ve been working again, ghosting Scorchy Smith for several months in Robbins’ ritzy Manhattan apartment.

It’s inconclusive, but based on American Comic Archive’s Big Fun Comics #6-7 reprint, we’d guess that Jack stayed about six months on the series, before giving it back to Robbins— starting on May 22, 1939, with Kirby’s last strip being November 30.

Robbins didn’t sign the strips before January 1, 1940, so Jack could’ve continued as a layout artist through December 1939. But whether or not Kirby is there, it’s difficult to say with certainty—the art bears very little resemblance to Jack’s other work of that time period.

1940, still signing under the “Charles Nicholas” house name, marking his first occasion to draw a real superhero. Jack was to write, draw and ink the strip till March 9, 1940. But the series didn’t turn out to be a success—the only recorded newspaper having purchased it being the Boston Evening Transcript—and the strip was eventually given to Louis Cazeneuve before its termination in November 1940.

Fox was looking for an editor for his new line of comic books, and found Joe Simon thanks to a newspaper ad. Jack met Joe in February 1940, and a strong friendship started. Simon was to favorably replace Farrell as Jack’s new coach and associate. Simon left Fox in April 1940, soon to be followed by Kirby, and the rest is history…

So Farrell seems to have played a key role, coaching Kirby at the beginning of his career in the late ’30s, despite the fact that no testimony from Jack nor anyone has been found to support this theory.

POSTSCRIPT After Kirby’s departure with Joe to Timely, Farrell and Fox started Comicscope, selling cardboard cameras and paper films of super-heroes strips. For their ads in Timely comics, they ran an early image of Cap and Bucky, and a description of the pair, before the release of Cap #1—helping a competitor rip-off Cap. See Harry Mendryk’s account of the story: http://kirbymuseum.org/ blogs/simonandkirby/archives/category/topic/comicscope At the same time, Farrell was still freelancing for the Iger studio (signing his scripts Bob Farrow or Bob Lerraf ), even though Iger and Fox were not particularly good friends. Farrell left Fox in 1944 to start Four-Star Publications and publish Captain Flight Comics. After its bankruptcy in 1947, he came back to comic books in 1951 with Farrell Publications and produced 26 issues of The Lone Rider, the hero he started his career with, this time with artist Jack Kamen. In 1954, under the Ajax imprint, he relaunched the super-hero Black Cobra and the famous Fox characters Blue Beetle, Samson, Phantom Lady, and Wonder Boy, before ceasing his activity in 1958. At that time, he offered to have Joe Simon handle the Brooklyn Eagle’s comics section, which he wanted to relaunch. In 1966, Farrell associated with Myron Fass and started Eerie Publications, a trend-follower of the Warren publications, flooding the market with the black-&-white horror magazines Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Weird, and Tales from the Tomb.

As far as Jack was concerned, he was to meet Frank Robbins again, but only two decades later, in the late ’50s, ghosting the Johnny Hazard Sunday Pages. ★

It looks like Robert Farrell’s influence on Jack’s early career didn’t end here. At that time, the man seemed to be more interested in making good money as a publisher. He dropped Scorchy Smith seven months after, leaving it entirely to Robbins.

In October 1939, Farrell associated with Victor Fox to start Fox Publishing, located on Lexington Avenue in the same building as DC Comics. And in late 1939, Kirby was employed there as a staff artist.

The connection seems obvious!

Fox already published Wonderworld Comics, Mystery Men, and Fantastic Comics. Jack was first employed at the workshop, along with young Charles Nicholas Wojtkowski, laying out and producing advertising pages for $15 a week, and getting bored with it!

Fox then decided to diversify his activities to other media: comic strips and radio programs. He rapidly searched among his staff for the proper artist for a Blue Beetle daily strip (a superhero concurrently published in Mystery Men), only to find Charles Nicholas. After his unconvincing debut on January 8, 1940, the series was quickly handed to Jack. Farrell couldn’t ignore Kirby’s skill and experience in the field. Jack started the strip on January 15,

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Kirby’s Fab Four

PROSPEAK

Close Kirby associates interviewed by Jon B. Cooke

(below) We used the below Superman pencil drawing as the cover of TJKC #31 (our first tabloid-size issue), with inks by Neal Adams. In 2009, Joe Sinnott took a shot at it for a fan. oe says, “I felt Jack made the arms a little short as he ran out of drawing room,” so he slightly altered it. (next page) A stat of the pencils from Jimmy Olsen #139, page 22.

ince this issue focuses on Jack’s partners, collaborators, and close associates, we sought out some reflections from his inkers, an assistant, and even Jack’s own daughter:

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• Joe Sinnott (most acclaimed inker from Jack’s 1960s Marvel era) • Mike Royer (prolific inker who tackled most of Jack’s 1970s DC work) • Steve Sherman (Jack’s assistant at DC Comics in the 1970s) • Lisa Kirby (Jack’s youngest daughter, and executor of the Kirby Estate) Jack was famously known to have the stories virtually “flow” from his pencils. In your experience, was it to the work’s benefit for the King to work in collaboration with someone, or go it solo?

MIKE ROYER: It is my concerted opinion that Jack’s best work happened when he was left to his own creative instincts. Solo!

STEVE SHERMAN: I don’t think Jack needed anyone’s help. Given enough time, he could have inked and colored his own work. But with the amount of pages he needed to turn out to make a decent living, other hands were necessary. I know that on Sky Masters, Jack was more than willing to accept the Wood brothers’ input.

In fact, he would hunt them down to get the scripts.

After a while it became such a chore that writing the strip himself was so much easier, even though the Wood brothers still received credit as writers. I guess it depends on how you look at. If you want pure Kirby, then his ’70s DC work is the best example. If you prefer Jack with a collaborator, then ’60s Marvel is the finest example.

JOE SINNOTT: Jack certainly had to work with a good inker, one who was also a good artist, because as great a penciler that Jack was, he really was not a good inker.

His work suffered if he were to ink his own pencils.

Can you share any specific incidences where your suggestions, direction, or input (creatively or editorially) made it into the stories?

ROYER: Hate to disappoint you on this one. I never ever suggested anything to Jack; however, without him being aware of it there were a couple times when I added a word or two so that the meaning was perfectly clear. Example: Jack, Roz and I had lunch at the Copper Penny restaurant that used to be across the street from the Warner Brothers bungalows in Burbank, after I went on staff at Disney. He wanted me to ink Silver Star. At lunch he proceeded to tell me the story of Silver Star. I thought at the time, gawd, this is a hell of a lot of story for

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one issue. I was mistaken. He told me what would be in all six issues of the run. It was all done in his head. So, when he wrote/drew the pages, he and his wife/editor knew the story inside out. Well, I was slightly confused while lettering a couple times and added a word or two here and there to clarify something, and Jack and Roz never noticed. Shoot, they knew the story every which way but loose, so it didn’t stand out that I’d done a couple of minor things when they looked over the completed book. When people say Jack shouldn’t have edited himself, I think they’re off-base. All Jack needed was once in a blue moon for someone to ask, “Did you mean...?”

have to worry about plot or pacing. Writing the dialogue for all of the books, brought a cohesiveness to the Marvel Universe. Whether or not it matched Jack’s intentions is a whole ’nother matter.

ROYER: From the evidence of Jack’s margin notes that have survived, his work would have retained all of his intent before Stan justified his role as an editor by writing whatever he thought would be cool.

Stan was a great “snake oil salesman.” I mean that in the most complimentary way. His “arthur” at selling Marvel to the comic buying

SHERMAN: After all these years it’s hard to remember much. I do know that Mark [Evanier] and I contributed to the Jimmy Olsen stories more than the other books. The infamous(?)

Don Rickles issue was from our suggestion. We also did a lot of work on the [Speak-Out Series] magazines. Had they continued, we would have been contributing a lot more. My contribution to Kamandi was Prince Tuftan.

There was also King Kobra and the issue of Kamandi about Superman. I’m sure there were some minor suggestions and input on other things, but nothing so important that I can remember.

SINNOTT: Early on during our collaboration I added quite a bit to Jack’s art, as I felt he didn’t draw things correctly. Over time, I realized that I was wrong in doing this. I gradually started inking more or less just like Kirby pencilled. He didn’t have to be tampered with, as his style was so unique.

LISA KIRBY: I can’t remember if any of my input made it into any of Dad’s stories, but my sister Susan had written a song that made it into an issue of Silver Star. Sue is a talented singer/songwriter. When I was younger she wrote a “Birthday Song” for me. It was really beautiful and touching. Dad loved it and included it in the book.

In your estimation, after years of associating with Stan Lee on all the great 1960s Marvel stories, did Jack Kirby ever need collaborators?

SHERMAN: No. He didn’t need them. However, I think Stan was able to bring a certain unity to all of the stories because he didn’t 13

public worked a great deal of magic.

But, I guess that wasn’t enough for him. This is just one man’s opinion... I think Jack should have been left alone.

SINNOTT: Here again, he needed collaboration only on his inks—his great pencils wouldn’t have materialized into the outstanding finished art without a great inker.

In your personal dealings with Jack, did you learn anything from the man’s storytelling from your association with him?

ROYER: Nuts and bolts I don’t remember.

Personal stuff I do.

When I worked with/for Jack Kirby I was treated like part of the family. I have fond memories of sitting at their kitchen table, eating Roz’s homemade chocolate cake, drinking a glass of milk, and talking with them about old movies. I would deliver the finished books to Jack two ways: (the old) Postal Special Delivery or in person. Many times my son or son and daughters would accompany me to Jack’s. While Jack and I went over the finished pages, we would occasionally look out the window to the left of Jack’s drawing board and watch my kids (all AAU competitive swimmers) 14

playing in the Kirby swimming pool. You know, it’s kinda funny now, when I think about it, but we didn’t really talk that much about the work. Jack knew I loved what he did and that I was doing my best to complete his statement. The only time he ever got after me was when I made Barda’s face a little (as I stupidly thought) prettier.

Never changed a face after that. He never noticed that once in a while I would slim her waist or ankles a tad bit.

The most important thing I learned from Jack Kirby was to never be afraid of a blank piece of paper.

Every drawing should be part of a (sometimes never seen) continuity. The best work I did in creating character art for Disney is because I had (metaphorically) Jack Kirby looking over my shoulder. I’m proud of the work I did for Disney and that’s because Jack “rubbed” off on me. I tried to be a “storyteller.” You don’t have to agree with me. It’s my opinion and I’m stuck with it.

SHERMAN: That’s a lot of ground to cover. I was a friend to Jack (and Roz) from 1968 till Roz’s passing in 1998. That’s 30 years. We went to the first San Diego Comic-Con together. I spent I don’t know how many Fourth of July gatherings at their home. I learned a lot from Jack. One was not to go into comics, unless you really, really had to do it. Storytelling, sure. I learned

about pacing, how to open a story and how to create situations. It’s only now that I realize what a fortunate experience it was. I knew it was special at the time, but I didn’t have the perspective that I do now.

SINNOTT: During all the years that I worked with Jack, I never once spoke to him about anything. We met briefly at the 1972 Phil Seuling NY Comic Con [right] and spent the entire weekend together at the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention.

What a great weekend! So I can honestly say that I really had no personal dealings in any other way with Jack.

LISA KIRBY: Growing up in a creative family, you hope to absorb some of the talent. Unfortunately, art was not something I was particularly good at. I did enjoy creative writing, whether it be short stories, poetry, or songs. I

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(opposite) Thor #162, page 19 pencils.

Colletta omitted a background figure in panel 1, and Thor in panel 2! (below) Unused animation concept.

unique. He was inspired by everything around him—but mostly people. Jack was fascinated by humanity and its highs and lows. And he always tried to be positive.

They say the mark of a good editor is to enlist the best talent and let them alone to a large degree to do their job.

Would you agree, particularly in regards to Jack’s work, as well as your own?

SINNOTT: No question about it—we certainly as artists knew more about our side of the business than the editors did.

ROYER: As far as Jack Kirby is concerned I wholeheartedly agree with your statement. As for me, I would never assume that I knew all I needed to know. I welcomed suggestions and valid criticism.

SHERMAN: In anything creative, it’s always nice to get a second opinion. Now in commercial artistic endeavors, such as comics, an editor is necessary. Someone has to be concerned with the marketing, sales and publisher’s demands. Jack was unique in that he had done it all. So with a Jack Kirby, yes it’s better to just let him do what he does best and work with it. As for me, no. The more input from others the better.

Especially with comedy.

A fine editor protects their freelancers from outside interference and gives them an abiding sense of security so they can produce their best work. In your opinion, as Roz Kirby took care of much of the mundane aspects of home life, would you consider that Roz was perhaps his finest collaborator?

ROYER: Absolutely! Jack was an amazing talent and the gods were smiling on him when he found and brought Roz into his life. She recognized what the man was capable of, and was there to make sure he was able to do it, to the best of her ability.

SHERMAN: Yes. Definitely.

What do you think Kirby gleaned from his most prominent partners— Joe Simon and Stan Lee? would like to also think I developed a good sense of humor from both my parents. They could be quite humorous at times.

ROYER: In the long (or short) run, who not to trust!

SINNOTT: I think Jack learned a great deal from Joe Simon and Stan Lee, especially Joe, who was a giant in all aspects of comics.

To what do you attribute the source of Kirby’s inspiration?

SHERMAN: I realize this makes me seem thin-skinned, but Jack only had two partners in his career—Joe Simon and Roz Kirby. Stan was never Jack’s partner. Stan was the editor of the line and Jack supplied the content. On his own. What Stan did with it once he got it was out of Jack’s hands. That said—Jack was in awe of Joe. He thought the world of Joe and they were the best of friends. Even though Joe could do everything Jack did, Joe quickly realized that Jack was better at it and that taking care of the business end of things made the team complete.

There was nothing to be gleaned from Stan Lee. Sorry.

SINNOTT: To his upbringing and environment in the Lower East Side slums—especially [for] his great[est] characters.

ROYER: His life, the experiences he had (and lived through), the people he knew and admired or disliked, etc. I think the reason Roz did all the driving is because Jack’s mind was working with all his life experiences all the time, developing visual stories that he felt would resonate with his readers. Jack lived one hell of a life. I believe that’s why we’ll never see his like again. He and many of his talented contemporaries lived in a time we will never experience, and their lives shaped their talent and desire to tell stories based on the “truths” they learned firsthand.

What was the greatest challenge in inking the King’s pencils?

SHERMAN: In every sense of the word, Jack was an artist. He was able to channel his experiences and imagination into something

ROYER: To be true to Jack’s pencils and not dilute it. My mantra was “Don’t screw this up, Pal!” 16

SINNOTT: I think, as I’ve said before, try not to put too much of your own style over Jack’s pencils, because only rarely did anything of his need to be fixed.

What were the greatest lessons you learned from being in such extended presence of Jack Kirby?

ROYER: As I said before... not to be afraid of a blank piece of paper. You might not think doing “bigfoot” storytelling could operate on the same principals of “realistic” but you’d be wrong. I did some pretty dynamic Mickey Mouse comic book stories because Jack was in my mind at all times. Storytelling... storytelling... be it a single frame or many pages. Make it “move” the reader/buyer. The Disney Stores sold a lot of my Winnie The Pooh products and I think it was because I touched the potential buyer in some way. Sorry... don’t mean to come off immodest.

SHERMAN: Never get into a position where you can’t walk away.

Jack made a good living doing comics but he could have made more doing something else. But he loved comics, loved working at home at his own hours. Comics afforded him that situation. But, he was also limited in where he could work. So, for him, it was either Marvel or DC. He could have done any job in animation once he moved to the West Coast and earned a lot more. But he would have had to go to an office every day, which he didn’t want.

I also learned about WWII, the Depression, New York in the ’30s and a lot more.

LISA KIRBY: I like to think my greatest lessons that I learned would be compassion and helping others. My dad was one of most caring people I know. He would open his door to anyone, and make them feel welcomed.

Did your creativity benefit from your association with Jack Kirby?

SHERMAN: Yes. So many things but most importantly, to ask “What if ”? That was Jack’s favorite question.

What if this was this instead of that? What if aliens landed on Earth? What if someone could split into three entities? One time he said to me, “You don’t have to come up with anything new. Just look at things from a different perspective.”

ROYER: I think I’ve answered that query. I don’t want

this to be the department of redundancy department. I benefited in untold ways!

SINNOTT: There isn’t anyone that didn’t benefit in some degree by working with Jack, or just studying his work—he was one of a kind, and there will never be another one like Jack Kirby.

LISA KIRBY: I believe it definitely helped. Dad encouraged my creativity and always made a effort to listen to a song I wrote, or read a story I had written. Later on in life I had the fun experience of working on a comic book series based on some of his characters that were never published. The Galactic Bounty Hunters came to life with the help of Mike Thibodeaux, Richard French, and Steve Robertson. I would like to think Dad would have gotten a kick out of me giving it a try! ★ 17

(these pages) Jack drew the piece at left in the 1960s, in his bound volume of 1940s Captain America Comics, and Mike Royer recently did the beautiful ink job presented above.

An ongoing examination of Kirby’s art and compositional skills

Kirby + Wood = Evolution ometime around 1954, work in the field of comic books began to grow scarce, even for the formerly lucrative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. When Simon became an editor for Harvey Publications, the two creators went their separate ways. Kirby struggled to find work, approaching the newspaper syndicates with proposals for strips. In 1956, he returned to work for National Periodicals, developing such ideas as Green Arrow and Challengers of the Unknown.

At some point following the break-up of the team, Jack Kirby’s style began to undergo a series of gradual changes that would alter the look of his figures and the design of his pages. Kirby’s heroes had always possessed a lithe sinewy and somewhat elongated musculature. Beginning somewhere in the mid to late fifties, Kirby’s artwork began to bulk up and to take on a more architecturally geometric quality. Coincidentally around this time, Kirby’s pencils were coupled with the embellishment of an inker of extraordinary skill who was a legendary draftsman in his own right. This was the remarkable Wallace Wood, who had honed his skills working with EC Comic’s groundbreaking storytelling company.

The unique partnership debuted on the aforementioned series Challengers of the Unknown, a concept often considered to be a forerunner of Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Kirby also soon realized his dream to pen a newspaper strip, one Sky Masters, which was also inked by Wood. Wally Wood is usually described as an intense workaholic who labored obsessively over his pages. In an article in The Comics Journal #197, author Bill Mason1 says this of Wood’s development as an artist: “The young Wood taught himself how to draw in a dashing, boldly exaggerated style which he gradually refined by adjusting the spatial relationships in his drawing, through an extremely laborious process of point to point navigation from one solid object to another.”

You can see in the intricacy of this cover from EC Comics’ Incredible Science Fiction #11 (left2) just what Mason is talking about. There is literally no space in this composition that is not being used to maximum advantage to showcase the complexity of the craft’s interior. Wood served in the Air Force as a Paratrooper, and was fascinated with the equipment he worked with, later incorporating its design into his sci-fi illustrations. Every shape in this drawing is meticulously and strategically placed around the figure and all are precisely rendered with dark and light almost perfectly balanced.

The ability to do this sort of spatial structuring is something that Wood had in common with Jack Kirby, who is generally regarded as someone who drew seemingly with no effort or preparation. This may be the case for the latter portion of his career, when he had more or less mastered his craft, but having seen some examples from his early swipe file, I believe that Kirby worked extensively on his depiction of reality. One notable example is Robert Riggs illustration that Kirby used for a cover for Police Trap #2 [see Jack Kirby Collector #38]. The figures that Kirby more or less copied, that are standing in a station house, show a serious concern with the young comic artist’s desire to master the

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of the description of Wood’s system of point-to-point navigation.

It is difficult to know to what degree these changes in Kirby’s work are due to Wood’s inking. Certainly, it is easy for an artist of Wood’s caliber to embellish surfaces such as machinery and add touches such as highlights to faces, but more seems to be happening here. Kirby appears to be composing his panels in anticipation of Wood’s inking because he knows what Wood does best.

This becomes even more apparent on the next feature that the two artists collaborated on, the newspaper strip, Sky Masters of the Space Force.5 Below is the strip’s debut panel, inked by Wood.

An invaluable artifact (see next page6) from that series gives us an incredible insight into the Kirby/Wood combination. There is a photostat of a page in process, inked partially by Wood with simply a pen outline. With this sample one can clearly see that Kirby did not spot blacks for his inker, preferring to leave these decisions for Wood to make.

There is ample evidence that Kirby sought out Wood as the

arrangement of deep space.

I believe that Kirby’s artistic collaboration with Wallace Wood on Challengers and Sky Masters had a profound effect on Kirby’s approach to his work. Wood’s obsession with the meticulous arrangement of spatial relationships reinforced a similar tendency in Kirby, who became for the next ten years increasingly more proficient at utilizing every object placed on his page to maximum compositional advantage.

I also believe that Wood’s mastery of black spotting affected Kirby’s perception of and use of dark and light in his pencils.

Kirby first worked with Wood on issue #4 of Challengers of the Unknown. The previous issue is inked by Marvin Stein, and while there are backgrounds, they are a bit uninspired by Kirby standards.

Wood’s inking of the following issue shows us that we are in for something completely different. In this splash panel (above3), there is an almost geometric arrangement of the figures emerging from the background.

In the Stein-inked pages, the machinery that Kirby draws functions as a device to establish setting and has only a secondary design purpose.

Wood’s inspired rendering seems to usher in the first era of “Techno-Kirby,” where nearly all surfaces of all objects and in particular machinery, are covered with detail that serve primarily a design function.

In this first story, “The Wizard Of Time” (right4), the Challengers travel back to ancient Egypt and Rome. In the Roman setting, Kirby really uses panel space to full advantage, constructing small windows into elaborate mini-worlds. One can observe the wealth of compositional detail in this scene on the steps of the Roman Forum.

All the successive panels are densely populated with objects that are reminiscent 19

Kirby’s mind. From that point on, he begins to draw in an even more panoramic style. His machinery and architecture become more elaborate and he begins to delve even further into deep space composition. Panel count also grows smaller as panels become larger and more complex (next page, top8).

The earlier Chic Stone inked issues have a higher panel count and the figures within the panels are generally smaller. Unfortunately, Vince Colletta inked the follow-up Daredevil issue #40, and his inks there are scratchy, blotchy and represent the very antithesis of technical precision. Sadly, gone are the Wood-inked DD figures to give the story that distinctive touch. Colletta was put on the book for

inker for this strip, and this sample clearly shows us why. Wood is a masterful spotter of blacks, using a combination of solid shadows and gray halftones to bring Kirby’s drawings to vivid life. If one looks at the area that suggests atmosphere surrounding planet Earth, one can see something very much like what would eventually become known as “Kirby Krackle.” This substance does not appear in the pencils. This is something that Wood has added as an effect as he has positioned his blacks, and he uses it liberally to give that cosmic quality to his work. Is it possible that Kirby was inspired by Wood to use Krackle in his cosmic art?

At some point thereafter, Kirby began spotting blacks in his penciling. It may be overreaching to suggest that his time working with Wood, and then carrying on as inker in Wood’s absence on Sky Masters, influenced Kirby’s approach to dealing with dark and light, but I believe this to be the case. I strongly feel that Kirby was favorably impressed by both Wood’s strong sense of composition and his powerful use of black and white contrast. Although he never used the sort of realistic shading that Wood was famous for, Kirby became a powerful black spotter and never again left such important artistic decisions to his inkers.

Wood seldom ever inked Kirby again, but a notable exception was issue #39 of the Fantastic Four, in which Wood only inked the figure of Daredevil, a series he was drawing at the time. Frank Giacoia inked the remainder of the story.

Given my penchant for finding correlations between things, I see a similarity in the compositions of these two panels (right4, 7), separated in time by more than five years.

As a matter of fact, this entire story, which opens on board a nuclear submarine, is an early high point in visual Kirby-tech that seems to be a bow in the direction of Wood’s style. It feels to me as if initially in the late Fifties, Wood’s inking had an impact on Kirby as the King segued into the Marvel years. Then, their later collaboration on the Daredevil issue of the Fantastic Four re-ignited something in 20

three more issues and we do not notice any great sea change until issue #44, with the masterful ascension of Joe Sinnott.

This 39th issue of the Fantastic Four is dated June 1965. Wally Wood left Marvel soon after to begin working for Tower Comics. The rival publisher’s first issue of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS debuted in November 1965.

Kirby may have felt the pressure from his former collaborator enough to ramp up his own efforts and out“Dynamo” the competition, because that same month brought the introduction of The Inhumans and the leadup to the Galactus Trilogy and the appearance of The Silver Surfer. The King reassessed everything that he had absorbed from his initial encounter with Wallace Wood and took it to the next level, a plateau so lofty that no one has ever come close to even touching it.

Kirby kicked the already revved-up Fantastic Four beyond the stratosphere and into intergalactic hyperspace. The sequence of events appears to be far more than a coincidence.

I suggest that Kirby plus Wood equals evolution. ★ Citations: 1- Quote from The Comics Journal #197, Bill Mason article, “A Thousand Rays of Light in Your Belly”, Wally Wood at EC 1952-54, Fantagraphics (July 1997) 2- Cover from Incredible Science Fiction #11, EC Comics 3—Kirby, Jack, “The Wizard of Time”, Challengers of the Unknown #4, reprint from Super DC Giant #S-25 (Jul-Aug 1971) 4—Ibid.

5—Kirby, Jack (art) Wood, Wally (inks), Sky Masters of the Space Force, 4/18/59 6—Kirby, Jack (art) Wood, Dave, Wood, Dick (story) Wood, Wally (inks) The Complete Sky Masters, Pure Imagination.

7—Lee, Stan (story) Kirby, Jack (art) Wood, Wally (inks) Giacoia, Frank (inks) Simek, Artie (lettering), Fantastic Four #39, “A Blind Man shall Lead Them” 8—Ibid. pg. 14

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FANSPEAK

(below) Leading up to the 2014 settlement, fan support was at a fevered pitch, including this petition at Change.org. You’ll see the “Confirmed Victory” notation that it holds now. (bottom) This year, Marvel celebrated “Jack Kirby Week” at www.marvel.com with a slew of tributes to Jack and his creations.

Kirby Confab “Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honoring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.”

Several prominent Kirby fans corralled by John Morrow

Disney’s bottom line.

For the record: the terms of the settlement were private, and I have no firsthand knowledge of the details, other than hearing that the Kirby family was very happy with its outcome. (But since soon thereafter, Jack’s began receiving a creator credit on both comics and films, it’s a safe bet that was part of any agreement.)

That doesn’t mean I, like most of fandom, didn’t find it fascinating. Just as interesting to me was how some “civilians,” who knew little to nothing about comics, approached me for feedback. A couple of the dads in my father/daughter YMCA group independently asked me about it. They didn’t specifically realize I was associated with this “Jack Kirby” guy they’d heard about in the news, but both said basically, “I know you’re involved in comic books. What do you think about this court case?”

So to get some perspective on its repercussions, I asked a select group of Kirby friends, fans, and TJKC contributors to answer a few questions, to help us all better understand what it meant, and continues to mean, to Jack’s legacy and fans. Contributors were:

eptember 26, 2016 marked the two-year anniversary of that joint statement, and the settlement between Marvel/Disney and the Kirby family over rights to Marvel characters Jack was involved in the creation of.

Unsurprisingly, immediately after the news hit back in 2014, the online comics community was abuzz, with rumors of what it would mean to the industry, and wild speculation of how many millions/billions/trillions had been shelled out to keep the Supreme Court from having the chance to issue a ruling that might irreparably hurt

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• Jon B. Cooke (editor of Comic Book Creator magazine, and former associate editor of TJKC) • Adam McGovern (Kirby scholar and the voice behind our “Kirby As A Genre” column) • Steve Robertson (Kirby family friend, and assistant at Genesis West publications) • Norris Burroughs (our “Kirby Kinetics” columnist) • David Schwartz (Kirby family friend ) • Jerry Boyd (regular TJKC contributor)

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• Marty Lasick (Kirby family friend, and occasional inker of Jack’s commissioned work) • Tom Kraft (trustee of the Jack Kirby Museum) I simply asked them to answer a few questions, in as brief or lengthy a manner as they saw fit. In checking the pulse of Kirby fandom, I encountered a few surprises.

What was the first Kirby work you ever saw, and did you immediately like it, or did it turn you off?

JON B. COOKE: I have a vague memory of seeing “Ant-Man” in Tales to Astonish. I thought his work was somewhat grotesque and not as accessible as the slick work in the DC, Harvey, and Dennis the Menace comics of which I was more accustomed. I believe I was five years old.

STEVE ROBERTSON: Honestly, I can’t remember specifically what the first Kirby artwork I ever saw was (I was only seven years old at the time, in 1960), but it immediately made all other comic books obsolete! I can tell you that it was Jack’s pre-hero monster artwork for Marvel, that I saw displayed on the comic book racks at the local grocery store where my Mom shopped. I absolutely loved it! To put this in perspective, I was an early reader, and I had always enjoyed comic books, but my parents forbid me to buy any “Horror” related material—but the furtive glances that I was able to make at Famous Monsters of Filmland at the local store, and Jack’s monster artwork, were so powerful to me, that it changed my life forever! After this, I never had any interest in comic books that weren’t drawn by Kirby (or Ditko)!

remember being totally absorbed by the story and art and sorry I hadn’t been able to read the previous issue, since it was a continued story. Believe it or not, the very next week I checked the same newsstand and they actually had issue #57 in the back of the stack of comics from the month before. I was very excited to get that issue as well!

ADAM McGOVERN: I saw Kirby work so early in life that everything in the rest of the world looked wrong—not seeing puffy clouds with metallic squiggle-lines or people with mouths shaped like trapezoids took some adjusting to. I received subliminal education in the Kirby style by the comics my older brother left around. The first was probably some Thor story or one of the shorts about Cap in WWII (the 1960s ones by Lee & Kirby)—I was always an inside-my-head kinda kid, so the ideal and fearsome abstraction of Kirby’s look appealed to me right away.

JERRY BOYD: I wish I could remember the first time I saw the King’s work! It really kicks me around at times, because I can remember the first time I saw the work of Steranko, Romita Sr., Colan, Sprang, Ditko, and both Buscema brothers, among others. But Kirby became my king at first glance, and the memory’s gone! But I’ll say X-Men #9 and I did love it!

NORRIS BURROUGHS: I’m pretty sure the first Kirby story I saw was a monster comic, Strange Tales #75 with Taboo, the Thing From the Murky Swamp, and it was pretty scary. I was about nine and I thought the art was really intense. The first thing that made me sit up and notice Kirby as an artist, which also inspired me as an artist, was the amazing sequential fight scenes in Rawhide Kid #30. I think the most wonderfully hilarious image was that of the Kid standing on his head shooting the boot heels off an opponent [above right].

MARTY LASICK: I remember first seeing (what I later found out to be) Kirby artwork on The Fly, “Green Arrow”, Challengers of the Unknown, and some sci-fi short stories. I was addicted from the start and looked forward to Kirby on any book I could find. It is something I have never grown out of. Now I look forward to any Kirby reprints to preserve my original comic book collection and Kirby-IDW original artwork books. Jack in any format never gets old to me.

TOM KRAFT: The first Kirby work I saw was The Fantastic Four. My best friend handed to me in a stack of FF comic books when I was sixteen. They were random issues from issues in the #60s, 70s and #80s. They immediately blew my mind! The visual language and power simply thrilled me. I never thought a comic book could be like that, and I was hooked from then on.

DAVID SCHWARTZ: I believe the first time I saw a Jack Kirby comic was when my grandmother bought me a copy of Fantastic Four #58. I was eight years old and it was on the stands at a newsstand near my school. My grandmother used to take my brother Howard and me to lunch each week and sometimes she bought us each a comic book. I was immediately grabbed by the cover as it looked really exciting and very grown-up to me at the time. I

How do you feel Kirby’s legacy has changed now, in light of the Marvel/Disney settlement?

COOKE: I firmly believe that Jack Kirby will be remembered and appreciated a century from now, if not by the masses, at least by those who appreciate the best cartooning.

ROBERTSON: Frankly, it hasn’t changed at all among anyone who was already a comic book fan, and has any knowledge concerning comic book history. My fervent hope is that Jack’s genius will become more widely recognized! It’s up to you, Kirby Museum!

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McGOVERN: His posterity is more secure now that you can’t open a Marvel comic without seeing his creator or co-creator credit. He could also, once again, be considered a trailblazer for other creators’ rights and legacy, since as soon as the settlement happened, Marvel started crediting Ditko on Spider-Man and Doctor Strange too… even long-deceased, Kirby is setting a model for how people should be treated.

enough in my eyes. Stan Lee still gets to make his silly cameos, but no one sees Jack. At least put a visual picture reference on him in a scene à la Alfred Hitchcock.

Jack knew comics would evolve towards film. Again, I wish he could have seen how big and how correct he was.

KRAFT: His name is prominent in the Marvel movies. DC and Marvel movie directors talk about his influence. For example, the Justice League movie will feature Kirby characters. I feel the settlement enables Kirby’s legacy to grow and provides greater possibilities for the Kirby Museum to grow as well.

BURROUGHS: I hope that the settlement brings attention to the fact that Kirby was an active creator and source of the initial ideas behind his work with Lee. I’m finding that despite the settlement, there is still a tendency to assume that Kirby was merely an interpreter of Stan Lee’s concepts and illustrator of Lee’s plots and stories, which is in most cases essentially the opposite of their actual working relationship. In the end, Lee is the interpreter of Kirby’s ideas and stories in his work as scripter.

When you heard a settlement was reached, who did you call/e-mail/text, and did you do anything to celebrate—or did you view the settlement negatively (and if so, why)?

COOKE: Upon receiving the Comic Book Resources alert in my e-mail inbox, I immediately called the editor of The Jack Kirby Collector, a tremendously close friend, and texted two of my brothers as well as my wife (who was well aware of my fervent loyalty to the artist).

After the initial stunned reaction, I viewed it as the best comicsrelated news I had heard in a very, very long time, and it is a cherished memory of recent years. (I also felt free to finally watch the Marvel super-hero movies without hesitation.)

SCHWARTZ: It seems to me that things are much, much better for everyone—both for Marvel/Disney and the Kirby family. As for Jack’s legacy, that is also likely to become more well-known because his name and efforts have now been aligned with Marvel/Disney’s corporate interests. We have already seen a number of projects, both in print and on the screen, that have promoted Jack and his efforts, and shared with the public more about his incredible genius.

BOYD: I think it’ll help his legacy very much, even though I hope all Kirby fans (though we’re getting older and tastes have changed in comic art in current titles) will do our small and large parts to keep Kirby as “current” as possible. The Jack Kirby Collector has played a large part in this. The movies will carry his name, and animated cartoons and documentaries will hopefully do their part in this endeavor, as well.

ROBERTSON: I was so happy! I didn’t contact anybody!

McGOVERN: I think I must have contacted Crystal Skillman, coauthor (with Fred Van Lente) of the stage-play King Kirby—its first run was the summer right before the settlement, so I was eager to commune over the news and curious how it might affect the play’s narrative. (Answer: Not, since the issues of Kirby’s hard work and meager reward during his life remained the same.) We all viewed the settlement positively; too late for Kirby, but a good step for Marvel and for comics’ future.

LASICK: It is nice to see a final settlement that the Kirby family agrees upon. I admire everyone who pressed on in the fight for Jack and Roz. I wish they could have seen it... or better yet, were respected enough to where this was not necessary.

Jack and Roz deserved better from both companies. At least Jack is getting credits listed on the movie and TV screens. It is not nearly

BURROUGHS: I’m pretty sure that the first person I contacted when I heard the news was my friend Steve, whom I collected and also drew comics with back around 1963. We were both fairly adamant

(left) Captain America #103 pencils. (above) Jack’s 1978 storyboards for the “Frightful Four” episode of DePatie-Freleng’s FF animated series.

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(below) Barry WindsorSmith adds a Raphaelite finish to Jack’s Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles (1976). (next page) Zeus from Super Friends (1978) and a Bird Woman from Thundarr (1980), both

by Jack.

throughout our lives that Kirby was an unsung genius who would eventually receive his due.

SCHWARTZ: My first call was to Michael Thibodeaux.

Since he and I knew Jack and Roz, he was the first one I wanted to contact. I viewed the settlement as a very positive action. Who knows what would have happened if the Supreme Court took on the case. I’m just glad it was settled in a way that looks like the outcome satisfied the

Kirby family.

BOYD: I didn’t contact anyone. I felt it was a major change that was in the wind, and I wish he (and Mrs. Kirby) was still alive and well to see it—as well as enjoy the movies, and hopefully get a large payment for his work in the shaping and creation of the many characters who are on the screen. It’d have been incredible to see him get movie cameos in the films the way that Stan Lee has deservedly gotten. I do hope Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema, Barry WindsorSmith, Tom Palmer, and others will get cameos in Avengers movies one day.

LASICK: I called Mike Thibodeaux when I first read about it. It was really just out and we did not know any details. If the Kirby family was okay with it, then that is all that mattered. As long as Jack Kirby was getting recognition for what he did in creating these beloved characters, it was a good start.

KRAFT: When I heard that the settlement was reached, I either called, e-mailed or texted—not sure which— Rand Hoppe of the Kirby Museum to discuss what this meant for the Kirby Museum.

I felt it was a positive closure for the Kirby family and in some way Jack was vindicated.

Jack would be happy to know his family benefited from the years of hard and creative work he put in to help build Marvel Comics.

Have your feelings (& purchasing decisions) about Marvel changed in light of the settlement?

ROBERTSON: No. COOKE: Yes. Though I had ceased my Marvel boycott prior to the decision (rationalizing that I was a part of comics-related media and had a degree of responsibility in keeping up with their output), I felt free to indulge in Marvel TV shows and movies without guilt.

McGOVERN: Not largely. I

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think there were many people within Marvel, artists to execs, who had wanted this to happen for a long time, and they were waiting on the owners to catch up. I kept buying the comics throughout, ’cuz in the Quesada/Alonso era they have been doing many creative, intriguing things that move the medium forward.

Kirby had good reason to be antimanagement, but he was a dedicated creative laborer, and I think he would have been appalled at the idea of people not buying the comics he created—he believed in the market, and he always feared being forgotten more than being financially unrewarded. That said, if I were a fan of branded merch (shirts, retro lunchboxes, etc. with Kirby images on them, of which there are a lot then and now), I would not have bought any before the settlement, and would feel okay about it now—good comics based on his creations are a tribute to him; designs of his used to sell accessories are just commerce (but now I guess not only Marvel/Disney profits?).

films don’t send me running to the theater either. At this point I don’t think that Disney/Marvel is likely to produce anything that I feel would be in the true spirit of Kirby as I appreciate him. The closest thing so far for me would be the first Captain America movie. If a cinematographer or film editor were skillful and perceptive enough to actually attempt to translate Kirby to the screen along with crediting and rewarding him and his estate, I would certainly be supportive of that endeavor.

BURROUGHS: I don’t buy any current Marvel comics. Most of their

SCHWARTZ: I feel much better about buying Jack’s work from Marvel/ Disney since the settlement. It’s nice to know that his family is seeing compensation for Jack’s efforts. One thing I know about Jack Kirby is that he was extremely dedicated to providing for his family.

BOYD: No, I found it easy to not buy Marvel. Their books haven’t excited me for a long time. They’re on faraway wavelengths from the Mighty Marvel I grew up with, and the new incarnations don’t have the same pizzazz and style of the KirbyLee-Romita-Severin-Thomas-DitkoAyers-Steranko-Friedrich-TrimpeLieber-Buscema-Goldberg days.

Still, I’m glad this point of controversy has been resolved.

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LASICK: No! I find myself buying only Kirby-related reprints like Essentials or Masterworks to preserve my original comic books. I wish Marvel would just do complete runs of these items and also complete the run of titles Jack did when he came back to the company on his last run there. Those titles deserve to be seen again in collected form.

I have no interest in anything new from Marvel today. The artwork and stories simply suck and are not worth the prices you have to pay today. It’s either reboot after failed reboot or they make stupid changes to classic characters for some form of imagined social injustice. Their books are not fun anymore.

KRAFT: It has not changed.

Due to all the publicity from the case and its after-effects, do you think more non-comics people you encounter seem to know who Kirby was, and what he achieved?

COOKE: No. ROBERTSON: I sure as hell hope so!

KRAFT: I feel more and more people know who Jack Kirby is. People who know who Stan Lee is now seem to know who Jack Kirby is. There is so much positive publicity online, offline, in social media, movies (and movie extras), etc., that I feel the word is getting out and growing.

McGOVERN: Emphatically yes. Not enough, but more than ever before. The success of the Marvel movies has carried this awareness in its wake, and in the era of social media and democratized creativity (indie comics, online music, etc.), more people than ever have a voice about how media corporations behave, and there is wider sympathy for the struggles of creative people and support for their visibility and well-being. The court case drew the kind of attention to Disney that it doesn’t want, and going all the way to the Supreme Court saying they [might] hear it made the case national, if not global, news. The case’s bearing on crucial issues of ownership in an era of hacking and corporate consolidation had a wide spotlight with Kirby’s story at the center of it. He still isn’t as well-known as Siegel & Shuster or Stan, but these events have provided a lasting platform from which that can improve.

BURROUGHS: Sadly, I can’t recall a single instance of a non-comics person having any conception of who Kirby was and what he achieved. Ironically, for me Kirby’s work totally transcends comics and enters the arena of fine art. Given that Kirby worked in the intellectual ghetto of the comics world, I doubt that many people

would get how amazing and revolutionary his work was/is. Few people even understand what makes a universally acknowledged genius like Rembrandt or Michelangelo outstanding. Most wouldn’t even consider acknowledging a comic artist’s work as legitimate art unless an esteemed critic gave them permission as well as a compelling and authoritative explanation.

SCHWARTZ: I think it’s getting there. Until last year, Stan Lee was the only name most people knew when it came to Marvel Comics. I’ve seen that start to change over the past year, as Jack has been receiving more prominent credit in the movies, on television and in print. I hope this trend continues. It seems to me it can only be a good thing!

BOYD: No. The fan press kept Kirby’s name going strong, but it seems the fan press isn’t as strong as it used to be.

And a lot of today’s fans don’t seem to be interested in the old school. They respect the creators of times past, and some get the archives or collections, but sadly, many are only concerned with stuff from today or video games or phones.

It’d be fantastic to have an animated movie feature done in Kirby’s style, and I feel that would go a long way in keeping the magnificent quality of his storytelling alive and vibrant for young fans of today!

LASICK: No, not at all. I still have to re-educate the lowinformation crowd who think Marvel Comics were all invented by Stan Lee. He is the company figurehead that has paraded himself around and that is all they see and have been told without being told of what Jack Kirby really brought to the company catalog of character creation and stories. He was much more than “an artist for hire” and to call him that is simply insulting. Stan could not have brought to the table what Jack did in creating the Marvel Universe of characters and stories.

Above anything else, I am loyal to Jack Kirby. I bought Marvel comics because of Jack’s artwork and his stories. That same love of great artwork with great stories followed Jack to DC and back to his second stint at Marvel. What did Stan Lee do? In my eyes, Jack Kirby has yet to receive equal recognition and billing among the masses.

So what is happening is a beginning. ★

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(below) Must-see!

Mario Escudero paid tribute to Kirby’s Fourth World saga by releasing a two-anda-half-minute 3-D animated fan film starring Orion of the New Gods. See it at: https://vimeo.com/136 705678

(left) How times have changed. In the 1960s, Jack was given only a “pencilled by” credit, or the more vague “by Lee & Kirby.” Now, Marvel is properly giving cocreator credits to both Jack and Stan in their books (below). After years of fighting, isn’t this a much better way to be?

www.kirbymuseum.org Why we do what we do: The piece at right is from the Museum Archives: An unknown pencil page probably intended for the end of Jack’s 1984 Hunger Dogs graphic novel. Jack’s text reads:

Newsletter

TJKC Edition Fall 2016 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.

“An End to Power and Exodus From Eden!”

This is the only rational answer to the continuing, growing presence of the “unthinkable!”

With the “Source” in our Vanguard, Let Us Abandon New Genesis Let Darkseid live with the “Balance of Terror!”

Let us choose another shore... -A friendly cosmos… -A way to sacrifice and win!

Thus, I set these words down on a day when “Doomsday” is peddled by small beings for smaller coin…

Highfather This is why the Museum exists: To unearth artifacts like this, and preserve them for the enjoyment and enlightenment of future comics fans and scholars.

Vintage Posters stock low!

Become a member now, and we’ll strive to give you the best of what’s left of the vintage posters the Kirby Estate donated to us for fundraising purposes! Strange Tales just sold out, and more will follow soon...

We thank our new and returning members for their support!

Annual Memberships with one of these posters: $40*

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

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

with one of these posters: $50* Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center

Daniel da Rosa, Patrick Monks, Charles Glaubitz, Mark Miller, John Lindwall, Thomas Mott, Ryan Jennings, Robert Shippee, Michael Micciulla, Steven Robertson, Robert Walker, Dave Peek, Martin O'Connor, Brian Fox, Vincent Antonelli, Mario Freitas, Phil Hester, M Zaher, Allan Harvey, Jeffrey Wilkie, Rik Van Niedek, Stephan Meyer, Craig Peters

We also thank our Board of Trustees and Advisory Board for their support and help!

TRUSTEES: Rand Hoppe, Tom Kraft, Mike Cecchini ADVISORS: John Morrow, Charles Hatfield, David Schwartz, Mark Evanier

And of course, thanks to John Morrow and TwoMorrows Publishing, as well as Lisa Kirby and the Kirby Estate!

PO Box 5236 Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA Telephone: (201) 204-0532 All characters TM © their respective owners.

Marvel—14” x 23”

Galactic Head— 18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation—24” x 18” color

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

Barry Forshaw

Obscura unexciting contribution by Mort Meskin, but then we’re onto Kirby, and things move up a notch.

While “The All-Seeing Eye” is not particularly well written by its anonymous scripter (the hero is able to predict and influence events by using the mystical eye of the title), Kirby is able—in customary fashion—to give the piece a liveliness it would not otherwise possess. Take the first page (right).

While a crowd cowers at the sight of a gigantic eye in the sky, the second panel shows a plane about to crash— and Kirby has the nose of the doomed plane edging into the splash panel, breaking up (as he so often did) the layout of the page in dynamic fashion. The last two panels on the page show the actual crash and the broken plane floating in the water, and are reduced to virtually abstract designs: a series of shapes that instantly convey to the reader what’s happening in the story, but also in their effectiveness suggesting the amazing visual shorthand that Kirby was able to call upon—a shorthand, what’s more, which allowed him to be so very productive, as the essence of his art is so often great economy.

Hence, of course, his legendary speed.

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

by Barry Forshaw

Barry Forshaw is the author of British Gothic Cinema and The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (available from Amazon) and the editor of Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk) .His next book will be American Noir; he lives in London.

KIRBY’S EYE Anyone writing a column called ‘Kirby Obscura’ has to confront— at some point— a certain problem. There could well be a reason why something is obscure—surely most neglected material (in any field, not just comics) rises to the surface, rescued by admirers, however much dust of the ages has to be blown off to make us look at it afresh?

And surely this is true of the comics art of Jack Kirby, isn’t it? One might guess that everything by the artist that’s worthy of attention has been reissued and celebrated. Well, yes, most of it has—but some of it remains (by any standards) neglected, and it’s my job to provide for John Morrow and readers of this journal reasons to look at this little-known work in the King’s career.

And now I’m going to pay readers of The Jack Kirby Collector a compliment. I assume you’re all sharper and more perceptive than the average comics fan?

More conscious of design on the page?

More aware of what makes the comics medium function at the top of its game rather than just get by? The reason I ask is because I’m about to invite you to work a little harder to appreciate a littleknown, forgotten strip by Kirby in DC’s fantasy/SF anthology book Tales of the Unexpected #12 (from April 1957). It’s called “The All-Seeing Eye,” and on a casual acquaintance looks like a standard by-thenumbers comics assignment of the day. Ah, but is it?

A cover by Bill Ely previews the story “The Indestructible Man,” but that isn’t Kirby’s assignment in this issue. Neither is the first story, “The Four Threads of Doom,” which is a lively tale illustrated by the very capable Nick (Teen Titans) Cardy doing the best work of his career (and what a talent pool of illustrators DC were able to call upon in the 1950s!). The second piece in the issue, “The Witch’s Statue,” is an

FOREGROUNDED FISH Frankly, there isn’t a great deal else in the story to get excited about, but the piece is full of subtle pleasing details. On the third page, a bathysphere is being submerged into the ocean depths, but Kirby doesn’t make the machine itself the focus for the reader. He places a grotesque fish of his own invention in the foreground, which conveys the strangeness of the depths more effectively than a simple shot of the bathysphere would have done. Similarly, the next panel incorporates four elements: a sunken wreck, the weaving tendrils of an undersea plant, the bathysphere and an octopus, all perfectly balanced in the same frame. If any of the other artists in the issue (including Bill Ely in the last story, the title piece) had shown the same elements, they would have been perfectly efficient, but they would have lacked the imagination that came naturally to Kirby.

The average reader—in other words, not the dedicated consumer of TJKC such as you—would pass by this piece with barely a second thought. And though I’m 30

certainly not arguing it to be among the King’s best work, I’m suggesting that the Kirby aficionado will find a little more to reward them with just a bit of attention paid to the piece. Use your own all-seeing eye.

THE RIVALS OF BLACK MAGIC Even for Jack Kirby fans, there’s more to horror comics than his (and Joe Simon’s) tent-pole title, Black Magic. And collectors of the gloriously gruesome horror comics of the 1950s are currently crossing their fingers and praying that English publishers PS Publishing will succeed in completing its sumptuous series of hardback reprints of some of the most striking material of that era. After all, it’s not a foregone conclusion that such ventures reach a happy end—Russ Cochran’s admirable hardback colour reprints of the legendary EC line stumbled recently but (fortunately) seem to be back on track courtesy of another publisher, Dark Horse Comics.

So one has to admire UK editor Peter Crowther’s chutzpah in green-lighting this kind of not-massively-remunerative project, particularly when one holds in one’s hand something as striking as Black Cat Mystery, Volume 1, a collection of the first five issues of one of the seminal horror comics of the era (even if one is puzzled by the cover chosen to illustrate the volume, showing the sexy super-heroine Black Cat, whose innocent title was hijacked by tales of zombies, vampires and werewolves—and who is nowhere to be found in this collection). What is to be found, however, are examples of some of the most talented illustrators of the era: not Mr. Kirby, of course, but the imaginative (if derivative) Howard Nostrand and the totally individual Bob Powell (a major talent), the latter of whom supplied the Harvey imprint with all of its best illustration work (and this PS Publishing series, it should be remembered, is called ‘Harvey Horrors’).

The blood-drenched gruesomeness of the tales on offer here is reminiscent of EC Comics at their peak, and the cadre of artists (with some woeful exceptions) do full justice to the material, rendering it shamelessly enjoyable. If one has a caveat, it is, sadly, the usual one—Harvey simply could not afford writers of the calibre of Al Feldstein and William Gaines who (despite their repeated tendency to overwrite) seem like James Joyce compared with the bizarre, often totally incoherent scripting on offer here. Let’s face it, Harvey horror comics were (in general) very badly written. But as the writer Christopher Fowler (no slouch himself when it comes to horror material, although these days he is more often to be found in the crime arena) points out in the introduction, one does not read

Harvey comics for elegantly scripted dialogue—in fact, the jawdropping insanity of much of the writing here is actually part of the charm. As in other volumes in the PSP series, production values are the highest, and aficionados need not hesitate, even if there is little here to rival the King’s Black Magic horror work.

Personally, I can’t wait for Mr Crowther (an enthusiast for the medium himself) to continue his reprint series of one of Harvey’s rivals, ACG comics, whose Adventures into the Unknown was the first continuous horror comic (followed sometime afterwards by Forbidden Worlds). And collectors should note that even when the nannyish Comics Code laid its dead hand on these two titles, what they began to lose in the gruesome they more than made up for in sheer vaunting imagination. But getting back to Black Cat Mystery— forget about that eccentric writing and the odd maladroit illustrator, and just luxuriate in the grisly, often surreal imagery on offer here.

You’ll approve, even if the Comics Code didn’t. ★ 31

A Timely Pair

Classics

An interview with Bonnie and Arnold Hano, by David Laurence Wilson

(right) A recent photo of Bonnie and Arnold Hano. (below) Splash panel detail from Captain America Comics #10 (Jan. 1942), produced by Simon & Kirby just prior to leaving Timely Comics for DC. Though the Hanos worked at Timely in-between Jack’s 1940s and 1950s stints at the company, this interview should give readers a sense of what it was like at the offices there. (next page, bottom) Stan Lee in the 1950s, when Bonnie was his assistant.

[Editor’s Note: The following interview was conducted on December 19, 2013, and submitted to TJKC. While it doesn’t focus specifically on Kirby, I felt it gives a fascinating inside look at the workings of Timely Comics, with commentary about both Stan Lee and Martin Goodman. I have edited it to keep it more germain to topics that would likely interest TJKC readers.]

becoming an editor at Timely/Atlas.

(He later wrote numerous acclaimed books on baseball and westerns.)

Bonnie (who married Arnold in 1951), worked alongside Stan Lee in the early 1950s to keep the stories coming from Timely Comics. Those years, 1951-1954, were an industry-wide trough between waves of superheroes, with a wider range of titles, publishers, and readers in the industry than there has been since.

Visiting the Hanos at their charming home, on a quiet street two or three blocks from the main thoroughfares of Laguna Beach, California, would clarify what Bonnie Hano had done or didn’t do so many years ago.

The couple had not kept up with the comics business.

They couldn’t describe “Ultron” if you spotted them two Silver Surfers and a Black Widow. Bonnie said: “Who ever knew that Stan Lee was going to become the big famous deal that he is today?”

Both of them were surprised when I showed them hardbound copes of Atlas Comics produced during their tenure, issues that might even contain some of the stories they had written. Neither of them had ever attended a comic book convention. It was not going to be like a conversation with Jack Kirby, who seemed to be familiar with not only the past but the future.

First of all, Mrs. Hano had a bone to pick with the scholars of the comics industry:

n the 1950s, Arnold and Bonnie Hano were the power-couple at Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management company at New York’s Empire State Building. It was a dull, gray-suited name for an empire of publications that emanated from Goodman’s equally unassuming office. Goodman was a fellow who played hunches and took gambles but not risks, and if a magazine was unsuccessful, it would be quickly canceled.

The company was better known by what you might call its pseudonyms: Timely (now Marvel) Comics; men’s magazines, especially Stag magazine; and Red Circle Books, a sensationalistic line of paperbacks that would soon be revised and renamed as Lion Books, a short-lived but important paperback company.

Arnold Hano was born in Manhattan but he grew up in the Bronx. He received a degree from Long Island University and then higher education, as a copy boy at the New York Daily News. After action in World War Two, he worked as Managing Editor at Bantam Books and then Editor-in-Chief at Lion Books in 1949, before

I

BONNIE: Do you know what’s so crazy? I looked up something one day, and I found on the Internet that I was Hank Chapman’s first wife. I don’t know where they ever got that. When I met Hank, he was married to Gloria, whom he called Toni, and we knew her as Toni. They became very good friends of ours. So how did I get married to Hank on the Internet? How do things like that happen?

Chapman was one of the top writers at Timely, one of the few writers to be credited on many of his stories, receiving credit even before the artists. His best known story may have been “The Nightmare” from Astonishing #4 (June 1951), a story illustrated by Wayne Boring in which a writer for Marvel Tales and Astonishing named Hank Chapman is terrorized by vengeful characters from his stories.

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the writer and artists in his office, though I think they were always working from full scripts. But there was also always an aspect of shyness with him. If he seemed a little shy, it sounds incongruous, but I don’t think it was. I just really liked him a lot.

When Hank Chapman left his job as Production Manager, Lee asked Bonnie if she would like the higher paying position. She worked as Production Manager through 1952 until the end of 1953. It was a period when the number of titles at Timely almost doubled.

BONNIE: I don’t ever recall feeling pressured. We always seemed to be busy but I don’t think that any of us felt like we were overworked.

DAVID: Did you ever feel that there was a hurry-up atmosphere?

ARNOLD: Goodman was really good at that. He would get more out of everybody, and it didn’t seem to diminish the quality.

DAVID: Now when you took over as Production Manager, Bonnie, what were your duties? To get the comics out, I guess. Were you managerial or hands-on?

BONNIE: It was really a managerial job, because there wasn’t much physical stuff for me to do. My job was to get everything together. To get the stuff done. Then I’d take it into Stan, he’d put the stories in the order he wanted them to go to the printer, and we’d be on to the next one.

We had somewhere between eight and ten employees, including letterers and proofreaders. Chris Rule, a big, heavy guy, was on staff, mostly in production and inking. He didn’t do a lot of original artwork. Sol Brodsky was an artist, and a very nice guy. Artie Simek was a letterer. Stan Starkman, and Herbie Cooper, a talented singer who sang and acted in amateur productions—they were our letterers.

The thing I remember—I took it when I left—was my x-acto knife. Because one of the things we had to be very careful of, was that “flick” remained “flick.” That’s where the x-acto knife came in, just to erase a little bit of the lettering, when necessary.

DAVID: Would you say that any of the people working in production were frustrated artists?

BONNIE: If so, they weren’t talking about it. I know we had some inhouse artists. Sol Brodsky was an artist, a really nice guy. What Stan would do, there were in-house writers and he would assign the comics to freelance artists. Sol and Chris Rule might have done some of the artwork. I can’t remember whether they just did corrections and additions or whether they actually did some of the stories.

BONNIE: By 1949, when Arnold went over to Magazine Management, we were an item and I, too, began working for Lion Books. I was reading books to be selected for reprints. About a year later Stan asked me to come over to the Timely Comics division and work with him as his assistant. It was really a better job and it paid more.

DAVID LAURENCE WILSON: You already knew Stan?

BONNIE: We all knew each other. It was a very compatible office.

DAVID: When you were Stan’s assistant, did you work in his office?

BONNIE: I can’t remember that. Isn’t that funny? I don’t think so.

DAVID: Mostly they were inkers, I think, and they would do inhouse corrections.

BONNIE: Yes, that’s mostly what I remember. But I don’t think we did any coloring in-house. I have no memory of that at all. The art came in on the heavy paper that artists use, the big pieces of heavy paper. The lettering was done later in our office.

You know what was funny about that place, I used to be very good at getting stores to accept returns, and to do other things, situations that had to be straightened

DAVID: As an editor, Stan seemed to have a fairly lax style, in that he was a collaborator and an encourager, rather than someone who was eager to go line by line over a piece of work.

BONNIE: Oh, I think that was absolutely true. He was also very creative, too. That’s the thing I most remember.

DAVID: So you would be called in when he needed you for something?

BONNIE: I don’t really remember what I did for Stan. There was no correspondence for him. I have no idea what I did in that job. I have no idea!

ARNOLD: Part of that was that lax style of Stan’s.

BONNIE: Well, and besides, not only was it a long time ago, but there was nothing that happened that was memorable. It wasn’t like other jobs.

DAVID: By the 1960s, when Stan would work on a story, and give the writer his input, Stan would talk out the story in his office, and people would describe him as being really boisterous; he’d jump up on his desk and act out a fencing scene.

BONNIE: Well, he was. He was very lively, very active. I don’t remember him jumping up on a table, but he’d talk over the stories with 33

out. I sometimes wonder who did that for them after I left.

That was fine. It just seemed normal.

DAVID: There weren’t many women working in comics, let alone at Timely.

BONNIE: Yes, except the proofreader, Cindy Ewell. And when I took over the production department, Stan hired another secretary, or office helper, so there would have been three women at that time.

ARNOLD: I think the guys felt lucky, that she was allowing them to exist.

BONNIE: But I already knew them all, of course, because I had worked in the front office, so no, it just seemed natural. They were all friends. It was a really easy place to work. Nothing was particularly memorable. It was just fun. Everything was very casual and low key.

The thing that I really remember about Stan, was that there was never any question of, my God, he was the boss and you’d better beware. There was never a sense of working for him. It was always working with him. He was just a very easy guy to work with.

The whole thing was casual, and low-key.

There was a lot of bantering that went on.

It was not a quiet office, and it didn’t really have to be. There was a lot of camaraderie.

DAVID: Do you have any sense today, of your feelings about that, about being a woman in what was a male dominated field?

BONNIE: I wasn’t self conscious about it, no. Not in the slightest.

DAVID: Would you ascribe that to Martin Goodman or Stan Lee? BONNIE: Oh no, that was Stan. Martin seemed to have practically nothing to do with our department.

Chris Rule drew a picture of me when I left. I should have found it for you.

ARNOLD: The one with the whip? Bonnie has this whip over a table of letterers, and she looks like a cartoon figure.

DAVID: Would you say that your job was in any way creative, or were you just putting together the parts which had already been assigned?

BONNIE: It was certainly not creative, but I have a good critical eye, and I’m a very good editor—that is something I can do.

DAVID: Do you have any favorites, as far as genre goes?

BONNIE: Well, it wasn’t comics. Understand me, I read every one of those stories, every page that came across my desk, but I don’t 34

remember any of them.

DAVID: Did you have any pride of authorship, or...?

BONNIE: Well, I liked working there. I really liked working there. I liked Stan, I liked all of the guys in the production department. It was a great department. I mean, I really liked working there. But comics are not my own personal interest.

Between production work and keeping the ball rolling for Stan, Bonnie also found time to write a few of the short text pieces published in comics to qualify for Fourth Class mailing privileges.

BONNIE: You’re talking two pages. I don’t know how many words that would be. They were little romances, a dumb boy/girl kind of thing. And for me, it was just a check. It was an easy, quick way to make a couple of bucks. They paid a whole twenty-five dollars, and back then, you could knock something off that took a couple of hours maybe, and twenty-five dollars, my God! ARNOLD: I did a horror story for them once, I wrote a script. All of us at Magazine Management ended up helping, pitching in.

The reticent quality of Spider-Man, that’s what Stan Lee introduced into his comics. When I did my comic, he wanted me to add a levity to this horrible situation, and he was very good at asking for that, and it was totally impossible for me to do that. I was not that kind of a writer. I was more square than most writers.

DAVID: What was Martin Goodman’s input into the editorial side of his magazines?

ARNOLD: Very little. He just cared about the finished product. He was very good in that respect. Very good.

You see, he had a good eye for hiring people. He hired some of the best people in publishing. Goodman was an imitator. That’s the way he did nearly all his books.

He was an imitator. He was lucky when he could get guys like Stan Lee or me, people who could be original, but that was the way he operated.

He wanted to stay out of trouble. He came in to see me one day and said, “I see you put a “sh*t”—the word—into one of the books; one of the originals.” I said, “Yes I did, because I thought I could get it by you.”

See, those were the things that would worry him. We did a novel by Richard Prather about a pimp, and it sold like mad. In a few days, it sold ninety percent of the print order, and Goodman was terrified. He pulled the book off the stands. He was not going to get into trouble, and that was one of his great fears, that they were going to crack down on him. In fact, the comics were under a lot of fire in those days.

He would wander around, he’d walk around. At the end of the day he’d have a drink with different editors, and I kept a bottle of Scotch in my desk. He’d want to play Scrabble with different editors because he was very good at it. He beat me every time we played. He had no editorial dictums. Oh yeah, he was dying to have me begin a novel, an original novel, with a woman standing naked in front of a mirror, admiring her body. He thought that would be a great beginning for a novel. So that was the extent of his editorial input.

DAVID: Did that ever happen?

ARNOLD: Never. Never, never. I didn’t allow cheap, I didn’t allow porn.

BONNIE: But if he was afraid of getting in trouble, why would he allow porn?

ARNOLD: Well, what he would have wanted, he would get as close as he could, but stay out of trouble. “Keep me out of trouble,” is really what he was saying to us.

DAVID: Were you there for Red Circle, also?

ARNOLD: No, when I came along, this is what he showed me, and I said, “No, we’re not going to do that.”

So we stopped that at that point and started Lion Books.

Goodman would sometimes reduce salaries because of an Eisenhower recession, or something like that. He would do that, with a ten percent cut instead of cutting hours, but he would restore that later, and make up for it in bonuses.

There were Christmas parties and bonuses.

Bonnie received Christmas bonuses of up to $1,000 in the two years when she worked as Production Manager.

(opposite page) Original Simon & Kirby art from Captain America Comics #5 (Aug. 1941). (below) Timely/Marvel owner Martin Goodman in the 1940s.

With a baby on the way, Bonnie quit Magazine Management at the end of 1953. Arnold followed her out the door a year later, during one of the company’s periodic salary cuts.

ARNOLD: I figured that I had an ex-wife and two kids and I had Bonnie, and a baby, and my margin was disappearing. So I told Goodman, ‘I can’t do this, I’ll have to quit.’ One of his assistants advised me not to do so. He said, “Don’t quit. Martin won’t do that to you.

He’ll give you your ten percent back.” I said, ‘I can’t take special favors,’ so I quit and that was it. But I stayed around for about a year in New York City, currying favor with editors.

Lion Books lasted only another three years, but the comics division had better luck.

Before she left, Stan Lee gave Bonnie a handful of books he thought she’d enjoy, including The Harder They Fall and The Disenchanted, by Budd Schulberg. She still has those books today. In The Harder They Fall, Lee inscribed the book with what amounts to an ode for a production manager, framed with a little “Kilroy” cartoon and his signature: You’re subjected to westerns, crimes, and to horror!

What ain’t finished today, Goes out tomorra.

Now from your boss comes this sage advice, When the schedule scares ya Keep sayin: “Ahhh--Isn’t That nice?!

- Stan Who would have risked a sawbuck on a bet that these New York couples, Mr. and Mrs. Stan Lee and the Hanos, would end up in Southern California and would retire, at least to a degree. On the left coast these veterans of Magazine Management were still holding court, still making a contribution in their distant literary niches.

They left their scratch on history. Tomorra, tomorra indeed! It doesn’t seem to be a bad attitude at all! ★ 35

(above) Arnold Hano in the 1950s, during the time he was editing Focus magazine for Martin Goodman’s publishing empire.

Re-Pairings

(above) Jack’s illo for the Marvelmania Stationery Kit.

Comics and comic characters were continuing to gain respect and new audiences. Superman and Batman had marked fifty years as worldwide sensations by the late 1980s, and the House of Ideas had logged in 25 impressive years as an industry leader in 1986.

Cartoons, live-action films, products, etc., drew the casual observers into the circus tents of the fantastic, and those fans who’d already gotten the 10-40cent wonders and magazines/ fanzines dove wholeheartedly into the last frontier of collecting: original art.

The problem was that a lot of those original pieces got less respect in the days when they were first done, and over the years had been parceled out by editors, writers, artists, and company men to friends, neighbors, and (Odin forgive them) dumpsters. So some of these Silver Age covers had to be redone and happily, some of Marvel’s “founding fathers” consented to recreate them.

Christie’s East, established 1766, dedicated an entire catalog to Marvel Art and Collectibles with final bidding concluded on Saturday, November 18, 1995. The King’s artwork launched much of the super-hero explosion back then, so it’s only fitting that Kirby’s inkers—Dick Ayers, Chic Stone, Joe Sinnott, and chief early Marvel colorist Stan Goldberg—bring to life anew these Marvel masterworks.

Recreating the Covers Marvel-Ous

by Jerry Boyd

(next page, top) Dick Ayers’ recreation of the cover to Avengers #12.

Color by Stan Goldberg. (next page, bottom) Chic Stone was not pleased that Dick Ayers chose to recreate covers that Stone had originally inked, such as FF #27. So Chic also did his own recreation, shown here.

n the beginning—and we’re talking TJKC #1 as that beginning—editor/chief writer John Morrow wrote a short article about the then fairly-recent (early ’90s) recreations of classic Marvel covers auctioned off by Sotheby’s.

It had taken a while, but Sotheby’s, the venerable collectibles and antiques auction house, had caught on to what private collectors like Russ Cochran, Mark Evanier, Bill Pearson, and Marv Wolfman (among others) had known all along. And that was original comic mag artwork was a wonderful oasis for the discerning art connoisseur in and of itself.

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Dick Ayers & Stan Goldberg Stan Lee was quoted in the catalog, saying, “Dick could do it all, pencil, ink, even letter. I loved his work on our western and war titles. He was such a good penciler, I felt guilty every time I gave him an inking assignment.”

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Alongside a recreation of Fantastic Four #1’s cover, the catalog mentioned that Mr. Ayers was its original inker (something that today is disputed, with the nod going to George Klein in most historians’ minds). Stan Goldberg was the original colorist and recalled, “Stan (Lee) would never accept a first effort, no matter how much he liked it. Fantastic Four #1 was a perfect example. I remember my first concept, a dramatic night scene with a yellow logo, then a light blue background with a black logo. Stan finally decided on a white background with a red logo.”

Ayers and Goldberg teamed up to re-do Kirby’s covers to: FF #1, Strange Tales #101, Journey into Mystery #85, Avengers #11, FF #28, FF #6, Avengers #12, FF #12, JIM #83, and Avengers #1.

Chic Stone The late, great Chic Stone was one of Kirby’s finest embellishers. He came to Marvel and from 1963-65 worked on “nearly every Marvel character,” according to Christie’s East. For the catalog Stan Lee commented that, “Chic had one of the best inking styles in the business. I encouraged Chic to use a heavy brush line, and loved the fact that everything stood out clearly. We constantly had to take into consideration the limitations of the printing process and paper. Chic’s work was ideal.”

Chic always spoke highly about the work Stan and Jack produced, and especially his fondness for inking the King’s pencils. For the catalog (like Ayers), he even painted a selfportrait of himself and the many Marvel-ous heroes and villains he added ink to during his years at the House of Ideas. Chic also included a portrait of the fabulous Fantastic Four in

full color, done over pen and ink on illustration board.

Mr. Stone was aided by Mr. Goldberg in reprising the Kirby/ Stone/Goldberg covers for FF #27, 29, and X-Men #6. Chic did FF #33 and X-Men #7 in black-and-white by himself and X-Men #10’s cover in color.

Joe Sinnott ‘Joltin’ Joe Sinnott blew lots of eyes loose with his meticulous, slick inking over Kirby’s pencils in FF #5. So, can anyone guess one of the covers he was asked to reproduce? FF #5 was recreated by Mr. Sinnott along with FF #57. About the auction and his artwork, Joe recently recalled for me by phone, “Christie’s approached me initially. I got the whole amount from the finished pieces, as I remember, minus the fee I paid Marie Severin to color them for me.

I’m sure [Christie’s] got a piece of the ones I did, but it sure didn’t come out of my check! (laughter) “I mailed them down to them. They wanted them either matted or framed and I paid a small amount for the frames, I remember.

“I went to New York for the auction itself and we had a very nice time. We took pictures, had lunch, and the Christie’s people treated us very well.

“I don’t remember if I saw Dick Ayers there. I never met Chic Stone. He would’ve had to fly up from Florida. Joe Simon was there, along with Stan (Lee), John Romita, Sr., and other Marvel people. I saw other’s stuff, not mine, get auctioned off. Mine went 37

in phone call bids. I was very pleased with Marie’s coloring... she did her usual fantastic job.”

Joe Simon The legendary Joe Simon only did one cover for this auction (even though a nice reproduction of Captain America Comics #10 exists by Joe), but what an impressive piece of work he completed! The S&K Captain America covers (well, all their Timely covers were exciting and iconic, actually!) were Golden Age gems!

Christie’s East introduced Joe with, “Born 10/11/13 in Rochester, NY—While in his teens Simon began to distinguish himself as an illustrator. Relocating to NYC, Simon found himself drawn toward the newly emerging comic book industry. With a combination of creative brilliance and adept business sense, Simon was quickly selected to be the first editor at Timely Publications which later became Marvel Comics. Teamed with the legendary Jack Kirby, Simon and Kirby quickly took the comic industry by storm.” (Did they ever!)

S&K’s demented artist-villain, the Black Talon (see TJKC #22), paints Bucky’s image (after Simon painted them both!) as ol’ Winghead leaps to the rescue in this scenario from Captain America Comics #9.

Stan Lee...

Explaining a little of his approach to cover approval, Stan told the auction people in 1995, “...in the early ’60s we were in a market where there were no comic stores. Comics were bought in “candy stores” or at newsstands. I also felt that buyers were for the most part transient; we had no following at that point. For these reasons, I felt it was imperative that a cover shout out at you. I wanted a high contrast, poster effect. I insisted on bright colors, dark against light, light against dark. I wanted you to be able to see our books and tell what it was, even walking across the street.”

Stan was right. As the defacto art director, his instincts for hiring superb colorists like Mr. Goldberg and later, Marie Severin, and suggesting/ insisting that powerful color contrasts and images merge together provided us with some Marvel-ous covers.

(above) Joe Simon’s recreation of the cover of Captain America Comics #9.

...and Jack Kirby!

Kirby Cover Recreations PRICES REALIZED 11/18/1995 cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to

Journey Into Mystery #85 $1,093 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Fantastic Four #1 $3,450 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Fantastic Four #5 $2,530 (Joe Sinnott/Marie Severin) Strange Tales #101 $1,265 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) X-Men #10 $1,610 (Chic Stone) Avengers #11 $1,725 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Fantastic Four #28 $1,840 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Avengers #1 $1,955 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Fantastic Four #33 $633 (Chic Stone) Fantastic Four #6 $1,840 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Fantastic Four #57 $4, 025 (Joe Sinnott/Marie Severin) X-Men #7 $805 (Chic Stone) Fantastic Four #12 $2,070 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Avengers #12 $1,610 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Captain America Comics #9 (not sold) (Joe Simon) Journey Into Mystery #83 $1,840 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) X-Men #6 $1,495 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Fantastic Four #29 $2,185 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) Fantastic Four #27 $2,990 (Dick Ayers/Stan Goldberg) 38

King Kirby had passed on by 1995, but some of his original pages were auctioned off in this same catalog.

Just a few of the ones offered for sale: a great battle page (pg. 20) with Zemo and Cap trading blows and political philosophy from Avengers #6, the next-issue pin-up with Sub-Mariner from the back of Avengers #2, page 27 from the unforgettable Thor-Hulk slugfest from Journey Into Mystery #112, and the opening splash from “The Madness!”, Strange Tales #97. (The remainder of the catalog’s contents was filled up with rare ’60s collectibles and animation cels from the various Marvel cartoon programs.)

But you have to start with the pencils, and that’s where the King gets it all flowing in the right direction.

Idea-wise, Jack’s sense of composition/design was rarely askew (even his unpublished cover pieces stay in your head forever!).

And we can thank his talented collaborators Ayers, Goldberg, Sinnott, Stone, and co-conceptualists Simon and Lee for adding their own wonderment to the magical penciling design of Jack Kirby. ★ [Mr. Joe Sinnott has our gratitude for his continued support.]

Gallery Kirby’s partners & pairs, as chosen by John Morrow

(left) Only Kirby would take kids from the slums of New York, give them a sooped-up flying car, and send them to Scotland to track down the Loch Ness Monster. Pencils from Jimmy Olsen #144, page 13 (Dec. 1971). (pages 42-43) The “Black Musketeers” take their bow in Black Panther #9 (May 1978). Seeing as how the Panther was originally visually similar to a certain Caped Crusader, we thought it only fitting to show Jack’s one turn at Batman (and his partner Robin) from Super Powers II, #5 (Oct, 1985). (page 44) Space Stars was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon that ran on NBC-TV from 198182. Here are Jack’s animation concepts for the episode “Dimension of Doom” where Space Ghost rescues his mutated partners Jan and Jace. (page 45) Page 4 of the unpublished Dingbats of Danger Street #2 (circa 1974), with inks by Mike Royer. (page 46-47) Two pages of Cap/Falcon teamwork from Jack’s 1970s return to Marvel in Captain America #193 (Jan. 1976). (page 48) August 18, 1957 Sunday page of Johnny Reb & Billy Yank, which Jack ghosted for inker Frank Giacoia.

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We’re seeing double with this one.

The FF #96 cover original artwork (March 1970) here shows Jack’s unaltered take, before Marvel added stats of a skyline and weird domestic props (a phone, a pipe, a book) for the published version.

But when the company reprinted that issue in Marvel’s Greatest Comics #77 in 1978, they must’ve not had a good stat of the original cover, and had Jack redraw it. It looks like he simply flopped it, and basically traced it.

Coincidentally, both were drawn at the tail end of his respective 1960s and ’70s runs at Marvel, when his interest was likely waning.

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If you think you recognize this piece from the 1979 Jack Kirby Masterworks portfolio, you’re only half right!

For whatever reason, Jack decided to copy his own work—not exactly line for line, and not a tracing.

A Kirby friend commissioned the piece at left directly from Jack Kirby in 1979 for $200— whereas the bottom image is the one that appeared in Masterworks, with a 1978 copyright line (meaning Jack drew the bottom one first).

Matching up the two images in Photoshop (above) shows a) Jack didn’t lightbox it, and b) he didn’t trace it—he apparently just drew it again. Both versions appear to be directly from Jack doing all the art, with no assistants. He simply did two of them. We’re not sure if he looked at the previous piece while doing the second one, or if he just had a photograph in his mind and he drew it.

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Packaging Jack

InPrint

by Gary

by John Picariello Morrow (below) Original art from Who’s Who #6 (Aug. 1985) of Darkseid, showing an unused pencil panel of the ruler sending troops after the Hunger Dogs.

We darkened the top panel to better show the erased pencils.

here’s a great scene in the Jack Kirby graphic novel The Hunger Dogs where Darkseid ponders the techno-wizardry that has replaced the raw power of crowd-control used in simpler times. Comments one of Darkseid’s minions, “It’s packaging, sire!

Technology that is easy to produce and easy to create!” They could very well have been talking about comic book reprints instead of nuclear destruction, but the principle is the same: with so many years worth of archived Kirby material, a steady stream of Jack Kirby art has surfaced in the last few years: Repackaged, reformatted, and reintroduced to an eager and interested public, much to the delight of fans and publishing house accountants.

Over 20 years since Jack Kirby passed from this world into the great beyond, the sands of time have not dimmed the spotlight that continues to shine on this artist whose career spanned nearly five decades. Kirby’s work is still revered—his output and creativity still the benchmarks of what can be accomplished with a pencil and a simple sheet of Bristol board.

But perhaps the true testament to the man is the amount of product that continues to be published so many years after Kirby’s death. Trade paperbacks and hardcovers from Marvel and DC Comics reprinting the chronicles of the New Gods, Jimmy Olsen, Black Panther and Captain American generate healthy sales for both publishers. Add to the mix recent best sellers like the “coffee table” volume Marvel Visionaries or fanzines like the Jack Kirby Collector and it’s evident that there is still a market for the four-color visions of the creator or co-creator of this generations most popular comic creations.

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But what is the criteria for publishers who decide to repackage what is basically old artwork and stories in a way that appeals to the new reader, and not just the hardcore Kirby fan? When it comes to reprinting classic Marvel Comics stories and art, the focus—comments Marvel editor Tom Brevoort—is on the character and not the artist. “The fact that the work is by Jack is secondary”, says Tom. “So when there’s a Fantastic Four movie in the works, you can expect Marvel to produce a lot of FF collections, and certainly most of them will have some percentage of Kirby material in them. Outside of special cases— the Kirby Visionaries, or the Cap Madbomb book—we’re not really marketing to the hardcore Kirby fans.”

Tom also feels that when the classic stories are reprinted, the work stands on its own merits: “You work out what you think is the best, most economically sound package for the material you’re printing, and then you go with that. This means that certain stories may end up in black-and-white in an Essentials collection, in color on slick paper in a Masterworks volume, and reprinted in softcover in color as well—FF #51 is one of these. But I don’t feel the need to, say, try to color Jack’s work in the modern 49

computerized style. Every example I’ve seen of that sort of thing—and there’ve been a few of them over the last few years—has looked terrible to me. That’s not the sort of color the artwork was drawn to accommodate, so the color tends to fight the drawing.”

(above) DC, Marvel, or other companies not producing the compilation you want? Make your own, using this fan’s step-by-step instructions for binding your comics: http://did youmakethis.com/jackkirbys-black-panther/

(below) Devil Dinosaur, which many fans maligned when it was released in the 1970s, was saved from extinction in 2014, when Marvel released a paperback collection of the complete series.

At the other end of the spectrum lies what’s left of Jack Kirby’s unpublished work. Lisa Kirby—Jack’s youngest daughter and executor of the Jack Kirby Estate—has worked closely over the years with the Californiabased comic book publisher Genesis West.

The core group of the publishing house— artist and illustrator Mike Thibodeaux, designer Richard French, and publicist Steve Robertson, pored over the many files Jack left behind, in hopes of taking some of his many concepts and ideas and translating them into comics and film. Those efforts finally paid off with the 2007 mini-series Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters. Genesis West publicist Steve Robertson says the idea for the series started out as a venue for animation and evolved into something more. “We originally decided to produce a comic series of the Galactic Bounty Hunters when we were pitching this concept to different animation producers, who encouraged us to do so. Then, we realized we were coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Kirby’s death, and this seemed like a fitting way to commemorate Jack. We incorporated some great art of Jack’s, and Lisa Kirby helped develop the concept, and write the comic series.”

Other magazines—most notably The Jack Kirby Collector—have covered the series’ development in depth. Suffice to say that Galactic Bounty Hunters is an amalgamation of sorts between Kirby’s ideas and artwork, and new artwork by the Genesis West crew. Other unpublished artwork of Kirby’s may yet see the light of day. It’s a matter of economics for the Kirby Estate, and the interest that exists for Kirby artwork not related to Marvel or DC. Adds Robertson, “There really aren’t any copyright issues with DC or Marvel to contend with concerning the archive material.

Most of the artwork 50

that remains was done on speculation, and never used. At one time, when Rosalind Kirby was still with us, we were considering the idea of collecting some of this unseen artwork into a book, but couldn’t establish whether it would be economically feasible.

“I think that the Estate is gratified to see how much Kirby’s work has meant to so many people. The reprinting of material is how new readers are being introduced to Jack (but) the estate has no say about what is reprinted, as it’s either copyrighted by Marvel or DC, or is no longer copyrighted at all (in the case of older artwork).”

The challenge of creating new work from old art can be daunting. But Lisa and her colleagues have risen to the occasion by using the concepts that Jack left behind as springboards for their own imaginations. Adds Lisa, “I am hoping this series will springboard into other areas in which we can use other Jack Kirby concepts. Genesis West has their own story concepts which they have developed themselves and some with my father. John Morrow and the Kirby Collector have been a wonderful source for showcasing my father’s published and unpublished work.”

Not all Kirby-related publishing ventures have been hits. But John Morrow, publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector, thinks it’s critical for “the Big Two” to keep Kirby’s work in print, so the work remains a vital entity, and not just something that appeals to the hardcore fan. “I think it works in a cycle”, commented John. “Having a mag like TJKC out there to keep Jack’s name before the comics public is important, so that eventually companies like Marvel will do stuff like the Marvel Visionaries book on Jack. I’d like to think the ongoing existence of TJKC has at least helped a little to let them see there’s still a market for Kirby out there. And hopefully we’ll in turn benefit from Marvel reprinting his stuff. In any case, let’s hope that the big guys putting Jack’s work back in print will introduce it to a new generation, who undoubtedly never saw Jack’s work on the stands like we did.”

A lot of Kirby’s late ’70s comic work would seem made-to-order when it comes to trade paperback and hardcover reprints—if anything, because many of Jack’s series tended to run only about 10 to 18 issues. Marvel

and DC have demonstrated significant efforts recently in keeping Kirby’s work in print. DC in particular should be noted when they decided to reprint the New Gods, Mister Miracle and Jimmy Olsen, as well as Boy Commandos, Sandman, OMAC, Kamandi, the Losers, and more. Good sales on these books have lead to more volumes that flesh out Kirby’s tenure at DC. Marvel on the other hand has always mined a motherlode with its Masterworks and Essentials series, and has reprinted some of Kirby’s less acclaimed work such as the 1970s Black Panther and his Bicentennial run on Captain America (“The Madbomb Saga”). But just because the name “Jack Kirby” sits on the cover doesn’t necessarily mean there is a market for the work. Adds Marvel’s Tom Brevoort, “The drawback with something like Machine Man, for example, is that the character’s never really been a top seller, during Kirby’s time or afterwards. So it’s harder to justify a Machine Man collection—it seems much more a niche market item. This is the case with a lot of the stuff Jack did in the ’70s. We’ve made some headway successfully with the Cap Madbomb “collection and the Kirby Black Panther volume, so that bode well for doing Eternals.” [Editor’s Note: Since this interview was conducted, Marvel finally released a Machine Man collection, just this past summer. Looks like everything Jack did for both DC and Marvel will make it into collected editions sooner or later.]

It’s encouraging to see that the horizon looks promising when it comes to placing further Kirby artwork and stories on the market. That not all these ventures translate into dollar signs is unfortunate, but the important point may be that Jack Kirby’s work continues to find an audience.

And ultimately, it’s the comics fans and readers who come out as winners, as the timeless quality of Jack’s work continues to find a space in the hearts, minds and bookshelves of men, women and children the world over—pretty much like Jack Kirby himself always said it would! ★

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(left) Image Comics’ beautiful reprinting of Silver Star was meant to be followed by a Captain Victory collection, but sales apparently didn’t warrant the subsequent edition.

Innerview

Partners for Life

by Blair Kramer

(below) Forever People #8, page 7 pencils. (next page, bottom) Walter Simonson’s pencils from Secret City #0.

[This interview was conducted in late December 1992 via telephone with Jack and Roz Kirby, just as Jack’s Topps Comics series were about to launch. Much of this interview was originally published as “Interview with Jack Kirby” in Comic Book Collector #5, May 1993, by Century Publishing. This full version was transcribed and edited by John Morrow. It gives a nice look at how, even at the end of his career, Jack relied on his life partner Roz to help him.]

BLAIR KRAMER: First of all, I very much want to tell you that, and I guess you must’ve heard this many times, but it is true with me when I say that, you have been one of my idols for a very long time.

JACK KIRBY: I thank you for that. I can assure you that I’ve always done my best to just get the reader into my work as much as possible. Initially it’s my duty to sell magazines, and that’s what I’ve always done.

I’ve done it by telling the best story I can.

BLAIR: I remember as I was growing up in the 1960s, picking up the Fantastic Four, Captain America, and so many other comic books that you illustrated, I remember that all my friends, myself included, all wanted to draw just like you. You probably heard that many time, but in all honesty, as far as we were concerned, there was only one artist, and you were that artist. You were the only one.

JACK: Believe me, that’s deeply appreciated.

I can only say, as far as drawing style in comics, I’ve always felt that my style was apropos of the kind of comics I was doing.

BLAIR: There was hardly anything more dynamic, more fascinating, more exciting than the Fantastic Four, and any of the other comics you were drawing. There was probably nothing as exciting as those comics you drew.

JACK: Well I can only tell you that’s probably an offshoot of the times, when I was young, y’know? Probably much of my own development is a product of those times. Of course, those are transcribed in all the drawings and the stories I’ve ever made.

BLAIR: You bring up an interesting point, being that all the new comic book illustrators have people like yourself as influences, but you started in on the ground floor.

JACK: Yes. In fact, comics were first beginning to proliferate. I remember that the field didn’t have many magazines. The industry was growing.

BLAIR: You created many of the features that are mainstay comic books on the stands today.

JACK: I did. It was a lot of fun doing that.

BLAIR: It shows too. It showed in the work.

As I said, I’m gushing now, and I don’t mean to gush.

JACK: Oh no, in a way, I’m gushing too. (laughter) I’ve always been enthusiastic 52

And they’re very specific. One is called Secret City, and the other is called Satan’s Six. In the press release, they name who’s working on what, and what the stories are about, so that’ll give you a great idea.

They’ll have details, and ideas of what it’s going to be about.

A Kryptonian design, from the Super Friends cartoon.

JACK: You can get the information from that. It’s got all the new books they’re gonna produce, and they went from my ideas.

BLAIR: Can you elaborate on the storyline for our readers?

ROZ: Tell him about the Secret Six. [Roz meant Satan’s Six here—Ed.] BLAIR: Wasn’t there a comic book called Secret Six some time back?

JACK: Satan’s Six, Roz. ROZ: Oh, Satan’s Six. Sorry. I confused myself. Eliminate that from the tape. (laughter)

about comics. To me it’s always been a great form of American journalism.

JACK: Satan’s Six is about people who are caught in limbo. They can’t get into Hell cause they haven’t been that bad. The idea is that, in order to make it into Hell, they have to go out and do something bad, but it always turns out to be good. (laughter) And they’re forever caught in limbo. The Devil, of course, I call The Inspector, but he’s really the Devil, though.

BLAIR: I’ve never thought comic books were as well appreciated as they should’ve been. Not from the very beginning. They still aren’t.

BLAIR: Is this a continued series, or a mini-series?

JACK: No they weren’t. It was a very new media, and anything new, respect is something it gains over the years. It was the same way with comics.

ROZ: It’ll be continued.

JACK: Yes, it’ll be continued.

BLAIR: Can you tell me a little bit about what you will be doing with Topps?

BLAIR: Now who’s supposed to be drawing this?

ROZ: I forgot what the thing said on the paper, but there’s a whole list of who’s doing what.

JACK: Topps are doing some books created from my ideas.

ROZ KIRBY: And sketches. I’m here on the phone. (Roz laughs)

JACK: It’s one of the books that will be drawn by these top notch artists.

JACK: And sketches. They’ll produce the books, they’ll get their own artists.

BLAIR: And the other one is called…

BLAIR: So you won’t be drawing them.

ROZ: Secret City. Let me get the paper and I’ll give you the names.

JACK: No, I won’t be drawing them. But they’re taken from contributions that I made through my own ideas.

JACK: I’ve got so many concepts, that I’ve forgotten the details of all of them. (laughter) But Satan’s Six has that format. The Secret City also.

BLAIR: Will there be some reprint art?

BLAIR: So this isn’t all superheroes?

You’re not sticking to the superheroes.

ROZ: No, it’s all gonna be new stuff. They’ll have people like Don Heck and Roy Thomas; did you get the press release?

JACK: No, I’m not sticking to the superheroes. Well, the superheroes are in it.

Listen, if you talk to my wife, she’s got all the details for you. She’s really kept track of them.

BLAIR: Mr. Salicrup told me he would be sending me a press release.

ROZ: It’ll have all the people working on the books; all the great guys who worked with Jack before. Ditko, Don Heck, so many of the others.

BLAIR: Okay, I would rather you didn’t hang up, though.

JACK: Oh no, no.

BLAIR: By Don Heck and Ditko, new artwork?

BLAIR: I’m looking forward to it. Could you tell me a little about these ideas? Or is it too early to discuss them?

BLAIR: Because I wanted to hear about you, personally. I don’t want to pry per se. My idea was, when I was given this assignment, first of all I’m a feature writer. I’m not terribly experienced at doing interviews, but I’ve read enough interviews to know I did not want to ask you pat questions, which would force you to give me pat answers. And I wanted to have kind of a casual conversation interview, so to speak.

ROZ: Actually, you’ll have it in the press release. It’ll give you an idea what the first couple of books are going to be about.

JACK: That’s the kind of conversation we’ll have, I assure you. Like I say, I never give pat answers, unless it demands one.

ROZ: It’ll be all new artwork, from Jack’s characters.

JACK: They’re all great artists in their own right.

ROZ: It should be very interesting concepts.

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drawn by Steve Ditko. So it’s going to be very interesting, and continue on from there.

BLAIR: There’s no question that Topps Comics is going into the industry to do the best they can, in a big way.

ROZ: And they’re bringing in the best people.

BLAIR: No question about that. I’m excited about it!

JACK: I am too, because they’re evidently going to be top products.

ROZ: And of course, they have a lot of new ideas of Jack’s which they’ll eventually put out, but they have to go one at a time.

JACK: What I’ve done is given them the concepts.

ROZ: And also the sketches of what the characters look like.

BLAIR: When will the first couple of books start appearing?

ROZ: According to them, it’ll be April.

In fact, they’re going to call April the “Month of Jack Kirby.”

JACK: I’m sure you’ll find the stories and the concepts very, very interesting.

BLAIR: I’m sure I will too. As I said, there wasn’t anything happening when I was growing up. I’m 38 years old.

When I was growing up, there wasn’t anything more exciting than getting the latest issue of Captain America or the Fantastic Four, or whatever new comic book that you had illustrated.

And later on, of course, you were doing the New Gods and things like that at DC Comics.

JACK: I can assure you that it was just as exciting for me to produce them.

BLAIR: I remember, a lot of people were getting very excited over the Jimmy Olsen comics. I thought those were some of the best comics you ever did.

JACK: Well, I thank you. In fact, I did one Superman too. I forget which one it

ROZ: I’ll give you what they have on the bio. It’s called the Secret City Saga, and it’s a Kirby superhero concept. There’s three one-shot titles, and then they’ll continue into other things. There’s Bombast, Night Glider, and Captain Glory. These superheroes are sole survivors of an ancient civilization destroyed 15,000 years ago. They awake from suspended animation, and they fight to save modern mankind.

Bombast is going to be plotted by Roy Thomas, scripted by Gary Friedrich, and drawn by Dick Ayers and John Severin.

was, but it was an early one.

ROZ: Superman was in the Jimmy Olsen stories.

JACK: Didn’t I make one Superman story? No, it must’ve been part of Jimmy Olsen. [Editor’s Note: Legend has it that Jack offered the idea for the villain Metallo to Superman scribe Robert Bernstein on a train ride in 1959, during a conversation they had on the way into Manhattan, when Bernstein was panicked and needed an idea to placate his DC editor Mort Weisinger. Perhaps that’s what Jack was thinking of.]

BLAIR: Every one of these people go back to the 1960s.

JACK: Yes, they do.

BLAIR: You introduced the Forever People in the Jimmy Olsen comic book, didn’t you? [Editor’s Note: Nope, in their own book.] And now

ROZ: Captain Glory is going to be written by Roy Thomas, and 54

DC is using them again.

JACK: They are, cause they’re extremely interesting characters.

ROZ: Well, they’re using everything. They use the Demon; you remember the Demon? He’s going now for quite a while. It’s still coming out. A lot of the characters: Darkseid they’ve always used, the New Gods. They keep going. Jack keeps everybody in business. (laughter) BLAIR: There’s no question about that. It’s unfortunate there’s so many young people, most of the people buying comic books today are teenagers, in their early twenties, they don’t appreciate that a great many of the comic books they read today were created by Jack Kirby. They don’t know it.

of the rules, you were allowed to bring your own lawyer, y’know. (laughter) One of the fellas would act as a lawyer for the other, and state your case before the president of the club.

BLAIR: They had their own magazine?

JACK: Yes they did. I was the editor.

ROZ: Editor and artist.

JACK: I was the editor and artist. It was all done on a mimeograph machine.

ROZ: It was a little mimeograph machine, with two to four sheets of paper.

ROZ: Well, DC will put down on the Demon, and anything Jack created, “Created by Jack Kirby.” Marvel doesn’t do that.

BLAIR: Marvel doesn’t do that?

JACK: No, it doesn’t.

BLAIR: These characters are owned by the publishers, aren’t they?

ROZ: Yeah. Yes they do.

JACK: Well, more or less.

BLAIR: May I ask you; I don’t mean to pry. There are probably a lot of people like myself, who’d like to know more about Jack Kirby. Can you tell me a little about your personal history?

JACK: My personal background dates back to very turbulent times, and a very turbulent section of New York, the Lower East Side. I was born there, I got to see all the early films, and I loved the movies. It made me curious to find out about other people and other things, and I began to walk out of the East Side to uptown, and I began to discover all the things I knew nothing about, like the public library (laughter), Grand Central [Station], Central Park, Tudor City, and my life began to expand.

BLAIR: When did you start drawing?

How old were you?

JACK: Oh, I was very, very young. I might’ve been 19 or so.

ROZ: Honey, remember you used to draw for the BBR. You were twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

JACK: Right. I used to belong to the Boy’s Brotherhood Republic, which is a club. It was like the Boy’s Club.

ROZ: It’s still going strong in New York.

JACK: Yes they are. We had our own Mayor. We elected our own prosecuting attorney, and if there was an infraction 55

(this spread) Between the time Jack drew Demon #1 (Aug. 1972) and it was published, DC cut the cover price and page count of its comics. So these two pages were combined into one to fit the new format, leaving behind six unpublished panels.

(below) Jack worked for the Lincoln Features Syndicate in 1936, but this promotional tabloid lists the strip Abdul Jones as being offered by the Keystone Press Feature Service, Ltd., although the strips have Lincoln’s copyright notice on them. (next page, bottom) Kirby political cartoon.

BLAIR: So what would be called a fanzine today?

industry.

JACK: Yes. It was a club magazine, which was read by the members of the club.

BLAIR: Oh, you were working for the Fleisher studio?

BLAIR: You did cartoons, or comic strips?

JACK: I did cartoons. You can’t do much elaborate stuff on a mimeograph sheet. I would draw on the mimeograph sheet, and type a little, to explain the illustrations.

It was a lot of fun for me.

BLAIR: From there, you went into more important publications?

JACK: Yes, I did Betty Boop for awhile, for the animation

JACK: Yes. For about two days. (laughter) ROZ: It wasn’t two days, it was two years. That what you said in your book.

JACK: Yeah, it was about two years. It seemed like two days. (laughter) BLAIR: What work did you do for the Fleisher studios?

JACK: Strictly animation stuff. I would do Betty Boop starting to lift her foot, and I’d pass it on to six other guys.

ROZ: What you call an in-betweener.

JACK: Yes, I was an in-betweener.

BLAIR: So you filled in the...

JACK: I filled in the steps.

ROZ: Betty Boop and Popeye.

BLAIR: Did you work for any other animation studios?

JACK: No. ROZ: Well, later on.

JACK: I worked for a small newspaper syndicate that went out of business fairly quickly. Then I began to look for places where I could do more and more artwork. When comics came into being, I gravitated to them, and I grew with the industry.

BLAIR: I know that you’re credited as one of the co-creators of Captain America, with Mr. Simon. I don’t mean to be overtly ignorant, but I don’t know very much about Mr. Simon. Can you tell me, is he still alive?

JACK: Yes, Joe is still about, and he’s very active.

Joe came from a commercial art background.

We both met going up to these comic publishers, and we formed an association. We both grew.

Joe, being a college graduate, had more credibility than I had. He did most of the business with the publishers.

BLAIR: Whose basic concept was Captain America? Who did what?

JACK: It was both of us, because we were both patriotic. Those were patriotic times, and Captain America was a natural offshoot of those feelings. It’s hard to conceive of times when a guy like Hitler was grabbing everything in sight.

BLAIR: Well, I know that you’re Jewish; am I right?

JACK: Yes. BLAIR: Well, I am too.

ROZ: Happy Hanukkah. (chuckles) BLAIR: Happy Hanukkah to you. I want you to know that I do appreciate, at least as much as a person of my age could appreciate, those times.

I wasn’t alive at that time, but I do believe I

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appreciate those times, at least to some degree. I say that because I am Jewish.

concentration camps, just grabbing everything in Europe, and creating a general turbulence. In fact, he was reaching out toward Greece and India; evidently, he wanted the world. And there was nobody to stop him. That kind of thing was in the papers every day, and it was a thing to follow up on. The American government was very adamant.

JACK: I see. Well, I can tell you that I came close up to that kind of thing. We had Nazis in New York. They’d come up to the office, and I would deliver my work. They’d say, “We’re gonna wait for you and beat the hell out of you downstairs.” And I was as stupid as they were, and I’d say, “Okay, I’ll come down and see you guys.” And I would deliver my work at Marvel, which was Timely, and I would go downstairs, but nobody was there.

BLAIR: To stay out of the war?

BLAIR: They wouldn’t hang around.

JACK: No, they wouldn’t hang around. But they had big meetings at Madison Square Garden.

BLAIR: They were called Bundists, or Brown Shirts?

JACK: No, they were just Nazis. The Brown Shirts were in Germany. But Roosevelt got rid of all of them. He drafted everybody. (laughter) BLAIR: I’ve often felt Siegel and Shuster’s creation of Superman was part of a reaction to the news coming out of Germany.

JACK: Well, l just don’t know. We weren’t close friends. I knew them as fellow artists, who did work for the magazines.

BLAIR: You created Captain America before we got into the war.

JACK: Oh yes. I used to put Hitler on the cover, with Captain America beating him up. I created an awful ruckus. (laughter) BLAIR: Did you do this, anticipating the fact that we were going to get into that war?

JACK: It was nothing that I expected. Now, it was just a product of the times. Let’s face it, Hitler was in the news every day, and he was doing these things every day, forming 57

JACK: Yes it will.

BLAIR: I also wanted to ask you about the period during the 1950s.

How did the witch hunts, precipitated by Wertham’s book, affect you?

JACK: Well, it didn’t affect us that much. It was a period that didn’t really last long. We did the kind of things we always wanted to do.

BLAIR: You didn’t try to push the envelope?

JACK: No, we just put out the stuff we thought would sell.

ROZ: I think it did affect the comic books, cause people were afraid to buy comic books, and it did hurt the field quite a bit. I was a housewife, and I felt it.

BLAIR: So you weren’t getting as much work during the 1950s as you had been getting during the 1940s?

JACK: Well, it’s not that we weren’t getting as much work; the sales began falling off, and the publishers terminated some books.

ROZ: Cause they were afraid. So it did have an effect on the field. Then they brought in the Code, then the books started picking up again.

JACK: When they created the Comics Code, sales began to pick up again.

BLAIR: Around what year was the Comics Code Authority introduced?

ROZ: I don’t remember. You got to understand, we’ve been in the field over fifty years.

JACK: Oh no. They were adamant about Hitler, they told him so. It seemed like things were gonna happen. So I reflected those times in my Captain America feature.

BLAIR: That’s what I was telling my wife. You are one of the true pioneers of the industry.

ROZ: Yeah, Jack is 75, and I’m blah, blah, blah. (laughter) We have a daughter who’s 47, she’s back in New York.

BLAIR: Were the sales strong from the very beginning?

JACK: They were very, very strong from the very beginning. There was patriotism throughout the states; it was in the very air. Captain America was a very natural output of that kind of feeling. Captain America did very, very well.

JACK: We were in comics early, when they began to get moving. And of course, they began to sell better and better. Captain America was the kind of comic that really helped sales.

BLAIR: Throughout the ’50s, you were doing horror stories mostly, weren’t you?

BLAIR: Of course, shortly after Captain America first appeared, publishers came out with dozens of variations on your theme. You had something to do with a character called The Shield, didn’t you?

JACK: Well, there were horror stories, there were gangster stories.

BLAIR: You did a Capone story in the ’60s.

JACK: Yes, I did.

ROZ: In The Days of the Mob.

ROZ: I think you did that with Joe.

BLAIR: Later on, you did “Bullets for Big Al.” The reason I mention it is, I’m working on a comic book about a vigilante. It’s like the Punisher, except this character is fighting the gangsters in Chicago in the 1920s.

JACK: Yes, I did that with Joe. I think we published our own book with that. We did a thing called Fighting American.

BLAIR: Were they successful?

JACK: Yes, they were. In fact, we were the first ones to do “love” comics. I used to pass the newsstand every day, and there were these pulp magazines, love, love, love, and it suddenly dawned on me that there were no love magazines in comics. So we did a magazine called My Date.

JACK: I did comics like that. But they were true stories.

BLAIR: But it was that kind of story that inspired me to come up with my concept. You have been very influential, at least with me.

And I’m sure you know you were very influential with a great many other people as well.

ROZ: That came out before.

JACK: Well, I thank you for that, but I can tell you that there was always a large element of truth. In other words, what I did was just fictionalize it, get a good story out of the actual truth of things. That element was always in my stories. There was always an element of truth.

JACK: Yes. My Date was the first one to have romance in the stories.

ROZ: Before you go any further, there’s a book that just came out called The Art of Jack Kirby. Have you seen that?

BLAIR: Were you asked by Stan Lee to illustrate the Fantastic Four, right from the start?

BLAIR: How long has it been available?

ROZ: It just came out the last week or two. It’s being sent to the stores. But that has the entire history. It’s a biography of Jack. It’s produced by Ray Wyman, and Blue Rose Press. If they go into the comic book shops, they can ask and order it there too.

ROZ: That’s a whole misconception.

JACK: It’s a misconception.

ROZ: Fantastic Four was created by both. No one… he didn’t come up with the idea, and Jack came up with the idea as much as he did. To

BLAIR: It’ll be available at most bookstores, won’t it?

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put it frankly, I don’t want to start anything, but Stan Lee would never give Jack any stories. Jack would write his own stories. Everybody knows that. But we don’t want to go into the Stan Lee bit, cause that’s a sore spot.

But all those things were both drawn and written by Jack and Stan, they both produced the characters.

BLAIR: You mentioned you have a son and a daughter.

ROZ: We have a daughter back in New York; we have three daughters.

SIDENOTE The June 1971 issue #30 of the fanzine Fan Informer mentions that Jack had recently been interviewed for 15 minutes on the Detroit, Michigan radio station WCAR, on the Warren Pierce radio program, discussing how he got into comics. If anyone out there has a recording or transcript of this interview, please get in touch!

BLAIR: Are they artists? Are there any other artists in the family?

ROZ: My grandson. He’s only 14, but he likes to draw, and he likes to write, and he likes to create a lot of things.

BLAIR: So he likes comic books?

ROZ: Well, he’s into comic books, now he’s into cards, the saving of baseball cards. He likes to design buildings and things like Disneyland. He’s a very creative young man. My granddaughter’s going to be a Marine Biologist. She’s twenty.

JACK: She’s a wonderful girl, and very, very intelligent.

ROZ: She’s at the University of Haifa, taking a couple of courses.

BLAIR: So she’s studying in Israel.

ROZ: Yes. We have three daughters and one son. The grandchildren are from our son Neal.

My son’s a teacher; he teaches history and science. My youngest daughter’s also a teacher. My middle daughter’s like a stenographer, a secretary.

My oldest daughter is in show business; a beautiful singing voice, and does a lot of traveling.

So it’s a very talented family.

BLAIR: Well, I was gushing earlier, and I’m going to gush again. I grew up on comic books, and it’s a genuine thrill to have the opportunity to talk to you.

JACK: Believe me, in doing those comics, I was talking to you.

ROZ: It’s the generation, the late twenties, early thirties, and he receives so many letters from them, saying because of him, it’s what made them. And they’re very beautiful letters. We were just answering a young fellow from Singapore who wrote him a letter, and that was very nice. ★ 59

(opposite) Joe Simon commission illo. (below) Unpublished cover for Strange World Of Your Dreams, circa 1952.

How Did He...

...end up here?

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

by Sean Kleefeld

he original Sandman character was, of course, not one originated by the great Simon & Kirby team, but Gardner Fox and Bert Christman in 1939. However, after a couple years, the gas mask version of the character (above left) was scrapped and redesigned from the ground-up in a more traditional superhero vein, this time including a new kid sidekick. While I think many people (myself included) often think of this version as a Simon & Kirby

with almost non-designed, utilitarian versions. Sandman’s yellow ear caps were removed, and his ears were left visible through the cowl. The tops of their boots, which Norris had drawn as having a “M” shape not too dissimilar from Superman’s, were simplified to straight horizontal cuts. Jack also gave the partners gloves, where they had gone bare-handed previously.

The new version was, not surprisingly, a hit and the duo began appearing on the covers beginning with #74, a spot previously reserved almost exclusively for Starman since #61. Sandman and Sandy’s stories also got moved from the very last spot in each issue to the first, and their eight-page stories were now ten pages long.

Of course, as is typical with Jack, the character designs were not static. There are a few random panels in which Sandman’s boots have the tops rolled down, and his gun holster switches sides regularly,

T

Adventure Comics #70, art by Paul Norris.

character, he was actually originally designed by Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris. However, since they left after only three eight-page stories and Simon & Kirby immediately put their distinctive imprint on the strip, I think it’s an easy mistake to make. But how exactly did they put their visual imprint on the characters so quickly?

The Norris design is, of course, a huge departure from the original Christman design. In Adventure Comics #69, the Sandman began sporting yellow tights with purple boots, trunks and a cape/cowl combination. Also noteworthy are some yellow ear caps and a wide belt with an ornate clasp. Despite never having been seen by readers before, Sandy is then introduced with an almost identical costume, claiming he had been studying Sandman’s exploits for years and made his own version. The only differences being a domino mask instead of the cowl, and the purple elements being colored red.

In Adventure Comics #72, Simon & Kirby begin their several-year tenure on the book. On their first Sandman page, they immediately drop the extraneous flashy elements of the costumes. Most obvious is the loss of the capes, but the ornate belt buckles are also replaced

Adventure Comics #74, art by Simon & Kirby.

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sometimes disappearing entirely, before Jack settles on just drawing one on each side all the time—despite Sandman ever only seeming to have or use one “wirepoon.” My gut tells me Joe noticed the inconsistency and just told Jack to always draw two holsters so he wouldn’t forget which side it was supposed to be on.

There are two more alterations, though, that Jack seemed to put more conscious thought into. When he originally ditched the capes, he simply had both Sandman’s and Sandy’s costume cut off at the neck—as if they literally just unclasped their capes. After a few issues, though, Jack added a red collar to Sandy’s attire, though, as a sort of finishing touch. In the crude coloring and printing days of the time, it put a much more clear distinction between Sandy’s torso and head.

At this point, Sandy now pretty closely resembled Captain America’s Bucky— particularly since Jack was drawing both characters. Whether that was too much of a concern, or whether Jack simply got fed up trying to sort out how Sandman’s mask merged into the rest of his costume, with Adventure Comics #76, Jack brought the purple from the mask down onto and over Sandman’s shoulders. This seemed to visually differentiate the two duos more, as it provided Sandman with a distinct costume feature that didn’t simply look like an unfinished Captain America. While somewhat inconsistent in how much of the shoulders were covered in the first issue, Jack seemed to settle on a design he liked by the following issue. The character designs remained pretty well intact throughout Simon & Kirby’s tenure, and indeed the two years of stories after they left!

Although most of this column focuses on character designs that Jack initiated from scratch, I think it’s interesting to also look at how he took someone else’s design, and reconfigured it into something more uniquely Kirby. While the Norris designs certainly set the foundation for what Sandman and Adventure Comics #90, art by Simon & Kirby.

Sandy looked like, it was Jack’s own design sensibility, seemingly applied both consciously and subconsciously, that stands out in readers’ minds to this day. ★

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(below) Jack drew this pencil piece for the Kirby Masterworks portfolio in 1978, one of the final times he illo’d Sandman and Sandy in their Golden Age attire. But lest we forget, Jack also did not one, but two other Sandmen (at left, both with unusually ornate costumes): the 1960s Marvel villain (altered from Ditko’s stripedshirt design), and— teamed one last time with Joe Simon—DC’s 1976 version.

Optiks

Jack In 3-D Land

by Stan Taylor, with thanks to David Folkman for material assistance

his story starts way back in 1954. A young boy about six years old is out with his mother, comes upon a revolving comics rack, and stares in fascination. On the rack are several of those new three-dimensional (3-D) comics. He stares and rifles through the books. He shows his mother and asks if she will buy him one. He already has some comics so it’s not an unusual request. His mother looks and when she sees the EC 3-D horror comic, she blanches. Rather than the crime and gore, she picks out a 3-D comic featuring Mighty Mouse by St. Johns. The kid is spellbound; he had never seen anything like this.

The amazing rodent is flying and almost jumping out of the book. This was an excellent choice. Originally created in 1942 as a movie short, Mighty Mouse was a parody of Superman.

We have a hit.

He went through several mutations—beginning as Super Mouse—before becoming the mouse we all love. Mighty Mouse became the most popular of the many characters in Paul Terry’s studio. Not many could ever forget the stentorian operatic vocals of Mighty Mouse singing, “Hereeee I come to save the dayyyyyy.” Opera and farce played a large part of Mighty’s oeuvre, even the constant villain; Oil Can Harry occasionally breaks into aria.

He was a natural for comics with Timely producing a short run in 1946. St. John’s took over the license and started making comics in 1947 with Mighty Mouse soon their top selling book.

It was no surprise that this character was chosen for their first 3-D comic. Joe Kubert recalled: “We produced two sample proofs with the 3-D effect, a panel of Tor and one of the Three Stooges. When we showed them to Archer St. John, he flipped over the idea! We went to work on a Mighty Mouse book because St. John felt it would be the best vehicle for 3-D and get the best chance on the newsstands.” The first book sold out. Mighty Mouse later became one of the earliest TV characters in 1955 when the studio was sold to CBS. The 3-D effect left young Ray Zone breathless. Ray’s imagination and wonderment were on fire as he searched out and collected any and every thing he could find relating to 3-D. Hollywood was just beginning to flood the market with 3-D movies.

Such great titles like Bwana Devil, It Came From Outer Space, and House of Wax captivated the young man who became obsessed with the concept of 3-D. One of his favorite comics was Captain 3-D by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby—a wondrous example of the 3-D concept.

Ray came to this fascination as a consumer, but James Butterfield (below) was deep into the nuts and bolts of the industry. Even as early as the 1950s, he was producing a 3-D TV show in Mexico. He invented several 3-D set-ups

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(above) Get out your 3-D glasses, and you can see Ray Zone in the third dimension! (next page, top) Photo of Jack by Susan Pinsky.

He’s working on the pencil art to one of the versions of the 3-D Cosmic Poster. Shown at center is Jack’s first try at it—it was apparently deemed too complicated to convert to 3-D, so an effort was made to simplify it (right) before abandoning it for a new image (see page 64). (bottom) One of Jack’s unused attempts at art for Battle for a ThreeDimensional World’s included 3-D glasses, with inset stereo photo of James Butterfield.

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to improve the quality of 3-D pictures and films. In 1979, he started a new business called 3-D Video Corporation in North Hollywood, ostensibly to transfer ’50s Movies into 3-D films for TV showings, but he also had plans for other 3-D concepts. In 1981, he created 3-D Cosmic Publications, a printing division of the parent 3-D Corp. One of the first things he did was hire David Starkman for his sales team. A week or so later, he hired David’s wife, Susan Pinsky.

It was a serendipitous 1976 visit to a garage sale that got their 3-D spark going when they ventured upon an old View-Master. The View-Master was originally invented in the early 1900s and first presented at the New York World’s Fair. It was a self-contained stereo viewing unit containing 7 pairs of stereoscopic pictures in a round reel that produced great 3-D shots of scenic spots and entertainment shows. The 3-D effect amazed them and they were instantly obsessed with the hobby. They joined the Stereo Club of Southern California, they wrote a newsletter, and opened their own retail mail order business selling 3-D paraphernalia to photographers, both amateurs and professionals.

At 3-D Video, David was put to work in the sales department selling 3-D glasses and various trinkets to convenience stores and other outlets. But Susan was given another task. Mr. Butterfield asked her to gather and produce a 3-D comic book that could be used as a primer and sales point for the 3-D craze. He wanted this to be the best 3-D comic ever. He envisioned this book to be sold at convenience stores with the accompanying glasses. This daunting task was the first attempt at a 3-D comic in 25-some-odd years and Susan decided she first needed a writer who understood 3-D and possessed a writing style that could captivate the young readers. The young man from 1954 had now grown up into perhaps one of the most knowledgeable people on the concept of 3-D. Ray Zone was working at a large steel company in their art department. On the side he was writing articles about 3-D in various magazines.

From a 1989 interview, Ray recalls: “I was writing articles freelance and had a couple of articles on 3-D published. One was in the 11th edition of the Overstreet Price Guide (1981) and another, called “Stereovisions,” was in Fanfare Magazine. And that article was an attempt to create a single historic overview of all forms of 3-D imaging, including photography, comics, holography, 3-D movies, the whole thing. After that article appeared, a lady named Susan Pinsky contacted me. She was employed by 3-D Video Corporation in North Hollywood, the company that was producing anaglyphic conversions of old 3-D movies for television in 1982. She asked me to write a 3-D comic book that would be a graphic history of 3-D and hired me to create an original superhero that would be a vehicle to tell that history.

After I hung up the phone talking 63

(below) Concept drawing of the main characters.

with her, I jumped up and down for about an hour-and-a-half.”

Ray already had a similar idea roiling around in his head. Since Susan had no workable script, she hadn’t decided on an artist. A couple weeks later, Ray gave her his script. Knowing his comic book history and remembering the great job on Captain 3-D, Ray later suggested Susan get Jack Kirby to illustrate the book. She was happy, but when she showed James Butterfield the script, he had some ideas of his own. He wanted his company and himself to play a role in the story so he rewrote the script and inserted himself into it. Susan fought to keep all the historical items in the script. James and Susan finally hammered out the script and Susan set about finding Jack Kirby.

This wasn’t too difficult as Kirby was listed in the phonebook. Susan called up Jack, and told him a little about what she wanted. Jack shuddered thinking about the hassles making the earlier 3-D book. He laughingly swore that even thinking about 3-D comics caused him heart palpitations. Jack invited her up to his house where he and Roz charmed Susan with their graciousness and kindness. After hearing about the progress in technology, and what was needed, he quickly agreed and his salary and time were worked out. One good thing was that Susan was given no budget—she was told that whatever it cost, just charge it to the company. There was no dickering over his page rate, or unholy time schedules to work around—none of the usual comic book hassles. Jack was to do the work and turn it in as soon as possible.

“A month later Susan Pinsky informed me that they had engaged Jack Kirby to illustrate my script. Then I was jumping up and down for about two days! I still can’t believe my incredible good fortune to have this absolute king of comic books illustrate my script. That was, and is still, just amazing to me.

Back in the early days of 3-D, in the 1950s, he produced one of the finest 3-D comics of them all, Captain 3-D. I was amazed,” Ray enthused. “I went to the president of the company, James F. Butterfield, and told him I wanted to work there. He hired me to work in the 3-D Cosmic Publications division, which was the print media side of the company. We produced the 3-D Cosmic Poster, which was a preview of the comic, and I worked on the creation of point-ofpurchase displays and different aspects of the print media.”

Jack was given the script plus a layout and asked to follow it as closely as possible. For once Jack wouldn’t tear the script apart and rework the story to his own fashion. It was an easy job, only 17 pages plus a cover, back cover, and a poster for the stores.

She had Jack Kirby supply the art for the glasses. He did at least three presentations before a choice was made. Mike Thibodeaux inked. The poster was actually printed in at least two versions, one for stores and another called 3-D TV Cosmic Poster which credits Mike Royer as inker. Jack finished very quickly and turned the pages in to Susan.

Susan loved what he had done— not surprising since Jack’s natural style was a version of 3-D drawing that he had perfected in his comic book work. He understood

(above) The final 3-D Cosmic Poster, and its original art, with Royer inks (next page). (right) Another unused attempt at the 3-D glasses artwork.

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forced perspective and driving the action forward. Jack was also happy since he didn’t have to separate the bits into layers like they had in the 1950s.

With the artwork in hand, Susan hired a familiar face. The late Tony Alderson was also a member of the Stereo Club of Southern California. He was unemployed at the time, yet he was well versed in the 3-D conversion process needed for the comic. Tony was a tall, lanky, mustachioed fellow, lovable but grouchy, given to answering any question with a negative response. Susan had learned that in talking with Tony, a different approach was needed. She would ask every question in a reverse negative manner so when he said no, it actually meant yes. So rather than asking Tony if he wanted to work for 3-D Video, she asked if there was any reason he couldn’t work for 3-D Video. When he said no, she then asked him in her reverse manner: “Is there any reason you can’t start tomorrow?” Tony said no, and

letter to Joe Kubert, thanking him for his part in 3-D history and inviting him to partner up for a project. Joe kindly begged off with a note. “However; I’ve always felt that the 3-D graphic process is a viable procedure, if coupled with a good story and art. As a gimmick, it has no longevity (as sadly proven through past experience).”

About the comic book, Joe included a little message. “A cosmiccomic book, huh? Great! You couldn’t have made a better choice than Jack Kirby, whose work has a tendency to look 3-D even when it’s flat.

Please give Jack my fondest regards when you see or speak to him.”

A 3-D comic is complicated; because of the labor intensity it is a time-consuming process, even with a large crew such as at Harvey Comics in 1953. A regular monthly book is out of the question. It only works on standalone issues that are not time-related to other books. It cannot be made as a regular part of the publishing routine.

It is also a costly job due to the time and physical labor needed to

started right away. Ray Zone recalls, “I first met Tony Alderson when I was hired to work at 3-D Video Corporation in 1982 and it was Tony who converted Jack Kirby’s art to 3-D in Battle for a ThreeDimensional World. We have maintained an idiosyncratic dialogue with each other that incorporates Tony’s uniquely satirical slant on the vagaries of stereoscopic business practices.”

Tony explained the process he used. “I take the drawing supplied me as the left image. I then simulate the right image by cutting apart copies of the drawing and reassembling them with the proper displacements to create retinal disparities when viewed.” Ray sent a

transfer. It would bankrupt a company trying to do too many 3-D books at once. St. John Publishing had learned this lesson the hard way.

They paid the artists twice the normal rate when working on 3-D. Not every printer was equipped to meet the specific needs of 3-D. It was also a fad that tended to die very quickly at the marketplace. But this was not a problem for 3-D Video. It was a standalone book with no promised publication schedule and continuity. It was being worked on when the people were there, and finished when ready. This turned into a problem because Mr. Butterfield would often corner Susan, now editor-in-chief of 3-D Cosmic Publications, and hand her a new project that required the artists, and graphic people on a priority matter. One such project was a set of glasses with 3-D drawings on them for a chain of convenience stores to sell, or give away when some item was purchased.

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3-D Video produced a set of 3-D cards for Topps to go along with the movie Jaws 3-D. Susan and Tony, as well as artist Barry Jackson, also worked on a 3-D poster for the movie Friday the 13th Part 3.

The comics work was back-burnered during these mini-crises.

Among all the other projects, Susan says the book became almost an after-thought. Jack had done his work in a timely manner in late 1981, and eventually, by late 1982, the artwork was finished and ready for the printer.

One looming problem: In late 1982, 3-D Video was in trouble, their spending spree having caught up to them. The time of no budgets came to a quick halt. The company that bragged about cash flow and how well they were doing was suddenly cash poor.

Yes, they had taken in over $12 million, but the new accountant told them that they had spent $14 million. The printer needed $6000-7000 up front to print the 100,000 issue run. They found the up-front money and the printer came through with 100,000 copies, neatly delivered to their warehouse. Ray remembers this period: “This was a ‘cosmic’ book, by the way, it wasn’t a 3-D comic book—hyperbole was the real stuff of our day-to-day.

“So I worked there for about a year and in December of 1982 the Battle comic actually was printed, and I was there at the printer when it rolled off the press. I have 3-D photos of the book being printed.” Susan and the chosen colorist, John Rupkalvis, disagreed about the colors. She recalls: “When it was printed, Ray, John and I were there at the printers, but only John could approve the colors. We both strongly disagreed with his choices, but we were so happy to have it finally being printed that we had to go along with the situation.” Susan thought they were too faded.

Susan lost, and some of her pride waned with the coloring choices.

On December 11, Ray set up a comic book signing for Jack at a local comic shop—Ray supplied the books. Susan Pinsky and Tony Alderson accompanied Jack and a lovely time was had by all. The

(this page and opposite) Splash page pencils, script, and finished version for the splash page of Battle for a Three-Dimensional World. (below right) Rejected splash page.

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(above) Jack’s first attempt at the cover image for the 3-D Cosmic Poster. Check out his amazing design for the alien “Flattie.” (below) The final, published version of the 3-D glasses.

(inset) Susan Pinsky, Jack Kirby and Tony Alderson at a signing in a Hollywood Comic shop. Stereo photo

by David Starkman.

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feedback was all positive and Kirby wowed the crowds. After the signing in Studio City, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner ran an article entitled “Pow! 3-D comic craze is back— Cartoonist all smiles: New book a fast seller at (that’s right) $3”. The article by Timothy Carlson featured a large photo of Jack, seated at a table containing many books and art pieces, signing a book for a young fan. After a particularly shy ten-year-old got a book, Jack turned to an older collector and said, “Look out for his generation! They’re gonna zap you!” When Jack’s return to 3-D was questioned, Jack explained, “It drove me crazy to do the painstaking overlapping of blue and red shading of the drawings (in 1953); this time I just did the drawings and I was happy to leave the rest to 3-D Video.”

The flyer for the signing at The American Comic Book Company headlights the first major 3-D comic book in over 25 years! But it also included his old books plus the new first issue of Silver Star. On the shelf were Captain Victory and Destroyer Duck—Jack kept busy for a semi-retired comic book man.

At $3, the book meant as a convenience store gimmick without a price got one quickly, though the other independent books were retailing at $1. Susan said that after the accountant added up all the costs, the books came to about a dollar apiece. 3-D’s marketing director, Linda Feldman, boldly told everyone that Battle for a 3-D World would easily sell out its 100,000 print run. Susan says the hyperbolic B.S. was a direct extension of Jim Butterworth’s personality. The article did make its requisite mistake when they credited Jack with creating Captain Marvel.

Unfortunately, 3-D Video went bankrupt and the printer never received the remainder of the payment. Ray Zone was let go, and the next day Susan arrived at work to find the sign taken down from her door. She was also let go, as were her assistants Roy Besser and Mark Beam—both important parts of assembling the comic. The boxes of comics languished on the delivery dock, never to be sent to the distributor.

But the story doesn’t end there. Shortly thereafter, 3-D Video held an auction to raise money for creditors. Ray, David, Susan and a friend, Mark Ober, attended this auction and went home with boxes of glasses, the boxes of comics, and other assets for a mere pennies on the dollar. Unfortunately they had no place to store the comics so they sat outside

a garage for a period. Never let anyone claim that it doesn’t rain in Southern California. It rained and some comics were ruined. Susan did work out a deal with several Western distributors such as Bud Plant to take the books and distribute them to comic shops. After a year-and-a-half, the public would see Battle For a 3-D World.

After being let go by 3-D Video, Ray began his own venture. “In 1983 I started my own company, The 3-D Zone, which was to be, specifically, a company to convert flat, existing

images into 3-D, make 3-D glasses, and do 3-D printing,” Ray said. Ray was a hustler, always exuberantly looking for the next project. A year later Ray would hire Jack Kirby to create three posters of children at play.

Jack actually drew four, but only three were chosen. These would be placed in boxes of Post Honeycomb Cereal. Mike Thibodeaux recalled: “I did some presentation pieces, but I don’t remember if they were for Ruby-Spears or for some other company. They were some toy posters that went into cereal boxes. Nobody knows about these things, but I remember inking them. They were kid sports concepts. Ray Zone produced these posters for a cereal account.” Ray recalls: “I did a 3-D conversion job with Jack Kirby for Honeycomb cereal. Jack drew great images of a kid on a skateboard, a baseball player, and a scene with a BMX bicycle. I sent down a proposal to Bill and Steve Schanes at Pacific Comics with copies of the Honeycomb 3-D sports action posters, and a specific proposal for a 3-D comic that had all the prices I was charging, including the glasses that could bind into the book. They got back to me in late 1983 and said they wanted to do a book (Alien Worlds 3-D).

When the Pacific book came off the presses, Schanes showed copies to publishers at Petuniacon in Oakland. The people at Aardvark-Vanaheim were so excited they ordered their own 3-D comic.”

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Ray was a master at letting one project sell the next. Later, when Pacific was going through bankruptcy, the Schanes said that their 3-D comic had been a disaster; it was costly and never sold in the marketplace, leaving them with bundles of expensive back stock in their warehouse—sort of the curse of the 3-D comic.

Ray Zone feels that story is full of beans!

He says Pacific had a quick 100% sellthrough of their initial 60,000 copy order, and they were so happy they placed a second order for an additional 20,000. (Ray says he remembers because he had to manufacture the additional 20,000 glasses for the books.

He thinks Schanes was doing some scapegoating.)

Ray Zone had made a name for himself. He would follow with over a hundred other comics, featuring the work of such luminaries as Will Eisner, Steve Ditko, and Neal Adams. Ray added that yes, it was very timeintensive; at his peak in 1987, he did manage a comic a month for a year or so, but the pressure got to him and he cut back to first bi-monthly, and then quarterly.

Susan’s memories of the Kirbys are nothing but love. She mourned the passing of both Jack and Roz. She says he was the most (above) After this second try at the Poster cover image, Jack went back and modified his first attempt, removing the alien, and adding an audience of heads. He later added an extensive background on his own to complete the piece (next page, center). (right) Here’s Johnny, inset into the printed flip-side of the 3-D glasses that he wore on-camera.

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professional artist she ever worked with, and the most kind and gracious. She sent me a stereo photo (see pg. 63) of Jack, looking very trim and healthy working on a page. As a present, Jack gave her a piece of original art which she had framed and is hanging in her living room today. It is with great thanks and respect that the author acknowledges the assistance and memories of Susan Pinsky for her help in telling this story, and the inimitable Ray Zone for his recollections.

Postscript In 1982, 3-D Video set up a program where they were going to show a 3-D movie on a local California TV station. The catch was that the viewers had to buy a set of 3-D glasses for a dollar at a local convenience store chain. This aggravated the heck out of late night host Johnny Carson, and he

spent a whole monologue railing against this practice. As a prop, Johnny walked out wearing a set of 3-D glasses which, by mistake, were a pair from the Battle For a 3-D World comic book, instead of the ones that were being sold.

Carson did a bit involving the glasses, and noticed their tagline: “Jack Kirby: King of the Comics.”

Not knowing who Jack was, or realizing that “comics” referred to the books—not stand-up comedians— Carson called this “Jack Kirby” person a con-man on-air.

Kirby was watching that night, and was devastated by the insult.

Fans sent Johnny letters, and Mark Evanier contacted Tonight Show producer Fred DeCordova about the mix-up. Carson gave a long, gracious on-air apology to Jack on June 8, 1982. You can read more details of the event in TJKC #35.

It doesn’t totally end there. In the mid-1980s, Ray Zone had a local cable TV show called The Zone Show, where he introduced and interviewed local artists. On October 10, 1984, Jack Kirby was the guest for a taped half-hour interview. Jack was in the studio with a large blue screen behind him. Ray Zone was conspicuously hosting off-screen. During the show, a constant stream of Kirby covers were chroma-keyed to appear in the background. It created a most intriguing sight, of the animated Kirby talking with covers floating behind him. The interview stuck closely to Jack’s history, and precious little was said about 3-D. That show’s first screening in over 30 years was held at the 2015 Comic-Con: International, San Diego. ★★

Sculpted

The Kolleda Incident Glenn Kolleda remembered, by Ray Wyman, Jr. (http://www.linkedin.com/in/raywyman) [Editor’s Note: During my first visit to the San Diego Comic-Con in 1991, before I had any idea I’d one day be publishing this—or any other—comics publication, I briefly met Glenn Kolleda. I was lurking around the booth where Jack was supposed to appear, waiting for what became my one and only encounter with the King, and Kolleda was there promoting his pewter sculpture/print combo of Jacob & The Angel. I remember not being particularly impressed, as the price seemed astronomical to me, for what was not actual “Kirby” work, but someone else’s sculpture based on Jack’s drawing. But I took his flyer anyway, which I still have (left).

Cut to a few years ago. I received a phone call at the TwoMorrows offices in North Carolina, and the person on the other end said he was Glenn Kolleda! We spoke for a few minutes— he said he’d relocated to NC (less than an hour from me), and wanted to go on-the-record about his dealings with Jack and Roz. When I tried to set up a specific time to do an interview, he hedged, saying he’d call me back soon when he was ready. Sadly, I later learned Glenn died shortly after our phone conversation. While we’re left without his firsthand recollections, Ray Wyman Jr. was kind enough to provide the following details, including one harrowing incident, which he offered up to Jean Depelley for his recent Kirby biography in France.] lenn Kolleda was a very imaginative man; affable and charming (he had two really cute little kids and a very charming wife). He was also a jeweler who could do some fantastic work with small figures. He had a contract with Roz to promote Jack’s art through pewter sculptures and other projects, but was incredibly disorganized and couldn’t keep his mind on one task.

During the time he knew Jack and Roz, he managed to generate a few high quality pewter sculptures—one very clever design of Spider-Man leaping off a wall and another based on Jack’s pen-and-ink illustration titled Jacob and the Angel.

The ‘incident’ happened while Jack was very much alive—Spring of 1990 (Jack passed away in 1994). By the time of this event, we had all grown weary of Glenn’s distractions—even Jack was making fun. But this incident was to be Glenn’s last distraction and his downfall.

He had befriended a con-man who claimed (among other things) to be “Roberto Salazar.” Actually, it’s hard to tell who befriended whom and I’m not sure if I have the correct last name for “Robert”—but it doesn’t matter. “Robert” admitted to me that he used an alias because he was really a government agent (seriously, that’s what he told me). The point is that “Robert” had Glenn thoroughly convinced that he could promote Jack’s art like no one else: Robert had contacts in government. Robert knew highly influential people throughout the world.

Robert was an aficionado of fine art, and no art—in Robert’s opinion—was finer than the work he saw hanging on the walls at Jack and Roz’s home.

While we all agreed that Jack’s art was splendid work, we rolled our collective eyes at Robert’s endless proclamations and platitudes—which, at the time seemed completely harmless. At some point, however, Glenn started pushing a plan to take Jack’s art on a tour, but a date was never set, so none of us really

G

(top right) Glenn Kolleda with Jack. (below) Original handpainted Kolleda sculptures of Beast Rider and Odin.

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paid much attention.

One day, I was coming back from a meeting with a client when I received a call on my cell phone from Roz. She was frantic: “They are taking Jack’s drawings off the wall!” I pulled over and listened to her near-hysterical explanation. She couldn’t reach Lisa, her daughter, nor any of their trusted family friends. I was next on her list. What should she do? She was very emotional and very upset. I told her that nobody was taking so much as a piece of notebook paper out of the house (I think I added one or two colorful metaphors for extra effect). It was the first thing that came to my mind to calm Roz down. Then I asked her to tell Glenn and Robert to stop everything and to put Glenn on the phone. Glenn happily explained the “wonderful” opportunity that Robert was giving the Kirbys through his “incredible” list of contacts (the superlatives were never ending) and that the tour had to begin now.

In as few words as I could manage—and I knew that I had to be very clear and concise— I told him to put the art down and leave the house immediately. I also said that if he didn’t comply, I was going to tell Roz to call the police and for extra measure, I’d call the police myself.

One thing about con-artists: they do not like to appear as burglars or thugs. For them, it is vital in the commission of their crime that they keep up the illusion of total faith with the victim.

When Glenn and Robert realized that the “jig was up” (as Jack put it), they put the art down and quietly left. Now, to be fair to the late Glenn Kolleda (who passed away in 2008), I do not believe that he was a con-artist. But I’m pretty sure that Robert was. We never heard from that man again. Glenn was subsequently “fired”

by Roz herself (with a little help from her friends). And I believe that Lisa Kirby and other family friends made sure that Glenn knew that he was persona non grata at the Kirby home from that time forward, although he was allowed a few last visits under adequate supervision.

The sad part was that Glenn truly was a talented artist in his own right. Jack and Roz admired his talent and energy. ★ The promotional flyer above describes Beast Rider thusly: ”There will come a time when the great beasts walk the Earth again. With the aid of technology, these ancient horrors will be reborn. By recovering the D.N.A. locked inside fossils, science has successfully brought to life the most fearsome creatures known to man, the triceratops, sabretooth tiger, and of course the tyrannosaurus rex.

“In these times a man will come forth, a man strong enough, brave enough, and with the will to harness the ferocity of the DNAsaurs.TM This man will be know as… The Beast Rider.TM”

POSTSCRIPT

by Jean Depelley I met a French collector named Didier Girard at Angoulême last year, and he gave me information I didn’t know about Glenn Kolleda.

After the first statue (Jacob and the Angel, 1989, 2500 copies accompanied by a signed print of Jack’s original art) failed to meet success, you might expect the second statue, The Beast Rider, was cancelled. That is not the case. Kolleda did produce it just after, with a more limited run.

Didier has a copy of it (above) and kindly provided me with photos and info about its production: “The statue is in lead and measures 21x17x10 cm and weighs 2.5 kg. It is quite faithful to the accompanying art

by Jack, printed on a 60x62 cm transparent celluloid paper and limited to 15 copies (signed and numbered).” Didier informed me it was purchased from Artnet in 1990.

The limited quantity of this piece certainly didn’t help tracking it down, or knowing it even existed! ★ 73

Mark Evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s A column of Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

(below) Jack reunites with an old friend at a late 1970s Comic-Con. (opposite) Page 11 of the Silver Surfer Graphic Novel (still in pencil)—the final Lee/Kirby collaboration. (bottom) This year’s panelists, left to right: Kevin Eastman, Mark Evanier, Ray Wyman Jr., Scott Dunbier, and Paul S. Levine. Panel photos

by John Morrow.

Another event that’s going to happen... there’s a convention called the San Diego Comic Fest, which attempts to replicate the El Cortez hotel years of this convention, the years when you could actually sit by the swimming pool with Jack Kirby and talk about comics. Actually, you could talk with Jack about anything. If you wanted to talk about World War II, he’d have you there for an hour. (laughter) It’s a more intimate convention, more about comics. And they have this thing, it’s February 17-20, and one of the themes of the convention is a Centennial Tribute to Jack Kirby, special programming, and Kirby Cafe. That means there’s a restaurant on the premises, and they redecorate it into a theme each year for whatever is the main topic of the convention. I believe they’re flying Mike Royer down to be a guest there, and Mike will probably be here next year. I will just mention that the convention has not invited me yet. (laughter) Also, next year, I really, really hope I’m going to have my big biography of Jack out.

2016 Kirby Tribute Panel Held Sunday, July 24, 2016 at 10:00am at Comic-Con International: San Diego, California. Featuring Kevin Eastman; Ray Wyman, Jr; Scott Dunbier; attorney Paul S. Levine; and moderated by Mark Evanier. Transcribed by Steven Tice, and edited by John Morrow.

MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon. Welcome to the 8000th annual Jack Kirby Panel. I’ve done a lot of these.

I’m Mark Evanier, you must know that by now. You know, every year this convention has themes. Next year they essentially only have two themes: The 100th anniversary of the birth of Will Eisner, and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kirby. (applause) There will be quite a few important events on the schedule.

There will be more than one Jack Kirby panel, and there will be a lot of special guests. If you’ve got a great idea for a panel or event that should take place, drop me an email before next April or so, when we start planning this stuff, because it seems like it would be a very good year to celebrate Jack. Every year is a good year to celebrate Jack, but people seem to like round numbers. (laughter) I’m very good friends with the great cartoon voice actress June Foray, and she’s going to be 99 this year. And the people at Warner Brothers came to me and said, “We want to set up a special big birthday party for her, when she turns 100.” And I said, “How about doing it when she’s 99?” (laughter) And they go, “Well, that’s kind of a messy number.” (laughter) Like, anybody can live to be 99. (laughter) So I think we’re going to do a party for 99, and maybe she’ll get another party next year out of the deal.

PAUL S. LEVINE: You will, you will.

EVANIER: This man is my attorney, Paul S. Levine. (applause) He’s also the attorney for what people casually call the Jack Kirby Estate. It’s really the Rosalind Kirby...?

LEVINE: Family Trust.

EVANIER: They call it the Kirby Estate, but to be specific it’s the Rosalind Kirby Family Trust.

LEVINE: And I’m also a literary agent, so I’ll sell Mark’s book to a book publisher, the moment it’s done. (laughter) EVANIER: Yes, the moment it’s done. It gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

[Australian voice from audience]: No pressure.

LEVINE: No pressure.

EVANIER: No pressure, no. Why wasn’t Jack born in 1918 instead [of 1917]? It’d be much easier for me. (laughter) So I’m hoping to have that out. It is going to be a very, very long book. It is going to be a very, very controversial book, I think. You are never going to read so much, dissecting the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby relationship, and who did what. I think I am the only person alive who ever worked for both men, and I had a lot of conversations with both of them, and also with a lot of their close people and intimates.

Let me introduce to you the rest of the dais, and I’m going to poll the room for people who’ve got Kirbyrelated announcements. I wish I had taken the time to look up the exact quote, but somebody asked Jack around the late 1970s or something like that, “What’s the next trend in comics?” and he said, “I can’t tell you 74

what it’s going to be, but I know it’s not going to be created by me or anybody of my generation.

It’s going to be two kids in a garage somewhere.” The next trend in comics was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (laughter) You didn’t do that in a garage, did you?

KEVIN EASTMAN: Pretty close. (laughter) EVANIER: Anyway, this is Mr. Kevin Eastman, ladies and gentlemen. (applause) An enormous Kirby fan and supporter, and I am very pleased we got him here to talk about it. He’ll tell you what Jack meant to him, and about their many interactions.

EASTMAN: Yes, sir.

EVANIER: There was a very fine book done a few years ago about Jack, and the man who did it was this man, Mr. Ray Wyman. (applause) There are very fine Artist Edition books coming out, reprinting Jack’s work the way he would’ve wanted it seen, on big paper. In fact, Jack would’ve wanted them to be the size of Foster & Kleiser billboards if possible, but we will settle for something at the size he drew it.

Although this gentleman has done other wonderful books and publications, today in this room we only care about the Jack Kirby ones. This is Mr. Scott Dunbier. (applause) I want to say a little thing before we start here. I keep finding myself in the middle of a controversy on the Internet.

Perhaps people in this room have seen this, too, about whether Jack has gotten all of his due. Now, I am so thrilled that Jack’s name now appears in the places he always wanted, as co-creator of all those characters, on movies and some of the merchandise and the comics. There are people who are annoyed that Stan’s name is on it at all, or that Stan’s name is on it as an equal. I feel like nobody ever said these were 50/50. If you’re put into a collaboration with someone, nobody ever said those were exact equal contributions. Certainly I’ve been on teams where the other guy did more than I did, or I did more than he did. Lennon and McCartney didn’t write each song 50/50. Somehow John Lennon’s name was on Yesterday, and he didn’t write any of it. But when you have a team and a partnership, that’s kind of how it goes. Only the people who did the work really know who did what, and sometimes you have to settle for that. And sometimes the people who did the work together

disagree on who did what. If you go to Sergio Aragonés or to me and ask who did what on this issue of Groo, we’re each likely to say the other guy, because we forget who did what, or sometimes it’s such a seamless collaboration that he came up with the germ cell, I fleshed it out, and he then did something I didn’t expect. And the only way to describe the end product is we both did it, and you can’t break it down any farther than that.

In my book, I can tell you that I break it down farther than that between Stan and Jack in a lot of places, and explain the bizarre definitions that many people in this world use to denote the term “writer,” because there is no universally accepted definition of it, 75

and it’s entirely possible for two people who worked on a comic book to each believe they wrote it, because from their standpoint, they did. And some people just have strange definitions.

I’m involved in the Writers Guild a lot, and we have credit manuals that break down credit terminology, because frequently there’s an awful lot of money at stake with who gets the screen credit, who did what, and what you have to contribute to have your name on the movie. Sometimes people who contributed a lot to a movie do not get their name on it at all. They have to settle for a lot of money instead.

What I want to say is just this. I wish people would stop getting

angry over the use of different definitions, and assume bad faith intention on the part of those who inflate the role of the person they may favor emotionally, or the person they connected with more.

There are people who read Marvel comics over the years who really caught on to Stan Lee’s way of writing, not just whatever he did in the comics, but within the Bullpen pages and the letters pages, and who’ve had some interaction with Stan, and they have some great personal affection for him. I have very great personal affection for Stan, even though I’ve told him to his face several times I think he did some unethical and immoral things.

I wish people could dial down the rhetoric a bit. I’m a little afraid that my book will ratchet it up, because I’m going to give both sides more ammunition to make their cases. It’s like, you know, Hillary Clinton withheld naming her vice presidential pick until after the Republican convention ended, because she didn’t want to give them more ammunition, something new to attack. So I’ve been a little reticent sometimes to put out so much of the data that I’ve found, and information I found, and interpretations that I found, about who did what in the Stan and Jack contributions. The answer is that both of those men made major contributions—not exactly the same thing, and maybe not exactly what was credited properly at the time.

Jack always wanted me to write stuff about him, and he knew I was going to write a big book about him. Jack knew a lot of stuff that was going to happen later on. And he never told me what to write. He said, “Just print the truth.” He never tried to spin the truth. He was a very, very honest man. He could get confused at times. For some ungodly reason, the last ten or fifteen years of his life, when he was talking in interviews, he would talk about working in the animation business, and he kept saying how he was working for Filmation Studios. He meant DePatie-Freleng. He didn’t work for Filmation, he worked for DePatie-Freleng, and somehow he got the wrong name. Everything else he said was true, you just have to change the noun. There was no lie there, although I once saw someone accuse Jack of lying when he said he worked for Filmation.

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No. He just got the wrong name there. But I would hope that the Kirby fan community, which I assume is lots of people in this room, would help to dial down the rhetoric to make it a little saner and a little more of what Jack wanted it to be, which was an intelligent discussion that properly acknowledged his role, and didn’t inflate it one bit. Because Jack always knew that the truth would serve him well, and if the history was written honestly, he would come across as the greatest guy in the world.

And I think he does. That is my sermon for today.

Thank you. (applause) Let me introduce to you, we have sitting in the front row the publisher of the Jack Kirby Collector, Mr. John Morrow. (applause) We have one of the movers and shakers behind the Kirby Museum, Mr. Rand Hoppe. (applause) Another mover and shaker, Mr. Tom Kraft. (applause) I saw as I walked in the gentleman who did the Lord of Light project with Jack, Barry Geller. (applause) Is Mike Thibodeaux here? Did Mike make it in? No? Okay, Mike may come in a little later.

These are all people who have helped carry the name of Jack Kirby along.

Kevin, I’m going to start talking with you, here. The traditional question we ask of people on this panel when they’re on for the first time is, what was the Jack Kirby work you remember as your first?

was just absolutely brilliant in so many ways.

EVANIER: Name some other favorite Kirby work.

EASTMAN: Mister Miracle, New Gods. I liked Sandman, the Dingbats of Danger Street. (laughs) It was pretty much “The Losers.” I was a big fan of John Severin and his work on “The Losers.” When Kirby came in, that was one of my favorite runs was the Kirby “Losers” series.

For me, I just sort of hit that time with Kirby when he had just moved to DC Comics and was doing a lot of work for them, an insane amount of work for DC Comics. I still loved Captain America and that kind of

EASTMAN: Kamandi.

EVANIER: Was it a particular issue?

EASTMAN: It was pretty much the first issue. I had grown up in a very, very small town in Maine. Our downtown was a store that was also a gas station and that was pretty much it. I had a paper route, and back when comics were twenty cents, I used to save all my money and once a month I’d take all $3.25 down to the closest place, which was five miles away, and buy as many comics as I could—plus a Yoo-hoo and a Twinkie. (laughter) And when I saw it was Jack Kirby, I bought the first issue off the newsstand. To me, growing up in this town, I mean, I really felt like the last boy on Earth most of the time. But Kamandi was the thing for me, and it just resonated. It helped that one of the first movies that I ever saw in a movie theater was Planet of the Apes, which had a huge effect on me, and Kirby’s furtherence of that concept 77

(opposite) Kamandi #1, page 6 pencils. Panel 1 divulges where the character got his name. (below) Page 5 of the unpublished Dingbats of Danger Street #3, circa 1974. Inks by D. Bruce Berry. We’re kindred spirits, Kevin!

stuff, some of the earlier stuff. That’s stuff I discovered later, but, for me, it was the DC period that was really right at my right time. And I still remember to this day my favorite stories, because I used to trace Jack Kirby drawings when I was younger. I told my parents that when I grow up, I’m going to be Jack Kirby. What I loved about Kirby was that he wrote and drew, and especially the DC stuff that I was reading, and I just remember this horrified look on their faces that, “Oh my God, we’re going to have one of those kids that never moves out of the basement.” (laughter) In those days, comics were something that was a throwaway, disposable entertainment, and there was absolutely no way anyone could make a living at it. But I was adamant that I was going to be Jack Kirby when I grow up. Well, try.

EASTMAN: Actually, issue #1 sold 3,000 copies after we emptied all of our bank accounts. A very supportive uncle gave us a thousand dollars to print 3,000 comic books. By the time we got to—this is basically the start of the black-and-white boom and bust, and we still get blamed for that in most cases. But Turtles was selling around 60,000 black-and-white comics with a two-color cover and this was no Hollywood, no anything to come. We were just like, working together, fulfilling a dream. Because Pete, his passion for Jack Kirby is at the very least equal to mine in every way. Especially on all those early issues, it was… to us the greatest gift in the world was, we were literally sitting, in most cases, in the same room, passing pages back and forth, penciling together, inking together, working together.

And it was—we were living the dream. We were Jack Kirby at that point, in our minds.

EVANIER: Now, when did you first meet Jack?

EASTMAN: Actually, I met Jack—I have one quick story about him.

When I first met Peter Laird, and this relates because it really is— both Pete and I got to meet— Peter Laird is the co-creator of Ninja Turtles. (applause) Both he and I got to meet Jack here at the 1985 Comic-Con, both together. But my favorite story of how Pete and I met is, I was riding the bus—I was bagging groceries at a store in Amherst, Massachusetts, I was riding the bus, and I saw this magazine called SCAT, and they printed some cartoons in it, and it was in Northampton, Massachusetts. So I went over to their magazine with my portfolio, knocked on the door, and tried to sell them some work. They said, “Well, we don’t really do your kind of work, but you should meet this guy, Peter Laird. He draws the same crazy sh*t you draw, you know, this cartoon stuff, this comic book stuff.” So I wrote Pete a letter. You had to do that back in those days. I wrote Pete a letter, and he wrote me back. I said, “Hey, I don’t know anybody in this area. I just moved here. Do you want to hang out sometime?” And so he invited me over, I met him at his house. I walked into this tiny little studio. It was probably smaller than this stage. But the first thing I saw on the wall was an unfinished pencil “Losers” page. I had never seen a Jack Kirby original in my life, and I literally almost passed out. I was like, you just sort of walk up to it, and you don’t dare to touch it, but it was the most fabulous thing on the entire planet. And Pete gave me that later. It hangs in my studio today. It’s the most fantastic thing. So later on, in 1985, I think I actually met him in 1986, together, and we met him here at San Diego Comic-Con.

EVANIER: There’s an obvious influence in your work, especially in the earlier stuff, where we see Jack Kirby poses, people putting Turtles into the poses that we associate with Captain America and such, and a certain energy. Was there an inspiration from Jack just to write and draw, period?

Kirby’s rendition of Caesar from the Super Friends episode “The Time Trap/ Sinbad and the Space Pirates” which aired on September 30, 1978.

EASTMAN: Yes, absolutely.

I mean, that’s what I love so much is the fact that he did everything. The writing and drawing part, with great inkers like Mike Royer, who just is so fantastic. But it was the fact that he did both. And to me, again, growing up in a very small town, it was important to do that, because I felt like Jack Kirby, anything I could imagine, a story I could create in my head, if I could draw it also, I could go anywhere in the universe, any genre, any aspect that I wanted to tell, any kind of story I wanted to tell, I could do both. So really, my passion was to do both. I wanted to be a writer and an artist because of Jack.

EVANIER: Now, I remember Jack, when you guys suddenly were making ridiculous sums of money, and taking it to other media, and doing toys and stuff—I remember Jack being absolutely delighted by that, and not the least bit jealous that he had maybe gotten into the industry in the wrong year to be able to do that. Because you couldn’t have done that in the 1950s or 1960s, and he couldn’t really do that in the 1980s or 1990s. Did he express to you that joy he had?

EASTMAN: He did. Actually, what was so wonderful about Jack in every sense, and actually one of my favorite Kirby stories is at this Comic-Con when we first met him, it was here in San Diego. It used to be at the Civic Auditorium, and I think the year that we were there, it was holding between eight to ten thousand people, attendees. So we were sitting there doing our little sketches, trying to make as

EVANIER: Okay. Now, forgive me for not knowing the dates on this.

When you first met Jack, where were you vis-à-vis Turtles?

EASTMAN: Turtles in 1986, I think we had completed issue #5 or #6.

EVANIER: What level of success was it at?

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much money as we could so we could buy as many comics as we could before we left the show, and this hush comes over the room. It was like, (whispering) “Kirby’s in the building. Kirby’s here. Kirby’s here.”

So Pete and I had a minute, a near heart attack, drop our stuff, ran over to where he was, and by the time we got to where Jack was, it was about thirty or forty people around him, and he had just finished telling this story about he and Joe Simon and the creation of Captain America, and how much they loved Captain America. And it was a wonderful, short story. Every fan was hanging on every word. And he finished, and the fan next to the guy who asked the question, asked the same exact question. “How’d you create Captain America?” And he told the story in the same way (laughter), the same time, with the same anecdotes, and the same love, and I said, “Man, if I ever have one single fan, I want to be like Jack Kirby.

I want to be the guy that loves his work, loves his creations, loves what he does, that passion that he had.” And anyhow, that’s where we got to meet him. And it’s like, you know, how do you do it without embarrassing yourself? There’s just no way to do it. “Mr. Kirby, I love you! You’re so awesome!” (laughter) But he was great. (Kirby voice) “Good work, kids. You guys keep doing good work. Keep drawing and keep—,” you know. And that was just one of my favorite moments in my entire life.

Another Super Friends concept drawing from the late 1970s.

short guy, because he knew he was stronger than anybody he was talking to, physically. But he loved conventions, he loved talking to people. There was one time Jack and Roz were at some convention, and a kid came up to them and said, “Oh, we’re doing a comic convention.” I want to say it was like Bakersfield or Fresno, some place way up north, in northern California. “Would you come to our convention?” And Jack said, “Sure, anytime. Just let me know when you want.” And the kid went ahead and advertised without even floating the date with Jack. I told Roz, “You don’t have to drive up there. The guy didn’t clear this with you.” He didn’t offer to pay for transportation.

He didn’t make any accommodations. He didn’t offer a hotel room or anything like that. He just went ahead and advertised Jack Kirby was going to be at his little one-day mini-convention. I said, “You don’t have to do that. If you want, I’ll call him and raise the riot act,” and Roz said, “No, Jack says someone will show up who drove there to see him and he doesn’t want that person, that unknown person, to be disappointed.” So Jack and Roz drove up to wherever this was, and probably talked to twenty people, ten people, whatever it was.

Jack was perfectly fine with that.

EVANIER: Not to take anything away from you guys, but that “keep working,” he said that to everybody, and even people whose work you or I might have overlooked and thought, “Well, that guy ain’t going anywhere.” He encouraged everybody, and you went away from Jack feeling smarter and more talented than you probably were. He loved conventions. He’d love to stand—and he’d usually stand. He was probably standing.

SCOTT DUNBIER: Yeah, but you know what? Every one of those ten and twenty people remember that to this day.

EASTMAN: He was standing. He looked like he was sitting even when he was standing. (laughter) He had that hunch from sitting over the drawing board.

EVANIER: Yes. That’s exactly right. I want to move on here so we don’t get behind, but one more question. I situated you this way because you were involved in the book that Ray did.

EVANIER: He was also someone who, and I found this very interesting; there are people who are, as we say, “height challenged,” who are not very tall, who have trouble looking up at someone else. They look at your chest because some part of them doesn’t want to acknowledge that you are taller than they are. And I’ve met people, and there are some pretty short comic artists, who had trouble with the fat guy who was tall. That was an instant problem. I have trouble talking to Mike Richardson occasionally, because I’m not used to making my head go up like that. Jack had no problem with the fact that he was a

EASTMAN: Yes, yes.

EVANIER: Would the two of you together tell us about that?

EASTMAN [to Ray Wyman, Jr.]: Why don’t you start?

RAY WYMAN, JR.: You know, I was not a fan of Jack Kirby before we started. I was hired to do The Art of Jack Kirby, brought in by the late Glenn Kolleda. You know Glenn Kolleda? And for those of you who do remember around 1989, 1990, there was an attempt to do a Kirby art promotion, with pewter and posters and things like that. And 79

there were some dubious financial dealings. In the middle of all this, I was hired as a writer, as a journalist, to write Jack’s book. Roz and Glenn Kolleda were pretty much the runners of that, and they were in charge of it. And then Glenn dropped out. He was fired, actually, is what happened, and we were without an investor. We were without anybody. In fact, actually, there was a moment there where we thought, “Oh, The Art of Jack Kirby is just not going to happen. We’ll just do little pamphlets and saddle-stitch them together and distribute them.” And I had already started doing a compilation of lists of characters and issues and things of that nature that I thought would be interesting to fans. But, again, I approached this from purely a non-fan standpoint. It was purely just a journalistic investigation. And in the process, in my first few interviews with Jack, Roz mentioned Kevin, and said, “You know, if you need a publisher, you should go talk to Kevin, because he’s got this wonderful publishing company that’s doing well over in Massachusetts.” And you and I met out in a patio someplace. Was it here?

it happen. And so when the Turtles were crazy successful, I felt that starting a publishing company like Tundra, which, in my opinion— I said, “This is going to be the Apple Records of comics, but it’s not going to be like Apple Records which kind of ended up being...”. But the most important point was, I wanted to put my money where my mouth was and put an opportunity in front of creators, many creators, that they can bring their ideas to Tundra. We’ll share a small part of the success, returning most of the profits to them, but then they would be in control of their destiny, because a lot of these guys were working for bigger comic book companies, like, “I have a family, I have a mortgage, I have things to pay, bills to pay, but if I had the opportunity, this is my own personal creation, my own personal idea of what I want to do.” So Tundra, that’s where I explored this.

So one of the coolest things was that when Ray came to me with this project, to be able to thank Jack in some tiny, tiny way, out of respect for our success? F*ck, yeah. Definitely. (laughter) WYMAN: You didn’t say that, but yes. (laughter) I wanted to add another thing, too. It’s just that a lot of people gave me a lot of grief about the cover. They wanted me to put some Jack Kirby original art

EASTMAN: Yeah, it might have been here.

WYMAN: Was it the first year the convention was here, 1990, right? And all I did was send a message to you, and you said, “Yeah, sure.” (laughter) I had a portfolio. I had a business plan. You probably don’t know this, but I showed up with a binder, and I had a business plan about how the book was going to get published, and I had letters and all this stuff in it.

EASTMAN: I’d probably already said yes by then.

WYMAN: Yeah, that was the thing. I showed up to the meeting, we were sitting at a banquet table, basically, just after the banquet, and Kevin just shook my hand and said, “Okay, let’s do it.” And I was like, “Damn.” (laughter) EASTMAN: I knew a couple things. One is, Peter and I were very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very aware of the system of how comics were done, work-for-hire and all that. We were clear on, at least in our opinion, what we felt a lot of creators would do is, especially Jack, in ownership and profiting from their creations. And so, by the time we started the Turtles, one of the first things we did was that simplest copyright, trademark: You mail it to yourself certified so it’s protected, and we filed trademarks—and this was pretoys, pre-everything else—and were inspired by the underground publishers, Crumb and Zap Comix and Richard Corben and those guys, and Vaughn Bode; later inspired further to self-publish by independent creators like Wendy and Richard Pini, and Dave Sim with Cerebus. So we had a success with the Turtles, we felt that each success was for a reason. It was we were standing on the shoulders of giants and we were having our success because of these guys, and as far as we were very lucky that we had full control over our creations and thus profited from the success of our creations— and nothing happened on the Turtles without Pete and I agreeing to it together and making 80

on it. That cover was a decision by Roz and Jack, and it was symbolic. I don’t know if it escaped anybody, but if you remember the Art of Jack Kirby cover, it was a trace of various character poses from the past, and it was ultimately illustrated by Kevin.

Kirby original art. And an Artist’s Edition of course isn’t the original art, but we try to make the experience the closest thing you can get to that. And people are just happy when they see it. I was showing a gentleman at the IDW booth yesterday, he had never seen an Artist’s Edition. He’s a Jack Kirby fan, and I opened it up, and there are—you know, this book is 15" x 22", and so the endpapers are 30" wide by 22", and I took a single panel, a horizontal panel of Thor flying and blew it up to this size, and the guy just stopped. (laughs) Then he got to the rest of the book, but he looked at that for a few minutes.

EASTMAN: The scariest and most exciting thing I ever did. (scattered laughter) WYMAN: And so you get the point now is that—and I’ve never been able to tell anybody this, some people were like, “Why did you do that?

Why wasn’t it Jack Kirby’s photo on the cover or something like that?”

Well, because Roz and Jack had a mind for a tribute to the special relationship that they had with their fans, and Kevin was the ultimate expression of that relationship. (applause) EVANIER: Let’s go ahead and turn to Scott here for a second. Tell us what you’ve got coming up.

EVANIER: Now, obviously, in putting these books together, you’re limited by where original art can be found, scanned. Is there a Holy Grail that you’d love to find and put into one of these books?

SCOTT DUNBIER: We just actually published our first Jack Kirby Marvel Artist’s Edition, which is the Jack Kirby’s The Mighty Thor, which is tremendous. And, actually, Mark was very helpful in the production of the book. We announced at the show that we were going to be doing the very first Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four Artist’s Edition, and that will be coming out early next year, with five great Fantastic Four issues, including Annual #6, which is the Annihilus story, and the birth of Franklin, and 48 pages of amazing Kirby and Sinnott art.

EVANIER: Tell me a little bit about—well, first, you did a Kamandi book.

DUNBIER: We did several DC Artist’s Editions so far of Jack’s work. We did New Gods, Mister Miracle, Kamandi. We have a second Kamandi book which will be issues #11 through #16, the Kliklak stories, as well as “The Hospital.” That’ll be coming out in September.

DUNBIER: By any artist?

EVANIER: What kind of reaction do you get from people when they see the artwork in that format?

EVANIER: Yeah, by any artist. The question’s both ways, by any artist, and then Jack.

DUNBIER: It ranges. Big smiles. People really just kind of grin at it, especially when they open it for the first time and they haven’t seen an Artist’s Edition, and a lot of people haven’t seen original Jack Kirby art. And if you look at it, it’s a great experience to read a Jack Kirby comic, but it’s an amazing experience to look at Jack

DUNBIER: You know, if I could do anything, if I could find anything, I think I would love to be able to do a Jack Cole Plastic Man book. But I’ve 81

(opposite) Very early original art page from Captain America Comics #6 (Sept. 1941). (below) Letterhead for “Simon-Kirby Story and Art Studios,” with an address listed as 141 Brown St., Mineola NY. Public records show Joe’s house was built in 1946. Here’s a current photo—that attic space is where Joe & Jack worked. Does the current owner know its historical significance?

(Note the wacky coloring on the letterhead art; someone at the printer must’ve mixed up the color separations!)

(below) OMAC #1, page 5 pencils.

Farewell, faithful Lila! (opposite) Luscious inks by Al Williamson, from Race For The Moon #3 (Nov. 1958).

only heard of a handful of pages and covers that exist. Maybe someday somebody’ll find a whole stack of them and I’ll be a very happy person, but I kind of doubt it. As far as the Holy Grail of Jack’s work, you know, the Galactus Trilogy, FF #48-50. Avengers #4. FF #4. Those two issues are two of my absolute favorites. And Avengers #4, I think

everybody just sort of tears up like that cop did in the story.

EVANIER: What considerations do you have about inkers when you’re looking up, trying to decide what to reprint? Obviously you’re limited by what you can get, but are you looking for art that’s historic? Are you looking for art that’s inked well? These books bring into sharp clarity what the inkers contributed, the work, as you can sometimes see the pencils through the ink, and you sometimes see the work in such detail that you realize that one inker was truer than another inker. And some of this stuff really blows up well, in fact. Some of the flaws are hidden when the book is reduced and printed on bad paper with bad coloring on it and such. What kind of reactions are you getting about inkers? If I’m asking a question that makes any sense here.

DUNBIER: No, yeah, you are.

You know, it’s actually perfect timing with the Thor book, because there have been a lot of people who have been arguing online about the merits, or lack of merits, with Vinnie Colletta’s inking on Thor. You know, I understand why people don’t like Colletta’s work, and he’s certainly not my favorite Kirby inker. I still think he did a very serviceable job on the stories. Again, if I had my wish list, I would have liked to have had Joe Sinnott stories.

Actually, I’m a big Dick Ayers fan, so those early issues are great, and the Chic Stone issues of Journey into Mystery…

There is one of those in the book. But, you know, speaking about inkers, it’s funny, because I’m a big Chic Stone fan, but I’m really a Chic Stone fan of his earlier stuff in Journey into Mystery. Like, when he was inking Fantastic Four, I don’t really care for that particular work as much. But there were so many different inkers, and there’s so many different interpretations. My least favorite Kirby inker is probably [Paul] Reinman. His stuff just didn’t really do very much for me. My favorite inkers on Kirby tend to be other artists, really. I mean, I love Steve Ditko on FF #13. (applause) In the pre-hero stories, Wally Wood, another

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fantastic artist. Actually, not at Marvel, but Al Williamson on Kirby was tremendous. A lot of people think that Bill Everett was overpowering, but I like those Thor issues. As far as other favorite inkers, Mike Royer is fantastic. Like Kevin, it’s funny, because my introduction to Kirby’s work really was the same as Kevin’s, with Kamandi, and I was a huge Planet of the Apes fan. You know, it just hit me. I had seen Jack’s work before that, but it didn’t quite grab me, I didn’t quite get it until Kamandi and Demon and those things, and they really blew me away.

EVANIER: Do you have any dream projects about Kirby art? Anything that you’d like? IDW publishes some amazing books, and Scott’s are all wonderful. Is there something you want to publish someday? Forget about if it’s legally possible or practical.

EASTMAN: Turtles/Kamandi crossover. (laughter) DUNBIER: We’ll talk about that.

EASTMAN: We’ve talked about it for five years.

DUNBIER: He knows how I feel about that.

EVANIER: Okay. You know what?

When Vince Colletta was replaced on the Fourth World books by Mike Royer, there was a brief, chilling avalanche of people writing in saying, “This man is ruining Jack’s work because he’s changing it too much,” because these people grew up on Colletta inking. This is very common.

Back when comics had letter pages, which they rarely do now, anytime you changed the creative team, you got hate mail. When the Spectre went from Murphy Anderson to Neal Adams, people practically wanted to burn the DC building down, because Neal Adams obviously couldn’t draw to save his life. (laughter) And when Mike Royer’s work began appearing, his inking on Jack, the mail—and when I say “avalanche,” I’m talking about 20 letters, 25 letters, which for a book selling 180,000 would be a statistically insignificant percentage. Still, Roz and Jack got shaken by this, and there was one day when they came in and said, “We may have made a mistake with Mike. The readers don’t like him.” I said, “How many readers don’t like him?” At that point in time it was six. (laughter) It was one of the few times I could ever say “I told you so” to Jack. He could say it to me 8,000 times. But what happens is that—and this is a generalization—the way you come to discover and love Jack Kirby, that’s your favorite Kirby work.

Whatever you find first, that’s usually the archetype work. You know, Kevin and Scott started with Kamandi, so Kirby/Royer looked right to them.

DUNBIER: All I can say is, nothing against Vinnie Colletta, but I used to be an art dealer, so I’ve seen a lot of original art. That’s my background. And I’ve seen a lot of Kirby Thor pages, and I’ve seen a lot of figures that have sort of vanished from the pages. I think, Mark, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

EVANIER: Yeah.

DUNBIER: Sometimes if they were background characters, if there were four or five, there might be two or three when the page was inked. (laughs) But, you know, he was a commercial artist, as all comic artists are, and I assume he had deadlines. But Mike Royer, thank God he wound up inking Kamandi and the majority of the books, because—and not only was he a great inker, but he was great 83

at doing the titles and the lettering. Tremendous. (below) Even in these fairly simple pencils from the “Tales of Asgard” story in Journey Into Mystery #112 (Jan. 1965), Vince Colletta removed the large sword in panel 2, the shadowed figure in panel 4, and simplified background elements throughout.

EVANIER: Let me say this now when Mike isn’t here, so you won’t think I’m saying this because he’s on the panel with us. It is amazing the synchronicity that Mike Royer was available. When Jack started looking for someone to ink his work, there was really no other person in Southern California who could have done it. It’s not like Mike was the best choice; he was the only choice. And he also had the ability to letter. It wouldn’t have worked to send all the pages back to New York for lettering. We never would have gotten them back. And

also he was—and I learned this from Mike, who’s a very close friend of mine—he was a super-reliable guy. He absolutely, never missed a deadline. He worked as many hours as was necessary. A few times he would employ assistants when he got a little behind because— it is very tough to keep up with Jack. Both Joe Sinnott and Frank Giacoia told me they were really impressed with Mike’s inking, the quality level, but they were also amazed that he could do all of it. Neither one of them could have inked as much as Mike did.

DUNBIER: It’s a remarkable achievement.

EASTMAN: Actually, when I was reading his Kamandi impressions, is it true that he was lettering on three pages and finishing inks on three pages a day?

EVANIER: Yeah. Well, Jack was drawing, averaging 15 pages a week then. (scattered whistles of amazement) EASTMAN: He hadn’t yet slowed down a little bit.

EVANIER: There are guys in this business, some of your favorite inkers couldn’t ink 15 pages a week. Forget the lettering!

DUNBIER: Fifteen pages a week? Fifteen pages a month! (laughter) I’ve worked with some guys that wouldn’t do that, okay? I edit comics! (laughter) EVANIER: Yeah. And so that was amazing. And this analogy only goes so far, but it’s like the dancing bear. Never mind how he dances. The fact that he can do it at all is amazing! (laughter) It just happened the work was very good. And, going back to something Scott said, I think Mr. Colletta gets a bad rap sometimes by people who forget that he didn’t, like, barge into the office, and grab the pages, and ink them over someone’s objections. They assigned them to him. The people at DC were very happy with his inking. Every time he handed in a job, they would say, “Great job, Vinnie. Here’s the next issue.” I think he was miscast. First and foremost, my objection to Colletta is, not every penciler goes with every inker. I think he was a miscast person. I don’t care for his

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inking in many other ways. On the other hand, when you look at what he was paid, he was giving these people a lot more than they were paying for. From that period especially, the question is not why didn’t this guy do a better job? The real question is, why did anybody do a better job? Because they weren’t being paid to do a better job.

What the worst guy was doing at the time was perfectly acceptable to the editors then. And possibly in your job you do what you’re paid to do and not a lot of extras. We all have those moments when we have to say, “I’m going to turn this in. I’ve got to get this done in three days or it doesn’t make financial sense for me to do it.”

EVANIER: I wish Jack had had Paul or someone comparable to him earlier in his career because we would have a lot of better comics, longer runs on some books and more Kirby control. Paul deserves a lot of credit for the fact that Jack’s name is on stuff these days and that people are respecting the creative rights, and he watches out real carefully. And it isn’t just a job for him, it’s kind of a labor of love. Thank you.

LEVINE: Absolutely. (applause) AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I’m interested in how 3-D film in the 1950s and also Jack’s own work in 3-D comics, briefly, impacted his subsequent work; how it maybe impacted how he did covers, how he did his collages, some of that. It just seems like to me that there is a connection between that and the work he did immediately after, the Bullseye thing, those covers, especially.

DUNBIER: You know, one other thing, sorry to interrupt, but if you want to get another perspective on it, getting back to the Thor Artist’s Edition, there was an introduction in there by Walter Simonson, who knows a little bit about Jack Kirby and about Thor, and he sings the praises of Vinnie Colletta.

EVANIER: I think when they did 3-D comics, they did Captain 3-D, the one issue that came out—there were a couple others drawn that weren’t printed—Jack hated it. He didn’t like it. His attitude was, the artist should be able to make the page 3-D without 3-D glasses.

And his stuff was kind of leaping off the page well before there were 3-D comics. There was a gentleman who passed away a year or two ago named Ray Zone, who was the world’s foremost authority on 3-D, a lovely man who I knew, and who was responsible, kind of, for the 3-D rush of comics we had in the 1980s with some of the—you did a 3-D Turtles book, didn’t you?

EVANIER: We’re going to take questions here in a minute. If anybody’s got one, go over to the microphone. And we’re going to stop for a moment because Mike Catron has to change cartridges. This is Mike Catron, who comes in on his own time, nobody pays him to do this, he donates his time, he donates the tape, and he preserves comic book panels that otherwise would be lost forever. A very fine gentleman. (applause) Okay, thank you. Questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m just wondering, recently I’ve noticed that they’re reprinting a lot of Jack and other classic artists’ work, they’re going in and doing modern recoloring on it. Do you think that might help improve the way we can see the linework, or does it somewhat diminish the value of the work?

EASTMAN: I don’t know. (laughter)

EVANIER: Personally, I think a lot of coloring these days overpowers the work in not good ways because suddenly there’s a colorist deciding on the contours of figures and the shading and the light sources that were not put in by the original creators. Even if they might be better light sources and contours and shadings, they’re not what the original artist had in mind. Anybody want to tackle this?

A very 3-D Hulk sketch from 1977.

DUNBIER: Actually, I would. We’ve done some reprints with recoloring in them, none of Jack’s work, but other things, and my philosophy has been first not to print something on really bright, shiny paper— white, stark white, shiny paper—and give it more of a matte finish, closer to the original printing. But also, what I’ve done is I get the actual comic books and give them to the person who’s doing the recoloring, and it’s basically remastering it so it’s keeping the feel of the original coloring, but it just looks nicer like that.

EVANIER: I don’t believe that you have to have the original coloring.

Jack did not like the original coloring on the New Gods at all. In fact, Jack had a lot of battles with the DC coloring department at the time, and he did not care for the way the New Gods was colored at all. So recoloring them doesn’t trample Jack Kirby artwork because there’s a good chance he would have liked this coloring better. But when we get to this new field, it wasn’t penciled for that. It wasn’t drawn for that. The artists weren’t weighting the panels and spacing to push out their blacks and placing their line weights. So it can be wonderful, there can be wonderful interpretations, just as sometimes people colorize movies they aren’t bad. It’s just not what was originally intended. Thank you for your question.

PAUL S. LEVINE: As a lawyer, imagine trying to write a contract that says, “I get to approve the colorist,” (laughter) and what criteria do I use in the contract to do that? That’s what I was doing back in the early 1980s for Jack, when he was dealing with DC. 85

EVANIER: And Ray was on a mission to get every comic book and movie in the world turned into 3-D and get rid of all the flat stuff, which he hated. And he did that book, Battle for a Three Dimensional World, that Jack did, that caused so much trouble. You all know that story. But I think Jack drew in 3-D before they had 3-D. I don’t think the 3-D craze impacted him in any way, because Jack was influenced by a lot of things, but he didn’t need to be influenced to draw things leaping out at you, because he was doing that in Captain America #1.

So… thanks. Barry?

end of the tour, he had his little table there. He wasn’t drawing as much, but he had his table there and that was just like, why isn’t this preserved in gold and put up on a pedestal? (laughter) But no, Kirby to me is the beginning, middle, and end. I’ve loved so many artists. I love comics as a medium and I love every aspect of what we’re able to do thanks to everybody in this room being fans of the original guys that inspired us—again, the shoulders of giants we stand on— but for me, Jack was responsible for that much, and to this day I still can’t believe, 32 years after the Turtles were created, I get to get up every day, go downstairs, have my coffee, give my son a hug, play with my dogs, and sit down and draw comic books for a living. It’s the greatest gift ever. And it’s all your fault. Thank you. (laughter, applause)

BARRY GELLER: Actually, I have a quick announcement or two, and then a question. As some people know, I worked with Jack in 1978, ’79, designing the prints or the production designs for, at that time, the film Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. And what’s amazing is that, no matter how much we actually talk about Jack’s influence on the world, it goes even beyond that, because his work was discovered by the CIA and actually used to get those people out of Iran. But even more than that, [the Iranians] thought some of his work was heralding the leaving of the Shah and the coming back of their religion.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I found out about it. So he transcended time and space, as far as all of us were concerned. And Mike [Royer] was the inker on those drawings, as well.

Now, in the past year or so, Heavy Metal has come out with blacklight [versions] of all those prints, and now they’re going to come out with metallics and Indias. What’s so interesting is that during that period I remember Jack talking to me about this letter that was handwritten that he got from some kid named Kevin Eastman, talking about this map, and it’s amazing that Kevin is the publisher of Heavy Metal, and so all of these things come around. So my other announcement—well, two more—is that Heavy Metal is going to be doing, from what I understand, giant sculptures of some of these characters for the commemoration of Jack’s 100th birthday and more. And secondly, Tom Kraft, master digital reconstructionist, finished a whole new museum-level quality of the original prints themselves. So my question is, Kevin, did you actually see or feel the connectivity of life in this fashion, that here we are now, 35 years later, and we’re doing this?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Did Mr. Kirby ever express privately any opinion about the Colletta question, or any kind of preference about his own inkers?

EVANIER: When I first met Jack, I had strong opinions as a reader of comics about who his best inkers were, and I was amazed that Jack really didn’t care. He actually said to me, “No professional inker ever

EASTMAN: Yeah. I mean, that was, without doubt, for me, I guess what I think of right away is that I think I saw some of those works, as well as some of his other larger pieces, there was some Lord of Light stuff—both Peter and I went right up to visit Jack after Comic-Con one year. The coolest and, again, scariest moment of our life was when we went up there. We met the truly amazing and wonderful Roz Kirby.

And she said, “You know, if you boys want to come up, come up and see the studio.” And so we went in and Jack gave us the tour. He had so many of those big pieces hanging around his house. It was just like, you could have heard a pin drop because Pete and I were falling behind him as he’s walking us through all these things.

And, again, after seeing the work itself, getting that tour by the man himself, I can literally replay every second of it in my head, and just the white collar and the blue sweater that he often wore. And then we went—towards the 86

made a difference in the sales of a comic.

No professional inker ever did a really bad job.” And I said, “Yes, they did.” (laughter) And at one point I told Jack that I thought one of the best inkers he ever had was Bill Everett.

And Jack went, “Bill Everett? Bill Everett didn’t ink my work.”

I said, “Yes, Bill Everett inked your Thor for about a year or so.” And he didn’t believe me. Jack had a huge pile of random comics, and I went over and I dug through them and I found an issue of Thor that Everett inked. And Jack’s attitude toward that was kind of like, why are they wasting Bill Everett inking somebody else? That was kind of his attitude about Wally Wood. He loved Wally Wood, personally. He thought that Sky Masters was a great-looking strip, and in the perfect world of Jack Kirby, Wally Wood would not have been inking other artists. He’d have been writing and drawing his own stories that were all Wally Wood. Since he didn’t know Colletta or some of these other people as individual creators, okay, if that’s what the guy wants to do. But he didn’t really have a negative reaction to Colletta until Steve Sherman and I started showing Jack before-and-after stats and xeroxes.

“Look, Jack, that’s a whole background that’s not there anymore!”

And that bothered him, because Jack was such a hard worker, and he expected the inkers to work as hard as he did. Then he had a problem with Vince Colletta because Jack was, you could say, either paranoid or very, very cautious when he went to DC about Marvel—he feared that Marvel would be ripping off the work. He was concerned that Marvel would steal ideas from New Gods, get them to the newsstands faster, and people would think Jack was copying Marvel. And Steve and I went to New York in the Summer of 1970, and Mike Royer came a couple of days later and stayed in a room with us. Mike wanted to show his work to DC and sell it up there.

And we went up to the Marvel

offices, Steve and I did, and there were copies of Forever People #1, xeroxes, stacked up on the wall. And we figured—there were people at DC who hadn’t seen it yet.

Julius Schwartz, whose office was right down the hall from Carmine Infantino’s, had not seen the New Gods yet because they were keeping tight security, but Vince Colletta was showing copies around the Marvel office

87

(opposite) Original art in layers for Captain 3-D #1 (Dec. 1953). (this page) Part of Jack’s work for the 1983 Super Powers toy line.

their personal interaction. He was upset about the security thing. He was upset about having to have a New York artist inking his work and therefore minimizing his editorial input as the editor. And I think, I hope I’ve answered your question.

DUNBIER: Actually, could I just add one quick thing, a very brief anecdote? The first time I met Jack Kirby, I was fifteen or sixteen.

I had called him up because someone at a comic shop in Los Angeles, where I had just moved, for whatever reason, told me that Jack Kirby had a listed phone number. And so I called him up, of course, and of course, like any comic artist would do, he spent 20 minutes talking to me and then invited me to his house. (laughter) That’s what comics artists do when you call them up when you’re a kid and you bug them. A lot of people on this panel and in the audience know that’s not a unique story. But, anyway, that’s a long story that I won’t get into. There’s one funny part. At one point I asked Jack—who was very, very patient with me—who his favorite inker was. And he said, “Oh, they’re all great. They’re all great. Every one of them.” And then years later, maybe in 1992, one of his last San Diegos, Jack was talking to somebody, I was nearby, and I said hello to him and Roz. And someone asked him the exact same question, and he—and it was good-natured, but someone said, “Who’s your favorite inker?” “Oh, they’re all terrible.

They’re all terrible.” (laughter) But it was good-natured.

EVANIER: You know, when people ask me who my favorite Jack Kirby inker is, I give this answer. I like a lot of guys. I like Frank Giacoia tremendously, Mike Royer, of course, and Joe Sinnott, and Bill Everett. But I always forget to mention my real actual favorite is a guy named Jack Kirby. (laughter) In the best of all possible worlds, maybe Jack could have inked some of that stuff himself and it would have been even more amazing than it was. Of course, then we would have gotten less of it.

DUNBIER: Actually, one more thing about inking, just on this particular subject. Not meaning to self-promote a project, but we’re putting together, editing a book, a new Jack Kirby book called Pencils and Inks, and it actually showcases Kamandi #1, Demon #1, and OMAC #1, with side-by-side comparisons of the pencils with the inks. And we’ve been working very closely with the Kirby Museum, with Rand and with Tom. As a matter of fact, Tom is doing the design work on the book. But if you want to have a look at just a wonderful textbook of how to draw great, amazing stuff and then do beautiful inking, this would be a good place to start.

and letting people copy them. And that upset Jack. He had a personal meeting with Colletta one time when Jack went back, and I only have Jack’s side of the account, but it did not go well. Things that were said in that meeting, which I describe in the book I’m working on, caused Jack to not want Colletta anymore as his inker—partly because of the security, partly because of the personal connection, partly because of the leaving out of figures, and partly because Jack was the editor of the book, but they weren’t letting him see the book before it was printed. He didn’t see the lettering, he hadn’t picked the colorist, and he felt that if he was going to get the blame for the comic failing, if it did, he wanted to have more say. One time he said to me something like, “If this book’s a hit, I’m going to get 25 percent of the credit. If the book’s a flop, I’m going to get 90 percent of the blame.” And so he wanted his own inker, somebody on the West Coast, and as I said earlier, Mike Royer was the only candidate that we knew of. So he was not fond of Colletta personally because of

EVANIER: We’ve got three minutes for the last few questions.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks for continuing to hold this panel.

And just, FYI, my wife and I gave our son the middle name Kirby. (applause) My question involves creator credits. You go on Wikipedia, you see all these classic Marvel characters, Fantastic 88

Four, X-Men, Black Panther, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. In your expert opinions, do you think it was a true, even creator collaboration? I know it’s impossible to quantify, but is it really a 50/50 sort of situation?

EVANIER: Did you miss the beginning of the panel? (laughter) AUDIENCE MEMBER: I did.

EVANIER: Because I talked about that earlier.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, sorry!

EVANIER: I discussed that. I don’t think there’s ever true 50/50 collaborations, nor is there a way of measuring it. I interviewed a man named Sol Brodsky, who was present for all this stuff, and I said to him, “What do you think the credits should be?” And he said, “They’re created

by Stan and Jack, or Jack and Stan. Either one, they both did them.” Even if you had videotape— I am now paraphrasing. If you had videotape of the discussions in which they discussed this, that you still couldn’t figure out how to break it down by percentages. And when it’s all said and done, yeah, that’s it. That’s right. Thank you, sir. Last question.

EVANIER: I would love to see the way Scott would do any of these books. Thank you, sir, for your question, and the rest of you, next year there’s going to be a lot of Kirby at this convention, and a lot of Kirbys. We’re going to see if we can get the whole family out here—.

LEVINE: Yes. EVANIER: And Paul is nodding in agreement, I’m happy to say, and you’re going to see a lot of wonderful things next year. And please, like I said, if you have an idea for an event that should happen at this convention next year, drop me an e-mail between now and April and I’ll pass it on to the proper authorities. Thank you very much, we’ll see you at the next Jack Kirby panel. (applause) ★

AUDIENCE MEMBER: One of the areas that seems to be neglected when they talk about Jack Kirby is the Westerns. I’m talking about Kid Colt Outlaw, Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid. You see reproductions, but you don’t see, necessarily, original art. Why is that, and to what degree and how did Jack feel about the Westerns as far as that particular early Atlas work?

EVANIER: Jack loved every assignment he ever had, some more than others. If he had been told one day he would do nothing but Westerns, he would have been happy for the rest of his life drawing Westerns.

He would have been even happier drawing war comics for the rest of his life.

Everything was a challenge to him, and he loved it. I think that the Rawhide Kid stuff he did, was a little less his favorite because it wasn’t him. He was taking over existing characters, and he never liked doing that as much as baking from scratch. Those Westerns aren’t seen that much because there doesn’t seem to be fan demand for it, and I don’t think even Scott, with his fabulous ability to find lost original art, could find enough to put together a Western…

DUNBIER: Oh, actually, I could. (laughter, applause) You know, going back to what you said about what would be a dream project? Boys’ Ranch. (applause) AUDIENCE MEMBER: That’s been done.

DUNBIER: Not the way I would do it. (laughter) 89

(opposite) Colletta inks (with Al Plastino inking the Superman figure) from Jimmy Olsen #133 (Oct. 1970). With wild concepts like this, it’s no wonder Jack didn’t want Vinnie showing them up at Marvel Comics. (below) Original art to the inside cover of Boys’ Ranch #6 (Aug. 1951).

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERVIEWS WITH KIRBY and his contemporaries, FEATURE ARTICLES, RARE AND UNSEEN KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and presentation of KIRBY’S UNINKED NS PENCILS from the 1960s-80s (from EDITIO BLE photocopies preserved in the KIRBY AVAILANLY ARCHIVES). Now in FULL-COLOR, it FOR O $4.95 showcases Kirby’s art even better! $1.95—

DIGITAL

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

COLLECTED VOL. 3

COLLECTED VOL. 6

COLLECTED VOL. 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go to www.twomorrows.com for other issues, and an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #50

KIRBY COLLECTOR #51

KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

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!

KIRBY FIVE-OH! covers the best of Kirby’s 50-year career in comics: BEST KIRBY STORIES, COVERS, CHARACTER DESIGNS, UNUSED ART, and profiles of/commentary by the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus a 50-PAGE PENCIL ART GALLERY and a COLOR SECTION! Kirby cover inked by DARWYN COOKE, and introduction by MARK EVANIER.

Bombastic EVERYTHING GOES issue, with a wealth of great submissions that couldn’t be pigeonholed into a “theme” issue!

Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JIM LEE and ADAM HUGHES, MARK EVANIER’s column, huge pencil art galleries, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS, and more!

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

(84 tabloid pages) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(168-page trade paperback) $24.95 (Digital Edition) $7.95 ISBN: 9781893905894

(84 tabloid pages) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 tabloid pages) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #54

KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

KIRBY COLLECTOR #56

KIRBY COLLECTOR #57

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!

(84 tabloid pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 tabloid pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 tabloid pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 tabloid pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

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! (84 tabloid pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #58

LEE & KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS! Traces their history at Marvel, and what led them to conceive the Fantastic Four in 1961. 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.

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $7.95 ISBN: 9781605490380 Diamond Order Code: SEP111248

KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

KIRBY COLLECTOR #60

KIRBY COLLECTOR #61

KIRBY COLLECTOR #62

KIRBY COLLECTOR #63

“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

FANTASTIC FOUR FOLLOW-UP to #58’s THE WONDER YEARS! Never-seen FF wraparound cover, interview between FF inkers JOE SINNOTT and DICK AYERS, rare LEE & KIRBY interview, comparison of a Jack and Stan FF story conference to Stan’s final script and Jack’s penciled pages, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, gallery of KIRBY FF ART, pencils from BLACK PANTHER, SILVER SURFER, & more!

JACK KIRBY: WRITER! Examines quirks of Kirby’s wordsmithing, from the FOURTH WORLD to ROMANCE and beyond!

Lengthy Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, LARRY LIEBER’s scripting for Jack at 1960s Marvel Comics, RAY ZONE on 3-D work with Kirby, comparing STEVE GERBER’s Destroyer Duck scripts to Jack’s pencils, Kirby’s best promo blurbs, Kirby pencil art gallery, & more!

KIRBY AT DC! Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, updated “X-Numbers” list of Kirby’s DC assignments (revealing some surprises), JERRY BOYD’s insights on Kirby’s DC work, a look at KEY 1970s EVENTS IN JACK’S LIFE AND CAREER, Challengers vs. the FF, pencil art galleries from FOREVER PEOPLE, OMAC, and THE DEMON, Kirby cover inked by MIKE ROYER, and more!

MARVEL UNIVERSE! Featuring MARK ALEXANDER’s pivotal Lee/Kirby essay “A Universe A’Borning,” MARK EVANIER interviews ROY THOMAS, STAN GOLDBERG and JOE SINNOTT, a look at key late-1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s events in Kirby’s life and career, STAN LEE script pages, unseen Kirby pencils and unused art from THOR, NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD, and FANTASTIC FOUR, and more!

(104 pages with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(104 pages with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #64

KIRBY COLLECTOR #65

KIRBY COLLECTOR #66

KIRBY COLLECTOR #67

KIRBY COLLECTOR #68

SUPER-SOLDIERS! We declassify Captain America, Fighting American, Sgt. Fury, The Losers, Pvt. Strong, Boy Commandos, and a tribute to Simon & Kirby! PLUS: a Kirby interview about Captain America, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, key 1940s’50s events in Kirby’s career, unseen pencils and unused art from OMAC, SILVER STAR, CAPTAIN AMERICA (in the 1960s AND ‘70s), the LOSERS, & more! KIRBY cover!

ANYTHING GOES (AGAIN)! A potpourri issue, with anything and everything from Jack’s 50-year career, including a head-tohead comparison of the genius of KIRBY and ALEX TOTH! Plus a lengthy KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused Kirby art from JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, MARVELMANIA, his COMIC STRIP & ANIMATION WORK, and more!

DOUBLE-TAKES ISSUE! Features oddities, coincidences, and reworkings by both Jack and Stan Lee: the Galactus Origin you didn’t see, Ditko’s vs. Kirby’s Spider-Man, how Lee and Kirby viewed “writing” differently, plus a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused pencil art from FANTASTIC FOUR, 2001, CAPTAIN VICTORY, BRUCE LEE, & more!

UP-CLOSE & PERSONAL! Kirby interviews you weren’t aware of, photos and recollections from fans who saw him in person, personal anecdotes from Jack’s fellow pros, LEE and KIRBY cameos in comics, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and more! Don’t let the photo cover fool you; this issue is chockfull of rare Kirby pencil art, from Roz Kirby’s private sketchbook, and Jack’s most personal comics stories!

KEY KIRBY CHARACTERS! We go decadeby-decade to examine pivotal characters Jack created throughout his career (including some that might surprise you)! Plus there’s a look at what would’ve happened if Kirby had never left Marvel Comics for DC, how Jack’s work has been repackaged over the decades, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and galleries of unseen Kirby pencil art!

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST: GOLD EDITION

Lists EVERY KIRBY COMIC, BOOK, UNPUBLISHED WORK, cross-references reprints, and more!

(128-page Digital Edition) $5.95

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’ home and more than 200 pieces of Kirby art not published outside of those volumes!

(120-page Digital Edition) $5.95

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

KIRBY’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHIC NOVEL presented as created in 1975 (before being modified for the 1980s Pacific Comics series), reproduced from his uninked pencil art! Includes Jack’s unused CAPTAIN VICTORY SCREENPLAY, unseen art, an historical overview to put it in perspective!

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

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

First conceptualized in the 1970s as a movie screenplay, SILVER STAR was adapted by JACK KIRBY as a six-issue mini-series for Pacific Comics in the 1980s, as his final, great comics series.

The entire six-issue run is collected here, reproduced from his 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!

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $7.95 ISBN: 9781893905559 • Diamond Order Code: JAN063367

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

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 1972 GODS posters, and four extra Kirby color pieces, all at tabloid size!

(60-page tabloid with COLOR) SOLD OUT • (Digital Edition) $5.95

TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Collector

[I’m trying extra hard to keep this mag on its announced quarterly schedule, and so far this year, I’m hitting my target dates pretty well. But it’s up to YOU, Kirbyphiles, to do your part. Check the list of upcoming issue ideas on the next page, and submit something! Our regular contributors can only do so much, and we need as many fresh, new approaches to Jack’s work as we can get.

And even if you’re not up for writing a full article, let’s hear from you in this letter column!

Now, on to some missives:] I absolutely love your magazine as I absolutely love Jack and all his work! However, this was not always the case. I started reading comics right about the time that Jack returned to Marvel in the mid-’70s. To say that I found this period of his work difficult would be a huge understatement. But then, someone a little older showed me Jack’s mid-’60s work on the FF and THOR. I was hooked. I have since acquired great affection for all his work, along with about every collected volume of his work that has ever been published. It takes up the better portion of two standing bookcases and I get lost in Mr. Kirby’s universe more than I probably should. I consider your publication and its contributors a great guide through that universe.

While this is mainly a letter of praise, I did want to make one observation. As you and your readers well know, Jack was, among many other things, a visionary and a prophet. After rereading my OMAC collection, I have come to the conclu-

Send letters to: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR c/o TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com Letter hacks are the key characters in our book—write us!

Comments

sion that among the many other things that he foresaw, he predicted the coming of Donald Trump!

Check out the cover to OMAC #2. Mister Big is Donald Trump! I mean no political offense to any of your readership, but come on! Jack nailed it!

Scott Strong, via the Internet I used to really love Colletta`s inking on THOR. Reading the comics as a kid, it kind of complimented and suited the tone of the book... however, it’s not until you actually own or see the original artwork that you truly understand just what a butcher that man was to Jack’s pencils!

Fast he may be—the go-to man to knock an emergency ink job out over a weekend maybe.

But hell, why butcher everything else as well? I think in the end that was the only way he could be bothered to work! Okay, sorry, rant over—it’s just when you see Frank Giacoia’s inks over Kirby, you see what a difference a good inker can make.

You produce and continue to produce some of the best magazines on the market—and to be honest, the only ones I buy these days. I know I could download them cheaper, but somehow Kirby is about being on the printed page! Thanks again for many happy hours of reading and the ones still to come.

Roy Banham, UNITED KINGDOM Great job on TJKC # 67. The cover printing with the “hidden image” was outstanding.

Ross Sprout, Arden, NC Am just getting around now to reading TJKC #67 and had to dash you a note to tell you of my appreciation in reading your own personal Kirby odyssey that fronts the ish. You’re a bit younger than me (by seven years) so it’s difficult for me to understand getting hooked on Kirby by way of KAMANDI... lol! But I can still dig anyone who can get into Kirby by any means!

Pierre Comtois, Lowell, MA [Glad you enjoyed the printing effect, Ross, and my “personal odyssey” as you so eloquently put it, Pierre. I took the opportunity to make #67 a bit different, and more personal, in keeping with the theme. My modest Southern upbringing ingrained in me the desire to shy away from the limelight, and though I felt it made sense this time, I never forget this mag’s about Jack, not me.]

I have a new dedicated Jack Kirby channel on YouTube I thought readers would enjoy checking out: KIRBY CONTINUUM. Nearly every video on the channel features panel for panel cutouts by me with selected background scores: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzC_BvV_bv 7mk2PY9tzmA8A?view_as=public Fred Smith, Goose Creek, SC 92

I recently interviewed saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins for THE YALE ORAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN MUSIC. Knowing that Sonny was a big fan of The King, I brought him a copy of TJKC and Sonny just loved it. In particular, at age 86, Sonny is a Cap and a Golden Age fan.

Gregg Bendian, Fair Lawn, NJ If you’ve ever printed a page as jam-packed with interest as the “Kirby Cameos” (TJKC #67), I don’t remember it. Twenty shots! Half the fun was trying to remember where the ones I’ve seen appeared. Probably my favorite was Jack’s self-caricature where he’s smoking a pencil and drawing with his cigar (from an early Fourth World essay page, I believe). Also, amusing to see his HULK TV show sketch artist photo. I rarely watched but somehow did happen to tune in the night that was on.

Also got a tremendous kick from Jack’s Thor pencil drawing (page 63). When and where was that originally published? Or is “1960s fanzine illo” all you know about it to date?

Another standout was the majestic drawing of his daughter, Lisa, astride the horse, with a cosmic backdrop. So cool! Don’t recall seeing that previously.

Enjoyed the pencil cover to ETERNALS #3, especially Jack’s blurb, not printed on the published version, reading: “Would it scare you if all the strange stories so common in every country’s mythology—were true?” As to Ikaris’ costume, while it was the debut, technically, we saw it in the corner box from the first issue on.

With Margo reaching out to help, who’s flying the plane?

The abundance of photos this issue, especially in your retrospective, was terrific. Please continue to print more, as they’re unearthed, in future issues. They were great; covering so many eras of his career. Always enjoyable to see them.

One batch that had a personal significance were Jack’s chalk talk from the ’75 San Diego Con. That was the first one I attended.

Unfortunately, so solely focused on buying back issues, I missed not only meeting Jack, but seeing him draw. Here, forty-plus years later, I can see what I missed.

As to content, loved that your initial issue of KAMANDI, with the giant grasshopper Kliklak, had a sense of continuation and reward with the

gift page, featuring him, given to you by his family—to me, a touching gesture and uniquely treasured memento.

In the 2015 Kirby Tribute Panel, Marv Wolfman dubbed KAMANDI “one of the best kids’ books ever done.” As it was said with obvious affection, I hate to disagree, but it was a good book for anyone. It wasn’t exclusively fast-paced and playful as Jack confronted adult topics, on occasion, such as the loss of a loved one (#6) and putting a beloved pet out of its misery (#14). I agree it was ideal for kids but, even in my mid-teens, I never felt he was talking down to me. It may simply be that, after an intricate series of titles tied together, Jack went in the other direction with a self-contained book that was more singularly focused on the lead character. One without a great master plan; just wide-ranging adventures.

To show you how successful it was, I was actually sad about his return to Marvel, knowing the days of KAMANDI and OMAC, with Jack at the helm, were soon to end.

It may seem more childlike in that there were talking animals and a sense of fun. But, usually, it was all played very straight.

Two concerns with your presentation: First, Jack’s passing was on Sunday, February 6th.

The 7th may be the date his obituary hit the papers.

Secondly, I thought it was a shame, in such an otherwise-positive presentation, to take an unnecessary shot at Steve Ditko, calling him stand-offish. If TwoMorrows doesn’t have a warm relationship with him, why mention it? Plus, I’d think, since he bothered to respond, that’s still better than a total silence. Just seemed cold and out of place here.

Has the Kirby cover to the SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL ever been printed full size? It would be nice to examine it larger. In that sense, occasionally I miss the old format. No griping about tiny reproductions there. Still, I suppose that’s why they invented the magnifying glass.

Loved all the Kirby interviews you printed this time.

Nothing better to clarify Jack’s beliefs than his own words, not others offering, however heartfelt, their own interpretations.

Two interesting aspects to the California State University (CSUN) panel discussion: First, people have no end of different times and entrance points to Jack’s work, yet they still become fans and, later, fill in what they missed.

Secondly, as to whether originals to something that can be held in your hands, like a comic book, can provide a gallery with “art,” I see it as something readers appreciated before academics. To me, it was both entertaining and “art.” The fact it’s commercial shouldn’t take anything away from that. In that sense, the fine art world is just now discovering something fans already knew long ago.

Though it wasn’t specifically produced to be hung on a wall and admired, it certainly can be without apology or explanation.

I know I’d much rather see a gallery exhibit of Jack’s exciting art than a fruit bowl or a landscape.

Here’s a tentative list of upcoming themes, but we treat these themes very loosely, and anything you submit may fit somewhere. So get writing, and send us copies of your art! #71: OMEGA ISSUE All about Anti-Life/death and endings in the Kirbyverse!

FIGHT CLUB! Jack’s most powerful fights and in-your-face action!

KIRBY’S ONE-SHOTS! Jack’s best & worst throwaway characters and concepts!

Thumbs up on this one, John. Both conceptually and visually, #67 was a considerable achievement.

Joe Frank, Scottsdale, AZ [Sorry, that’s all the info we have on that fanzine illo.

The SSGN cover was shown in TJKC #9 full-size. As for my comment about Steve Ditko, no disrespect was meant. I’ve swapped a few brief, cordial letters with Mr. Ditko over the years, but I did find it humorous that he’d respond that way to something we sent him.]

I spoke to you briefly at the San Diego Comic-Con back in 2006. While purchasing a copy of TJKC (#43, the one with The Silver Surfer on the cover), I mentioned that my mother-in-law, Christine Monteath, was going to make me a stained glass window of The Silver Surfer. You immediately perked up and said, “Really? When it’s done, send me a photo and maybe we’ll publish it in THE COLLECTOR!” Well, the stained glass window is finished at last and has already won an award, the Glastar Art Glass Competition.

It’s entitled “The Silver Surfer Returns.” You really have to see it in glorious color to appreciate how accurately Christine was able to replicate the pure psychedelic dynamism that is Jack Kirby at his most cosmic.

If you choose to publish the piece, please include the artist’s name and contact info: Christine Monteath, The Glass Attic, chrismonteath@dslextreme.com.

Who knows? Perhaps there are more Jack Kirby stained glass windows in her future. At the moment I’m trying to twist her arm to get a stained glass Galactus out of her! Can you imagine a better companion piece than that?

Robert Guffey, Long Beach, CA

(below) Utilitas zothe#69 Credits: cas fermentet bellus John Morrow, Editor/Designer saburre. Perspicax syrtes spinosus cirTHANKS TO OURcumgrediet CONTRIBUTORS: ut Jerry Boyd • Tom Brevoort Norris Burroughs • Jon B. Cooke Jean Depelley • Scott Dunbier Kevin Eastman • Mark Evanier David Folkman • Barry Forshaw Richard French • Glen David Gold Arnold Hano • Bonnie Hano Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com) Rand Hoppe • Larry Houston Lisa Kirby • Sean Kleefeld Tom Kraft • Blair Kramer Paul S. Levine • Harry Mendryk Gary Picariello • Susan Pinsky Darcy Quinn • Steve Robertson Mike Royer • Steve Sherman Walter Simonson • Joe Sinnott Stan Taylor • Mike Thibodeaux Steven Tice • Pete Von Sholly David Laurence Wilson Ray Wyman Jr. • Tom Ziuko Ray Zone • and of course The Kirby Estate • The Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org) and whatifkirby.com If we forgot anyone, please let us know!

Contribute!

The Jack Kirby Collector is 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.

Submit art & articles by mail, or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com

KIRBY’S WORLD THAT’S COMING (AGAIN)!

How Jack looked into his crystal ball to predict the future!

KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID! Stan & Jack’s comments about their Marvel Universe work!

FATHERS & SONS! Odin, Zeus, Darkseid, and other bad parental role models!

BUGS! Mantis, Forager, Ant-Man, Lightning Lady, & more crawlies!

GOT A THEME IDEA? WRITE US!

93

NEXT ISSUE: It’s the first of two bookend issues we’re calling the ALPHA (#70) & OMEGA (#71) ISSUES! #70 looks at the BEGINNINGS of Kirby’s greatest concepts, and how he looked back in time and to the future for the origins of ideas like DEVIL DINOSAUR, FOREVER PEOPLE, 2001, ETERNALS, KAMANDI, OMAC, and more! There’s also a rare Kirby interview, the 2016 Kirby Tribute Panel from WonderCon, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and galleries of unseen Kirby pencil art, all behind a KIRBY/MIKE ROYER cover! It ships February 2017 (and leads directly into #71’s inverse look at ENDINGS in the Kirbyverse).

Parting Shot

Only a true friend (or an enemy) would strap you to a Civil War-era cannon, and light the fuse. Mister Miracle sure knew how to pick a loyal partner in Oberon, as evidenced in these pencils from Mister Miracle #5, page 8 (Nov. 1971).

Mister Miracle, Oberon TM & © DC Comics.

94

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Welcome to the CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, good guys beat bad guys with a pun and a punch, and Batman shook a mean cape. HERO-A-GO-GO celebrates the Camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent. BACK ISSUE magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY takes you through that coolest cultural phenomenon with this collection of nostalgic essays and histories of classic 1960s characters like CAPTAIN ACTION, HERBIE THE FAT FURY, CAPTAIN NICE, ATOM ANT, SCOOTER, ACG’s NEMESIS, Dell’s SUPER-FRANKENSTEIN AND DRACULA, the “SPLIT!” CAPTAIN MARVEL, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), BOB HOLIDAY (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, Spider-Man), DEAN TORRENCE (Jan and Dean Meet Batman), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), DICK DeBARTOLO (Captain Klutz), TONY TALLARICO (The Great Society Comic Book), VINCE GARGIULO (Palisades Park historian), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and many more!

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ALTER EGO #138

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Science-fiction great (and erstwhile comics writer) HARLAN ELLISON talks about Captain Marvel and The Monster Society of Evil! Also, Captain Marvel artist/ co-creator C.C. BECK writes about the infamous Superman-Captain Marvel lawsuit of the 1940s and ‘50s in a double-size FCA section! Plus two titanic tributes to Golden Age artist FRED KIDA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

JIM AMASH interviews ROY THOMAS about his 1990s work on Conan, the stillborn Marvel/Excelsior line launched by STAN LEE, writing for Cross Plains, Topps, DC, and others! Art by KAYANAN, DITKO, BUSCEMA, MAROTO, GIORDANO, ST. AUBIN, SIMONSON, MIGNOLA, LARK, KIRBY, CORBEN, SALE, SCHULTZ, LIGHTLE, McKEEVER, BENDIS, and more!

Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

Golden Age great IRWIN HASEN spotlight, adapted from DAN MAKARA’s film documentary on Hasen, the 1940s artist of the Justice Society, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Wildcat, Cat-Man, and numerous other classic heroes—and, for 30 years, the artist of the famous DONDI newspaper strip! Bonus art by his buddies JOE KUBERT, ALEX TOTH, CARMINE INFANTINO, and SHELLY MAYER!

From Detroit to Deathlok, we cover the career of artist RICH BUCKLER: Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Black Panther, Ka-Zar, Dracula, Morbius, a zillion Marvel covers— Batman, Hawkman, and other DC stars— Creepy and Eerie horror—and that’s just in the first half of the 1970s! Plus Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, FCA, and comics expert HAMES WARE on fabulous Golden Age artist RAFAEL ASTARITA!

DAVID SIEGEL talks to RICHARD ARNDT about how, from 1991-2005, he brought the greatest artists of the Golden Age to the San Diego Comic-Con! With art and artifacts by FRADON, GIELLA, MOLDOFF, LAMPERT, CUIDERA, FLESSEL, NORRIS, SULLIVAN, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, GROTHKOPF, and others! Plus how writer JOHN BROOME got to the Con, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, FCA, and more!

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BACK ISSUE #88

BACK ISSUE #89

BACK ISSUE #90

BACK ISSUE #91

BACK ISSUE #92

“Comics Magazines of the ‘70s and ‘80s!”

From Savage Tales to Epic Illustrated, KIRBY’s “Speak-Out Series,” EISNER’s Spirit magazine, Unpublished PAUL GULACY, MICHAEL USLAN on the Shadow magazine you didn’t see, plus B&Ws from Atlas/Seaboard, Charlton, Skywald, and Warren. Featuring work by NEAL ADAMS, JOHN BOLTON, ARCHIE GOODWIN, DOUG MOENCH, EARL NOREM, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by GRAY MORROW!

“Bronze Age Adaptations!” The Shadow, Korak: Son of Tarzan, Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Worlds Unknown, and Marvel’s 1980s movie adaptations. Plus: PAUL KUPPERBERG surveys prose adaptations of comics! With work by JACK KIRBY, DENNY O’NEIL, FRANK ROBBINS, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, FRANK THORNE, MICHAEL USLAN, and sporting an alternate Kaluta cover produced for DC’s Shadow series!

“Eighties Ladies!” MILLER & SIENKIEWICZ’s Elektra: Assassin, Dazzler, Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), Lady Quark, DAN MISHKIN’s Wonder Woman, WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS and ADAM KUBERT’s Jezebel Jade, Somerset Holmes, and a look back at Marvel’s Dakota North! Featuring the work of BRUCE JONES, JOHN ROMITA JR., ROGER STERN, and many more, plus a previously unpublished cover by SIENKIEWICZ.

“All-Jerks Issue!” Guy Gardner, Namor in the Bronze Age, J. Jonah Jameson, Flash Thompson, DC’s Biggest Blowhards, the Heckler, Obnoxio the Clown, and Archie’s “pal” Reggie Mantle! Featuring the work of (non-jerks) RICH BUCKLER, KURT BUSIEK, JOHN BYRNE, STEVE ENGLEHART, KEITH GIFFEN, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and many more. Cover-featuring KEVIN MAGUIRE’s iconic Batman/Guy Gardner “One Punch”!

“Bronze Age Halloween!” The Swamp Thing revival of 1982, Swamp Thing in Hollywood, Phantom Stranger team-ups, KUPPERBERG & MIGNOLA’s Phantom Stranger miniseries, DC’s The Witching Hour, the Living Mummy, and an index of Marvel’s 1970s’ horror anthologies! Featuring the work of RICH BUCKLER, ANDY MANGELS, VAL MAYERIK, MARTIN PASKO, MICHAEL USLAN, TOM YEATES, and many more. Cover by YEATES.

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #11 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #12 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #13 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #14 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #15

Retrospective on GIL KANE, co-creator of the modern Green Lantern and Atom, and early progenitor of the graphic novel. Kane cover newly-inked by KLAUS JANSON, plus remembrances from friends, fans, and collaborators, and a Kane art gallery. Also, our RICH BUCKLER interview conclusion, a look at the “greatest zine in the history of mankind,” MINESHAFT, and Part One of our ARNOLD DRAKE interview!

JACK KIRBY’s mid-life work examined, from Fantastic Four and Thor at Marvel in the middle ‘60s to the Fourth World at DC (including the real-life background drama that unfolded during that tumultuous era)!

Plus a career-spanning interview with underground comix pioneer HOWARD CRUSE, the extraordinary cartoonist and graphic novelist of the award-winning Stuck Rubber Baby! Cover by STEVE RUDE!

MICHAEL W. KALUTA feature interview covering his early fans days THE SHADOW, STARSTRUCK, the STUDIO, and Vertigo cover work! Plus RAMONA FRADON talks about her 65+ years in the comic book business on AQUAMAN, METAMORPHO, SUPER-FRIENDS, and SPONGEBOB! Also JAY LYNCH reveals the WACKY PACK MEN who created the Topps trading cards that influenced an entire generation!

Comprehensive KELLEY JONES interview, from early years as Marvel inker to presentday greatness at DC depicting BATMAN, DEADMAN, and SWAMP THING (chockful of rarely-seen artwork)! Plus WILL MURRAY examines the nefarious legacy of Batman co-creator BOB KANE in an investigation into tragic ghosts and rapacious greed. We also look at RAINA TELGEMEIER and her magnificent army of devotees, and more!

Celebrating 30 years of artist’s artist MARK SCHULTZ, creator of the CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS franchise, with a featurelength, career-spanning interview conducted in Mark’s Pennsylvanian home, examining the early years of struggle, success with Kitchen Sink Press, and hitting it big with a Saturday morning cartoon series. Includes rarely-seen art and fascinating photos from Mark’s amazing and award-winning career.

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ALTER EGO #143

ALTER EGO #144

ALTER EGO #145

ALTER EGO #146

ALTER EGO #147

DON GLUT discusses his early years as comic book writer for Marvel, Warren, and Gold Key, with art by SANTOS, MAROTO, CHAN, NEBRES, KUPPERBERG, TUSKA, TRIMPE, SAL BUSCEMA, and others! Also, SAL AMENDOLA and ROY THOMAS on the 1970s professional Academy of Comic Book Arts, founded by STAN LEE and CARMINE INFANTINO! Plus Mr. Monster, FCA, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

MARK CARLSON documents 1940s-50s ACE COMICS (with super-heroes Magno & Davey, Lash Lightning, The Raven, Unknown Soldier, Captain Courageous, Vulcan, and others)! Art by KURTZMAN, MOONEY, BERG, L.B. COLE, PALAIS, and more. Plus: RICHARD ARNDT’s interview with BILL HARRIS (1960s-70s editor of Gold Key and King Comics), FCA, Comic Crypt, and Comic Fandom Archive.

40 years after the debut of Marvel’s STAR WARS #1, its writer/editor ROY THOMAS tells RICHARD ARNDT the story behind that landmark comic, plus interviews with artists HOWARD CHAYKIN, RICK HOBERG, and BILL WRAY. Also: GEORGE BRENNER, creator of The Clock—“Jazz in Comics” by MICHAEL T. GILBERT—the finale of BILL SCHELLY’s salute to G.B. LOVE—FCA—and more! CHAYKIN cover.

DOUG MOENCH in the 1970s at Warren and Marvel (Master of Kung Fu, Planet of the Apes, Deathlok, Werewolf by Night, Morbius, Moon Knight, Ka-Zar, Weirdworld)!

Art by BUSCEMA, GULACY, PLOOG, BUCKLER, ZECK, DAY, PERLIN, & HEATH! MICHAEL T. GILBERT on EC’s oddball “variant covers”—FCA—and a neverpublished Golden Age super-hero story by MARV LEVY! Cover by PAUL GULACY!

Giant-size Fawcett Collectors of America special with Golden/Silver Age writer OTTO BINDER’s personal script records and illos from his greatest series! Intros by P.C. HAMERLINCK and BILL SCHELLY, art by BECK, SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, SCHAFFENBERGER, AVISON, BORING, MOONEY, PLASTINO, and others! Plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and an unpublished C.C. BECK cover!

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BACK ISSUE #93

BACK ISSUE #94

BACK ISSUE #95

BACK ISSUE #96

BACK ISSUE #97

“All-Captains Issue!” Bronze Age histories of Shazam! (Captain Marvel) and Captain MarVell, Captain Carrot, Captain Storm and the Losers, Captain Universe, and Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers. Featuring C. C. BECK, PAT BRODERICK, JACK KIRBY, ELLIOT S. MAGGIN, BILL MANTLO, DON NEWTON, BOB OKSNER, SCOTT SHAW!, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, and more.

Cover painting by DAVE COCKRUM!

“Indie Super-Heroes!” NEAL ADAMS Ms. Mystic interview, Continuity Comics, BILL BLACK Captain Paragon interview, Justice Machine history, STEVEN GRANT/NORM BREYFOGLE Whisper “Pro2Pro” interview, and the ’80s revivals of Mighty Crusaders and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Featuring BUCKLER, DEODATO, ELLIS, GRINDBERG, GUSTOVICH, ISABELLA, REINHOLD, ORDWAY, PÉREZ, and more. Cover by NEAL ADAMS!

“Creatures of the Night!” Moon Knight’s DOUG MOENCH and BILL SIENKIEWICZ in a Pro2Pro interview, Ghost Rider, Night Nurse, Eclipso in the Bronze Age, I…Vampire, interviews with Batman writer MIKE W. BARR and Marvel’s Nightcat, JACQUELINE TAVAREZ. Featuring work by BOB BUDIANSKY, J. M. DeMATTEIS, DAVE SIMONS, ROGER STERN, TOM SUTTON, JEAN THOMAS, and more.

SIENKIEWICZ and KLAUS JANSON cover!

“Marvel Fanfare Issue!” Behind the scenes of the ’80s anthology series with AL MILGROM, interviews and art by ARTHUR ADAMS, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, STEVE ENGLEHART, MICHAEL GOLDEN, ROGER McKENZIE, FRANK MILLER, DOUG MOENCH, ANN NOCENTI, GEORGE PÉREZ, MARSHALL ROGERS, PAUL SMITH, KEN STEACY, CHARLES VESS, and more! Cover by SANDY PLUNKETT and GLENN WHITMORE.

“Bird People!” Hawkman in the Bronze Age, JIM STARLIN’s Superman/Hawkgirl team-up, TIM TRUMAN’s Hawkworld, Hawk and Dove, Penguin history, Blue Falcon & Dynomutt, Condorman, and CHUCK DIXON and SCOTT McDANIEL’s Nightwing. With GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, GREG GULER, RICHARD HOWELL, TONY ISABELLA, KARL KESEL, ROB LIEFELD, DENNY O’NEIL, and others! Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.

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BRICKJOURNAL #43

How-to demos & interviews with Philadelphia artists JG JONES (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and KHOI PHAM (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing SpiderMan, The Mighty World of Marvel), JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews of art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY demos the “ORD-way” of drawing, and Comic Art Bootcamp by MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS! JG Jones cover! Mature readers only.

Super-star DC penciler HOWARD PORTER demos his creative process, and JAMAL IGLE discusses everything from storyboarding to penciling as he gives a breakdown of his working methods. Plus there’s Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviewing art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY showing the Ord-Way of doing comics, and Comic Art Bootcamp lessons with BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

Interview and demo by Electra: Assassin and Stray Toasters superstar BILL SIENKIEWICZ, a look at THE WATTS ATELIER OF THE ARTS (one of the best training grounds for students to gain the skills they need to get the jobs they want), JERRY ORDWAY shows the Ord-Way of drawing, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, and BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY take you to Comic Art Bootcamp.

LEGO GAMING! IMAGINE RIGNEY shows his Bioshock builds, NICK JENSEN talks about his characters and props from HALO and other video games, and GamerLUG member SIMON LIU builds LEGO versions of video game characters, spaceships and more! Plus: Building instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS, MINDSTORMS lessons & more!

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