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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #77•SUMMER 2019•$10.95
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82658 00365
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with ERIC POWELL•MICHAEL CHO•MARK EVANIER•SEAN KLEEFELD•BARRY FORSHAW•ADAM McGOVERN•NORRIS BURROUGHS•SHANE FOLEY•JERRY BOYD
STARRING
JACK KIRBY•DIRECTED BY JOHN MORROW•FEATURING RARE KIRBY ARTWORK•A TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING RELEASE
Monster, Forager TM & © DC Comics • Goom TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Lightning Lady TM & © Jack Kirby Estate
New Gods TM & © DC Comics.
Contents
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Monsters & Bugs! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ( something’s bugging the editor) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (S&K show the monsters inside us) RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 (from Vandoom to Von Doom)
C o l l e c t o r
ISSUE #77, SUMMER 2019
INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . 23 (you recall Giganto, don’t you?) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 (the FF’s strange evolution) INFLUENCEES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 (cover inker Eric Powell speaks) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 (monsters, in pencil) HORRORFLIK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 (Jack’s ill-fated Empire Pictures deal) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 (vintage 1950s monster stories) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM . . . . . . . . . 48 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) POW!ER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 (two monster Kirby techniques) UNEXPLAINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 (three major myths of Kirby’s) BOYDISMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 (monsters, all the way back to the ’40s) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . 64 (Michael Cho on his Kirby influences) ANTI-MAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 (we go foraging for bugs) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 (the bugs attack!) UNDISCOVERED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 (a blue bug in Sweden) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 ( Mark Evanier moderates a panel on Kirby’s monster influence) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . 94 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Co ver inks & color: ERIC POWELL COPYRIGHTS: All-Widow, Dragorin, Darkseid, Demon, Dingbats of Danger Street, Farley Fairfax, Forever People, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Kliklak, Lightray, Lupek, Man Who Collected Planets, Mantis, Mister Miracle, My Greatest Adventure, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Orion, Prime One, The Bug/Forager, The Howler, The Negative Man TM & © DC Comics • Ant-Man, Avengers, Black Talon, Blip, Bucky, Captain America, Challengers of the Unknown, Colossus, Creature from Krogarr, Destroyer, Devil Dinosaur, Diablo, Dr. Doom, Dragoom, Fantastic Four, Fin Fang Foom, Gargantus, Giant-Man, Giganto, Goliath, Gomdulla, Goom, Gor-Kill, Grogg, Groot, Hulk, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, It, Klagg, Krang, Loki, Man in the Bee-Hive, Metallo, Modok, Mongu, Monster at My Window, Monster in the Iron Mask, Monsters on Mercury, Monsters on the Prowl, Monstrollo, Moonboy, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. Morgan’s Monster, Mummex, Ninth Wonder of the World, Orogo, Rick Jones, Scarecrow, Shagg, Sporr, Spragg, SubMariner, Swarm Queen, Taboo, The Weed, Thing, Thing From the Hidden Swamp, Thor, Triton, Trull, Vandoom, Where Monsters Dwell, X The Thing That Lived, Xemnu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, Phantom of the Opera, Six Million Dollar Man, Wolf Man, TM & © Universal • Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Island of Lost Souls TM & © Paramount • Avenger, Justice Inc. TM & © Street & Smith or successors in interest • Black Magic, Fighting American, “A Husband for Tracy!” © Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estates • Chimichanga , Lulu the Bearded Girl, The Goon TM & © Eric Powell • The Fly TM & © Joe Simon Estate • Green Hornet TM & © Green Hornet, Inc. • Tales from the Danksyde TM & © Rick Becker & Vince Dugar • Close Encounters of the Third Kind TM &© Columbia Pictures • Damon Hunter/The Raven TM & © RubySpears • Thunderfoot, “Street Code”, Unknown Insect Man, Captain Victory, Egghead, Dr. Mortalis, Mindmaster, Lightning Lady, Insectons, Moon-Bear, Secret City Saga TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Blue Bolt, Gorgo, Heaven’s Gate, Legend of Bigfoot TM & © the respective owners
From Demon #13 comes this incredible pencil page, showing that even as Kirby was relying on old monster films for inspiration, the series was anything but a copycat. Thanks to Eric Powell for his stunning inking and coloring on our cover! The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 26, No. 77, Summer 2019. 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: $48 Economy US, $70 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
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Retrospective
(above) The cover for Tales to Astonish #34’s “Monster At My Window”, and the [spoiler alert] twist ending to the tale, are a prime example of the best of Kirby’s Atlas monster stories. (next page, bottom) It’s Von Doom... er... Vandoom himself!
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here were giants in those days, back around 1961—real giants, and their names were Thorr, Oog, Grottu, Gorgolla, Shagg, Fin Fang Foom, Lee, Kirby, and Ditko.
corporation names: Zenith, Vista, and Atlas, and had no umbrella company logo. And Marvel wasn’t the only comic outfit cashing in on the B-movie-
inspired nuclear monster fad. Even Batman and Tomahawk were tangling with aliens and other-dimensional creatures in their own magazines. Well, maybe Dell and Gold Key ignored the trend; and over at the American Comics Group, where Richard Hughes suffered in the same writer/editor position enjoyed by Stan Lee at Marvel, the focus was on the supernatural with a sprinkling of aliens and dinosaurs. No monsters allowed. In truth, it wasn’t until 1959 that the true Marvel Monsters began materializing. Marvel at the time was on shaky ground, its super-heroes long gone, and was sustained by the likes of Kid Colt, Outlaw; Millie the Model; and a number of colorless supernatural titles written by Stan Lee and others and drawn by a train of obscure artists. A company purge in the summer of 1957 killed off most of the supernatural comics, including the company’s first title, Marvel Tales.
They roamed the four-colored forests of Tales of Suspense, Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, and Tales to Astonish with impunity, towering over their peers, hurling their bombastic challenges to a frightened, insignificant humanity until, one by one, they died out; those atomic dinosaurs, supplanted by the new masters of the comic book jungle, the Marvel super-heroes. It was an older, more simple time before the Marvel Universe had taken over the global consciousness–– yes, even before the fabled Marvel Age of Comics. This was a formative era unto itself, long after the Golden Age of Comics, which might be called the Marvel Age of Monsters. Of its glory I will sing. Of course, Marvel Comics wasn’t called Marvel Comics back in the early Sixties. Publisher Martin Goodman copyrighted his titles under a maze of different
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Then Jack Kirby wandered over from DC, where he had produced Challengers of the Unknown (who battled countless giant monsters), and began doing some of the science-fiction stories for Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery (two survivors dating back to the early 1950s) as well as Strange Worlds, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense (all three of which were launched in September 1958). Next thing you know, the four-color pages were bursting with “I Unleashed Shagg Upon the World” (in which the Sphinx comes to life), “I Created Sporr! The Thing that Could Not Die!” (about a veerry big amoeba), and the unforgettable “Creature From Krogarr!” Stan Lee never showed this kind of imagination in his pre-1959
changing and the pace kept accelerating. With an eye to increasingly alarming headlines, Kirby used all of this for story fodder. “The monster phenomenon got started primarily just because people were concerned about science,” he recalled. “People were concerned about radiation and what would happen to animals and people who were exposed to that kind of thing.” But Kirby wasn’t alone. That same year, a self-effacing young artist named Steve Ditko came over from Charlton and lent his unique talents to the revitalization of several titles by drawing solidly imaginative short features. Initially, he also inked many Kirby stories, and for decades afterward, Stan Lee would tell fans Ditko was his favorite inker on The King. When Lee set Western artist Dick Ayers to inking Kirby, he found a perfect match, as far as style and efficiency was concerned, freeing up Kirby to turn in more simplified pencils which Ayers would embellish as co-artist. This also freed up Ditko to concentrate on his own stuff. And it saved the career of Dick Ayers, who was about to leave comics for the post office. “I enjoyed the monsters,” Ayers told me. “They had terrific names––Sporr and Fin Fang Foom and all that.” “An inker like Dick Ayers would be bold and stark,” Kirby once observed, “and you’d find the style in a bold and stark attitude, and of course, that’s interesting.” Another new recruit was Don Heck, who stepped in to fill the empty shoes of the prolific and versatile Joe Maneely, who had just died, and whose covers had given Marvel its house look prior to Kirby taking over cover chores. “It was the summer of ’58 or somewhere around there,” Heck told me. “I can remember the first job I did and it was tough after having not done any comics for over a year. It was one of these Mysteries. I used to call [Stan] all the time [about] these five-page stories, you know? Some of that Mystery stuff was really poorly written. Oh, God. How do I get intrigued enough to get this thing off the ground?” By the beginning of 1960, Stan Lee had weeded out the also-rans from his stable, trained a small group of replacements to work from his plots and brother Larry Lieber’s scripts, and established a new house look to his four surviving fantasy titles, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Journey into Mystery, Tales of Suspense, and a new entry begun in 1961, Amazing Adventures. Lee didn’t bother
scripts, so I would guess it was Kirby, whose mother was born near Transylvania and who told him some pretty wild legends when he was a kid, on whose doorstep we can lay the credit—or blame. For Kirby had been doing stuff like this for DC’s mystery titles, occasionally recycling concepts and plots for Marvel. “I always enjoyed doing monster books,” he told Gary Groth. “Monster books gave me the opportunity to draw things out of the ordinary. Monster books were a challenge––what kind of monster would fascinate people? I couldn’t draw anything that was too outlandish or too horrible. I never did that. What I did draw was something intriguing. There was something about this monster that you could live with. If you saw him, you wouldn’t faint dead away. There was nothing disgusting in his demeanor. There was nothing about him that repelled you. My monsters were lovable monsters. I gave them names—some were evil and some were good.” This was a time when the Universal monster movies were first showing on TV, leading to the launch of Famous Monsters of Filmland early in ’58. Baby Boomers liker myself were discovering the unbridled charm of monsters. In day-to-day reality, the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, and the Space Age were converging. The world was
I Remember... Vandoom, Master of Marvel Monsters
by Will Murray • This article originally appeared in Comics Collector #3, Spring, 1984, and is revised and expanded for this appearance. 13
From No Name...
Incidental Iconography
...to Big Name!
An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld
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ack Kirby, of course, spent a fair amount of his career drawing monsters, from what would become stalwarts like Fin Fang Foom to lesser known creatures like Kraa the Unhuman! I might be inclined to say it was genre in which Jack excelled, but really, was there a genre in comics in which he didn’t? Today, though, we’re going to look at what is arguably his most iconic monster creation: Giganto. If you’re unfamiliar with the creature by name, you might be relieved to hear he’s never named in the comics Jack drew—indeed, Jack only drew him in one issue— his name only came years later, presumably based on the “gigantic” descriptor Stan Lee used repeatedly in the monster’s debut issue. So what qualifies this character as “iconic”? Simple: He appears on the cover of Fantastic Four #1 (above). Before getting to how Jack drew Giganto, though, I want to point out that, while the Mole Man shows up repeatedly throughout Jack’s run on the FF, it is only in that first issue that he commands a slew of monsters. In the rest of Mole Man’s appearances drawn by Jack, he relies on an army of Moleoids. Not only is Giganto never again drawn under Jack’s tenure, but neither are any of the other monsters from Monster Isle. In fact, Giganto disappeared entirely after its 1961 debut until the creature was revisited by John Byrne in 1984’s FF #264 (top right). Looking at Fantastic Four #1, there are eight drawings of Giganto including the cover (all shown here). Two of these are just close-ups of the creature’s clawed hands, and one is a small silhouetted shot that may have been “fixed” if not entirely drawn by someone else, like Sol Brodsky. All of these occur on page 16 (right). Sol went back and made substantial changes to how the Human Torch was drawn in FF #3, so it’s
not unreasonable to think he made changes here too. (Check out Will Murray’s excellent piece back in TJKC #38 for how Sol altered the Torch’s appearance.) That leaves us with five drawings to examine, none of which show the creature’s lower half. We clearly see that Jack gives Giganto a relatively consistent-looking, spikey, chitinous armor. Despite the monstrous appearance, though, Giganto does not appear to have any teeth. The inking on one panel on page 16 might suggest some large, flat teeth and, in some reprints, these are indeed left white; but given that all the other panels show Giganto’s mouth wide open with no teeth visible at all, that one instance seems to be more an instance of a minor misinterpretation of Jack’s pencils, than even an accidental design change on Jack’s part.
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An ongoing examination of Kirby’s art and compositional skills
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THE FANTASTIC FOUR’S STRANGE EVOLUTION recently picked up an issue of CNET magazine (Winter 2017), which featured an interview with Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. The interviewer, Connie Guglielmo, asked Mr. Boseman, “What do you think that it says that Black Panther was created in 1966 by two white men—Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby?” Boseman replied by first stating unequivocally, “Yes, the idea came from Stan Lee.” At this point, even after the near miraculous development that finally compelled Disney/Marvel to grant Jack Kirby co-creator status, most people, like Boseman, still believe that Kirby was merely the visual interpreter of Stan Lee’s creative concepts. Few members of the general public are even aware of what has become known as the “Marvel Method,” wherein the artist is plotter, or at very least co-plotter of a story. The average modern fan doesn’t really understand the complex and painstaking process of visual storytelling, and has no concept of the degree to which Jack Kirby has contributed to the language of sequential syntax as applied to the panels of a comic book page. By the point in time that the Black Panther was created in Fantastic Four #52, Kirby was routinely bringing concepts to Lee in the form of complete stories, including characters like the Panther. Less the creative initiator, Stan Lee was often times just glibly filling in balloons based on Kirby’s margin notes. In the end, it is most instructive to study The Fantastic Four, where the Marvel Method was essentially refined. If we do so, we will better understand the Lee/Kirby partnership and how it evolved. Fantastic Four #1 is the comic that set off the process. I was eleven, sometime in 1963 when I picked up Fantastic Four #12, only because it featured an appearance by the Hulk, whose first few issues I’d already seen. I was hooked on the self-described “World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” straightaway. My obsession has never really let up, with the exception of a few years surrounding puberty and an excursion into rock ’n’ roll performance. It’s something I still struggle to attempt to explain. I know that I am not alone here. Scores of comic 25
Influencees
Eric Powell Interview The creator of The Goon talks with Eric Nolen-Weathington
(right) Powell’s 2005 Monsters on the Prowl cover, featuring Kirby super-heroes vs. Kirby monsters. (below) One of Kirby’s own MotP covers (actually a 1974 John Romita-altered version of Kirby’s cover to Tales to Astonish #34), along with Eric himself, and his creator-owned Lulu the Bearded Girl and her pet monster Chimichanga.
(next page, left) Pencils for the cover of Arkham Asylum: Living Hell #6, featuring Eric’s favorite Kirby monster: Etrigan! (next page, right) Page one of Marvel Monsters: Devil Dinosaur #1, which Eric drew as an homage to Kirby’s cover for Devil Dinosaur #1 (bottom).
[These days, many comic book artists have an almost homogeneous style; intricately rendered, but lacking the stylistic panache of a Walter Simonson, Mike Mignola, or—yes—Jack Kirby. So when a talent like Nashville-based cartoonist Eric Powell burst onto the scene in 2002, it didn’t take long for the industry to take notice. After winning the 2004 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for “Best Single Issue/Single Story” for The Goon #1, Eric’s gone on to numerous other awards in both the comics and horror fields. Powell wears many hats, from creator to self-publisher, and even a breathtaking inker over Kirby’s pencils on this issue’s cover. The Kirby influence is always there, as you’ll see in this e-mail interview conducted in May 2019.] THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: You’ve been into comics and scary stuff since you were a little kid, to the point you wanted to be a special f/x make-up artist when you were in your teens. What is it about monsters, and horror in general, that grabbed your attention? And why do you think there’s been such a resurgence of horror comics the past few years? ERIC POWELL: That’s a hard question to answer. What makes people like Justin Bieber? That’s truly horrifying. I dunno. I’ve always liked monsters. I’ve always been drawn to sci-fi and horror fiction. It’s just in my blood, I guess. And I feel like we horror comic fans have been lucky recently, because it seems to me that comics of all genres are kind of taking off right now. Pretty sure that, in my lifetime, this is the
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moment where more voices are being expressed and heard through comics. That’s nothing but a good thing for growing our industry. TJKC: You’re a few years younger than me. Were you old enough to see any of Kirby’s comics on the newsstand, or did you come across them later? Do you remember the first time you saw his work? POWELL: Younger?! You must be sooo old! I kid! Dude, I can’t see anything, and I forget anything I’ve heard ten minutes later. Let’s commiserate on our misspent and lost youth. Ow, my back! What was the question? Oh, yeah… My uncle was a comic reader, so I’m sure my first exposure to Kirby was through some of his old comics. But it was when I started reading his groundbreaking run on Fantastic Four that I started to appreciate and really recognize his pop-art genius.
Kirby’s Fantastic Four #1 cover. What about the others? Did you go through the old Atlas monster comics to find inspiration? Have you read much of that stuff? POWELL: I’ve read some of the stuff here and there. But when I was a kid collecting, it was hard to come by. Luckily, through reprints and digital comics it’s becoming easy to find. I do remember having to search on the Internet to find reference for a couple of those monsters. A couple on those Marvel Monsters covers were pretty obscure.
TJKC: What aspect of Kirby’s work do you connect with the most as an artist? POWELL: The bold power of it. As an artist that tends to be somewhat heavy-handed, I really appreciate the raw power of his work. Subtlety and nuance were not what he was going for. It was all about the energy of the art.
TJKC: As part of that series you also co-wrote, with Tom Sniegoski, and penciled a Devil Dinosaur story, which also featured the Hulk. How did that story come about? Were you a fan of Devil Dinosaur? POWELL: It’s funny, Tom and I had spoken beforehand about trying to pitch a Devil Dinosaur book to Marvel. When they contacted me about doing it, I had to ask Tom to come along. The Hulk got thrown in just because I wanted to draw the Hulk. I had inked a few Hulk issues, but had never gotten to draw him before.
TJKC: In 2006 you drew several covers for the Marvel Monsters event, which featured several of the Atlas-era monsters created by Kirby. What do you think about Kirby’s monster designs? Are there any specific ones you enjoyed drawing more than the others? POWELL: I love Kirby monsters. My favorite Kirby monster fest was his run on The Demon. I love the big meaty fingers, squared claws and heads. There’s no mistaking a Kirby monster.
TJKC: The opening splash page of the story is an homage of Kirby’s cover for Devil Dinosaur #1, and it seemed like you were emulating Kirby’s panel layouts to some degree as well. Is that the case?
TJKC: One of those covers is an homage of 31
Gallery 1
Commentary by Shane Foley
(this page) Count Dragorin and Lupek, as revisited by Kirby for his ‘Black Book’ gift for Roz: When Kirby’s desire to do a Dracula comic was scuttled, he did Dragorin and a whole cast of monster film characters instead, in what is one of the wackiest stories ever done. I wonder which character from Oklahoma these two became? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to find Jimmy Olsen #142–143 to find out. It’s too wayout Kirby complicated to go into here!) (next page) Forever People #9, page 18: A bandaged face is spooky enough, but notice how, in panel 2, Kirby adds power and rage by cleverly arranging the bandages to form a contorted, angry face! The harsh shadowing on the face in panel 3 continues the drama, even as the impossibly thickened body mass evokes unstoppable strength. And the detail in panel 4 is stunning pencil work! (following spread) Demon #10, page 6: (It’s numbered ‘5’ here) Dramatic Phantom of the Opera pencils by Kirby, filled with his trademark ugliness! But maybe a key point of this page is comparing these pencils to the inked version on page 89 of this issue, where we see the thought and care that Mike Royer put, not only into his expert inking, but into the lettering. Note how Royer has made a separate balloon for the second ‘Look!’ and placed it over to the right side for better balance. And note his beautiful title and ‘Chapter Two’ lettering artistry!
Demon #6 cover: An effective, simple layout of power and mystery. The horse turning its head back in fright is drawn to perfection, adding to the drama! Jack’s stylized blacks surely have their origins in the shapes created in old black-and-white photos, such as many of World War I, and in films like 1941’s The Wolf Man, which helped generate this and many other story ideas.
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HorrorFLIK
The Empire Strikes out Interview with Michael Zuccaro
(right) A letter Jack sent to Michael Zuccaro, two years prior to their first meeting at the 1975 Miami Comic-Con. (below) The Stephen Spielberg-produced Gremlins got an Empire knock-off called Ghoulies. (bottom) Head of the Family is a 1996 B-movie black comedy released by Full Moon. The similarities to the Simon & Kirby story from 1954’s Black Magic 30 (V4#6, reprinted in 1973 by DC Comics with a new Jerry Grandenetti cover) are unmistakable.
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ack in TJKC #11, we ran a short feature on Kirby’s work with film producer Charles Band at Empire Entertainment. In May 1995, I had sent a letter to Mr. Band, asking for background on two Jack Kirby concepts that had apparently evolved into renamed films at his later company, Full Moon Productions. In response, he briefly visited the TwoMorrows booth at the 1995 ComicCon International saying in passing, “Sometime I need to tell you what happened with those,” but he never responded to our repeated attempts to get details on the situation. So we asked Michael Zuccaro, who was Jack’s initial contact with Band, to offer up his own recollections of the experience. “My ill-fated two-pic deal with Jack Kirby at Empire Pictures started with my subscription copy of The Hollywood Reporter, where I read a 1986 front page story about film producer Charles Band. In it, he was quoted as having a love for comic books—and if you love comics, you can’t not love Jack Kirby. “Therefore, I took it upon myself to approach Mr. Band in hopes of him doing my script NOCTVRNVS that Jack embellished (formerly entitled Forever Amore—see TJKC #11 for my story behind that project). Band was very much intrigued and requested a meeting at his Empire Entertainment office in Hollywood. Jack and I took the meeting with him and his girlfriend/ producer/then-wife (now ex-) Debra Dion.
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“While Mr. Band liked Forever Amore, he didn’t have the budget for it, but wanted Jack and me to produce a couple of Jack’s ideas: Mindmaster and Doctor Mortalis. “Mr. Band is known for producing his low-budget B-movies in reverse, which apparently by sheer volume has served him well. He starts with the last step, the movie’s poster (i.e. 1985 Gremlins knock-off Ghoulies, with a creature head popping up from a toilet seat, and the tagline “They’ll Get You In The End!”) and seeks financing by talking up the poster. “He proceeded to do just that after getting Jack and me some ‘good faith’ money, and following another front page Hollywood Reporter article announcing the deal, he took out full-page ads there and in Variety. “The plan was for Jack and me to go to his film studio in Rome to produce the two films. After months of delays, Empire Pictures filed bankruptcy [in 1988]. Years later, Band re-emerged, his new company re-Banded as Full Moon Productions. In 1992 and 1993, it released what to our eyes were identical projects to ours, renamed Mandroid and Doctor Mordrid—with no creative input from us or money from Mr. Band. “I felt bad and responsible for Jack’s name being exploited, because if not for me, he and I wouldn’t have felt fleeced. I asked Jack if he wanted to sue, and if so, I would split legal fees. “Scrapper that Jack was, he said, ‘Let’s get the bastard!’ “I got an attorney that said it was a slam dunk because it wasn’t
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
mens along with the Earthman. As he was later to repeatedly demonstrate for Stan Lee’s Atlas/Marvel monster books, Kirby’s inventiveness when creating these grotesque aliens is second-to-none, but that imagination is, of course, also evident in conjuring up the alien environment—such as a jungle overrun with growths of purple vegetation covered by snaking roots, or a gigantic crimson lake with bizarre yellow flowers floating on its surface. The other stories in the issue by DC workhorses Ruben Moreira and Jim Mooney are nothing to write home about, but they are perfectly efficient pieces of work and par for the course for DC fantasy/SF comics of the day. But—as ever—it’s the Jack Kirby tale that makes this issue collectable.
THE KIRBY IMAGINATION
It’s not a problem that exercises most of us who have tried our hand at illustration (and that includes me—for eight years, I drew for British comics): What you do when your imagination is so prodigal that your right hand can barely keep up with the images that spring to your imagination? The late Wally Wood was well known for the fact that he considered himself to be—with some justification—the world’s greatest comics artist, but in the wee small hours (and perhaps before he finally took his life), the truth nagged at him: For all his brilliance, Wood had to concede the Number One spot to Jack Kirby. Apart from anything else, it was the sheer operatic range of Kirby’s imagination which extended across everything he drew, from the human figure to landscapes to buildings. And there was one area in which he unquestionably beat all his rivals (including Wood): The creation of bizarre and unusual alien lifeforms. All of which is a preamble to discussing a minor but entertaining Kirby story drawn for DC’s My Greatest Adventure #20 (March/April 1958), “I Was Big-Game on Neptune.” The basic theme here is a very familiar (and well-worn) one—the Earthman captured and spirited into space to take part in a series of games on an alien planet, where he finds himself as prey along with captured specimens from other worlds. In fact, it’s a theme that Kirby used most successfully in one of his Challengers of the Unknown stories, “Captives of the Space Circus.” But here it is given a very lively treatment—and one of the pleasures of the stories is the chance to see the bizarre variety of alien creatures on the run from brutal Neptunian captors. The splash panel alone features five such (mostly humanoid) speci-
KIRBY KONGRUENCES
One of the particular pleasures for the Kirby aficionado is spotting versions of ideas that were developed elsewhere in his work—such as a short SF piece about a future world ruled by animals which was to be developed in Kamandi, and, of course, the Challengers of the Unknown elements that reappeared in the later Fantastic Four. Yet another example? The glorious (albeit brief) period of sciencefiction tales by Simon and Kirby that appeared in Harvey’s Race for the Moon may be found reflected in an anomalous tale in Kirby’s parodic Commie-baiting book Fighting American called “Homecoming Year 3000” (issue #4, October/November 1954). The tale actually has nothing to do with the adventures of the red-white-and-blue patriotic super-hero—mainly because it’s a retooled version of the unsold Starman Zero strip. In his secret identity as Johnny Flagg, Fighting American settles down to sleep one night and dreams an entire science-fiction adventure in which he 46
POW!ER
Two Monster Techniques by A.T. LeMay
D (below) The origin page from Incredible Hulk #1.
r. Bruce Banner pushes Rick Jones into a ditch and then is hit by the full force of a Gamma Bomb explosion—in this exciting creation of one of Marvel’s most popular ongoing characters, Jack Kirby manages to violate every unwritten rule of cartooning. All cartoon drawings since the time of the Egyptians have always been done with outline techniques. Jack’s drawing of Bruce Banner being nuked is an impressionistic technique done with power lines that give the impression of a human figure. It was a drawing with pure energy instead of outline. The story of the Hulk’s origin has been retold at least once a year since issue #1, often by a different artist. Still, I’ve yet to see a more effective technique used to communicate the full impact of the action. What’s more, Jack was working at a severe handicap,
compared to his more modern contemporaries, for comic book reproduction and printing technology in the early 1960s was pretty poor. In fact, Marvel Brass had originally wanted the Hulk to be gray, but they couldn’t get him to stay the same shade of gray throughout the books, so in Hulk #2 he came back as the Grumpy Greenskin Guy we all know and love; but even with this very limiting printing technology, Jack was pushing the medium like few cartoonists before him or since. Fancy airbrush and computer coloring techniques hadn’t yet been used or invented in the industry, and so Jack was limited to using a #2 pencil and two decades’ experience. I know that Hulk #1 probably wasn’t the first time Jack used this impressionistic technique to show energy, but it’s one of the finest early examples, and a real step up from the bars of colored light that he used to depict cosmic rays in Fantastic Four #1. One thing is for sure: It wasn’t the last time he used the energy lines. The great thing about Jack is that although he used the impressionistic technique often, he never repeated himself. Also, he never overused the technique. His books were always about character and plot, not special effects. Jack was a master storyteller; like George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry, he believed in a strong storyline, but when the special effects were finally needed, he could provide them better then any effects house. Jack’s explosions were the best in the industry. Looking back at the Golden Age of comics, many explosions were almost childish. Take a drawing of the sun done by a six-year-old—any six-year-old— and it will be a circle with lines to represent rays of light extending outward from it. Now remove the round circle in the middle and replace it with a word like ‘POW’ or ‘BOOM’ and you have a Golden 49
Unexplained
(below) Pencils from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #144, as the crew prepares to summon Jack’s version of the Loch Ness Monster.
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Monster Myths
by John Morrow
ythological beasts abound throughout history: Kraken, Griffin, Manticore, Basilisk, Roc, and many others. But Kirby, always on the search for new fodder for inspiration in his stories, took two that had made their way into pop culture, and turned them into characters in his own comics.
Highlands. The earliest report of a monster there dates back to the year 565. In 1933, road construction on the north shore of Loch Ness involved a lot of drilling and blasting, which some think forced the monster to come out of hiding, and into the open waters. Around this time, there were numerous reported sightings. In 1934, a London surgeon took a photograph that seems to show Nessie above the surface of the water, and it’s kept the creature in the headlines ever since. (That “surgeon’s photograph” of 1934, above, is now known to have been part of a hoax.) From 1962–1972, the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau conducted a ten-year study, and documented an average of 20 sightings per year. By the end of the 1960s, sonar was used unsuccessfully in trying to track the creature, but in the mid-1970s, underwater photographs that appeared to show a ‘flipper’ were made public, further helping keep the legend alive.
The Loch Ness Monster
In Scottish folklore, the Loch Ness Monster (or “Nessie”) allegedly inhabits Loch Ness in the Scottish
Bigfoot/Sasquatch
Bigfoot (or “Sasquatch”) are said to be hairy, upright-walking, ape-like creatures that dwell in the wilderness (particularly the US Pacific Northwest) and leave large, otherwise unexplained footprints behind. On September 21, 1958, journalist Andrew Genzoli of the Humboldt Times ran a letter about loggers in northern California who’d discovered mysteriously large footprints. In his column, he joked, “Maybe we have a relative of the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas.” Due to interest from readers, he published follow-up articles about the footprints, stating loggers had named the creature “Big Foot,” and a legend was born. A 1976 faux-documentary titled The Legend of Bigfoot catapulted the creature to pop culture stardom. That same year, the highly watched first installment of a two-part 51
Boydisms by Jerry Boyd
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onsters have been a part of popular culture ever since writers, artists, painters, and sculptors found an audience for things that go bump in the night. Most nations have their demons, witches, ghosts, animal-men, and so on as part of their lore. In the US, Lee and Kirby made Comics Codeapproved creatures (with briefs on, a lot of the time) a staple of their pre-hero line-up, and the many imaginative space aliens, man-made creatures, swamp and plant things, and revived evil giants of legend kept readers glued to Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense, among others. For this young fan, Kirby’s monsters and heroes came together in one moment in the Summer of 1966. My parents went away for a short vacation, and my brother and I were left with our maternal grandparents in Durham, North Carolina. When my parents returned to get us, the hugs and kisses were added to by two comics they’d gotten me: Fantasy Masterpieces #4 and Amazing SpiderMan Special #3. The Kirby cover for the former and the
Romita splash for the latter knocked me out! I’d never seen a copy of either, and while the adults chatted, my brother and I (he got two 25¢ Harvey comics) were lost in our grandparents’ den. I knew there’d been some time on Earth long ago because I had grandparents and parents, but these old Captain America and Bucky stories—what was this?! I was glued to the pages—crudely drawn (though I wasn’t old enough to really know “crude”), but filled with passion, and wildly intriguing. Stan and Jack had an “It!” story inside—closer to his current style in the Fantastic Four, but less crude than the two Captain America tales (and look—Bucky Barnes, the youngster referred to in more than a few Tales of Suspense yarns—wowwwweee…). I had to devour this, and though I was only an almost-thirdgrader, I had to figure out the words I didn’t know. I had to get into this stuff—and the Spider-Man, as well! The first Captain America story dealt with “The Menace of Dr. Grimm” and the moody, dark splash page said a lot about the events to come—a foreboding building with strange underlings bringing a victim to it in the darkness. Cap and Bucky were standing nearby, taking it all in. I’d take it all in, also. The afternoon was set—monsters from a 1940s story and another monster from the early 1960s. It was all new to me and I’d love it and more of the same from issues of Fantasy Masterpieces to come! I’ll examine the monsters the Star-Spangled Sentinels battled first.
The Monsters That Haunted Camp Lehigh! In those less sophisticated days, enthusiastic
comics readers didn’t do a lot of questioning (because most comics houses didn’t have letters columns, for one thing) or stop reading their heroes’ adventures because they instantly (and impossibly, really) became superb sleuths right after first donning their colorful outfits. But Cap and Bucky always “had a clue” and used the mounting evidence they gathered to its best advantage. They found out who would strike next, where, and how, and by the story’s end, Cap would stand victoriously over the beaten enemies and reveal their insidious plot. Sometimes the duo went aboard ship or overseas to combat the Japanese militarists or fascists in Europe in their strongholds. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby provided plenty of “human monsters” like the Red Skull, the Chessman, the White Death, and the Killers of the Bund to 54
That Menaced The World (Of Marvel)! by Jerry Boyd
challenge the adventurous twosome. But we’re concerned with real monsters here, or those who presented themselves as actual monsters for this offering. And some of Joe and Jack’s probable inspirations for said monsters came from the bustling dream factory of Southern California’s Hollywood. Axis aggressors started Cap and Bucky off, with the youngster drop-kicking Hitler and Goering in the second issue (!), but it was the third issue that placed the powerfully built Private Rogers into a knight’s armor on a film production conveniently photographed near… Camp Lehigh. (Aside from Steve and Bucky’s “instant deductive powers”, Camp Lehigh was placed where a lot of the action was!)
The chief antagonist was the Hollywood Hunchback, a nice Kirby rendering not too far from Lon Chaney Sr.’s classic portrayal from the Universal Studios’ hit of 1923, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In Joe and Jack’s take, a filmmaker who was messaging the fight against fascism was mysteriously murdered on the set of a medieval-era adventure. Suspects were lined up. All had reason to get rid of the deceased, of course. The local police questioned them all, including one actor who looked a lot like Boris Karloff, one of Universal’s kings of horror (who shared the throne with Bela Lugosi). Jack did a nice likeness, and the name “Goris Barloff” said the rest. The Sentinels of Liberty had to keep the homicidal hunchback from doing more damage, and in the end, they unmasked the killer and saved the day. Spoiler Alert: It wasn’t Barloff… Another ‘monster’ showed up in the same issue. A plundering, murdering Butterfly (!) soared about the confines of a museum. Captain America Comics #4 saw the first all-out monster cover. Bucky was strapped to the type of table nine out of ten demented doctors prefer to use for hapless victims. A barely controlled green monster (!) is at the camp mascot’s right, and a twisted, grinning scientist (or assistant) is near our hero, holding a
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(above) The Hunchback of Hollywood (Captain America Comics #3) gave readers a monster derived from the success of Lon Chaney’s grotesquerie from 1923. (previous page, bottom) “Goris Barloff” was one of the suspects in the Hunchback story. S&K did a solid likeness of Boris Karloff (pictured). (bottom) Our heroes also had to contend with the plundering Butterfly in their third issue. (below) Undated Joe Simon commission.
Kirby As A Genre
Covering Fire
Columnist Adam McGovern talks with King of cover-art Michael Cho on what meets the eye and burns beneath the surface of Kirby (right) The mark of Kirby “becomes overt when I’m drawing Kirby characters,” Cho says. “I’ll draw Captain America with Kirby pencils and Giacoia inks in mind, because that’s the version of that character I see in my head.” (below center) “I love all eras of Kirby,” Cho says. “People draw the line at different points. Some people don’t like Captain Victory. I love Captain Victory!”—and this image inked over Kirby’s sketch makes that truer than ever.
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ichael Cho has given the comics artform a brand new past. The dynamic drama and elegant, endearing mood he brings to the medium, like a pulp storybook, makes you feel as if the optimistic, exhilarating heyday of North American pop culture is unfolding afresh, a timeline do-over with many of the mercenary and malicious tendencies of mass entertainment filtered out and the creativity, common hope and social daring brought forth all the farther. A distinguished book-cover and magazine illustrator (The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Random House, Penguin Classics), Cho’s first love was comics, and comics loved him back, first gaining him acclaim for his webcomic Papercut and then for his New York Times bestselling debut graphic novel, Shoplifter (Pantheon, 2014). He’s now one of the most in-demand cover artists for both Marvel and DC, where his images are welcoming in a new generation of comics fans and steering classic super-hero mythos to its next future. When we first met at New Jersey’s East Coast Comic Con this May, it didn’t take a Cosmic Cube or Source Wall to
guess that he’s a connoisseurial Kirby fan, though the breadth of thought he’s put into Kirby’s artistry, and the extent of the mark Kirby has made on Cho’s own work, were two of many pleasant surprises from this most modest of virtuosos. We soon sat down to share his story, and to see how his artistic eye casts Kirby’s own saga in a highly original light. THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Looking at your art I could easily guess you were a Kirby fan, but I’d never call you a Kirby disciple. How does an artist as distinctive as you are incorporate and advance from a model as definitive as Kirby? MICHAEL CHO: I’m not a Kirby imitator in the sense that I try to draw exactly like Kirby; there have been a lot of those in history. Nobody can really be Kirby, but a lot of people can copy the surface mannerisms. I do consider [Kirby] the single greatest influence; if you boil down all the influences that have become distilled in me, the biggest piece of the pie-chart,
(next page, top) Before and beyond: Cho says it was common for cartoonists in his home base of Toronto to practice their inking over images scanned from (blush) The Jack Kirby Collector; this diptych shows his “translations” of Kirby, in which Cho preserves the King’s personality while making the image even more his own. (next page, bottom) One giant step for the classic Hulk (with a look back to the 1960s Marvelmania t-shirt and Aurora model?) in this art for the Marvel Style Guide by Cho.
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Bugs In The System
Anti-Man
by Shane Foley
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(below) Panels from “Tales of Asgard” in Journey Into Mystery #124 and #125, showing the Swarm Queen and her swarm in action.
ho were the New Genesis “Bugs”? When they were first introduced in New Gods #9 and 10 in 1972, the Bug society that Jack invented was really violent and interesting, while at the same time really confusing to 15-year-old me. Why? Because these Bugs lived on New Genesis—the planet of the comic’s good guys. Yet they were despised and even killed by those good guys! So what sort of goodies were these New Gods? Why are they trying to exterminate these Bugs, as though they were bad guys living on their planet? And if these Bugs really were baddies, why were they on New Genesis at all? Shouldn’t they be part of Apokolips? And it got more mystifying! As the story progressed, we saw some of these Bugs weren’t really bad guys at all—particularly the Prime One and Forager himself. Were there more like them? And then, to complicate matters more, suddenly Mantis—definitely a big-gun bad guy—was there in the Bug society! What goes on here? As the story further unfolds, we see that the Bugs’ society is multi-layered. There is desire amongst some (Prime One and Forager at least) to be on equal footing with the “Eternals” (their name for the New Gods
of Supertown). But this desire is not shared by the colony’s supreme leader, the All-Widow. She wants a more violent approach, preferring that of Mantis from Apokolips, who stirs the colonists to rebellion and invasion. This all smacks of a story that has deep and unexplained thinking behind it, and one that I believe Jack was going to explore further but never could. I see three distinct story elements in the situation of the Bugs. 1) The Bugs themselves are a strange, sciencefiction society, enlarging on one Jack introduced years earlier in “Tales of Asgard” (Journey Into Mystery #124125), based loosely on the way insect colonies seem to work. It is a violent society, complete with the death ritual forced upon the Prime One, and all the strangeness that encircles that—perfect sci-fi fodder for Kirby to visualize! 2) There is the clear notion that Forager is not really a Bug at all, but something different. As Orion was not from New Genesis, and Scott Free was not from Apokolips, neither does it seem that Forager is from the Bug society. (See pages 10 and 18 in New Gods #9). Where was Kirby going to go with this? Editor John Morrow has this recollection: “Richard Kyle long ago told me his theory, after talking to Jack, was that Forager was Orion’s son from an affair with someone, and that’s why he didn’t fit in; he got shuttled off to the Bug colony to keep it secret. It was just his theory, not something specific Jack said, but based on conversations with Jack, and his own reading of the Fourth World stuff.” Orion having a child from an affair? Wow! ’70s super-hero comics under Kirby certainly went places no
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Gallery 2
Bugs!
More commentary by Shane Foley
(above) By the time Kirby came to draw Ant-Man at Marvel, he’d already sired a host of creepy-crawly heroes. And seen in this issue of TJKC, the insect world continued to be a constant source of inspiration for him. This pic of The Fly (from the 1959 series with Joe Simon) is his memory of the character as drawn in Roz’s ’70s sketchbook. Jack and Joe were also involved with the Green Hornet via covers, and an unused newspaper strip (left). (next page) Unknown – undated. Do we know what this incomplete sequence was drawn for? Who this guy is? Is he a goodie? A baddie? I’d like to know! All we can see is—he looks powerful, mysterious and insecty!
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Mark Evanier
Jack F.A.Q.s
A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby
Jack Kirby’s Monster Influence Panel Held Saturday, April 21, 2018 at the San Diego Comic Fest. Featuring Mike Royer, Tom Kraft, and Mark Evanier. Transcribed by Tom Kraft. Copyedited by Mark Evanier. Photo by Phil Geiger.
“Whatever movie I was watching I would see it about seven times, and my mother would have to get me out of the theater. I believe the naturalism and the drama that were inherent in the pictures left an impression on me that I wanted to duplicate. I tried to duplicate that faithfully.” Jack Kirby interviewed by Will Eisner, February 1983
MIKE ROYER: You know Mark, at first I thought this “Jack Kirby, Monster Influence” panel would be about all the guys who tried to draw like him. MARK EVANIER: No, it’s all the guys who employed him. [laughter] Not everyone who employed Jack cheated him badly. I’m Mark Evanier, this is Mike Royer, that’s Tom Kraft. In the audience, we have another person who worked with Jack Kirby when Jack worked for the Ruby-Spears cartoon studio on Thundarr the Barbarian. Buzz Dixon is sitting back there. [applause] Buzz worked on the Destroyer Duck comic book as well and he has got a spotlight in this room in two hours? BUZZ DIXON: I believe so. EVANIER: Alright, Buzz will correct all the stuff we get wrong. The premise here is, Monster Influence. Jack Kirby was influenced by monsters. One of the fascinating things which I’m sure we’ll be talking about in the next hour, is that if you look at the early Marvel super-heroes, an awful lot of scenes in there, are very similar to scenes that were in horror and mostly science-fiction movies that came out in
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the early ’60s. Jack used to take his son Neal to every matinée that had “The Amazing Colossal Anything” in it. [laughter] As a result, if you’ll look at the first issue of The Hulk, and you watch The Amazing Colossal Man, you see certain similarities. For years, there was a guy who’d come to these conventions, and would lecture about the influences of monster movies on Jack. And his big finale, his big coup d’état, the big moment when he made like he’d liberated the entirety of comic book research, was to compare the character Ray Milland played in The Man with X-Ray Eyes, to Cyclops in the X-Men, and he did this for years and years until some of us pointed out that X-Men #1 came out two years before The Man with X-Ray Eyes. [laughter] We destroyed that theory completely, whereupon he developed the theory that the movie was inspired by the comic book. [laughter] So, Tom, this panel was your idea. Would you tell us the thesis on which you operate here? TOM KRAFT: The thesis is monster influence—it takes him from being a young person and being influenced by comics, and by the monster movies, mostly Universal films, which were Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera and so forth. So it’s comparing the two, and how he was influenced as a young person. 1 Because he grew up on the Lower East Side in the slums fighting, his only escape from all that reality was to go to the movies.
So, when he was very young he would go to these movies. 2 This is an image from Frankenstein when it came out in 1931, and these are the types of theaters that he would go to. 3 In interviews, he would talk about seeing these movies seven times inTHIS a row,PREVIEW, and he wouldn’t leave, and IF YOU ENJOYED hisCLICK mother hadLINK to come to the theater THE TO in ORDER THIS and drag him out, ISSUE PRINT OR DIGITAL cause IN he just wouldn’t leave. FORMAT! Mike, you’ve had a lot of influence on The Demon and other comics that Jack did, plus you have a lot of experience in the movies, theater and so forth.
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ROYER: Well, I was a Saturday matinée kid. I lived in a very small town and theaters were operated by an old time exhibitor who every chance he could get, whatever the occasion was, he would rent the inexpensive, old Universal and Columbia and Paramount horror movies. So I was raised in a different time on the same kind of movies that inspired Jack, but if you think about Jack and everything he did, every one of his life experiences was channeled into his creative endeavors. And these films obviously had a great influence on him. There were people who write about sitting with Jack and talking KIRBY COLLECTOR #77 about his war Jack’s experiences; we neverintalked about war experiences. MONSTERS & BUGS! monster-movie influences The Demon, Forever Black IMagic, Four,family, Jimmy he had a family and we had Maybe it’s People, because hadFantastic a young Olsen, and Atlas monster stories; Kirby’s work with “B” horror those things to BAND; talk about, but“The when wecre-did talk about movies it was film producer CHARLES interview with Goon” ator ERIC POWELL; Kirby’s films use of insect characters (especially Warner Brothers from the ’30s. And even they did a couple of as villains); MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, pseudo-horror starring Humphrey Bogart, etc. Golden Age Kirby story,movies, and a Kirby pencil art gallery! But I think the films definitely (100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 had a tremendous influence on (Digital Edition) $5.95 him and it may not have shown as much in a lot of his early work as it did in his Demon, but I think in doing The Demon, it just opened up that reservoir of memories, and the experience of seeing something seven times in a row. And then he put on paper his version of it. And it became something in its own way, totally unique, but based in his experience of sitting in that darkened theater watching those images on the screen.
run there, that Mr. Infantino, who brought him into the company, might not be there very long unless the company had a dramatic turnabout. So, the frustrations Jack had, were that he didn’t think DC knew how to sell a book, and they didn’t think he knew how to do the right kind of comics, and it was not a very good match, because the company was operating out of desperation, doing, I think, some very foolish things. Well, at one point, the office more or less decided that the coming trend in comics was not super-heroes, but monster books. Ghoulish things, Swamp Thing-type comics, and Infantino asked Jack to come out with a ghoulish monster book of some sort. I think Carmine claimed he said to come up with some sort of “demon,” and Jack said he was the one who applied the word “demon” to it. That’s one of those arguments you can never resolve, and both people went to their graves believing that they said “demon” first. But we went to dinner that night: Steve Sherman, myself, Jack, Roz, and the kids. I remember this more vividly than anyone should; Mike will tell you I have a real good memory.
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_57&products_id=1416
ROYER: Oh boy. EVANIER: We went to a Howard Johnson’s restaurant where I had a hot turkey sandwich, and for dessert, a scoop of orange sherbet with a cookie in it. Usually when we went to dinner with Jack, he’d look at the menu and decide what he wanted and then Roz would tell him what he was going to eat. And he’d go, “Okay, fine.” And he’d eat whatever she said. This time he was absorbed in thought and she ordered for him and we were just sitting there talking, and Jack was com-
Well, I may be crazy as a loon.
pletely quiet, like he was in another plane of existence. He just sat there thinking and thinking and thinking. And then the waiter brought the entrées. We stopped talking and Jack said, “The character’s named The Demon. His name is Jason Blood.” He went on to tell us the whole first issue, the whole premise. If it was somebody else you would have thought he must have spent a month working out all those details, cause he had the next issue, and the next issue. He had villains, some of which I don’t think he used. He had storylines already figured out. And we just kind of sat there chewing and listening to this thing.
EVANIER: No, you’re right. Actually, you’re crazy as a loon, but you’re right about that. [laughter] I was actually present at the moment of the creation of The Demon. Jack had been working with DC and the New Gods was selling decently, but those books were not the Marvel destroying hits that DC was hoping for. I am trying to finish up my big giant huge biography of Jack this year, and one of the points I’m trying to make to people about that era, is that DC was a company that was in deep trouble when Jack joined it. Jack was aware fairly early on in his 80