Jack Kirby Collector #73 by TwoMorrows Publishing

$10

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All characters TM & © DC Comics.

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SEVENTY-THREE

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Contents

THE

One-Shots! OPENING ONE-SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 (a once in a lifetime summer) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (murder makes bad medicine) GAME ON! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ( the King Kirby 100 Crossword)

C o l l e c t o r

ISSUE #73, WINTER 2018

INFLUENCEES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 (Mike Royer, one-on-one) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 (one-hit oneders) ZAP-OUT! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 (Kirby and Zappa revisited) BOYDISMS 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 (a three-pack of one-shots at Marvel) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 (the Old Master, interviewed) BOYDISMS 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 ( the gods themselves!) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM . . . . . . . . . 54 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) BOYDISMS 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 ( Simon, Kirby, and some magic lightning) STILL BORNE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 (the Fighting Fetus was an only child) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 (one shot could start a universe) ANIMATTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 (hi-rez Skanner) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . 66 (Manhunter from the ’40s to now) JK IN THE UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 (the crown jewel of Kirby artwork) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 (never seen by American eyes) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 ( Mark Evanier moderates the 2017 Kirby Family & Friends Panel) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . 92 PARTING ONE-SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Co ver art: FRANK FOSCO & MIKE ROYER (FROM A KIRBY SKETCH) Cover color: TOM ZIUKO

Numerous images in this issue are courtesy of the Jack Kirby Museum and whatifkirby.com, which have our Eternal(s) thanks! COPYRIGHTS: Atlas, Auralie, Beautiful Dreamer, Big Barda, Big Bear, Billy Batson, Black Racer, Boy Commandos, Brola, Brute, Challengers of the Unknown, Darkseid, Demon, Desaad, Devilance, Fastbak, Female Furies, Flash, Forever People, Fourth World characters, Glob, Guardian, Himon, In The Days of the Mob, Infinity Man, Izaya/Highfather, Jimmy Olsen, Lightray, Magnar, Manhunter, Mark Moonrider, Mister Miracle, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Orion, Sandman, Scott Free, Seagrin, Serifan, Shazam, Steppenwolf, Superboy, Superman, Vykin, Wonderful Willik TM & © DC Comics • Adaptoid, Ant-Man, Avengers, Black Bolt, Bucky, Captain America, Captain Britain, Colossus, Crystal, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Dragon Man, Fantastic Four, Frightful Four, Hawkeye, Henry Pym, Him, Hulk, Human Torch, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Kang, Karnak, Klaw, Liberty Legion, ManBeast, Medusa, Millie the Model, Mr. Fantastic, Nick Fury, Paste Pot Pete, Quicksilver, Rawhide Kid, Red Raven, Red Skull, Scarlet Witch, Sif, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Super-Adaptoid, Super-Beast, Thing, Thor, Tumbler TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Blackmass, Bombast, Captain Glory, Captain Victory, Fighting Fetus, Nightglider, Old Times artwork, Satan’s Six, Tiger 21, Valley Girl, Wonder Warriors TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Roxie’s Raiders, Skanner, Wheel Barons TM & © RubySpears Productions • Bullseye, Stuntman, The Fly TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Avenger, Black Cat Mystic, Great Stone Face TM & © the respective owners.

This issue’s cover started from Jack’s rough sketch for a proposed Big Barda comic, circa 1971 (top). Frank Fosco finished Jack’s sketch in pencil (above), and Mike Royer worked from that and Jack’s sketch to channel Kirby in the finished art in 2011. The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 25, No. 73, Winter 2018. Published quarterly by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $12 postpaid US ($18 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $46 Economy US, $69 International, $20 Digital. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All Kirby artwork is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912

Opening One-Shot

Once In A Lifetime by editor John Morrow

ummer 2017 will go down as one of the most unforgettable and satisfying times of my life. And like so many other moments in my 55 years on Earth, it all centers on Jack Kirby. For starters, on July 14, I was honored to be invited by the Kirby family to be their guest at the Disney Legends Awards ceremony at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. Among the recipients this year were both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. If by some chance you haven’t heard about this event, I urge you to go online now and see both Disney’s presentation about Jack, and his son Neal’s acceptance speech:

Kirby family paved the way for this to occur, in a way many—including me—thought would never happen. Here’s just a few lines from the awards’ video presentation, which began by talking about Jack and Stan: “Together, they created the Fantastic Four... Kirby’s imaginative mind and skilled pen gave life to hundreds of major and minor characters for Marvel Comics. His broad interests added a new dimension to comics: Cosmic spacescapes, mythological characters sparring across bizarre, mind-twisting panoramas. The visionary creations of Jack Kirby forever transformed the art of comics, and gave birth to an entire universe of epic, cinematic storytelling.”

https://goo.gl/kC1Mm8 as well as Stan’s own appearance there, which was all the more poignant in light of his wife Joan’s passing just a week prior: https://goo.gl/znAj9F It takes a lot to move me to tears, but I will admit that emotions were running pretty high for me that day. Stan’s heartfelt comments about Jack, coupled with imagining how tough it must’ve been to soldier on after losing his partner of 70 years of marriage, really got to me. Kudos to “The Man” for a classy, totally appropriate appearance that, for those out there still holding a grudge for some of his past comments, I hope will finally give some fans peace about him. But while Stan’s speech choked me up, the Disney presentation about Jack buoyed me with a feeling of excitement and satisfaction I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced. When I started this publication back in 1994, it was for one reason only: To honor and pay tribute to a creator who I’ve always felt was undercredited and underappreciated. For almost 25 years now, I’ve toiled to the best of my ability to remedy those concerns in my little arena of influence, but wondered if the world at large would ever understand what Jack meant—and means—not just to comics, but pop culture the world over. Wonder no more. When a company as large and influential as Disney unequivocally states that Kirby is the co-creator of the Marvel Universe, it’s a done deal. The 2014 settlement between Disney and the

Disney CEO Bob Iger [below] followed with this: “Jack Kirby was an industry icon, who redefined comics not only with his eye-popping artwork, but with his bold point of view of what comics could be. He was the creative genius behind a legion of compelling and enduring characters as you just saw, and still beloved around the world. It’s really impossible to convey his impact on the industry, because his work is still inspiring and influencing artists today, and it will be for generations to come.” Now, if that doesn’t set the record straight, once and for all, nothing will. Jack’s creator credit is appearing on comics, TV shows, and movies that feature his creations, and will indefinitely. It’s in many ways, the culmination of what I’ve been trying to make happen with this mag for the better part of my adult life. I’m over the moon to be able to see it during my lifetime. And leave it to Jack: Afterward, I got to hobnob at a private luncheon with the honorees, including Mark Hamill, Whoopie Goldberg, and Oprah Winfrey. Just like in his comics, Kirby was responsible for taking me to a place I’d never have an opportunity to travel to on my own, and one that I never imagined. (Thanks also to buddy Steve Sherman [right] for urging starstruck me to go over and actually talk to these celebrities, instead of just standing off to the side with my jaw dropped; they, and Disney CEO Bob Iger, were all imminently approachable and down-to-earth people to chat with.) Just as memorable was finally getting to meet, face-to-face, 2

Jack’s son Neal, his wife Connie, and daughter Jillian. As if that weren’t enough, the following week was Comic-Con International: San Diego, where I was invited as a Special Guest of the Con. I’d heard how great the Con treated their guests, and all those stories were true, and then some. Personal attention, outstanding accommodations, and to top it all off, they surprised me with an Inkpot Award for “Achievement in Comic Arts” at my Spotlight Panel. Here’s a link to my video presentation (complete with lots of rare audio, video, and photos of Jack himself ): https://goo.gl/5iDScZ But as gratifying as it was to be recognized for the nearly quarter century (yikes!) I’ve been producing publications like this one, even more satisfying was the sheer amount of love for Kirby at this year’s Con. San Diego Con has been Jack’s home, even after he passed away in 1994. His presence will always be felt there, but perhaps never again as much as in 2017. To celebrate his centennial, the Convention invited Kirby family, friends, and co-workers, and scheduled a huge slate of panels focused on Jack and his career. You’ll get just a small taste of the festivities this issue, with more to come over the next few. Of special note: Kirby was awarded both the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing (something long overdue, based on how many great comics Jack wrote in his lifetime), and its top honor, the Comic-Con Icon Award, which the convention changed the rules for, so Jack could receive it posthumously—something never done before. Then, on August 28, it seemed like the whole world celebrated Jack’s actual 100th birthday. We released our book Kirby100 that day, to overwhelmingly rave reviews. Although a campaign to get Google to do a Kirbyesque Google Doodle on their search page failed, Facebook alone probably featured more tributes and testimonials on that one day, than I’ve published in 70+ issues of this magazine. The outpouring was astronomical, and it gave me a wonderful opportunity to reflect back on what Jack’s meant to me, and how far we’ve come—and how things have changed—since TJKC #1 back in 1994, during a time shortly after Jack had passed away, and not much was being done to honor him once the initial shock of his passing was over. Those days are over, my friends. It’s a brave, new world, where the name “Jack Kirby” is more than a footnote in the popular consciousness. With each passing month, and each

successive film or television series based on his creativity, we’re seeing that more and more people “get it”, and that Stan Lee—as much as he deserves credit for his involvement—didn’t create the Marvel Universe single-handedly. Nor, for that matter, did Jack. So let’s all take stock, and I challenge you right now, readers: Are you a “Type A” kind of fan, who thinks Kirby deserves all the credit, Stan cheated Jack out of it, and this magazine doesn’t beat that drum loudly enough? Or are you a “Type B” fan, who thinks Stan gets unfairly maligned by all the “Type A” fans, and this publication is unfairly skewed toward Jack? Let me toss this out. How about we all be “Type C” fans— the kind that can put on our Big Boy (and Girl) Pants, consider others’ viewpoints, and admit that the reality might just lie somewhere between the two extremes? Stan Lee will have turned 95 by the time you read this (on December 28, 2017), and TwoMorrows celebrated with a special 150th issue of Roy Thomas’ mag Alter Ego devoted to Stan. He toiled in the thankless business of comics for a lot of years, and God-willing, he’ll be with us many more. We gain nothing by denigrating The Man, and we don’t have to tear him down to build Jack up. Marvel Comics, through Disney, finally gets that. So should we. The battle’s over, folks, and we all won—both Kirby and Lee fans (not that those two groups are mutually exclusive)! For those who feel this publication has contributed to animosity in some quarters of fandom, all I can say is, as editor of a publication about Kirby, I’ve had a lot of tough decisions to make over the years. I’ve cut a lot of articles that were too one-sided toward giving Jack credit, and rejected a lot that took unfair shots at Stan. My goal has been to find some middle ground where both sides could fairly air their opinions. And I’ll continue to do that as long as I keep publishing this mag. But that doesn’t mean I’ll shy away from honest, open, and spirited debate about either man—and Joe Simon, Carmine Infantino, or anyone else closely tied to Kirby’s career. We can all agree to disagree, and still learn from one another, as we continue to explore the life and career of the King of Comics. H 3

(previous page) Images from the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, and the Program Book from the event. (above) That’s me, editor John Morrow, with my Inkpot Award. Having seen Steven Spielberg receive his a few years ago at Comic-Con, to say I’m humbled to be in that company, as well as the company of all my favorite comics pros who also have received one, is an understatement. (below) The always delightful Jonathan Ross—a devoted Kirby fan—interviewed me at Comic-Con about the release of KIRBY100 for his BBC radio show.

Foundations

It’s a CRIME this story from Headline Comics #28 (Feb. 1948) has never been reprinted, not even in Titan’s great S&K Crime volume. So here you go! Restoration and color by Chris Fama.

The King Kirby 100 Crossw

Game on!

Puzzle and accompanying art by “3”

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irby fans never shy away from a challenge, so let’s see what you’ve got! To commemorate The King’s 100th birthday, the blogger/artist known only as “3” prepared this puzzle to test your knowledge of all things Jack. If you’ve been paying attention these last 70+ issues, this one should be a breeze. The answer key is in this issue’s letter column. 12

ord Challenge

If you struggled with this puzzle, help is on the way. The sold-out Jack Kirby Checklist will soon be reprinted in a Limited Hardcover Centennial Edition (1000 copies) at double its current length, and updated to include every Kirby item through Jack’s 100th birthday. Look for it in April 2018!

Down 1 Pen name used before settling on Jack Kirby. 3 Kirby’s Inker on first Marvel Silver Age super-hero. 4 __________ of the Space Force. (two words) 6 “The Buzzard’s Revenge”: First Simon & Kirby story featuring ________. 8 Jack Kirby’s industry nickname. (two words) 11 Jack & ___. 15 First Marvel Silver Age super-hero. (two words) 16 Dan Turpin’s nickname did not mean he was bad at his job. 17 First super-hero Jack Kirby & Joe Simon worked on together. (two words) 20 83 Down was also known as “Witch Queen Of ________”. (two words) 22 Jack Kirby’s first story as Jack Kirby was titled ________. (two words) 23 Simon & Kirby’s Newsboy Legion first appeared in _________ Comics. (two words) 25 Boy ________. 26 Jack Kirby’s first cover art was for ________ Comics. 27 Dark Side of the Eternals. 28 Name of The Demon. 29 Dr. Vundabar’s first name. 31 Jason’s naughty brother. 34 Name that Kirby signed on “Wing Turner”. (two words) 37 Home for the Last Boy On Earth. (two words) 38 Two Jack Kirby newspaper strips were collected in the first three issues of _______ Comics. 40 Kirby much preferred this book title to the ‘disrespectful’ team name they plastered on the covers. (three words) 41 The first Romance Comic was Simon & Kirby’s _________ Comics. (two words) 42 ________ Comics: Publishing house owned by Simon & Kirby. 44 Many years before George R.R. Martin was writing his first fan letters to the Fantastic Four, Jack Kirby was already having his own Red Wedding in the first issue of this 1949 comic. (two words) 46 Teen Kirby’s mimeographed weekly comic was Kurtzberg’s (or K’s) ________. 47 “46 Hours and 36 Minutes in the Life of __________”. (two words) 49 Original concept name for the Black Panther. (two words) 52 Special Investigator who delivered his TRUE crime reports to Simon & Kirby for Headline Comics. (three words) 55 Kirby was a ghost artist for Charles Nicholas on this hero’s newspaper strip. (two words) 56 Title of Jack & Rosalind Kirby’s favorite Kirby story. (two words) 58 Leader of the Howlers. (two words) 59 He was created for issue #48 of the Fantastic Four. (two words) 60 Kirby inker on The Demon. (two words) 62 First appearance of The Demon: “Unleash The __________”. (three words) 63 Longest running Kirby inker on Fantastic Four. (two words) 64 Orion’s ugly brother. 65 Scott might be a showman, but She always stole the show. (two words) 70 This movie renamed The Source. (two words) 71 Simon & Kirby did “Guys & Dolls” for _______. 72 First Jack Kirby comic featuring Thor: “The Villain From _______”. 75 Mister Miracle’s ________ is absolutely not, in any way, based on any real person. (two words) 76 He was Simon & Kirby’s character in the first issue of Wow Comics. (two words) 79 This modern day MCU Avenger is a Silver Age re-invention of the Simon & Kirby character of the same name from 1940. (two words) 81 Pen name used before settling on Jack Kirby. 83 Kirby’s first story for Weird Mystery Tales was “_________ Phenomenon”. 87 Comics genre created & popularized by Simon & Kirby. 88 Young Kirby drew cartoons and strips for _______ Newspaper Features.

Across 2 Kirby newsstand magazine. (six words) 5 Kirby’s Fourth World epic began in the comic starring this guy. (two words) 7 X-51’s Human name. (two words) 9 One of the comics that Kirby drew for Punch & Judy was Earl, The __________. (two words) 10 Kirby gave teasing hints of the Evil Factory, Kamandi, and the Mobius Chair in the first issue of this 1957 comic. (two words) 12 Kirby’s partner. (two words) 13 OMAC, without Brother Eye. (two words) 14 The Boy Explorers’ mentor must have done awful things in the past, because his name is Commodore ________. 18 Pen name used before settling on Jack Kirby. 19 Fred Drake is ________. 21 Blue Bolt’s sexy opponent. (two words) 23 Kirby newsstand magazine. (two words) 24 In a March 1963 story drawn by Jack Kirby & Don Heck, “_______ Is Born.” (two words) 30 Name of the first romantic hero in Young Romance Comics. (two words) 32 He just wanted to make Orion smile. 33 First Mister Miracle story. (three words) 35 Boy __________. 36 Kirby signed his first Green Hornet cover as ________. (two words) 39 Devil’s pal. (two words) 43 This famous comic redhead wanted desperately to model for Jack Kirby. (two words) 45 First Fighting American story: “_____ the Spy-Ring”. 48 The only story Kirby drew for Science Comics. (two words) 50 First super-hero Simon & Kirby created for DC Comics. 51 Better use this name, since The Watcher just doesn’t quite work any more. 53 First title Simon & Kirby worked on for DC: “________ Comics”. 54 Jack Kirby’s name before his Origin. 56 According to Jack Kirby, this hero was him. (two words) 57 “I Was A Come-On Girl For Broken Bones, Inc.” was Simon & Kirby’s debut story for this title. (four words) 61 Jack Kirby & Joe Simon published war comic written & drawn by veterans. 66 35 Across tale that appeared in Joe Palooka—three times! (five words) 67 That other guy. (two words) 68 _______ of Danger Street. 69 _________, Western Scout. 73 He battled for a Three-Dimensional World. 74 Romance comic published by Simon & Kirby. (two words) 77 Kirby’s first work for Timely/Marvel was in ______ Comics. (two words) 78 What to call if the Infinity Man is needed. 80 35 Across found “The Isle Where ________.” (two words) 82 Two different Simon & Kirby stories with this same title ran in the first few issues of My Date Comics. (five words) 84 Kirby’s Inker on Space Force. 85 Kirby worked as an in-betweener on this character. 86 First Simon & Kirby story for DC Comics: “Riddle of the ________”. (two words) 89 Unpublished ’70s Black Romance comic. (two words) 90 Pen name used before settling on Jack Kirby. 91 Simon & Kirby-owned comic about cops. (two words) 92 He was Highfather. 93 Novel written by Jack Kirby. (two words) 94 Kirby’s first use of collage art for comics was in _________. (two words) 95 Pen name used before settling on Jack Kirby. 96 Alias used for Jack Kirby in Wordsmith. (two words) 97 This Kirby super-hero was born from a movie adaptation. (two words) 98 25 Down first appeared in ________ Comics. 13

Influencees

Mike Royer One-On-One

Edited by John Morrow • Original panel moderated by Mark Evanier, and transcribed by Steven Tice

(below) Mike Royer at the 2017 San Diego Comic Fest, signing copies. Photo by Kevin Shaw. (next page, top right) The first thing Mike drew for Western Publishing was the pencils for this Superboy puzzle. (throughout) Several commissioned ink pieces Mike has produced, working from photocopies of Jack’s pencils.

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Grantray-Lawrence

[At the San Diego Comic Fest on Saturday, February 18, 2017, Kirby inker Mike Royer was interviewed by Mark Evanier. Mike’s career goes far beyond just inking Jack Kirby: He assisted famed artist Russ Manning, worked at Gold Key Comics for several years, drew stories for Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella for Warren, and even worked on the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons for Grantray-Lawrence. To cut down repetition from numerous interviews and panels we’ve run in past issues, I’ve compiled comments by Mike from his Spotlight Panel into this first-person narrative of his career. Our thanks to Tom Kraft for providing the audio of this panel, and to Mark Evanier who did the actual moderating that evokes these responses from Mike.]

Grantray-Lawrence Animation was very interesting. I met Mike Arens through Russ Manning, and Mike Arens became my real mentor. I worked with Mike at his home. He produced a Batman comic strip based on the TV series at the time, which appeared in shopping newspapers in the South. And he’s the one that taught me how to letter, and I inked a lot of his stuff for Petersen’s CARtoon Magazines. He hired me because he knew from Russ that I had an ability to ink. They took the stats from the old comics, pasted them down, and drew extensions to finish stuff off, and I was hired to ink those. I wound up doing some original drawings of Tony Stark in the cockpit of his jet plane and things like that, because there wasn’t comic book art to fill it out. And on the Sub-Mariner stories, not enough Sub-Mariners had been published at that time, and so we did a whole bunch of original stories. When I met Stan Lee, he came up to visit us at Grantray-Lawrence Animation when we were doing the Marvel Super Heroes show, and he was there for an afternoon. We’re talking about artists, and Stan Lee says, “You know, the Marvel artist is a particular kind of artist. If Alex Raymond walked into the office looking for work, I wouldn’t hire him.” And I thought, “Okay...”. [In] this one room, there was a card with WinsorNewton Series 7 #2 brushes, and the way we always tested a brush is you pulled it off the card and you licked it. If you liked the point, that’s the one you took. And I’ve never forgotten. Doug Wildey pulls out this brush and he goes, “This stuff is sh*t!” Now, that’s 1967 or ’68. I would kill for some of that 1960s crap. And it cost an amazing two dollars and fifty cents. So I got to learn different inking techniques by inking Doug Wildey, Herb Hazelton, and Mel Keefer, and a lot of these people. Mike would occasionally let me pencil stuff for the cartoons. And then it was all done.

Alex Toth

When I moved to Southern California in April of 1965 from our home in Oregon, I looked in the telephone book the first week I was there and found Alex Toth. I wanted to meet Alex, whose work I liked. I knew that he was a Noel Sickles freak, and I had this stack of Noel Sickles’ Scorchy Smith daily comic strips that I’d collected. I called him up, and I introduced myself, and I said, “I’ve got these Scorchy Smith dailies by Noel Sickles. Would you like to have them?” And he said, “Yeah, come on out to the house.” So I show up at Alex Toth’s house. I stayed for eight hours! And, to the chagrin of his wife, I was invited to stay for dinner. And then, after dinner, we watched a Jonny Quest and he talked about working on that. Then a few months later, I’m a member of the Cartoonists Union and working on the Marvel Super Heroes. At a union meeting he walks by and says, “Hey, kiddo, what are you doing here?” And I say, “I’m paying my bills.”

Western Publishing

Through Russ Manning, I met guys like Sparky Moore and Mike Arens—names that are probably unknown to you, but they were the backbone of the production art done at Western Publishing for first Dell and then Gold Key comic books. Sparky Moore told me something that stuck with me my entire career. He said, “Mike, you get your first job on your ability, and every job after that on your dependability.” And on the basis of a letter from Chase Craig at Western Publishing, I got a mortgage as a freelancer to buy a house based on the fact that he said, “We set our clocks by Mike Royer.” I called up Russ and asked him if he needed more assisting, and he said, “Well, coincidentally, Western Publishing has asked me to produce more comics, and I told them the only way I could do it is if Mike assists me. But assisting is not enough money to support 14

him.” So I got a phone call from Western Publishing saying, “Would you like to come in and pick up some work?” So the very first thing I did for Western Publishing is I penciled a Superboy puzzle— he is flying away, about to be grabbed by a grizzly bear—that that painter in New York, George Wilson, painted. Then I started getting assignments with all their other stuff, and he’d let me pencil an occasional inside back cover, which in half of the comics wouldn’t be there because there would be an ad printed for that part of the country. I worked for an editor who I kept asking for penciling assignments, and he wanted me inking other people’s stuff, and so I never developed to be the kind of artist I wanted to be because I was always inking. But I had a wife and a family to support, and I had plenty of work. Mike Arens and Sparky Moore were doing primarily all the art in the HannaBarbera super-heroes and the Hanna-Barbera adventures, so I went to Chase and I said, “Look, Chase, it would be fun for me to try this. Why don’t you let me produce one of the issues? I’ll get the guys to do it, Sparky and Mike Arens, and then I’ll ink and letter it.” And he said, “Okay.” And with Sparky and Mike’s Arens’ permission, I drew the whole book, inked and lettered it, and he thinks Sparky and Mike Arens did it. But he wouldn’t give me pencil assignments.

come in tomorrow morning with your car and an empty trunk and take anything you want, because Monday the sheriff’s shutting us down. We’re bankrupt.”? It’s like, “Thank you, June!” Now, let me tell you how dumb I am. I go in on Saturday morning with an empty trunk, and I could have walked out with every piece of animation from Amazing Spider-Man. I thought, “Who wants this crap?” The only original art that had ever been sent out from Marvel was a Two-Gun Kid page that Jack had penciled and Dick Ayers had inked, and a Captain America that George Tuska had penciled and inked, and I took those. And then I always liked the way they had painted the title cards on the old Marvel Super Heroes, and so I took a folder of those home—and left all the rest of it because who would want this crap? Now, I’m famous for throwing crap away.

Jack Kirby

As a kid, I loved Jack’s work, but I didn’t pay any attention to the little boxes that said “a Simon and Kirby production.” I just knew that there was this one artist that I really loved his work. It was like all of us of a generation that loved Carl Barks, but didn’t know his name. And I was such a dumb kid that I didn’t bother to see who drew it. I just knew it was this artist I liked, who, by the Sixties, when I got interested in comic books again, I started seeing these Marvel books and stuff drawn by Jack Kirby, but it didn’t connect until I saw a fanzine which reproduced some of Jack’s undiluted pencils, and I went, “It’s that guy!” Chic Stone, Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott, all added parts of their own personality and the way they liked to draw things or ink things if they were doing their own work. So it still had the power of Jack Kirby, but it didn’t have, to me, the look of this artist that I remembered as a kid in the late Forties, early Fifties. I thought, why does no one ink what Jack has drawn? So with this thought in the back of my head, I continued with my career at Western Publishing and other places. I had been at work in my studio at the back of the garage, and I’m walking across the backyard and the phone rings in the kitchen. I run in and I answer the phone, I go, “Hello?” And he says, “Mike Royer? This is Jack Kirby. Alex Toth says you’re a pretty good inker. I’ve got something here I’d like you to ink. Can you come out to the house tomorrow?” Every time I’d left the house, I always took this little box of pens, brushes, ink, pencils, erasers, and stuff just in case, so I took this with me. Jack showed me the drawing, and it was the Marvelmania portrait page he

Almost Peter Parker

I got called by Grantray-Lawrence Animation, and, lo and behold, they’re going to do a Saturday morning Amazing Spider-Man show, and would like me to come in and come back to work. So I go in and I talk to the production manager, and it should have been a clue right away about what was going to happen. The production manager had been hired from the construction trade. I told him, “You know, I can only give you twenty hours a week, squeeze in twenty hours with all this other stuff I’m doing.” And he says, “Well, we can’t give you screen credit.” Now, I’m a naïve twenty-something. I’m a member of a Cartoonists Union #839 from the earlier stuff. If I’d been smart, I would have gone to the Union, told them that, and they would have jumped all over him, and my name would be on all twenty of those shows. I laid out one-third of them. That’s when Grant Simmons said, “I want you working directly with me, and I want you doing the voice of Spider-Man and Peter Parker.” And then Lawrence says, “No, it all goes to Trillium in Canada.” Grantray-Lawrence was Grant Simmons and Ray Patterson, who directed, earlier in their career, Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM; and Robert Lawrence was the money man in New York. June Patterson, Ray’s wife, was the head of the story department, and she had five writers. Every episode except one were two different stories, and one episode that’s the full twenty-some minutes, is Electro, Green Goblin, and Rhino who escape from prison. I laid out that whole show. But she would have all five writers take the synopsis for one of those stories and write a script. Five scripts, and she would pick the one she wanted. Now, is it surprising that Grant Simmons calls me up on a Friday afternoon and says, “Mike, 15

did of himself sitting at the board with all of his characters swirling off, out of his hand. And I said, “Okay. Is tomorrow soon enough?” And he says, “Well, why don’t you do it here?” And I’m going, “Oh, my God.” Every twenty minutes Jack would walk in and look over my shoulder, and I am intimidated when people watch me work, anyway. We broke for lunch, and Roz made sandwiches. And it was like I was with my cousins or something. That’s the way the Kirbys were. So I guess this was my tryout. I don’t remember him saying anything other than, “This works,” or, “This is okay.” And, at the same time, Mark [Evanier] was going to work at this little outfit called Marvelmania, which this drawing was done for, and that was shortly after he’d met Jack. I did several other pieces for Jack that were Marvelmania items, and I also inked his Toys for Tots with the Marines and Spider-Man, and a lot of noncomic-book stuff. I saw Alex Toth shortly after that first meeting with Jack Kirby at a collector’s house in one of the beach communities, and I said, “Oh, everybody, Jack Kirby said to say hello.” And Alex pulled me aside and he said, “What the hell are you doing telling everybody that Jack Kirby’s here?” And I said, “Well, Jack told me to.” Alex thought it would be a secret until Jack announced it, and, in a way, that was Jack announcing it. I got a phone call from [Jack] at some point in ’70, and he says, “Mike, I’m flying back to New York City. I’ve got something in mind, I can’t tell you about it, but you’re part of it.” And I thought, “What is he talking about?” A few days later I got a call from Maggie Thompson saying, “Mike! What’s this I hear that Jack has quit Marvel and gone to DC?” And I said, “Beats me.” Then as soon as he got back from New York, he called me and he says, “Mike, I’ve left Marvel and I’m going to DC. You were part of the plan, but they wouldn’t go for it.”

New York

I learned earlier that the attitude in New York was that the world ended at the Hudson River. I think, in a way, that actually bothered Russ Manning, and I always felt that Russ kind of carried that with him, that New York didn’t think he was good enough. I find that the New York comic book companies never wanted to acknowledge the fact that Western Publishing, which had offices in New York but the bulk of their stuff was done on the West Coast, outsold them every month. It’s a funny thing about those 16

attitudes, and about what they thought they were producing and what was great about it. And to the chagrin of the people at DC in New York who assumed that I would fail, I didn’t. Well, they gave me work after they lost Jack back to Marvel, so I must have proved something. Roz used to tease me about the people who would write and say, “Who the hell is this Mike Royer?” And I wrote about that in one of my Afterwords, Forewords, Introductions, or whatever, in one of the reprint publications in the last few years, and I said that basically these people who were saying, “Who is Mike Royer?” had never seen undiluted Jack Kirby. I look at some of this stuff now and I go, “I inked three pages a day?” I look at some of those Demon double-page spreads and say, “That was two-thirds of a day’s work.” And it has to go back to that Forties and Fifties, and loving this artist, who I was not smart enough to find what his name was back then, that there was some kind of an affinity that when I was working with Jack, it just happened.

Temporarily Leaving Jack I’m standing at the top of Mount Whitney,

freezing, with my family, wife, three kids, five or six girl scout cadets, and their male leader. That’s why my wife and I were there, because they needed adult chaperones. And I looked out at all the tiny little specks that were towns and things, and I said, “I don’t want to have the rat race anymore. I want to slow down.” And I called Jack when I got back and I said, “Jack, is there any way I can only do part of the books?” And at the time it kind of shocked me, but Jack said, “Well, it’s all or nothing.” I know now even if there was somebody in the wings, Jack didn’t want different looks, comparisons, those kinds of things. So there was a two or threemonth period there, I don’t even know how I got back to working with him. Maybe he asked me, or I called him up and ate crow or whatever, but in that three months I did a 44-page Jane album for that group that was doing the Tarzan stuff, and I did other things. And I wrote 33 pages of a 44-page Tarzan album that Russ Manning had started. I still have my tissue layouts that I gave to Russ with indications and the panel sizes, and bless his heart, Russ drew it the way I boarded it in my script. It’s never been published in English, darn it. But I got to do some other things and stretch my wings, and I really don’t honestly remember whether Jack called me and asked me if I was interested in doing anything, but suddenly I’m doing everything again.

Beyond Kirby

Only one other artist did I ever ink more than three pages a day, and that was Ramona Fradon on a Plastic Man. I did five pages a day on that Plastic Man. And Mark [Evanier] told me one time afterwards, he was in New York and Ramona Fradon told him that she loved the work I did. That’s the first time she’d ever seen anybody ink Ramona Fradon without changing it. I still wanted to hear that from her. The first year she was a guest at Comic-Con, I walked over to her table, introduced myself, and she said, “You’re the

first person that ever inked me [the right way]. If I were still drawing comics, I’d want you inking me.” She’s a grand lady. I had a bit of an argument with the late John Verpoorten, who was the production manager at Marvel. They sent me two Ka-Zars, one at a time, that were penciled by Don Heck. Now, one of the things that I had an ability at was to ape other people’s styles, which is why I never really found my place in the firmament until I started drawing funny animals and realized, “That’s me.” But whoever I inked, I wanted it to look like they had inked it. So I did everything I could to keep my personality out of it. I get a book of Don Heck’s pencils, and I like Don Heck’s work. So when I inked it, when it was finished, it pretty much looked like Don Heck had done it. After the second book, Verpoorten called me and he says, “You know, I’m really unhappy about those books.” And I said, “Why?” He says, “Well, I really wanted you to do a Joe Sinnott embellishment.” And I said, “Well, there’s two things you didn’t tell me, John: Number one, that that’s what you wanted, and number two, how much extra you were going to pay me.” Mike Friedrich wrote a Ka-Zar that was drawn by Paul Reinman, and Mike asked me to please redraw, from scratch, three of the pages. I had fun because Sheena was tied to a stake, and heaving breasts and that kind of crap, you know, that all male cartoonists like to do. We’re just adolescents at heart. So these three pages are totally Mike Royer. And guess what? When the inker got his one-third share of the inks, which three pages weren’t there? Paul Reinman kept them. I don’t know if Jack was slowing down, but for some reason I had the opportunity when Russ called me and said, “I’m going to do the Star Wars strip. Would you like to ink every daily and Sunday Star Wars, and letter it? Would you like to ink and letter everything on the Tarzan Sunday pages?” And I said, “Well, this is the X number of dollars I want each week,” and he said, “Okay.” And I don’t know if I talked to Jack about it, but it wasn’t a case that Jack says, “Well, damn you for leaving me.” It was well wishes, and I think he realized that I didn’t always want to be Jack Kirby’s inker, because he always said do your own thing, you know?

Magnum to work, or quit. So I took the boss to lunch and over a glass of wine I shook her hand and I said, “You know how I’ve always said life’s an adventure?” And she says, “Yeah, you say that all the time.” I said, “Well, I’m going to live it. I’m quitting.” She blacklisted me at the studio. I didn’t do another job for consumer products for seven years. But the Disney Stores called me and said, “Please work for us. You’ll never be out of work. You don’t have to come in. Just fax it all.” In the seven years that I worked for the Disney Stores, they bought everything I did. Seven wonderful years, the most financially rewarding and, more important, the most creative years of my entire career, were working as that independent contractor for the Disney Stores, and also having time to moonlight for Warner Brothers. At Hanna-Barbera, I helped produce a Jonny Quest licensing guide. I did 90% of the drawings. Every drawing they had ever had of Doug Wildey’s from way back in the Sixties that wasn’t finished, I completed it, and did new art in his style—a great time in my life. My wife and I would start the day with a cup of coffee and we’d talk about ideas. She’d like to go to antique malls. We used to tell people that she collects antiques, and I’m ten years older than her, I’m her first. We’d go out to a mall and there’d be an old Jack and Jill book on a little easel, and they’re standing on a little covered bridge looking at the water. She says, “Why don’t you do Pooh and Piglet on the bridge?” Well, what I did was Pooh and Piglet sitting on a log, fishing in a wooden barrel. But she would give me springboards, and it was a great time in my life. And I discovered that, at Disney, my bag was funny animals. Since 1979 I must have drawn 12 million napkins with Mickey, Goofy, Tigger, and Eeyore. But you get great service from waitresses that way. H

Disney

In those months that I was inking and lettering both the comic strips, Russ never got the full complement of stuff to me, so I wasn’t making the money I thought I’d be making. Russ was late with Star Wars, and the Black Falcon office across from the entrance of the old Universal Studios was complaining that he was late, so, bless his heart, he would say, “Oh, that’s my assistant’s fault.” But I would drive out to Modjeska Canyon to pick up work that had been scheduled, on the phone. I would come out on Tuesday to pick up more work, and I’d get there, and his wife would say, “Oh, Russ and Roger are out fishing.” So, after several weeks of never making the week’s income that I had agreed to, I got a call from Sparky Moore saying, “They’re looking for some freelancers at Disney in the comic strip division. Why don’t you take in some samples?” So I did a week’s worth of Mickey Mouse daily strips that were horribly offmodel, and took them in and met with the head of the department, Don McLaughlin. And he gave me some inking assignments on one of their Christmas strips and something else, and gave me an assignment to pencil a Mickey Mouse story. I’d only penciled a few pages of the Mickey Mouse story and he called me up and he says, “Would you like to come in and talk about your future?” And I thought, “Oh, it’s going to be a steady gig! It’s a comic strip that he’ll let me ink or something!” And I walked in and he says, “How would you like to come on staff?” And in less time than it takes to tell, I said, “Yes!” He asked me what I wanted a week, and I told him, and he says, “Well, we’ll give you more than that.” When I left the staff job at Disney, it was either take a .44 17

Gallery Being a gallery of Kirby one-shots—sometimes two—by Shane Foley (*with thanks to Tom Hanks for making “That Thing You Do”)

(pages 18-19) Stuntmen Stuntman isn’t a oneshot—but he comes close. The evolution of Kirby’s art style is hardly more prominently displayed than in these two versions of him. In the unfinished “Jungle Lord” page from 1946, we see lithe, supple figurework, no penciled blacks, and decorative, slightly irregular panel shapes. The stylized anatomy, energy and action, wonderful choreography, and ease of flow for the reader are already a Kirby staple. In the 1979 pin-up, all suppleness has been replaced by steel-like mass and strength, and his blacks are an integral part of the composition. It’s owned by the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of NebraskaLincoln, as part of the Dan Howard collection, donated by the painter and lifelong comics enthusiast. It measures 22 1/8 × 15 inches (56.2 × 38.1 cm). (pages 20-21) Manhunters Similar observations are seen in the Manhunter pieces. In 1942, Adventure Comics #73 (a tie for the first ever Simon-Kirby cover for DC with Star-Spangled Comics #7) shows brushed inking (whether by Simon or Kirby) that is already as much to emphasize tension and energy as it is dynamic lighting and muscle. By 1975, in this one-shot Manhunter feature (First Issue Special #5, page 16), his bulked-up figures now use those blacks to punch forward the action and strengthen clarity, with little conservative regard for light source. If only Jack had continued this feature!

(pages 22-23) Fantastic Foursomes

The second page features storyboards from “A Monster Among Us”, the first 1978 animated FF story. The story was a reworking of “The Infant Terrible”, a one-shot protagonist from FF #24 (March 1964).

The FF—a one-shot? Nah! But the first piece is a kind of ‘one-off’. It looks to be part of a story (otherwise, why the suited stranger?)—but which one? Sue has a nice graceful turn that is often absent from Jack’s later work. And what a beautifully designed chair! This art was purchased at a Los Angeles convention in 1981, and later authenticated and signed by Jack. Unfortunately, neither Jack nor Roz Kirby could recall the underlying story or why it was drawn.

Both pieces are beautiful examples of Kirby pencils that are not total roughs, but not quite finished either, being incomplete and unpolished—perfect for any art student to pore over!

Two pages from short-lived 1975 DC features—one a genuine “one-shot!”

shot of the scene so the reader knows where he is and what’s happened. Then the story continues—another medium shot and then the action continues, another closeup being called for.

This “Avenger” page (Justice Inc. #2, page 7) is a nice example of Kirby’s staging and direction. It starts with a medium shot of the action, followed by three close-ups of activity: An extreme close-up, followed by a less extreme close-up of more action, then a quick change of direction to a close-up of the source of the action unseen in the previous panel. After these shots, Kirby suddenly pulls away for a medium-long high

With the “Atlas” one-shot (First Issue Special #1, page 1), Kirby began a series that had huge potential for his imagination—but it wasn’t to be. Editor John Morrow says, “Wish Jack had done three complete Atlas (or Manhunter) stories, like he did three Dingbats stories.” I wholeheartedly agree! Imagine creating characters like Manhunter and Atlas—then doing no more than one strip of each! What a loss to Kirby lovers!

(pages 24-25) Two-Shots

(pages 26-27) Hot Shots

practice at the time. Expressive, character-filled action without a super-hero in sight! The inks and letters show Kirby’s dialogue and Mike Royer’s faithfulness—as well as Jack’s ability to capture the likeness of gangster Abe Reles (“Kid Twist”), a real-life member of Murder, Inc.

Thankfully, 1971’s In The Days of the Mob is no longer a one-shot, with Kirby’s fully completed second issue finally published a couple of years ago. This page from #2 was photocopied before there was any dialogue added, which was not Kirby’s usual

(pages 28-29) Circus Troupes The circus trappings of late Mister Miracle were a novelty at the time. But that motif got reused in the Ruby-Spears animation project Roxie’s Raiders, by Steve Gerber and

Kirby. These full and tightly rendered pencils on the Mister Miracle splash (#11, page 1, Nov. 1972) contrast the really loose one-off and unused 1980s Roxie’s storyboards.

sharp POV changes that keep the movement vibrant but never confusing to the reader. Panel 1 is extraordinary—with the readers’ eye led to the dominant figure at the right by the small crowd in the sky and the swirling line below it. If the reader’s eye wanders around the panel, it is enticed down the huge arm then, when blocked by the

(pages 30-31) Fast Guys At only two appearances, Fastbak of New Genesis is almost a one-shot! From New Gods #5 (Oct. 1971), second feature page 3, Kirby extreme action fills the page with

massive curve of the head, sent straight back up that arm. These two subliminal lines (the horizontal through the crowd, and the slanted up the arm) form an arrow, which pushes the reader’s eye directly to the figure of Fastbak, in the next panel—exactly where Kirby wants the reader to go. Brilliant!

Fifteen years later, in this Jan. 1986 Super Powers II, #5 work for DC, the figure work is not nearly so strong, and, forced to attempt to look more ‘modern’, Jack reverts to panel arrangements from the ’40s. Energetic blacks, however, are still his forte.

(pages 32-33) Sandmen

forced into evocative patterns to energize the story are pure Kirby. And they appear in six of the seven panels on this page!

So we finish where we started—with two versions of similarly-named characters thirty years apart. Since Kirby (as far as we know) didn’t pencil in blacks at this early stage of his career, he must have been heavily involved with the brushwork on this feature (Adventure Comics #86, page 4, May 1943). Those swirling and dynamic shadows

Contrast that with the page from 1975 (Sandman #1, page 15), the final Simon & Kirby collaboration, where once again the Sandman helps a kid—but this time, it’d be the same kid for the book’s full run of seven issues. H

Zap-Out!

World’s Finest

Relive that magical day when Frank Zappa met Jack Kirby, by Jeff Newelt (a.k.a. Jahfurry) (throughout) Examples of a proposed early 1980s Valley Girl newspaper strip that Jack prepared, at the urging of Frank Zappa. (below) Photo of Zappa and Kirby by Michael James Zuccaro. (next page, bottom) Illustration of a very Kirbyesque Super-Zappa by Rick Veitch, originally done for this article in Royal Flush magazine.

[For a living, Jeff Newelt (a.k.a. Jahfurry) does social media and PR for some pretty cool clients, and is minister of hype for webcomics collective ACT-IVATE. Look for @ jahfurry on twitter.]

[This article was originally published in Royal Flush Magazine #6 (October 13, 2009); graphic design by Josh Bernstein. Thanks to Randy Klauzer for turning us on to this article! See the original at http://royalflushmagazine.com/ news-events/news/zappa_meets_kirby/#.WfDujY5ryV5]

neurs, and one lady says, “Yer not one of those comics people, are you? My husband’s one, Steve Sherman.” D’OH! Steve Sherman was one of Kirby’s fabled assistants! I reached out to Steve and turns out Jack and Frank Zappa were not only pals, but also essentially neighbors. How was this friendship kept secret so long? A mere week later, I wind up having drinks with fellow Flusher Paul Pope and none other than Frank’s youngest son, Ahmet Zappa! We learned all about Kingdom Comics, the new graphic novel line Ahmet was helming for Disney. Contextual rewind: Not just a comics impresario, Ahmet’s been rocking in different media since he was a wee young lad. He was lead singer/songwriter in Z, a band he formed with his brother Dweezil in the early ’90s, an actor on Roseanne and Growing Pains and in films such as Pump up the Volume and Jack Frost, and most recently hosted VH1’s But Can They Sing?. So I had to show Ahmet my Blackberry screensaver, the image I had found of his dad and Jack together, and Ahmet goes, “Whoa, I never saw that! That’s in my living room… Jack would come over and smoke cigars and Frank would smoke cigarettes, and they’d talk and talk.” One of the things Frank and Jack had in common: The prodigious amount of cosmic goodness that extruded from their respective noggins was not the result of drugs; they both enjoyed tobaccy but only the unwacky. We had other stuff to discuss that evening, so I made Ahmet promise to reconnect asap to spill the magic beans on this egregiously undocumented duo. And he kept his promise.

I’

ve always been a sucker for the big team-up: Superman/Shazam. Hulk/Thing. Chocolate and peanut butter. So when I came across a photo of Jack Kirby and Frank Zappa embracing, my synapses started firing like the FBI at Waco. Were they friends? Did they hang? Play action figures together? WTF! I had to know. For those not so in-the-know as us ubergeekanoids, Jack Kirby was the visionary artist who created The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Thor, Silver Surfer, Captain America… the Marvel universe sprang forth from his (and writer Stan Lee’s) head. In the ’70s, Jack went solo, rocking out idiosyncratic cosmic characters—the New Gods, OMAC, Forever People, Eternals, Devil Dinosaur, Kamandi, Demon, all nutty, jazzy, psychedelically mythic stuff. Frank Zappa was a musical iconoclast and genius composer/producer/guitar player. He wove together humor, avant-garde classical guitar-rock, doo-wop, dada, jazz-fusion, and political satire, hired the badassest musicians, and rolled with world leaders like Czech playwright/philosopher Vaclav Havel. His songs are like audio comic books, hypervisual with colorful characters and scenarios like “Camarillo Brillo,” which includes the lines “She had a snake for a pet / and an amulet / and she was breeding a dwarf / But she wasn’t done yet / She had gray-green skin / A doll with a pin / I told her she was awright / But I couldn’t come in.” Sounds just like a character out of Kirby’s Demon. Jack and Frank, both universe builders, one music, the other, comics. But what was the connection? Fast-forward to present day. I’m at a conference in New Mexico teaching social media to female entrepre-

Ahmet, one of four Zappa kids, the other three being Moon Unit (the oldest), Dweezil (second oldest), and Diva (youngest), was always into super-heroes his entire life. “I loved Spider-Man; it’s the jam,” gushed Ahmet. “My dad loved comics and was the first to advertise rock n’ roll in comics, for We’re Only In It For The Money [in Fantastic Four #72, 1968, Natch!]. My mother made Dweezil and I costumes of Spider-Man and The Mighty Thor.” The son of a gregarious rock star, Ahmet grew up meeting every celebrity musician under the 34

sun. But it wasn’t a rocker who gave Ahmet that first feeling of being around greatness. “I was not starstruck at all by rock stars because music is its own language and my father spoke it, so we spoke it,” Ahmet explains matter-of-factly. “This totally demystified the fame or the celebrity. There was no currency for ‘oooh, that guy sold a million records’, we just cared about good music. One of the most significant moments in my life is when my dad said, ‘meet Jack, he’s the guy who created all those super-heroes you love.’ That blew my little mind. I thought it was awesome and weird that my dad had this friendship with this guy. It was like meeting a real magician!” And Jack brought some presents for the kids, but oddly, they weren’t comics. “Actually, he first came over with these Mr. Men books, you know Mr. Tickle, Mr. Impossible… I thought they were fantastic, and was like ‘did you do these too?’ Weird. Dunno why he brought those instead of © 2017 Sanrio Co., Ltd. his own books, but later, of course, he wound up giving us comics too. Jack gave me this Silver Surfer book. I didn’t know what to make of this silver dude on a surfboard; it didn’t make any sense, but he was super cool. This was around the time Empire [Strikes Back, 1980] came out and was huge, and I remember Jack confided in Frank that he felt like the stories he created helped shape the Star Wars saga, that he saw direct parallels

between his characters and the movie’s story arcs.” Of all rock stars in the world, Zappa, famously an outspoken champion of free speech and artist’s rights, was the ultimate sympathetic ear. “He told my dad stuff like, ‘Darth Vader was Doctor Doom and the Force is the Source’ and that George Lucas ripped him off. Now this you may not know, and I was only a kid, but I remember learning at the dinner table that my dad was asked to write the music for Star Wars; he turned it down, he said he wasn’t interested. That would’ve been really strange, the lives of us Star Wars fans woulda taken a different turn, and that whole score woulda sounded like Tatooine Cantina music.” Two powerful worlds that happened to collide one special night in 1980. A friendship began and a mutual bond was formed. These two titans are now sadly no longer with us, but their spirit lives on now through their family keeping tradition alive. The only regret, readers, is that we’ll never get to visit the parallel universe where Frank Zappa actually got to score Star Wars: The place called the Fourth World. H 35

Boydisms 1

A Mighty Marvel Three-Pac by Jerry Boyd

(next page, top) Bashful Benjamin gets stymied by Klaw in FF #56 (Nov. 1966). (next page, bottom left) The Inhumans were given a lot of page space from 1965-’69. The occupants of the Great Refuge had their problems, and the Master of Sound was about to be a problem anew for the world’s most fabulous foursome. (next page, bottom right) The human Klaw comes to an end at the conclusion of FF #53 (Aug. 1966).

1966

was a magical year for this Kirby fan. That Spring and Summer, the first Marvel Super Heroes Bubble Gum Card set showed up for me at a Mom-&-Pop store in my native North Carolina. I was floored! My mother bought me a few of the 5-cent packs, and I wanted that great cards box also, but the counterman gently smiled and told me that, “Most every child in the neighborhood has asked me about that box, son. But, if you’re here when all the card packs have been sold, it’s yours. First come, first serve.” Some kid beat me to it. I didn’t get the box until eBay had one in my price range 51 years later, (sheesh!) but that was okay. Then the mini-books froze me in my tracks once my family had left N.C. for D.C. at the end of that Summer. My mother was buying groceries at this odd place called Safeway, which had a conveyor belt for speeding bought-and-bagged groceries outside to the customers. At the counters were bubble gum machines with Marvel mini-books. Thor, Captain America, Spider-Man, even Millie

the Model was inside the little plastic bubbles! What was going on? Well, Mighty Marvel was on the march again! And the other gem of that year was the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons on afternoon television! My after-school sojourn went on too long for me to get home and catch them (except for school-free holidays, naturally), but these three one-shots were… Marvel-ous! But the most wonderful magic of them all, of course, was buying Jack Kirby comics in the drugstore. And those events came with a great regularity.

“The Routine”

For those who weren’t buying Stan and Jack’s Marvels in the 1960s, “the routine” went something like this—at least for this enthusiastic fan. I’d check and double-check my allowance in my pants pocket (not wanting to be “financially embarrassed” when it was purchase time) as I walked into the drugstore. My kid brother was just behind me and my mom was headed in the opposite direction to get groceries—not at Safeway, but a store farther away in Maryland, so my brother and I could have a place to get our comics. Inside the pull-back double-doors, it was a short, straight walk to the magazine section, a section my sibling and I rarely really noticed, fixated as we were on the two spinner racks that stood just before it. Marvel Comics, DC’s offerings, Harvey Comics’ efforts, Tower Comics’ lineup, Archie’s gang, and Classics Illustrated material (good stuff, but only for book report aids, I thought then) were spread top to bottom in neat stacks against the spinner rack guards. While my brother sought out Harveys, I looked for Marvels. Only Millie the Model and Patsy Walker were beneath me, however, Millie would grow on me in just three years. Jack and Stan’s efforts were the prizes, with Lee and Colan’s Daredevil, Thomas and Buscema’s The Avengers, and Lee and Romita’s SpiderMan closely behind. The Fantastic Four was always at

(above) While Kirby characters reigned on TV, gum cards and mini-books, Jack snuck in some one-shot stories for Classics Illustrated, including this one for #161 (1961), inked by Dick Ayers. Classics Illustrated © Jack Lake Productions, Inc. or respective owner.

ck Of One-Shots the top of my wants, Thor next, and Captain America in Tales of Suspense—all were guaranteed to elicit a boyish gasp of excitement, no matter how cool I’d tried to act. When I came across the latest Kirby-Lee titles, I almost had to fight the temptation to jump ahead to the stories’ ends. Those cliffhangers were special, a wonderment in their own right which I’d come to treasure, though I knew I might miss the following chapters. Jack and Stan gave us some terrific villains, but the three one-shots I’ll go into now stand out strongly in memories today. Maybe they’re some of your favorites, also.

Fantastic Four #56

(Nov. 1966)

“Klaw, The Murderous Master Of Sound!” Yes, yes, I know. Klaw made his debut on the side of

malevolent Marveldom in FF #53, but that was the human side of him. The King would spotlight his new, inhuman incarnation in this one-time only edition. (Roy Thomas and assorted Avengers artists would keep Klaw busy after this.) Years ago, Klaw shot and killed the future Black Panther’s father, the Chieftain T’Chaka, in the back in “The Way It Began!” in #53’s flashback sequence, and attacking the Wakanda again, he was defeated by the Panther. But he wasn’t done. Leaping into his sound transformer, he promised to exact his vengeance on the Black Panther “…and

after him—anyone else I so choose!”. The lucky readers who didn’t require a parental car ride to their nearest comic outlet may have gotten confused by the contents of FF #54. No Klaw, after #53?! “So, what happened to him?” they may have asked. Lee and Kirby had an abundance of supporting stars to include, so much that some readers complained that the four main stars were being crowded out of their own mag. Jack and Stan did a superb job juggling new developments with old and keeping most of the fans satisfied. Still, Klaw’s metamorphosis wouldn’t be made known until most of our fabulous foursome was back in NYC (with Johnny and Wyatt Wingfoot still abroad). Jack gave Klaw a distinctive look—a black rectangle for a “nose”, bright red “skin”, and zigzag lines “hair” with the requisite Kirby briefs. Only the King could make this look work! 37

Klaw wanted to take the Invisible Girl hostage and perhaps destroy the others. A back-up plan included outright destruction of the team that helped the Black Panther defeat him, and to issue a challenge from the Baxter Building to the African Avenger-to-be. Mr. Fantastic outwits him, of course, armed with vibranium brands. Vibranium negates sonic waves. So, Klaw becomes Reed’s punching bag. It was all another LeeKirby-Sinnott-Simek blast! This bad person wouldn’t be used by Kirby anymore, but he’d go on to be the Panther’s #1 baddie, and one of the Masters of Evil, following this impressive one-shot.

Thor #135 (Dec. ’66) “The Maddening Mystery Of The Man-Beast!” As with FF #53 and

(above) Lon Chaney Jr. in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), and (right) Bela Lugosi in make-up for 1933’s The Island of Lost Souls as a scientifically created man-wolf. © Universal.

#56, a brief cliffhangerintro in Thor #134 gets things going for “the supreme evolution of the wolf”, our baddie of the month in #135. The High Evolutionary stands in as an inspired super-scientific take on acclaimed book writer H.G. Well’s Dr. Moreau from The Island of Dr. Moreau. Moreau had a motley crew of half-beast/half-people. Jack and Stan retooled this notion accordingly, to be a match for the Thunderer. The Knights of Wundagore, they were called, and nurse Jane Foster was recruited to be a nurturer-of-sorts/tutor to the Evolutionary’s bestial creations. The thunder god picks up her trail and follows her to a remote corner of Eastern Europe. While a number of the Evolutionary’s new men are commendable “people”, there are those ne’er-do-wells, and the born-sinister Man-Beast quickly becomes their leader. Everyone comes to blows. Despite the wolf-being’s futuristic battle skills and predatory instincts, the Son of Odin’s skillset is all-encompassing (time-wise) and our hero and the good creatures prevail. Again, this mighty effort was derivative of the Wells’ classic, and upon subsequent readings, I couldn’t help wondering why Stan and Jack chose ‘a wolf’ as their chief antagonist for the Thunderer. But there’s a clue. In the 1932 science-fiction/horror classic, Island of Lost Souls (adapted from the novel), the unforgettable Bela Lugosi portrayed “The Sayer of the Law,” who was both man and beast. That beastly part of him was a wolf. As the emissary of the other beast-men, he was the one Moreau addressed when he thought to remind his creations who the boss

was. Fairly passive, the Sayer is, and he repeats “the law” often. These laws keep the things in line, until the end of the movie… naturally. Jack told a group of fans in early 1993, “I worked late... [see TJKC #39 for the larger body of this talk] a lot of the time. The wife and kids would be asleep, and I’d draw with the television on. We got a lot of channels in New York and…. the late, late shows had it all! [chuckles] I’d watch the movies, Stan would watch them at his home… and we’d get ideas! [more chuckles] In 1989 at Oakland, California’s WonderCon, Stan concurred. “Ideas… for characters and stories came from everywhere at times. Old radio shows, the late show on TV, novels, and plays. Jack and I would watch TV late at night and the next day, if we had a scheduled story conference, we might incorporate a giant monster or a tree-thing or whatever—with our own spin on it, of course, into our stories.” Universal Studios sold prints of their old monster movies to TV in the late 1950s. This was the famed Shock Theater package, fondly remembered by Baby Boomers who got their first, terrified looks at Dracula, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, the Creature From the Black Lagoon… and the Wolf Man. Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man was much more dangerous and feral than the Lugosi-wolf. Perhaps Kirby and Lee merged the two, added the requisite tights in the visual, ditched the fur (the Code was still staunchly anti-werewolf in ’66), and went futuristic with the rest of it. The result? The Super Beast was just that—a super one-shot villainous treat!

Tales Of Suspense #84 (December 1966)

“The Super-Adaptoid!” Oddly, the Super-Adaptoid was a one-shot in

three stages. Stan and Jack started him off as a milkwhite, featureless automaton who bedeviled Captain America in Tales of Suspense #82. Standing in as the trusted Avengers Mansion butler Jarvis, the Adaptoid employed a drugged cup of coffee to make the StarSpangled Avenger believe he was reliving his war experiences. (Far-fetched perhaps, but we’re talking comics, and the creators always made these things work.) In TOS #83, the Adaptoid has used his adaptable body

to look exactly like the costumed Steve Rogers’, but his timing could’ve been better. The Tumbler smashes through a window and he wants to establish a rep in underworld circles by defeating Captain America! He almost does; the Adaptoid doesn’t have the years of battle experience Rogers does and the ersatz Cap takes a beating, even with the real shield-slinger’s shield as protection. The real deal wakes up and is furious when he confronts the Tumbler. He gives him a real shellacking as the fake tries to get his feet under him in another room. The fight ends with a beaten Tumbler. In #84, the silvery-white mechanoid is stretched out before 39

(previous page, top) The end of Thor #134 (Nov. 1966) provided the intro and origin of Man-Beast. (previous page, bottom) Jack manipulates the action expertly on this Thor #135 page (Dec. ’66). (above) The Tumbler sought to make his rep by tackling Cap in TOS #83 (Nov. 1966).

(right) “It” wasn’t Jarvis after all—the Adaptoid reveals its true self at the end of Tales of Suspense #82 (Oct. 1966). (below) The real Captain America mixes it up with one big, green machine in TOS #84 (Dec. 1966).

the summoned Goliath, Hawkeye, and the Wasp. Cap explains as best he can what he believes to have happened. All this time, the android is seemingly oblivious to all, but it’s quietly drawing on the strengths and abilities of the four Assemblers. As Cap muses alone later about what’s happened, the now SuperAdaptoid strikes. As huge as Goliath, armed with Hawkeye’s quiver and arrows (like I said, it’s comics, so don’t ask where they came from!), and wings like the winsome Wasp, he takes on his target in full strength! Cap knows he can’t match up against the power of Hank Pym, so he holds him off for a while, employing the great skills he’s honed for years. Then he tricks the creature into taking flight by taunting him about his wings, figuring the adaptoid to be a stranger to trickery. The ruse works. There’s a battle above the city skyscrapers, and ol’ Winghead manages to break the android’s grip and escapes him by angling his body above the river. He falls expertly and his enemy believes him dead. Not wanting to give up its unnatural life yet, it decides to get away and not report back to its masters at A.I.M. Captain America’s “triumph” on this stage is not only his very survival, but getting away from his more powerful foe means he’s denied A.I.M. a huge opportunity to give other adaptoids a chance to absorb his unique capabilities. Jack and Stan left the Super-Adaptoid after this one-shot, but the super baddie would show up again to menace the X-Men (and a guy who had all their powers—the Mimic!), and later the Avengers assembled! This one, in my opinion, was one of Steve Roger’s finest hours. He didn’t win outright, as he’d done at Graymoor Castle with Bucky in a wartime saga, or against the Red Skull when the masked fascist obtained the Cosmic Cube, but he won, and in just surviving the attack of a more powerful foe, he kept its creators from a huge win. Jack and Stan were well aware that they needed to steer away from a DC-like ‘super man’, a character so powerful it was tough for creators to dream up menaces for him. Even Thor had his limitations… and because of them, he had a far superior villain corps to deal with, than say, Superman and the Spectre. Other Marvel-ous characters also just survived. That’s what life is all about under some circumstances… just surviving. The Lee and Kirby team reminded us of that in subtle ways via their heroes, heroines, and supporting characters. Good work, guys. These examples of menacing might mean a lot to this reader. It’s still incredible to me that so much good work poured from this twosome during those years. And they never got back to these titanic baddies—they went on to other triumphs! Three one-shots from 1966—Klaw, the Super Beast, and the SuperAdaptoid—were villainous masterpieces from a magical time. H 40

INNERVIEW

The Old Master The “Kirbyverse”: Last hurrah for Jack, by Mark Voger

(right) Kirby originally created Satan’s Six in the late 1970s, and drew eight pages, that remained in pencil form until Topps came calling in the early 1990s. They had a slew of top artists each ink a page. Here’s Joe Sinnott’s prime work on it. (below) Mike Royerinked presentation piece for Satan’s Six.

[Author’s Note: Here is an interview I did with Jack Kirby in 1993, at the time of Topps’ Comics “Kirbyverse” line. Much of it ran in Comics Scene Spectacular magazine at the time, and some of it in my alma mater, The Asbury Park Press.]

“K

IRBY IS BACK!” screamed advertisements for Topps’ line of Jack Kirby-created titles, which began to appear in comic shops in 1993. Like so many pop-culture events of the ’90s, the “Kirbyverse” line was kind of exciting, but ultimately fell short of classic status. Kind of exciting because it was “new” stuff from the old master—in fact, several old masters. Initially announced were four new titles (that number would be doubled), with contributions from some of Kirby’s old Marvel Comics contemporaries such as Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers and Don Heck, as well as younger artists like Frank Miller and Todd McFarlane. The announced talent included Gary Friedrich, John Severin and Ayers on Bombast; Roy Thomas and Ditko on Captain Glory; and Gerry Conway and Heck on NightGlider. Satan’s Six promised eight pages of Kirby pencils with inks by Miller, Joe Sinnott, Terry Austin, Mike Royer and Ditko, plus a cover by Kirby and McFarlane. (Nowhere in the preview material did it mention that the eight Kirby pages were not exactly new—something Kirby freely admitted when we spoke in a February 1993 interview.) During a call from his Thousand Oaks, California home, Kirby was friendly and funny, though his replies seemed more casual and pragmatic than substantive or revelatory. Try as I might, I couldn’t

get him to talk about the old days. This felt like a case of talking to a guy who had nothing to prove. Kirby’s wife, Roz, was also on the line—not to talk, but to gently jog her husband’s memory every now and then. Kirby spoke about the Topps deal, his opinion of modern comics, his TV cameo alongside Bob Newhart, and his long love affair with Roz. MARK VOGER: What do you think of comics today? JACK KIRBY: Comics today, I think, are wonderful. They get better paper. [laughs]They have a wide variety of stories. They’re great to look at, but I haven’t got the time to read too many of them. But they’re extremely well done. And extremely well-produced. The young people that are engaged in putting them out, I think, have good concepts. It’s a larger world with a larger series of happenings and prospects, and that’s reflected in the books. VOGER: What do you think of the world today? KIRBY: I think that the world can be very, very

turbulent and very, very dangerous, considering the way these atom bombs are sold in all directions. So there’s a little ominous cast to the world today. But I look forward to people being sensible. I hope the next generation forgets about whatever can spoil things for the world. I like to see people happy. All kinds of people. We’ve been through a lot of trials and tribulations, and we deserve whatever happiness the future can bring us. I’m a guy with grandchildren, and I suppose there are a lot of other fellas with grandchildren, and I want a safe world for all of them. So I look forward to people using common sense, and keeping the kind of tranquil world that will help people prosper, keep people happy.

VOGER: I haven’t, of course, seen the Topps books yet, because they come out in April. But you created all of the characters for them?

VOGER: What do fans say to you when they meet you?

KIRBY: Yes, I created the initial characters. They may go on from there from the original format.

KIRBY: They stand around and stare at me. [laughs] I guess I’m sort of a mythic figure, because of my length in the field. I’ve been in the field a very, very long time. I try to put people at their ease. Actually, I have a wonderful time with them.

VOGER: The books are called Bombast, Captain Glory, Nightglider and Satan’s Six. Do they relate to each other? Are they all in the same universe?

VOGER: Was it fun playing yourself in an episode of Bob Newhart’s show?

KIRBY: No, not Satan’s Six. The others are related. They’re genuine action characters. Satan’s Six are a little more subtle.

KIRBY: That was a lot of fun, yes. Bob Newhart is a wonderful guy, and so was everybody in his cast. They treated us very well. We grew fond of the entire experience.

VOGER: And that’s the one you penciled eight pages and the cover for?

VOGER: What can you tell us about your new work with Topps?

KIRBY: Yes.

KIRBY: Well, I work more or less as a concept man. I’m essentially an idea man. What I do is create ideas that can be expanded into bestselling books.

VOGER: How was it to draw again? Have you kept in practice? Was it easy to get it back? KIRBY: Oh, sure. I did them quite a while ago anyway. I don’t do much since those days. I more or less concentrate on creating things. But I’ve got a lot of things around the house which I’ve drawn and created through the years. Topps will be doing a lot of that stuff. VOGER: How did the deal happen? Did they give you a call, or did you call them? KIRBY: They called me. We got together, and it was a very equitable deal. It turned out very, very nicely. I get along with the Topps people. We’re just going fine. VOGER: Have you seen any of the books yet? KIRBY: They’ve just sent us copies of the script. But the books’ll be done by the top-notch artists in the field. They’ll probably be very, very exciting. VOGER: A couple of the artists are newer people such as Frank Miller and Todd McFarlane. These are people who have always expressed a love for 42

(top row) Each first issue of the “Secret City Saga” books contained one “Kirbychrome” trading card, printed with metallic foil stamping. Below is an uncut press sheet recently acquired by TJKC editor John Morrow, and the Kirbychrome cover to Secret City Saga #0. (bottom left) Jack makes his cameo appearance on the January 22, 1993 episode “You Can’t Win” from the shortlived Bob Newhart sitcom Bob, in a scene that involved a fictitious comic book awards ceremony. © Paramount Television.

your work. KIRBY: I know that. They’re wonderful young people. But they’re also very professional. They do a great job in their own right. Frank Miller’s a good friend. These people do a wonderful job. I have every confidence that they’ll just do a great job on whatever material is supplied to them. VOGER: Do you have a moment in your career that you think of as your greatest accomplishment? KIRBY: Yes, well, my 50th wedding anniversary (in 1992) was a highpoint of my life. I enjoyed that immensely, because I love my wife. Our meeting was like a storybook meeting. She’s made my life wonderful. I get carried away. My wife thinks I’m too sentimental. VOGER: Do you have any thoughts on the hereafter? KIRBY: Somehow, I tend to believe it. I believe the Bible. I guess I come from that kind of a background, where people like to believe the best of things. I think the Bible can keep us on an even keel. I think there’s a lot of truth in the Bible, practical truth. I think it keeps man from descending into utter chaos. VOGER: You’ve heard this before, Jack, but thanks so much for the many wonderful books you’ve drawn. KIRBY: Well, I thank you for reading my material and I thank you for liking it. Any good testimony I get, I’ll take. H [Newspaper columnist Mark Voger is the author of The Dark Age: Grim, Great & Gimmicky Postmodern Comics; Hero Gets Girl! The Life & Art of Kurt Schaffenberger; and Monster Mash: The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze In America, 1957-1972, all from TwoMorrows Publishing. His latest TwoMorrows book GROOVY! When Flower Power Bloomed in Pop Culture is now available nationwide.] 43

Boydisms 2

(this page & next) Orion fights for Earth, but Brola’s battling for his sinister master in New Gods #2 (April 1971). Brola made his first and last cover appearance on that issue. (next page, bottom) Detective O’Ryan discovers the slain Seagrin in New Gods #4 (Aug. 1971).

The Gods Themselves!

by Jerry Boyd

war was brewing… in Jack Kirby’s mind. He had the beginnings of an interstellar conflict; one which would be described (in blurbs to come) as, “Intrigue! Vengeance! Blazing confrontations that dwarf the infinite!” This war would be fought on a grand scale—there’d be skirmishes among the stars and the noble, upstanding immortals would see their world invaded by the evil aggressors of their sister planet, and that aggression would bring about counter-attacks… as large and technologically advanced as Jack could imagine and pencil them. But by and large, the main theater of war would

be the planet Earth… so that Earthlings reading these comics could have characters with whom to identify. And weren’t Earthlings… mere mortals, always caught between ultimate beings of astounding powers? Adam and Eve were caught between their loving creator/God and the lies of the fallen angel, Satan. Jack had to figure it out. His ‘new gods’ needed to be fresh and exciting, yet archetypes—familiar to students of mythology, as if they’d existed for eons. And wars meant gatherings of armies, also, like the Third U.S. Army which included a young Jacob Kurtzberg, PFC First Class, assigned to disembark on the Normandy beachhead in 1944. “Armies mean lots of soldier boys and lots of drawing,” the King may have chuckled silently as his family slept. “I’ll need individuals who are like Divisions… all by themselves. Each man and woman—a virtual one-man army corp!” (This idea would get added mileage later.) Jack sat back down. Over time, he would brilliantly conceive of and develop those “armies”, large and small. They’d come in small groups like the Forever People, the Deep Six, and the Female Furies. They’d come as one-person doomsday machines—Orion, Kalibak, Mantis, and Big Barda. “And some of these soldiers are going to be killed in action,” Jack may have mused. “After all, this is war.”

The Ultimate One-Shots!

King Kirby lived through small battles and large ones in 1944 (see TJKC #49 for a few of his recollections). There were GIs he knew briefly, wiped out by shelling in an instant. He tramped past the bodies of Allied and Axis infantrymen alike. He had friends who survived and went home to productive, happy lives. Navy sailor Joe Simon, off in the Pacific, returned. And because no one was guaranteed a trip home, Jack would craft his ultimate war comic with fallen ‘ultimates’. Some of them the readers would know very briefly, and some not at all. This was the way it was in war. Here are a few of those ‘one-shot warriors’ who made strong impressions on this mere mortal in their brief time on the Kirby battlefield. 44

A Shock Prod… A Stone Hand! A quick aside: I got

New Gods #1, 2, and 4 around the same time #8 hit the spinner racks. (Thank Odin for CBG.) When I finished with the spectacular opening issue, eyes ablaze (kinda like Darkseid in Forever People #6, which came in the same package), I went on to NG #2. Wow. Orion came face-to-face with Darkseid, something that hadn’t happened in #3,5,6, and 7—issues I’d purchased as they came out. And there was a bodyguard named Brola, a nasty Apokolips type who was armed with a shock prod. Nothing special here, but it was interesting at this early stage in the game, to see Orion the Fierce surmount this second ‘insurmountable challenge’. In #1, he somehow weathered Kalibak’s nerve beam from his club. Now, he advances against Brola, who exclaims, “Incredible! He lives through this! He advances—even as I unleash maximum power!” Orion not only advances, he pushes back the shock prod and throws the man with the stone hand through the wall in open space!

On the ‘face’ of things (faces play heavily in Jack’s saga— Orion’s true/hidden face, Esak’s changed face, Richard’s mutated face in “The Glory Boat”, and so on), Darkseid’s blue-granite visage is unchanged. As the supreme warlord for a world of bloodthirsty subordinates, he surely knew his demeanor must be impassive, confident, supremely assured of victory even when lesser beings like Brola fail him. Still, he had to be seething with unspoken fury underneath. Brola’s attempt to kill Orion was not a test, not a mere set-up to determine his son’s physical limits. Brola simply failed. Orion had shaken his father’s confidence somewhat… if only temporarily. Orion the Fierce would go on to master even greater trials, his strength, ferocity, and stamina rising to levels beyond the gods’ comprehensions until he’s (in Kirby’s final two battle-fests in the 1980s) decimating the dread lord’s bodyguards, his larger engines of destruction, and keeping his hated father retreating through underground tunnels. Orion and Brola would never share a return bout. We fans might have seen a donnybrook worthy of Orion’s ‘top hits’, like the two against Kalibak (#8, 11), Mantis (#10), and the Deep Six (#5 and 6). But for my money, Brola, as a one-time top contender from Apokolips, was one memorable adversary as well as “a stone groove,” as TV’s Soul Train’s host Don Cornelius would’ve said (I couldn’t resist…).

A Gentle Warrior

Seagrin…we hardly knew ye. Jack’s god-war would be different. Gone were the battles between Thor and Loki where the Prince of Evil saw his plans thwarted by the Prince of Vikings, but he was still allowed to try, try again. New Gods #4 gave the tetralogy its first casualty. Seagrin was killed by one or more of the Deep Six (clever monikers, by the way). Detectives O’Ryan and Dave Lincoln had been summoned to the Metropolis pier to identify the body. The distinc45

Esak’s life. Here again was Kirby’s innovativeness—a ski-bound, armor-clad death god, pushing the cosmic envelope whenever he saw fit! As Dave Lincoln and O’Ryan leave the scene of the tragedy in #4, Darkseid gloats silently, unseen in a narrow alleyway nearby. The master of the holocaust takes little time to revel in the triumph provided for him by his loyal underling, Slig of the Deep Six. The brothers’ next obstacle will surely be the destruction of fierce Orion—but Darkseid’s ambition rests with the prize of prizes: The Anti-Life Equation. Given time and more than eleven issues, Seagrin may have shown up again, in perhaps a back-up story in one of Kirby’s many-layered flashbacks concerning the young gods. I can picture him in Triton-like poses, aiding a younger Orion and perhaps Magnar (more on that guy later) against Captain Ogur (another oneshot warrior from a “Young Gods of Supertown” outing with Serifan and Big Bear), Slig, and Jaffar as the demonic trio come through a Boom Tube with “a horribly ugly pollutant” as Serifan or Big Bear might have termed it, to ruin the pure, magnificent oceans and rivers on New Genesis.

The Dog Cavalry Commander!

“Feel the burning bite of my electro-axe, you heroes!!” Ahhhh… that’s a great line from a great villain—even if he was a oneshot warrior. (Yes, I know Steppenwolf “returned” in the King’s twopart wrap-up in the 1980s, but I truly believe he was supposed to be a one-and-done catalyst for the Great Clash and a battlefield casualty for maximum impact.) His comeback owed more to Jack’s Fourth World’s marketability in toy stores and DC’s graciousness to let Jack end it all, so to speak. New Gods #7 saw Darkseid’s not-so-dear uncle get manipulated into a battle with a New Genesis leader, one Izaya the Inheritor. What could’ve been a lusty struggle between two proud soldiers takes a tragic turn when Izaya’s wife Avia is accidentally killed by Steppenwolf’s weapon. Izaya survives the killing gloves’ impact, unbeknownst to Darkseid’s savage uncle, and the Inheritor’s vengeance ignites the war of the worlds—the Great Clash. Darkseid’s clever machinations place his murderous uncle at the front of the sister worlds’ most intense fighting and in command of the Dog Cavalry, a post Steppenwolf relishes much more than supreme warlord of his planet’s armies. The giant canines beneath their barbaric riders leap from battlefront to battlefront in the new teleportation device constructed from the genius of Metron. The carnage brought about

tive garb of the dead man had the local police baffled. “He loved the deeps and all life in it! It was his element! Within it, he found harmony in living! And this is the end of it! Somewhere in these waters, he fought and died!” Orion offered this brief, mournful explanation. The star of NG #3 was the Black Racer [below]. The ultimate new-age harbinger of death swooped into the fourth issue’s proceedings briefly, unseen to all but Orion, to remove the body of the unfortunate Seagrin from further police inspection. Unlike the more passive Hela, Norse Goddess of Death at the House of Ideas, the Racer could advance his own cause! In his introduction, he seeks to end young Lightray’s life and would circle around a trapped Esak in NG #8’s back-up adventure. Fastbak had to outpace him to save 46

by Steppenwolf in the lead led Kirby to later dub him “the Spirit of Slaughter” in the ’80s. “Where Steppenwolf leads, the carnage mounts until the battleground whines beneath the weight and agony of mass death!!! Nothing lives in his path!” Jack was too busy with this one to even offer a panel of the Black Racer soaring above and through the explosions and flames surrounding the dead, the dying, and those barely surviving. But it wasn’t necessary! The Great Clash was suffused with panels great and small of horrific devastation in the King’s “techno-cosmic war”! In Asgard’s biggest wars, Jack never got to individual faces of the dead immortals who met their end (as Odin slept—sheesh!) and the Mangog or Surtur wreaked havoc on the kingdom of the Aesir. In NG #7, the King brings the face of war (See? Faces again…) to the readers as one expressive panel depicts a fallen warrior looking frozen-faced toward the heavens, struck down in combat. Kirby may have ‘known that type of face’ during the Big One, marching past fallen Allied or Axis infantrymen. “Resistance melts before Steppenwolf! He finds himself alone!—And blasted out of his saddle!!” “The Risen Dead” awaits him. Steppenwolf was ‘blessed’ with an innate savagery that’s served him well until now, but not the skillset (as we call it now) to plot/connive—and that inability to do such, works to his undoing now. “The Risen Dead” is Izaya, who shocks his foe with his identity, speeding up his attack or “taking him out of his game”, a professional athlete might say. Izaya ends their conflict with a mighty blow, adding, “You’ll never kill again, Steppenwolf!” The Dog Cavalry commander’s end can be interpreted as Jack’s sly comment on the days when horse cavalrymen in the Great War (or World War I, as it came to be known) became outmoded in the advent of mass tank formations and strategic air bombing during the Nazi blitz. Brave Polish soldiers rode out against the Blitzkrieg, only to be wiped out by ‘lightning warfare’. Blitzkrieg took combat to a whole new level, aided by radio contact, infantry support of tanks, disruption of enemy communications, etc. Steppenwolf and his Dog Cavalry are already an anachronism in war as Darkseid unleashes a hideous new phase in his appetite for total destruction. Still, the uncle served the nephew well. Many of us contributors have said it before and I’ll say it again—the King’s magnum opus works brilliantly

on so many levels that subsequent re-readings never diminish its superiority in graphic storytelling. We get in his tetralogy: Romance (okay, not much but enough), super-hero vs. super-villain battles, war, sci-fi, and even dabs of horror. Steppenwolf was one of his best… he got a retooled outfit for his brief comeback in the 1980s’ toy market and a short stint, guiding those ferocious dogs against Lightray, but his main appearance in NG #7 marked him as one of the most pivotal and unforgettable warriors in the battle between the immortals.

(left) Steppenwolf would ride high in Feb. 1972’s New Gods #7... at least, until ‘The Risen Dead’ Highfather adds him to the ranks of the dead. (below) New Gods #7’s cover got an impressive makeover on the back of New Gods Reprint #4 (Sept. 1984).

Those OTHER Jimmy Olsens

To reiterate, ‘King’ Kirby’s god-war is a multi-layered masterpiece. And its collective secrets sometimes reveal themselves in reading after reading… if you’re looking. (I didn’t catch the following until 2016.) For years, the Daily Planet’s bestknown cub reporter was one of DC’s most versatile heroes. Baby Boomers, like this contributor, were weaned on the many incarnations of young Olsen, such as his masked/costumed identity as ‘Flamebird’ to Superman’s ‘Nightwing’, or Jimmy as ‘Elastic Lad’, ‘the Wolf Man of Metropolis, ‘the Giant Turtle Olsen’, and so on.

the facility [left]. Then a quick look into a microscope showed a lot more little Jimmys just ready to grow and grow [bottom]. Bad scientists Mokkari and Simyan have stolen a sample, however, and we find the third Jimmy (who gets a brief intro in #135) has been modified for growth and tremendous strength over at the rival camp. He’s even given a Kryptonite coating in his hide in case you-know-who shows up. In JO #136, he gets his biggest moments (pun intended) when he goes on a Hulk-like rampage—he’s green, y’know—and gives Superman and the new Golden Guardian one heckuva fight! [below] Called the D.N.Alien on a cover blurb, the winners of the

It didn’t seem likely that Jack was going to continue the long-standing tradition of Jimmy getting super-powers/becoming monsters/getting temporarily mutated, etc. after the Hairies, the Mountain of Judgment, the Wild Area, Morgan Edge, Intergang, and the Evil Factory had quickly reshaped all things Olsen. But Jack added his new takes on our hero anyway… and they were great! To begin with: In JO #135, Kal-El got his friend “hip” (it was the ’70s, right?) to “The Project” and showed him how productive their new clones could be. One of those DNA samples taken from Jimmy revealed a full-grown Olsen soldier who maintained security at

battle turn out to be other clones, Scrapper Troopers, spawned by the D.N.A. of you-know-you. I caught JO #136 shortly after it came out, and it blew my mind. Years later, circa 2000, I’d talk to Steve ‘The Dude’ Rude at a convention and found out that that issue was one of his early Fourth World favorites, as well. Naturally, we came to a quick conclusion that a commission had to be done of that fantastic scenario. Recently, I asked Steve about it and he said, “The first thing that comes to mind is when a company, any company, has just solicited Jack Kirby to do a line of books for them is—get out of his way. Step back, turn off your business mind for a moment, and realize you’re seeing a one-time historical moment with a man whose 48

powers of creativity are at their explosive zenith. “This was such a moment in 1970, when 53-year-old Jack Kirby began his work at Marvel’s rival company, DC, to simultaneously launch four books that would change the format of comics authorship forever. “To open up a comic done by Jack Kirby still in his prime, is like experiencing the magic of Christmas morning with every turn of the page. When I saw the Golden Guardian in Jimmy Olsen #136, that’s what I felt. Words stop working, and feelings take over. I couldn’t explain it, but I could sure feel it. This imagery has stayed with me for 40 years. That’s the power of comics within the good right hand of its greatest generator.” Another brief aside: I got home from work one day in ’02, and got a welcome phone message. Steve said he’d finished the commission but didn’t want to send it to me. He wanted to keep it because he was so proud of it. I returned the call, and told him we had a deal and I’d already paid for half of it. We laughed. He was kidding, but the finished result was spectacular. I was stunned by the piece the day it arrived. The fourth and final one-shot Olsen made his unforgettable debut in Jimmy Olsen #146 as a feral, caveman-like “Olsen” thing, knowing only conflict and destruction [right]. He’s another foul-up gone wild, given to us by those mad master scientists, Mokkari and Simyan. But Kirby didn’t foul up. Whether his characters were angry powerful immortals, mutations, monsters, or variations on a freckle-faced newshound, he gave us heroes, villains, and supporting cast members who were wonderful oneshot warriors or ongoing delights. H

from his friends, however, though the effort is unneeded and wasted on the Metropolis Marvel. Magnar’s “pups” are children of Supertown, and they want to do their fair share in bringing down a bloodthirsty minion of Darkseid’s, as they suspect the Man of Tomorrow to be. Kal-El talks them out of it. His easygoing and reassuring manners are those of a “friend,” and friends are welcome on New Genesis. Another nice Kirby touch—a promising fight scene is quickly halted in the name of reason and peace. The pups show the way to Superman and they follow in Magnar’s magnetic field, floating about playfully, for the orbiting city above. Magnar wouldn’t be used again by Kirby. Still, he made a big impression on me. Though he was of “peaceful New Genesis”, he seems to have rubbed shoulders with Orion! He seemed more war-like than others of Jack’s bountiful world of new-agers, and is even red-haired like Darkseid’s destructive son (for whatever that’s worth). Given time, the King may have set up a “Young Gods of Supertown” yarn with Orion, Magnar, Lightray, Seagrin, Lonar, and others. With the kind of powers Magnar possessed, Darkseid and Granny Goodness might have thought twice before sending out some of their ‘weirdie-nasties’ to ruin their day!

Your District Protector… “The New Gods are power beings—but on

Apokolips their power is maintained by lesser entities! And from these emerge interesting personalities!!” This needed bit of information came from Mister Miracle #7 and it was just what this fan needed to know! As stupendous as Kirby’s god-war was, there were story concepts unexplained. Maybe Jack wanted it this way and the revelations would come as time progressed, but still…. There were issues such as: Was Scott Free a “power being”? He was Highfather’s son and certainly New Genesis’ supreme leader was a new god. But could the super escape artist have a true claim to godhood? We never got to find out if he had supernatural abilities. And what of Himon? No powers (okay, a superior intellect) were demonstrably shown in him, also. How about Esak? The jury is still out. And this next guy… Wonderful Willik was the main antagonist in Mister Miracle #9, and as district protector, he outraged readers as one of the vilest

Magnar…!!!

Jimmy Olsen #147 saw one of my favorites—a guardian-of-sorts (maybe he was a descendant to Heimdall?) to the Boom Tube called Magnar! Magnetic control was his power, and for his first and only appearance, he got to strut his stuff admirably… against no less an opponent than Superman! In this issue, The Man of Steel, operating without Jimmy and the Newsboy Legion, gets another chance to visit the mysterious ‘Supertown’ which was first brought to his attention in Forever People #1. Jack’s touches are soooo nice. We Baby Boomers were so used to seeing an indomitable-impervious-to-harm Kryptonian in action during those years. Magnar’s challenge to Kal-El stands out and endures. “I captured you! And I must subdue you!! Even if it takes the combined magnetic repulsion-flow of a hundred galaxies!!” Superman even believed he might be in trouble! Heady stuff for the early 1970s! Magnar gets a little help 50

no-goodnik’s in Apokolips. Assigned to suppress the unfortunate Lowlies in Armaghetto, he had the added responsibility of flushing out, capturing, or killing Himon—an outlawed rebel who gives the poor unfortunates hope. In his ‘spare time’, he takes great relish in keeping training cadets in line. If the links between this evil system and the totalitarian state of the Nazis are consistent, Willik is surely a stand-in for Hitler’s sadistic, casually murderous Gestapo or S.S. chieftains. He even burns Lowlies alive,

a chilling reminder of the S.S. excesses practiced against Russian civilians and Jews. His time as a one-shot warrior depicts him as utterly hateful and beyond redemption. His end at Himon’s hands (a hidden time bomb on a food plate) is a moment to cheer. Jack made sure his readers would get used to death coming at them any time and in a variety of ways. In NG #7, Darkseid manipulates a number of ultimate beings and circumstances toward the all-consuming conflagration he craves. The ‘death’ of Izaya, the carnage ensued by The Great Clash, and the trap set for Steppenwolf are done subtly, befitting the cunning mind of the dark lord of the shadow planet. Slig dispatches Seagrin off-panel. But Wonderful Willik jolts us in a terrible fashion! He finds an easier prey than Himon in poor Auralie and Himon’s trainees. He shows off their corpses with relish to Scott Free and Lt. Barda, daring Himon to present himself. The scene is chilling. Willik’s twisted display reminded this pre-teen reader of some hazy-yet-extremely-unsettling b&w photographs of S.S. killers standing near pits of murdered Jews or Russians during the war. Auralie would’ve been better suited for the gentle, caring atmosphere of New Genesis, but it was not to be. Like Jack himself, she’s a “sensitive,” an artist/creator—and perhaps the King made a subtle comment through her on Anne Frank, the young Dutch Jewish girl who was captured by Nazis during the occupation of Holland, and later shipped off to a death camp. Kirby may have attached a bit of himself to the luckless Auralie. Jacob Kurtzberg scribbled on the 51

(previous page) Superman and Magnar duke it out in Jimmy Olsen #147 (March 1972). When Magnar guards New Genesis, even Supes doesn’t make him flinch! (left) The young Anne Frank was captured in this portrait before she became a victim of the bloodthirsty Nazi killers. Auralie, contemplating a beautiful scenario in these panels from Mister Miracle #9 (July 1972), could easily have been inspired by Frank. (below) The sadistic savagery of Wonderful Willik was revealed several times in Mister Miracle #9, and these reveals weren’t far from the types of brutality WWII produced. Nazi butchers took delight in filming or taking still pictures of the civilians they massacred [below and next page]. The King gave readers a taste of the barbarism European civilians in occupied lands encountered in Willik’s excesses.

pavement sidewalks in his Lower East Side bowery. He knew that he stood a chance of being bullied and beaten for his sensitivity and creativity. While Willik could afford to be insufferably overbearing and crass given his official position in Darkseid’s evil hierarchy, Auralie is mostly silent. Kreetin and Scott fill in the details about her for the readers. She is even symbolically silent—her voice and happiness marginalized by Apokolips’ oppressive weight. We feel for her—and through her quiet suffering, eased only by her forbidden trips to Himon’s places of rest, we feel for all the innocents who live under Darkseid’s terror.

(next page) Devilance (great name!) gave the young Forever People and the Infinity Man the last challenges of their Kirby-created run in Forever People #11 (Oct. 1972). Kirby served up the action nicely, as usual. (next page, bottom right) Jack got one more shot at Devilance in Who’s Who #18 (Aug. 1986).

Scott Free, however, has two mentors on the dark world: Metron as well as Himon. Made of sterner stuff than Auralie (or perhaps better protected), he survives Willik to try an escape, and leaving with a memorable shout, proclaims, “Let me be Scott Free—and find myself!” A Boom Tube brought to him by his benefactors shoots him to Earth. Once again, Kirby’s subtle touches work beautifully in this tapestry backstory. Willik, Auralie, Zep, Kreetin, etc. are not given the green, scaly, monstrous looks of the Deep Six or depicted as hooded torturers a la Brola and Desaad. They’re ‘human’, like the readership. So is Willik, even though his humanity-of-a-sort is lost in his despicable actions. This one-shot warrior represents man’s inhumanity to man, quietly invoking all human conflicts between oppressor and the oppressed, specifically those set up by totalitarian states. Wonderful Willik shows us the worst in ourselves. In that respect, he’s more terrifying to me than Mantis, Kalibak, the para-demons, and other overtly-designed devils. 52

The Pursuer!

Devilance The Pursuer really upped the ante for Fourth World baddies. This inhuman wrecking ball got whipped up to put an end to the troublesome Forever People! Jack, having got the bad news that DC was not going to keep the FP and NG going, had to wrap it all up. Mark Moonrider’s family unit was faced with an untimely end—the end of their magazine. Still, Jack delivers a wallop. Devilance’s assignment came from Darkseid and Desaad themselves. His lance has many capabilities… all dangerous to his quarries, and his physiognomy enables him to adjust to any challenge or condition. Truly, he is a challenge for the mightiest of the gods. He trades blows with Mark, Big Bear, Vykin, and survives the effects of one of Serifan’s cosmic cartridges. The battle could go on indefinitely. However, the Infinity Man (absent since #3) is the power most needed, and Mother Box and “TAARUU!” brings him before an astonished Devilance. Incredible energies are released and the combatants seemingly destroy themselves and the island (let’s hope Gilligan and his friends weren’t on the other side) they were on. The Forever People were spared, however. Shunted to the paradise dimension and world the Infinity Man was inhabiting, they rapidly concluded that this time and space would be home for some time. Was Devilance a one-of-a-kind, in addition to being a one-shot warrior? Or did Darkseid have other Pursuers at his command? If so, the gods of New Genesis would see greater trials in battles to come. Over the decades, I’ve wondered how Orion, Magnar, and Lightray might have fared against a Pursuer. We’ll never know. The Hunger Dogs was a flawed masterpiece, in my humble opinion. Jack

was forced to jettison some (I’m sure) superb ideas in favor of a compromised “ending”, and the ending used left out Magnar, the Forever People, Mister Miracle, other possible Pursuers. And we never really got the ultimate match-up: Orion vs. Darkseid, as intended, either…. Well, we got a lot of great characterizations, battles, and suspenseful moments in the greatness Kirby produced for us. I got a great deal of satisfaction from them then, and with numerous subsequent readings… ever since. And some of that wonderment came from the King’s oh-so-memorable one-shot warriors. H 53

www.kirbymuseum.org A Fantastic 100th!

Newsletter

Thank you to all the Kirby fans who visited our four-day “Jack Kirby: 100 Years” exhibit in New York City this past 27-30 August! We popped-up in the beautiful One Art Space in Tribeca (run by Dan Giella, son of artist Joe Giella!). It was great to see old friends, make new ones, all surrounded by an eye-popping visual biography of Jack Kirby, as well as large replicas of some of his comics, and a display that showcased pieces from our digital archive. We had talks, a silent auction, a “birthday” cake from Hoboken’s “Cake Boss,” and even a visit to Jack’s birthplace the night of the 28th!

Incredible Conventions!

We’d also like to thank the folks at Baltimore Comic-Con, Heroes Con, and Terrificon for sponsoring us at their shows this year. We had a great time sharing Kirby wonders with your attendees!

TJKC Edition Winter 2018

The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center is organized exclusively for educational purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby by: The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center is organized exclusively for educational What’s this? Well, yes, there purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation are new shirts available: Our Kirby • iand llustrating the appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby by: scope of Kirby’s 100 shirt with metallic silver, and a multi-faceted career, • illustrating the scope of Kirby’s multi-faceted career, new version of Dylan Todd’s “King” • communicating • communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby, shirt—this time it’s “King Doom”. the stories, • celebrating and the life of Jack Kirby and his creations, and inspirations Check out the “Support Us” section influences of • building understanding of comic books and comic book creators. on our website to see all our items Jack Kirby, for sale. this end,the thelife Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study, teaching, • cTo elebrating conferences, of Jack Kirby and his discussion and groups, creations, Thanks to all displays, • bexhibitions, uilding underpublications and our new and standing of comic $ cinematic, theatrical and comic books returning members for their support, or multimedia book creators. productions. and our Board of Trustees & Advisory To this end, the Museum Board: will sponsor and otherwise support study, ve is amazing, and conferences, allows us to teaching, TRUSTEES: Rand Hoppe, Tom Kraft, Mike Cecchini groups, d. We'ddiscussion like to take this moment to ADVISORS: John Morrow, Charles Hatfield, exhibitions, displays, d it: publications and David Schwartz, Mark Evanier cinematic, theatrical Captain America—23” x 29” Strange Tales—23” x 29” a Kirby, or Steve Robertson, Albert multimedia 1941 Captain America—14” x 23” Super Powers—17” x 22” color ropolis productions. Collectibles, Mike Burkey, $ wish to remain anonymous!

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Boydisms 3

Simon, Kirby, & Some Mag by Jerry Boyd

(right) In March 1941, Captain Marvel Adventures #1’s readers were thrilled by this C.C. Beck cover which introduced four Simon and Kirby stories in a true Golden Age milestone. (below) It was okay for costumed crime-busters to kill monsters during the Golden Age. Marvel dispatches the vampire Thirla at the end of their conflicts in CMA #1.

irst off, this may sound like heresy, especially in these pages, and to many of you—but I must admit this: Everything that Simon and Kirby produced doesn’t grab me. I don’t reach for my wallet when I see a collection of their material, either. To be fair, no creator’s or creative team’s work pulls on me at every turn unless I really can’t do without it and/or there’s not a lot of it to begin with. So, when I learned (at some time in the 1980s) that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were in as a one-shot team on Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (March, 1941), I wasn’t impressed. DC had gotten me used to the styles of C.C. Beck, Mac Raboy, Kurt Schaffenberger, and others on the titles spotlighting the Big Red Cheese and Family in those wonderful 100-pagers in the 1970s. I found those comics enjoyable until…. I didn’t. High school, disco dancing, albums, and college came along. Captain

Marvel, the old wizard Shazam, and company were great products of their day, but the latter part of the 1970s and ’80s were chock-full of new days and I went with newer material. ‘King’ Kirby was still a very strong presence in comics, but I had no strong compulsion to see what he’d done with Billy Batson’s magic lightning-brought big buddy.

& Lightning Will Strike….! If you’re open-minded and willing to try new

things, you’ve certainly said to yourself, “Let me see what all the fuss is about…” as you’ve put on an older person’s album, or listened to an acclaimed old radio show, rented a ‘classic film’, or just opened a recommended novel, book, short story, etc. In my case, I took out a hardcover edition (my brother’s) of the earliest Captain Marvel stories— The Shazam Archives!, Vol. 2, 1999. “Hmmm... Kirby and Simon did some stories in this one. I’ll read those first…” I murmured to myself. The one with the vampire (always had a soft spot for Golden Age vampire and werewolf stories) grabbed me first. (In 1938, Universal Pictures re-released Dracula and Frankenstein to old and new audiences. The response was tremendous, leading to the revitalization of the creatures, and newer ones, for 1939 and on. The Mad Monk, a vampire menace, may have been inspired by Dracula. He got his sinister start in one of Detective Comics’ early Batman adventures. I wanted to see what this ‘Baron Thirla’ could do against the World’s Mightiest Mortal.) Jack’s artwork was still in its formative stages, I felt, but very dynamic as he explored an economy-of-line approach. The atmospheric inking that I felt was needed wasn’t there, but its absence didn’t really hurt the story. It only made it seem more surreal. Thirla is resurrected by a scientist, and the undead monster promptly shows his “gratitude” by draining the poor man’s blood on the spot. Turning to a horrified Billy Batson, the Baron is ready to add to his strength with the blood of this youngster. Saying the magic word saves Billy’s life and the first battle between the supernatural pair begins. Marvel’s superhuman strength is largely wasted on Baron Thirla, who can de-materialize at will. Kirby pulled out all the stops in this one. At one point, the Baron sends a small pack of wolves at our hero, but Marvel is up to the challenge, even when they merge into one slavering behemoth and gobbles up the champion. Realizing

gic Lightning that Marvel must die before he can move safely on to new conquests, Baron Thirla trails Batson to his home. But Billy’s been reading up about the undead, and their last confrontation, following Thirla’s entry into Billy’s room as vapor, ends with the Big Red Cheese plunging a sharpened stake of white thorn wood into the vile demon’s chest. This was a typically uncomplicated Golden Age story, but it moved nicely and Jack’s artwork is almost as good here as it was for his work on that other Captain for Timely. And what did I learn? I learned to be more willing to take chances on unfamiliar material. Right after that, I read the rest of CMA #1 and enjoyed it immensely. This one-shot by Kirby was well done. He’d never return to Fawcett Comics to do more with Marvel in his stellar career, but this effort was very satisfying. Moreover, it provided a few more one-shot scenarios that may have stuck in Jack’s mind over the years to come as more super-heroes came into the world of fantasy.

One-Shots & New Shots

In CMA #1, S&K were responsible for four stories. The first was an untitled tale where Captain Marvel met ‘Z’, a super robot fashioned by Dr. Sivana. After a few terrific encounters, Marvel smashes Z into a wall and finds he’s a sophisticated machine. This was interesting to me since the Thing demolished what he thought was Dr. Doom in FF #5, only to realize he/it was… a sophisticated machine! “Captain Marvel Out West” followed the encounter with Sivana and Z, and in this, Marvel leaped about (he couldn’t fly yet), like a certain green-hued giant for Marvel! And of course, young Billy had to shout “Shazam!” to summon Marvel. This wasn’t wasted on Simon and Kirby—in 1959, young Tommy Troy changed into the Fly in a similar fashion! In that same story, Kirby and Simon have a sequence where the Big Red Cheese jumps around… hmmm… and the Incredible Hulk would do the same years later. Superman started off with mighty leaps also… but that controversy will never end, right? When the creative juices flow, some artists and writers bury ideas in quickly scribbled sketches, on notebook paper as ideas to be used later, etc. Perhaps the young Jack Kirby buried these touches he liked, and brought them to the fore years later. In another untitled tale of note from the same comic, young Batson uses Earth technology and accidentally stumbles onto a world ruled by Dragon Men. They 57

(above) All four stories from CMA #1 are reprinted in DC’s Shazam! Archives Volume 2. (below) These oppressed people hoped Marvel was the legend of “the thunder-god”, sent to deliver them from the cruel torments of the Dragon Men. (right) And the most famous Thunder God Kirby ever adapted was this one, shown here in action from Journey Into Mystery #110 (Nov. 1964).

mistreat their human slaves and Captain Marvel takes to the outer reaches to eagerly get to them and rescue their subjects. Dragon Men?! I never knew the King got to that concept until Fantastic Four #35 in the 1960s! Jack would change the look for “the everdelightful Dragon Man” (as Stan Lee would call him), but the basis began in this comic. To be fair, Jack may have forgotten those mean old Dragon Men by the time the ’60s came around, but we’ll never know for sure. But this was a oneshot group of baddies who may have inspired a new shot later on. It doesn’t end there. Billy is captured by the Dragon Men early on in the story, and a wizened old captive asks Captain Marvel if he’s “the thunder-god” of their legends. (!) Yeah, Jack did a couple of thunder gods for DC long before his most famous take on the Norse sky-god for Marvel, but we’ll just say that Thor as an ongoing concept was an idea lonnnnng in the making, an idea that may have begun with the Big Red Cheese in ’41. At the time, however, at least onehalf of the already famous S&K team didn’t think much of their efforts for Fawcett Comics. Joe Simon wasn’t happy. He observed, “The final pages were disap-

pointing to us. They didn’t match [C.C.] Beck’s polished style we had been striving for.” He didn’t make excuses, though he and Jack were simultaneously doing Captain America stories during the day for Timely Comics, and Captain Marvel pages (with a number of inkers, it seems) at night. Though some will write Captain Marvel Adventures #1 off as an okay one-shot effort by Jack and Joe, it’s those minor touches the team threw in that remains enthralling today. And it all adds to the greatness of the World’s Mightiest Mortal, surely one of the finest and enduring achievements of comicdom’s Golden Age. H 58

Still Borne

(right) Jack’s original Wonder Warriors in pencil were a bit different [see TJKC #27] from this illo from Captain Victory #6 (Sept. 1982), leading us to think the concept was originally meant as a solo series or animation idea.

The Only Child

love Captain Victory. It’s raw, unedited Kirby ideas flowing freely in an unrestrained way. The scripting is often almost unintelligible as Kirby puts his ideas down— but at times it’s as if he’s forgotten that those ideas are familiar in his head but foreign to the readers, and he gives no basis from which to interpret much of what he writes. The same problem arises in Hunger Dogs and other works of the ’80s. With Captain Victory #7, the first story arc has passed and Kirby is onto a new one. It seems he has a new idea about CV too—that he wants to suggest that CV is Orion’s son and that Darkseid is now an incorporate evil force in his background. All this is fine by me, but my confusion comes when Kirby seems to suggest that one baddie—Paranex, the Fighting Foetus (spelled ‘fetus’ throughout)—is somehow part

by Shane Foley

of it. But, as far as I can see, it is never explained. So what do we know about Paranex? In CV #7, the four Wonder Warriors are revealed to us and to CV. He knows some of them but not Paranex. It is Mr. Mind who knows his name and that what matters is, “not what it is, but what it will be when it is born!” It was Klavus who said Paranex had “found Quadrant X—and I’d just as soon leave him there!” He ‘found’ it? Or did Kirby mean to say he was found in it? Later that issue, the four baddies appear and ravage a starship, stealing its star drive. Amongst the talk, there is mention of Paranex being “a horror”, that he never responds in any way to speech, and that it’s “not time for you to make your move!” One reiterates that he isn’t born yet and that “I wouldn’t like to be around when he is.” In Captain Victory #8, there is a similar attack by the warriors, now on a Ranger outpost. This time Paranex acts by using his own power to draw out the star drive. Again, fear of it is verbalized amongst the Warriors about who/ what Paranex is: “There’s no name for that thing in the cosmos…” to which one replies “I’ll bet the Voice knows it!”, the Voice being the disembodied words of the evil mastermind who controls and empowers the Warriors. In CV #9 (after a wonderful journey through hyper-space and a distortion zone that was a big enlargement on concepts intro-

duced in the Fantastic Four years earlier), the Rangers reach the Eye that opens in the Universe to reveal Quadrant X, and surprisingly quickly overcome three of the attacking Warriors. But then CV realizes that “the toughest of the pack” is still to come—referring to Paranex. The issue ends with Paranex hammering the Tiger with Kirby energy and “…growing! It’s growing!.. into what?” Captain Victory #10 opens where CV #9 finished. Kirby draws huge panels, full of power and dynamic machinery as only he can do it. Again there is a line about Paranex being “an unborn fetus!” A fusillade of gas is fired at the fetus and a solid wall entombs him and the attack is stilled. There is mention of “strange reports” about the fetus, but the conversation only talks of its power storage and ability to draw out huge star drives. Then there is an argument on board the Tiger, with CV objecting to Tarin’s desire to kill the creature. “Despite its power, it is still unborn.” The Voice then is heard and we find that, somehow, the argument was a ruse to get him to speak. (How did it tempt the Voice to make itself heard? It’s unclear to me.) The other Wonder Warriors engage in escape, with CV ordering that they be allowed to do so. Another argument occurs with CV then surrendering to the Voice (a ‘god’) and going with the Warriors. Kirby then writes, “Suddenly, it begins… and Paranex rises above his gas cloud prison like some evil moon…”. The next panel says “Paranex is rushing towards birth! He is not yet the calamitous baby! He is not yet the Universal Terror! Still, he is Power!” He blasts away at the Tiger while the escape continues. The Tiger’s own star drive is pulled from it, presumably by Paranex. CV goes as a prisoner with the Warriors into the eye. At this point, Paranex has disappeared, as he is not with the three warriors and the captive CV as they return to Quadrant X. The end comes quickly with CV detonating a bomb in Quadrant X, that he somehow knew was there. (We even find out that the captive CV was only a robot. What? Why was he not another clone—one of CV’s main gimmicks?) The crew quickly realizes that CV knew the Voice (“…from another Universe!”) and that “…the Cosmic Fetus… he’s no mystery to you! He’s still alive!” CV agrees—then goes to explain all in his origin tale. And the Cosmic Fetus is never mentioned again.

So—what did I miss? What was he “rushing towards birth” as? What did he become? In the Origin tale, we see Kirby clearly wants it known that Captain Victory is Orion’s son, and that the Voice, named Father Blackmass there, is a disembodied Darkseid. Was Paranex to be a new body for the Voice? (After all, that one line did say that the Fetus “was not yet the Universal Terror”!) Was there a story coming that we never saw? (After all, it seems clear that there were only meant to be two origin issues, with the third tacked on to be the last.) So is the story unfinished? Or is there another explanation? H (below) Blackmass/Darkseid speaks! Captain Victory #12 (Oct. ’83), page 5 pencils.

An ongoing examination of Kirby’s art and compositional skills

H (below) Tales to Astonish #27 (Jan. 1962) cover. (right) Fantastic Four #4 page 10 detail (May 1962).

One Shot Could Start A Universe

owever rewarding the search for Kirby one-shots might be, I find it equally fascinating to dwell on the avalanche of individual stories Kirby composed, either standalone or parts of a series. Each of these stories could have been a narrative dead end, but think of how so many of them spawned multitudes of characters and concepts. Think about it. In the course of his career, Jack Kirby created so many vivid viable characters that he could have peopled a near infinite number of universes with them. When I make this statement, I am not merely referring to the myriad super-hero series that he initiated. For fifty years Kirby had spun yarns of all varieties, from action/adventure to romance, horror, crime and comedy. Even many of the peripheral characters that peopled his tales were well enough rendered so that they could in turn be the main protagonists of other stories. They could even morph into super-stars of their own comics. If we choose to pick up a thread in the beginning of the Marvel Age of Kirby, we can quickly think of “The Man in the Ant Hill,” a fairly standard early Marvel story featuring a generic Kirby scientist protagonist. Kirby would crank out several stories like this per month, featuring ordinary men put in situations involving some sort of monster or bizarre science-fiction-based situation in which the hero must somehow prevail. In this particular story [left], chemist Henry Pym shrinks himself and enters an ant hill. It just seemed at the time like another in a series of Monster/Sci-fi premise of the month, but when the rush came for Marvel to capitalize on the success of super-heroes, this premise quickly became the basis of the continuing adventures of Ant Man. Or think of how Johnny Storm, The Human Torch was always inadvertently stumbling on a member of an ancient super-powered race. This happened first in Fantastic Four #4, when the teenager wandered downtown to get away from his dysfunctional surrogate family, and then found the incoherent Sub-Mariner living in a Bowery flophouse. On this extremely powerful and atmospheric page of the story, the enraged vagrants menace the bearded prince Namor. Johnny Storm stops them dead in their tracks with a great action-to-action panel display of the precision use of his flame, as he shaves the SubMariner. This sequence of course led to the rediscovery of an entire undersea kingdom that Kirby and then Marvel would exploit for decades, introducing myriad subplots of romance, intrigue, and rivalry. Kirby did not invent Namor’s undersea kingdom, but he was perfectly capable of generating scores of such worlds, fully realized as cultures and societies. In Fantastic Four #45, Johnny Storm is at it again. This time he is wandering in another desolate neighborhood, when he spies a captivating young girl. She is Crystal, youngest and most bewitching member of The Inhumans, who live amongst us hidden in an enclave known as the Great Refuge. When she runs from him, Johnny reveals to Crystal that he also has super-powers, and he then pretends to be one of her kind so he can find out who they are. The story, other than 61

providing fans with some of Kirby’s best action artwork, gave us a fresh new world to explore and exploit. The Inhumans has already been a marginally successful TV series and may yet spawn a movie. In the right hands, it is powerful and compelling enough as a concept to succeed in any number of incarnations. Of course, that is the secret, isn’t it? It’s all about who works the property. In the hands of a master, good concepts are a dime a dozen. It’s how you put them through their paces and make them interact that matters. The romantic chemistry on that FF page between Johnny and Crystal was palpable. You could feel the heat between them, and it wasn’t coming from Johnny’s flame alone. That’s why Kirby is King! He could bring any world to pulsing vitality with a million subtle multi-dimensional interactions. Kirby could summon a Cecil B. DeMille-quality tableau with a few wellplaced props, costumed figures and other signifiers, as he did in the composition of this “Tales of Asgard” Thor page [right]. And here we can also play with this issue’s bywords “One shot.” Here, in one shot, Kirby has given us a multiverse to take in and internalize artistically. The great ship mast dominates the scene, establishing the vital force of man-gods against the ocean that rears over the lip of the boat. On the mast, Thor’s central figure only shouts orders as a mass of men swirl about him. One massive figure, just offset on the lower left quadrant, secures the rigging while tying the composition neatly together with his herculean stance. In such ways does Kirby excel as a storyteller, because he sets the stage and the world brilliantly, as well as peopling it with characters that he also makes us care about. Like Robert De Niro’s character in Deer Hunter, Kirby the marksman is consistently capable of bagging the buck with one shot. H (top) Fantastic Four #45 page 10, and #46, page 10 (Dec. 1965 and Jan. 1966, respectively). (right) Journey Into Mystery #121 (Oct. ’65), page 2. See TJKC #44 for the pencil version!

Animatters

The only published work fans have seen of Skanner was the small repro at right from the 1990s trading card set Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives by Comic Images. But Kirby did plenty of work on this 1980s concept, as you’ll see here and on the next two pages.

High-Rez Skanner

lthough there was no sign of Brother Eye, Kirby’s presentation art for the Ruby-Spears project Skanner shares a lot in common with OMAC. Set in the future, it features a “Magnum P.I.”-type lead character who’s the Last Private Eye on Earth, and includes the idea of teenagers being kidnapped to harvest their youthful bodies for brain transplantation for the old and rich, and the phrase “The World That’s Coming”. So for anyone bemoaning the fact that Jack never got to continue his one shot at the One Man Army Corp, rest assured that the King found in animation, an outlet for many of the ideas he never got to utilize in comics. H

by John Morrow

(above) Shades of (more) OMAC! The animation presentation piece above is straight out of OMAC #6’s twopage spread (July 1975, right). But despite basic similarities, it’s clear that Jack completely re-envisioned the scene without copying. (next page) With names like Mystery Marvin, Doomsday Dingle, and Uno Huhu, it’s pretty clear Jack was having a lot of fun working in animation. (And like Morning Gloria, what girl doesn’t love bar bells, and arm-wrestling with dates?)

One Good shot...

Incidental Iconography

...deserves another!

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

anhunter is one of those characters from the Golden Age of comics that never seemed to quite find his footing. Not only has he been reinvented several times, but completely different companies have tried to do something with the name. So it’s no surprise that, much like Sandman, Jack Kirby got a crack at designing his take on the character not once, but twice. The first Manhunter by Ed Moore was simply a visually uninteresting investigator in a suit and tie. After a year’s worth of appearances in Adventure Comics, though, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were asked to reinvent the character. Like they also did with Sandman, the original concept was scrapped and they started over with a costumed hero idea. Simon has noted that, creatively, it wasn’t a very original execution and that both Sandman and Manhunter under the Simon & Kirby banner were essentially clones of Captain America. So what did their new Manhunter actually look like? His original design debuted on the cover of Adventure Comics #73 [see above left], and featured a full-body, skin-tight red suit with blue trunks, gloves, and boots. And like Captain America (and Sandman and Guardian and Stuntman and…), the costume features a half-mask that exposes his nose and mouth. Thanks to Jerry Robinson, the original art for the cover is still around, making it abundantly clear that the half-mask was a very deliberate design choice. Things begin to get interesting inside the book, though [left]. On the opening splash of his story, Jack added a couple of additional details: The gloves come to a flared point near the elbow, and the boots are now turned down on themselves. Further, while the half-mask was still drawn in place, an additional seam runs above Manhunter’s forehead. It would seem that Jack decided to make a notable change by the time the Manhunter costume shows up in-story on page 6; the forehead seam remains in place, but he’s stopped drawing any indication of the mask ending on/around the nose. Midway through the first story, he’s changed the design to essentially what most people would recognize as the Manhunter.

However, as readers had already seen two significant images of the character (the cover and the opening splash) wearing a halfmask, the colorist continued coloring the face as if it still had a half-mask. While many of the individual panels are drawn in such a way that the details of the mask as Jack intended are either vague or easily misread, the penultimate panel clearly shows that by the end of the first story, Jack was very much drawing Manhunter with his face entirely covered, and it was the colorist who was altering what it looked like. They seemed to have resolved the coloring issues by the subsequent story. (As an interesting aside, though, it looks as if they continue calling the character’s civilian identity “Rick Nelson” until issue #76. While the printed stories in #74 and #75 do use “Paul Kirk,” picking up on Moore’s version, it looks as if there was initially more space allotted every time the name is mentioned and it was later changed by someone other than the original letterer.) The costume remains pretty much unchanged for the rest of the Simon & Kirby run, although Jack would, not uncharacteristically, sometimes forget details like the flares on the gloves or the turneddown boots. He even reverts to a half-mask in a few panels. Simon & Kirby left Manhunter after less than a year, but others continued the stories in the same vein for another two years, with the series only being dropped due to paper shortages from World War II. The concept was revived, in a substantially altered form, by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson in 1973. But that only lasted a year, and Jack was given another opportunity in 1975. Jack returned to the same basic visual concept—a red skin-tight suit, with blue trunks, 66

gloves, boots, and mask—but he implemented them with his 1970s aesthetic instead of his 1940s one. The flared gloves are now gauntlets; the boots seem more technological in design with a squared-off circuit pattern type design running down the front; Jack even adds some finishing details across the chest and back—not to mention Jack’s illustration style generally favored bulkier, blockier figures, and this new Manhunter wasn’t as lithe and lean as his previous version. Also notable is the addition of a baton with some blasting capabilities (the original S&K Manhunter carried no weapons at all), although it seems to be at least partially ceremonial as the new Manhunter, Mark Shaw (named “Mark Sawyer” in Jack’s original concept art, shown below), has not “earned” one by the story’s end. It’s interesting, I think, to note that while Simon considered the character and his design to initially be basically yet another in a string of Captain America style characters, Jack found a way, inside of just a few of the very first pages, to single out Manhunter’s design as something distinctly unique from other heroes that were birthed in nearly identical formats. Not only was that unique enough to continue after Jack first left the book, but he found the basic design intriguing enough to return back to it decades later. And even though Jack’s new version technically only lasted for a single issue, the basic idea and design he introduced in First Issue Special eventually got picked up and used sporadically throughout Justice League of America. Many of the character redesigns since then still harken back to Jack’s 1975 version of the costume; even the Kate Spencer version of the character hints back to the 1975 design—a surprisingly iconic design, particularly when considering how often it’s had to go back to the drawing board! H

(top right) Compare this late-1960s sketch of the original Manhunter, to Jack’s redesign at right, done just a few years later, but both in his bulkier, modern age style.

JK In The UK

Crown Jewel

The Greatest Prize in British Comics History, by Robert Menzies

(right) How would you score on the 1976 Marvel Mastermind Quiz? (below) Super SpiderMan and the Titans #217 (April 6, 1977) back page pin-up of Captain Britain and Captain America by Jack Kirby. Jack photocopied the pencil version before sending it in to Marvel Comics, and this image (next page) comes courtesy of the Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org).

hen the Jack Kirby illustration of Captain Britain and Captain America was printed in FOOM #19 (Fall 1977), there was no explanation of the background to this art, no information on why it was created or when it first appeared. This, then, is the origin of that art and the story behind the greatest prize ever given by British Marvel.

Marvel Mastermind

British comics have a tradition of competitions and British Marvel was no different. The most interesting by far was the Marvel Mastermind competitions which ran at the end of 1975, 1976 and 1978. The name was obviously inspired by the Mastermind TV quiz show, which was, and still is, a British institution. Mastermind, which over the years has had many formats including an adult and junior version, asked a range of specialist and general knowledge questions. The comic version asked introductory and advanced questions like “Who was the first Inhuman to fight the Fantastic Four?” and “What do Thanos, the Sub-Mariner, the Red Skull, and M.O.D.O.K. have in common?” Nowadays, with the advent of the Internet, it would of course be impossible to run such a competition like this in a print form and ensure that there was no cheating. In 1975 the first ever Marvel Mastermind winner, Peter Judge, won copies of Origins of Marvel Comics and Sons of Origins signed by Stan Lee, as well as two head sketches from Herb Trimpe, who was then living in England. In 1978 the announced prize was original art: One of the Spider-Man newspaper strips drawn by John Romita and signed by both the artist and the writer, Stan Lee. Of interest to us is the 1976 winning prize. The first part of the competition—with an unflattering stereotype of a likely entrant—appeared in comics dated week ending November 24, 1976. Prizes? Well, the Marvel Mastermind of 1976 will receive two prizes. Firstly a copy of Bring On The Bad Guys, signed by Stan “The Man” Lee, il-meme. And secondly, an exclusive framed Mastermind certificate featuring a drawing by one of Marvel’s most legendary artists. Who? Wait until next week, Frantic Ones, and we’ll tell ya! The qualification “one of” rather than “the” most legendary artist may have been an effort to make the answer less obvious and more of a tease, although it is impossible to know after so many decades. Whatever the truth, they did reveal the artist’s identity the following week, even if they failed to give Joe Simon credit for co-creating Captain America. Remember we told you last week that we’d reveal the name of the legendary artist whose original sketch will be gracing the Marvel Mastermind Certificate? Who is it? Only Comicdom’s most creative genius, the man who invented Captain America, Jack “King” Kirby!” The British office was always inundated with correspondence, especially during competitions, so it took some months for the winners to be announced, and many fans must have been biting their nails to nothing in the hope of winning the prized Kirby art. The following two quotations come from comics dated March 16 and 23, 1977. 68

I suppose all you want to know now is who won the competition? Who’s the Marvel Mastermind of 1976? The Marvelite who’s won an original drawing by Jack “King” Kirby, himself? Of course ya want to know! So we’ll tell ya… NEXT WEEK!

held in the UK weeklies. While in the 1970s Britain (or, rather, England) had an annual comic convention, usually in London or perhaps Birmingham, visits by American creators not named Stan Lee were still quite rare, and the King never made an appearance to draw sketches or sign comics. The winner, fourteen-year-old Mark Haynes from Middlesex in southeast England, must have been pinching himself when he discovered he had won a Kirby original. As the competition itself proved, if anyone appreciated the immense significance of this event, it was him. While a lengthy list of famous artists like the Buscema brothers, the Romitas, Joe Sinnott, Jim Starlin, Rich Buckler, Dick Ayers, Frank Giacoia, Marie Severin, Larry Lieber, Keith Pollard, Dan Adkins, Herb Trimpe, Marshall Rogers, and others contributed exclusive art for the British weeklies, this was the one and only time that Kirby himself created anything for the UK comics—and Mark would have it! Frustratingly, and unlike in 1975 with the Trimpe sketches, we were not shown the art won by Haynes as part of the announcement, or even informed that we would ever see it. This being the 1970s, a more innocent time, Haynes’ address was printed, and while the house number was not given, it would not have taken a detective to locate exactly which house he lived in, even without a phone book. One can only wonder whether any fans turned up at his door and asked to see the art. Thankfully, without warning or hoopla, it did appear a fortnight later on the back cover of Super Spider-Man #217 (April 6, 1977) and our collective curiosity was sated. Fans like myself were confident that this was the prize art, but I was not certain until forty years later when Alan Murray, former British Art Director, kindly confirmed it to me in a private e-mail in May 2017. There’s a few surprises that make this artwork even more special. Note that the original announcement talked about a “sketch” on a certificate, when in fact Haynes received a full-figure, inked and coloured commission in addition to the certificate. (Kirby seldom inked his own work, so it is unclear who embellished this.) It does the art a major disservice to call it a sketch, and it’s not comparable in any way to the quickie Trimpe sketches of the previous year, great prizes though they were. Murray, designer of the winner and runner-up certificates, told me that the British staffers were themselves surprised when the Kirby image, fully coloured and inked, arrived from the States. Due, no doubt, to the frankly chaotic rush to fulfill a weekly release schedule rather than any deliberate policy, the art did not appear in any other titles, even if they ran the Mastermind competition entry forms. Surprisingly, that

As Marvel Mastermind of 1976, Mark [Haynes] has won the most pulsating prize ever! An original, full colour masterpiece by Jack “King” Kirby, featuring Captain Britain and Captain America, personally inscribed by the King himself. Pretty incredible, huh? Bet the whole of Marveldom (and the whole blamed Bullpen, for that matter) is green with envy! Now there’s a safe bet if ever there was one. This was an enormous coup for the British Department and easily qualifies as the single greatest prize ever won in any of the countless competitions

includes the Captain Britain comic book that was being published at the time and ran from October 1976 until the following summer. So, it would have been easy for fans to miss this gem. Set in the British Isles, Captain Britain’s adventures were isolated from the rest of the Marvel Universe until issue #16 (January 26, 1977), when fans saw Captain Britain battle, and then team up with, his colonial counterpart, Captain America. This epic story, which ran until #27 (April 13, 1977) and also included the Red Skull and Nick Fury in prominent roles, was easily the title’s highwater mark. That the Kirby art harkened back to this story arc, and included one of his greatest co-creations, is extremely pleasing. It’s a powerful piece by the King, even if it’s lacking the usual Kirby dynamism. Captain Britain is drawn with his original weapon, the quarterstaff, albeit with three rather than four buttons on the handle. By Captain Britain #35 (June 8, 1977), only eight weeks later, he was given a new, and much more powerful, weapon in the form of the Star Sceptre in a desperate and tardy effort to boost sales and save his comic from cancellation. The Two Captains art then appeared for the first time in North America in FOOM. From #13 (March

1976), FOOM had been running a “British Features Page” where Captain Britain featured prominently, dominating the announcements in #17 (March 1977) and #18 (June 1977). In #19 (Fall 1977) the Kirby art with Captains America and Britain was reprinted. Presented as it was at a much smaller size and lacking colour, the art was less impressive than in its UK appearance. The art’s provenance was not explained. The art next appeared in colour in the 1980 Captain Britain Summer Special, the second and last of Cap’s specials over here. This is usually the version that is shown online, and can be differentiated from the earlier appearance in SSM by the absence of the “pin-up” stamp in the bottom lefthand corner. The Two Captains art once more resurfaced, with minor colouring changes, in Captain Britain Volume 4: The Siege of Camelot (2010). What happened to the art after that is mostly a mystery. It was on display from April 6 till May 7, 1994 in the Words & Pictures Museum of Fine Sequential Art in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is not clear if Haynes loaned the art or if he had sold it and it was owned by someone else at this point, although the latter seems likely. I can add nothing else except to say I have not located it in any online sites, including the comicartfans.com site or in past Heritage auctions. Mark Haynes of Clarendon Crescent, Twickenham, Middlesex has proved even more elusive: No one of that name belongs to any comic group I can find, and no one on Facebook, Twitter or in online searches has replied to my appeals. One can only hope that both owner and art are still extant, that Mark will hear about this article, and that this story will have a happy coda. 71

(previous page, top right) Captain Britain #16 cover (January 26, 1977), art by Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia—the first encounter of Captain Britain and Captain America. (previous page, bottom) Super Spider-Man and the Titans #215 (March 23, 1977) winner announcement for the Marvel Mastermind 1976 competition, and description of the Kirby art prize. The art is not shown and nothing is said about showing it in a future issue. (below) FOOM #19 (Fall 1977), page 34, “British Features Page” with uncoloured art by Jack Kirby. So you think you’re a Marvel Mastermind, hmmm? All right then, who inked this onetime Kirby rendition of Captains America and Britain? Take a guess, and then turn to this article’s sidebar on the next page for our answer.

The United “King”-dom

Here’s a selection of altered Kirby covers and pages as they were seen in British annuals and comics from the late 1960s and early 1970s. All are listed below in chronological order of appearance. This page: Marvel Story Book Annual (1967) back cover painting by R.W Smethurst based on Jack Kirby art for the cover of Tales of Suspense #74 (February 1966). Published by World Distributors (Manchester) Limited. The Fantastic Four Comic Annual (1970). The miscolouring of Doom was inconsistent throughout this annual and saw three variants. Here are two, from pages 57 and 87, originally taken from page 6 of Fantastic Four #86 (May 1969) and page 14 of Fantastic Four #87 (June 1969), respectively. Marvel Annual 1973 (1972). Three-page FF text origin with Kirby art from Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961). Author unknown.

Next page: The Mighty World of Marvel #1 (October 7, 1972). Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers’ cover to Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) was recycled as a pin-up. Notice that all character dialogue has been removed. The Mighty World of Marvel #2 (October 14, 1972). The cover to Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962) by Jack Kirby and George Roussos was also repurposed as a pin-up. Note that Hulk was green from his first UK appearance and that the new colourist has matched up the trousers and shirt of both man and monster. The art, in fact, is much more colourful than the original cover. The Mighty World of Marvel #3 (October 21, 1972). Again, the cover to The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (March 1963) was recycled as a pin-up. Notice the brighter colours and the altered and removed cover text. Art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

The Mighty World of Marvel #4 (October 28, 1972). Another Kirby-Ayers cover recycled as a pin-up, Fantastic Four #3 (March 1962). This art has lusher colours than the original, although the FF’s blue uniforms seem somewhat greenish. British weekly The Avengers #20 (February 2, 1974). This Kirby and John Romita cover, which originally featured on the cover of The Avengers #23 (December 1965), is now presented here with Kang differently coloured. The Avengers #21 (February 9, 1974). This cover from The Avengers #24 (January 1966) has its Kirby and Dick Ayers cover heavily recoloured from the US version. Spider-Man Comics Weekly #138 (October 4, 1975). An example of the common practice of a cover being repurposed for the second half of a bisected story. Original cover to Thor #165 (June 1969) by Kirby and Vince Colletta.

The Answer... At Last? We’re pretty sure that the inker of the Kirby pencil drawing of Captain America and Captain Britain, was none other than Larry Leiber, brother of Stan Lee, and regular artist on Captain Britain. Larry was always a big Kirby fan, and did some very Kirbyesque work on that UK title, as evidenced at right. Larry did some earlier Kirby-inspired work on Marvel westerns, and the ink styles seem to match, so it only makes sense that he’s the inker of this piece. That’s our educated guess—and seeing how great it turned out, it’s a shame Larry didn’t ink more of Jack’s work in the 1970s!

different ideas! Efforts were certainly made to encourage Kirby to headline a British convention—and came very close to succeeding. Frank Plowright, one of the organisers of the United Kingdom Comic Art Convention (UKCAC) and a prominent figure in British fandom, attended the San Diego Comic Con in 1985, held over the first four days in August, and asked Kirby if he would like to be a guest the following year. The men exchanged contact details and from this Kirby accepted the invitation to attend the second UKCAC show over the weekend of 20-21 September, 1986, in the University of London Union (now Student Central, London). Kirby was announced as the Guest of Honour in Fantasy Advertiser #96 (April/May 1986). History, alas, had different ideas. During that period there had been a succession of terrorist acts and this eventually resulted in the US, under the leadership of President Reagan, bombing Libya on 15 April. Without going into lengthy details, or discussing the merits of this order, it further destabilised international relations and US nationals found themselves targets, causing many in North America to cancel overseas holidays and trips. The bombing was the tipping point for Kirby and he quickly sent the organisers a letter informing them he wouldn’t be attending. With the letter he also kindly included an original piece of art to be auctioned for charity. In Fantasy Advertiser #97 (June/July 1986), a terse statement from UKCAC read: “We regret that our previously announced guest of honour, Jack Kirby, citing personal reasons, can no longer attend UKCAC86. All our other American guests have reaffirmed that they will be attending.” The UKCAC team were obviously disappointed but they were not, at that point, aware of the full circumstances behind Kirby’s decision. Kirby’s childhood friend, Leon Klinghoffer, had been celebrating his wedding anniversary with his wife on the MS Achille Lauro cruise ship when it was hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLO) on 7 October 1985. Despite being an elderly wheelchair user, the PLO murdered Klinghoffer, and forced other passengers to throw his body overboard. The disturbing story was widely reported at the time and went on to be the subject of TV movies and even an opera. Kirby must have realised Klinghoffer was targeted because he was Jewish, and also knew that as a Jew himself he was especially vulnerable. So, with the ratcheting up of tensions after the Libyan bombing on April 15, Kirby’s change of heart with regard to traveling is easy to understand. Hass Yusuf, another of the UKCAC organisers and formerly a Marvel UK employee, self-describes himself as “Jack Kirby’s biggest fan” and was the most vocal in pushing the idea of inviting Kirby. “Happy Hass”, as he was nicknamed by the British Bullpen, was also the convention booklet designer, and confirmed that Kirby sent them an illo of Etrigan the Demon and that “like everything in the UKCAC booklets, the original was auctioned for charity.” The guest list in 1986 was, to say the least, impressive. It included Frank Miller, Gil Kane, Barry Windsor-Smith, Alan Davis, and Brian Bolland, so the auction had some stunning art. Keen to own the Kirby art, Yusuf started to bid for it, but as an organiser he didn’t want to appear to be “pushy” and soon dropped out. The auction,

Kirby’s Kancellation

Time only made the Mastermind prize all the more precious, as Kirby never did attend a convention here. He had visited England once during the war, although “visited” is misleadingly benign as he was convalescing after a serious injury, and his memories of his time here could not have been pleasant ones, especially when doctors debated amputating one of his legs. Nevertheless, his art appeared in two convention booklets and Britain came very close to hosting him as a convention Guest of Honour. The first of Kirby’s British con artwork is a fun image of Benjamin J. Grimm, a.k.a. the Fantastic Four’s Thing, and Doctor Doom that appeared in the 1978 UK Comicon booklet. The event was held in the Bloomsbury Centre Hotel in Coram Street, London, and the guest of honour was the ground-breaking writer Don McGregor. In the penciled illo, Ben is shown standing as a sentry of the Queen’s Guard outside Buckingham Palace, recreating one of those iconic London sights that are a must-see for most tourists. That dastardly Doctor Doom, of course, has 74

and the convention profits, eventually raised a combined total of £3000 for the Save The Children Fund [about $3900 US in today’s currency]. The history of the Kirby art was more complicated than it seemed. The art that appeared in the con booklet was actually a penciled image of the Demon from the 1970s and not entirely new. Kirby arranged for Mike Thibodeaux to ink it before sending it on. It was a generous act by Kirby, who was under no obligation to provide auction art now that he was no longer attending. It is probable that Kirby realised that a finished piece would raise more for charity and that’s why he had it inked. The Demon art was one of several pencil prints that Kirby sold at cons in the 1970s. Orion and Captain America were two other examples. (The Demon and Orion artworks can be viewed in the comicartfans.com gallery of Jeremy Kirby, Jack Kirby’s grandson, and the Captain America one is on his website.) The booklet art is misleadingly dated “1986” but this must be the year that it was inked by Thibodeaux, who is incorrectly credited as Greg Theakston in the booklet’s credits. This was not, however, the final time Kirby was asked over to Britain, although the last invitation was also unsuccessful. Hass shared: “I did meet Jack and his wife Roz very briefly at San Diego Comic-Con in the late 1980s or early 1990s and tried to persuade them to come over, but I think Jack was getting a bit ill to travel such a distance. A real shame as he was comicdom’s best ever creator in my opinion.” H ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thanks to Alan Murray, British Art Director 1973-78; former UKCAC organisers “Happy” Hass Yusuf, Frank Plowright and Andrew Littlefield; David Hathaway-Price and his wonderful “Classic Comics U.K. Zine” website; Kirk Tilander for his “Kirby on Display” article from The Jack Kirby Collector #2 (November 1994); Ian Hollingsworth; and Gerry Turnbull, the world’s greatest detective.

[The first Marvel comic that Robert Menzies read was Spider-Man Comics Weekly #138 (October 4, 1975), which alongside part of Amazing Spider-Man #100 (September 1971), reprinted the second half of Thor #165 (June 1969) by Lee and Kirby.]

(top) Fantasy Advertiser #96 (April/May 1986) announcement of Jack Kirby being Guest of Honour at UKCAC 1986, and the Kirby/Thibodeaux Demon art that Jack sent for its con book (cover shown above) when he couldn’t attend. Both images courtesy of David Hathaway-Price.

(previous page) Jack Kirby penciled image of Ben Grimm and Doctor Doom from the 1978 UK Comicon booklet (below).

Obscura

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

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

the Colossus!” in the black-&-white issue #6 of a shilling British magazine called Spellbound, which, of course, borrowed its title (and much of its contents) from the American Atlas book of that name. The UK Spellbound #6 appeared in 1961 (according to my friends, the British comic experts Frank Motler and ‘Doc’ Garriock, whose expertise in this area far exceeds mine). But there’s something curious about this reprint, as you can see. The three main UK companies reprinting American comics over the years were L. Miller and Co (whose offices used to be relatively near to where I live in London), Thorpe & Porter, and Alan Class. The latter individual—an amiable, still sharp gentlemen who now deals in fine art, told me that he received the original US art plates of Kirby, Ditko and Co., which he would put (fairly randomly) into his own titles. For the latter, he came up with intriguing names such as Secrets of the Unknown and Sinister Tales. The UK issue of Spellbound reproduced at left is from the earliest of these distributors, L. Miller, and with nobody now around to confirm what I’m about to suggest, you’ll have to take the following on trust. It seems to me that Miller received the plate for the Strange Tales cover, but not a color version, so the only option was to re-color it in the UK—a situation often observed in these reprints. Personally, I prefer the British recoloring which shows more of the detail of the giant Kirby robot; what do you think?

NEVER SEEN BY AMERICAN EYES

Editor John Morrow will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’m the only Brit regularly writing for The Jack Kirby Collector, and if you’ve bothered to read this column in the past (before moving onto coverage of the later Marvel and DC periods which are most readers’ favourite work by The King), you’ll have noticed that I’ve mentioned first encountering Kirby’s work (as a bookish 1960s schoolboy) in the chunky 68-page black-&-white UK reprints that sported a random selection of DC, ACG and Atlas material. But I don’t think I’ve ever given you the chance to compare the US and UK

THE GENESIS OF THE BIG MONSTERS

But back to Strange Tales #72 itself, the original book. This is a fascinating early example of the Kirby/Lee monster books which were to completely take over the Marvel Comics line shortly after this issue. Topped and tailed by big hitters Kirby and Ditko (Stan Lee knew what would sell a comic book), the gigantic robot on the cover is a typically imaginative Kirby creation—and one that (of course) is not seen in the story itself; as usual, the impatient Kirby has come up with a completely different design for the figure in the tale. The piece itself is full of the kind of creativity that Jack showered about like sparks from a Catherine wheel, but the story is a prime example of the kind of cliché that would hang over so many of these tales—possibly, I’d suggest the most egregious cliché of all in the Kirby/Lee giant monster canon (so I hardly need to say ‘spoiler alert’, do I?): The initially threatening menace turns out to be benign, with the final panel showing a chastened humanity regretting it acted so precipitately in getting rid of what was perceived as a threat. The story is, of course, worth having for the artwork, and the rest of the issue has its (slender) charms. The Don Heck, Paul

books before—an omission I now remedy, as you’ll see from the illustrations accompanying this piece. I didn’t see Strange Tales #72 (December 1959) in its original full colour form for many years—I first encountered Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s “I Fought 76

TODAY I AM A--?

Reinman and John Forte stories are distinctly workaday, but the last piece, “I Entered the Doorway of Doom”, is a fascinatingly surreal inter-dimensional tale by Atlas’s other big talent of the day, Steve Ditko, and makes the issue very collectable. Incidentally, there is no mention of the words ‘Atlas’ or ‘Marvel’ anywhere in this issue. The indicae says “a product of Zenith Publishing.”

While the eccentric Salvador Dali may have earned millions from his surrealist paintings, there is another artist who demonstrated a similarly off-kilter vision of his world—with a similarly individual way of expressing it; an artist who was not, perhaps, Dali’s equal, and someone who worked in the despised medium of the comic book. But this was a man whose imagination and vision rivaled that of his richer and more fêted contemporary. I’m talking, of course, about Jack Kirby, and if these claims seems a little grandiose and overblown, take a look at the cover of issue number #59 of Black Cat Mystic as mentioned above (published by Harvey in September 1957), with its bizarre image of military and scientific types looking in alarm at an almost human figure— sporting a grotesquely enlarged cranium—with part of his body wiped away so that the green of the background shines through. Isn’t this as bizarre an image as you’re likely to see on a four-color comic magazine? There is also something of a clever trick being pulled off here by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. This is a post-Code issue of the ex-horror magazine, so the grotesque removal of body parts (standard fare on earlier, pre-Code issues of the magazine) was no longer permissible. But young readers (as I was when the book was first published) still had a taste for the grotesque and the macabre, and this cover image—while remaining within the strictures of the violence-free Comics Code— still presented something unsettling. It was a book that one had to simply pick up—particularly as it was the work of ‘that artist’; the distinctive one whose name we didn’t know back then, but whose work we eagerly sought out when we could find it in comic magazines. The cover story itself is as well written as anything in these early S&K Harvey books, which were, let’s face it, something of a quantum leap from the overwritten purple prose of Black Cat’s horror era. In the story, “Today I am a --?”, we are given something rather similar to ideas that had appeared in written science-fiction but not, as yet, in comics—the super-evolved human being who goes beyond the parameters of the possible. The splash panel shows a melancholy-looking figure, the young man with an engorged brain who we had seen on the cover, surrounded by cautious establishment figures (including soldiers who had guns ready to train on him). We learn that he is a mutant with evolving futuristic powers (a pre-taste of the theme that Kirby and Co. were to explore more thoroughly in the Marvel super-hero period, and which also suggested the “Sixth Finger” episode of the TV sci-fi show The

DEEPER INTO THE OBSCURE

I’d like to say that the “Kirby Obscura” column—since Mr. Morrow first suggested I write it for TJKC—has been systematic in its coverage of the lesser-known byways of The King’s stellar career. I’d like to say it, but with my hand on my heart, I really can’t. The reason? Frankly, I had no idea how long the magazine would last (who knew it would be so durable?)—or, for that matter how long Mr. Morrow would continue to use me (“Sorry, Mr. Forshaw, you’ve done solid work, but we’re letting you go. Kirby Collector readers are more interested in Reed Richards than Race for the Moon...”)—so I wanted to cover as wide a range of lesser-known Kirby material as I could in whatever time was allotted to me. Which meant, I surmised, leaping about in the artist’s illustrious career in order to celebrate the choicest of neglected material (although that sentence requires two qualifications: Firstly, that the ‘leaping about’ was largely confined to the 1950s, which remains the least celebrated period in Jack’s career—and as for choosing the ‘choicest material’: When is his artwork ever less than choice?). All of which is a prelude to suggesting that the longevity of this column means I now have to check something very carefully: That I haven’t covered individual runs of comics in earlier columns. Take, for instance, the book Black Cat Mystic, an issue of which I covered in the last issue of this magazine—that was issue #58. According to my file copies of TJKC, I

found that I had (in an earlier column) talked about Black Cat Mystic #60, but not, in egregious omission, the splendid issue #59, which not only had four superb Kirby stories, but an extremely memorable and surrealistic cover by the artist. So let’s remedy that omission right now, shall we? 77

Outer Limits, with a similarly large-headed, super-powered ‘future man’ played by David McCallum). Kirby’s mutant has been kept prisoner for most of his life by a relatively sympathetic doctor/scientist, but is now chafing at the bit to leave his confined environment. And as we learn (don’t worry—no spoilers to follow), there is nothing that can stop him. The fate of Paul, the super-intelligent and gifted anti-hero, is to be strange indeed when he meets up with several others possessing similar abilities. What distinguishes Kirby’s work is not just the customarily craftsmanlike illustration on the tale, but the numerous studies of Paul’s enlarged head. As so often in his work, Kirby is reluctant to repeat himself, and Paul is shown in a variety of different positions—always human and sympathetic (it’s easy for us non-mutant types to identify with him), but also bizarre and appearing to belong to a different species. It’s a beautifully turned tale and a perfect curtain-raiser for the stories that follow (all of which can be found in the excellent Titan Simon & Kirby Science-Fiction reprint volume).

BEWARE OF ALIENS BEARING GIFTS

The next tale, “A Weemer is the Best of All”, is one of those humorous fantasy/SF pieces of the kind that frequently turn up at this period in Simon & Kirby’s work: Slight, but fun (with a diminutive alien giving the lanky loser hero a variety of bizarre life-changing items). But the penultimate piece in the issue is in the genre in which Kirby always did good work—or, to be precise, two genres: Intelligently written science-fiction, and the ‘great stone face’ idiom. There are too many of the latter in Kirby’s CV to list (variations on the Easter Island statues appear frequently throughout his work), but this one has an actual on-the-nail title of (guess what?) “The Great Stone Face”, and it is an interesting anticipation of a certain celebrated science-fiction film. However, if I tell you that film is Ridley Scott’s Alien, I have to insert a spoiler warning: The mysterious stone visage seen in the splash panel which the archaeologist protagonists discover belongs to the gigantic body of an alien, frozen at the controls of the spaceship in what appears to be death (it is unlikely that Ridley Scott used this as an inspiration for a similar scene in Alien, as the notion had already appeared in Mario Bava’s Italian SF film Planet of the Vampires, generally regarded as the template for Alien). The fact that the alien is not really dead brings the revelation that—no, I don’t want to spoil it for you as it is a splendid revelation, and Kirby’s art is so good that it’s only a shame that the issue didn’t end with this tale rather than with a nondescript final appearance for the now-forgotten ghostly figure Mr. Zimmer. However, if you read “The Great Stone Face” in the Simon & Kirby Science Fiction Library, you will be spared this unexciting end piece as it is not reproduced in that volume.

drawing always observed the proprieties of the possible and never went in for the impactful, in-your-face Kirby approach. But both men, of course, were unparalleled craftsmen in their own very different ways. And thanks to the publisher of this magazine, John Morrow, we now have a handsome hardbound volume (written by Roger Hill) called Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics, which is the perfect celebration of one of the most accomplished artists in the field. As Hill points out, while Crandall always enjoyed the undying admiration of his peers, he never quite achieved the commercial success that Kirby did at various points in his career, although we are reminded just how popular Blackhawk was in the days when Crandall was drawing it. (Personally, I grew up with the Dillin/ Cuidera era when Blackhawk was no longer fighting the Red Menace, as in Crandall’s day—but outlandish science-fictional threats). And, like many comics aficionados, I consider that Crandall’s finest work was done for EC Comics, the greatest single publisher in the history of the medium. And as EC editor Al Feldstein (quoted in Hill’s text) noted, it was a shame that Crandall came on board relatively late in the company’s success with the destruction of the medium looming at the hands of the censors. But all aspects of Crandall’s career are celebrated here in beautiful reproductions (if I have one caveat—and it’s a modest one—it’s that some of the illustrations are simply too small to show the astonishing detail that Crandall included on his pages). Nevertheless, admirers of the artist need not hesitate. And aren’t we comics fans lucky to have such very different talents as Jack Kirby and Reed Crandall at our fingertips? H

KIRBY’S CONTEMPORARIES

Great comics illustrators can possess a wide variety of styles. For instance: can you think of two artists with more different styles than those of Jack Kirby and Reed Crandall? The former is all dynamism and rule-breaking when it comes to the human body, sometimes creatively distorted at the service of the drama and the action, while the latter is very much in the classical tradition of early 20th Century draughtsmen, with carefully delineated artwork, notable for Crandall’s definitive use of cross-hatching (at which discipline Crandall was the absolute master). As for the human body, Crandall’s beautiful, balanced figure 78

(above) We promise! We didn’t ask Barry to include TwoMorrows’ Reed Crandall book in his column—he did it all on his own. But far be it from us to miss a promotional opportunity to sell a few more copies! And a few more is all we have left; it may indeed be sold out by the time you read this, so if you missed it, hurry to twomorrows.com for you last shot at one!

Mark Evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

(above) Jack at work in his home studio, mid-1970s. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Kirby. (below) The panelists, left to right: Mark Evanier, Jillian Kirby, Lisa Kirby, Jeremy Kirby, Tracy Kirby, and Mike Thibodeaux. Photos by John Morrow.

2017 Kirby Family & Friends Panel Held July 21st, 2017 at Comic-Con International San Diego. Featuring Jack’s daughter Lisa Kirby, granddaughter Tracy Kirby, grandson Jeremy Kirby, granddaughter Jillian Kirby, close friend and inker Mike Thibodeaux, and moderated by Mark Evanier. Transcribed by Steven Tice, with edits by Eric Nolen-Weathington. Copyedited by John Morrow and Mark Evanier.

MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon, everyone. While I’m getting my mic on here, I would like to audition for Sean Spicer’s job. [laughter] I’m Mark Evanier. Welcome to a panel we’ve been looking forward to for some time. You know, at this convention, we used to run around and applaud Jack Kirby like crazy. We don’t have Jack here, but we’ve got a lot of his friends and family. I’d like you to meet Kirby’s friends and family, folks. [applause] Except for me and Mike, the rest are all related. This is Jillian Kirby, that’s Lisa Kirby, that’s Mike Thibodeaux, that’s Tracy Kirby, and that’s Jeremy Kirby. [applause] We’re going to talk about the man we were all privileged to know or to have in our world. A lot of you feel close to the Kirby family, I know. If Mike Royer were here, he could talk about the feeling of an extended family. You know, when I went to work for Jack in 1969—I met him in ’69, and went to work for him in 1970 with a fellow named Steve Sherman, who couldn’t be here—Roz was making us sandwiches, we would jump in the pool. At one point Lisa had a horse at the back of the house, and Jack would—every so often at two o’clock, he’d say, “Hm, time to go shovel out the stables, Mark.” And he’d get up to go out to shovel out the stables. Do you remember this, Lisa, at all?

(above) Pencil storyboard from the “Frightful Four” episode of the 1978 Fantastic Four animated series. (below) Photo of Jack holding court with the kids of Atherwood Elementary School in Simi Valley, California. Photo by George Reynolds from the March 24, 1983 edition of the Simi Valley Daily News. (next page, bottom) This sketch of Captain America was recently auctioned on the French eBay site, and looks authentic to us. However, there has been a rash of forgeries sold online lately, and it’s often hard to know if something is legit. The very loose Mister Miracle marker sketch at top right is a great example; while it might be authentic Kirby, it’s just not very good, and it’s not hard to fake Jack’s signature. So buyer beware!

LISA KIRBY: Oh, yeah! I was happy about it. I didn’t have to do it! MARK: And I would say, “Why don’t you let me do that, Jack?” Because I figured the one thing I could do better than Jack was to shovel a lot of horsesh*t. [laughter] And he’d go, “No, Mark, this is honest work.” Jack was much stronger than I was—a very strong man. And he would start shoveling horsesh*t and throwing it into the canyon down where hopefully it would hit one of the motorcyclists who would ride there. [laughter] I like to think that with every one of those shovelfuls that he was thinking of someone he hated, and then flinging the sh*t. Anyway, he was an amazing man, and I wanted to ask everybody a little bit about the effect that—I want to ask Lisa first. Lisa, how old were you when you figured out what your father did for a living? LISA: About 35. [laughter] You know, to me, I get this question a lot: He was my dad. I mean, that’s what he did for a living. For most people, your parents, you know what they do for a living, and that’s what he did for a living. I really didn’t realize until I was older how much he did and the effect it had on the public, and entertaining people. I think he was just always my father, so especially as a teenager, I don’t think you really even appreciate—you roll your eyes at your parents. “Oh, no, he’s telling me that story again.” And as you get older, you’re like, “Wow. I should have listened more,” or, “I should have paid attention more.” So it took awhile, but now, like I said, I am overwhelmed sitting here, so it’s a pretty amazing thing. I’m very proud of him, and I think everybody else is very proud of his

achievements, as well. MARK: Was there one story you heard so many times you could hear it in your sleep? Was there one anecdote he would tell you over, and over, and over again? LISA: Gosh, you know, I can’t think of something [off the top of my head?]. MARK: Was there a World War II story? LISA: A World War II story? Um… I can’t think of any. Does anybody here? TRACY KIRBY: I always remember the story he would tell about finding the dog. LISA: Oh, that’s the one. Yeah. TRACY: The one where they found a lone dog after they went into a town that was pretty much broken down and destroyed, and they found this lone dog walking around, and that to him was a very vivid memory that he carried with him for a long time, that he’d always talk about. And then the Nazis usually multiplied over the years. [laughter] From five Nazis, to ten Nazis, to twenty Nazis that he’d be fighting, which I always thought was pretty funny. MARK: Lisa, did you ever get any reaction from kids at school who knew what your father did? LISA: Yeah. I mean, definitely. Growing up, I was just a really shy kid. I was quiet. I was one of those people that just sat and didn’t talk very much. It was hard for me to make friends. But he would come to my classroom, and he’d draw for the kids. He’d ask, “What letter does your name start with?”, and he’d put a big “A” on the drawing pad and make a superhero out of it. So somewhere, hopefully those people still have their drawings. But it really broke the ice for me, and then I had birthday parties and a lot of these people would come because—yeah, I owe it to him. He got me in the group. And then, as I grew older, I was a preschool teacher for quite a long time, and he would come to my class and do the same thing. It was really neat to see it all go full circle. So, yeah, he was pretty fun. MARK: Jillian, what’s the reaction you get when people find out you’re related to Jack Kirby? JILLIAN KIRBY: Almost the same. I guess a lot of kids, especially with the conversation of his characters in the movies

going on, and, “Oh, I just want to get to tokidoki, mom. Let’s go.” And I was kind of like that, I think, as a little child. Definitely when I was ten, and moving on into the early teenage years and really going to the ComicCons, it really hit me how much he meant to people. Growing up, I understood his characters, and I spent so much time hanging out with him in his studio, and I just loved looking at all the stuff he would draw and create, and all the stories that he would tell me and my brother growing up. To me it was just Grandpa stories, and then, going to the comic conventions, it was, “Oh, wow! This really means a lot. It’s not just me who is actually enjoying all this. This is a lot of other people out there.” So it was definitely the early years of the comic book conventions and the award ceremonies, and just following him around and seeing fans approach him.

and everything today, now they’re becoming more and more aware of who he is, especially people in my age group. We didn’t really grow up with him as people did when he was first co-creating the characters, but now people are more aware of his contribution to the industry and the implications with his characters. They’re everywhere now, and it’s crazy. One of my friend’s brothers, who is even younger than me, kind of freak[ed] out when [he] realized, “Oh, wait. Your friend’s related to Jack Kirby? This is amazing!” And so it’s still kind of coming back to me now, as almost an odd-person-out on this panel; my grandfather passed away in 1994, and I was born in 1995, so I never had a chance to know him personally. So even here this year, all my relatives’ stories about him—and even fans that approached me recently, like yesterday at the con, and they’re like, “Oh, I met your grandfather. He was a huge inspiration to me” — that’s just amazing to hear all of his impact on people of all ages, too. MARK: Did Neal, your father, ever sit you down and say, “Let me tell you about Grandpa”? JILLIAN: Yes. I think there was one of those moments. It was definitely when I was in elementary school, and I was not aware of how big of a deal it was. I remember I knew enough by, in third grade—we had to do a hero report, and I did it on my grandfather, so I had this whole twenty-minute-long presentation I did in front of my classroom of eight-year-olds. I had Styrofoam poster boards I had printed out. I had used the color printer and printed out a bunch of comic book covers and was trying to teach my peers about what my grandfather did. It would be great if I still had them today, but—

MARK: Jeremy, when did you figure out who he was?

MARK: Some kid whose father worked for CVS pharmacy had to get up and follow you, [laughs] and said, “Well, my grandfather didn’t create multi-million dollar characters...”. Tracy, when were you first conscious of Jack, of what he did? When did you understand what he meant to people?

JEREMY KIRBY: Mine was kind of two-fold. I grew up in the early ’80s, so, for me, a lot of my grandfather’s stuff was some of the awesome cartoons at Ruby-Spears that he had worked on. So everything through Mr. T and all of that type of stuff, and Thundarr the Barbarian, of course. All those amazing things, and it was getting to actually journey with him to the Ruby-Spears offices and being able to experience that: That was one. And then, of course, I knew there was something special about my grandfather when you’re maybe four, five years old, and you want to play cops and robbers, and you’re at their house going, “Okay, let’s play an imaginary game. Let’s play cops and robbers.” And your grandfather’s like, “Yeah, that’s awesome, but instead of cops and robbers, how about we play intergalactic spaceman and robbers,” [laughter] “except the robbers live on a planet that’s too close to the sun, so it’s one-third the gravity of Earth, and we...”? And I’m like, ‘I just want to shoot people, you know?’ [laughter] So that would be when I realized that there was something kind of special about my grandfather, obviously.

TRACY: I think at a pretty early age, because, honestly, I mean, I’ve been going to this Comic-

MARK: He did that with everything people gave him. He always took everybody’s idea and added 33 things to it. It was amazing. One time, I told him I had an idea for a comic book, and he went, “That’s great,” and then he started telling me how to expand, to add characters to it, and I thought, “Did I tell him this idea six months ago and he spent all this time working on it?” Because he had all these add-ons instantly in his head. And this is one of the things that convinced—when I first met Jack, he told me, “I came up with all the ideas for everything.” And then I thought, “Well, everybody would say that.” And then I started hearing all the ideas he had, and I started believing him. Then I started meeting people he worked with like Steve Ditko and Don Heck, and they said, “Yeah, Jack had all the ideas for everything.” And I was just, it’s all true. I never once caught Jack lying to me. I caught him being confused a lot, saying “Captain Marvel” when he meant “Captain America,” but I never ever thought he told me something that wasn’t true. Did you find that? Was he as honest

Con since—I was born in May, that summer, so I think I was a couple months old. MARK: There’s a photo in the program that I took of Jack and Tracy, and you must have been about four at that point, or something like that. TRACY: Yes. I was a little girl. For me, I’m experiencing it right now with my own children, dragging them around to some panels, and they’re bored and not really understanding what’s 81

with you as he was with me? LISA: You know, I think so. I mean, he was just such a sweet man. I can’t picture him lying at all, to anybody. Like you said, he may embellish, possibly, or be confused, but I don’t think he would lie about anything. MARK: But he embellished the way a writer tries to make a story better. LISA: Right, in that way. MARK: He didn’t embellish to make himself look better. LISA: No, that’s true. It would make his story more alive and interesting, and he was constantly thinking. He didn’t even drive a car. My mother drove him because he knew he would end up off the road somewhere because he couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing; he was constantly thinking of stories. MARK: Yeah, Jack behind the wheel of a car was a frightening thing. LISA: Yeah, you would not want my dad driving you. MARK: Mike, tell us how Jack came into your life. MIKE THIBODEAUX: No, I came into his life. MARK: Okay, either way. MIKE: Actually, I met him at a convention in ’71 in LA. We were talking to him, and I bought a piece of artwork from him at that point. Actually, it wasn’t a piece of artwork. It was a drawing that was inside a comic book. And I bought some comics from him, talked to him for a while, and he… I just wanted to know if I could have lunch with him at some point, and he said, “Yeah, come on over to the house.” And I just couldn’t believe that. I said, “Oh, can I get your phone number?” Then he says, “It’s in the phone book.” [laughter] Jack Kirby puts his name in the phone book? Anyway, I called him up, and he had me over and they were so kind. They were just so nice, and they invited me up again, and again, and then I just started calling, and I went up there at least once or twice a week. MARK: At what point—when you first met him, did you say, “I want to be an

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artist”? MIKE: I’m sure I mentioned that to him. MARK: Did you show him any of your work? MIKE: A few years later I started showing him stuff. MARK: So, without even seeing artwork by you, he took an interest in you. MIKE: Yes. MARK: Okay. And then, as you started bringing him artwork, what was his reaction? MIKE: He didn’t mind it. [audience laughs] He would suggest things I could improve, but very kindly. He was a very—he would never put you down. He probably should have. [laughs] But I just kept working on it, working at it all the time, and then one day he did say, “It looks pretty good. Do you want to ink something for me?” Just a trial run. It was a big Surfer piece, which to this day I regret inking over the pencils. I ruined it. [laughs] But he was so cool about it. MARK: Did he think you ruined it? MIKE: He didn’t say it. [scattered laughter] You know Jack. He said, “Great job!” MARK: Did he ask you to ink something else right after? MIKE: No. [laughter] It was a few years later. MARK: But he gave you another chance. MIKE: He did.

introduced Jack.

MARK: And how did you feel when you were now inking something of his that was going to be published?

MIKE: Weren’t you responsible for Royer inking him? MARK: I was the one who talked Jack into getting rid of you-know-who and giving it to Mike [Royer]. One of the people who talked him into it. I knew [Royer] years before he even met Jack, but Alex Toth’s the one who sent him to do that Marvelmania stuff.

MIKE: Oh, like Captain Victory? MARK: Yes. MIKE: It scared the hell out of me. I didn’t want to touch it. I remember looking at the page for hours and not wanting to touch it. And I asked him if I should do it over a light table, and you know Jack. “No, no, just get it done. Go do it.” That story took a long time. The first couple pages I did, I remember him telling me to go look at Mike Royer’s work. I’m sorry he’s not here. But that’s what he’d constantly say. And then, I believe you introduced him to Royer, is that right?

MIKE: Wait, so are you not responsible for him inking? MARK: I am one of the people responsible for Mike [Royer] inking Jack. MIKE: Okay, then I’m still angry at you, because he would always compare everything to Royer. And it’s like, who introduced you to him?

MARK: Sort of, yeah. Well, Alex Toth actually 83

(above) Amazing Heroes #100 (Aug. 1986) devoted its full issue to Kirby, and Jack produced this image for its cover. Steve Rude was called upon to ink the finished piece (previous page), tweaking it ever so slightly to correct some of the anomalies that had crept into Jack’s work as his eyesight worsened.

MARK: If Mike hadn’t inked him, you wouldn’t have inked him.

(this spread) Two Kirby fan sketches from the late 1970s. We’ve run lesser reproductions of both of these previously, but for this issue, we were able to re-scan them directly from the original art. It’s a testament to Kirby’s abilities that he was able to produce as powerful a sketch in magic marker, as he was in pencil.

MIKE: That’s a good point. [laughter] I like it! [laughter] Can I bring up something real quick? She was saying something that made me remember something that had happened to me. Lisa was saying it was “just Dad,” that she was so used to him, he wasn’t what he was. It reminded me that when I was first inking for Jack, he wanted to just draw the whole book and give it to me, but he was only a half hour away, and I asked Jack if I could do it piecemeal. Just draw two or three pages, and I’ll drive up and get the pages and go. Jack… Jack liked doughnuts. And they would make fresh doughnuts at two in the morning down the street from him. So I used to drive up there, get him—as long as Roz was sleeping, we could go do this, because she wouldn’t let him do this. [scattered laughter] Anyway, there was one night I picked him up and we drove down there, and I had the pages with me. We went into the doughnut shop. You wouldn’t do that today with original art, but we were sitting there eating doughnuts, and I was going over it, asking him how he would like something inked. And I remember him talking about it. I see a group of people behind us, young kids, they had to be college kids, and one of them just kept looking over. He finally gets up, walks over, and he’s standing there, and he says, “Is that—are those Jack Kirby pencils?” And I’m sitting there thinking right away, “This is a civilian. How does he know?” Anyway, I start talking to him, and he’s in

shock because this is really Jack Kirby’s work, and I finally say, “I’d like to introduce you to Jack.” And the thing was, his eyes lit up. He just stepped back. But his eyes lit up to the point where he almost fell down. And, when he finally got back to the table, he asked Jack if he could shake his hand. And he was just talking about, “You’re the greatest artist in the world!” He said, “I have all your comics.” He was going on. And, again, it was a civilian saying this! The guy calls everybody over, and they’re all standing there. But his speech that he gave to these people was pretty incredible, and I realized when she was talking about Jack just, you know, Jack told so many war stories. You’d get to the point you started to glaze over. It’s just, on the drive home, I remember realizing, this is that giant that I remember. You know, sometimes you forget, as time goes on, what a giant this person is. And I hadn’t been drinking either, but I said, “Jack, man, I luuuve you.” [laughter] MARK: That’s a great story. [applause] I have a quick story here. I worked on a TV show for a year called Welcome Back, Kotter. Some people remember, it was on ABC. And Lisa came to the set one time. Do you remember this at all? LISA: I don’t know if that was me. I think I would have remembered. MARK: I think it was you. LISA: I can’t remember last week. MARK: You and a couple of your friends came to the set when we were taping, and I introduced you to John Travolta and all the people on that show, and I introduced—there was a black guy on the show named Larry Hilton-Jacobs, and I introduced him to Jack and Roz and everybody there. They stayed for after the taping, and we had stuff we taped after the studio audience had left. I introduced them. And the episode was an episode that George Kennedy was supposed to guest-star in, and at the last minute, he dropped out, and they grabbed an actor named Scott Brady, who was an old Western actor. He filled in for George Kennedy at the last minute. So we’re at this taping, and Roz was so excited to meet John Travolta and Gabe Kaplan and all these people, and Jack was all excited because he met Scott Brady, because Scott Brady was in old Republic serials. [laughter] So the next day, Larry Hilton-Jacobs comes up to me during rehearsals and says, “Hey, Mark! You’re into comic books, aren’t you?” I said, ‘Yeah.’ He says, “Do you know the character, the Silver Surfer?” And I said, ‘Sure.’ He said, “That was a great character.” I said, ‘Well, you’ve met the guy last night who created the Silver Surfer.’ And Larry said, “That was the Jack Kirby?” I said, ‘Yeah.’ “The guy who drew this stuff? That little guy was Jack Kirby?” [laughter] And I said ‘yeah,’ and he says, “I thought it was just some guy named Jack Kirby!” [laughter] Anyway… thank you, Mike. That was a great story. MIKE: I liked yours better. [laughter] MARK: Well, mine’s got some stars in it. Jillian, tell us a little about the project you’re doing now. I want to make sure we have time to get all that in. JILLIAN: I founded a charity campaign back in 2012 called Kirby4Heroes, and at the time, like I just

said, I didn’t have that personal connection with my grandfather, just family stories that I kind of inherited through my father, Neal, [who] also told me all these stories about my grandfather, and I wanted a way to further connect with him, myself. So, from what I can gather through hearing all these stories, he was a very generous and charitable person, and I thought, “Okay, I could maybe give back somehow to the comic book industry, in tribute to my grandfather.” So I founded Kirby4Heroes in 2012 to raise money for a charity called the Hero Initiative, which gives back to members of the comic book industry and provides them with medical and financial assistance. So every year around August 28th, my grandfather’s birthday, comic book stores across the country and individuals can donate to the Hero Initiative, plus stores throw birthday parties in honor of my grandfather, then donate a percentage of sales to the Hero Initiative as a part of the Kirby4Heroes campaign. When I started in 2012, I was sixteen. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t know how to try to make a big campaign on a national or international level, or try to get people involved. But, through the guidance of both my parents, Connie and Neal, and Jim McLaughlin at the Hero Initiative, the campaign has grown every year, and there’s comic book retailers across the country, and even in Brazil and France, and I think Argentina. It’s crazy how much it’s grown. I think the first year we raised $5,000, and now we’ve raised over $70,000 so far for the Hero Initiative. [applause] And the campaign will continue this summer in honor of my grandfather’s centennial in August. My goal is to total $100,000 raised for the Hero Initiative in honor of his 100th birthday. That will be my goal for this Summer. So check out the campaign, guys.

JILLIAN: It’s kind of awed. They’re like, “Oh, I personally didn’t know how to give back to the comic book industry,” if they used to be in it, but if they are not in the comic book industry, they’re like, “Oh, this was part of my childhood,” or, “I grew up on this, and it has meant so much to me, personally,” and they want—they think this is a great way to give back, and especially if they’re inspired by my grandfather. “To do something in honor of Jack Kirby, who meant so much to me,” and maybe they had met him, or hadn’t met him. Just to contribute on behalf of him, and especially to a charity that is directly helping members of the comic book industry, the industry that has given us so much enjoyment. And people, like you said, really want to give back to that, if it meant so much to them, personally.

[Editor’s Note: You can donate to the Hero Initiative on behalf of the Kirby4Heroes campaign online at https://www.heroinitiative.org/ portfolio-item/kirby4heroes-jillian-kirby/ or mail your donation to: Kirby4Heroes Campaign c/o The Hero Initiative 11301 Olympic Blvd., #587 Los Angeles, CA 90064

MARK: Jeremy, I want to hear a little more about the reaction you get. People try to talk to you about Jack’s characters. What do they say to you? What’s the character of his that people mention most to you?

On the memo portion of your check, please write “Kirby4Heroes”.]

JEREMY: Probably Captain America, most likely. When you let them know who your grandfather is, they want—a lot of them never got a chance to meet him, so you almost become a vessel for them to be able to get a feeling of someone that meant so much to them [in] their childhood. They grew up on these characters, whether it be Captain America, or the Fantastic Four, or New Gods, any of those. And to

MARK: That’s great. What is the reaction you get where people think, “Oh, Jack Kirby. I’m going to open my wallet”? I mean, there’s a lot of people who just want to give because of Jack’s name. I guess the question I’m asking here is, what’s the response you get from people when they hear the name “Kirby” in conjunction with this? 85

back and forth. It was just so neat to see these two pillars of the comics community be able to talk about their past. It’s why I think it’s so neat, too, that this year they’re honoring my grandfather and Will Eisner at the same time, because they worked together, they were great friends, and I think he would have been so honored, himself, to be recognized, as well. So I just think it’s great to see that. MARK: How many people in the room met Jack? Of those people, is there anyone who didn’t have the kind of experience Jeremy’s describing with him? I mean, he treated everybody like an equal, or sometimes like you’re even better than him. And I remember that, most of the time when he was physically able to, he would stand when he talked to you if you were standing. He’d be sitting, and you came up to talk to him, he would stand up to talk to you—which he didn’t have to do, but it was simple courtesy to him. Tracy, can you expand on this? Do you have a story you could tell people about Jack that makes them understand at all? I don’t mean to put you on the spot here, but it seems to me that you had— LISA: I have a story. MARK: Oh, Lisa’s got one. Tracy can think of one while Lisa’s talking. LISA: We talk about growing up and recognizing what your father did. Well, after a while you’d have people coming over and getting interviews. He was in the phone book, so you could call him up, and people would call up, or they’d actually just show up and, “Oh, yeah! Come on in!” My mom would make sandwiches and they’d go and sit by the pool. But this one time—we used to tease him because these days you can’t obviously do that, but he would let anybody in. These people came, and I don’t know what cult they were from. It was some UFO cult. [laughter] And they wanted him to join, and give up all of his belongings, and follow them to the desert, and he’s like, “Come on in, we’ll talk about it!” [laughter] “We’ll have cookies and milk.” And they came in, and sure enough, they asked him to leave with them. And I can’t remember the name of the cult. This was obviously a long time ago. But, yeah, we used to tease him that, “Yeah, Charlie Manson came to the door today. Come on in!” [laughter] He didn’t turn anybody down. He was so grateful to his fans for enabling him to do what he enjoyed doing the most. And he would have been very humbled and grateful to be here. So it is funny. It’s even funny for me to hear all these stories.

be able—they actually [want to talk] less so about the characters and more so about the man, because they can see the super-heroes all over the big screen, they can see them in their favorite comics, but what they really want to know is about my grandfather—what type of person he was, what did he do, what did he believe in? And what I like talking about more is the type of person he was; someone that would, if you stopped him here at Comic-Con—and when I was a kid I’d walk the floors with him—he would sit there and talk to you almost to a fault, where my grandmother would have to grab him, or Mark would have to get him to the next panel or whatnot. But he literally had this genuine kind of love for everyone, and if you ever got a chance to talk to him, you would see it in the way that he talked to them, and the way that he’d treat every person. And when people talk to me, it’s really about trying to just figure out more about the man. I love being able to share with you guys anecdotes and some stories that I have, because he really was that good of a person. Like, if you never had a chance to meet him, he’s just the embodiment, I guess, of warmth to people that—

MARK: Tracy, you got something? TRACY: Oh, gosh. I mean, there’s so many great stories and memories. Actually, it’s funny, because a lot of us have a very similar story in regards to: I brought friends over to the house when I was getting into my teenage years, and it was funny because there was one friend who knew the characters, but didn’t really know who my grandfather was. And I did not see my friend for about two hours. Like, he brought my friend through the halls, and was talking about pictures. And, actually, that friend now is a full-blown comic book/ Jack Kirby fan and collector of art and everything like that. It’s a lot of fun. I mean, personal stories, I always remember my favorite times—I always loved the fact that he stayed up late at night, so when

MARK: What’s a story you tell people? JEREMY: I have a lot of them. I guess Comic-Con-related, is every year we would drive down. It was my grandmother, myself, my grandfather, and Julie Schwartz in the car. And being able to come down and listen to him and Julie just kind of kvetching over everything—do you know what I’m saying? They were just gossiping 86

I got to spend the night at my grandparents’ house, it was always a treat because I got to stay up late. I literally would just spend hours with him in his studio. He would take time, because I would watch him draw, and a lot of times he would let me draw on his desk. Of course, I am a horrible, horrible artist, unfortunately. But, again, he was super nice and would say how great I was drawing this stick figure [laughter] that was supposed to look like a super-hero. So I have really fond memories of those evenings. MIKE: The respect the man had for other people. This is very minor, but I’ve learned from this. Every time I would leave his house, he would always walk me to my car and make sure I got in, and watch me drive down the street before he’d walk in the house. And to this day I try to do this, because I thought, how many people do that? It’s just—I know it sounds minor, but to me it was a big deal at the time. [Editor’s Note: Having visited Mike’s house, I can attest that he does indeed follow Jack’s lead by walking guests out to their car; something that made an impression on me.]

Spielberg, and Ray Bradbury. At one point Stan Lee got it. Neil Gaiman got the award. It’s a very big award. June Foray won it one year. And it’s the only award Jack never got. Now he’s a Disney Legend and all those, but the problem is, they don’t give it to anyone who is deceased. You have to be alive to get this award, and I don’t think that’s right. I think they should change the rules and give this award to Jack Kirby. Am I the only person who thinks this? [applause] There was a wonderful moment at “Quick Draw” last year when David Glanzer, who handles the promotions and publicity for the convention, came up on the stage and presented the award to Sergio. Sergio started—wasn’t this a wonderful moment, those of you who were there? Sergio was crying. It was a terrific, wonderful moment. I think the convention should change the rules and give this award to Jack Kirby. Now, if we can get this arranged, will the family come back for the ceremony if we do this? Lisa, Jillian, Tracy, will you all come back and do it? Okay,

MARK: Actually I think he walked you to your car to make sure you hadn’t stolen anything. [laughter] He was very gentlemanly. He always offered Steve Sherman and me coffee. We never drank coffee, we didn’t want coffee, but he always had to offer coffee. He had a very kindly attitude towards everyone. Jillian, did you go to D23 last week? JILLIAN: I did. I was at D23. As some of you may know, my grandfather received a Disney Legends Award at the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, D23, and so my father, Neal, accepted the award on his behalf and gave a speech. MARK: Neal gave a very classy, lovely speech. If you have not seen it, it’s on YouTube. Go search for D23 Kirby. There’s a wonderful film clip package about Jack which does not mince any words or couch things about saying he’s the co-creator of these characters. I feel Disney is even trying to be a little too loud with that to counteract all the previous words that left him out of the creatorship of these materials. I think they’re really, actively trying to do that. And Neal got up and gave a real classy speech. Perfect. I wish he could be here today because he’s a bright, lovely man. I love Neal. He’s just an amazing guy. And this brings up a topic I want to talk about at this moment here. I’m so serious about this, I’m going to move to the podium. [pause while Mark moves] Was anyone here at [the] “Quick Draw” [panel] last year? Anybody here in the room? Do you remember what happened at “Quick Draw” last year? We were doing this thing with Sergio Aragonés and Scott Shaw! and Keith Knight. And the convention has a thing called the Icon Award. This is an award, the convention’s highest award. It gives it out once a year to one person, and it is for a person whose work has transcended the original medium it was in. It’s for a writer whose work became movies, or a comic book artist whose work became movies, or novels, or video games, or a filmmaker whose work has transcended its form. I think the earlier winners were, like, George Lucas, and Steven 87

(previous page) 1967 Thor sketch by Jack, done for a young Marv Wolfman, who was a frequent visitor to the Kirby home. (below) L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future 4 (published July 28, 1988) featured the story “Old Times There” by Dennis E. Minor, with this interior illustration by Jack Kirby—one of the last pieces Kirby drew for publication.

good. We’re going to save you the trouble. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s David Glanzer from the convention. [applause]

of or excess of ink. For the first time I really understood the art of comics, so this opened up a whole new world for me, and it was great that Jack taught me, even after he had passed away, the importance and nuance of comics and comic art. Jack Kirby’s impact upon the comics industry is monumental. Jack Kirby’s impact on Comic-Con is equally so. One of our first guests, he remained one of our truest friends, and even predicted the growth and success of what was at the time a tiny, little fan-run show. For all this and so much more, I am proud to say that, for the first time, Comic-Con International will present the Icon Award posthumously. This year’s recipient is Jack Kirby. [cheers, extended applause, whistles]

DAVID GLANZER [left]: Thank you, Mark. So what I’d like to discuss is something that is really unprecedented in our organization’s history. It will come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with Comic-Con that when we compiled our 40th Anniversary tabletop book, among the most frequent memories and events that were cited were people’s recollection of Jack Kirby. It will certainly come as no surprise to anyone who knows of Jack Kirby that his influence in comics and storytelling truly stands apart. In fact, The New York Times said of his work, “The force of punches thrown was visibly and explosively evident. Even at rest, a Kirby character pulsed with tension and energy in a way that makes movie versions of the same characters seem static by comparison.” I cannot do justice to Jack Kirby by reciting a list of his accomplishments or anything else about him. That is being done far better at panels like this today and others over the course of this weekend, but what I can say is this. As a young man who knew very little about comics other than Archie and some others I read as a child, I truly had little knowledge about the different aspects of creating a comic book. For example, one element I never thought much about was the nuance and the very importance of inking in relation to the creation of a comic book. It wasn’t until I began working with Comic-Con that I came across copies of a series of pencil sketches that Jack had done as a demonstration about that importance. All the pencil sketches were of the same image, but, as a testament to Jack Kirby, he used those sketches as a teaching tool. The interesting aspect of those sketches is how they were transformed when inked by different artists. The original sketch, as you can all imagine, was impressive enough. But the finished examples of each took on a life of their own. The same image told different stories depending upon the thickness of lines, shading, lack

LISA: I hope I don’t drop this! This is gorgeous. I’m not even sure what to say because I am totally surprised and a little emotional. So I thank you so much. This means the world to us. I’m sure everybody feels the same way and they can say a few words. I wish he was here to accept this, and we are so proud and happy to accept this on his behalf, and, as a family, it means so much for us that he’s still getting the recognition that he deserves. And he did a lot for the comic book industry, and it makes me very happy for people—all of you, and other people who have met me just out on the floor—saying such kind words and recognizing that he did so much. And this is great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Comic-Con International. Does anybody else want to say a few words? Because I don’t want to start crying and fall down. TRACY: I think this is a great example of the amazing recognition, and I think the long-term inspiration that Jack Kirby is going to be, not just in the comic book industry, but internationally recognized as a master of art, just in art itself. It’s a true form. I think this is going to be a great inspiration for many years to come. His art is not just an inspiration in comic books, but for me he was a master of many things, science and history, and now is my inspiration looking through his form of drawings and his stories. So I thank you very much for the honor. I think it’s just—it’s a great honor. Thank you very much. [applause] JEREMY: This is amazing. Thank you. And it’s humbling, too, obviously, for the whole family. Looking out at the audience today, I see people that I’ve seen here since I was two years old, three years old, since I can remember. And, obviously, it’s because of you. It’s because of you guys coming back here every year after year and getting the word out about my grandfather and his achievements that something like this could be made possible, so it’s humbling for me to see all of you here in this panel showing the support that you have. So thank you all so much for being here, and thanks again to the convention, as well. This is amazing. [applause]

Courtesy of Frédéric Manzano, researcher Ferran Delgado sent us these unused Challengers of the Unknown #4 (Oct. 1958) pencils, which are on the back of one of Jack’s Surf Hunter daily strips. Back in TJKC #17, we ran another partial set of unused Challs#4 pencils from the back of a Surf Hunter strip, so Jack was sadly chopping up old art boards for reuse.

JILLIAN: I’d also like to thank Mark and Comic-Con for bestowing this iconic award on my grandfather posthumously. Also, I wish my father, Neal, could be here to see this, as well, and my mother, Connie. As Jeremy said, we are humbled that this award is being given, but I am also sure that my grandfather would be very humbled to receive this award if he were here. And it’s amazing, really, how

much his large body of work has grown and expanded and been recognized, and like you were saying, has “transcended” what it originally was from the pencil sketches to the Marvel Universe. My first con, I saw Kirby everywhere. You know the impact he has had on this convention, and on the fans, and on people speaking at panels, too. And it’s just amazing. Thank you so much again. Jack Kirby is truly an icon to me, and a hero, and an inspiration, so thank you to the fans, and Mark, and Comic-Con, again. [applause] MARK: We can’t follow this, but I want to say one last thing here. I’ve been doing Jack Kirby panels for a long time at these conventions, and for a long time, the panels were about getting Jack the recognition he deserves. This was always a thing. I met Jack, like I said, in 1969, and it bothered me for years, and years, and years that he was not getting the recognition he deserved. And I’ve told this story many times before, how I walked out of the X-Men movie angry at how small his credit was. I sat there after everybody had left the theater. I was determined to sit there until Jack’s name came on the screen, and they’re cleaning up the popcorn boxes around me, and I’m sitting in the theater. Finally they got to the last name on there, and it was smaller than the caterer’s. And I was angry about that, and I’ve been angry about it for years, and upset. And in the last couple years this has all turned around. Now it is not a matter of telling people how important Jack was, it’s a matter of letting it propagate down, letting it trickle down. The new dynamic made the old one passé, because now Jack is recognized as the full co-creator of all those Marvel heroes, and the full creator of all his DC heroes, and co-creator of all the stuff he did with Joe Simon. It’s a tremendous body of work. Jack wanted two things in his life: He wanted financial security for his family and he wanted recognition for his work. And he’s gotten the recognition now. We just have to accept that, instead of fighting it like the underdogs, we have to accept that Jack Kirby’s recognition has finally reached the stage it should have and it’s only going to grow from here. And the people up here, the family and the friends—I felt close to the Kirby family the minute I started working with Jack. Not after a little period of time; like, the second day, because they accepted me like that, and I am so happy about this. And this is

the last one we can give him, folks. It’s the last award he didn’t have. [laughs] I’m very happy about that. And thank you all for coming to this. We’re having the usual Jack Kirby tribute panel on Sunday. We’ve got some surprises planned for that also. Please be there for that because we’re going to be talking about all the stuff with Jack that’s going on now, and there’s a lot of it. Thank you very much for coming. [applause] H

(below) Wheel Barons, an unused animation concept, circa 1980.

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERVIEWS WITH KIRBY and his contemporaries, FEATURE ARTICLES, RARE AND UNSEEN KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and presentation of KIRBY’S UNINKED NS PENCILS from the 1960s-80s (from EDITIO BLE photocopies preserved in the KIRBY AVAILANLY ARCHIVES). Now in FULL-COLOR, it FOR O 5.95 showcases Kirby’s art even better! $1.95-$

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

COLLECTED VOL. 3

COLLECTED VOL. 6

COLLECTED VOL. 7

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

KIRBY COLLECTOR #56

KIRBY COLLECTOR #57

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

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

“Legendary Kirby”—how Jack put his spin on classic folklore! TONY ISABELLA on SATAN’S SIX (with Kirby’s unseen layouts), Biblical inspirations of DEVIL DINOSAUR, THOR through the eyes of mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, pencil art from ETERNALS, DEMON, NEW GODS, THOR, and Jack’s ATLAS cover!

(84 tabloid pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #60

KIRBY COLLECTOR #61

KIRBY COLLECTOR #62

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

KIRBY’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHIC NOVEL presented as created in 1975 (before being modified for the 1980s Pacific Comics series), reproduced from his uninked pencil art! (52-page comic book) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

LEE & KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS

#58 traces their history at Marvel, and what led them to conceive the Fantastic Four in 1961. Also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with plenty of Kirby art, plus previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby’s working relationship, and their eventual parting of ways in 1970. (160-page trade paperback) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $7.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #63

“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

FANTASTIC FOUR FOLLOW-UP to #58’s THE WONDER YEARS! Never-seen FF wraparound cover, interview between FF inkers JOE SINNOTT and DICK AYERS, rare LEE & KIRBY interview, comparison of a Jack and Stan FF story conference to Stan’s final script and Jack’s penciled pages, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, gallery of KIRBY FF ART, pencils from BLACK PANTHER, SILVER SURFER, & more!

JACK KIRBY: WRITER! Examines quirks of Kirby’s wordsmithing, from the FOURTH WORLD to ROMANCE and beyond! Lengthy Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, LARRY LIEBER’s scripting for Jack at 1960s Marvel Comics, RAY ZONE on 3-D work with Kirby, comparing STEVE GERBER’s Destroyer Duck scripts to Jack’s pencils, Kirby’s best promo blurbs, Kirby pencil art gallery, & more!

KIRBY AT DC! Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, updated “X-Numbers” list of Kirby’s DC assignments (revealing some surprises), JERRY BOYD’s insights on Kirby’s DC work, a look at KEY 1970s EVENTS IN JACK’S LIFE AND CAREER, Challengers vs. the FF, pencil art galleries from FOREVER PEOPLE, OMAC, and THE DEMON, Kirby cover inked by MIKE ROYER, and more!

MARVEL UNIVERSE! Featuring MARK ALEXANDER’s pivotal Lee/Kirby essay “A Universe A’Borning,” MARK EVANIER interviews ROY THOMAS, STAN GOLDBERG and JOE SINNOTT, a look at key late-1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s events in Kirby’s life and career, STAN LEE script pages, unseen Kirby pencils and unused art from THOR, NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD, and FANTASTIC FOUR, and more!

(104 pages with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $4.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #64

KIRBY COLLECTOR #65

KIRBY COLLECTOR #66

KIRBY COLLECTOR #67

KIRBY COLLECTOR #68

SUPER-SOLDIERS! We declassify Captain America, Fighting American, Sgt. Fury, The Losers, Pvt. Strong, Boy Commandos, and a tribute to Simon & Kirby! PLUS: a Kirby interview about Cap, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, key 1940s-’50s events in Kirby’s career, unseen pencils and unused art from OMAC, SILVER STAR, CAPTAIN AMERICA (in the 1960s AND ‘70s), the LOSERS, & more! KIRBY cover!

ANYTHING GOES (AGAIN)! A potpourri issue, with anything and everything from Jack’s 50-year career, including a head-tohead comparison of the genius of KIRBY and ALEX TOTH! Plus a lengthy KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused Kirby art from JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, MARVELMANIA, his COMIC STRIP & ANIMATION WORK, and more!

DOUBLE-TAKES ISSUE! Features oddities, coincidences, and reworkings by both Jack and Stan Lee: the Galactus Origin you didn’t see, Ditko’s vs. Kirby’s Spider-Man, how Lee and Kirby viewed “writing” differently, plus a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused pencil art from FANTASTIC FOUR, 2001, CAPTAIN VICTORY, BRUCE LEE, & more!

UP-CLOSE & PERSONAL! Kirby interviews you weren’t aware of, photos and recollections from fans who saw him in person, personal anecdotes from Jack’s fellow pros, LEE and KIRBY cameos in comics, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and more! Don’t let the photo cover fool you; this issue is chockfull of rare Kirby pencil art, from Roz Kirby’s private sketchbook, and Jack’s most personal comics stories!

KEY KIRBY CHARACTERS! We go decade-by-decade to examine pivotal characters Jack created throughout his career (including some that might surprise you)! Plus there’s a look at what would’ve happened if Kirby had never left Marvel Comics for DC, how Jack’s work has been repackaged over the decades, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and galleries of unseen Kirby pencil art!

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $4.95

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #72

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST: CENTENNIAL EDITION

KIRBY COLLECTOR #69

KIRBY COLLECTOR #70

KIRBY COLLECTOR #71

KIRBY’S PARTNERS! Cap/Falcon/Bucky, Sandman & Sandy, Orion & Lightray, Johnny & Ben, Dingbats, Newsboys, plus features on JOE SIMON, MIKE ROYER, CHIC STONE, DICK AYERS, JOE SINNOTT, MIKE THIBODEAUX—even ROZ KIRBY! Also, BATTLE FOR A 3-D WORLD, the 2016 Comic-Con Kirby Tribute Panel, MARK EVANIER, and galleries of Kirby pencil art! Cover inked by JOE SINNOTT!

KIRBY: ALPHA! Looks at the beginnings of Kirby’s greatest concepts, and how he looked back in time and to the future for the origins of ideas like DEVIL DINOSAUR, FOREVER PEOPLE, 2001, ETERNALS, KAMANDI, OMAC, and more! Plus: A rare Kirby interview, the 2016 WonderCon Kirby Tribute Panel, MARK EVANIER, unpublished pencil art galleries, and more! Cover inked by MIKE ROYER!

KIRBY: OMEGA! Looks at endings, deaths, and Anti-Life in the Kirbyverse, including poignant losses and passings from such series as NEW GODS, KAMANDI, FANTASTIC FOUR, LOSERS, THOR, DEMON and others! Plus: A rare Kirby interview, the 2016 Silicon Valley Comic-Con Kirby Panel, MARK EVANIER, unpublished pencil art galleries, and more! Cover inked by WALTER SIMONSON!

FIGHT CLUB! Jack’s most powerful fights and in-your-face action: Real-life WAR EXPERIENCES, Marvel’s KID COWBOYS, the Madbomb saga and all those negative 1970s Marvel fan letters, interview with SCOTT McCLOUD on his Kirby-inspired punchfest DESTROY!!, rare Kirby interview, 2017 WonderCon Kirby Panel, MARK EVANIER, unpublished pencil art galleries, and more! Cover inked by DEAN HASPIEL!

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

This final, fully-updated, definitive edition clocks in at DOUBLE the length of the 2008 “Gold Edition”, in a new 256-page Limited Edition Hardcover (only 1000 copies) listing every release up to Jack’s 100th birthday! Detailed listings of all of Kirby’s published work, reprints, magazines, books, foreign editions, newspaper strips, fine art and collages, fanzines, essays, interviews, portfolios, posters, radio and TV appearances, and even Jack’s unpublished work! (256-page Ltd. Ed. Hardcover) $34.95

Digital Only:

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

KIRBY100

KIRBY100 features an all-star line-up of 100 top comics pros who choose key images from Kirby’s career, and critique Jack’s PAGE LAYOUTS, DRAMATICS, and STORYTELLING SKILLS to honor his place in comics history, and prove Kirby is King! Celebrate Jack’s 100th birthday in style with this full-color, double-length book edited by JOHN MORROW & JON B. COOKE, with a cover inked by MIKE ROYER. (224-page COLOR softcover) $34.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95

JACK KIRBY The entire six-issue SILVER STAR COLLECTOR run is collected here, reproduced his uninked PENCIL ART, SPECIAL EDITION from showing Kirby’s work in its un-

Compiles all the “extra” new material from COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES 1-7, in one huge Digital Edition! Includes a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ home and more than 200 pieces of Kirby art not published outside of those volumes! (120-page Digital Edition) $5.95

diluted, raw form! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective! (160-page Digital Edition) $7.95

The fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED PORTFOLIO, completely remastered! Spotlights some of KIRBY’s finest art from all eras of his career, including 1930s pencil work, unused strips, illustrated World War II letters, 1950s pages, unpublished 1960s Marvel pencil pages and sketches, and Fourth World pencil art (done just for this portfolio in 1970)! We’ve gone back to the original art to ensure the best reproduction possible, and MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN have updated the Kirby biography from the original printing, and added a new Foreword explaining how this portfolio came to be! PLUS: We’ve recolored the original color plates, and added EIGHT NEW BLACK-&-WHITE PAGES, plus EIGHT NEW COLOR PAGES! (60-page Digital Edition) $5.95

Collector

Send letters to: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR c/o TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • See back issue excerpts at: www.twomorrows.com

Comments

(This is your one shot to be famous—write!)

[Mail sure has picked up here at TJKC the last few months! We have lots to cover, so let’s get right to it:] Hi John, Just a quick word on the latest issue of TJKC, as usual excellent and with plenty of food for thought. One thing that struck me was the image we have of Jack as constantly moving forward, not looking back, forgetting stuff like dangling plotlines while distracted by constant new ideas, etc. Two thoughts on this based on the latest issue: 1) The interesting article on the ’70s Marvel letter-cols raised my eyebrows at one point. Is it really true that Jack insisted on taking over editorially the letters for his mags? While he loved feedback and interaction from fans, would he really be interested in going over stories that for him would be ‘old news’ by the time the letters came in? And I’m not convinced at all that the editorial on THE ETERNALS (pg. 57) was written by him—they may well be his thoughts, but they don’t read like his words (more likely Mark Evanier or Steve Sherman? Perhaps one of these gentlemen could confirm or dismiss my theory). 2) Following on from this, perhaps I (and others) tend to fall into the trap of having fixed ideas about our favourite artists/creators. They are/were all human and a human trait is inconsistency. We can all behave at various times (or even at the same time) in ways which seem to be contrary to others’ image of us. TJKC does a great job of reminding us, if subliminally sometimes, of that—things are not always black&-white, the latest musings on the ‘origin’ of Spider-Man being just one example. Things are often more complex than we’d like. On a lighter note, loved the ‘my dad’s bigger than your dad’ theme of your Opening Shot, some fun before some serious stuff later on in the mag—but Jimmy Olsen over FF? C’mon! I presume it was no accident that TJKC #72 featured two almost identical panels of his—pg. 33, panel 5 from 1969 and page 63 (1972). Admittedly, Jack used this device of an extreme close-up of eyes often (there’s another example on pg. 75) but these two are so alike, it’s almost Kirby swiping Kirby. I can’t believe he did this on purpose but some images (of his making, or the real-life inspiration for them perhaps) obviously stayed in his mind. I’ve just finished reading KIRBY100, a process that has taken several weeks (this was not a book to rush through) and have been bowled over throughout. I think you pitched it 100% right—no over-analysis or doctoral theses (which have become part-and-parcel of TJKC, with mixed results in my opinion), just a joyous celebration

by a distinguished roll call of creators. There were several shared memories which hit a particular chord with me and took me back to my childhood, my first experience of Kirby (FF #5, since you ask), my collecting adventures, my late-adolescent dropping out of comics and (thanks to one particular new friend at the time), my return, just in time to catch up on the first few Fourth World issues I’d missed/been unaware of. From then on, the journey never wavered. And the copious accompanying illustrations showed care, thought and taste. Sincere and hearty congratulations to both Jon B. Cooke and yourself. As a celebration of Jack Kirby’s work, this will not be bettered. Thank you both. Geraint Davies, WALES Here’s the link to my post “Jack Kirby in the Census and Army”: http:// alphabettenthletter.blogspot. com/2017/08/creator-jackkirby-in-census-and-army. html Alex Jay, Brooklyn, NY (Everyone should be following Alex’s great historical detective work; check it out!) Surely someone has noted this before. Paste Pot Pete’s second costume in STRANGE TALES #124 (on a cover and story that was not drawn by Kirby) is almost a dead ringer for Kirby’s “Man who Shrunk the World” in ST #92. Lee (and Ayers?) knew where to find good inspiration when they needed it! On page 61 of the new TJKC you asked about the note to/by Jack saying “Shot of Thing look angry twisting lamp post Yancy Street”. Attached is a pin-up rarely seen—and I THINK it’s the one published only in MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #24 (according to your KIRBY GOLD CHECKLIST). I no longer have that issue—and it took an age to find it on the ’Net. So It’s rare. But I’ll bet this is the one. Shane Foley, AUSTRALIA TJKC #72 was another great issue. The query 92

on page 61 regarding the Thing art notes brought to mind the Thing pin-up in MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #24 (Dec. 1969; also in TJKC #63). Although Shane Foley beat me to the punch on this, I think I can shed additional light on the Thing art mystery. Based upon the 1965 creation date (now known), it was likely created for a specific purpose, not for MGC (four years later). By Fall 1965, Marvel’s pin-up pages had disappeared from their comics and Annuals (until 1967). After carefully studying the tall, vertical format of the Thing art, I discovered the aspect ratio (proportionally 2:5) is remarkably identical to Marvel’s 1965 six-foot tall Spider-Man poster—the one mailed in the “mystery tube”—first advertised in Dec. 1965 comics. In addition, the typographic tomfoolery at the bottom is set in a similar script style endemic to the mystery poster project. I submit Kirby’s Thing mystery art is most likely an unpublished poster. Next, it is important that the dates of Jack Kirby’s wartime service are etched in stone: June 7, 1943–July 20, 1945. Kirby’s sketch “Two Guys in My Barracks” (in TJKC #72) is hand-signed and dated 1942. Kirby’s faulty memory is well known... In FOXHOLE #3 and #5 (Feb./July 1955), Kirby lists the duration of his military service as “1942–1944” in the credits of a couple of stories. Private First Class Kirby was incorrect on both ends of the time frame. In interviews, Kirby was often corrected by his wife, Roz. Her memory was far more dependable than his. In a 1995 interview (TJKC #10), Rosalind Kirby explained, “We were married for about a year before he was drafted.” The Kirbys were married May 23, 1942. After a one-year deferment to support his family, Jack was drafted June 7, 1943. Kirby’s signature on this wartime sketch exhibits the “hooked J” identifier of his later signatures from the 1960s to the 1980s. Instead of getting the year wrong while sketching at Camp Stewart in 1943, Kirby probably goofed

when signing and misdating drawings in his files years later. Richard Kolkman, Fort Wayne, Indiana I enjoyed TJKC #71, along with the other high quality recent issues. Even in Jack’s centenary year, you still find so many new and interesting things to print each issue. Long may it continue. I enjoyed the Alpha and Omega issues (#70 and #71) but feel there is scope for a trilogy. When a software company is preparing a major new release of software, they will often produce a Beta version which ordinary users try out. There may be features in it which will not make the final version, just as new features will appear based on user feedback. I would suggest that the three CAPTAIN AMERICA OMNIBUSES to feature Jack’s work are a good analogy. The GOLDEN AGE OMNIBUS is the Alpha to the MADBOMB OMNIBUS’s Omega. His artwork and storytelling changed greatly between the two, but it did not happen overnight. In between is the 1960s CAP OMNIBUS where Jack is busy experimenting and developing his storytelling artistry. As with any Beta, he tried lots and lots of different things over the course of his career. Some things worked and went on to change the visual grammar of comics, while others did not catch on. The Black Owl story you printed in issue #70 showed basic circular lines around the point of impact of each punch. He went on to greatly develop and refine this over the years. So there is scope for showing examples of how he experimented to develop various things throughout his career. Another example is his collages. He enjoyed doing these and I thought they did add creatively to the stories involved. The technology was there to print them, albeit crudely then, but probably very well now, but they never caught on with other artists or comic companies. My suggestion, therefore, is for the trilogy TJKC to be called BETA and to show his most experimental ideas and artwork and how he developed or discarded certain things over the decades. It could also show examples of how his

work changed the grammar of comic books and set new rules for others to follow. Of course, if you also wanted to do a quadrilogy of issues with one devoted to the Hulk, you could always call that GAMMA! It was great to see so much Fourth World in TJKC #71. Like you, I love those issues as they were a major part of my early teenage years. I don’t think that younger generations, who can read all the issues one after the other in a day, have any idea what it was like to have to wait a month or two between issues. Each one would be read and reread and discussed with friends and then we would try and work out what could possibly happen next. And we were never disappointed with the following issues. Jack always massively surpassed our expectations of what we thought he would produce. The Fourth World covered several formative years of our lives. I was very saddened to hear of the passing of Stan Lee’s wife Joan. Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that two of the major creators of modern comics, who are inextricably linked, also had happy and strong marriages? Would either of them have been able to achieve a fraction of what they did if they did not have their wives? There is a famous story where Stan was about to hand in his resignation and Joan persuaded him that he had nothing to lose and should write the sort of comics he had always wanted to. Of such legends are comic universes born. It would be really nice if your upcoming TJKC containing the words of Stan and Jack also contained a section where they talked about their respective wives. After all, “behind every great man there is a great woman” and it would be a fitting tribute to both Joan and Roz. This gives me an idea for another themed issue: Love and Marriage in Jack’s comics. This is far more, and far deeper, than just his romance comics. Because of their own strong marriages, Stan and Jack revolutionised comics by introducing marriage for their heroes. Lois Lane was forever Superman’s girlfriend while Bruce Wayne’s girlfriends came and went over the decades, but Stan and Jack moved that on to the next level. Once the Reed Richards/ Sue Storm/Namor love triangle had been resolved, Stan and Jack were not content to just leave them as boyfriend and girlfriend. Why should they when they both knew that there was something far better—marriage. And marriage inevitably led to children, e.g. Franklin Richards, which, again, changed comics forever. I think that one of the reasons the shock ending of X-MEN #137, where Jean Grey dies, had such an emotional impact was because Stan and Jack had created them to be soul mates way back in X-MEN #1. You remind us in TJKC #71 of both Scott Free and Orion finding love. When Jack sat down to draw the final issue of MISTER MIRACLE, it was, as far as he knew, going to be the final time 93

that he would ever be able to tell a Fourth World story. The obvious story, which the fans including myself at the time, would have wanted was a resolution to the Orion versus Darkseid conflict left dangling from NEW GODS #11, including, ahem, a big Kirby battle. But there was a far more important story to Jack which he chose to tell instead: The marriage of the two ghetto soul mates Scott Free and Big Barda. Wars and conflicts would continue, but their happy ending was forever. Similarly, when a decade later he was unexpectedly given another opportunity to tell his final Fourth World story, THE HUNGER DOGS, what was important to him was not the epic physical battle between Darkseid and Orion, which was conspicuously missing, but Orion finding love with a soul mate. These are just some examples from a lifetime’s work, so I think there is great scope in a “Love and Marriage” themed issue. It is great to see both Marvel and DC celebrating Jack’s centenary, but there is one thing which I would dearly love to see happen. A long time ago you reported the news that DC was working on producing a JIMMY OLSEN collection with Jack’s version of Superman. I think you said that Mike Royer was involved. Unfortunately this never happened, but it really should now. With the upsurge in interest in Jack among younger comic fans, there would now be an audience for something new. It would be JIMMY OLSEN: DIRECTOR’S CUT. It would not cut across what was originally printed in the comics, as that is readily available, but it would be an interesting addition. It would also mean that I, and so many others of my age, would finally get to see in print what we have always wanted to see since we first bought those comics and realised another artist had done Superman. I have enjoyed the pencil art you have printed from those comics and it convinces me that JIMMY OLSEN: DIRECTOR’S CUT would be something special indeed. The recent article on Sandman was fascinating but also throws up something very intriguing. I am one of those who always thought that Jack had created the yellow and purple costume when he took over the comic. It was, therefore, a surprise to discover that someone else had created it and that he simply refined it. This raises a very interesting “What if.” Just imagine that Jack had taken over the original gas mask Sandman and revamped that mask, costume and gadgets. Instead of being lost in the crowd of similarly costumed super-heroes, would Sandman have become a long-lasting memorable character still popular today? I ask this because one of Jack’s greatest, and most popular, villains is simply a man in a full face mask with a cloak and gadgets—Doctor Doom. Kevin Ainsworth, London, England (While I consider a Love & Marriage issue of TJKC, we featured a wonderful interview with Stan’s wife Joan Lee in Blake Bell’s book I HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS GUY!, which, while sold out,

is available from our website in digital form. And this is as good a place as any, to let readers know that our sister magazine BACK ISSUE #104 ships in May, and spotlights the Fourth World AFTER Kirby. Don’t miss it!) Some particularly interesting musings on the Fourth World characters this time around (TJKC #71). But we may be at a disadvantage trying to judge a work that was only partially completed before the cancellations came in. Imagine trying to form a firm opinion of the FF and THOR based solely on the first eleven issues. Jack produced some wonderful stories, as is,

but we’ve no way of knowing where he planned to go or what, ultimately, he was working towards—what twists or long term direction he may’ve had in mind. Sadly, most of the Fourth World books started better than they ended. There was an overabundance of new concepts and characters—new ways of telling a story in a larger framework. By the end, the Forever People were hosting Deadman and Mister Miracle was cut off from exploring his place in the Fourth World. It became generic escape stories far removed from the first half of his run—so, a continuation, but at a terrible price. I see far more right than wrong with Jack’s initial releases. What was the problem? Was it the bi-monthly frequency? The page and price increase with the fourth issues? Adding “Golden Age Grabbers” to books striving to establish an identity and retain or grow the readership? JIMMY OLSEN, easily, was my least favorite of the bunch. Loved many of the background elements but wasn’t fond of the redrawn Superman (not Jack’s doing) or the Newsboy Legion. The comedy relief, for me, killed the dire drama. But the other three titles all had interesting characters and much to recommend them. Numerous stand-out issues, too: “The Pact,” “Glory Boat,” “Himon” and the Sonny Sumo twist ending, with the wonderful moral, in FOREVER PEOPLE #7. I even enjoyed “regular issues” like Orion’s battle with Slig or Mister Miracle taking on Kanto.

Same with the introduction of Big Barda to the Mister Miracle book; a vital addition. What I don’t quite understand is, did Jack think he was doing five regular books: MISTER MIRACLE, NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE along with DEMON and KAMANDI? Or was he under the mistaken impression he was still working on the remaining trio of Fourth World books and just introducing the two new characters to hand off to others? Had DC more faith in Jack’s work, they could have tinkered with the format and kept the New Genesis characters around. For instance, instead of bi-monthlies, do a monthly split book with shorter stories. That wouldn’t have increased his work load and would’ve provided an ongoing presence on the stands. Or keep the characters confined to their own book, if crossing over elements was seen, at that time, as too complicated for the readership. Jack did that, to a great extent, later, with his ETERNALS. We only needed to read the one title. Really, I question why DC even wanted Jack if they were going to undercut his creativity: Redrawn faces; magazine concepts and titles killed with one issue or less; insisting, later on, he draw stories written by others (such as SANDMAN), etc. They wanted to turn a trailblazer into just another hired hand. As to your desire to see KAMANDI tied in with the NEW GODS or OMAC, I’m actually glad that didn’t happen. I prefer that they can—and do— stand alone as separate creations. You pointed out, correctly, the Fourth World books had more death than Jack’s work in the previous years. That could be because it was a war scenario with casualties, consequently, expected. Whenever I see that “Magic of Kirby” ad, from JIMMY OLSEN #134, I remember how much promise they had. Jack delivered on it, but higher-ups got nervous or impatient. It might be an entirely different discussion had Jack had support and a longer run. Then it wouldn’t be conjecture, but justified admiration for a job well done. It’s like we only saw the first half of his epic. Two corrections: “The Death of a Hero” was FF #32, not #31, though Franklin Storm was introduced in that earlier story. The moon landing was July 20th, 1969, not the 16th. What’s amusing about that FF #98 Apollo 11 moon landing story is that, by that point, the FF themselves had been to the moon twice (in issues #13 and #29). So, Neil Armstrong, from their view, would have been a latecomer. Enjoyed your Walt Simonson interview. Feel free not to wait another twenty years for the next one. Delighted with Jack’s rare Sub-Mariner cover to TALES TO ASTONISH #90. One of his later covers on a book he didn’t do. Only two complaints this time out. First, were the microscopic cover and image reproductions. For those of us not reading the digital edition, it’s almost a lost cause. Certainly, the eight THOR covers (page 59) lost all legibility and charm. Secondly, as with the Angel to Esak essay, the speculation without facts does no one any favors.

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #123 recently, which introduced an earlier “The Demon,” and wow... this version even has the black eye make-up and wild hair! It came out around the same time as Black Bolt’s debut, so Simmons had to be reading... a Film by Glenn B Fleming I have a wild spreadsheet I’ve put together of early Marvel 2017 marks the centennial of American comic book artist and writer Jack Kirby's birth. Kirby publication dates taken from created (or co-created) most of the iconic Archive.org’s digitization of all the characters we continue to see in comics and pre-1978 copyright records. I put on film today; this together to aid in a couple Captain America, the Avengers, the Fantastic articles I’m currently writing Four, the Incredible Hulk, Nick Fury, X-Men, about that era, but it’s fascinating Galactus, the Silver Surfer, the Black Panther, the to see how Marvel was indeed Mighty Thor, New Gods, Mister Miracle, Doctor limited to just 8 books a month Doom and many, many more. initially, and then were able to add a slot or two every year. In 1991, during my second trip to the Kirby home, I was able to record part Was it part of the agreement of my talk with the King of Comics. that Marvel would be able to Jack was open and warm, entirely slowly expand, or was Goodman at ease with the presence of a camera, and he talked about his regularly negotiating for more? life in general and service in the And why did they only release Second World War. books during the first week of the month (and later, the first This film has never before been Order the DVD at seen in its entirety and serves as two weeks)? Was that part of a www.glennbfleming.com an historical document, showing semi-”no compete”? Or did it $20/£12 (includes Jack Kirby in his own home, in his save them money somehow? All postage) or email own studio, talking about his GBFJK.FILM@gmail.com own life, in his own words. I have are questions. for further details. Speaking of questions, This film is unique. would you happen to know of a definitive source that would tell me when Marvel’s distribution changed again? It looks to me like April 1969 is It was labeled a “wild hypothesis” but still... when the floodgates opened, but I’ve had Perhaps Jack just had an archetype he used trouble tracking down details. occasionally, without any sort of violence-based (Maybe it’s in some back history behind it? Again, if someone can offer up some issue of TJKC I haven’t read evidence, fine. But otherwise, why lend credence to and I just need to dig more?) flights of fancy? Kate Willaert, Minnesota Omega doesn’t have to signify death. It can be, and often was, just Jack moving on to different projects, Really enjoyed TJKC #70. whether by choice (a move to different companies) or Nice to hear from Stan Taylor otherwise (books pulled out from under him). Whether even if it’s posthumously. short or long run, I guess the key was to enjoy them Beautiful job on the Black Owl while they lasted. reprint. Kudos to Robert Guffey on Joe Frank, Scottsdale, AZ his research on “Little Humans & Giant Gods.” Your mention of Black Bolt resembling Batman I do need to point out, however, reminds me of an article I came across recently that that you left a few “Captains” out revealed Gene Simmon’s “The Demon” cape was of your “Famous Firsts (& 2nd)” inspired by Black Bolt. What I really got a kick out of, including Captain Daring from though, was reading Simmon’s critical take-down DARING MYSTERY COMICS #7, Captain of Stan Lee lining his pockets with the fan club and Terror from a Timely house ad in CAPTAIN AMERICA merchandising, things that clearly inspired Simmon’s #10, Captain “Happy Sam” Sawyer from SGT. FURY, direction with KISS a decade later. Captain Flint (cover only) from SGT. FURY #11, and But there’s one thing the article doesn’t mention that Captain Wings (cover only) of The Crusaders from I came across recently. The article ponders if there’s INVADERS #14. That makes it an even dozen! a connection between Kirby’s “The Demon” at DC Tom Morehouse, Hawthorne, NJ and Simmon’s “The Demon.” But I was just reading

www.glennbfleming.com

Here’s a tentative list of upcoming themes, so get writing! KIRBY FIRSTS! All the ways Jack was a pioneer in comics and life, by being the first to create or champion characters and concepts! KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID! Stan & Jack’s comments about their Marvel Universe work! FATHERS & SONS! Odin, Zeus, Darkseid, and other lousy parental role models!

MONSTERS & BUGS! Atlas Monsters, Thing vs. Hulk, Frankenstein, Deviants, Mantis, Forager, Ant-Man, Lightning Lady, and others! PIVOTAL DECISIONS! How key choices Jack made work out well—or not—for him, and how we fans benefited from them nonetheless! GOT A THEME IDEA? WRITE US! We treat these themes very loosely, so anything you send could get used.

(below) Utilitas zoth#73 Credits: ecas fermentet bellus John Morrow, Editor/Designer/ saburre. Perspicax Whatever syrtes spinosus circumgrediet ut THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS: “3” • Jerry Boyd • Norris Burroughs Ferran Delgado • Jean Depelley Mark Evanier • Shane Foley Roderick Fong • Barry Forshaw Frank Fosco • David Glanzer Heritage Auctions (ha.com) Rand Hoppe • Lisa Kirby Jillian Kirby • Jeremy Kirby Tracy Kirby • Neal Kirby Randy Klauzer • Sean Kleefeld Tom Kraft • Frédéric Manzano Robert Menzies • Ron Murphy Jeff Newelt • Mike Royer Steve Rude • Steve Sherman Scott Stewart • Aaron Sultan Mike Thibodeaux • Rick Veitch Mark Voger • Marv Wolfman Michael James Zuccaro and of course The Kirby Estate The Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org) and whatifkirby.com If we forgot anyone, please let us know!

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The Jack Kirby Collector is put together with submissions from Jack’s fans around the world. We don’t pay for submissions, but if we print art or articles you submit, we’ll send you a free copy of the issue it appears in. Submit art & articles by mail, or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com

NEXT ISSUE: Travel through the ages in JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #74, the FUTUREPAST issue, featuring two different covers! Set course for “The World That Was,” documenting Jack’s work from Caveman days to the Wild West, behind a Kirby Bullseye cover inked by BILL WRAY! And transport yourself to “The World That’s Here” for Kirby’s visions of the future that became reality, with a cover featuring his unseen Tiger 21 concept art! Plus an interview with ROY THOMAS about Jack’s work, a rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER moderating the biggest Kirby Tribute Panel of all time, pencil art galleries, and more! Let us know which cover you want for your subscription copy!

Parting One-Shot Kirby’s been quoted as saying that Red Raven #1 (and only, August 1940) was the biggest flop of his career. But he just did the eye-catching cover below; the bland interior art (right) was by Louis Casenueve, so Jack hardly deserves any blame. In fact, Kirby never drew an actual story with the character—but he sure did draw him on a lot of covers, as shown here. Goes to show, in comics, there’s no such thing as a one-shot character.

ALTER EGO #150

ALTER EGO #151

ALTER EGO #152

ALTER EGO #153

ALTER EGO #154

STAN LEE’s 95th birthday! Rare 1980s LEE interview by WILL MURRAY—GER APELDOORN on Stan’s non-Marvel writing in the 1950s—STAN LEE/ROY THOMAS e-mails of the 21st century—and more special features than you could shake Irving Forbush at! Also FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), BILL SCHELLY, and MICHAEL T. GILBERT! Colorful Marvel multi-hero cover by Big JOHN BUSCEMA!

Golden Age artist FRANK THOMAS (The Owl! The Eye! Dr. Hypno!) celebrated by Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt’s MICHAEL T. GILBERT! Plus the scintillating (and often offbeat) Golden & Silver Age super-heroes of Western Publishing’s DELL & GOLD KEY comics! Art by MANNING, DITKO, KANE, MARSH, GILL, SPIEGLE, SPRINGER, NORRIS, SANTOS, THORNE, et al.! Plus FCA, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Unsung artist/writer LARRY IVIE conceived (and named!) the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, helped develop T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, brought EC art greats to the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more! SANDY PLUNKETT chronicles his career, with art by FRAZETTA, CRANDALL, WOOD, KRENKEL, DOOLIN, and others! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Remembering Fabulous FLO STEINBERG, Stan Lee’s gal Friday during the Marvel Age of Comics—with anecdotes and essays by pros and friends who knew and loved her! Rare Marvel art, Flo’s successor ROBIN GREEN interviewed by RICHARD ARNDT about her time at Marvel, and Robin’s 1971 article on Marvel for ROLLING STONE magazine! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

ALLEN BELLMAN (1940s Timely artist) interviewed by DR. MICHAEL J. VASSALLO, with art by SHORES, BURGOS, BRODSKY, SEKOWSKY, EVERETT, & JAFFEE. Plus Marvel’s ’70s heroines: LINDA FITE & PATY COCKRUM on The Cat, CAROLE SEULING on Shanna the She-Devil, & ROY THOMAS on Night Nurse—with art by SEVERIN, FRADON, ANDRU, and more! With FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

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BACK ISSUE #102

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BACK ISSUE #104

BACK ISSUE #105

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MERCS AND ANTIHEROES! Deadpool’s ROB LIEFELD and FABIAN NICIEZA interviewed! Histories of Cable, Taskmaster, Deathstroke the Terminator, the Vigilante, and Wild Dog, plus… Archie meets the Punisher?? Featuring TERRY BEATTY, MAX ALLAN COLLINS, PAUL KUPPERBERG, BATTON LASH, JEPH LOEB, DAVID MICHELINIE, MARV WOLFMAN, KEITH POLLARD, and others! Deadpool vs. Cable cover by LIEFELD!

ALL-STAR EDITORS ISSUE! Past and present editors reveal “How I Beat the Dreaded Deadline Doom”! Plus: ARCHIE GOODWIN and MARK GRUENWALD retrospectives, E. NELSON BRIDWELL interview, DIANA SCHUTZ interview, ALLAN ASHERMAN revisits DC’s ’70s editorial department, Marvel Assistant Editors’ Month, and a history of PERRY WHITE! With an unpublished 1981 Captain America cover by MIKE ZECK!

FOURTH WORLD AFTER KIRBY! Return(s) of the New Gods, Why Can’t Mister Miracle Escape Cancellation?, the Forever People, MIKE MIGNOLA’s unrealized New Gods animated movie, Fourth World in Hollywood, and an all-star lineup, including the work of JOHN BYRNE, PARIS CULLINS, J. M. DeMATTEIS, MARK EVANIER, MICHAEL GOLDEN, RICK HOBERG, WALTER SIMONSON, and more. STEVE RUDE cover!

DEADLY HANDS ISSUE! Histories of Iron Fist, Master of Kung Fu, Yang, the Bronze Tiger, Hands of the Dragon, NEAL ADAMS’ Armor, Marvel’s Deadly Hands of Kung Fu mag, & Hong Kong Phooey! Plus Muhammad Ali in toons and toys. Featuring JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, STEVE ENGLEHART, PAUL GULACY, LARRY HAMA, DOUG MOENCH, DENNY O’NEIL, JIM STARLIN, & others. Classic EARL NOREM cover!

GOLDEN AGE IN BRONZE! ’70s Justice Society revival with two Pro2Pro interviews: All-Star Squadron’s ROY THOMAS, JERRY ORDWAY, and ARVELL JONES (with a bonus RICK HOBERG interview), and The Spectre’s JOHN OSTRANDER and TOM MANDRAKE. Plus: Liberty Legion, Air Wave, Jonni Thunder, Crimson Avenger, and the Spectre revival of ’87! WOOD, COLAN, CONWAY, GIFFEN, GIORDANO, & more!

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Special double-size BOOK! Photo editor GEOFF GRAY talks to JOE MENO about the beginnings of BrickJournal, TORMOD ASKILDSEN of the LEGO GROUP interviewed, how the fan community has grown in 10 years, and the best builders of the past 50 issues! Plus: Minifigure customizing with JARED K. BURKS’, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, & more!

A look at 75 years of Archie Comics’ characters and titles, from Archie and his pals ‘n gals to the mighty MLJ heroes of yesteryear and today’s “Dark Circle”! Also: Careerspanning interviews with The Fox’s DEAN HASPIEL and Kevin Keller’s cartoonist DAN PARENT, who both jam on our exclusive cover depicting a face-off between humor and heroes. Plus our usual features, including the hilarious FRED HEMBECK!

The legacy and influence of WALLACE WOOD, with a comprehensive essay about Woody’s career, extended interview with Wood assistant RALPH REESE (artist for Marvel’s horror comics, National Lampoon, and underground), a long chat with cover artist HILARY BARTA (Marvel inker, Plastic Man and America’s Best artist with ALAN MOORE), plus our usual columns, features, and the humor of HEMBECK!

GREG HILDEBRANDT (of the Hildebrandt Brothers) reveals his working methods, BRAD WALKER (Aquaman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Birds of Prey, Legends of the Dark Knight) gives a how-to interview and demo, regular columnist JERRY ORDWAY, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, and BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY’s Comic Art Bootcamp! Mature Readers Only.

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