Jack Kirby Collector #6 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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Fully Authorized By The Kirby Estate

$ 95

$5.40 Canada $7.40 Foreign

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CELEBRATING THE LIFE & CAREER OF THE KING!

LICATIO

A Special Do uble-Size Theme ISSUE Featuring THe Fo urth Wo rld!

Issue #6, July 1995

Jack’s

Original Ending For New Gods! Real Reasons

Why DC Cancelled It! INterviews With:

Mark Evanier Steve Sherman & Mike Royer Mister Miracle’s

Female Furies A look at The

1971 New Gods Portfolio The

Hunger Dogs Rare And

Unpublished Art From The Series, Including Jack’s Pencils Befo re They Were Inked

Fan Memories, Analysis, And Much Mo re!!

Orion & Darkseid © DC Comics, Inc., Artwork © Jack Kirby

You Never Saw

Jack put into the series. Even by making this a double-size issue (plus four extra pages!), we’ve really only scratched the surface. Perhaps we’ll examine each of the four books separately in future theme issues. My apologies to those readers who sent in submissions for this issue but don’t see them here. Your efforts are greatly appreciated, but this issue filled up fast. I’ll try to run them in an upcoming issue. For now, sit back and return with me to a time that was brimming with possibilities; a time when Jack’s fertile imagination was turned loose on unsuspecting comics readers. And let’s get some answers to those two big questions! Long live the King! All prominent characters in this issue are © DC Comics, Inc., except Captain America, The Thing, Silver Surfer, and Ikarus which are © Marvel Entertainment Group. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted.

Jack with Joe Sinnott at their first face-to-face meeting during the 1975 Mighty Marvel Comics Convention in New York. (photo by Sam Maronie)

John Morrow, Editor

The Two Big Questions...

(This issue’s cover is a drawing Marty Greim commissioned Jack to do for his publication Comic Crusader in 1974. The inks are by Joe Sinnott, who never worked on the Fourth World books. Rumor has it Joe offered to ink one of the books, but DC turned him down, preferring instead to have Vince Colletta ink them all.)

wo questions have been eating away at me since the early 1970s. And they both revolve around what I think was (conceptually at least) Jack’s greatest achievement in comics. As most of you know, Jack left Marvel for DC in 1970, and immediately created an incredible tale that wove through a series of books. It was unlike anything seen in comics up to that time. New Gods. Forever People. Mister Miracle. And most unlikely of all, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen! Together, the series came to be known as the Fourth World (you’ll find out why in this issue). And as this tightly woven tapestry began to unfold, readers everywhere were amazed at what Jack could do when given the creative freedom to fully explore his imagination. But the freedom didn’t last long. DC management demanded more control over the books, and Jack was forced to modify his stories. Soon Jack had left Jimmy Olsen; New Gods and Forever People were canceled; and Mister Miracle no longer adhered to its Fourth World roots. DC claimed it was due to low sales, but rumors of other reasons abounded. Regardless, the war between New Genesis and Apokolips stayed unresolved, and the final battle between Orion and Darkseid in the slums of Armagetto was never fought. Time passed, and new management took over at DC. Jack was invited back to produce the Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel in the early 1980s, supposedly to conclude the series. But as you’ll see in this issue, Hunger Dogs is totally unlike what Jack originally had planned, and it left many readers unsatisfied. Which brings me to the two big questions: 1) Why did DC really cancel the series? 2) How did Jack originally plan to end it? When I started TJKC, I set out to get answers to these questions. You’ll find the results of my search here, as well as fan recollections and analysis of the series. And you’ll also get some insights into the behind-the-scenes workings of the Fourth World through Part 2 of our interview with inker Mike Royer, and new interviews with Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman, Jack’s assistants in the early 1970s. Our thanks to all of these gentlemen for sharing their time with me for this issue. I approached this issue with the assumption that you’re already familiar with the Fourth World books. It would take far more space than we’ve got here to fully explore all the concepts and characters

As a teenager in the mid1970s, I tried to produce my own ending to the Fourth World, using some pretty awful Kirby swipes. I finished a cover and two pages before I realized I could never do justice to it. (I only wish some of the other people who tried over the years would’ve had the same revelation!) But since I always wanted to see it published, here’s the cover I created. Ahh, the advantages of being Editor... The Jack Kirby Co llecto r #6 Edited by: John Morrow Design & Pro duction: John & Pamela Morrow Special thanks to : Mark Evanier, Russ Garwood, D. Hambone, Chris Harper, Richard Howell, Richard Kyle, Mike Royer, Steve Rude, Steve Sherman, Greg Theakston, Jon Warren, & of course, Roz Kirby.

This Issue’s Contributo rs: jerry boyd, Allan Chao, jeff clem, Bob Cosgrove, rob daniels, shel dorf, mark evanier, david hamilton, Chris Harper, charles hatfield, michal jacot, jim korkis, richard Martines, mike royer, steve rude, steve sherman, carl taylor, daniel testmoingt, greg theakston, Kirk Tilander, peter von sholly, elayne wechsler-chaput, and Bruce Zick. (Each Receives one free issue fo r their effo rts!)

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 2, No. 6, July 1995. Published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Advertising, 502 Saint Mary’s St., Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Single issues and back issues: $2.50 each U.S., $2.70 Canada, $3.70 outside N. America. 6-issue subscriptions: $12.00 US, $13.20 Canada, and $19.20 outside North America. First printing (dated 6/20/95). The initial printing of this issue was mailed the week of July 3, 1995. All characters are © their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors.

friends in your zip code to subscribe! Or as an alternative, call your local Post Office and find out what your NINE-digit zip code is, and send it to us. I’m told it really makes a difference in delivery time.

Kirby News

Help Compile The Kirby Checklist

Keep Sending Letters To DC!

ur goal is to compile an accurate checklist of everything Jack ever had published (including reprints), and offer it as a separate atcost publication. As a starting point, we’re using the Kirby checklist from Blue Rose Press’ The Art Of Jack Kirby. Already, we’ve received numerous lists of uncredited Kirby work, and we’re incorporating them into one final, accurate checklist. So if you remember seeing an error, omission, or inaccuracy in the AOJK checklist, or if you’ve got an accurate list of your own to contribute, write us!

eep writing letters of encouragement to DC editor Bob Kahan, urging DC to publish their proposed Jimmy Olsen, Challengers of the Unknown, and Simon & Kirby Sandman reprints. His new address is DC Comics, 1700 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

Jack Kirby: A Celebration ark Evanier reports that things are progressing nicely on Jack Kirby: A Celebration, the tribute book he and Frank Miller are co-producing. It’s still too early to release a list of all the artists who will do their interpretations of Jack’s characters, but practically every living Kirby collaborator will be represented. A few who never worked with Jack will also, including Al Feldstein and other EC artists. This artist’s gallery will only account for part of the book there’ll be plenty of Kirby art as well. Stay tuned for more details.

The Complete Kirby itchen Sink has expressed interest in Greg Theakston’s proposed Kirby reprint series, The Complete Kirby. But Greg still needs a few comics for this project. Subscriber Frank Johnson supplied Greg with Famous Funnies #75, and Greg also found Blue Bolt #7. He still needs Blue Bolt #4 & #9, Famous Funnies #80, and Justice Traps The Guilty #2. If you know where Greg can acquire these, call him at (404)424-5151.

The Kirby Educational Fund on’t forget that you can still make donations to the educational fund that was set up in Jack’s name shortly after his death. Send your contributions to: The Jack Kirby Educational Fund, Temple Etz Chaim, 1080 Janss Rd., Thousand Oaks, CA 91360.

TJKC In Comic Stores Celebrating the life and career of the King!

BIMO NTHLY!

O N SALE HERE!

Send Letters To Marvel! eep those letters going! As you know, Dr. Mark Miller originated the letter-writing campaign to get Marvel to give Jack co-credit for his creations. TJKC has helped get copies of the letter circulated throughout Canada, England, France, and other parts of Europe. Despite a recent positive response from Marvel, nothing has been done so far. Send letters to: Mr. Terry Stewart, Marvel Comics Co., 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016.

e’re proud to announce that TJKC is now carried in a number of comic shops nationwide. This has increased our print run, which allows us to add extra pages from time to time, like in this issue. If your local shop doesn’t carry TJKC, show them a copy and give them our address. And look for our poster wherever comics are sold - it means you’re dealing with a store who understands the importance of keeping Jack’s memory alive throughout fandom.

Fully Authorized by the Kirby Estate

See You At The Dallas And San Diego Cons!

e’ll tentatively be attending the San Diego Comic Con (July 2730) and the Dallas Fantasy Fair (August 11-13). And we’d like to meet our subscribers! If plans materialize, we’ll be putting on a display of unpublished Kirby art at each show, like the one we did at Heroes Con, June 16-18. Look for us – we’ll be wearing t-shirts bearing the retail poster design you see above. Hope to see you there!

Patience, Everyone!

More Thanks!

e know you’re anxious to receive each new issue of TJKC, but give the Post Office time to deliver it! To keep costs down, we mail new issues by Third Class Bulk Mail, which can take up to three weeks to be delivered (although it usually doesn’t take that long). Since TJKC ships at the beginning of the month, please don’t call to say you haven’t received it until the end of the month that it shipped. To my knowledge the Postal Service hasn’t lost a single Third Class issue we’ve mailed to date (although they’ve taken their sweet time delivering some of them!). Because of Bulk Mail sorting, zip codes with ten or more subscribers receive theirs first. So don’t automatically assume yours is lost if a friend already has theirs. To speed up your delivery, get nine

pecial thanks to Jon Warren, publisher of Comic Source, for helping spread the word about TJKC. If you’ve never seen Comic Source, check it out! It’s a BIG monthly publication for true fans of comics, featuring great articles on all aspects of fandom. Plus, it lists hundreds of comics for sale from different sellers, in alphabetical order for easy searching. Subscriptions are $23.45 from Comic Source, 2401 Broad St., Chattanooga, TN 37408, phone 615-265-5515. Also, thanks to Ryan Dillman for again plugging TJKC in his review-zine Alternate Entertainment (not Alternative Entertainment, as I incorrectly stated in issue #4). For info on Alternate Entertainment, contact Ryan at 6144 E 00 NS, Greentown, IN 46936.

Mantis

Lightray (note the mask, which only appeared intermittently in New Gods #2.)

Orion

Darkseid (Jack utilized collage in the original. Notice how much less threatening he looks with ears.)

The New Gods Portfolio Background information supplied by Allan Chao.

drawings for the New Gods characters, done while still at Marvel in the late 1960s. The originals were inked by Don Heck and hand-colored by Jack, similar to the color plates in the GODS Portfolio. While many details of each character changed before they appeared in Jack’s comics, it’s interesting to see how these characters evolved.

n April 9-11, 1971, this rare Kirby portfolio was released during Jack’s appearance at the Disneyland Convention of Nostalgia, held at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, CA. The dimensions of these eight black-&-white plates are 8-1/2” x 11” without an exterior portfolio envelope. They were taken from Jack’s original concept

Rameses (also known as the Black Sphinx, he never made it into the New Gods series.)

Robot Defender (also unused. He was renamed Death Flash and appeared in Jack’s Topps comics series.)

Mister Miracle (Jack’s original color scheme used purple instead of red.)

Metron (like the Darkseid prototype, the drawing was incorporated into a collage.)

Buzzing In The Boom Tube With Steve Sherman Interviewed by John Morrow (Steve Sherman, along with Mark Evanier, served as an assistant to Jack throughout the Fourth World series and beyond. I “spoke” with Steve on March 29, 1995 via computer on America Online.)

being paid by the book to write, pencil and edit. Any extras would have to come from the editing fee he received. When Mark and I first started, we would usually drive out on Sunday afternoon to Jack’s house in Thousand Oaks. Jack would show us what he was working on, or we would go over ideas for various new things that Jack wanted to do. Then during the week, Mark and I would get together at Mark’s house and come up with either outlines or character ideas and the following Sunday spring them on Jack. Later, we’d sometimes come out during the week as things got busier.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What was your earliest exposure to Jack’s work? STEVE SHERMAN: My earliest recollection of a Jack Kirby comic has to be around 1959 and the first issue of The Fly. TJKC: How did you meet Jack, and end up working for him? SS: The short version is that sometime in the spring or summer of 1969, I, along with almost the entire Los Angeles Comic Club went to work for Marvelmania International. Jack and his family had just moved to Southern California and settled in Orange County. One afternoon, a group of us went to visit, since Jack had single-handedly done most of the artwork for the catalog and posters that were being hawked by Marvelmania. After that visit, Mark and I kept in touch with Jack and it must have been a few weeks or a month later when Jack told us that he was leaving Marvel for DC. He said that he would be driving up to Los Angeles and that he’d come by the Marvelmania offices to pick up some artwork that belonged to him. I think we all went out to lunch and Jack just sort of asked Mark and myself if we would be interested in working with him on some projects. We were both ready to leave Marvelmania so it worked out. I left first and Mark followed as soon as he had finished the issue of Marvelmania Magazine that he was working on.

TJKC: It sounds like you both had some creative input from the start. SS: Only from the standpoint of Jack showing us what he was doing, and asking our opinion. TJKC: Did he use your opinions generally? SS: Sometimes. He was very gracious about listening to any ideas we had. If he felt that they were good, he incorporated them into stories. TJKC: What are examples of things you contributed? SS: Mostly we came up with things for Jimmy Olsen. This was because Jack had more leeway in the direction of the stories. The other books he pretty much had plotted in his head. I remember Mark and I suggested the Loch Ness story. We were all fans of Laurel and Hardy and Jack got a kick out of drawing Jimmy Finlayson.

TJKC: Was it weird having Jack Kirby ask you to work for him? SS: Yes and no. We had been working at Marvelmania for a while, so having been immersed in dealing with Jack and Stan and the other artists, it just seemed like a natural progression.

TJKC: Where did the term “Fourth World” come from? SS: As far as I can recall, and this is 20 years ago, the term “Third World” was just becoming a catch phrase in the media. Jack loved words and he loved coming up with punchy names or crazy alliterations. Fourth World was a unique and familiar sounding term to describe this new world that he was creating.

TJKC: Describe a typical work session with Jack. SS: There really wasn’t a typical work session since Jack was running a pretty informal operation. First of all, he had no budget. He was

TJKC: I’ve heard it came from a typo on one of the covers... SS: Well, I don’t think so. Jack was using the term before the comics were even printed.

Jack’s pencils for the cover of Jimmy Olsen #144, before inking by Neal Adams. 6

TJKC: Did Jack have a beginning, middle and end worked out from the start? Or did he make it up as he went along? SS: He had some of it worked out since he had been working on it for a few years before he started at DC. But he didn’t have it plotted out. It wasn’t until he started putting it down on paper that each chapter came to life.

TJKC: How much did you contribute to Jack’s understanding of the hippie counter-culture? SS: We gave him lots of pot. (laughter) But seriously, Jack had kids around all the time. I don’t know if he understood the hippie counterculture. He read a lot and listened to talk shows on the radio. TJKC: Some of the letter columns seemed to me to be a bit padded. Did you get much mail? SS: Padded? I don’t know. Maybe Mark and I just got carried away writing answers. But, we did get lots of mail and we tried to keep a balance between the “I love Kirby” and the “I hate your stuff ” letters.

TJKC: How did Marv Wolfman end up doing text pages in each #1? SS: Marv was working at DC and he knew Jack from the Marvel days when he and Len Wein would go out to East Williston and visit. The first issues were already being set by the production department and Marv wanted to do it.

TJKC: Was it generally favorable mail? SS: It probably was. A lot of it was drawings from fans or requests for sketches. There were the regulars who would write in.

TJKC: Which of the Fourth World books was your favorite? Which was Jack’s? SS: Mister Miracle. I thought that it was a great premise and it was fun to read. I don’t know that Jack had a favorite book. To him, it was one huge saga and the separate books were a matter of packaging enforced on him by the publisher. If it had been up to him, I think that it would have been one big book that came out once a month. And by big I mean printed 11" x 17" and 64 pages in full color. Jack was very frustrated with the 6" x 9" format.

TJKC: Are there any unrevealed secrets you can share? You mentioned Jack envisioned it as a movie... SS: Any secrets I’ve long forgotten. Whatever there was, it was on the page. As far as movies, Jack really wanted to direct a movie. Now, I’m certain he had no idea of how tough a proposition that is or that he probably wouldn’t have even enjoyed it. But he really saw these images as BIG moving across the screen. Jack saw Jack Palance as Darkseid. This was 20 years ago. He thought he had a great face.

TJKC: How did the inking switch from Colletta to Royer come about? SS: A story steeped in drama. Basically, Mark and I bugged Jack about the inking. Jack was putting all TJKC: Who at DC made the kinds of detail into the decision to redraw Jack’s pencils, and Colletta was faces on Jimmy Olsen? How inking as fast as he could to did Jack react to it? make a living. Jack had a lot SS: Now you’re getting into of respect for Colletta and the byzantine practices of The original, rejected cover to Mister Miracle #10, still in pencil stage. probably would have just the DC production departlet it slide, until he compared photocopies of what he was penciling to ment. Whoever made the decision had Carmine’s approval. Why? what was being printed. It was a tough maneuver, since he was 3,000 Stylistic reasons, merchandising reasons. Jack wasn’t thrilled by it, miles away from the production of the book. But Jack wanted to set but he had so many other things on his mind that to stop and worry up a West Coast operation and he was doing everything he could to about it would have been just another aggravation. make it happen. Mike had inked his work for Marvelmania. He could also letter, and most important, he cost the same. TJKC: Why did DC keep rejecting Jack’s Jimmy Olsen cover designs? SS: Probably someone whispering in Carmine’s ear about sales and TJKC: Roz told me that pencil photocopies don’t exist for those first such. Not everyone at DC was a fan of Jack’s at the time. few Colletta issues, that DC never sent them back. Is this why it took so long for Jack to see what Vince was doing to his pencils? TJKC: How did Goody Rickles come about? SS: That’s true. Jack didn’t get the copier until Neal (his son) went to SS: That came about because Mark and I LOVED Don Rickles. He was work for Canon. Jack didn’t know what was happening until the book big at the time. Jack liked him too, so Mark and I suggested that Jack was printed. work him into the story somehow. We contacted Rickles’ PR firm and 7

best damn Jimmy Olsen that he could. TJKC: What details about Mister Miracle were never revealed? We never really saw when he discovered he was from New Genesis, where he got his Bag Of Tricks, how he confronted Highfather about giving him up to Darkseid... SS: Well, one of Jack’s “secrets” was to always create a world that you made up so that anytime you needed an idea for a story, you could just dip into it and pull out what you needed. So with the Fourth World, Jack created this giant world that he could use to pull out whatever he needed. The fact that he never explained a lot of stuff simply means that he just never got around to that story – even if he didn’t know what the final outcome was – he knew it was there. TJKC: Why was Mister Miracle purple in #1? SS: Jack’s rule of thumb was all costumes should be red, blue or yellow or combinations of the same. The reason Mister Miracle’s costume was purple was because the DC production department had no guidelines and slipped up. TJKC: What type of reaction did the Funky Flashman story in Mister Miracle #6 get from inside the industry? SS: The people who knew Jack got a big laugh. Those who didn’t thought it was just another funny character. Jack personally had to pull back a bit, but he had a great time writing it. TJKC: Did Stan make his opinion known? SS: Probably. But Stan has a pretty good sense of humor. TJKC: Who did Jack base each of the Forever People on? Were you or Mark in there? SS: No. They weren’t based on anyone in particular. Jack was just trying to create characters that were a bit younger than the ones he had been working with at Marvel.

After a long absence, Infinity Man returns! Pencils from Forever People #11. they said, “Sure, go ahead.” Well, Jack turned it into a whole run. He had a lot of fun doing it. It was pretty amazing how Jack was able to get Rickles’ dialogue down. It was Pure Jack.

TJKC: You and Mark were listed in the credits of Forever People #9 as “Synopsis prepared by.” What did that mean? SS: That Jack figured whatever we had said made some kind of sense and fit in with the story he was telling. As I said, Jack was really gracious when it came to listening to what two eager beavers had to say. Thinking back on it, I’m surprised we had the nerve to even suggest stuff.

TJKC: What happened to Infinity Man between Forever People #3 and his return in #11? SS: He got a job? (laughter) I haven’t the slightest idea. Probably Jack just got so involved in the stories that he just didn’t have a chance. Like I said, he had this big pot of stew going, trying to juggle.

TJKC: Was having a Morgan Edge clone in Lois Lane Jack’s idea? SS: Morgan Edge was Jack’s idea. It was one of the few things he tossed into the Superman mix at Carmine’s request. I doubt if the clone idea was his, since he tried not to meddle in other folk’s books.

TJKC: In the Masterworks portfolio, there’s a pencil drawing for a proposed New Gods tabloid. What’s the story behind this? SS: I looked at that the other night. I don’t know. Maybe Mark remembers. I know that we were developing some tabloid ideas at the time, but the New Gods weren’t part of it.

TJKC: Why didn’t DC let you handle the Jimmy Olsen letter column? SS: Jimmy Olsen was part of the Superman family, and nobody messed with the Superman family who didn’t live on the East Coast.

TJKC: Heggra was Darkseid’s mother. Who was his father? SS: My best guess would be Loki, since that’s the direction Jack would have headed. But, who knows. It could have been anything.

TJKC: Why did Jack stop doing Jimmy Olsen? SS: Carmine decided he wanted Jack to do other things. Strictly a publisher’s decision.

TJKC: Fastbak and Lonar both appeared in backups. Did Jack have any plans for them, or were they strictly filler material? SS: Eventually, I’m sure Jack would have created whole books around those characters had things worked out.

TJKC: Was Jack upset about being taken off Jimmy Olsen? SS: Things like that didn’t upset Jack. He never wanted to do Jimmy Olsen in the first place. But if he had to do it, he was gonna do the 8

TJKC: In Mister Miracle #10 and Forever People #9, a shift away from the Apokolips War took place. Why didn’t it happen in New Gods? SS: I think that at some point, Jack realized that he had to simplify. Reader’s just coming in were having a tough time following what was going on. Jack figured that he could keep the saga going in New Gods, and at the same time allow Mister Miracle and Forever People to stand on their own.

TJKC: Over the past 20 years, how much contact did you have with Jack and Roz? SS: Oh, lots. They’re like my second family. Jack was there for me when my dad passed away about 10 years ago. Plus Neal, Lisa, and Tracy are part of the family. It’s hard to describe in just a paragraph. Just the 4th of July stories alone would fill a magazine. TJKC: What’d you think of the Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel? SS: I always got a kick out of anything Jack did. It was great that he got a chance to continue the saga, but deep down I know he would have liked to have seen it projected on a big wall.

TJKC: Several of your next issue blurbs around that time don’t reflect what ended up in the next issues... SS: That happens. Jack didn’t have any of this written down. Sometimes when he finished a book he had one idea, and then when he actually got down to writing it, he found himself going off in another direction.

TJKC: What’s the greatest thing you learned from working with Jack? SS: To boil it down for simplicity’s sake, I would have to say professionalism. There was no trick to what Jack did, even though he knew them all. It was hard work, sitting at that drawing table seven days a week, trying to come up with something that wasn’t just adequate, but good. So in any job that comes through here I try and remember that. And have a good time.

TJKC: How far was Jack from ending the series when DC pulled the plug? SS: Light-years. Jack never planned to end it. What he wanted to do was set in motion a whole bunch of characters that would eventually spawn (if you will) a line of books. TJKC: Wow, that’s really contrary to what Mark’s said about Jack planning to end it at some point... SS: Yeah, well, Jack was known to change his mind. Sometimes he’d have an idea one minute and the next something completely contradictory. He very well could have told Mark that he had a plan. I wouldn’t be surprised. TJKC: Why did DC really cancel the books? Sales? SS: That enters in to it. I think that Carmine wanted Jack to come up with another Fantastic Four, Hulk, XMen, etc. and Jack had other ideas. I’ve always heard from those who were at DC at the time that the sales were decent, they just weren’t spectacular. No instant success. Plus, the distributors never liked the name “New Gods,” especially in the south. “What the hell is this Jack Kirby’s “New Gods?” Had they known Jack was Jewish they probably would have torched them. TJKC: When DC pulled the plug, were there any partially started stories that were never published? SS: Not that I recall. Jack never worked that far ahead. TJKC: When Star Wars came out, did you discuss with Jack any of the similarities to the Fourth World? SS: Sure. But stuff like that didn’t bother Jack. Actually, when he went and saw the film it just gave him more ideas for other things. TJKC: What was the last thing you worked on with Jack? SS: King Kobra. By then Jack was doing one-shots and it was a lot easier to pitch an idea because it was a void that had to be filled every month. TJKC: Update us on where you went after leaving Jack... SS: 20 years!! Gack – I went to work for a toy design firm, I worked with my dad in developing an invention he had, I freelanced for awhile doing graphics, I created a TV show for a local horror host, and about 13 years ago I started a company called the Puppet Studio with Greg Williams here in Hollywood. We’ve worked with the Krofft’s, Bette Midler, Pee-Wee, and just recently finished 13 episodes of a show called “Unhappily Ever After” for the WB network.

Orion and Kalibak clash - pencils from New Gods #8. 9

The Fourth World in fact revitalized these classic Kirby formulas. The Forever People trumped the S&K kid gang premise by dispensing with the usual adult chaperone (e.g., the Guardian in The Newsboy Legion, Rip Carter in Boy Commandos) and replacing him with the Infinity Man, a superbeing who appeared whenever the Forever People joined together around their Mother Box and uttered the key word “Taaru!” Infinity Man functioned much as the Guardian had in the Newsboy Legion’s adventures, but did not seem much like a fatherly protector. Rather, Infinity Man seemed a composite of the Forever People themselves, a mysterious being summing up the power and appeal of the whole group. The character was a brilliant stroke. Mister Miracle took S&K’s acrobatic hero and gave him a new gimmick, one perfectly appropriate to Kirby’s flare for balletic action: he was an escape artist! Scott Free’s struggle to break free from his past was symbolically reenacted in each adventure by his daring escapes and stunts. Seldom has a superhero’s ability or gimmick seemed so psychologically apt. The Fourth World’s flagship title, The New Gods, represented

Kirby’s Fourth World: An Appreciation by Charles Hatfield eginning slyly with Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Jack Kirby’s “Fourth World” line (1970-1973) unleashed an astounding surge of creative energy which represented Kirby at his professional zenith. Jimmy Olsen, New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Forever People formed an eccentric, arguably brilliant, mythos which irrevocably changed the horizons of superhero comics. Whenever I reread or think back to Kirby’s Fourth World, three distinguishing aspects of the tetralogy always come to mind: its originality of conception, its variety, and its urgent subtext.

Originality Structurally, the Fourth World was unprecedented: it introduced several new series, all centered on a single premise, all at once. This approach has since been imitated numerous times within mainstream comics (for example, in Epic’s short-lived Shadowline saga, or more recently in superhero lineups from Malibu, Dark Horse, Milestone, and others). At the time it was a logical extension of the intertextual continuity Kirby and Stan Lee had pioneered at Marvel in the 1960s; yet the Fourth World went Marvel one better, by offering several variations on the same theme simultaneously. The basic conflict behind the Fourth World (Apokolips vs. New Genesis) perfectly distilled the dualism already inherent in Kirby and Lee’s X-Men (with its good mutant/bad mutant theme). Kirby must have realized that such a conflict was too big, too promising, to be limited to a single book, so he took the next logical step – he launched several new series at once. The consequences of this step are still being felt today. Originality was also evident in Kirby’s arsenal of ideas and gimmicks. Devices like the Boom Tube, Metron’s Mobius Chair, the Mountain of Judgment, and, best of all, the omnipresent Mother Box, offered vivid symbols of human/machine interdependence. Bizarre beings such as Mantis, the Deep Six, the Bugs, and the Black Racer suggested that Kirby had been breeding characters in the back of his mind for years. Settings such as Armagetto, Supertown, the Habitat, and Zoomway offer breathtaking vistas and endless narrative possibilities, while the cosmic mystery of the Source, and the overarching menace of Anti-Life, gave the story a weird, mythic urgency.

Variety Another notable aspect of the Fourth World is its variety. While innovative in structure, the lineup allowed Kirby to revisit familiar genres: Jimmy Olsen and especially Forever People revived the Simon & Kirby kid gang formula, while Mister Miracle recreated the familiar “acrobatic hero” type which S&K brought to life with such characters as Captain America, the Sandman, Manhunter, and Stuntman.

Infinity Man battles Devilance, from Forever People #11. 10

something new. While its ostensible hero was Orion, and its central conflict the clash between Darkseid and Orion (a father-son conflict, as it turned out), the book’s title allowed Kirby to focus occasionally on other characters – the bug Forager, for example, in the splendid twoparter about Mantis’ invasion of Earth (#s 910), or Highfather and Darkseid himself in the classic “The Pact” (#7). New Gods was the most innovative of the Fourth World titles, and flexible enough to give scope to Kirby’s restless imagination.

Subtext On rereading the Fourth World books, it’s clear that Kirby’s whole mind was engaged in the project. These comics represented Kirby’s boldest bid to turn the superhero genre into a vehicle for ideas. New Gods and its companion titles were about something: the dualism of the Fourth World’s premise allowed Kirby to use his heroes allegorically, to represent basic issues which obviously mattered to him very much. The not-so-subtle subtext of the Fourth World line gives it much of its urgency and character. The Fourth World books suggest that the essence of human life is choice, and that AntiLife is the negation of choice – absolute domination. (Forever People No. 5: “If someone possesses absolute control over you – you’re not really alive!”) Darkseid, in his quest to discover the Anti-Life Equation, becomes Kirby’s ultimate totalitarian villain, a tyrant determined to bend the universe to his will; in contrast, the gods of New Genesis become champions of human freedom. This conflict between control and freedom gives the Fourth World books their peculiar urgency. Clearly, Kirby believed in this struggle: no matter how outlandish the concepts, these comics are in dead earnest, and are refreshingly uncondescending. Subsequent revisions of Kirby have reinterpreted the fundamental conflict of the Fourth World along very different lines: Jim Starlin’s Cosmic Odyssey, for instance, interpreted Anti-Life as a malevolent, sentient force, while J.M. DeMatteis’ Forever People revival made Kirby’s heroes champions of order over chaos. Neither one of these revampings is satisfactory, and in fact the cosmology imposed by DeMatteis is exactly wrong: in Kirby’s Fourth World books, Darkseid did not represent chaos but order – suffocating order, robbing its subjects of choice and therefore life. Granted, Darkseid and his minions evoked chaos in their assaults on Earth, but with one ultimate aim: to ferret out the secret of Anti-Life and thus dominate all living things. In sharp contrast, characters such as the Forever People and Mister Miracle represented the possibility of radical freedom (a point nicely underscored in the 1987 Mister Miracle one-shot by Mark Evanier and Steve Rude). Tellingly, Kirby’s champions are outsiders even on New Genesis – the Forever People are restless, Scott Free earthbound, and Orion too warlike to enjoy the peace of Supertown. The premise of the Fourth World requires these heroes to come to Earth: as ever, Kirby’s concern is humankind, and his battleground our own backyard. Characteristically, the heroes of New Genesis are mostly youths, representing hope, energy, and enthusiasm. Kirby’s identification

Splash page pencils from Jimmy Olsen #139. with kids made itself strongly felt throughout the Fourth World line, most notably in Forever People and Jimmy Olsen – which broke new ground for mainstream comics by making heroes of “hippie” characters (e.g., the Forever People themselves, or the superscientific Hairies in Jimmy Olsen, who “live in harmony with whatever and whoever they contact”). Not surprisingly, some ambivalence about youthful rebellion survives in these books – particularly in Jimmy Olsen, with its covers emphasizing generational conflict between Jimmy and Superman—yet for Kirby to create such characters as the Forever People suggests a daring and sympathetic imagination, trying to keep pace with the youth culture of the time. These youthful characters perfectly embody the idea of freedom which underlies Kirby’s saga. Like much of Kirby’s work, the Fourth World suggests a largely untutored yet fiercely active mind, ever searching, always looking for ways to communicate grand ideas. Arguably, the Fourth World mythos was Kirby’s boldest attempt to personify abstractions, to turn a battle of ideas into rip-roaring adventure. Kirby was fully engaged, heart and mind, in this effort—it’s a damn shame he did not have the opportunity to see this dream through to the end while at the height of his creative powers. 11

A Brush With Mike Royer – Part 2 Interviewed by John Morrow (Here’s the conclusion to our interview with Mike, which began in #4.)

You know, Roz and I still laugh about the time when I took over the inking on Jack’s books, how many people wrote in and complained because I had replaced Colletta. (laughter) But then again, they’d never seen Kirby before.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How did Vince Colletta get assigned to ink the DC books? MIKE ROYER: Basically, Infantino wanted hands-on control and Colletta and his, as I’ve been told, staff of “wrists” who worked for him were right there where Carmine could control the books. Colletta did it for a price which was less than the going rate, and they got what they paid for.

TJKC: It probably scared them! MR: Maybe they didn’t know what the hell it was. Although, for a time I really liked Joe Sinnott’s inking, even if he really slicked Jack up and made things awful pretty. But I wonder what the hell I did that makes some people really not like me. Anyway... I enjoyed working on all the Kirby comics, even when it was a Devil Dinosaur that I needed to get done as soon as possible and I didn’t even care for the story that much. But still with every panel, I could be impressed by the dynamics of it, and the thinking and the design. Kirby was one hell of a designer.

TJKC: What happened that allowed the switch from Colletta to you? MR: I don’t really know how Jack got his way. I suspect Steve and Mark kept showing Jack all the stuff Vince and his crew were leaving out. So I assume, with their encouragement to scream bloody murder, that’s exactly what Jack did. TJKC: What do you remember about DC pulling the plug on the Fourth World books? MR: First, let me say that I don’t think Jack got a fair shake. I think there was an audience for Jack’s books that the people at DC and Marvel chased away. At the time, all I can remember is Jack saying, “Well, we’re not doing that anymore, we’re doing something else.” I don’t remember any sort of period of mourning or any exasperation. It’s only thanks to Mark Evanier and the stuff he’s written in the last year or so that I realize how many promises were made to Jack and were broken. Everything Jack did, he seemed to be so enthused about it. It’s like, “I might’ve loved doing New Gods, but now we’re doing The Demon.” Even though 2001, Machine Man and Devil Dinosaur weren’t books that I personally cared about, Jack still seemed to attack them with the same kind of artistic integrity and verve and enthusiasm and Freudian symbolism for power that he did with everything.

TJKC: When Jack went back to Marvel in the mid70s, why weren’t you assigned to ink Captain America? MR: They wanted Marvel people to ink the books. I guess that’s when I continued doing stuff at DC, inking Chic Stone Kamandis, etc...

TJKC: What are your feelings about Jack’s treatment at Marvel in the 70s? MR: About 12 years ago, I was on a comics panel sitting right next to guys like Kanigher, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, who had agreed with me privately before the panel began but didn’t back me up publicly. My viewpoint was that what Jack Kirby was doing was comic books for 12 year old boys, and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with that... You didn’t have to write down to your audience, you just gave them exciting adventure stories. All of the TJKC: Did you get to keep some of Jack’s people at Marvel Comics at the time, in my originals through this whole inking period opinion, seemed to want to justify the fact that at DC? Marvel? they were the fanboys that grew up and were now the ones proMR: Not exactly... Jack’s originals were Jack’s ducing comic books. If you looked at any of the Kirby comics like originals. They all went back to him. 2001, Machine Man, or Devil Dinosaur, the “boys” in New York were However, once he gave me one of the three in charge of putting together the letter columns. I read these letter Captain Americas I inked for him, and like a fool I column pages, and all the letters in essence were saying, “Oh, the arttraded it to Richard Kyle! (laughter) As much as I work is great, but the writing sucks.” And I voiced the opinion that if loved Jack’s work, I didn’t collect me. Now twenty I were a 12 year old boy and I loved this comic book, and then read years later, I look at those pages and it’s not me the letter page and all of my comic-buying peers were anymore. And I go, “God, I’d like to have those saying this, of course I would question my own judgOrion, as inked by originals.” ment. It would make me question the validity of the Royer for the 1992 San He gave me the Captain America, and later publication I was buying, and question my own taste. Diego Comic Con a Sandman, and the first half of What If? #11. I A 12 year old is subject to “peer pressure” from all areprogram book. inked the first half, which was the dull half, and because nas. I was booed by the audience because I espoused Jack had something else he wanted me to work on, and at the opinion that all of these fanboys at Marvel were my recommendation, Bill Wray got to ink the other half with all the sabotaging Jack, because they all felt their own “writing” would fix action in it. (laughter) (re: save) Jack’s books from declining sales. I feel this editorial slant 12

contributed to declining sales.

not the pages I inked. They’re the pages that Greg Theakston re-inked because, as he said, in the adapting from the smaller formatted page to the larger Graphic Novel page, for some reason they weren’t able to stat them so they’d work, of course probably due to my “ineptitude.” (laughter) So Greg had to re-ink all of them, thereby weakening their impact, lessening their dramatic structure, but making him feel like he had saved the whole thing.

TJKC: In the mid-70s, Jack started an adaptation of the Prisoner TV series, which Marvel pulled the plug on. How much of this was inked? MR: I inked about a quarter of the book. Probably the reason it wasn’t printed anywhere was because, the way I inked the Kirby pages was a method I learned from Russ Manning to help keep the work consistent. I wouldn’t start at the top of one page and go through until it was finished. I would just ink a panel on one page, and ink a panel on the next, and at the end of the day, 3 pages worth had to be done. The reason I found that a good way to work is that if you had an off day, the bad panels were spread out. By the time the book was finished, it was consistent. So on the Prisoner, at least the first four pages were finished, and then there were occasional panels on the next five or six pages.

TJKC: Did the original Hunger Dogs comic end the New Gods saga? MR: From what I remember, in the 24 pages we did, it ended. It ended with Orion dying. Esak was like the hope of the future or some... I can’t remember. I’ve got the stuff somewhere. As I recall, Darkseid was dead, Orion was dead, the only people I remember being left were Esak and the Mobius Chair and maybe Metron, but I’m not even sure about that. It was a long, long time ago, and because of the earthquake I can’t reach over to the flat file where these things used to be. Everything is in storage until we move back into the house. Anyway... I’m probably guilty of neglect, because when Hunger Dogs finally came out and I picked it up and looked at it, I went, “I did this, but this isn’t what I did.” And I flip through and I’m feeling, “What the hell is all this pseudo-Joe Sinnott stuff?” It was, “I don’t want to know about this. It’ll just make me angry.” I don’t know why Greg felt that he had to re-ink Hunger Dogs. But, as I said, some people just don’t like me... or my work... or whatever.

TJKC: Tell me about the Black Hole strip. MR: I was on staff at Disney. The Treasury of Classics strip was only in about 40 or 50 newspapers by the late 70s, but it was still considered a very important advertising tool for Disney motion pictures. I recommended Jack for it, and they hired him. Then Disney found that Jack, being the consummate impressionist/expressionist, never penciled the robots, etc. the same from one panel to the next. So it became my job on staff, as well as to ink and letter, to fix the robots and the spaceship. Disney is this incredibly huge money-making machine, and part of what generates that income is licensed product. You cannot produce a comic strip on the movie and not have the robots and rocket ships as exact as what’s in the film, because you cannot protect the trademark that protects all your licensed models and dolls, etcetera. And that was not what was important to Jack. It’s probably one of Jack’s least dynamic jobs because of the mechanical constraints of a syndicated strip.

TJKC: Do you know why the original story was changed? MR: Somebody told me it was because DC wanted to sell toys, and if all the characters were dead, they wouldn’t be able to sell the toys.

TJKC: What was the last thing of Jack’s you ever inked? MR: I believe it was on that huge poster Art For Kid’s Sake, the one with TJKC: Did you actually do any of the all the comic strip and comic book layouts? characters on it. I inked the Darkseid MR: The last Sunday page I laid out. It that’s up on the top row. They had a Ad artwork for the Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel, inked by Royer. has a big splash panel of the cast lookvery limited number that were all ing out a window at whatever the hell’s signed by the 200 artists involved, and on the other side of the Black Hole... none of us knew. That was such they sold for around $3000 apiece. I have one of the limited editions, a weird film project. Before the film was finished, the company sent and the first person with $3000 can have it! (laughter) memos around to every department on the lot saying, “Give us sugThere was also some character stuff that Jack did for Rubygestions on how you think the film should end.” (laughter) Ayeeee... Spears that I inked, but not for him. I did it for Jerry Eisenberg, who was one of the producers. He hired me to ink a bunch of Jack’s characTJKC: I understand that Jack originally drew Hunger Dogs as a regular ter designs... but this was in the early 80s... I think. comic-size story that you inked. Was the entire original comic story used in the Graphic Novel? TJKC: Many people think you only inked Jack’s work. Which other MR: I’d have to access my files. I have xeroxes of all the pencils and pencilers did you ink? You already mentioned Chic Stone... inks. I believe that 99.99% of the pages appear in the Graphic Novel. MR: There was a Kamandi story that Keith Giffen did the layouts for. There might be one page missing, and there are a couple of pages that, And I really enjoyed doing that one Plastic Man with Ramona Fradon. as they appear, were cut up and things were put in between them. I hear that she liked what I did. I did five pages a day without my wife filling in blacks. I can’t believe I managed to do that. TJKC: So the pages in the Graphic Novel that you inked made up the I loved Ric Estrada’s pencil work in the 60s and 70s. I wish I hadn’t original comic story? been given his roughs on Freedom Fighters and told to finish them. To MR: There are pages that I inked in the Graphic Novel, but they’re me it wasn’t Ric Estrada anymore. 13

I’ve also inked Ernie Chua, Mike Arens, Sparky Moore, Doug Wildey, Steve Ditko, Mike Vosburg, Carl Barks, etc...

TJKC: If you were offered the inking on an unpublished Kirby story, would you take it? MR: Probably not, for two reasons. What they would dig up would be xeroxes, which means working on a light board, which means it’s not gonna be that true to the pencils. If somebody turns up actual pencils, I would think at this point, with Jack being gone, inking them would be sacrilegious. If you’ve got a piece of pure Kirby, you don’t ink it no matter how you might value the person’s ability whose inking it. I wouldn’t touch ’em. The second reason is nobody could afford me! (laughter)

TJKC: Who’s your favorite inker? Penciler? MR: I can’t narrow it down to one person. Jack is right there at the top of the list. I think Johnny Romita Sr., besides being a hell of a nice guy, did beautiful work and did the most beautiful women that have ever been in comic books. His Mary Jane and Gwen were just gorgeous drawings. And of all the Marvel comics I once owned, the ones that I’ll never get rid of are the romance comics that Johnny Romita and John Buscema penciled and inked. These guys knew how the hell to draw before they started becoming expressionists. To me the real geniuses in comic books were Jack Kirby and Alex Toth. I really have great respect and love for Alex. Aside from his artistic contribution to the comics medium and his absolute genius as a storyteller and a designer, I still personally really loved Alex Toth the man. After meeting him, it didn’t make a bit of difference that he had been one of my icons, I just thought he was a hell of a guy. And of course I can’t leave out Al Williamson, who I love like, and who made me feel like, a brother. The thing I like about Jack’s impressionism/ expressionism is the fact that it was all grounded in a firm academic base. Jack knew how to draw things correctly, and then he went beyond. He inspired several generations of artists who took off from the beyond part, but I don’t think academically many of them could draw their way out of a paper bag.

TJKC: Lastly, what was the greatest thing you learned from inking Jack’s work? MR: The greatest thing I learned from Jack Kirby is not to fear a blank sheet of paper. When I sit down at the board every morning, it’s a challenge to make whatever I do fun and vital and interesting and appealing. That’s what I learned from Jack.

TJKC: I understand you’re the official Pooh artist at Disney now! Tell me about your current work. MR: I’m a product designer/character artist. I create product for the Disney stores and Disney Consumer Products. I character-correct some concepts from other artists and Disney licensees, also. I created a new look for the Winnie The Pooh characters two years ago, and it seems to be going through the roof. I love drawing. I love doing it. And there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about Jack Kirby. Even though I’m doing different material, I’m sitting at the board, and 70% of what I do is creating from scratch. Most of what I do is Winnie The Pooh characters. I really like drawing. And Jack had to like to draw, even if he were doing books he didn’t want to do; just the pure process of creating. The ego part of me would like all the people who only know me as an inker to see what I’m doing. I’ve had single character drawings that have been the best-selling shirt for the whole year in the Disney stores, and things like that they’ll never know, because they want 4-6 panels per page, and heroes that are punching other guy’s faces out. TJKC: Why do you think you’re so many people’s favorite Kirby inker? MR: I did what Jack wanted me to do. 90% of the time I completely submerged my personality and any desires to embellish. If you were to ask Jack privately, he’d say I was the truest inker to his pencils. When he finally retired from comics, he said that I was his favorite inker. Mike’s inks from the original comic-size Hunger Dogs. Note the blurb for the upcoming Graphic Novel. 14

ghost of its former leader Great Blackmass. Blackmass tells Captain Victory, “How like your father you are!–A feisty, rebellious, arrogant warrior who delighted in tearing up my dreams! He was the wheelhorse for my enemies! A traitor to his own blood!–Like you!” (#12, pg. 5) And Captain Victory escapes Hellikost on a craft similar to Orion’s Astro Harness, which he says was built “from a design known to my own father!” (#12, pg. 5). It takes very little reading between the lines to see that Jack was by John Morrow saying Captain Victory was the son of Orion, and the grandson of Darkseid (Great Blackmass). any Kirby fans dismissed Jack’s 1980s series Captain Victory and There are other ties to the Fourth World. Bloody Marrien bears a the Galactic Rangers when it first appeared. Some viewed it as a striking resemblance to Mad Harriet, one of the Fighting Furies from pale imitation of Star Wars (which is ironic, since many of those Mister Miracle. You might speculate that she’s Harriet’s descendant. same fans viewed Star Wars as an imitation of New Gods). But despite Big Ugly is probably the child of Kalibak, making him Captain its merits or lack thereof, Captain Victory contains a very important Victory’s cousin (as Jack states in #11). Brother Pias, whose “air of toltie to Kirby’s Fourth World saga; a possible conclusion! erance for all sides--somehow seemed--intolerable!!” (#11, pg. 15), The pivotal storyline runs from #7 - #13, and culminates with must be an heir of Metron, right down to having an upside-down the three-part origin of Captain Victory. In #7, Captain Victory is copy of Metron’s ‘M’ on his searching for “Quadrant X,” an cloak. Young Captain Victory is uncharted part of the galaxy befriended by a giant computer where four galactic outlaws are named Turai (similar to the hiding. They’re called the word “Taaru” which transforms Wonder Warriors; Finarkin The the Forever People into Infinity Fearless, Bloody Marrien, Ursan Man). Turai is like a giant The Unclean, and Paranex, The Mother Box, capable of “lessenFighting Fetus (truly one of the ing my pain!” (#11, pg. 3). And strangest characters Jack ever just before escaping, young created). These Wonder Captain Victory enters an equaWarriors are wrecking havoc at tion into Turai which is the command of a bodiless undoubtedly the Anti-Life Voice who spouts commands Equation (#11, pg. 17). such as, “It is better to live one With careful reading, you minute as a god than a lifetime can get an idea of how Jack in mediocrity! Do as I commight have ended the Fourth mand!” World series. Orion and Clues to the Voice’s identity Darkseid meet in final battle in are given throughout the storyArmagetto, which ends with line. #10 states, “The Voice is both dying. Darkseid, in a last heard without a sense of – ditch effort to survive, somehow SOURCE...” Also, “You’ve manages to continue his reached ‘Quadrant X’–where the existence as a disembodied gods abide!!” voice. So he’s still able to comIn #11, Captain Victory mand others to do his bidding tells of his home planet. He says, for him, as always. And Jack “Think of a giant planet that even gives us a glimpse of the blazes with unrestrained enernext generation of characters gies – a place of ultimates – its who carry on where the Fourth people schooled in ultimates, World leaves off. who have smashed for all time, a Since it’s doubtful Jack had powerful sister planet–” Sound conceived Captain Victory in the familiar? He proceeds to tell of early 1970s, this probably isn’t his planet’s ultimate war, “A like the original ending he had final struggle in which frenzied in mind. But since DC hadn’t gods vanished with their leaders yet offered Jack the opportunity in the flames of hate! Hate so to do Hunger Dogs, my guess is strong that it was able to salvage he saw Captain Victory as his and give ‘half-life’ to the only avenue to put some type of thoughts and voice of its greatending to the story he started a est disciple!” When asked about decade earlier. As the consumthe Voice, Captain Victory A “family portrait” commissioned by a fan in 1984. mate storyteller, I don’t think Jack replies, “There are grandfathers could stand to leave those loose ends untied forever. who are not fond of erring grandsons... He’ll try to kill me as he did Who knows? Maybe DC saw how Jack had wrapped things up in my father!!” Captain Victory, and this spurred them to offer him the opportunity As his face becomes an evil parody of itself, Captain Victory tells to do it in Hunger Dogs. Whatever the case, Captain Victory was Jack’s of his childhood in the ruling family of a dark, dismal planet of flamfirst published attempt at concluding the Fourth World, and is well ing energy pits called Hellikost (a clever turn on the word ‘Holocaust,’ worth any Kirby fan’s attention. which is another word for Apocalypse/Apokolips). The Voice is the

The Captain Victory Connection

The HUNGER DOGS You Never Saw by John Morrow f you thought DC finally let Jack wrap up his Fourth World epic in the 1980s, think again. The 1985 Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel and Jack’s new “conclusion” in the 1984 New Gods Reprint #6 bear little resemblance to the story he started out to tell when DC made the offer. Here’s my attempt to piece together the chain of events, based on information supplied by Roz Kirby, Mike Royer, Mark Evanier, Greg Theakston, and my own research.

It Started As A Standard Comic The self-portrait on the indicia page of Hunger Dogs is Greg Theakston’s inked version of a pencil drawing Jack gave him as a wedding present.

Hunger Dogs started as a 24-page standard-size comic story called “On The Road To Armagetto” that would wrap-up New Gods. After a six-issue series reprinting New Gods #1-11, the plan called for the second half of the sixth issue to be Jack’s new conclusion. After an initial meeting with DC about the story, Jack wrote and penciled the

pages. If Mike Royer’s memory is correct, the story ended with both Orion and Darkseid dead, and Esak representing hope for the next generation. Metron may have also made an appearance at the end.

Not What DC Had In Mind When Jack showed DC the pencils, it wasn’t what they were expecting. Perhaps it wasn’t the superhero slugfest they wanted, with Darkseid and Orion in direct combat. More likely, it killed off characters that DC had merchandising plans for. Whatever the reason, DC felt it wasn’t publishable. Plans were made to change the ending, and to have Jack do a separate Graphic Novel to follow the comic story (see the blurb on the Royer inks on page 14 of this issue). Why they added the Graphic Novel is unclear; maybe they wanted to give Jack a little more space to work with, or as Greg Theakston speculates, perhaps DC wanted to make use of rejected pages from the original ending. Regardless, Jack reworked the pages and made copy changes, then sent the revised pencils to Mike Royer for inking. To get an idea of the revised story at this stage, isolate pages 12-18 & 31-46 of Hunger Dogs. Rearrange them into the following order: 31-33, 12, 34-37, 13-18, 38-46. Although some of these pages are altered from Jack’s original story, this order makes more sense than the published version, and approximates Jack’s original sequence of events. Also, this utilizes all 23 published pages with Royer inks. DC also decided to include “Himon” from Mister Miracle #9 in the reprint series since Himon figured into Jack’s story. This caused Reprint #6 to go from 48-pages to 72-pages.

Still More Changes DC was still unsatisfied with the revised comic story, and an adversarial situation arose because they wanted to have someone rewrite it for Jack. To diffuse the situation, Joe Orlando was assigned as the new editor. DC ended up rearranging the pages of Jack’s revised story, making some copy changes, and moving it all into the Graphic Novel. They also abandoned the “Himon” reprint, leaving a 50-page hole in Reprint #6. In the midst of drawing new pages to fill 16

out the Graphic Novel, Jack had to go back and pencil a new 48-page story (plus write a 2-page text article) to fill the second half of Reprint #6. So the “conclusion” in Reprint #6 was actually done after-the-fact. Since that 48-page story did little more than resurrect characters like Kalibak, Desaad and Steppenwolf, I suspect its real purpose was to clear the way for the Super Powers comics and merchandising tie-ins. (It’s ironic that a lack of merchandising potential may have contributed to the original cancellation of New Gods, while an abundance Super Powers merchandising probably kept Jack from wrapping it up the way he wanted to.)

filled by Jack. Instead of enlarging them, they statted them same-size and pasted them on larger boards. This left a 2”- 3” border around the artwork which had to be filled, making even more work for Jack (this is why the word balloons on the Royer-inked pages are all toward the center of the pages, with none near the margins). To make matters worse, Jack and Roz were preparing to leave for a vacation to Israel, so Jack hurriedly drew the edge filler artwork, which was inked by D. Bruce Berry. (DC’s production department also forgot to include the capital letters in the beginning of some text on page 12.) Greg Theakston was chosen to color the Graphic Novel. When he got the art, he saw some of the stats were improperly shot, causing linework to become too heavy or light. Because of this and the different inking styles between Royer and Berry, Greg tried to make things more consistent by reinking parts of some pages on overlays without Jack’s original pencils to guide him. Greg also resized individual parts of the Royer inks on page 40 and recomposed them to make Orion more dominant, then reinked the whole piece. And for the indicia page, Greg inked a pencil drawing Jack had given him for a wedding present. The DC production department then shot Greg’s overlays and combined them with the Royer and Berry inks. After two editors, three inkers and numerous delays, the final result was a very pieced-together job, and it showed. The much-hyped “conclusion” wasn’t much of an ending, and this project that sounded so promising from the outset had a disappointing finish. But at least now we can see that Jack wasn’t solely responsible for the awkward nature of some of the narrative, artwork, and story flow.

Too Many Inkers By this time Mike Royer was no longer available, so D. Bruce Berry was called upon to ink the new 48-page story and the jigsawed Graphic Novel pages. Since a Graphic Novel page is larger than a standard comic page, DC told their production department to photostat the original Royer inks up to Graphic Novel size, which would have left a small border on the left and right side that needed to be

Shown on the previous page are Jack’s pencils to the page 3 splash of the original comic version of Hunger Dogs. The Royer inked version (left) includes Jack’s original lead-in text (including the title “On The Road To Armagetto”), and Mike’s custom logo for New Gods. Pictured above is Greg Theakston’s overlay art for this page, showing what was reinked. Despite Greg’s good intentions, the final product was anything but consistent, looking like a hodge-podge of ink styles. It’s unfortunate the entire book couldn’t have been done by one inker’s hand, but a combination of editorial changes, deadlines, production errors, and incompetence kept it from happening. 17

19 A spectacular example of Jack’s pencils, restored from a photocopy in Jack’s files. It’s reproduced here at full size. This is from “The Glory Boat” in New Gods #6.

Apokolips once more, and their loyalty to her, indelibly ingrained in them through years of training under her even extends to Earth, where they participate in a few of Scott’s showcase escape acts. Under Bernadeth’s command are: Mad Harriet, the wearer of A Primer to the World of the Female Furies, by Elayne Wechsler-Chaput special “power spikes” that do a hell of a lot more than just “snikt.” I kinda felt sorry for poor Harriet – after issue #10 she was nowhere to ne of the coolest things to me (as a relative newcomer to comics be found. I always figured she wound up in their attic, like Ross reading) about discovering the Fourth World was the way Kirby Perot’s crazy aunt, before finding her own personal Boom Tube or drew and wrote what I think of as “the Women of Apokolips.” something that recalled her to Apokolips again. The denizens of New Genesis were all well and good, but the place Lashina, a kinky dresser with a whip for every occasion. Her flexseemed to be run by men. Certainly not this reader’s idea of heaven! ible steel bands cut through just about everything, and the way she But Apokolips – there was a place where women could wields them puts Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman to shame. My favorite rise to the top echelons of Darkseid’s minions, as long as part of her costume is the way some of the lashes she employs are they had the training, the skill, and of course the willsituated on her face – it’s like a strange Hannibal Lector fixation. ingness to be utterly subservient to his every whim. Stompa, my favorite Furie next to Barda and the best hefty Granny Goodness, everyone’s favorite immortal “sepwoman ever to grace a comics page. Stompa wears heavytuagenarian,” not only runs the Apokolips orphanage matter boots, and (like most real women) her strength is all that tempered and honed Scott Free’s spirit, but in her legs, which she uses to great effect. When I grow up, oversees and disciplines the Special Powers Force, I want to be Stompa. Female Furie (yes, “ie”) Battalion. Together, these four women make a formidable The Furie Battalion’s barracks houses many team – the only time Kirby chose to depict an allstrong and substantial women who never held female action force. At times they may be misguided the spotlight outside of a background appearand misdirected (mostly by Granny), and they often ance in a panel or a cameo on a splash page, bicker (although it comes off as more one-upswomanbut a few made it to the fore. Chief among ship than actual malice), but they stick together and these, appropriately, is the Furies’ first work together superbly – on Apokolips, through and best leader, “Big” Barda. Barda is a the Boom Tube back to Earth, even in bizarre superb example of a citizen born and places like the Head’s Techni-plant in Mister raised on Apokolips (where Kirby Miracle #10, where solid teamwork serves to help reminds us, via signs in Scott Free’s break them out of a tight spot. orphanage, “You’re Not A Beast – If Only two other Furies received mention You Kill For Darkseid”, “You’re Not a by name in Kirby’s run. Gilotina puts in her Liar – If You Lie For Darkseid” and of first cameo in Mister Miracle #7 (page 21, course the ever-popular “Die For panel 3), pouring Granny Goodness a drink. Granny – And She Will Live For She later helps spring Scott from Apokolips, You!”). Barda is expertly taught to where she apparently remains with the other believe in herself and trained to nameless Furie hordes. And Aurelie, the misfit the fullest in her abilities (the most prominent of Furie, whose special power is to create beauty which is super-strength), but capable of learning from on a world of ugliness, appears in Mister experience and of utilizing the same independent Miracle #9. This “fragile, little” girl is tracked thinking which fuels her leadership and initiative to rise and captured by then-Lieutenant Barda, who above her brainwashing and break out of her mental tries, and ultimately fails, to shield her from and emotional prison, the same way her friend and the punishment of Darkseid’s minion later husband Scott (aka Mister Miracle) breaks Protector Willik. Aurelie serves an important out of his. As Barda points out in an early conpurpose in showing us Barda’s sentimental and frontation with Granny, “You taught me how almost maternal side, which makes it easier to to hate! But you couldn’t teach me whom to accept her willingness to help Scott escape. hate!” In Mister Miracle #11 and 12, three of the Barda, however, doesn’t have Scott’s An early 1970s Furies help Scott and Barda with Mister Miracle’s main advantage – she’s not born of New drawing of Barda. escape act, even giving some sailors a hard Genesis, with its innate sense of goodness time (the first panel in Mister Miracle #12, and right. She doesn’t even have a page 9 is a “bathing beauty” keeper!). That’s the functional name like most of her last we see of them in the original series save for a compatriots; she’s fully, uniquely herself – couple of pages in #14 featuring Lashina and big, bold and beautiful. She’s also my Stompa. It was around this time that Kirby’s other Fourth World favorite Fourth World character – and of series were cancelled, and Steve Sherman notes in Mister Miracle course, she gets the guy. #15’s letter column that “Jack is taking them [Scott and Barda] in a With Barda’s desertion from direction he feels is in touch with what you want.” Apparently that Apokolips, Granny enlists four direction involved Shilo Norman to the detriment of the Furies. But main Furies to do her business it was to only last three more issues, and was hastily wrapped with (including trying to recapture the quick but sentimental wedding of Scott and Barda. Barda and Scott). The next nominal leader is Bernadeth (also referred The last use Kirby made of the original Furies was in the New to as Burnadeth, a more evocative spelling which I much prefer), sisGods Reprint #6. Alas, the pages are somewhat disheartening to both ter of Darkseid’s right-hand maniac Desaad and skilled in the use of the reader and the poor Furies themselves, as Darkseid’s newfound the Fahren-knife, a blade that burns her victims from the inside out. love of intricate machines is making warriors superfluous, and the Bernadeth and her crew later join Barda in springing Scott from

Hell Hath No Furies...

Furies get zapped rather unceremoniously at the end of their short appearance. Their frustration with what machines hath wrought is, however, the crux of their cameo, during which we actually see Stompa directly confront, then incite the others to attack Granny Goodness, who is leading them on this mission! Rather uncharacteristic, on first glance, for warriors trained to unquestioningly follow their leader – until one remembers that Kirby had long ago established that Apokolips denizens are constantly feuding bloodily with one another. Here again, though, we see their wonderful comraderie and teamwork in action, however briefly. (From fighting to pulling together and back again... talk about your mood swings!) But it’s the unnamed ones that seem to fascinate the most. What powers and weapons are possessed by the other 12 Furies in that great 2-page splash that leads off Mister Miracle #8? Most of Darkseid’s chilluns got guns of varying colors and configurations, although at the center of the panel is a lovely lady with metal thigh-high boots and a cool lance that extends from her right arm-or. I’ve named her Lansa in my head, of course. Behind her a woman with a winged-helm design and a whip (who has a second “speaking” role on page 22) exclaims, “I’m glad Barda deserted Apokolips! Choosing a new leader is more fun than a shoot-out with

Darkseid’s elite guard!!” My name for her? How about Riata (another name for lasso, thanks to my years of crossword-puzzle solving)? Most of the others are in various stages of lounging and undress, although there’s a cool green-clad Furie with a yellow zapgun hanging from a pipe (“Spida”?). And the five background babes in the middle of the following page look like they could have stepped from an old movie serial – one has fun goggles (“Vyza”?), another snakelike headgear (“Pythona”?)... well, you get the idea. This issue is peppered with great Unnamed Furie cameos – and in all of them, the women prove to be resourceful, dynamic and just plain a pleasure to watch in action. These are women who move, as opposed to all the badly-drawn women in superhero comics who only pose. I’m drawn to them because they act rather than react, because they exist in their own right as players in the game rather than solely as objects of the male gaze. In the past few years Female Furies old and new have turned up in Suicide Squad, Hawk & Dove and The Guardians Of Metropolis miniseries. The Furies will continue to live on, in comics and in our hearts, as long as good writers and artists continue to see their power and their potential – after all, heaven, hell and comics hath no Furies like the ones launched by the King! (Special thanks to Mark Waid for letting Elayne swipe from his 1991 Who’s Who text on the Furies!)

To And From The Source: Mark Evanier Interviewed by John Morrow TJKC: Do you think what Jack did near the end of the each book’s run, to make them less complicated for new readers to follow, was good? E: No, I don’t. I think Jack got lost in the last couple of issues of most of the books. With all due respect, they aren’t my favorite Kirby work. I don’t think any of them are the equivalent of “The Pact” or “Terrible Turpin” or “The Glory Boat.” I see Jack’s work on the Fourth World books as three separate periods. There were the early issues that laid groundwork and started to get folks hooked. Then there was the middle period where Jack really got cooking and I thought the material was excellent and getting better — but the books were in that disastrous 25¢ format so maybe not enough people saw these. And then there was the late period when Jack was getting panicked about some sales reports on the middle period books and was maybe trying too hard to please a lot of folks who had suggestions on how to make the books more commercial.

(Mark Evanier, along with Steve Sherman, served as an assistant to Jack throughout the Fourth World series and beyond. I spoke with Mark on April 6 and May 30, 1995 by telephone to conduct this interview.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What was your earliest exposure to Jack’s work? MARK EVANIER: Oh boy. I think probably Green Arrow in Adventure Comics, or Challengers of the Unknown. I remember I started buying Fantastic Four around number 10 or 12. I knew who he was by then, I knew that style. But I didn’t really become a fan of Jack’s until I really got into the Marvel stuff. TJKC: Why did DC really cancel the Fourth World books? Was it due to bad sales? E: That’s what they said at the time, that’s what the former publisher still says. For years, I’d heard his successors at DC say that Jack’s Fourth World books were among many that they felt should have not been cancelled, that sales did not warrant it and you have to expect some new books to take a while to catch on. For the Kirby tribute book we’re putting together, Paul Levitz, who is now the publisher, specifically dug into the DC files, looked up the numbers, and gave me a quote that they were mid-range books. They were selling better than some books that were continued, according to Paul. So everyone can believe whatever they want. You know, someone pointed out a couple of things to me the other day which are not irrelevant to this discussion. One is that DC was going through a bad period at the time. Almost every new book they introduced lasted five or six issues and some of them were very good comics. There has been the insinuation that, if New Gods didn’t sell at a certain level, there was something wrong with the content of the book, that Jack somehow did something wrong. Comic book history is filled with books that sold poorly but later caught on big. Conan is one example. The first run of the Hulk only lasted six issues. X-Men was cancelled at one Jack point. So even if Jack’s epic sold poorly, maybe handed it was the wrong time for it or maybe it should out have been marketed differently... or something. copies The first few issues of the Fourth World of this books, like everything at that time, were 15¢. pencil Then there was a paper and printing drawing increase and DC went up to 48-pages to fans at for a quarter and they stuck reprints conventions in in the back. I don’t think that was a the early 1970s. very commercial format and apparently, since they retreated from it, it hurt sales on the entire line, across the board, especially with Marvel undercutting them. So one could say that, right when New Gods might have been catching on, DC raised prices in an experiment that didn’t work. New Gods may have been a casualty of that experiment.

TJKC: How much creative involvement did you have in the series? E: Just this side of none. I made a few suggestions, Steve made a few, we talked Jack out of a couple of ideas, or at least into delaying a few of them. (laughter) Jack was very eager to prove he was a creator of new characters. My feeling was, one of the weaknesses of New Gods was just too much personnel at once. He introduced too many things at once, he was rushing himself too much. Jack would sometimes tell us a whole storyline he had in mind, a brilliant concept, and then he’d cram it into three panels in the story so he could jump on to the next concept. He had enough ideas there for a hundred issues, and he was eager to get them all established. At no point was he ever thinking of the books as closing off at number eleven. I’m sure if he’d said in the first place, “These books will only run a dozen issues,” he would’ve written them entirely differently. He was writing the first chapters in a 200-part story. TJKC: So you think Jack hurt himself by being too conceptual? E: I think that’s the main problem with the books. I think Jack was trying to do an epic, and DC was viewing it as a bunch of bi-monthly comics. A lot of stuff that didn’t go anywhere in some of those issues would’ve made a lot of sense if Jack had done another forty issues. Particularly the Black Racer and the Darkseid/Orion relationship would’ve made more sense if Jack had gotten deeper into it. It’s like any good novel; a lot of things that happen in the third chapter don’t pay off until the last chapter, and Jack never got to the last chapter. To get back to your question of how much involvement I had, I corrected some spelling, suggested a couple of names for characters. I 22

think collectively I wrote about three pages out of all the issues, not counting Jimmy Olsen. Steve and I wrote a bunch of things for Jimmy Olsen. We did the letter pages, and gave Jack a little bit of input, some of which he followed, but most of it he didn’t. I can’t really claim any credit for anything that’s good in those books. I think they’re wonderful comics, and I think they’re 99.99% Jack Kirby.

E: Yes. If you look over some of the later Tales of Asgard stories, you’ll see references to young gods. There was a point when Jack was contemplating presenting the concept there as a spin-off comic but he was unwilling to give it away for both financial and creative reasons. In fact, at one point, I know one of the Marvel writers wanted to do a New Gods imitation that would have evolved out of those Tales of Asgard stories.

TJKC: Did Jack explain the entire Fourth World saga to you from the outset? Did he have a beginning, middle and end worked out? E: He had a beginning, middle and end in his head, and he gave us pieces as he went along. He revised as he went along. Jack was a very instinctual creator. He created by instinct. If you asked him a question about why he did something in an issue, he’d figure out a perfectly logical answer then, but it wasn’t necessarily something he’d articulated explicitly in his mind at the time. And he only gave you the reason if you forced him too. If you nailed him down and said, “How come Darkseid treats Desaad that way?” he’d give a perfectly valid 25-minute explanation, but that doesn’t mean it was fully formed in his mind when he drew those sequences. He viewed it as a novel that DC would someday repackage and print in a deluxe format, not necessarily completed. They might’ve left certain sections out for the final collection, like in European comics where they serialize a strip and collect it into a novel later. That’s what Jack ultimately had in mind. He originally conceived of New Gods as a novel but DC put it into a more conventional comic book format. When he went to DC, one of the things he was interested in was doing new sizes and shapes of comics, new formats. He didn’t want to just do the same kind he’d been doing, and that’s all DC wanted out of him.

TJKC: Which of the Fourth World books was your favorite? E: I don’t think I had a favorite. I don’t think I ever viewed them as separate books. If you put a howitzer to my head, I’d probably say a couple of New Gods issues; “The Glory Boat,” “Terrible Turpin,” and “The Pact” were some specific stories I liked. On the other hand, New Gods was the most frustrating book because it was the most overpopulated, and characters disappeared in it. To give you an example, Jack had this whole concept developed for the Black Racer. Well, New Gods #3 was too soon for it. In #3, we still hadn’t figured out who Metron and Orion and Lightray were. I remember being at Jack’s house and he told Steve and myself this whole story about the Black Racer, and I said, “Gee Jack, that’s a great story, but why don’t you hold off and give us three or four more issues of Orion, Lightray and Metron before you put the Black Racer in.” And I thought I’d talked Jack into it. When Steve and I left that day, Jack was determined not to put the Black Racer in for three or four more issues. We went back the following week and Jack had the first Black Racer story almost drawn! (laughter) He just felt compelled to do it. He couldn’t help himself. I think in small part he was worried Marvel would beat him to it. Sketches of some of these characters were floating around and I think he was afraid he’d wake up one morning and the Black Racer or something similar A 1980s drawing of The Black Racer, a character Jack felt compelled to use. would be in a Marvel comic.

TJKC: Is this how Spirit World and In The Days Of The Mob came about? E: Sort of. I really don’t understand why those books came out the way they did, or why they came out at all. I don’t think anyone was too happy with the format, including the distributors. As I said, Jack went to them with ideas for adult comics, large comics, magazine tabloid comics, everything. Spirit World and In The Days of the Mob were about as far as DC was willing to push the format at that time and Jack didn’t like it. Jack never really liked black-and-white comics. He had something vastly more upscale in mind with color and slick ads and typeset lettering and more adult content and I guess DC didn’t feel that format was worth pursuing at the time. I think they canceled the books and decided not to print the second issues before they even had any sales figures on #1.

TJKC: Where did the term “Fourth World” come from? I’ve heard it came from a typo on a cover... E: That’s my understanding. Len Wein, oddly enough, is the one who told me this. I had never heard the term until suddenly I discovered everyone was using it. It kind of snuck up on us. The fourth issues of New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle all say that, and I think it was intended to be that each comic is a world in itself, so here’s the fourth world, the next issue will be the fifth world, the next the sixth world (laughter), but they only did that gimmick on the fourth issues. TJKC: Steve said Jack was using the term before the comics were even printed. E: That’s possible. I’m not saying Steve’s wrong, I just don’t remember it. I looked up what the equivalent of a trilogy was with four books,

TJKC: Did Jack view New Gods as the logical extension of his Thor mythology? 23

and it was a tetralogy. I was pushing that term in letter pages, and it never caught on. TJKC: How did Jack work? Did he outline and thumbnail? Did he start at page 1 and work in sequence, or bounce around? E: It was never sequential, he would just start drawing. He would do sequences. He would roughly know what a story was about when he started, but it could change completely by the time he got to the end. There were dozens of cases where Jack told us this wonderful story he was going to do in the next issue, and then sat down and did something completely different. TJKC: Is that why some of the “next issue” blurbs in the letter columns weren’t accurate? E: Correct. But Jack would start drawing with key sequences, and occasionally a sequence would be kept for another comic when he ended up with extra pages. If you notice, most of the cuts between scenes occur on page breaks. That’s a function of him juggling pages

back and forth and doing sequences out of order. Occasionally, if it cuts in the middle of a page, he’d erase half a page in order to start it there. He just basically worked it through, and the first page of the comic might be the last thing drawn, or the first thing drawn. One of the duties Steve and I occasionally had was to look through the story and say, “Hey Jack, you’re short a page.” The Funky Flashman story in Mister Miracle #6 was short a page, and Jack said, “Figure out where to put something.” So I wrote the page where Big Barda takes a bath. (laughter) If you look at the issue, you can see that the story can be told completely without that page. I just wanted to put Big Barda in the bathtub. (laughter) That issue probably has about half my contributions, in that I named a couple of the Female Furies. TJKC: Do you remember which ones? E: Lashina and Stompa, I think. What happened was that I came up with a character that Jack liked. I’m not sure if it would have wound up in New Gods or would be a separate comic. It was a girl with ESP called Phantasmagloria. Jack loved the name, and when he started the Female Furies he was going to name one of them Phantasmagloria. But then he decided the name was too good to waste on a small character, so he asked me to give him some other names. I jotted down a whole bunch of names and two or three of them made it into the final grouping. The only page in that whole book that I had any story input into was that one page. I plotted the page and wrote most of the dialogue on it. I think that’s the only page in all of New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Forever People that I actually wrote in any way. Steve and I did almost nothing on the Forever People issues that have our name on them.

This unused page from Forever People #8 is the result of Jack penciling in sequences. After assembling the sequences into the final story, he ended up one page over, so this page was never used. (next page) A Mister Miracle pencil drawing done for an early San Diego Comic Con. 24

TJKC: What type of reaction did the Funky Flashman story get from inside the industry? E: I’ll tell you how that issue came about. Steve and I had worked for Marvelmania International, a Marvel mail order firm. The guy who ran it was... well, let’s just say that a lot of kids never got the Silver Surfer posters they ordered and a lot of artists and folks who worked for him never got paid. When Jack asked us to come up with ideas for stories, we suggested, “Hey, let’s do him.” Funky Flashman was originally conceived as our version of that guy we’d worked for at Marvelmania. When Jack started doing it, the character started turning into Stan Lee. I don’t think Jack consciously decided, “I’m going to parody Stan.” I think he just sat down to draw this character who was going to be sweet-talking Mister Miracle into working with him and his personal reference points for that kind of relationship led him to start drawing Stan. The issue ended up coming out more Stan Lee than Jack had intended and I have to believe that something triggered that. You know, something of a peace has now been made between the Kirby side and Stan. The hard feelings have been set aside and the genuine love and respect has been allowed to live... but there were times in the past, as everyone knows, that that wasn’t the case. There were times when Jack would pick up a fanzine and someone at Marvel would be saying, “Oh, all Kirby ever did was draw up Stan’s ideas” or someone would credit Stan with creating Captain America or something like that. Any time you heard Jack say anything negative about Stan it was in direct response to one of those insults... and sometimes things would escalate from there. I’m sure Jack set out to do a story that would only tenuously have referenced Stan and then one of those

things hit him. There was a lot of that crap floating around at the time... Marvel partisans saying, “We don’t miss Kirby, we never needed Kirby, Stan invented everything all by himself.” I have no evidence of this but I’d bet my T-Bird that one of those things hit Jack that week... maybe someone called up and quoted something, maybe he got a fanzine in the mail, whatever... and it caused him to make the character look more like Stan than he’d intended to. But a lot of that issue was still extrapolation, it was still a fictional character and most of it really has nothing to do with Stan Lee. If Jack had sat down from the start and said, “I’m going to make Stan a character in my comic,” it would have been a much more dead-on parody.

sent. I don’t know if Stan wrote them or if he had people in the office put them together, which he occasionally did at that time. Jack basically drew what he was handed. The next-to-the-last one was about Janus, the last one was the Sub-Mariner story, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Stan could not dialogue the stories into anything coherent, so they put the Janus one on the shelf with the intention of printing it the same month New Gods #1 came out to kind of blunt the impact of Kirby not being at Marvel any longer. They went ahead with the SubMariner story and had much of it redrawn. That one was in a little better shape, and that became Jack’s last sequential issue. They went ahead and had the Janus issue redrawn and patched together until it became coherent. It would’ve been #102, and the Sub-Mariner story would’ve been #103. I’m sure if you asked the Marvel people from that time what happened, they’d say, “Jack handed in something unusable, we had to save it.” Which was their point of view. It was a case of a story that was not dialogueable.

TJKC: When you and Steve Rude did Funky Flashman in your Mister Miracle Special, did you do Jack’s Funky or your take on Stan Lee? E: Jack’s version. If I’d tried to model a character on Stan, it wouldn’t have resembled Jack’s Funky at all. The only thing I did with Funky that referenced Stan at all — and this was actually Marvel, not Stan — was that Funky was trying to get Mister Miracle to sign an onerous contract, not unlike a release Marvel had tried to get Jack to sign. So, to answer your question about industry reaction... the issue came out, the reaction was very strong. A lot of people loved the issue. I don’t think it was as negative about Stan as it could’ve been, or as some people took it as. I think some people read some things into it that even Jack didn’t intend. But it was a fair game parody. It wasn’t the first time Stan had been burlesqued in comics, and it wasn’t the last either.

TJKC: It’s interesting that they held it until New Gods #1 came out, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it being a Kirby book. E: At that point, they didn’t want to say ‘Kirby.’ But if you look at Marvel’s output for that month, with reprints they were publishing twice the Kirby material DC was. And that was not unintentional. At Marvel, there was a very strong panic that they’d lost their soul by losing Jack. It wasn’t coincidental that Johnny Romita was imitating Jack so much in Fantastic Four, and Buscema started imitating him that much in Thor. They were pretending it was business-as-usual, trying to keep a continuity going.

TJKC: Did Stan take it okay? E: I never discussed it specifically with Stan. I know Stan was deeply hurt about Jack leaving. I know he never quite understood why Jack left. I explained my version of it to him a few times. Stan’s a very smart man, and I don’t think he has ever fully understood Jack’s feelings because the two men, on many levels, spoke very different languages. The two of them, whenever they talk about writing a comic, are using the word “writing” in completely different methods. To Jack, writing was primarily conceptualizing the plot and to Stan, writing was primarily filling in word balloons. So you always had a communication problem there. They’re two men who are very similar in many ways, both with a lot of common background, a lot of very common values on certain levels. They both have some of the same bad habits, including two of the worst memories you’ll ever hear in your life. (laughter) But I think that there are some partnerships that, as the success increases, the people change. The partnership doesn’t work anymore, and they end up driven apart because they can’t communicate anymore, especially when they’ve had a huge success.

TJKC: Why did Jack stop doing Jimmy Olsen? E: Jack was never wild about doing Jimmy Olsen in the first place. He took the comic on because it was at that point the only book without an artist attached to it. And it gave him a chance to put the Newsboy Legion in it, there was a connection there, as tenuous as it may have been. As he was doing New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle, he increasingly asked to get off Jimmy Olsen because it was not his book. It was a little more restrictive because he had to keep checking with the Superman editors. Nelson Bridwell was Jack’s liaison, and anything that affected Superman at all, Nelson had to clear it. TJKC: How did the practice of DC changing Jack’s faces on Jimmy Olsen come about? E: Jack handed in his first Jimmy Olsen issue and a few others, and I believe Colletta inked two Olsens and the first Forever People before DC looked at it and said, “My God, Superman looks all wrong.” So on the first two issues I think, and Forever People #1, Al Plastino was brought in to repaste things. Thereafter, Colletta inked the book without inking the Olsen or Superman heads, and Murphy Anderson finished them up. Part of the problem was that Colletta’s style was so different from Anderson’s. If Anderson had inked the whole comic, I don’t think anyone would have noticed. Or if Wally Wood, who wanted to ink all of Jack’s DC work had inked them, I think it would have worked. Mike Royer inked a couple of issues and he made some slight adjustments

TJKC: Since we’re on the subject of Stan, I’ve always wondered what Fantastic Four #108 was originally drawn for. E: That was going to be the next-to-the-last issue Jack did. In the last year or so of Jack’s work on Fantastic Four, his relationship with Stan Lee deteriorated for reasons I’m sure everyone understands. Jack was determined not to introduce any new characters into those issues, not to give them another Silver Surfer. He basically started saying to Stan, “Hey, if you’re the writer of this book, you give me the plot.” The last two issues were instances of Jack drawing these vague plots he was 25

to Jack’s Superman and DC didn’t deem it necessary to bring in Anderson.

E: To me, what Jack was penciling was closer to the official Superman than a lot of other versions that were subsequently allowed and even some of the then-current ones. And I thought his Jimmy Olsen was right on the money. Jack found out about the retouching from Steve and myself. We read it in a fanzine over at Mike Royer’s house... I think it was in Don and Maggie Thompson’s fanzine, Newsfangles. Jack was frustrated by it. Who wouldn’t be? It wasn’t just the embarrassment of being corrected but it kind of put Jack on notice that he was expected to do work that looked like what DC was already publishing. He felt that it was not what he did best. I felt it was like stealing Willie Mays in his prime away from the Giants and making him play tennis. But I’ll tell you one thing. To Jack’s credit, he never stopped putting everything he had into his Jimmy Olsen and Superman drawings. A lesser artist might have slopped the main figures out, knowing that another guy in New York was going to redraw them. Jack didn’t do that.

TJKC: Did Royer change it a lot? And what did you think of his inking on Jack? E: It was a lot by Mike’s standards, since he was usually very faithful to Jack’s pencils... probably more faithful than any other inker Jack ever had at any company. Mike was and still is a very intelligent artist. He made one or two minor mistakes early on in his tenure as Kirby inker and learned immediately and, well, I think he was one of the all-time best Kirby inkers and probably the perfect choice for Jack’s most personal works. TJKC: Was Jack’s version of Superman that far off? How did he react when he learned about the retouching?

TJKC: The cover of New Gods #1 doesn’t look like a typical Kirby design. Did DC change it as well? E: Jack’s original cover for New Gods #1 was completely different from what was ultimately printed. In fact, I believe Neal Adams was the person who came up with the gray star effect, which was not something in the Kirby repertoire. TJKC: Has the original drawing ever been printed anywhere? E: I don’t think so. I don’t know that it exists anymore. The drawing that was used on the cover of New Gods #1 was one of a bunch of presentation drawings that Don Heck had inked for him, and Jack had hand-colored it. DC managed to lose it, and it turned up later folded in quarters and stuffed in a filing cabinet. But they had taken that drawing and photostated it, and used it to make the cover to New Gods #1 because they didn’t want to use Jack’s layout.

One of at least two alternate covers Jack did for New Gods #1. This one was sold to a fan in 1976. 26

TJKC: Did Jack base the Forever People on real people? E: Jack based everybody that he ever drew in comics on somebody. I think he always had to have some sort of emotional handle on a character before he could draw that character into a story... and that meant referencing a real person, however tenuously. In some cases the references were so far removed that it’s impossible to see the final connection. Everything he plotted was based on somebody in his mind. One reason he didn’t get along better with Stan at points was that Stan would then dialogue with totally different reference points, and Jack would look at the printed comics and go, “No, that’s wrong. That guy wouldn’t say that.” But of course Stan had no way of knowing what Jack’s reference point was for the character. In the case of Mark Moonrider, some people say Jack more or less based the character on me. He was going to just call the character Moonrider and I think he called him Mark by accident once (laughter) and the name stuck. I don’t know every specific reference point and some characters, I know, were kind of an amalgam of several people he knew. You know, I loved Jack. He was the dearest, most creative man I’ve ever met in comics,

maybe in the whole world, but he had a few shortcomings and one of them was a bad memory. In the first or second issue of New Gods, he introduced those ordinary people who were tied somehow in to the Anti-Life Equation — Dave Lincoln, Victor Lanza and so on. Then, when he drew the next issue, he completely forgot what he’d named them and gave them all different names. I think Steve Sherman caught it on some Xeroxes after the issue had been sent off to be lettered. We had to get on the phone to New York and have someone arrange to change the names. TJKC: Were there any other cases of you having to change things like that? E: Well, there was one issue of Jimmy Olsen that Jack drew the wrong size. He was doing those black-and-white books concurrently and the art for them was drawn 11" by 15". Olsen, like all the other color comics, was drawn 10" by 15" so Jack had two piles of paper cut to size. He drew a whole issue of Jimmy Olsen the wrong size and I had to go through it and erase an inch off the side of each page. In a few cases, I had to trace figures off the page, erase them, then trace them back onto the page... then Jack worked over my pencils to true them up. It was the closest thing to artwork I ever did on any of the books, except for once or twice when I repencilled Superman’s chest emblem for Jack... the only thing in the world I drew better than him. You can probably pick out that issue of Olsen because I didn’t always take a half- inch off each side. On some pages, I could preserve more of Jack’s drawing by taking more off one side than the other so a number of pages don’t have the center dividing line in the exact middle. You can see that the center line isn’t where it should be and, also, some panels have some strange cropping. There was also an issue of Mister Miracle where Jack accidentally gave Mister Miracle a nose. One of the fascinating things about Jack was that he was always, subconsciously I think, trying to improve his characters’ designs. He was always making minor modifications in a character’s costume from issue to issue. Joe Sinnott and Mike Royer could speak to this more authoritatively than I can... but they often corrected the costumes back to the established versions. Anyway, one Mister Miracle confronts his childhood tormentor on Apokolips - uninked pencils to #7, page 20. issue, Jack somehow decided that Mister Miracle’s TJKC: Jack put a lot of emphasis on the younger characters throughnose should show through his mask, nostrils and all. Steve and I out the series. Were the Forever People a reaction on his part to the looked at the pencils for a while going, “Gee, something’s wrong and Peace Movement of the 1960s? we can’t figure out what.” Then, finally, we realized it and Jack decided E: Yes, Jack’s attitude about everything in life was — and these are my it wasn’t an improvement so I went in and erased Mister Miracle’s words, not his — “No matter what we do, the future is in the young nose in every panel. That’s, like, my most lasting achievement in the people.” I don’t know anyone in the comic industry who was ever history of comics. more supportive of new talent. Oh, I just remembered one other thing we did. Steve and I designed the color scheme for Mister Miracle’s costume. TJKC: How did Deadman end up in Forever People? E: Jack was asked by DC to put Deadman in New Gods. He didn’t want TJKC: Does that have anything to do with why it’s wrong in #1? to, he had New Gods already plotted ahead, he didn’t want to do other E: Yes. DC designed color schemes for all the characters and I don’t people’s characters at all, and he didn’t like Deadman. I remember he think Jack liked any of them. The first Mister Miracle went to press thought it was impossible to do a good character with that name. In before Jack saw the colors they’d chosen and when he did, he asked us the whole DC universe you couldn’t have picked a character Jack to come up with some others. Steve and I took some Xeroxes of a would less have wanted to put into his book, except maybe Fox and drawing of Mister Miracle and we did about a half-dozen versions Crow. (laughter) So he decided to put Deadman in Forever People and Jack picked one out and sent it to New York. They changed all where it was a little less offensive. Because Jack didn’t want to even further colorings to match. 27

look at the old Deadman comics, at his request Steve Sherman and I prepared a storyline for Forever People. Jack read it and said, “This is great, this is fabulous, you guys did a great job!” and then he didn’t use any of it. (laughter) But he felt since we had been assigned to plot #9 and #10, he should give us a credit. He left us off #10 accidentally, so he stuck it on #11. It’s a really generous credit considering he didn’t use a word we came up with.

would say “Taaru” instead of “Shazam” but then they’d be displaced by Infinity Man the same way Billy Batson was displaced by Captain Marvel. Jack was a great fan of Captain Marvel. He was the one who suggested to DC that they revive the character and, of course, he and Joe Simon worked on one of the first Captain Marvel comics, way back when. TJKC: Since Fastbak and Lonar each had two back-up stories, is it safe to assume Jack had plans to feature them more prominently? E: Yes. Jack had a number of different plans for how this material might expand. Even if he had done the ending of the Darkseid/Orion story, that didn’t mean many of the other books or other characters couldn’t be continued. One of the things he was trying to do at DC, in his own way, was to create a whole line. That was one of the reasons Jack felt he needed Steve and me around, in case the books took off and DC was willing to expand them into six or ten titles. There could have been a Lonar book, a Black Racer book, a Fastbak book and so on. Jack loved the idea that he might be supervising a whole line like that, written and drawn by others, and he could be a kind of idea man and creative supervisor.

TJKC: Where did Infinity Man fit into the grand scheme of the Fourth World? Was he connected to the Black Racer in any way? E: There was a whole storyline involving Infinity Man that never got into the books and a separate one for the Black Racer. I don’t recall them intersecting at any point but I’m sure Jack would have found a way. By the way, I’ve never heard anyone mention it but it was always obvious to me that Jack was subconsciously doing his take on Captain Marvel when he came up with Infinity Man. The Forever People

TJKC: In the Masterworks portfolio, there’s a pencil drawing for a proposed New Gods tabloid. What’s the story behind this? E: I never heard of a New Gods tabloid being proposed. I think that was an ad that was done for the proposed paperback reprinting. At one point, somebody at some company was talking about reprinting New Gods in paperback format or in some sort of deluxe format and Jack did a couple of drawings for ads so they could discuss it around the book company. That may have been one of those. TJKC: How far was Jack from ending the series when DC pulled the plug? E: I don’t think he even knew. Jack had originally conceived this as a finite series. I think if he had done it initially as paperback books as he wanted to, it might’ve ended up being collectively 600 pages. Once DC changed the format on him and put it into bi-monthly comics, he kept coursecorrecting to the point where he wasn’t really sure. His plans kept being readapted. There were characters that were thrown out. There was a character that was kind of a Super-Pharaoh. That guy was going to be part of New Gods. Just like we tried to talk Jack out of putting the Black Racer in #3, we successfully talked Jack out of putting that guy in #4 or #5. So you’re not dealing with a concrete, logical plan on paper. My guess is that if the New Gods comics had been selling well enough for DC to continue them, Jack would’ve probably kept doing them for a very long time. By that point he realized DC was not going to do deluxe, fancy adult comics, or photo comics. So Jack would’ve kept the Fourth World books going as a job he could take pride in. Jack just wanted to be left alone, he wanted to do his own comics and when he felt like ending it, he would’ve ended it, assuming they would’ve allowed him to. TJKC: Looking back, those last issues seemed a bit rushed. Did Jack get the word that he only

Jack’s uninked pencils for Forever People #6, page 15. 28

wasn’t fully-formed and I can’t believe he wouldn’t have made other decisions once he got there. He told me and Steve a lot of what he thought he was going to do. I don’t know how much of it Steve remembers but I think I remember most of it. Even then, Jack was the kind of guy where every new idea suggested twenty others. He often found his stories taking him in directions he didn’t anticipate and anything he told us about the ending of the New Gods saga was just the direction he thought he was heading at the moment, what was on his mind that day. If he’d finally gotten around to doing it, I’m sure it would’ve been different. I do have a gut feeling that it would’ve been fabulous. At one point, Jack said it would be the last thing he ever did for comics because everything would have been anti-climactic after that. TJKC: Is there any of it you’d be willing to share? E: I’ve got some of it in the article in the upcoming tribute book. (pause) I don’t want to turn this into “I’ve got a secret.” I can tell you that it would’ve involved Orion having to kill Darkseid. And I can tell you that it would’ve involved Orion’s full transformation into taking after his father. It also would’ve involved a number of characters that Jack never even got around to introducing. TJKC: Would Orion have survived? E: I don’t think so. But I don’t think even Jack could have answered that until he got to those pages. Orion certainly would have become a very different person had he survived. TJKC: Did the Anti-Life Equation play into it? E: The plan Jack had for the Anti-Life Equation was that it didn’t exist, at least not in the form Darkseid believed. Darkseid was chasing something he could never have. Whereas Darkseid perceived it as a weapon, it was a spiritual goodness that exists in every religion and every people. It’s the concept that guides the Golden Rule, that underscores the Ten Commandments, it’s the concept that underscores the basis of man’s humanity to man. And it’s something which, if Darkseid got his hands on it, he’d have a very powerful concept in his hands, but nothing he could ever use for conquest. I envisioned, or maybe Jack told me this, a scene with Darkseid finally realizing what the Anti-Life Equation is and screaming, “I can’t use this! This is of no use to me!” And he’d killed hundreds of thousand of soldiers, and spent billions of dollars to get his hands on the ultimate weapon, and he discovered the ultimate weapon was, “Thou shalt not conquer.” (laughter) Darkseid was the repository for everybody who’d ever been rotten to Jack, or everybody Jack ever perceived as being a selfish pig.

The mysterious page from the Masterworks Portfolio. had one more issue, and try to cram as much in as possible? E: No, I think he got the word that DC didn’t like what he was doing, and he was panicking, trying to please them. My feeling is that DC never understood what Jack had to offer, and conversely perhaps Jack didn’t understand how to get along with DC. They had very different philosophies of what constituted a good comic. Not a good marriage. I think in the case of each book, he found out in the middle of what became the last issue. I remember when Forever People and New Gods were canceled the same day. He was just devastated. He looked like a man who’d been punched in the face repeatedly. He was very, very hurt.

TJKC: Is that why he was such a great villain? E: Yeah, I think so. I was at that point kind of a Watergate junkie, a Nixon scholar. We spent all our time talking about Nixon, whom Jack disliked intensely. I believe that based on our discussions about Nixon, a few of Nixon’s quirks and habits and attitudes found their way into Darkseid. As did everybody Jack had ever met in his life who was dedicated to the prospect of stepping over other people to get what they wanted, as an act of ultimate cowardice. Trying to conquer someone is an act of cowardice, you’re trying to control them so they won’t hurt you. Darkseid was ultimately the #1 coward in the world. He was trying to conquer the universe so the universe couldn’t hurt him. If in a given week Jack was outraged at some South American dictator he saw on the

TJKC: I know you’ve been asked a million times over the years to tell how Jack would’ve originally ended New Gods. You’ve generally said that it was Jack’s story to tell and not yours... E: You know, I think we may have made too big a thing about it all. I hosted a panel once at a convention where Jack spoke and someone asked him how New Gods would have ended and he said, “Only three people know... I know, Roz knows and Mark Evanier knows.” Now, I’d never really thought of it as a great secret that had been entrusted to me but it seemed to please Jack to view it in those terms so we did. But the honest truth is that Jack never worked out all the details of the ending. He had scenes in mind and specific themes and there were certain things about some of the characters that I believe he viewed as inevitable. But it 29

news, that South American dictator was Darkseid. And if Jack was angered at somebody in the comic book business who had knifed someone else in the back, the knifer was Darkseid. Jack’s such a giving man, a generous man, such a selfless person who never stood on the ceremony of complaining that a convention had not put his name large enough or whatever. He never cared about those things. And I always felt Darkseid was the flip-side of Kirby. He was the Anti-Kirby. (laughter) Darkseid was against everything Jack stood for in his life, and the various heroes who opposed Darkseid were all different facets of Jack’s personality.

Desaad was about people who do.

TJKC: When did you stop being Jack’s assistant? And after that, how often did you see Jack and Roz? E: Jack finally had to face the fact that he was never going to have a West Coast DC office, and edit a whole bunch of comics other people did. It was kind of silly for him to have two assistants when he didn’t really even need one. It came about the time the second or third issue of Kamandi was being done. At that point I was writing for Gold Key comics so I had another source of income and Steve did not, so Jack decided to keep Steve TJKC: Could you elaborate on that? around. Also, I know now that I was annoying Jack a little because I E: To a certain extent, Orion repwas frustrated at the posiresented the fact that Jack had to tion I was in. The only deal with these people to feed thing I really know how to his family. You can’t avoid the do is write and I was a proDarkseids of this world, they’re fessional writer working there and you have to deal with for a guy who didn’t need a them. And sometimes to deal writer around. I was having with them, you have to play some other, personal probtheir game, you have to be as lems at the time... some ruthless as they are. Jack was not emotional things unrelated proud of everything he’d ever to Jack but I think I made done in his life from an ethical Roz and him nervous at standpoint, but he did what he the time. I was trying to had to to make a living and to bury myself in work and feed his family. Sometimes when there wasn’t anything for you’re dealing with evils, you me to do. Steve and I have to pick the lesser of the would go out there and, evils and live with it. The well, Steve found things to Forever People represented hope do, to make himself useful for the future, that the new and I really didn’t. I’d pace generation would build a world around Jack’s studio trying without Darkseids, or at least try to find something to do. to. Mister Miracle represented Steve and I decided to kind the side that gets away from the of split up anyway, and Darkseids, that escapes. But ultiJack made the decision to mately you have to go back and keep Steve doing the letter confront them. There were all pages, and never got these different themes operating, around to telling me. I had and I think one of the reasons to figure it out on my own. the comics have touched so Jack just didn’t have the many people is that anyone can heart to say to me, “Gee look at the whole Fourth World Mark, I really don’t have set-up and find some analogy for anything for you to do...” their own life in there. Because Without realizing it, he put we all at some point have to conme in this very strange front dealing with people like situation where some of Darkseid, dealing with people the local comic fans heard who want to own us or possess about it from Steve, and us or control us. And we can they came up to me and react as Mister Miracle did by went, “Hey, we heard Kirby fleeing from them, or react as fired you! Nyahh, nyahh!” Orion did by confronting them, So I called Jack to see if I’d A plethora of villains from Jack’s fertile imagination. or as the Forever People did by been fired, and Jack said, essentially hiding from them. “Oh no, no, no, no...” And The other kind of evil that you have is the person who wants to then I talked to Steve a couple of times and he was waiting for Jack to cause you pain because they enjoy it. That was all manifested in tell me. Anyway, I finally got the message without anyone telling me. Desaad. Whenever Jack drew Desaad, he was drawing everybody he’d ever met who enjoyed somebody else’s failure or pain. One of the TJKC: After that, how often did you see Jack and Roz? things I learned from Jack as a person was not to enjoy the pains of E: I didn’t talk to Jack too often right after that, except I ran into him others. Jack was never that kind of person. If you went up to Jack and at conventions a lot. Over the years, I just stayed in contact with him, said, “Hey, I just had a friend who was hurt in a car accident,” even if through conventions and occasional visits. We became closer in the he didn’t know the person, he’d be genuinely concerned that someone last few years, I guess because I kept visiting more or seeing him more was in pain. That person’s pain was his pain. Jack never derived any often. I’m sure you have this experience, you have certain friends who glee at all from somebody else’s pain or misfortune or suffering, and are always your friends even though you may go months without 30

seeing them. And the minute you see them, you pick up where you left off last time. Jack and Roz became like that to me. I’d also like to mention that Steve Sherman proved to be a stand- up guy. Folks in comics know me better because I’ve remained at least part-time in that field, whereas Steve went off and became very successful in puppetry and television spots. But Steve and I have remained friends and I know he has also been a good friend to the Kirby family over the years.

TJKC: But it sounds like he wasn’t exactly torn up about the way things worked out. E: No, but he sat down to do a story and whatever it was, it wasn’t what DC was expecting. Now again, I’m speculating but I think the problem was that everyone — not just DC but a lot of fans out there — were expecting some incredible, mind-boggling story. For years, everyone had asked Jack how it would end and I’m sure Jack had hundreds of ideas whirling around in his head but none that could end things and live up to everyone’s expectations without doing another three hundred or five hundred pages. Like I said, when the New Gods books were cancelled, Jack was on like chapter 12 of a 300 chapter novel and they just said, “Okay, skip 13 through 299 and cut straight to chapter 300 and, by the way, everyone is expecting the greatest story ever done.” At first, he did a normal-length story and they felt was not publishable or, at least, did not live up to anyone’s regal expectations. The situation was turned over to Joe Orlando, who flew out here and sat down with Kirby and said, “We’ll give you more pages... see what you can do with them.” They’d decided to expand it into a graphic novel and give Jack a little more room, which probably didn’t help, especially since the material he’d already done was not his original ending but a new plot he’d invented for the occasion. Jack did the new pages and they jigsawed what he’d already done, relettered parts of it, reinked some of it. And they ended up with this book that I don’t think pleased anybody. Also, I suspect Jack was not able to recreate his thought processes of the years before. He probably looked back at those issues and went, “Why did I do this again?” (laughter) It was 15 years later, and Jack had changed in that time. A lot had changed in his life. I think he found himself needing to pick up themes that no longer interested him, and characters that he had long since abandoned. But at least something came out of it financially for him, and there was a little sense of closure there.

TJKC: Did you have any contact with Jack when DC invited him back to do Hunger Dogs? E: Not with Jack. Folks at DC called me for advice a few times. There was some sort of miscommunication between Jack and DC as to what was supposed to be accomplished in the project and everyone at DC respected Jack too much to criticize him. That got to be a very messy situation. I don’t really know fully what happened, I was hearing more from DC’s end than Jack’s end. At one point, DC was trying to force me on him as the writer or the dialogue writer and I think someone broached the subject to him in manner he found a little offensive. Jack had always resisted the notion that a dialogue writer was the writer. They went ahead and did most of that stuff without my involvement, which was fine because I think it would’ve poisoned my relationship with Jack if I’d gotten involved. TJKC: I got the sense from talking to Mike Royer and Greg Theakston that the wrap-up didn’t end up the way he wanted it to. E: I don’t think it ended up the way anyone wanted it to. A couple of things happened, and I’m going to give you a guess here. The people at DC, Paul Levitz and Jenette Kahn, did an enormously nice thing by cutting Jack in on the money that came from the Kenner Toys and the Hanna-Barbera usage of Darkseid, Desaad and all those characters. They didn’t have to because they were created before they started their creator participation contract. But I think DC saw the public relations wisdom and the essential decency of doing so. So Jack got a couple of nice checks for the fact that there was an Orion doll and Darkseid was on Super Friends. If Jack had wrapped-up the series the way he originally intended to, an awful lot of those characters would’ve been killed. He liked not only the symbolism of those checks, that he was getting a profit participation in his creations, but I think he wanted to see them continue for Roz and I think he understood that DC didn’t want the series ended to the point where they couldn’t use the characters again. He couldn’t give them the old ending he’d been thinking of for those reasons and also because the foundation for it had never been laid down, he’d never gotten far enough in that story to do that ending in twenty or fifty or even a hundred pages. So my guess is that Jack sat down and said, “DC wants an ending. What kind of ending can I do without destroying these characters?” Now, all I’m giving you is a guess on my part, I was not privy to his thoughts on this.

TJKC: Did Esak’s betrayal and pseudo-redemption in Hunger Dogs match Jack’s original plans for him? E: Well, I’ll tell you what I can. The whole New Gods thing is really about generations and about how one generation assumes the burdens and responsibilities of the one before it. Someplace buried deep in there, there’s probably a few subtle subtext where Jack was writing about the hopes and fears he had for the next generation taking over for his. I mean the new generation that he knew would take over the comic book industry as well as the new generation that he knew would take over America and the world. And maybe one of the reasons he couldn’t return to New Gods and wrap it all up is that, between the time he originally did the series and the time he went back and did Hunger Dogs, his thoughts and hopes about the next generation had matured and advanced. The whole mood of the country was different, the whole mood of the comic 31

book business was different, Jack’s whole standing in his field was different and so on. Now, all I really know about Esak in the original series is that the Forever People and Orion and Mister Miracle and Lightray represented the next generation to Jack... and Esak represented the generation after them. I’m sure Jack had in mind that Esak’s generation would figure into any conclusion, possibly personified by Esak, possibly by other characters who would have been introduced. But I would be guessing wildly if I told you exactly how.

Kirby fanzines. How many other people in this world have that? He was thrilled to see guys like Steve Rude and Scott Shaw emerge from his inspiration because we are his legacy. He was upset that he didn’t get paid more for his work, and he was upset that there are people in this world who think Stan Lee created everything. One of the last times I had a long talk with Jack, I said to him something like, “I’m meeting new fans all the time who get into this business and they know who you are, and they know what you did. There’s so many of them that your name can never disappear from this industry.” Jack had watched as, for a long time, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster TJKC: Tell me about working on the monthly New Gods series at DC. did not exist. DC published in 1971 or so a 48-page History of E: The continuing series at DC, which I tell people was done by the Superman Collector’s Edition to celebrate Metropolis, Illinois’ opening. other Mark Evanier, (laughter) was a case where DC started this series It did not mention Siegel and Shuster. Shortly before that, Marvel for with another writer. He wrote a couple of issues, they called me and a period of time wiped Joe Simon off the face of the Earth. Joe Simon asked me to take it over. I said yes without stopping to ask what did not exist. Somebody wrote in a letter to Marvel saying, “Who crethey’d done so far. They wanted me to do a new first ated Captain America?” They found a way to not mention Joe Simon Orion © DC issue, then print the three issues by the other writer, as co-creator, they took his name off the reprints. Jack was Comics, Inc., then I would come in on #5 and #6 and wrap up his always worried about that. And one of the underlying Artwork © Steve Rude storylines. So right there you have six issues where no problems with that whole original art one was at the wheel. If the first six issues of your brouhaha was that, in the document comic are pulled in all different directions and don’t he was originally asked to sign, Jack make any sense, it’s kind of hard to course-correct saw the groundwork for him to be after that. denied credit. One of the clauses said They teamed me up with an artist named Paris that Marvel didn’t ever have to give him Cullins, whose a very nice fellow, very talented artist, credit for his work, and he would not conand he had a passionate love for the New Gods. But test it if they didn’t. And that was what we did not see the characters the same way. To this the argument was all about. It wasn’t about day, Paris still insists the character’s name is prothe artwork, it was about the name of Kirby. nounced Dark-Seed, not Dark-Side. I Jack was very pleased in his last two thought I could meld his version years to realize the scope of honors he had, and mine, and I was wrong. On top and just the fact that the sheer volume of fans of that, we had enormous deadline out there insured that he would never be forproblems. Paris was getting yanked off gotten. It wasn’t a question of three or for other DC projects, so I was four people who thought he was neat. dialoguing pages on the fly. They He’d go to the San Diego Convention would suddenly send me pages 2, 9, and get the only standing ovation of 14, 17, and 18, and say, “Here, dialogue these.” the whole evening at the banquet. He And I would have no idea what was happening on was so well known. And it wasn’t a case the other pages, because Paris was adding to the of wanting to be famous just to boost his plots. By the time Paris left the book, I was so mired ego. Jack wanted to be famous to make sure in the wrong direction I didn’t know how to get out of that enough people knew what he’d done, so that it. It was not a very good comic and I deserve a pretty he’d always get credit for that work. And in his last good share of the blame. When people ask me couple of years, he realized that it’d come to to autograph them now, I offer to buy the book pass. So he was very happy on that level. An example of what we missed art-wise off them and tear it up. (laughter) He was not happy that he couldn’t leave from Steve Rude on New Gods. Roz $50 million. He was not happy about TJKC: What’s the story on the aborted New Gods series you and Steve things like having to hire a lawyer to see that his name wasn’t left off Rude were supposed to do? the Captain America movie. But I think he was very pleased overall E: Steve and I would’ve been completely in sync on that. This was that he was able to retire from comics. He was very pleased that he after the continuing series, and it kept changing editors at DC. What got to do some work in television, to prove that his skills could apply happened was that Steve had a specific window in his schedule... he to another medium. He was very happy at the number of people who could only do the project between specific dates. There was some sort came up to him and said, “Mr. Kirby, you were my inspiration.” Every of miscommunication between the editor and myself and Steve over year the Kirbys would trek down to the San Diego Convention, and when I would turn in the script and when Steve would start on it. One he’d stand there for three or four days. And kids would come up to day, all of a sudden, Steve was ready to start on it, and nobody had him and say, “Mister Kirby, you’re the greatest person who ever lived, given me the go-ahead on the script. That caused Steve to go off on and I love you.” And Jack would have these wonderful one-on-ones another project. I think he’d still like to do New Gods again, I’d love to with these people. And every year Roz would sit there going, “We’re do New Gods again, but at this point DC is looking into some sort of not coming next year.” (laughter) And I’d tell her, “You’re coming next large master plan which probably won’t involve Evanier and Rude. year! You always say that, and you always show up!” Because it was very important for Jack to meet his fans. Not as professional to fan, TJKC: Jack obviously had a lot of bad things happen throughout his but as human to human. He loved to stand there and meet people. career. Overall, was he genuinely pretty happy? E: Jack was frustrated on a lot of levels. I think he felt he’d been TJKC: Last question - what was the greatest thing you learned from abused by a lot of people through the years. But he also felt very working with Jack Kirby? appreciated. Jack’s legacy was us. You and me and everybody who still E: Treat everyone with dignity and respect. That was it. Everyone is honors his name and talks about him and runs tribute books and entitled to dignity and respect until they prove otherwise. 32

The Last(?) Word...

COMIC*

1970 AVERAGES

1971 AVERAGES

Summing Up the Two Big Questions, by John Morrow

Superman

859,811/446,678/52%

793,000/421,948/53%

Jimmy Olsen**

627,102/333,539/53%

555,000/299,882/54%

World’s Finest

606,305/333,213/55%

566,875/312,978/55%

Adventure

591,190/310,123/52%

549,583/288,941/53%

Justice League

381,212/200,715/53%

362,500/210,108/58%

Flash

356,666/184,479/52%

326,250/181,380/56%

Wonder Woman 325,594/172,536/53%

302,500/159,263/53%

DC’s Print Run/Issues Sold/Percentage Sold

n a 1973 issue of Rocket’s Blast Comic Collector, DC Publisher Carmine Infantino said the following about canceling New Gods: “A tremendous college audience, but the youngsters didn’t dig it. They couldn’t understand it. The college kids flaked out completely, but the audience was not broad enough to carry the book... There’s a line you must cross. Apparently we didn’t hit the key. The New Gods hit one area but couldn’t pick up the other level. I was sorry to see New Gods go, too. And Jack was in tears over it. And he was right, he was really building this thing into a tremendous epic. You never know, there may come a day when we’ll bring it back. But it just never picked up that circulation. Hung around a forty percent sale and bang, that was it.”

*All data taken from March 1971 and 1972 issues of these books. **1970 average includes 2 or 3 Kirby issues & may be inflated due to the huge sales increases of Kirby’s first issues. 1971 average is based on all Kirby issues.

Why did DC really cancel the Fourth World books? I’ve heard several possibilities, including personality conflicts between Carmine and Jack, and lack of merchandising potential. But I How did Jack originally plan to end the series? Since he worked have great difficulty believing that it was due to poor sales. so instinctually, it was probably never set in stone. But let’s Infantino states that New Gods sold only 40% of its print run, so examine the four potential endings we’ve explored: he canceled it. But let’s examine the Statement of Ownership that was A. Mark Evanier’s version, where Orion kills Darkseid after becoming printed annually in DC books for actual sales figures. Since none were a reflection of his father (Orion may have died also). published in New Gods, Mister Miracle, or Forever People, we’ll have to B. The Captain Victory ending, where Orion and Darkseid die stick with Jimmy Olsen numbers. Shown are averages from 1970 and (although Darkseid’s ghost survives, unable to harm Orion’s heir). 1971 for six non-Kirby titles compared to Jack’s Jimmy Olsen. These C. The original Hunger Dogs ending Mike Royer mentions, where books all averaged over 50% of sales and none were canceled, so it Orion and Darkseid die, and Esak represents hope for the future. stands to reason that DC deemed 50% acceptable. D. The published Hunger Dogs ending, where nobody dies (we’ll elimiBut even if Superman had only sold 40% of its print run, it would nate this one since it’s the product of story changes forced by DC). have sold more copies than any of these other books, and would A. is the obvious choice for Jack’s original ending, since it’s the never have been canceled. And an examination of the numbers shows earliest. But consider this; when TJKC subscriber Jerry Boyd asked that, as sales declined between 1970 and 1971, DC kept them all Jack how it would end in 1977, Jack replied, “Y’know, I thought I had selling over 50% by lowering the print runs. So you have to wonder – it all figured out and ready to go a couple of years ago, but I came up if New Gods sold only 40% of its print run, why not print fewer issues? with a few new ideas and...” So if Jack had been able to continue the For example: if New Gods started with a print run of 555,000 like books for several more years and then conclude them, the original Jimmy Olsen and only sold 40%, it would be selling 222,000 copies ending could’ve evolved over time into B. or C. And though all three monthly - more than Wonder Woman, Flash, or Justice League. If DC share a common climax (Orion and Darkseid fight to the death, and then dropped the print run to 412,000 (still higher than those three both probably perish), I don’t think Orion would die at Darkseid’s books), those same 222,000 sales would have amounted to 54%! So a hand, since Jack has stated in interviews that “a percentage figure is a misleading way to judge father could never kill his son.” performance, since it can be easily manipulated But any ending must go deeper than whoby altering the print run. What matters is the killed-who. A central theme of the Fourth World actual number of issues sold. series is how one generation passes on, leaving I suspect DC put unrealistically high expecthe next to learn from their mistakes (ie. the Old tations on the Fourth World series based on Gods of Thor’s mythology die, and the New Gods Jack’s track record at Marvel, and started them emerge from their ashes). It seems only natural out with ridiculously high print runs (somewhere that, given the number of Young Gods Jack introin the Superman range). Although they were duced (Fastbak, Lonar, The Forever People, Esak, probably selling better than much of DC’s line at Lightray), he planned to have some of them the time, they wanted better. Just look at the full survive to carry on the next generation. Even page house ads they ran before the series Captain Victory (as Orion’s son) represented the appeared – they expected big things out of Jack’s future to Jack. His emphasis on different generabooks. The initial success of his Jimmy Olsen tions throughout the series makes me think that must’ve had them licking their chops. I suspect even after Orion and Darkseid fought to the when the other books didn’t deliver huge sales, death, the story wouldn’t end; it would simply they blamed it on the complexity of the series. progress to the next level (much like how Thor They pulled the plug and convinced Jack to leads into New Gods). create other, less-conceptual books in hopes Still, it’s nice to know where Jack was origithey’d get the big payoff elsewhere. Just read the nally headed. Now I can finally put to rest those text page of Demon #1; somewhere, Jack got the questions that have plagued me for over twenty idea that an involved, continued epic was too years, and go back and reread the Fourth World much for readers to handle, and he was now series with a new insight into where it was going, forced to stick to simpler, single issue stories. DC’s house ad from their August, 1970 comics. and how it would have wrapped-up.

done anything else in the field of comics. Talk about a humbling experience. I found out that what I believed was the absolute pinnacle of comics sagas, a cosmos-spanning saga that could never be equalled, was simply business as usual with Jack Kirby. I had been merely peeking through a small window into a huge house full of characters and concepts. I found his talent extended not just in cosmic superheroes but in other genres as well. I spent many years afterwards discovering Jack’s incredible legacy, because that’s how long it takes anybody to see the full scope of his work. I’m still discovering it. And so, here is a man who, with his glorious artwork and mindboggling concepts, forever altered the way I see my favorite entertainment medium. Did I ever meet Jack Kirby? No. Do I know him? Oh, yes.

I Am The Man Who Never Met Jack Kirby by Michal Jacot hat’s right. I never met Jack Kirby. I’m sure that will elicit gasps of shock from a stunned fandom to find out that there is apparently one person out there in funnybook-land who has never met Jack. After Jack passed away, the Comics Buyer’s Guide letter column was jammed with reminisces and tributes. Everyone seemed to have a favorite story to tell of their personal encounter with Jack Kirby. Everybody except me. So I sat down and wrote to CBG to tell them what an influence a man I had never met had been on me. And you know something? It was pretty easy, once I got started. Here’s my Kirby story. I was 13 years old and had been a diehard DC fan for seven of those years. I started to notice some ads for new, upcoming titles in my favorite DC comics. But what kind of titles were these? “Forever People?” “New Gods?” I could handle the Mister Miracle title poking up from the bottom of the ad – that sounded like a common superhero comic. But those other ones were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. And what was with the artwork on those covers? And there, on every ad I saw for these books, were mysterious blurbs: “The Magic of Kirby!” “Kirby is Here!” “A Kirby Explosion!” And who in the flaming heck, I thought, is Kirby? But there was no doubt that something new and innovative was coming. The anticipation made me actively seek out these books. I had caught Kirbymania without even knowing who Kirby was. Well, I finally got my issues of the Fourth World series and was totally and completely stunned by it. It was one of those moments where you can’t believe you’re reading a plain old comic book. There was something special going on there, a cosmic grandeur that I’d never seen before. This was back in the days before words like “epic saga” were ever used to describe a comic book story. So now I knew who Kirby was. Where, my naive little mind thought, had this guy been all this time? Here I was, 13 years old; I figured I pretty much knew everything there was to know in life by this point. I thought I’d do a little research and see if this guy Kirby had

17 16

Who ’s Yo ur Favo rite KirbyInker?

15 14

Thinkin’ ‘Bout Inkin’

13 12 11 10 9

62 respondents so far

8 7

Klein

Colletta

Ditko

Heck

Giacoia

Ayers

Everett

Stone

J. Kirby

Wood

Sinnott

Royer

Simon

Shores

5 4

Verpoorten

Don’t Forget...

ere are the current results of our ongoing poll for favorite Kirby inker. But there are still several hundred of you out there who haven’t voted, so spend 32¢ and have your opinion counted!

We’re taking a month off for the summer Conventions, so the Submission deadline for #7 (our kid gang theme issue) is Sept. 1st

...to send your letter to Marvel Comics requesting they give Jack credit for the characters he created (see page 3 of this issue). And while you’re at it, send one to DC telling them how much you’d like to see those Kirby reprint volumes (again, see page 3).

Issue #7 will be mailed Oct. 2 34

Classifieds WANTED: Especially interested in Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko prehero Marvel and early Marvel superhero covers, splashes, and pages. Buy-Sell-Trade! Other artists too. Conrad Eschenberg, Rt. 1, Box 204-A, Cold Spring, NY 10516, (914)265-2649. ____________________________ WANTED: Color xeroxed copies at 8-1/2” x 11” of MMMS posters and 1940s Kirby comic covers. Write David Penalosa, Box 814, Arcata, CA 95521.

WIDE SELECTION of comics available. Send $2.00 for giant catalog, or reading copy catalog. Kirby, Ditko and other greats in supply. We also service want lists. Nostalgia Zone, PO Box 6106, Minneapolis MN 55406, (612)6455950 or faxes to (612)645-6958. ____________________________

RARE KIRBY CAPTAIN VICTORY PRINT! Sent to fans by Kirby himself, signed. In original mailing envelope, $25.00. Kirby Masterworks Portfolio, $25.00. 908-946-0851. ____________________________ KIRBY ORIGINAL ART for sale: FF #36, pg. 3 - $750. Thor #174, pg. 16 - $525. Thor #147, pg. 8 $450. Cap #105, pg 10 signed $600. Marvel Blacklite posters: FF, Cap - $65 each. 1970 Marvelmania Portfolio - $130. Also looking to buy: Kirby Unleashed Portfolio, Masterworks Portfolio, Gods Portfolio, Marvelmania T-Shirts. Call or fax Curtis at 415-637-9634.

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WANTED: Back issues of Rawhide Kid, #18, 21, 22, 24. Also Strange Tales #89. All in good or better condition. Contact: M. Lee, 7356 W. Beverly Blvd. #2, Los Angeles, CA 90036. ____________________________ WANTED: 70’s-80’s Kirby originals - Eternals, Demon, 2001, Capt. Victory, etc. And if you don’t want to sell - how about exchanging 11x17 xeroxes? Doug Smith, 34 Erie Ave., Newton, MA 02161, (617)558-3256. ____________________________ DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS, THE LETTERS SECTION WASN’T IN THIS ISSUE, BUT WILL BE IN #7.

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36 Two pivotal encounters with Darkseid - from “Himon” in Mister Miracle #9, and “The Pact” in New Gods #7. Both are taken from pencil photocopies in Jack’s files.