Jack Kirby Collector #79 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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ISSUE NO. 79 FALL 2020

KIRBY COLLECTOR

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Characters TM & © DC Comics.

A STARTLING LOOK INTO...

THE

Contents The Big Picture! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 (Brother Eye beams in) KIRBY EPIPHANY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 (Kaluta on Kirby) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (a Scarce interview)

C o l l e c t o r

ISSUE #79, FALL 2020

BOYDISMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 (some big costume ideas) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 (more early Link Thorne work) GENERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 (fighting illiteracy with Kirby comics) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . 24 (who watches the Watcher?) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 (Jack’s two-page spreads analyzed) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 (One Man’s Amazing Concepts) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 (monsters and outer space!) CHANGE-UPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 (some Marvel mysteries) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 (before & after: the Eternals) RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 (Jack’s legacy characters) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM . . . . . . . . . 59 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 ( Mark Evanier moderates the 2019 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring Buzz Dixon, Tracy Kirby, Jeremy Kirby, Paul S. Levine, Kurt Busiek, and Mike Royer) A SPECIAL APPEAL . . . . . . . . . . . 75 COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . 78 Co ver inks: MIKE ROYER Co ver color: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: Big Barda, Brother Eye, Demon, Flash, Global Peace Agency, Guardian, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Mister Miracle, Newsboy Legion, Oberon, OMAC, Sandman, Superman, Tales of the Unexpected, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics • Absorbing Man, Ant-Man, Avengers, Batroc, Bucky, Captain America, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Frightful Four, Galactus, Hulk, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Loki, Magneto, Maximus, Odin, Pluto, Sandman, Sentry, Sgt. Fury, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Strange Tales, Thing, Thor, Trapster, Two-Gun Kid, Vision, Warriors Three, Wasp, Watcher, Wyatt Earp, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Fighting American, Hot Box, Link Thorne, Night Fighter TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Captain Victory, Darius Drumm, Silver Star, Sky Masters TM & © Jack Kirby Estates • The Fly TM & © Joe Simon Estate • Destroyer Duck TM & © Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby Estates • A if for Alien, Power Planet, Raven, Roxie’s Raiders, Thundarr the Barbarian, Turbo Teen TM & © Ruby-Spears Productions

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(above) Kirby’s original art for the cover of OMAC #1 was flopped and altered for publication. Courtesy of the Jack Kirby Museum.

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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 27, No. 79, Fall 2020. Published quarterly (barring worldwide pandemics) 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, $18 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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Opening Shot

THE BIG PICTURE

am Brother Eye. I am ever vigilant! Created by Dr. Myron Forrest, I serve the Global Peace Agency, during an era that has not yet occurred in your plane of existence. But in fact, that World That’s Coming is partially There now, as predicted by one of the most prescient minds of your civilization: Jack Kirby. That you are reading this message, means you have seen what I’ve discovered from my vantage point as an Eye in the Sky – that this humble man, over the course of 50 years, managed to not only entertain and enlighten human beings, but cause them to think about the human condition, and improve themselves in the process. What other human has had a magazine singularly devoted to him, for 25 years and 79 issues, plus books and specials, all from one publisher – let alone all that has been documented about him elsewhere? My blood brother OMAC only survived through eight periodicals in your time – which pales in comparison to this publication’s longevity. My chronicler still speaks to mankind today,

years after his passing, through so many interviews that remain to be published. New art by him is being discovered regularly, showing how this tireless writer/ artist could never stop creating new characters, even when times were difficult, and appreciation for him was low. So I have chosen to beam in, and temporarily take control of this publication from its usual editor, to work with some of his most erudite contributors to help readers get a wider view of Kirby’s work and influence, in hopes of furthering society’s appreciation for just how remarkable Jack Kirby was. So, how does a “Jack Kirby” fit into the big picture of your era? Certainly, he was a patriot – the epitome of an all-American individual, not only through proudly serving his country in your second World War, but by co-creating a symbol of national pride in Captain America. That character’s patriotism was earnest, not forced, and rang true even throughout your 1960s decade, when such devotion to one’s country could seem outdated. My

construct OMAC was inspired by him, as I provided Buddy Blank with my own digital version of a super-soldier formula, similar to the way an analog serum was administered to Steve Rogers. Mr. Kirby fought for what he felt was right, even against editors and publishers who sought to hinder his vision. His belief in justice and fundamental fairness permeated his stories, but also his real life. His inclusion of characters such as the Black Panther and the Reject clearly stated his disdain for prejudice. He didn’t shy away from a tumultuous battle over the rightful return of his original artwork, and he stepped up to assist fellow writer Steve Gerber with his own pursuit of justice. That Fighting spirit lives on through Kirby’s offspring, evidenced by their own dispute to secure his legacy – which nearly ended up being decided in your Supreme Court – and their continued efforts to make sure Kirby gets ongoing credit for his work. Kirby was also a devoted family man – loving husband, father, and grand-

by guest editor Brother Eye, beaming in for John Morrow

father, as will be seen in this issue’s Tribute Panel. He was a steadfast friend and mentor to many. the camaraderie of his Newsboy Legion, Boy Commandos, and Dingbats of Danger Street recalls the relationships he had with the children he grew up with in the poverty of New York City’s Lower East Side. Today, a new generation of youngsters is learning to read through his work, as recounted later in this publication. Mr. Kirby was a keen observer of, and deep thinker about, film and pop culture, and its influence on daily life. He was steeped in knowledge of mythology and what in your day may seem like science-fiction, but was acutely aware of the times around him, from the youth culture and civil rights, to the need for diversity in culture, and empowering women as well as men. His most nagging internal question was “What’s out there?”, and he constantly sought to answer it. This innovator only dwelled on the past when recounting war stories. He built on the foundations of others by reenergizing staid legacy characters, and pioneered new genres, formats, and artistic and commercial innovations. His Captain Victory series launched your current direct market for Comics distribution, and his work on THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN brought a new level of excitement to Saturday Morning television. But perhaps the most lasting facet of his essence is his imagination. It lingers today, and continues to influence others. As your era’s digital printers are now becoming capable of creating replacement parts for human organ transplants, the age of OMAC would seem to be upon you. I’ll attempt to convey, later in this document, how Kirby predicted things that are just now starting to come to pass for you. Like OMAC, Mr. Kirby set an example for all to follow. May you all do likewise, and help build a future that could live up to his dreams, expectations, and imagination.

KIRBY EPIPHANY I

remember, early on, asking myself why Barry Smith (at the time, pre-Windsor) drew such tree trunks for legs in his Conan comics. As I became more aware how seminal Jack the King’s art was to most of my friends (outside the Jeff Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Roy Kernel, Al Williamson, and Frank Frazetta circle), I saw exactly why Barry’s work during those days had a “weight” that fought against his exalted style. By the time “Red Nails” hit the stands in 1973, Barry had absorbed his early influences and then sped along into his own sunlight and shadow. I did have a Kirby Epiphany. All those years of me dismissing Kirby’s style were cast into bold relief when I finally saw, quite a ways into my drawing career, his two-page fill-in story titled “Hot Box” from Foxhole Comics #2 (December 1954). It was a brief glimpse into the perils of a B-17 Flying Fortress waist gunner fighting his .50 cal flexible machine gun at high altitude against the Luftwaffe fighters bent on setting his bomber on fire. WWII high altitude flight gear effectively made the gunner into a shambling homunculus, nearly exactly a mirror reflection of so many Kirby characters. Seeing Jack’s work in a context I was intimately familiar with enabled me to understand what Jack was “up to” in his art and storytelling. Better late than never. H 3

by Michael William Kaluta

Innerview

A SCARCE KIRBY IN Interviewed by Nikola Atchine, translated by Jean Depelley

[A NOTE FROM JEAN DEPELLEY: In 1992, Nikola Atchine interviewed Jack Kirby at his booth at the San Diego Comic-Con. Instead of the resentful and embittered man he expected to meet, Kirby was a sympathetic and funny grandpa. His booth was loaded with superb original art pages for sale. His charming wife Roz was filtering the people around Jack and making sure he was comfortable. When she gave Nikola her approval, he interviewed the Master. A most incredible aspect of Jack Kirby was his New York City slum accent, an accent you can find in the old crime films starring Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Spencer Tracy. Kirby’s sentences were filled with “You know” and “So I says,” making him even more sympathetic. The man was colorful. Sometimes he could be a bit absent-minded when he discussed with fans or answered the occasional question in an interview, but his mind was sharp, as if he were only twenty years old. Kirby was extremely warm. If he liked evoking the past, he still lived in the present, with his eyes turned on what was coming. This interview was originally published in the French comics-related magazine Scarce #31 (Spring 1992). Journalist Nikola Atchine died in 2008 and the transcript was lost. Publisher Xavier Lancel kindly gave his permission to have the interview translated and reprinted in The Jack Kirby Collector. Our thanks to him and to Scarce, the longest-running magazine in its category in France.] NIKOLA ATCHINE: How did you start in comics? JACK KIRBY: My mom pushed me to it! That’s true! I was from a very poor part of New York and, in the ’30s, when you were poor, you were really poor. So I was trying to make a little money one way or another, especially by selling newspapers at the corner.

(above) Examples of Kirby’s early strip work, clipped from newspapers and saved by Jack’s mother! (right) Jack’s own Judo and boxing experience may’ve inspired this 1986 animation idea, Night-Fighter—a name first used in this late 1950s unused concept (below).

ATCHINE: Did you practice any sports? KIRBY: No, not really. I was interested in boxing and judo, but nothing else, even if I played lots of sports, as all kids do. ATCHINE: Did your interest in combat sports help you in your career as an artist? KIRBY: Oh yes, absolutely! But, at the beginning, I first used these sports to fight for real! Sometimes I lost, sometimes I won. But one thing was sure: When I was after guys, they all came back home with bruises and bumps. That was my life back then. ATCHINE: So, drawing comics was considered a decent way to make a living, if your mother 4

NTERVIEW pushed you to do it then… KIRBY: There was nothing wrong with doing comic books. They were new and they were emerging. You could find them everywhere, but people didn’t realize it was a burgeoning industry. And the more comics became interesting, the more numerous they were, up until they finally covered a large variety of genres for readers. ATCHINE: Did you start drawing as a kid? KIRBY: Yes, with the feeling I could draw everything. ATCHINE: Were you, at one point, tempted to try painting or illustration? KIRBY: No. I went to a drawing school, but it didn’t work that well. As a matter of fact, they put me in front of a model; it took me two days to make a portrait, but the other guys there spent something like 30 to 40 days to draw it! Once my drawing was finished, I gave it to the teacher, telling him it was done. And this guy shouted at me: “You’re fired!” He had the feeling that I didn’t respect the anatomy, that my drawing was too “free.” As far as I was concerned, I thought it was okay and that it was functioning as it was. I was already doing comics! ATCHINE: And you kept on doing it! Let’s discuss your style. When one of your characters has, for example, a very big fist, it gives an incredible effect.

KIRBY: Yes, I had to find a way to render this effect. That’s what you call a shortcut. ATCHINE: Did you analyze your work? Did you know, for example, that this shadow at this place on the panel would give that effect? Or were you more intuitive? KIRBY: I analyzed it, in the way I was drawing the best I could. I was writing and drawing my stories, adding my own vision to them, producing them the best way I could, mostly in the fight scenes. I loved action scenes, violent fights, their sequences of movements with power and continuity. When Captain America had to fight five or six guys on his own, it was a real treat! I was wondering what the other guys would do when Captain America was knocking out two of them. So I showed one of them going through a window, one landing on a table, and the whole scene looked like a ballet and I was its choreographer. The fight scenes had to be very efficient. ATCHINE: You had to work very fast. Did it affect the way you drew? KIRBY: You know, I was not drawing that fast! It was very difficult, so I had to take two or three 20-page stories back home and work them at my own pace. I didn’t like drawing in a studio. I was lucky enough to work at home, so I could draw when I wanted. ATCHINE: But you worked for the Eisner & Iger Studio. KIRBY: That’s true and, before, I also worked for the Max and Dave Fleischer Studio, in animation. It was honest-to-God factory work. Their cartoons were absolutely beautiful, but when a character was taking a step forward, you had to draw twelve pictures! My father (above) Kirby’s design for a Medieval soldier in an episode of the Super Friends animated series. (left) Paste-up art for the cover of Captain America #109.

was working in a factory at that time and the idea that I was following in his footsteps was very unpleasing. It had nothing to do with the Fleischers or animation, it was just my desire for independence.

the stories and art were good! They knew the magazines would sell. That was their business. Their job was to sell comics, not to teach people how to draw. And, from the moment my comics started selling, they couldn’t refuse me anything. When I was drawing Captain America, it was selling one million copies. Who can refuse anything to a guy who’s selling a million copies?

ATCHINE: At the Eisner & Iger Studio, did you learn from Eisner? KIRBY: Yes, a lot. I learned many things from him, because he was impressive. He was already an authority in the field and I wanted to draw good stories to please him. But I have to say I always thought I should please myself first! It may be an egotistical point of view, but it’s the only relevant attitude to adopt, artistically speaking, to improve. If you satisfy yourself, you will satisfy others.

ATCHINE: You drew Sky Masters in collaboration with Wallace Wood. KIRBY: The strip Sky Masters was initiated by Dick and Dave Wood, no connection with Wally Wood. They were committed to produce a daily. Wally and I were called, he for the inking—he was the best inker in the world—and I for penciling the strip. Dick and Dave were writing the stories. But it didn’t work very well, because of the distance—the writers were living in New Jersey—and the scripts were late to reach me. So I had to rush my job to catch up. Moreover, their scripts were not up to the standards, so we ended up dropping it.

ATCHINE: In the studio, you were with Lou Fine. Your respective styles were quite different, his being closer to illustration. KIRBY: That’s true. Each of us had his way of seeing things and it was obvious that Lou Fine wasn’t seeing comics as I was. He was doing a wonderful job, doing his best to correctly draw proportions and anatomy. But he was often late on his deadlines... I remember he was so diligent and meticulous that, in the evening, when we were going back home, he was staying at the studio. As far as I was concerned, I was then making a little more money which I was giving to my mother, only keeping a few dollars to go to Broadway shows, which turned out to be helpful afterwards. I could meet different people, discover new forms of expression, go to places I had never visited. All this gave me a new vision of life, and this new maturity was visible in my art.

ATCHINE: Do you regret not having collaborated more with Wally Wood? KIRBY: I regretted not working anymore! It didn’t matter who I was working with, writer or inker, as long as they were doing a good job, without altering my art. Wally was one of the best inkers I could meet, but Mike Royer is still the best professional I have worked with. Mike was perfect for me because he was never late and his inking was exceptional. With him, at DC, I could explore new dimensions in comics.

ATCHINE: Were you interested in working for newspaper syndicates? They were paying more than comic books and their audience was larger—not to mention the job security. KIRBY: I wanted to try everything that could bring in extra dollars! But I was feeling uneasy with the format. I wanted to tell complete stories. With strips, you need at least two weeks to tell something satisfying, just because you have a limited number of panels a day. So I was frustrated, even if I loved that sort of job.

ATCHINE: You rarely inked your own pencils. KIRBY: When I was working with Joe Simon, I inked some comics. ATCHINE: Wasn’t Simon generally inking your work? KIRBY: Yes, as well as negotiating with publishers. Actually, I was entirely dependent on him business-wise. Joe was a very impressive guy. Taller than me, he could speak easily and was good looking. He befriended the Goodmans at Timely. Yes, Joe was great for business... anyway, I was writing and drawing the stories that he was inking.

ATCHINE: You were not as patient as Milton Caniff... KIRBY: No, certainly not! I would have loved being like him. Caniff was a big fish. There were guys like him who inspired me first and made me continue in this medium. I was inspired by every cartoonist and illustrator at the time. I liked Billy DeBeck who was doing Barney Google. [Interviewer’s Note: DeBeck also inspired European comics genius, André Franquin.] But, at the same time, I wanted to be independent and do things my way. Mostly, I didn’t want to draw what others were asking me to.

ATCHINE: Were you uneasy inking your own pencils? KIRBY: I was comfortable doing everything, but the problem always was time. You must deliver your work on time, respect the delays. For that as well, Joe was great. I had a great time working with him and that’s the reason why our collaboration lasted that long. Together, we produced a great variety of comics, and the pleasure we had collaborating was the same as the one we had hanging around with each other. It’s as if there was an interaction between us: Joe was an excellent writer, but also a good artist. So, depending on the situation, he was inking or I was inking, he was drawing or I was drawing, he was writing or I was writing. Our roles could be reversed

ATCHINE: Did you have problems with editors? KIRBY: Yes, and I was telling them to go to Hell! I was bringing in my pages, throwing them on the table, and they took them! Because

anytime... ATCHINE: With Joe Simon, your drawings had lots of black and cross-hatchings, a typical style no longer visible afterwards. Did Joe Simon’s inking have an influence on your pencils, or did the end of your collaboration start an evolution in your style? KIRBY: No, it all came from me. You know, the cross-hatchings were very present in my pencils. It was my way of expressing halftones. ATCHINE: You never tried wash drawing? KIRBY: No, because it couldn’t reproduce correctly. It wouldn’t print on paper. The drawings had to be black. We could use cross-hatchings which were okay to print. ATCHINE: You invented double splash pages. How did it occur? KIRBY: It certainly comes from my taste for cinema. I am a very cinematographic person. Very often, films had a very sensational opening; the intention was to attract the audience and catch their attention. I also created the principle of double splashes because, when I was drawing a crowd, I needed room. You know, I am a New Yorker and, when I draw people, I draw a lot of them. Moreover, there’s the environment and its complex structures: all my buildings look like they’re built in New York. Once, after drawing a crowd on a double splash, I realized I unconsciously drew my uncle! I remembered him and drew him, lost in the middle of the crowd, because I was drawing real people. When you’re living in New York, you instinctively draw crowds, buildings, traffic jams, cars...

ATCHINE: Do you ever use photos to draw cars? KIRBY: To make your comics interesting, you have to draw things as they really are. As far as cars are concerned, I used to draw different models because, in the streets, there are dozens of different brands, but I drew them as I remembered them, adding variations to them. Matter of fact, it’s as if I created my own vehicles. They looked like the ones I could see everyday, limousines, taxis and so on. And that was the same for the people I drew. ATCHINE: Where did your taste for science-fiction come from? It’s omnipresent in your work. KIRBY: I believed in legends and I loved mythological tales. The character of Thor has his origins in these fairy tales. But I wanted to tell them my own way, as adventure comics. The writers of these tales wrote them their way. The tales had a medieval style, a medieval language. My characters capture this language, with understandable English. ATCHINE: Did you read all these legends? KIRBY: I knew many and read lots of these books. My parents believed in demons, like every European migrant who believed in popular tales! The English, the people from Central Europe, they all sat by a fire and

(previous page) First installment of Sky Masters. (above) A Wally Wood sketch drawn for Jack. (below) Dig Count Dragula’s cool Coffin Car for the Turbo Teen animated series!

(below) Pencils from Demon #2, page 19.

repeated these stories. They were telling how Count Draha abducted peasants and their daughters, driving them to his castle which they never escaped from. Perhaps the Count had only had them wash his stables or clean the parquet floor, but the people around the fire kept telling he forced them to do very strange things. That may be the origin of the Dracula myth. Characters, more or less historical, are turned into legends, even if they probably were people like you and I! ATCHINE: So you dug into these classic legends and

transformed them, mixing them with today’s concepts and transposing them into a urban environment. KIRBY: I tried to incorporate what I know. My father came from an aristocratic Austrian family and my mother was a peasant. And they told me popular tales, stories very real for these people. At that time, penicillin didn’t exist and people were dying from diseases easily cured by today’s treatments. There were some religious ceremonies where people danced and sang. I could see them with my own eyes. ATCHINE: In the United States? KIRBY: Absolutely, in the States! And I could see them dancing around the patient’s bed, calling the demon and telling him: “Leave the body of that man, demon! What’s your name, demon?” ATCHINE: Etrigan? KIRBY: [laughs] Etrigan is a name I invented. Then, these religious people told the demon: “Leave! This place is not yours, here! This man is in good health, he is not sick.” ATCHINE: How old were you when you attended these scenes? KIRBY: I was eleven and it impressed me a lot. I was not accustomed to European traditions, outside what my parents could tell me. Every person on the block was migrant and everyone had his customs. If they came from England, they practiced the old English traditions and transmitted their tales. Somehow, they were all alike: they had bad demons, good demons and religious people who succeeded in controlling them... These priests had an important role in these tales, probably because at the time, people were dying young and only religion and faith could help them. ATCHINE: These stories are eternal, out of time. KIRBY: Yes, all of them. The Nordic legends about Asgard will live forever, as will our own legends, transmitted by comics, at least the best ones. We are building our own legends right now. What is modern today will become archaic for people in the future, and, for them, our writers will describe the “primitive life” we are currently experiencing. You know, as intelligent as Shakespeare was, he was still a man of his time, a man from the 16th century. H

COSTUMING BY KIRBY BIG

BOYDISMS (right) The malevolent Mogul took over grim Hogun’s homeland and got the same kind of dancers and revelry that marked Cecil B. DeMille’s films. (below) The opulence of DeMille’s King of Kings may have inspired the grandeur of Jack’s crowd scenes. Here, the wealthy and decadent courtesan Mary Magdalene moves haughtily through a crowd in her chariot.

(right) Paramount Pictures’ biggest moneymaker of 1949, Samson and Delilah. (bottom) Harokin is made ready for Valhalla in Thor #133.

PICTURES DESIGNS, INC.

s I asserted in a past issue of TJKC, the boys I grew up with and I saw super-heroes as one heck of a “power trip,” though we were, of course, too unsophisticated to articulate it in that fashion. Jack Kirby’s army of super-doers knew what they were capable of, enjoyed taking to the skies (the Angel, the Human Torch, and the Silver Surfer), praised the achievements of their own tech-weaponry and inventions (Iron Man, the Wingless Wizard, Dr. Doom, Lucifer, Mr. Fantastic), and were quite proud of their own sheer physical strengths (the Hulk, the Thing, SubMariner, Hercules, Giant-Man/Goliath, Thor). And though my buddies and I had problems at the time reciting poetry assigned to us in our classes, Stan Lee’s liltin’ dialogue and Kirby’s magnificent visuals stuck with us. Jack’s visuals— let me rephrase that, Jack’s ‘suitably impressive visuals’—stuck with us since his costumes and uniforms elevated his splash panels, covers, pin-ups, and posters to a pinnacle no other cartoonist of his day could reach. The King’s garb for the gods (Balder, Heimdall, Loki, Hela, Pluto—and Odin’s closet saw no end!) or impressive uniforms for the baddies who served Hydra, A.I.M., and the Red Skull never disappointed loyal readers, whose eyes were blown out by the “senses-shattering’’ look of it all. Jack and Stan’s characters were always supremely confident, and their attire matched their status among their own. Here’s a modest compilation of some of them and the way the master storyteller may have used past storytelling—in this case, from the Biblical spectacles of another master, director Cecil B. DeMille, to invigorate his tales… of Asgard and Midgard.

by Jerry Boyd

courtesan Mary Magdalene in the former, and before Samson’s humiliation before the Philistines in the latter. DeMille played heavily on his superb composition of these scenes and others with magnificent costuming for all. Jack would do the same for the murderous Mogul (Thor #139) and Zeus (Thor #129), among others. DeMille wasn’t shy about adding scarcelygarbed handmaidens to attend to the main female characters (something some film critics said was too sexy) any more than Jack would do by supplementing his backgrounds and foregrounds with ugly gnomes, ogres, and the like to his super-villains’ celebrations. For additional information, we’re all fortunate to have Kirby friend Scott Fresina share his memories of Jack. The first anecdote deals with costuming.

GAMES OF THRONES Even seated, in their palatial throne room chambers— or in Harokin the Barbarian’s case, facing death (sheeesh!)— Jack Kirby’s heroes and villains radiated power or menace or majesty in those big pictures we cherish so dearly. In some cases, à la DeMille’s incredible silent masterpiece King of Kings (1927) and the later Samson and Delilah (1949), dancers would prance about the opulent settings before the wealthy

SCOTT FRESINA: I recall telling Jack I was impressed by the regal throne rooms of Atlantis and the pageantry of Asgard… when I asked where the inspiration came from, he only offered, “I lived at the movies when I was a kid; I’d watch them over and over because they didn’t clear the theaters between showings. My mother would come charging down the aisle at dinner and drag me out of there!” He did 9

mention seeing many Hollywood spectacles. Quo Vadis [left] and Cleopatra [below] were referred to specifically. I had hoped Scott would say Jack took inspiration from DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (either or both of his renditions!) and perhaps Samson and Delilah, but Scott said the King only mentioned those two, to his best recollections. That’s all right. Both were spectacles imbued with the same type of grandiosity DeMille employed in his works, and Cecil did it first. No director-producer has done better Bible-based films, in my opinion. MEANWHILE, BACK ON EARTH… Occasionally, our King had an unveiling of sorts. A single splash would bring the villain even more to the fore than he or she had been previously in the story. The Trapster got a splash in Captain America #108. At that time in 1968-69, the split-books were ending and Kirby had more pages for Cap’s adventures. More than one panel on the cover of Tales of Suspense #39 would be employed to interest fans into finding out who this Iron Man was! Hands reached out for different parts of the gray protective garb, and that cover design still impresses today! In Fantastic Four #61, the Sandman reformed himself into a superbly designed new suit only ‘Kirby Big Pictures Designs, Inc.’ could’ve composed. At the beginning of Thor #164, Pluto, Lord of the Netherworld, drops his trenchcoat in one splash and reveals an awesome, updated look in the following splash. POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE Let’s go back to DeMille. The veteran director and producer took some of his inspiration from paintings, sculptures, drawings, murals, etc. done by the artists of the Renaissance and other periods. He knew people who’d long lived in the Western Hemisphere had seen them in museums, Biblical companions, histories of ancient Rome, and so on. He set up some of his crowd shots to match them, evoking the ancient splendor of the times. This brought a brand of neo-realism to his work. The films looked like they were made according to paintings and mosaics of old. Jack’s big pictures were spectacular in their crowd scenes also, with strong emotion among the throng that was right out of silent films and DeMille epics. Jack’s people threw up their arms in fear, cringed on the ground, ran, pushed away from others, or spun about in sheer delight and dance, stood at attention awaiting their masters’ orders, or brooded and schemed behind protective walls. ACTION! ACTION!! ACTION…!!! I’d be remiss if I ended this without going into Kirby’s big picture action scenes. An absolute master of the battle royal between super-powered antagonists, Jack’s covers and splashes, half-splashes, brought out that power trip I mentioned like no other during the first era of the Marvel Age. The cover of Wyatt Earp #26 is a prime example. The 10

gunfight hasn’t happened yet, but the bodies are almost in motion, ready to go for their guns. The cover of The Avengers #25 is another subtle but excellent play on the battle-is-about-to-joined motif. Dr. Doom stands defiantly before Cap’s “kooky quartet,’’ but they’re posed like statues—it’s clear they’re ready for offense or defense. Only Jack could make these scenarios as powerful as they are without any strong actions taking place. And on the big picture that met us on the cover of Journey Into Mystery #122, the Absorbing Man had the effrontery to confront regal Odin in his throne room! (The nerve of some people!) Thor is on the side, splitting the curtains to be in on the confrontation and the fight-to-come! Odin sits, unworried and majestic. It’s another Marvel masterpiece! Scott Fresina added this: SCOTT FRESINA: As far as the physicality of the action in Jack’s books, I remember telling him that I found his action scenes compelling because, like the work of Frank Frazetta, none of the poses were static, or seemed posed… all the character poses he drew were fully committed to action, and in fact captured at the “point of no return.” He modestly shook his head: “Listen, Frazetta is a great painter… I’m just doing comics…”. Ever modest, our King, but when he put those big pictures together, with powerful gods, immortals, heroes, and villains, we all got to be a part of that incredible power trip that was a key element of the success of Kirby’s Mighty Marvel heroes and villains. H [Jerry Boyd would like to thank Scott Fresina for that steel-trap mind of his that contains the priceless anecdotes used here and in other issues.] 11

(previous page, top right) King Hymir, and a big introductory splash of Heimdall! ’Nuff Said! (previous page, bottom) Sitting on the throne: Dr. Doom sulks in FF Annual #2, Odin gives an audience to Thor in Thor #159, Maximus wears a regal crown and attire Odin might’ve envied in FF #82, and Loki finally gets Odin’s chair in another solid splash in Thor #156—Mangog was a-coming, though. (above, left to right) New duds for Pluto in Thor #164. The Sentry is unveiled in Fantastic Four #64. FF #61 saw a new, improved Sandman show off in this exciting panel! The Trapster in full effect—from Captain America #108. (below) Lord Odin, unperturbed by the Absorbing Man, is perched majestically on the cover of JIM #122. And adjacent, the All-Father sports some mighty impressive headgear in Thor #162.

Foundations

Here’s our next installment of the complete Link Thorne stories by Simon & Kirby, this one from Airboy Comics V4, #6 (July 1947): “Dynamite.” Art reconstruction and coloring by Chris Fama.

Generations

(above) Origin page from Fantastic Four: The World’s Greatest Superteam (2007). (right) Condensed history of the Skrulls, from Fantastic Four: Evil Adversaries (2010). (next page, top) One of Jack’s coolest designs, as highlighted in FF: The World’s Greatest Superteam. (next page, bottom) A Frightful Four recap from FF: The World’s Greatest Superteam. (below) Covers from the easy-reading books for kids. On The Story of the Avengers (2012), only Iron Man’s armor and Wasp’s lack of a helmet deviates from classic versions, while The Story of the X-Men (2013) has an odd mix of costumes from the Silver/Bronze Ages to the early-to-mid 2000s eras.

ttentively, the class of eight-year-old children sat on the carpet in front of their teacher. “Can anyone tell me the name of the team of super-heroes we were learning about last week? Yes, Euan?” “The Fantastic Four, Mr. Menzies.” “Excellent. They are four people who go around helping other people, like when you go, boys and girls, and help someone who has fallen in the playground. Sometimes the Fantastic Four have to go far away to help people. Do you remember what they travel in? [Hands go up.] Annie?” “A Quinjet?” “No, that was the Avengers. We learned about those flying ships when we were looking at the Kree-Skrull War last week.” “Me! I know, I know!” “Yes, Ross?” “A Fantasticar. The first one looked like a bathtub but they all kept their clothes on!” [Children giggle.] “Yes, it did look funny! But it was good for flying to places quickly and they saved lots of people. Now today we’re going to learn about a new team made up of kind people—the X-Men—and also about the two men who created not only that team but the FF and the Avengers: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.”

of classic Silver and Bronze Age images, some by Kirby, and modern movie tie-ins, with the latter probably featuring more. Of course, super-heroes have a far greater cultural footprint than they had back in Kirby’s day; they’ve almost taken over the global box office, and the characters if not the medium have also undergone something of a rehabilitation in the eyes of adults. In my early twenties I used to joke that it was more socially acceptable to be an alcoholic than a comic reader; at least alcoholism was considered an adult problem. That negativity has been reversed in the last ten years with the superbly made and commercially successful films— not to mention the shirtless antics of Chris Evans and Chris Helmsworth. However, even as it has become less stigmatized and perhaps even “cool” to be a fan (I’m suspicious of any claims of the latter), there have been consequences, and now the merchandising, and even increasingly the comics themselves, reflect the films more than the classic costuming and storylines. Just as comics were stepping out from the shadows and being embraced by a new mainstream audience, many of the old diehards (of whom I am quite obviously one) were being alienated and started cancelling their standing orders after decades of dedicated purchases. Saturday, sadly, is no

Sounds like the daydreaming of an old fan boy, right? Not exactly. While this scene is not an account of an actual event, I am indeed a primary (elementary) school teacher in Scotland, these reading books do exist, and they’re part of the reading resources in my school. It has been nearly sixty years since Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others launched the Marvel Age. Now, their creations have been enlisted in the ongoing battle against illiteracy, and this article is going to be a brief investigation into how the classic art of Jack Kirby has found a new life in the field of education. CULTURAL SHIFT In Scottish schools—and I’m sure in other educational institutions across the world—many of the younger children have Marvel-themed bags, lunch boxes, stationery, and other items. The art used is a mix

longer referred to as Comic Shop Day in my house. And yet, despite all the success of the Marvel movies, the creators—with the obvious exception of Stan Lee due to his cameos—remain utterly unknown. While the films have generally been reliable in giving credit to

KIRBY KIDS:

FIGHTING ILLITERACY WITH COMICS by Robert Menzies, with thanks to Roy Thomas, Gerry Turnbull and the contributors to the amazon.com website. 20

the original creators, listing their names as cinemagoers wait for the next “hidden” scene embedded in the closing credits, this fleeting mention seems at best inadequate. Kirby co-created most of the major characters upon which the world box office is now dependent, and he is no better known than the guy who fetches Robert Downey Jr.’s latte. Visionary writer-artist Jim Starlin, for instance, watched his character Thanos star in a $2 billion movie in 2018 and he remains as anonymous outside the fanboy community as he was beforehand. Compare his status to, say, JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, who is a beloved celebrity and can’t go out for a loaf of bread in peace. This matter of credit is one that is a constant preoccupation with professional comic creators and hardcore comic book fans, and one that is felt especially by Kirby fans. To those fans I have to say that, despite my rather despondent opening, this article is a feel-good piece. In ways not generally known or recognized, Kirby’s classic Silver Age Marvel work is being recycled to grab the attention of the young and improve their literacy. It’s a testament to the power of the original work and a wonderful legacy. And, Kirby himself is being given credit so that even young children hear his name and can (hopefully) use these books as jumping-off points to discover more about him, and other creators. As you might expect, the majority of the Marvel kids’ books tap into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the books we are going to look at here buck that trend. They are produced by Dorling Kindersley (DK) and Disney. We will discuss the latter first. WORLD OF READING In the 1960s it was easy to stay on top of every appearance of every Marvel character and even the most popular, top tier heroes were largely confined to their own title. Now—and this is not a criticism or complaint—the marketplace is fractured, with age-specific target audiences. Children can read versions of the Marvel heroes based on various animated series including The Marvel Super-hero Squad, as well as storybooks that adhere to the comic or cinematic incarnations. While most of these books are designed to entertain, excite and amuse, some are purposely created with the aim of raising reading standards. Marvel Press, a Disney Book Group imprint, have released a series called World of Reading in North America. These books are three-quarters the size of a Silver Age Marvel comic, with dimensions of 15.2cm x 22.9cm. There are four levels in the WoR series: Pre-1 and then levels 1, 2 (both 32 pages) and 3 (48 pages). Pre-1 is for pre-schoolers and emergent readers, and has extremely simple character introductions. Level 1 is composed of more advanced character intros and are entitled “These are...” or “This is...”. Characters in Level 1 include Ant-Man, Black Panther, Black Widow, Falcon, Hawkeye, Hulk, Spider-Man and Thor, all of whom have appeared, not coincidentally, in the Marvel films. The teams include the predictable heavy hitters like the Avengers, FF and X-Men as well as the Guardians of the Galaxy, who also have had success in the world’s cinemas. Don’t be misled by that connection to the films, however. Consider the WoR Level 1 book This is Thor. Even though the visual depiction of Asgard and Loki is straight out of the MCU, Thor has the Silver-Bronze Age secret identity of Donald Blake, MD! Even Fin Fang Foom makes an appearance! With the bio of Hulk, the origin story involves Bruce driving out to rescue (an unnamed) Rick Jones from the test site, and by saving him is exposed to the atomic blast

that causes his terrible transformation. Greenskin’s birth ignores all cinematic accounts and reverts to the first ever Hulk story at the dawn of the Marvel Age. These are just two examples of how the vision of Stan and Jack is preserved. It’s not just in terms of narrative faithfulness, either. There are a number of swipes that can be easily spotted by any comic reader who knows his Vita-rays from his cosmic rays. This is Captain America retells the shield slinger’s origin with deliberate swipes of Kirby panels from Captain America #109 (January 1969). It is a simplified account, edited to eliminate some of the more extreme examples of violence. The murder of Dr. Erskine is absent from Cap’s transformation scene, although this does leave unanswered the question of why there was only one super-soldier. But even reduced as it is, four almost consecutive Kirby panels can clearly be identified as inspiration for images in that book. (Another, more complete version of the same story for older children in The Courageous Captain America reinstates the Nazi spy and the killing of Erskine, although in contrast to the usual comic book account, the saboteur is taken alive and the story’s death toll is exactly one.) Level 2 is perhaps even more interesting in that it homages several Kirby covers. The Story of Spider-Man and The Story of the Avengers (both 2012), and The Story of the X-Men (2013), are recreations of the covers to Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962; Ditko inks), Avengers #1 (September 1963; Ayers inks) and X-Men #1 (also September 1963; Sol Brodsky inks). The new covers are—inevitably—inferior to the source material, but it’s nevertheless pleasing to see that the artists were acknowledging the significance of Kirby by creating their own versions of a few of his most iconic covers. The interior Level 2 stories are potted repeats of the original appearances, and adhere very closely to the comic book version 21

rather than the cinematic presentation. The Story of the Avengers is a combination of the highlights of Avengers #1 and #4 by Lee and Kirby, with the original team battling Loki and then discovering a frozen Captain America. The first issue of the X-Men comic in 1963, again by the same creative team, has the newly-minted team opposing Magneto for the first time. This is closely adapted for The Story of the X-Men. The Spider-Man origin is an extremely close retelling of the web-spinner’s origin from Lee and Ditko’s Amazing Fantasy #15, complete with the advice that “With great power comes great responsibility”. The next level, while easing up on the Kirby, is worth mentioning as it offers faithful interpretations of famous storylines. Incredibly, the epic Kree-Skrull War by Roy Thomas, John and Sal Buscema, and Neal Adams that ran across Avengers #89-97 (June 1971-March 1972) has an entire book dedicated to it! It’s not an exception. The new version of “Days of Future Past” has many elements from the famous Claremont-Byrne story in X-Men #140—Uncanny X-Men #141 (January-February 1981). As you would expect, the brutal deaths of the likes of Wolverine and Storm are expunged, although the artists do include a homage to the famous ‘Wanted poster’ cover to #140. “Spidey’s New Costume” is likewise a simplified rewriting of the Spider-Man story arc from the first Secret Wars series. During that best-selling 12-issue series, Spidey discovered the black costume, which later became the symbiote Venom. The new cover recreates the Mike Zeck-John Beatty drawn cover to Secret Wars #8 (December 1984). It’s hard not to feel a sense of satisfaction that children are reading classic comic storylines, even in watered-down, more age-appropriate versions.

biographies of the members of a team like the Avengers or X-Men, or a listing of a hero’s rogue’s gallery; other times histories of an A-lister like Spider-Man or the FF. They dip into a library of images from the greatest artists of the comic medium. The likes of Don Heck, the brothers Buscema, Frank Miller, George Pérez, John Romita (Sr. and Jr.) and John Byrne, for instance, feature, as do other modern names like Mike Deodato Jr. and Steve McNiven. A couple of the Spider-Man books have a healthy sample of Steve Ditko art, and one even name-checks him as co-creator (The Story of Spider-Man, page 4 and Index.). As a general rule artists are not named, the only other exception is a Howard Bender credit for the Cyclops of legend in The Story of the X-Men. (Bender was a prolific member of Marvel’s New York-based British Department in the 1970s.) The eras and storylines encompass the highlights from the entire history of Marvel, from Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961), through the Kree-Skrull War, the first Secret Wars series, the Infinity Gauntlet, Civil War, right up to Spider-Gwen (okay, not all are “highlights”). What is pleasing is that when they revisit Silver Age origins or trace a character’s history, they avoid using art from later retellings. Rather, they prefer to go back to the very first appearances, like they do extensively with Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) in the pages of Fantastic Four: Friends and Enemies. The existence of these books doesn’t seem to be well known. Legendary writer Roy Thomas had no idea about the appearance of the Kree-Skrull War in The Avengers: The World’s Mightiest Heroes: “Nice to see the mention of the Kree-Skrull War... My enthusiasm was cooled by the fact that most of the illos weren’t by Neal or the Buscema brothers, but from later versions. Still, good to see!” When I then told him there was a whole kids’ book adapting the story, he said he’d have to get a copy. Now one interpretation, a cynical one, is that we see so much classic art as it is cheaper to cut-and-paste than hire an artist to create new images. That might be worth consideration, and may be a contributing factor, although against that position you have to wonder why they did not choose modern images. It’s not as if the FF origin hasn’t been retold a time or two. There seems a sincere wish to use as much of the original source material as possible and minimize the cinematic exploits. It should be noted that in Avengers: The World’s Mightiest Super-Hero Team, Nick Fury is not Samuel L. Jackson, but the classic comic version created by Lee and Kirby. While, sadly, there are no Kirby covers on the DK books and many covers appear to have been created especially for these books, Kirby art pops up frequently inside the books. In the 46-pages of Fantastic

DORLING KINDERSLEY However, the real kudos go to Dorling Kindersley, who provide a whistle-stop tour of some of the greatest images from classic eras, artists and storylines in their DK Readers line, which is published in the US, Canada and UK. These books are almost identical in size to the DK books, being only marginally narrower. They have five levels (Pre-Level and levels 1-4), with the first three levels having 32 pages, and the top two levels having 48. Like the WoR books, the DK Readers can also vary in structure and purpose: sometimes 22

Four: Evil Adversaries, for instance, exactly a quarter of the images are Kirby’s (19 out of 76 panels). This is an even more impressive statistic when you take note of the fact the book contains bios of post-Kirby characters like the Overmind, Terminus, and Terrax, and has an entry for the Ultimate FF, too. Level 2 books include an index, with level 3 also adding a glossary. The later Index entries— which wonderfully include supporting characters like Paste Pot Pete and Egghead as well as items like Baron Zemo’s Adhesive X—seldom name creators, but by Level 3 the essential trio of Lee, Kirby, and Ditko appear, as do others like Chris Claremont and Adam Kubert. (Oddly, the index listings don’t match the interior text.) Lastly, it is worth noting that the glossary for Avengers: Enemies of the Avengers includes explanations of “World War II” and “Nazi”. This surely would have pleased Kirby, who co-created Captain America as much as a political and moral statement as a commercial enterprise. FAILURE OR SUCCESS? So, pleasing as it is to see so much Kirby goodness and classic Marvel material in children’s books, the real question is whether their introduction as educational readers was a success. The blurb from amazon.com on the World of Reading series has this to say: “The Marvel Super-Heroes of Reading line of Early Readers is designed to offer reluctant readers, specifically boys, books that they will want to read by featuring characters they love. The series is broken into three levels [sic] that invoke the rigorous training courses their favourite Marvel heroes must engage in to perfect their super-powers. In reading this series, boys will perfect their own power to read.”

A search through online buyer reviews on Amazon can shed some light on whether the policy of using super-heroes was a success. The reviews are generally very favourable and usually refer to boys, as all three of the following examples do. A representative example from Neil Goodacre, reviewing DK’s Marvel Avengers: Avengers Assemble! on September 10, 2014, reads: “The likes of Biff and Kipper [recurring characters in the widely used Oxford Reading Tree books] are great, but it’s nice to give the wee man something he’s genuinely excited to read alongside it. Something tells me this won’t be the last DK book we buy...” A Mrs. B, writing in March of 2016, echoes Goodacre: “Bought a whole load of these books for my son who loves reading but gets bored with the books his school provides.” Perhaps more tellingly considering her professional training and experiences, a teacher by the name of Miss K. L. Olley commented in October 2014 on the book Spidey’s New Costume with these words: “Bought this book (plus other similar ones) to add to our super-hero topic box at school and the children loved them, especially the boys!” It seems that from these reviews, and from the continued reprinting of these reading books and the continuing expansion of the line, that they have indeed been popular and effective as an alternative to the usual reading material made available by schools. With the heavy recycling of his art, Jack Kirby, the King of Comics, is an integral part of firing the enthusiasm of children to read, and as a result develop literary skills that they will carry with them throughout their lives. H [Robert Menzies was a primary 3 pupil in Brediland Primary School in Paisley, Scotland, when he first saw Kirby art in his very first Marvel comic in 1975. He dedicates this article to his bunny Jack Kirby Menzies, 20132018, who sadly passed as he was writing this.] 23

(previous page, left column) Examples from Iron Man: Friends and Enemies (2010). (previous page, right column) Simplifying Kirby’s mutants in Meet the X-Men (2010). (above) Compare Steve Rogers’ transformation scene by Kirby (from Captain America #109, Jan. 1969) to one in The Courageous Captain America, adapted by Rich Thomas (Marvel Press, 2011). (left & below) Kirby visuals proliferated, and he actually got name-dropped for his X-Men art (but not creator credit) in The Story of the X-Men (first published in 2000).

Let’s Watch...

...How He Changes!

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

hen I first started collecting Fantastic Four comics, trade paperback collections were few and far between—which meant that I was picking up mostly original back issues and, thus, obtaining them wildly out of publishing order. So a point of mild confusion I had was when I finally got to read Fantastic Four #13, and found The Watcher looked pretty substantially different than when I had seen him in the Galactus Trilogy. For this issue’s “Incidental Iconography” column, I’ve finally gone through and figured out what happened and when. The Watcher is an interesting and unique character to study because, despite debuting in Fantastic Four, that wasn’t really treated as his “home” book in the same way as other characters. A year after his first appearance, he’d been migrated over to Tales of Suspense for a back-up feature. A year after that, he started

hopping around in Fantastic Four, Strange Tales, Avengers, and Tales to Astonish. He eventually (and somewhat logically) landed in the Silver Surfer series that started in 1968 before getting dragged over into Thor during Jack’s last days before leaving Marvel for DC. With all that jumping around, he was drawn by a good chunk of the artists at Marvel at the time: Larry Lieber, Don Heck, George Tuska, and Gene Colan 1 to name a few. With all those artists working on the character, and then mostly 1 sporadically, it’s little wonder that The Watcher’s appearance changed rather quickly compared to other characters who were drawn more regularly by a single artist. WHO WATCHES THE WATCHER? The Watcher’s first appearance is fairly surprising. 2 It occurs about halfway through Fantastic Four #13, after the story has largely been set up as the FF versus the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes. The Watcher suddenly appears from the shadows and starts throwing the issue’s villains around. Jack basically draws him as a variation on his typical “big head” aliens: a relatively gaunt figure with a proportionally over-sized, bald head. He’s given a sort of toga, and a cloak with a high, stiff, and stylized collar. There are only two full-body drawings of The Watcher in this issue, and both have the clothing drawn differently. The idea is the same in both, but almost none of the specifics match. His appearances in Fantastic Four #20 and #29 feel similar. They’ve got the same general idea, but none of the specifics match anything else, even within a given issue! That isn’t terribly unusual for Jack at this time. What’s of particular interest during this period, though, is that The Watcher began appearing in the Tales of Suspense back-up feature, “Tales of the Watcher,” drawn by Larry Lieber. The stories as the series began are short EC-style vignettes with The Watcher acting as a host character, so despite appearing every month beginning with ToS #49, we don’t see many full illustrations of him at first, and initially Lieber was largely copying Jack’s drawing from FF #13. As the series progresses, though, Lieber does try

2 24

to show the character from different angles and perspectives. In doing so, the character’s proportions normalize somewhat. While his head does remain over-sized, it’s not as jarringly so as he was shown originally. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this was done deliberately; with The Watcher as a host character, it would make sense to make him less alien-looking and, theoretically, more relatable to the reader. So when Jack picks the character up again for FF #29, he follows Lieber’s trend of normalizing the character’s size somewhat. Again, he still maintains the over-sized head, but the body proportions are closer to a human’s overall. (As an interesting aside, FF #29 and the “Tales of the Watcher” story from Tales of Suspense #56 have sequential job numbers. While The Watcher continues to appear elsewhere in enigmatic cameos, by this point, he’s become a more central figure in the ToS stories.) THE LAY(OUT) OF THE LAND After the Watcher stories are dropped in favor of Captain America with ToS #59, we then have what I think is a critical juncture in Avengers #14. The reason it is critical is because the story was drawn by Don Heck over Jack’s layouts. This was, of course, a not uncommon practice at the time as Stan Lee tried to “teach” what might be considered Marvel’s house style of storytelling by having Jack do quick layouts for an issue so that another artist could draw over top of them to get the general storytelling rhythm Lee felt was integral to their sales. Jack’s work here was necessarily very rough, so the details were left up to the other artist. And because of that, we see here the largest departure from previous illustrations of The Watcher. Heck draws The Watcher as a normal-sized figure wearing a robe. Presumably Jack’s quick sketches to indicate a toga were misread because of the lack of detail. More intriguingly, it looks as if Jack did indeed draw The Watcher’s head in its typically over-sized proportions, but Heck seems to have assumed that was a mistake and shrank it back down, judging by some faint hints of an erased halo-type effect around the final inked lines. However, the general roundness of the head remains, giving a hint of a double-chin in some panels. When we get to Fantastic Four Annual #3 later that same year, Jack adopts this more proportionally-sized Watcher. Whether he used the Avengers issue as reference or not, he continues with the thicker, rounder head. He does return the character’s toga as well, but by omitting the cloak and the chest decorations—as Heck

unintentionally had—The Watcher now appears to be wearing swaddling clothes instead of a toga. Although I suspect some would point to inker Vince Colletta as a potential culprit here, as he’s been given (unfairly, in my opinion) a reputation for leaving out critical details, many of the specifics he would have had to have left out here would make the final drawings more complicated rather than less. I suspect this was more an issue of Jack working quickly under a tight deadline—not only was this issue an Annual (an extra issue for the year) but this is the one that featured Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl’s wedding, and is packed to the gills with different characters. Jack was no doubt somewhat rushed in putting this issue together, and more loose than usual with the details. Roughly simultaneously, we have The Watcher show up in Tales to Astonish #73, wherein we once again have Jack doing rough layouts, this time penciled over by Bob Powell. What is interesting here is that Powell had already drawn The Watcher in Strange Tales #135 earlier in the year and was already familiar with the character. His depiction in Astonish seems to be a blending of the heftier Watcher that Jack was drawing at that point, and the thinner version he must have used for reference previously.

BACK ON TRACK The following year, The Watcher finally returns to the main Fantastic Four title with the start of the Galactus Trilogy. 3 Here we see The Watcher in his more-or-less final form: Jack draws him as visibly heavier with a kind of stylized toga, but we see a collar/chest piece poking out from underneath with flared shoulders. The collar wraps tightly enough around his head as to almost make it appear separate from his body in more than a couple panels over the next few issues. Likely because of the power of the story and the relative frequency of its reprinting, this is the version of The Watcher I suspect most people were familiar with for at least a couple of decades. However, Jack seems to have continued modifying the character design beyond this appearance. When The Watcher appears next in Fantastic Four #60, Jack continues to use the basic design from the Galactus Trilogy but adds some classic Kirby-style design elements to his now-uncovered chest piece. Jack expands on this idea considerably in FF #72, and draws a virtual geometric universe on the back of The Watcher’s collar. We then start getting into some seemingly incongruous appearances. 4 Fantastic Four Annual #5 from late 1967 features a pin-up of “The Greatest Array of Supporting Characters Ever Assembled in One Issue.” The Watcher is seen towards the back, towering over many of the other characters but, strangely, he’s holding a cape across his chest much like Dracula stereotypically does. This covers his body almost entirely, almost as if Jack felt he couldn’t be bothered to look up the costume specifics and did that to crank something out. I have trouble believing this to be the case, though, as Jack does include the much more complicated Galactus on the same pin-up. The art on this page, to me, seems a bit crude by Jack’s standards, and while that could be partially laid on the feet of inker Frank Giacoia, I’m forced to wonder about the origins of this particular piece. While The Watcher does make a few more appearances over the next year, Jack doesn’t use the character again until Thor #165 from late 1969. This brief appearance again plays with some “typical” Kirby-esque designs on The Watcher’s collar, but we don’t see the character’s legs or torso to see if the classic toga remains. And that’s a question because we then get into the slew of problems surrounding Jack’s final Thor issues. A THOR-NY ISSUE John Morrow covered this in much greater detail back in TJKC #52, but the gist of things is that Thor #168-170 were heavily

more sense. The deviation would have been more deliberate and contextual—not intended to be part of The Watcher’s “normal” look. Ultimately, however, any of Jack’s depictions of The Watcher published between 1969-1971 are hard to incorporate into the design through-line, and without more firm evidence, can’t be used to really determine how Jack evolved the character visually.

5 reworked after Jack had first drawn them. Several pages were pulled out, other new ones were dropped in, and some even seem to have been “leftovers” from the Galactus Trilogy! While John did a stellar job piecing together what Jack had originally intended for these issues, we’re not 100% sure which pages were drawn when, or under what circumstances. Which means that what we’re looking at—both what was ultimately published and the unused pages we think were intended for these issues—could have been drawn any time from early 1966 to late 1969, so it’s difficult to determine the evolution of Jack’s design. Making things more challenging is that there are some significant deviations throughout these issues. In some instances, The Watcher is shown close to how he was portrayed during the Galactus Trilogy, while in others, Jack gives him a form-fitting body suit complete with Kirby’s famous techno designs. These seem to be limited to flashback sequences, and Jack seems to be suggesting that The Watcher’s more natural-looking toga attire is a deliberate rejection of the more active technological pursuits from before he took a vow of non-interference. This could explain the outfit shown in the 1971 Kirby Unleashed pin-up, 5 which John suspects might have originally been part of an unused sequence from the Galactus Trilogy. It always struck me as odd that Jack would have drawn The Watcher without his classic robes for a pin-up, but if it were part of a Galactus/Watcher origin story that might have explained why he wore robes, it does seem to make

ON WATCH ONCE MORE As a sort of epilogue, Jack did return to drawing The Watcher for one last story in 1978’s What If? #11. 6 As Jack likely hadn’t drawn the character in nearly a decade by this point, he almost certainly would have had to get a reference, and it would seem he went back to the Galactus Trilogy for that. The design is remarkably similar; if he wasn’t using his own work for reference, it must have been that of another artist copying Jack. The Watcher must have been something of a challenge for Jack. The design itself isn’t terribly difficult, certainly, but the character appeared sporadically and of the times Jack did have to draw him, it was sometimes only a loose sketch to indicate a page layout. Further, the character mostly just sits on the sidelines; there were no real opportunities to draw the character regularly enough to get a good visual handle on him. The What If? issue is telling, I think, in that Jack went back to a design he (and other artists) seemed to unintentionally settle on until 1980 when John Byrne seemed to rediscover Jack’s original Watcher design, which he dropped into X-Men #137 before using it regularly in Fantastic Four. 7 Byrne had enough clout at Marvel at that time that he basically was able to dictate The Watcher’s “new” look, and that design remained the standard more-or-less since. This means that a character design that Jack established before he left Marvel was eventually scrapped for another design that Jack had also established for the same character. Interestingly, it’s not the only time that’s happened (see my columns about Sandman and Manhunter in TJKC #51, 69 and 73), but it’s probably the most visible to readers with The Watcher. That Jack’s second design was decidedly very incidental, as a series of minor alterations over the course of several years, is almost perfectly typical for him, as he always kept trying to improve on what he had already done, even if it was only a little at a time. H

6 (left) Al Williamson inked (and Tom Ziuko hand-colored) this illo (first run as the back cover of TJKC #15) from an unused pencil page in Kirby Unleashed. It was originally meant for either the Galactus Trilogy, or Galactus’ origin in Thor. And one more interesting bit of trivia to ponder: Glen Gold noticed that in the Fantastic Four #49 pencils we published long ago, Jack refers to The Watcher as “The Thinker.”

KIRBY KINETICS An ongoing examination of Kirby’s art and compositional skills

MOTION PICTURES: KIRBY’S CINEMATIC VIEW

hen we think of Jack Kirby, one of the first things we think of is size, as in larger-than-life. Kirby was an avid filmgoer and he instinctively infused his artwork with the characteristics of film, putting the width and depth of a movie screen into his pages. Even his small panels work as dynamic single compositions that often have deep space and scale in them. As soon as he became successful while working with Joe Simon on Captain America, Kirby began to experiment with page layouts, often using large double-page spreads to achieve his ends. 1 This example from Captain America #9 goes so far as to give us the equivalent of a Coming Attraction feature. Cap and Bucky talk directly to us about the case, and then Kirby uses small inset panels to display an advance view of the story’s highlights. One of the first things to notice is that Kirby uses a composition that comics scholar Greg Theakston referred to as the “Big O.” Kirby’s visual sweep takes us from Cap and Bucky’s figures to the words and figure of the Black Talon and rightward to the surgical scene. The eye then drops to Cap and Bucky assaulting the Talon, moves next to the strangled head, and finally back left to the file cabinet. The eye continually moves in an oval, hence the Big O. In 1952, Kirby and Simon created Fighting American, which quickly evolved into a satire of their original star-spangled hero. 2 In the fourth issue, Kirby opened the story “Tokyo Runaround” with this tableau, which easily could have been displayed horizontally as a two-page spread. One can clearly see that the figures are running in a circle around the page border. This is a marvelously complex and comical scene, and we cannot help but be in awe of the juxtaposition of figures and the expressiveness of their postures. One of the things we nearly always see in a Kirby composition is the use of gestures or 27

objects that move the eye in the direction that the artist wishes it to go. In the case of this panel, we can note the gun in the hands of the man on the left in the green trousers as well as the woman in red at bottom center. The position of the figure she is aiming at places his capped head under Fighting American’s rear, which gives the latter even greater upward propulsion than his spreadlegged stance already possesses. In 1959, Kirby and Simon gave us the first issue of Adventures of the Fly and Kirby created a gatefold splash panel composition that would attempt to simulate the width of a movie screen. 3 In the story entitled “Wide Angle Scream,” Kirby frames the action in a unique way. He crops the top and bottom of the space with curved black shapes that make the panel wider at the sides than in the center. This was certainly Kirby’s nod to the 1952

introduction of Cinerama, with its curved screen innovation. The figures of the Spider and the Fly face each other on a vast web which stretches across the entire panel space. Various other figures struggle to maintain their balance on the web’s unsteady surface. Kirby then draws the background buildings at differing slanted angles which again distort the way we view the scene. When Kirby started working with Stan Lee for Martin Goodman’s Atlas/Marvel Comics, it didn’t take him long before he was exploring his propensity for “larger than life” with the Fantastic Four. He reached his apogee with Galactus and the Silver Surfer. 4 In this cinematic opening panel to FF #50, we see the scale of objects in relation to each other used effectively in the depiction of sheer shock and awe. The gigantic Galactus stands before an intricate and imposing machine that takes up half the canvas space. It is a device that is capable of draining the life force of the planet, and Kirby makes it a structure of towering menace. The Fantastic Four, encased in Susan Storm’s force field, cower in the lower right edge of the panel. Swooping into the foreground from the left, the figure of the Silver Surfer confronts his master, but Galactus’ form framed by the massive machine is a solid wall of dominance that appears completely unassailable. Kirby was now fully in Cosmic Mode, and the grandeur of space was the ruling principle for the moment. His work would now begin to push the boundaries of how sheer energy could be depicted visually. When Kirby moved to DC Comics, he began to use the double-page spread more frequently. He started with Jimmy Olsen, modernizing the character and also bringing the 1940s nostalgia of the Newsboy Legion onto the scene. Kirby, in the spirit of some early 1960s Olsen stories, turns Superman’s pal into a rampaging green behemoth in issue #136. 5 This is a masterful depiction of a melee of kinetic energy. Here we have the Big O again, as the circular sweep of giant Jimmy’s back starts the movement. The monster’s massive right arm and outstretched hand then point to

The Demon has entered from Stage Left, invading the scene from backstage, yet another dimension between the two realms of audience and stage. As he advances on the narrow strip between worlds, the Demon sets off a visual space/ time continuum by his forward and diagonal motion, and we see him and the players in order of their appearance from Stage Left to Right. Pages like this, where one can see the passage of time, are compelling in ways that a more static image can never be. Kirby often said that as a comic book artist he was competing with the movies. What he also realized was that someday, his creations would be the source of blockbuster films— but as good as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, it can never come close to the awesomeness of Kirby’s boundless energy and creativity. H

the fallen Superman, whose shape brings the eye back around. Even the positioning of the Newsboy Legion figures emphasizes the force of the creature’s motion as he is struck by the Guardian’s blow. When the success of Kirby’s Fourth World did not meet expectations, he created The Demon, a series somewhat based on an Arthurian theme. 6 This page from issue #10 is a wonderful example of an artist using the arrangement of space to create time and context. We see the deep space interior of a theater, but not from front to rear as we are used to seeing it. Rather than the Big O, this composition is on a diagonal, the left side being the audience, and the larger right side being the stage. Here are two separate dimensions, divided by the lip of the stage. We see the audience first, framed by the tiers of boxes to the side. The vertical line of the pale blue pillar on the left starts the motion, which is continued by the stage’s edge moving the action forward like a conveyor belt.

6 29

Gallery 1

ONE MAN’S AMAZING

Brother Eye, return to comment on some of my chronicler’s work about me and my human brother OMAC. Before Jack Kirby began documenting our exploits for public consumption, he created for his publishers some presentation sheets showing his ideas. I shall analyze the second of these for OMAC first. Like most of these sheets produced during this period, he presented an amazing array of ideas and undeveloped concepts, showcasing possibilities he saw for his work. That they did not represent any definite planned direction is clear, because many of the ideas were never developed or were used very differently. In OMAC’s and my case, while Kirby’s ‘brain transplant’ concept gets full treatment in the third storyline, he never chronicled ‘Professor Brainwave’, or anyone else who ‘attacks minds’. Whereas an entire country wasn’t put up for sale, as postulated here, he did instead showcase an entire city up for rent for one evil night. Clearly, Kirby’s mind was in overdrive as he sought to inspire his employers with the potential in the series. He may have chronicled more of these ideas if the series continued beyond its eight issues, but it is also quite possible that once the series took clearer form in his mind, he may never have looked back to these ideas at all. That the ideas were sparked by Kirby’s reading of the direction that the science and authority of his time were taking is undeniable, and that he foresaw many possibilities that others did not, is as obvious now as it was to me when he wrote them. Next (page 31) is where I was introduced (OMAC No. 1, page 7). My creator was Myron Forrest (although there are indications my chronicler, Mr. Kirby, had considerable conceptual input) and we know part of his inspiration for me was a then current fictional entity from “2001: A Space Odyssey” named Hal. (This is mentioned by Kirby on his first presentation sheet, not shown here.) Some also think of me as a kind of robotic version of ‘Shazam’, from the old Captain Marvel comic. Others say I was named after George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ concept – though I reject that notion, since I see no evidence that my chronicler saw me as anything but totally benevolent in nature, unlike ‘Big Brother.’ Also introduced is the Global Peace Agency (GPA). At the time he wrote, my chronicler’s audience was familiar with the United Nations, so he was sure they would grasp the concept of the GPA, whose agents worked toward world peace, but whose features and nationalities were hidden by ‘cosmetic spray’ (those featureless faces were colored orange originally, but unfortunately, often got colored a Caucasian pink in later issues). My chronicler took the view that the GPA were wise and well intentioned and that their actions were warranted and moral – something many younger comic-book writers following him would never assume, in this series or any other. There is the paradox of a super ‘god of war’,

such as OMAC, being an agent to enforce peace, though there are many instances where Kirby attempted to define that, showing violence was not his normal method. He never addressed the issue of Buddy Blank not being consulted in his melding with me. I wonder if he would have, had the series continued? What he did write, in his editorial in OMAC No. 1, was about advances in technology. It was very insightful: “We’re too human to stop it. And we’re too human not to abuse it!” he wrote. Thus was the basis of my chronicler’s intent in this series. Oh – a quick aside. See the sequence Mr. Kirby drew on page 5 – where OMAC walks calmly away from a massive explosion behind him? How action movies have plundered that scene, ad nauseam, ever since! As always, Kirby was there first!

CONCEPTS

Commentary by Brother Eye, channeled through Shane Foley

At right, This first page in the second issue dynamically depicts my chronicler’s version of OMAC. (I always felt a full-size scene of him should have appeared in the first issue, but I presume page constraints limited this choice.) It always struck me as amazing how Kirby opted to never, ever try to depict OMAC’s scalp, instead with the Mohawk and his natural hair melding mysteriously into one. Those uniquely Kirby shapes on his head, as shown here, are how he always was shown under Mr. Kirby’s hand. This issue also addressed how the mega-rich can hide from and circumvent the law in a way the poor and powerless cannot. (If the rich man was law-abiding, why have security guards armed and decked out like Nazis?) In the first issue, Kirby perfectly captured the mindset of a man who acted for financial gain, with no thought to the broader implications of what he did (No. 1, page 15, panel 1). In this issue, he foresaw that, for the sake of paying no tax for a whole year, an entire city’s population would rent out their city for a night. Money can buy many people. As time has gone on, I believe Mr. Kirby has been shown to have understood the human mind very well. In this issue, he mentioned the submerged personality of Buddy Blank once more, after hinting at it in the first issue. I was unaware of any problems relating to that – I wonder if Kirby

thought an issue was arising, but which he had no opportunity to address? In his first presentation sheet, he clearly thought that OMAC would revert at times to Buddy, but he never chronicled it that way. Page 4 of the third issue (Opposite) is the finale of a sequence showing the use of what my chronicler called ‘mindphones’. I believe in your time there are 3-D movies, virtual reality, and the like. When Mr. Kirby conceived this sequence, did his readers think he had gone too far – that reality would never be like this? In so many ways, my chronicler was a visionary man!

In this issue, he again laid out the reasons for OMAC’s existence: “In this age of atom bombs and advanced technology, we can’t afford the clash of avenging armies!” “You must prevent that kind of violence – as a One Man Task Force!” with technology reaching the stage it had in my time, one evil-minded man, let alone an army, can cause more devastation for all than ever before. Perhaps one like OMAC was indeed the answer. Before he got to that, though, Mr. Kirby looked at the future of relationships directed by ‘computer dating’, where, in

the future, whole families could be brought together by such a process. No mention of Buddy’s family is recorded, except to note that OMAC is again aware of a forgotten, past life. As one reader noted in this issue’s letters, “Every Kirby comic seems more far-fetched than the last one.” (It just seems to be reality to me!) Another on the same page comments on how brother Eye is a positive concept as opposed to ‘Big Brother’ (thank you), while imagining the horror of the GPA becoming corrupted.

Page 12 of that same Third issue (right) looked at OMAC’s confrontation with a new enemy. I love how Kirby recorded the details of OMAC’s journey – from a two-stage rocket, to a ‘capsule-plane’, to the wonderfully original ‘Assault Chair’. Note that the enemy force is not met simply with a greater, equally violent force, but rather with weapons that are just as strong, but simply neutralize! Here, this ‘god of war’ was about preventing war in a new way, just as I intended. The ninth page of No. 4 is shown next. Here, the villain is Kirovan Kafka. I believe others have wondered if the chronicler saw this would-be dictator as somehow ‘kafkaesque’. I can’t say I know. One source (a Mr. Wiki Pedia, whoever he is) defined the term as “often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.” Had my chronicler been reading some Franz Kafka works? Or been in thought or conversation about him? Or was the name one that Mr. Kirby heard in the background somewhere, and felt it rolled off the tongue perfectly for his purposes? We can’t know – except to say that elements like this turned up often in Kirby’s work.

In this episode, the concept of weaponry being bio-engineered animal life is seen. Armies have always used animal life in one form or another to aid them, but my chronicler saw that technology can bring this to a whole new level. Here we see a

form of life that feeds on energy, has cyclotronic eyes and spews forth sonic waves, fire, and can even fission like a hydrogen bomb! We just survived that one.

[ An aside: I notice Mr. Kirby had the perfect opportunity to show OMAC’s ‘nimbus’ flight power (No. 4, page 15) but chose not to do so. I wonder why? ]

The Crime Cartel referred to on Mr. Kirby’s presentation sheet now comes to the fore, as he chronicles our exploits in OMAC No. 5, page 1. This episode focused on how technology, terribly misplaced, can operate on the black market. That wealthy people with no scruples would do such things as steal young peoples’ healthy bodies is not too hard to believe. But once the technology to do such a thing exists, it can be a nightmare. My chronicler recorded this case faithfully, right down to the ‘molecular cocoon’ I created to keep OMAC and his partner safe in the exploding train. I love that my chronicler included details such as Page 6’s ‘helium air-bed,’ as shown below – Unheard of in his time, probable in your time, well known in mine.

The next page (showing OMAC No. 5, page 14) depicts agents of the GPA boarding their transport to OMAC’s place of confrontation. Mr. Kirby mentions ‘the energy crisis’ which spawned the need to develop “magnetic travel – emissionless vehicles gliding on waves of polarized force.” Whether he understood such a power source is not known, but the fact that he recognized how the emissions of vehicles using fossil fuels would become a massive problem for the world, shows the man was very well informed. And again, my chronicler faithfully records the non-violent intent and methods of the GPA agents.

After Mr. Kirby had concluded his record of this case (in OMAC No. 6), his publisher suddenly reduced his page count. Their solution was to eliminate his usual twopage spread for pages 2 and 3, and use it to replace the top panel of his page 4. The image at right shows that issue’s page 4 as originally penciled. Then the story climax approached where OMAC and I prevented the first operation by the stolen Medi-Mind. Shown opposite is OMAC No. 6, page 15, with the representation of the circuitry that controlled the computer-run exchange of brains. I wonder what my chronicler had been researching before he committed this to paper? I could scarcely believe a man writing at this time could have understood the predictions of his future so well. So there we have it. I am proud to have been so well written and drawn by the master chronicler, Jack Kirby. But a few questions still haunt me. Was the ‘Mr. Fox’, Buddy Blank’s employer in OMAC NO. 1, a subtle reference to Mr. Kirby’s own early employer Victor Fox? And I see there in OMAC NO. 1 a “Section D” – Could that have any reference to “Command D” of Mr. Kirby’s Kamandi comic? Many believe he did indeed intend to have OMAC’s and my destinies tied in with Kamandi’s world. (My future has, alas, been hidden from me.) And then there are these questions recently posed to me by the regular editor of this publication:

to speak/think like a human when others couldn’t? Kirby says Buddy becomes OMAC via Electronic Surgery, using “remote control hormones. Was he an atomically manipulated perfect specimen like Apollo? Maybe Buddy was Kamandi’s father, and he just called him ‘grandpa’? Am I babbling?”

“ Hey; If Buddy/OMAC was Kamandi’s grandpa, who was his dad? I guess Buddy hooked up with Dr. Skuba’s daughter Seaweed or something? Although wasn’t she a modified fish that Skuba created (there’s all that hinting about atomic manipulation in OMAC No. 8)? Is that why Kamandi was able

Honestly, Mr. Morrow, I have no idea. Thank you. Brother Eye [shutting down]

OBSCURA

Barry Forshaw

A regular column focusing on Kirby’s least known work, by Barry Forshaw Barry Forshaw is the author of Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide and American Noir (available from Amazon) and the editor of Crime Time (www.crimetime. co.uk); he lives in London.

in this area, and the last page—spoiler alert!—has a slight touch of pre-Code horror era in which the price paid by the science-defying hero is a grotesque aging process (one wonders if Lee and Kirby borrowed this notion from Irvin S. Yeaworth’s film of the same year, The 4D Man—the timing seems wrong, but both men were cheerful magpies when it came to re-usable notions of the period). Strange Tales #67 concludes with a quotidian Carl Burgos time travel tale, “The Man who Never Was,” but (as so often) it’s the Dynamic Duo of Kirby and Ditko who are the reason for buying the issue.

PRE-MONSTER KIRBY

For all the controversial responses to his professional work (not least from a disenchanted Jack Kirby), even his detractors would not argue with the fact that Stan Lee was particularly skilled in certain areas. Primarily, of course, this was as an editor, and after various promptings from buck-andtrend-chasing publisher Martin Goodman, Lee would quickly put together a standard package for various issues of the books he was editing. This package would typically include his star illustrators (Kirby and Ditko) backed up by less spectacular but reliable second-string names in books in which four stories were offered for readers of the late 1950s and early 1960s. These stories had a satisfying range—a wider range, in fact, than would be available once those city-stomping behemoths comprehensively took over the pre-super-hero titles. 1 A good example of this reliable set-up might be Strange Tales #67, published by Atlas/Marvel in February 1959. The unexciting cover by sometime Kirby inker Joe Sinnott shows a man being pulled from a living room into the reaches of space, but hardly hints at the creativity within its pages. The first story is by Steve Ditko, “Trapped Between Two Worlds,” which is full of the bizarre imagination (and interesting panel design) that Ditko would soon lavish upon Dr. Strange. It’s followed by an efficient enough tale by Atlas/Marvel workhorse Don Heck, “I Seek the Sea Serpent,” but it’s the third tale of the issue which will be of most interest to readers of this magazine, in which Jack Kirby allows us a glimpse of a prototype for the Fantastic Four’s Invisible Girl/ Woman: “I Was the Invisible Man.” Strikingly inked by Christopher Rule, this is a perfect example of Kirby’s work of the period, with its anti-hero discovering a way to move at the speed of light (thus making himself invisible to those he’s stealing from). The dynamism and clarity of the panels is a reminder of just how few equals Kirby had

KIRBY IN SPACE

The very next issue of Strange Tales, #68 (April 1959) is another monster-free issue, this time giving us the opportunity to admire Jack Kirby’s spaceship design, both on the cover for the story “Evacuate Earth!” (not illustrated by The King in the issue itself), and for his four-page contribution “Test Pilot.” But of the many elements of Kirby’s talent to admire over the years, there is perhaps one that is underestimated, given the all-conquering dynamism of his work—and that is his striking sense of design. 2 The spaceship on the cover which so alarms onlookers is, frankly, a bit unwieldy, with so many cobbled-together

we see an early example of a rampaging giant creature which was to become the hallmark of Kirby’s work for Stan Lee and Marvel a few short years later. Take a look at the dynamism of the bizarrely shaped creature laying waste to buildings and vehicles, and you will see a good example of the King’s fecundity in coming up with new designs. The very distinctive malleable appearance of the creature may have stayed with Kirby, who used it again. 3 It is interesting to look at page 6 of the story, in which two panels of mass destruction take up nearly the whole page. Did the conservative forces at DC (who regarded Kirby as something of a loose cannon) object to this breaking up of the page? While the company showed a lack of adventurousness elsewhere, it’s good that (in this case at least) Kirby was able to stretch the DC envelope—and we have here a clear example of ideas which would develop in such Marvel titles as Tales to Astonish and Journey into Mystery.

KIRBY: KING OF ECONOMY

An issue of DC’s Tales of the Unexpected (#23, from March 1958) gives the reader an opportunity to do two things: to compare Kirby’s work on a given scene with that of another artist, and also to see just how economy of ideas and execution was one of Kirby’s great strengths. The cover, “The Giants from Outer Space,” by Ruben Moreira, shows three swimmers being sucked from a lake into a gigantic transparent tube (the woman is wearing a very discreet swimming costume with a skirt—this was some time after the period of pre-Code ‘good girl’ art and before the voluptuous, skimpily-dressed women of current comics); while it is effective, the actual scene in Kirby’s rendition in the story itself is slightly more dynamic. 4 The tale, while featuring such fantastic notions as gigantic alien scoops tearing up buildings (as in the splash panel), is notable for a brief number of panels showing the eponymous giants (two in total—two giants, two panels) that are drawn with the simplest of lines: their faces consist of six or so lines with tiny button noses and jutting brows. The illustration proves yet again that although Kirby’s aliens often have a sort of family resemblance, they are always different from their predecessors in the artist’s work. The issue itself is standard DC stuff for the period, with contributions by Bill Ely, George Roussos and Jim Mooney. As usual, it’s the Kirby tale that rings the bell. H

3 elements that it doesn’t look very take-off-worthy. But it’s certainly eye-catching, with its massive bulk taking up a third of the cover. The story it illustrates in the issue is actually illustrated by Joe Sinnott, whose own spaceship in the tale is more of the needle-with-fins design favoured by Carmine Infantino in his contemporaneous strips for DC’s Mystery in Space. However, after a typically eye-catching Steve Ditko tale, “The Creatures from the Bottomless Pit,” we come to Kirby’s piece, “Test Pilot,” which is essentially a short blast of space opera; almost plotless, just propelling the hero through a variety of outer space encounters. Apart from the customarily striking panel design, the splash page sports another bizarre Kirby spacecraft, its unusual design unlike anything else by other artists—or for that matter, by Kirby himself. The story is all too brief, but unquestionably (as so often) the best thing in the issue, enhanced once again by the clean and impactful inking of Christopher Rule. A workaday Carl Burgos piece follows, but the last story in the issue is worth the attention of aficionados of comics art: an early effort by John Buscema before he became a Marvel stalwart (he was, at the time, delivering equally slick and impressive pieces for Richard Hughes’ ACG comics). “Trapped in Tomorrow” is almost as impressive as the Kirby piece, and helps make the whole issue highly collectable.

HARBINGERS OF FUTURE MONSTERS

For the truly dedicated Kirby watcher (and that’s every reader of this magazine, surely?), there is one particularly pleasurable activity: looking out for themes and notions in the illustrator’s late 1950s/early 1960s work that would be developed more fully in his later projects. A classic case of the syndrome, of course, is the Challengers the Unknown team from which Kirby utilized elements in the later Fantastic Four. And here’s another example. If you pick up My Greatest Adventure #128 (DC, February 1959), you will see a fascinating example of something that would become a Kirby trademark. The splash panel for “We Battled the Microscopic Menace” shows two scientists looking at the total destruction left behind by an unseen creature. But when the eponymous microscopic menace—now grown to gigantic size—appears a few pages later, 41

Change-Ups

(below) Jack also included Crystal in this sequence from FF Annual #5, but she was removed from the page before publication.

MARVEL MYSTERIES A SCHEDULING GLITCH? by Shane Foley

Here are my reasons for thinking this. The first and most obvious hint is the presence of Triton. 1 In Fantastic Four #64, Triton is still staying with the FF after helping them in FF #62. 2 In FF #65, Triton is said to have left (page 4, panel 1). 3 Yet in FF Annual #5 (on sale the month of FF #68), Triton is with the FF when they come to join the other Inhumans. He then stays with the Inhumans at story’s end. It’s a nice, logical piece of detail in the FF’s continuing storyline. But if this is the case, it means Kirby not only produced the Annual between FF #64 and #65, but believed it would be on sale in that order. 4 This also means Kirby would think that the news of the Richards’ baby, announced in the Annual, would be common knowledge starting with FF #65. As pub4 lished, that knowledge wasn’t public until three months later, around the time of #68, when the Annual actually appeared on sale. Is there any evidence in FF #65, 66 and 67 that Kirby thought news of the baby was known to the readers; evidence that Lee, as scripter, would have to write around carefully? I believe so. Look at Reed and Sue. 5 In FF #65, Reed and Sue are seen flirting and having an intimate, almost celebratory dinner together. It really seems as though it’s something special for them. Stan scripts it as if it’s just a date (and it reads nicely that way), but if the original pages turn up, I’ll bet that Kirby’s border notes 5 mention that it’s to celebrate

nderstanding how the amazing team of Lee and Kirby worked is endless fascination for most of us who love Kirby’s work. When were there real story conferences? When did Kirby take over as chief architect of the work? Just how much editorial input did Lee have at times in that marvelous decade of the ’60s? We have anecdotal evidence from other Bullpenners that there were times aplenty when Kirby raced off in a direction that Lee had not anticipated, causing, it seems, more than a little frustration. And we know of other times where it was Lee who annoyed Kirby by altering his story motivations after he’d plotted and drawn his work. Here is one little example of what may be, or may not be, a little glitch in their working relationship.

3 She was supposed to be back at the Baxter Building, taking care of a newly pregnant Sue Storm—not off galavanting with the Inhumans.

Fantastic Four Annual #5 appeared opposite FF #68, dated November 1967. Yet there are a number of factors that make me (and, I’m sure, others) feel it was produced months earlier than that—between FF #64 and #65 to be precise. This would be no big deal—books were produced out of order all the time—except that this time, it seems to me there was a bit of fall-out.

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A wealth of observations by a trio of Kirby fans

the Annual was not going to be available in the same order that he was producing it. Whereas the plot surprise that the Richards were expecting a child surely can’t have been one that editor/scripter Lee didn’t know was coming—something that momentous simply must have been discussed beforehand—perhaps Kirby, in his impassioned way of forging ahead with storylines, simply forgot the timing of the Annual’s release, and wrote all the FF issues after the Annual as if the baby announcement had already been made, because in his head, it had. We’ve heard many stories of Kirby totally forgetting what he and Stan had discussed for various issues—maybe this is another, tiny example of this happening. Is this all very important? Not to us as readers, no. But to Stan Lee and the editorial staff, it would have been quite frustrating, and I’m sure they breathed a sigh of relief when it was realized that it could all be scripted around and no art changes required. If only no one notices Triton... ...and yes—this is definitely trivia!

5 their forthcoming child. The date just seems very ‘special’ to me. 6 Then in FF #67, Reed is suddenly very protective of Sue, “forbidding” her to follow the rest of the FF through the transfer grid to the Beehive. Why? She’s just held her own against the Sentry and plenty of others before that! Could it be because he is concerned she now has a child to think of as well? (Sure, she was 6 present fighting Ronan after their dinner in #65, but she was abducted that time—Reed had no say in it.) What about Kirby’s schedule? It fits. Almost perfectly. Looking at Kirby’s output at the time, we see that he had a fivemonth hiatus from his 10 pages per month assignment of “Captain America,” being Tales of Suspense #87-91, cover-dated March-July 1967. The FF Annual featured around 50 pages of new material, so it is fair to assume that the leave of absence from Captain America was to allow time to produce the Annual. Kirby then is back on Cap in Tales of Suspense #92—the same month that FF #65 appears. Perfect! So—if Kirby got the timing wrong, how did this happen? One possibility is that the Annual was originally to have come on sale earlier, but was then pushed back in the schedule after Kirby had completed it, forcing Lee to write around Kirby’s references to the pregnancy. There’s no evidence for this, for the FF and Spider-Man Annuals—presumably the biggest selling Annuals—had always been the last to appear in the three-month block in which Annuals were released. But if the original plan was for the FF to be first that year, rather than last on the schedule, it would have come out opposite FF #66—very close to where Kirby intended it. The other possibility is that it was Kirby himself who mucked up the schedule, forgetting that

MYSTERY OF THE FLYING HULK by Ross Morrison After originating the character, Kirby’s initial Hulk run was a mere five issues (of a total of six), during which the character’s circumstances, speech patterns and personality varied significantly. While it wasn’t unusual for a 7 strip to take time to develop, the Hulk really did seem to be an example of trying out many different ideas to see which 8 Kirby/Lee ones would work best. The result was a strip in constant flux. 7 The third issue’s cover highlights an exciting new development to draw in potential readers. “Look!” cries a soldier who is pointing to the Hulk soaring through the air with a hapless Rick Jones. “Nothing can stop him now! He can fly!” Two major changes are revealed inside. 8 The first involves a psychic connection to Rick, allowing him to control the creature’s movements and summon him from afar. The second is revealed when, while escaping 43

9 (next page, center circle) Kirby likely wasn’t aware that Doom had already returned in Daredevil #37-38, and this recap in FF #73 was necessary to try to explain the convoluted plot of the issue.

12 (above and right) Look how the Hulk’s arms are spread in a Superman-style flying position—which would indicate Kirby envisioned this as more than powerful jumps.

pursuing soldiers, 10 the Hulk suddenly takes hold of his teenage sidekick and soars into the air. 9 “We-we’re flying!” exclaims Rick. The narrative, however, stresses that it is actually a leap, “the like of which has never before been seen by mortal man!” 10 The leaping action appears supported by the third panel on page 20, depicting rocks being disturbed as the Hulk takes to the air. 11 Yet, turning to the conclusion of the story, we see the Hulk again escapes soldiers by taking off in a flight path that looks anything but straight, before clearly changing his trajectory in mid-air and disappearing into the sunrise. Once more, Lee’s script has a witness exclaiming, “Look! He’s flying,” as if to acknowledge to the reader that it really does appear this way, though one might safely assume that everyone present would have seen any jumping motions that led to the Hulk becoming airborne. The series subsequently makes little use of the idea of a psychic link with Rick. The development is briefly followed up in the following issue before being quickly dispensed of when Banner subjects himself to his “ray machine” in an attempt to imbue the Hulk with his own intellect. 12 But many more panels appear to show actual flight as opposed to leaping action. 13 At one point in issue #4, the Hulk swoops out of the heavens to lift Rick from a moving vehicle, and it becomes virtually impossible to argue that Kirby is not attempting to depict a character with the true power of flight. 14 Pictorially, the question of whether the Hulk is really leaping or flying is only settled in the second story of the fifth issue (“The Hordes of General Fang!”) when he is definitively depicted touching the 12 ground before once again jumping into the air. Whether coincidence or not, the letters page of that same issue shows at least one reader has been confused, writing in to say “…as for the Hulk flying, that’s no good.” The printed response 44

presumably reflects Lee’s views on the subject: “But Bill, the Hulk doesn’t fly! He jumps! Who ever heard of anyone flying! Tsk tsk! What do you think these are—fairy tales?” It is relevant to note at this point that Lee has expressed on various occasions his longstanding dislike of characters that can fly without any apparent means of propulsion. These events raise a number of questions. Why introduce a mental

13 link that goes nowhere? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to explain the Hulk’s leaping ability as a natural one, albeit newly-discovered? Why did Kirby seem so intent on conveying a flying Hulk in his drawings? Could it be that this was all originally intended as an attempt to permanently retool the character, including bestowing the Hulk with the actual power of flight? Certainly the “mental link” idea would have allowed Rick to summon the Hulk for assistance in all kinds of situations, opening up story possibilities for the strip. Similarly, an ability to fly, while completely at odds with how we perceive the character today, may well have seemed a logical way of allowing the Hulk to quickly change locales and move beyond what was an initially limited premise. Finally, given what we know of the Kirby/Lee working method, how did this situation arise? Was this development something that was discussed and agreed to in their story conferences that didn’t work out when seen by Lee on paper? Or is it possible that Kirby implemented these ideas of his own accord, “overstepping the mark” by adding elements and changes that weren’t in accordance with Lee’s own vision of what the Hulk should be? Intriguingly, a rare firsthand

account of the aftermath of a Kirby/Lee disagreement from around late 1962 has emerged in recent years. Artist/writer Larry Lieber has spoken of witnessing Kirby tearing up his own penciled artwork and disposing of the pages following a meeting with Lee. Lieber subsequently salvaged these pages, which apparently had not met with Lee’s approval. They depict scenes of an unpublished story Kirby had intended for the original run of the Incredible Hulk, complete with scenes of Rick’s mental control and a Hulk who seems to be flying out of a hospital window to his rescue. Many readers, of course, continue to appreciate Kirby’s original version of the Hulk for its compelling premise, abundance of ideas and dramatic storytelling. He would later return to the character for a well-regarded Tales to Astonish series. Regardless of what may have been happening behind the scenes, and the unresolved issues associated with the “flying Hulk,” we can safely say that Jack Kirby played a key role in bringing to 14 life what has become one of the world’s best known fictional characters. WHERE KIRBY STOPPED (and where Stan Lee did too!) by Shane Foley

Silver Surfer #1 in August ’68). And then there were new stories for the Marvel Super-Heroes title in the works as well (mentioned in the Bullpen Bulletins of June 1968). Is it any wonder he may have left even more of the heavy lifting of plotting on Kirby’s three titles to Jack? And is it any wonder he had less time to polish his own scripting? And it showed, in FF #74 in particular! 16 That FF #74’s script often made no sense is obvious. (No letters were published about it—but surely they received a mountain of them.) 17 I wonder if Ben’s absurd question on page 8, panel 17 2 (“Where’s the Surfer gone to?”) 18 was meant to be “Where’s the Surfer going?”—as in, “Where are you and Galactus going to take him?” Was Kirby’s mind elsewhere and the border notes just as silly as the script? If so, why didn’t Lee correct it? Or did Lee misread a relevant border note by Kirby? Or did the letterer misread Lee’s script and the mistake wasn’t picked up? Whatever happened, it showed Lee, as editor, was not taking much notice! 18 The Torch’s thoughts, “Now that the Surfer is safely hidden...” on page 9, panel 3 are very clumsy and unlike Lee. Normally, he would have been much more careful about it, making sure the reader wasn’t confused, such as having the words read “...wish I knew what the Surfer meant when he said he’d found the perfect place to hide... but at least now I can help Ben!” or something like that.

Recently, I was re-reading Glen Gold’s article in TJKC #61. (And I see that issue was Summer 2013—gasp!—seven years ago!) It was titled “Where Kirby Stopped!” He makes some great points about this most unusual period in Kirby’s time on the FF. The drop-off in 15 quality in these issues compared to the four-part Mad Thinker story and the Silver Surfer issue before them (#68–72) has always seemed blatantly obvious and fascinating to me. Personally, I’d say Kirby “stopped” an issue earlier than Glen does. 15 I’ve always felt FF #73 was where the rot started, the issue being appallingly slight in both plot and art, particularly when compared 16 with any issue that came before it. It looks to me that #73 was an issue Kirby had no interest in doing, continuing a Daredevil plot he had not had any part in. And whereas the Galactus and the Surfer story to follow surely was far more interesting to Kirby, the plotting and execution were, at times, little better. I think two things happened at once to make these issues as they are. The first is to do with Stan Lee’s lack of involvement. The second is about Kirby himself. For Stan Lee, this was suddenly a very hectic time. These issues were published when a number of time-consuming changes were on his desk. (Note: I’m using dates from the covers. While these may not indicate exactly when any given book was being prepared, they do indicate when similar schedules of regular titles had to be finalized. Thus it is reasonable to assume that all titles with the same cover date would have been in production at approximately the same time.) May 1968, the month of FF #74, was right when all the split books (Suspense, Astonish and Strange Tales) spun off into new titles. Add the new Captain Marvel and Captain Savage titles, and Lee suddenly had five extra regular titles to deal with. Not only that, but clearly from what is said in various Bulletin pages, both Silver Surfer #1 and the magazine format of Spectacular Spider-Man were also being prepped, both of which Lee scripted (Spectacular Spider-Man went on sale in July 1968 with 45

Clearly, at that time, Kirby was working well with Lee. But surely, Mantlo’s visit was from a much earlier time than FF #75, because not only in #75 do we have a page that doesn’t advance the story, we have an entire issue! Why did Lee allow this? It seems he was too busy (and perhaps flushed with Marvel success) to worry about it. Even a year earlier, this type of thing, where the plot didn’t move forward and a whole issue wasted, would never have happened. Further evidence that Kirby wasn’t happy is found in the art of FF #76. Surely the last half of FF #76 includes some of the lamest art Kirby ever did. Look at page 12, panel 6 21 ; page 16, panel 2 22 ; page 18, panels 3 and 4 23 ; or page 19, panel 2 24 . Perhaps Glen is right! He posits that midway through FF #76, Kirby gets news of the Silver Surfer’s book in production—and that it was being done without him. Did this cause him to junk his original plot for #76 and go elsewhere? Glen’s idea that a collision between the Psycho-man and the Surfer may have led to a telling of Kirby’s Surfer origin is a wonderful notion! 25

19 Then page 19, panel 2 has those nonsensical words from Reed Richards, about stuff he can’t possibly know. Surely any deduction to that effect should have come from the Torch. Again, did Lee misread Kirby’s border notes? Or did Lee go off on his own and ignore Kirby’s pointers? Either way, all of this 19 points to Lee being overstretched and not giving his script the care he normally did. 20 Perhaps something similar is what happened 20 on page 3, about which Glen asks, “What’s with the Surfer’s head and neck on page 3, panel 4?” Surely, Kirby intended the Surfer to be not only showing scenes of Galactus’ Punisher through his eyes, but to be taking on the very image of the Punisher that he was talking about (if the original page with Kirby’s border notes can be found, maybe this can be verified?). But Lee, for some reason did not script it that way. Perhaps there was an editorial note to “fix the Surfer” by Lee, but it never got done? Was everyone too busy? For Kirby, it seems he was not happy about his part in Marvel’s expansion at all. Marvel grows, and what does he get? Ten more pages of Captain America! How do we know he wasn’t happy? The content of his three titles shows it. All his books suddenly got stories that were longer but which contained less plot and less character creativity, and with lots of bigger panels that often did not advance the story at all. FF #75 (June 1968) is a good example. It has nice art, but is a totally superfluous issue. Take page 20 and perhaps the last panel on page 16. Replace page 20 and last panel on page 19 of FF #74 with them! What has the overall plot lost? Nothing! The entire issue simply repeats the plot of the previous one—where minions of Galactus hassle the FF for information about the Surfer. In Amazing Heroes #100 (August 1986, page 27), Bill Mantlo recounts visiting Kirby where he saw him draw a Thor page. He writes, “And then Jack did something unbelievable. He paused, looked closely at his handiwork, unpinned it from his drawing board, and handed it to a friend of mine, saying, ‘Here, you take it. It’s great, but it doesn’t advance the story. Stan would never accept it.’ I was stunned...”.

The idea that Lee was overworked and Kirby not happy at this time shows up clearly in the current Thor (#152, May 1968)—where the issue title is “The Dilemma of Dr Blake!”, an issue where Dr. Blake does not appear or is even mentioned. (This detail is referenced in Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said under the notes for November 1967.) Sure, the ‘dilemma’ is to do with Thor’s hammer that goes missing at story’s end and the consequences of that, but that is the subject of the next issue! Did Lee notice the title wasn’t really relevant to the contents of the issue? Did Kirby originally mean to have the implications of the lost hammer happen in this very issue—but then enlarge the story and forget the title was no longer appropriate? Or did Lee suggest the title as a story springboard to Kirby, who then plotted and drew it to be longer than originally envisaged, but then forgot to change the title? Who came up with the title anyway? However it happened, neither Lee nor Kirby seem to have been taking much notice. Something as careless as this would never have happened a year earlier. Jack stopped—and began to tread water. I think, in many ways, Lee did too. Marvel’s expansion in 1968 changed everything. Perhaps Lee was happier (although the expansion ushered in a period of sales stagnation) but Kirby clearly wasn’t. Neither of these gentlemen ever got back to working as they did. 25

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The meandering nature of Kirby’s stories continued through the rest of 1968 until he dropped Captain America after #109 (January 1969). Was he preparing for a new title? Lee hinted at such in the Bullpen pages—after all, Kirby had never drawn so little as 40 pages per month!—but for a whole year, any new title, even the mentioned Inhumans title, didn’t eventuate. To my eye (and I realize a lot of this is very subjective), Thor continued to be quite lackluster, but strangely, the FF seemed to get a slight new lease of life. After the appallingly light-on Inhumans story of FF #82 and #83 in Jan./Feb. ’69 (wherein Maximus surprisingly gets a superb new uniform), the art and even plotting of the following issues tightens up somewhat. The characterization of Dr. Doom and the Mole Man (in #84–90) was streets ahead of most issues from the previous year. The plots sometimes still made little sense. (How could anyone “buy” the weird house of the Mole Man? Why would you stay in a house that hums and gives you a constant headache? But this weirdness is no worse than what appeared in Kirby’s inspired years. Just try to understand the logic in the first Inhumans story arc, or that of having a blind girl sent to sculpt a likeness of a monster with the power to route an army!) But it didn’t last. Around the beginning of 1970, Kirby turned it “off” again—just as he had in early ’68! Maybe he’d hoped the situation would change and he could properly “turn it on again.” But it wasn’t to be. No doubt, the reasons are many (as M. Scott Peck writes, “All symptoms are over-determined. For any single thing of importance… there is more than one cause and multiple reasons.”), but surely, the Kirby books of May 1968 show where Kirby first “stopped”! IMPENDING DOOM by Ted Krasniewski

begun to “tread water” with the series that there was no manifest “change” in Doom when he finally showed up again. 27 Two years had passed, and it was the same old Doom— with barely a reference of any kind to that prior Kirby/Lee encounter [or to his mentioned but not seen return in #73, which picked up from Doom’s non-Kirby actual reappearance in Daredevil #37]! It’s a far cry from the team’s glory years when every reunion of the FF with their dread nemesis was accompanied by an accounting of how the great villain had fared since last he was seen! If Stan and Jack had been full-tilt committed to the creative preeminence of the title, they would’ve underscored the occasion of the good Doctor’s return by unveiling a Doom that was in some degree an outgrowth of that character that had harnessed for a time the kind of energies that the Surfer embodied; powers granted him by no less a being that Galactus! There should’ve at least been some visible modification to the face Doom presented to the world as aftermath; some finally unquestionable “scar.” He had, after all, dared briefly steal the fire of as angelic a creation as the House of Marvel would ever produce! That there was no change, however, doesn’t mean that no change was contemplated. What if Kirby had, in fact, considered introducing a “marked” Doom—a “Doom 2.0” of sorts—to the pages of the FF, and that the reason we never saw it is because any such radical “remodeling” was shot down by Lee the way he’d already vetoed a number of Jack’s creative choices? 28 [Jack did attempt to hint to readers what Doom looked like without his mask, at least.] And what if, out of those meditations on a more appropriate face and form for some “post-cosmic” Doom, Jack first began to shape the visage and lineaments of what became—Darkseid? H

Remember when Dr. Doom stole the Silver Surfer’s power (FF #57–60, Dec. 1966–Mar. 1967), only to unwittingly collide with the barrier set in place by Galactus to keep the Surfer imprisoned on Earth? That collision took place out of sight of both the FF and, remarkably enough, the reader—which only contributed to the cloud of uncertainty surrounding the Latverian monarch’s fate. Had Doom been “merely” stripped of the stolen cosmic power? Was he dead? I’m inclined to think that Kirby the showman was eager to prolong the mystery, and that the long delay before Doom’s reappearance in FF (#84–87, Mar.–June 1969) was deliberate—but it’s a measure of how much the team of Lee & Kirby had 26

(above) Why the anti-climax to Doom stealing the Surfer’s powers in FF #60? Surely Jack had a visual in mind for the scene where he collides with the invisible barrier Galactus erected to keep the Surfer on Earth. Imagine Doom’s armor being ripped from his body, leaving him scarred on more than just his face—and the resulting plotlines that could’ve evolved from it.

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Gallery 2

BEFORE & AFTER:

THE ETERNALS

A new feature showing big and small changes made to Kirby’s work, with commentary by John Morrow

(previous page) Eternals #3 cover, and #2 unused cover blurb: Jack’s penchant for exciting cover blurbs at 1970s DC Comics continued when he switched to Marvel, but the Bullpen usually overruled him. On his pencils from #2’s cover, it says, “The biggest UFO ever seen! What’s in it? Who’s in it?” The blurbs on the published cover aren’t on Kirby’s pencil art, so were added by Marvel. And on #3 (shown here but not used), it said, “Would it scare you, if all the strange stories so common in every country’s mythology—were true?” Not a bad teaser in both instances, helping get across the gist of what this new series was about. (this page) Eternals #5 cover: Kirby photocopied his pencils for this cover, then added the unused top blurb “City on a mountain-top! See Olympia!”, and the nifty cityscape at the bottom to justify it. In this case, the blurb didn’t effectively convey what was going on prominently in the artwork, and was respectfully altered to a more commercial grabber, while retaining much of Kirby’s intent.

(previous page) Eternals #6, unused cover: This unused version of the cover of #6 was rightfully rejected (whether by Kirby himself or Marvel is unknown), undoubtedly due to the rather static poses of the main figures. The published cover is much more dynamic, and uses Kirby’s own blurbs verbatim. (this page) Eternals #6, page 1: Jack had a sympathetic “consulting editor” in Archie Goodwin, who respectfully kept Kirby’s text focused and impactful, while editing out minor distracting prose. Add in Mike Royer’s amazing lettering and logo design, and you’ve got one very effective and memorable splash page.

(above) Eternals #6, page 16: Some at Marvel Comics were intent on Jack tying Eternals directly into existing Marvel continuity, but Kirby did it as little as possible. He vaguely worded his dialogue on panels 3 and 4 so that the Thing could be considered a fictional character in his Eternals reality, whereas Marvel altered it to convey the viewpoint of someone who believed them to be real. His later use of a robot Hulk instead of the actual character is another example of his desire to have his work exist outside the shared universe of the mainstream Marvel books.

(this page) Eternals #6, page 17: Meanwhile, in the same issue, Jack name-drops S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury himself, in another attempt to pacify those demanding a tie to existing continuity. The argument could be made that Jack only reluctantly included those references, because he felt it could still be construed as a version of S.H.I.E.L.D. that existed in his separate Eternals universe—or he did it just to get the Marvel editorial office off his back.

(this page) Eternals #7 cover: A minor change to Kirby’s cover dialogue does no harm here, but perhaps it’d been better and simpler to just omit the bottom balloon entirely.

(this page) Eternals #16 and 19 covers Completely unnecessary word balloons were added, distracting from the art and cluttering up the layout— while Kirby’s own cover blurbs, penciled in the margins of the art (and alas, now partially cropped off), were ignored.

Retrospective

THE LEGACY CHARACT by Ed Lute

C (right) Kirby’s Vision is a sort of reverse-legacy character—originated by Jack and Joe Simon, and first appearing in Marvel Mystery Comics #13 (Nov. 1940). Roy Thomas created the current android version of the Vision for Avengers #57 (October 1968, above). (below) Marvel Comics #1, and a Human Torch postcard, presumably drawn by Carl Burgos, from the character’s 1940s heyday. (bottom right) The Human Torch pin-up from Fantastic Four #3 (March 1962).

omic book historians and fans almost universally acknowledge that the Silver Age of Comics started with DC Comics’ Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956), which featured the first appearance of Barry Allen as the Flash. During the earlier Golden Age of Comics, Jay Garrick had been the Flash. However, Julius Schwartz wanted to update the Flash for a new audience, thus Barry Allen became the World’s Fastest Man. Barry Allen not only became the new Flash, but he took over the legacy of the character that had started with Garrick. Like Garrick, Allen was a super-hero who had gained the power of super-speed which he used to fight the forces of evil. Allen’s version of the Flash became popular and DC Comics capitalized on this popularity by updating other Golden Age characters such as Green Lantern and the Atom. For the uninitiated, a “legacy character” is one that took over the mantle of another character. The new character not only used the super-hero name of the previous character, but also continued their heroic legacy. There have been many examples of legacy characters in comic books aside from the ones mentioned above. So what do legacy characters have to do the legendary creator Jack “King” Kirby? Read on to find out! Kirby, whether by himself or with others, created some of the most iconic characters, not just in comics, but in pop culture itself: Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, and let’s not forget to mention the whole Fourth World. Kirby was one of the most innovative and creative comic book creators ever. So you would think that he never resorted to updating another creator’s character. However, he did update several characters, continuing their heroic legacy, and thus creating legacy characters. So how and why did one (if not the most) inventive comic book creators ever, update Golden Age characters for the Silver Age and beyond? The Silver Age Human Torch and the Bronze Age Sandman were Kirby’s contributions to the pantheon of legacy comic book characters. Let’s examine the creation of these two characters, how Kirby and his co-creators put their mark on these characters—thereby creating new characters that stood on their own—and their aspects as legacy characters.

story was written, penciled, inked, and lettered by the versatile Carl Burgos. The Human Torch, along with Kirby and Joe Simon’s Captain America and writer/artist Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner, became known as Timely Comics’ “Big Three” super-heroes. The original Sandman, created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Bert Christman, was Wesley Dodds, who made his first appearance in Adventure Comics #40 (July 1939). He wore a gas mask and used a gun that discharged a sleeping gas to stop criminals. The series had a pulp feel to it. As with most of the Golden Age characters (except for Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and a handful of others), after World War II and the beginning of the 1950s, the Sandman and the Human Torch faded away. However, this wouldn’t be the last time that readers saw these names on the covers of comic books. THE SILVER AGE HUMAN TORCH While still profitable, post-war comic book sales had been in decline due to a variety of factors, including Frederic Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent and the advent of television. With the birth of the 1960s Silver Age, comic books began to see a rise in popularity that they hadn’t experienced since the end of

GOLDEN (AGE) ORIGINALS The Golden Age of Comics began with Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1 (June 1938). With the character’s popularity, DC Comics and many other competitors attempted to cash-in on the success Superman generated, by creating more super-heroes. Two of these characters were Timely Comics’ The Human Torch and DC Comics’ The Sandman. The Golden Age Human Torch first appeared in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939). This Human Torch wasn’t human, but an android that went by the name of Jim Hammond. The 56

TERS OF JACK KIRBY World War II. Comic book publishers needed new material to sell to fans. In the case of Marvel Comics (formerly Timely Comics), this new material would primarily come from the prolific minds of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. The pair’s first super-hero creation was the Fantastic Four, which made it debut in The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961). A new Human Torch, this time an actual human named Johnny Storm, was a member of the heroic quartet. While there had previously been a Human Torch, this new character took the name, but was a new character entirely. However, the creators continued the heroic legacy of the original character, thus making Johnny Storm’s Human Torch into Marvel Comics’ first legacy character. With two of the most creative minds in comics, why did Kirby and Lee use Burgos’s creation for their heroic quartet? According to Mark Alexander in Lee & Kirby: The Wonder Years, “This was a compromise to placate [Marvel Publisher] Martin Goodman, who originally suggested that Timely’s ‘Big Three’ [Human Torch, SubMariner, and Captain America] be part of the new team. This modern Human Torch, however, was cast in an entirely new light.” Marvel Publisher Martin Goodman was notorious for following trends to sell comic books. With DC Comics’ legacy characters like the Flash and Green Lantern selling well, and their new super-hero team book featuring these characters called Justice League of America also selling big-time, it stands to reason Goodman would want to follow suit by updating at least one of his Golden Age super-hero characters and putting him on a team. So he had the two versatile creators update the Human Torch in the new team book. In a 1985 interview with Leonard Pitts Jr., Kirby discussed the creation of the Fantastic Four: “Of course, radiation had had the effect on all the FF—the girl became invisible, Reed became very plastic. And of course, the Human Torch, which was created by Carl Burgos, was thrown in for good measure, to help the entertainment value.” While the original Human Torch was an android, Johnny Storm was turned into the Human Torch because of radiation, which had become a popular topic since the end of World War II. Thus he was given a more modern origin, just like the heroes that DC had updated. However, Kirby and Lee had more in store for this version of the hot-shot hero, because they gave him a compelling alter-ego. This wasn’t the same old Human Torch that had appeared in the Golden Age. Kirby and Lee imbibed this character with life. Johnny Storm was written and drawn as if he was an actual teenager of the time. So

while the pair was forced by Goodman to reuse Timely’s Golden Age character, they took him to new heights and put their own spin on him. In Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics, author Les Daniels wrote, “He was a teenager, but quite different from the stereotyped worshipful sidekick. Instead, Johnny was a show-off and a bit of a troublemaker; he used his powers to attract attention, and often displayed more interest in girls and fast cars than in fighting the forces of evil.” Johnny Storm became such a popular character that he was given his own solo feature in Strange Tales starting with issue #101 (Oct. 1962, left) for which Kirby contributed the artwork—although the solo feature never seemed to spark reader interest in the character like the Fantastic Four title did. That Human Torch feature ended in issue #134 (July 1965), but even though his solo feature didn’t fare too well after Kirby left, the Human Torch remained an integral part of the Marvel Universe due to his membership in the Fantastic Four. Kirby even got a chance to draw a match-up between Johnny Storm and the original android Human Torch in Fantastic Four Annual #4 (Nov. 1966, above). According to Sean Howe in Marvel: The Untold Story, “Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four Annual #4 featured Burgos’s original Human Torch, battling the new teenage Human Torch and the rest of the Fantastic Four. [The issue] appeared exactly twenty-eight years after Marvel Comics #1—in other words, exactly as the initial twenty-eight-year copyright was expiring. The original Torch had been revived just long enough to ensure their copyright claim—only to be killed again, pages later.” Still, the issue contained a fun meeting between the two characters drawn by the King of Comics. Although not as iconic as “The Flash of Two Worlds” story that united the Golden and Silver Age Flashes in The Flash #123 (Sept. 1961), it was still a great way for the two combustible characters to meet, and remains a fan-favorite story to this day. SILVER (& BRONZE) AGE SANDMEN Although Kirby was one of the architects of the Marvel Universe, he left Marvel in 1970 to go to DC Comics. While at DC, Kirby got to work on a new version of DC’s Sandman. However, this wasn’t the first DC Comics’ Sandman series that Kirby worked on— in fact, it was Kirby’s third take on a character of that name. 1 Kirby, along with his partner Joe Simon, had originally reworked the Golden Age Sandman, during the Golden Age. The original Sandman wasn’t one of DC Comics’ best-sellers, so the company decided to revamp the character into a more superheroesque one. Simon & Kirby gave Wesley Dodds a super-hero costume and a kid sidekick (a common practice during the Golden Age, ever since the debut of Robin the Boy Wonder). In his autobiography, Joe Simon: My Life in Comics, Simon 57

However, it was short-lived, ending with issue #6 (Jan. 1976). Simon only wrote the first issue, with Michael Fleisher taking over writing duties for the remainder of its run. While Kirby drew all of the covers, he only penciled #4-6. “The Seal Men’s War on Santa Claus,” the final Bronze Age Sandman story written by Fleisher and illustrated by Kirby, was supposed to see print in the never-published Sandman #7 before being moved to Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #61, but Kamandi was also cancelled before the story saw print. It was finally published in the short-run in-house DC publication Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2 (Sept. 1978), produced only to secure copyright on the material. The public finally got to read this final Sandman tale in The Best of DC Comics #22 (March 1981), and in recent Kirby archive reprint volumes. The series had an intriguing concept that, if handled properly, could have had a more lasting impression on the DC Comics pantheon that it ultimately did. Unfortunately neither Simon nor Kirby stayed with the series long enough to give it the proper direction that it needed to succeed, but it continued the heroic legacy begun with the Golden Age Sandman. The character was later retconned by Roy Thomas in Wonder Woman #300 (Feb. 1983) as UCLA psychology professor Dr. Garrett Sandford, who was trapped in the Dream Dimension. Writer Neil Gaiman updated the Sandman character again when he began his own acclaimed run on a new series for DC Comics in 1989. Just like Simon and Kirby, Gaiman continued the Sandman legacy by only using the name, but creating a totally new character: Dream/ Morpheus of the Endless.

wrote, “The first series we did was ‘Sandman.’ Creig Flessel [right] had been the artist on the original series. His stuff was beautifully illustrated, but it wasn’t selling. The character looked ridiculous to me, a guy in a gas mask, with a gun that sprayed sleeping gas to knock out the bad guys. So we just did it in the trademark Simon & Kirby style, with the skin-tight super-hero costume and a sidekick named Sandy. “Our stories appeared in Adventure Comics and a couple of issues of World’s Finest Comics. There were even a few that were used in All-Star Comics, where he was a member of the Justice Society of America. Each issue of that title was a collection of stories starring the different JSA characters. Somehow they managed to tie our stories in with the rest.” 2 In the 1960s, Kirby updated Marvel Comics’ own “Sandman,” which was created by Lee and artist Steve Ditko and made his first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #4 (Sept. 1963). Marvel’s character was a super-villain who could shape-shift by turning his body into actual sand. Ditko’s renditions tended to be portrayed as more down-toEarth than the Kirby-drawn characters that appeared in other comic books. One example of this was Ditko’s Sandman costume, which was simply a striped shirt. Kirby apparently didn’t find the outfit too appealing, so after depicting the character that way as a member of the Frightful Four in early issues of Fantastic Four, he redesigned it for FF #61 (April 1967), making it more fantastical. Nothing was ever just ordinary with Kirby, and it’s clear from looking at the new costume that it was designed by Kirby. 3 During his time at DC Comics in the 1970s, Kirby once again was given the opportunity to work on a Sandman series, in a final collaboration with his former partner Joe Simon. Simon had pitched a new version of the Sandman to DC Comics, when someone at the company realized this was an opportunity to have them work together on a character they had previously collaborated on. However, this version of the character was much different than the Golden Age version. The legacy of the character’s name was the only thing that made the transition to the new series. Although this Bronze Age Sandman was clad in a super-heroic guise, he was supposed to be the immortal Sandman of legend. In the series, he monitored dreams from his Dream Dome and could enter someone’s dreams to save them with the assistance of his sidekicks Brute and Glob, two living nightmares. “The Sandman #1 was the last Simon and Kirby production. It was the biggest seller of the DC line at the time,” Simon recalled in his autobiography. Those strong sales resulted in an ongoing series.

CONTINUING THE LEGACY While Kirby was one of the most groundbreaking creators in comic book history, even he sometimes used his creativity to revamp previously created characters. Not just content with updating the Human Torch and the Sandman with new personas, he created totally new characters that, although using the names of Golden Age characters, were unique and took the characters to new levels of creativity, but also continued the legacy started with the original characters. Legacy characters, including those co-created by Kirby, are a popular and important part of comic book history. Johnny Storm is one of the most important creations from Lee and Kirby and is still integral in the Marvel Universe. While Simon and Kirby’s Bronze Age Sandman wasn’t as beloved as some of their other creations, the character remains an important and distinctive part of the legacy of DC Comics’ Sandman. H 58

www.kirbymuseum.org 50 Years of the Fourth World at San Diego Comic Fest!

Newsletter

Thanks to the friendly folks at SDCF, we tabled at their show for three days in early March. We also hosted a jam-packed panel discussion about Kirby’s Fourth World, featuring (below, left to right) Bruce Simon, Mike Royer, Rand Hoppe, Tom Kraft, and Ray Wyman, Jr.

We missed Steve Sherman, who couldn’t make it, and enjoyed spending time with Barry Ira Geller, too! Another highlight was Sydney Heifler’s Romance Comics panels—she’s pursuing a PhD in History at Ohio State University. SDCF is truly a small, old-school, friendly comic-con. We loved it and hope to be back.

TJKC Edition Fall 2020 The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center is organized exclusively for educational purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby by: • illustrating the scope of Kirby’s multi-faceted career, • communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby, • celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations, and • building understanding of comic books and comic book creators.

We thank our Members!

Below is a list of approximately 60 folks who, as of this writing, have active recurring Jack Kirby Museum memberships. These folks are the backbone of our efforts! Please consider doing the same. It is a really big help. Adam Smith, Alex Adorno, Alex Jarvis, Allan Harvey, Andy Rushton, Anita Hicks, Antonio Iriarte, Bernard Brannigan, Brian Fox, Brian Hurtt, Charles Glaubitz, Christopher Harder, Clayton Philips, Colin Edwards, Dennis Brennan, Don Rhoden, Douglas Peltier, Dusty Miller, Glen Brunswick, Guy Dorian, Sr., Harry Mendryk, Haydn Davies, Henry Gunderson, James West, Jeff DePew, Jeff Newelt, Jeffrey Carl Wilkie, Jim McPherson, John Jefferson Rix, John Smith, Keith Foster, Kenneth Conlow Jr., Lein Shory, Lex Passaris, Mario Freitas, Martin O’Connor, Matthew Lane, Matthias Pfruender, Melvin Shelton, Mike Cecchini, Michael Shovlin, Nathan LaBudd, Noah Green, Odin Fields, Peter Sullivan, Philip Hester, Phillip Atcliffe, Ralph Rivard, Rand, Hoppe, Renato Andrade, Richard Harrison, Richard Mancini, Richard Pineros, Robert Shippee, Steve Coates, Steve Meyer, Steve Robertson, Steve Sherman, Steven Ramis, Steven Roden, and Tom Kraft.

To this end, the Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study, teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays, publications and cinematic, theatrical or multimedia productions.

Annual Memberships with one of these posters: $50*

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

one of these: $60*

Marvel—14” x 23”

Galactic Head— 18” x 20” color

or this: $70*

Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center PO Box 5236 Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA Telephone: (201) 204-0532 Continued thanks to John Morrow and TwoMorrows Publishing, as well as Lisa Kirby and the Kirby Estate

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

All characters TM © their respective owners.

Fighting American print silkscreened in Switzerland 23” x 19”

Mark Evanier

JACK F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

about something. When I was working with Jack in the early ’70s on the Fourth World books, one of the problems that the books had was that they were considered kind of a hostile presence at DC by some people. There were people there who were kind of rooting for them to fail or didn’t see how they could possibly succeed because DC Comics, for years and years and years before there was any notion that Jack might come back there, was the company that considered Marvel comics garbage. “They’re all lousy! Look at the Marvel books! Oh, look how terrible they are!” And they got very frustrated at the idea when they looked and saw that Marvel was outselling them. They knew how Marvel was outselling them because they had the same distributor, the distributor that DC Comics, in effect, owned—Independent News. And there’s the embarrassment. Your own distributor is reporting higher sales figures on your competitor’s products to you. So you can’t really think, “Oh the distributor must be lying.” And around the DC offices, there was this feeling… not unanimous. There were people who loved Jack there, but enough people to kind of influence the attitude in the office that Marvel comics were flawed comics, badly drawn, badly done. And it was kind of jarring, all of a sudden, the announcement that, “We’ve just hired Jack Kirby. He’s coming over here.” Not that many people could make the jump to, “Oh! He’s good now!” So that was a problem that he had there. And the people at Independent News and the people at the licensing department, and some people at DC’s offices said, “Oh, these things, these New Gods, they’re never gonna sell. They’ll never do well and they’ll especially never be merchandised.” I was there when the guy from the licensing department told Jack to his face there would never be dolls of Darkseid or t-shirts of Orion or anything like that. How many people have seen dolls of Darkseid and t-shirts of Orion? [chuckles from audience] And then people proclaimed the books were failures because they weren’t putting Marvel out of business. I have in my office a shelf of the hardcover and paperback reprints of The New Gods and I look at it… It’s kind of there because I wrote the Forewords for ’em, but it’s really there

2019 Jack Kirby Tribute Panel Held Sunday, July 21, 2019 at Comic-Con International: San Diego. Featuring (standing, left to right) Buzz Dixon, Tracy Kirby, moderator Mark Evanier, Jeremy Kirby, Paul S. Levine, (seated) Kurt Busiek, and Mike Royer. Transcribed by Steven Thompson. Copyedited by Mark Evanier and John Morrow. Photo by Kendall Whitehouse.

(right) Kirby in his California backyard, circa 1971, during his time on the Fourth World series. (below) Jack scribbled these DC job production numbers on the back of his photocopy of Mister Miracle #7, page 15.

MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon, people. Please grab seats. [heavy background chatter] Thank you. This is the annual Jack Kirby tribute panel. That means I must be Mark Evanier. [applause] There’s my name plaque. Oh, wait a minute, that’s the wrong one. I’ve got… [laughter] Let’s see, this one… and this one… and this one, and this one, and this one, and THIS one… [Mark puts out dozens of name plaques from earlier panels at this convention] MIKE ROYER: And that’s all from yesterday! [laughter] MARK: … this one… and this one. You think I do enough panels at this convention, folks? [applause] Let me introduce the people on the panel here. How many people on this panel were ever Jack Kirby’s favorite inker? [laughter] Here’s Mike Royer! [laughter and applause] How many people on this panel are the attorney for the Rosalind Kirby Trust? That’s Paul S. Levine! [applause] How many people on this panel are related to Jack Kirby? Tracy Kirby and Jeremy Kirby! [applause] How many people on this panel ever collaborated with Jack Kirby on Destroyer Duck and worked on Thundarr the Barbarian with him? Buzz Dixon! [applause] And we may or may not have Kurt Busiek showing up here sometime soon. You know why we gather every year. We love Jack Kirby, we love his memory. I noticed on the way in, the panel in this room after us is “How to Do Comics the Marvel Way.” [light laughter] This is the panel on how to do comics the Marvel way! [laughter and applause] It’s just Jack Kirby. That system was built around having Jack Kirby. I think the public is beginning to notice that more. I get alerts on Google all the time when Jack’s name is mentioned, and frequently it’s like a Jack Kirby who’s a judge in some small county in the Berkshires or something. I got a flurry this morning because they made some announcements yesterday about the Eternals movie. Now, let me tell you, I have a feeling of great satisfaction 60

SIX DEGREES OF INDEPENDENT NEWS by John Morrow, based on research by Richard Kolkman

because I like seeing that shelf and looking at it every so often and going, “Yeah. Failure of a book, huh? Going into its ninth printing?! And the books you thought were hits then? I don’t see them being reprinted!” And I’m not allowed to tell you that there’s another reprinting coming up of all the Fourth World books in about a year, in a fancier format, which they’re doing just to give Mike Royer more money. [laughter] MIKE: Mark, I’m delighted when they reprint, especially The Demon, because every penny of reprint money for inking and lettering will come to me, because they’re all issues I worked on. I always hated to see a book that was one third Vince Colletta and two thirds me because… I wanted all of it. [laughter] Now, I have nothing but good things to say about DC. In the beginning, when Jack had made the decision to leave Marvel and go to DC, I was to be part of the package. I don’t know specific reasons given why they didn’t want me, but after Mark and Steve [Sherman] pointed out to them so many things that Vince was changing, and leaving out in his inking, DC finally said, “Okay, you can use the kid.” And I’m sure they were convinced that I would fail. MARK: Oh, absolutely. MIKE: And to their chagrin, I didn’t! And I’m proud of that fact. Yesterday someone from the SYFY Channel said they wanted to interview me. They’re doing a thing on Jack and they said they wanted to know what it was like working for Jack, and I said, “I don’t know because I had to ink three pages a day, letter a whole book in two days…

(right) House ad from Forever People #7. (left) August 21, 1971 Billboard magazine article.

ormer DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz wrote in his 2010 book 75 Years Of DC Comics: The Art Of Modern Mythmaking, that the reason DC used the name “Hampshire Distributors” in the indicia of Kirby’s In The Days of the Mob #1 and Spirit World #1, was to keep DC’s name off such adult material. But was anything else distributed under the Hampshire moniker? Take a look inside Forever People #7 or Jimmy Olsen #146. Those February 1972 DC comics contain an ad for two new bi-monthly music magazines: Planet #2 and Words and Music #1. The indicia in W&M states it’s published by “Hampshire Distributors Ltd.”, while Planet is published by “NPP Music Corp.” (NPP stands for National Periodical Publications, DC’s official name up to that point), and both mags have a December 1971 cover date and the same business address: 909 Third Avenue, 21st Floor, New York, NY (ie. DC’s address). Also, both W&M #1 and October 1971’s Planet #1 (the issue before the one shown in the ad) contain a special notice to magazine retailers about displaying these mags; it’s from Independent News Corp. Inc., DC and Marvel Comics’ distributor. There’s another curious connection between Kirby and Independent News’ other clientele. The back cover of Mob #1 and Spirit World #1 features those mags’ only ads—for a revival of Liberty magazine. This new iteration was nostalgia-oriented, reprinting material from Liberty’s 61

original 1924-1950 run (thus a good fit for promoting in Kirby’s magazine about 1930s gangsters, but not necessarily for one about the supernatural). This new Liberty was published by Twenty First Century Communications, and its staff included publisher Leonard Mogel and editor Matty Simmons—who had been producing National Lampoon since its debut in April 1970. NatLamp’s New York offices were at 635 Madison Avenue, in the same building as Marvel Comics—and the December 1972 National Lampoon featured Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Roy Thomas appearing semi-nude in its “Foto Funnies” strip. (Marvel’s Crazy later ran a parody of Roy’s risqué strip, and he promises to give me the long and funny story behind it all soon.) The early 1970s was a tough time for magazines. Words and Music (which hung on till 1973) was also advertised in June 1972 DC comics, but Planet appears to be gone by then, only lasting three issues. The new Liberty ended in Fall 1976. But this drive for new mag launches seems to have been the impetus for Kirby pitching other “Speak-Out Series” concepts, like a war-themed mag. (Despite its 1980 copyright, was Jack’s “Stop The Panzers” art originally drawn for it? It fits size-wise.) Would the never-published Demon #17’s vampire story have repurposed art or ideas from Dracula Forever, another Kirby undeveloped magazine idea? For more on Jack’s plans for his “Speak-Out” series, plus all the unpublished Kirby stories for Soul Love and True-Life Divorce, get my new book Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love, available now.

What I remember is sitting in the Kirby kitchen eating chocolate cake—Roz’s chocolate cake—drinking milk and talking about Warner Brothers movies. Or watching my kids swimming in their pool while my wife visited with Roz and Jack and I would talk comics.” And the guy said, “Oh, I want those stories!” MARK: I was interviewed for that also the other day. They’re doing a very big documentary on the history of the Fourth World that’ll be released to tie-in with the next Fourth World-related movie that people at DC years ago said would never happen. And Mike is exactly right. They thought he would fail. They thought he would fail and they wanted him to fail because they had this idea that comics were created in the office. The attitude that DC Comics had at the time was, “Well, the office makes the comics. The Superman books are great because we take the talents of the talented freelancer Curt Swan and we put the DC touch on it. We do little things here and there. You can’t do a book completely outside our office,” which is essentially what happened once Mike was lettering and inking the books. The books came in ready to go to the printer as opposed to coming in penciled and then needing lettering and such. That was a loss of control by them and they didn’t like that. They also didn’t like the idea that you could be a professional person if you hadn’t worked for DC before. Mike was an unknown talent to them. He had not been someone they discovered, someone they hired, and they didn’t think that the fact that he’d already been drawing comics for years and been working on newspaper strips and had tons of credits, that that mattered because it wasn’t done for DC. In the same way, they didn’t want Russ Manning. Russ applied for work. MIKE: Well, and one thing I found interesting, because of the deal they had with Vinnie—who as Alex Toth said, “He keeps bragging that he can do ten pages a day”—I did the three pages a day, I kept up. But one of the regulations when they said, “Okay, use the kid,” was I had to accept less money than Vinnie. MARK: Which probably made Mike the lowest paid inker in the history of DC Comics. 62

MIKE: So, on those early issues—Fourth World issues—I was paid $15 a page to ink. MARK: Now if you want to factor in how much you’ve gotten in reprint money… MIKE: Oh, I love those checks! [laughter] One quarter, it’ll be $96, the next quarter $735, then the next quarter’s maybe $200… then it’s $3500! I have nothing bad to say about DC. [laughter] MARK: Anyway, they thought Mike would fail. And I’ve said this before but I think it’s appropriate and it’s something you must understand if you want to know about Kirby. We were very fortunate that Mike existed because we needed someone who could letter, we needed someone who was a good inker, and we needed someone who was ridiculously reliable. Mike Royer is one of the two most reliable artists I have ever seen in this business, the other being Dan Spiegle. You don’t mind being compared to Dan Spiegle? MIKE: Oh! I’m flattered! MARK: This is not just my opinion. Mike and I both worked a lot for Gold Key and their editor, Chase Craig. I asked him one time, just out of the blue, “Who’s the most reliable artist you ever had working for you?” and he said, “Two guys. Spiegle and Royer.” And it was true. If Mike had been late with books, [DC] would’ve insisted on, “Well, send an issue back for somebody else to ink.”

make a living anymore. I need something else.” He got another job. In the midst of this he had married and was raising a family, and he felt that comics were just not something he could make a living in. He eventually moved back to near Chicago and nobody heard from him. He was incommunicado. I believe John Morrow tried to interview him a couple of times. He would not be interviewed. He didn’t want to talk about those days. [Editor’s Note: I did successfully conduct a short interview with Bruce by mail for TJKC #17, but all my subsequent attempts were declined.] So, about 12 years ago I guess, somebody at DC called me. They said, “Do you know how we can reach Bruce Berry? We’re sitting on a lot of reprint money for him.” I said, “I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can do.” I called a fellow named Richard Kyle, who gave me the phone number. “Don’t pass this on to anybody else. Bruce does not want to be called but I think he’ll take your call.” So I called him up and the attitude was, “Oh, Mark! It’s great to hear from you… but I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to talk about comics. I put that behind me and I don’t want to have anything to do with this anymore. No, it’s nothing personal. I just do not even think about that part of my life anymore.” And I said, “Well, Bruce, I just have to tell you that DC Comics is sitting on some reprint money for you and I wanted to give you the number so you could call them

MIKE: As a freelancer in comic books, I was working with Russ Manning and doing things for Western Publishing, the Gold Key comic book line, and I got a mortgage from Bank of America on my first house on the strength of a letter from Gold Key’s editor Chase Craig saying, “We set our clocks by Mike Royer. We only wish we could get more work out of him!” MARK: Yeah, and that would be true if the work was not as good as it was. The fact that it was as good as it was, was like a bonus, that Mike did such a fine job. I want to talk about two things here, and I’ll come back to him shortly, but Mike reminded me. After Mike stopped inking Jack, a lot of it was done by a fellow named D. Bruce Berry, a very nice guy who worked very hard, but he had the problem of not being Mike Royer, but being expected to ink and letter as fast as Mike did. I think if Bruce had done half the work as opposed to almost all of it, he would have had a happier life and would’ve maybe done a little better work. He was not quite experienced enough for that job at the time. When Jack went back to Marvel, he tried to get Bruce in there because Bruce’s income depended on Jack Kirby. As you all know, Jack was very concerned about everybody’s need to make an income, everybody’s need to put food on their table, and over the years he sometimes did not ask for people to be replaced on his work because he thought, “Well, the guy needs to make a living. I don’t want to take away someone’s livelihood.” Well, they couldn’t make a deal right involving Bruce. Marvel gave Bruce some work but it was not steady, and Bruce finally decided to get out of the business and stop working. I was getting him some work on Hanna-Barbera comics and one day he said to me, “Mark, I’m getting out of comics completely. I can’t 63

(previous page) An example of Jack’s work on The Raven, an animation project for Ruby-Spears. The lower page appears to be a possible comic book treatment for the concept (along the lines of how Jack drew one issue of a Roxie’s Raiders comic in conjunction with its animation proposal), although this could be an unrelated concept. (below) Glen Gold noticed on this Boys’ Ranch #1 page, there’s blank space down the right side of all three tiers, and a pencil line running vertically to a page number a halfinch in from the panel borders. Glen says, “Jack never drew stuff off-balance. For some reason, he penciled this as if the page was narrower. Why?”

and claim it.” He said, “Thank you, but I’m not gonna do that. I want to put that behind me.” And he politely hung up on me. I spent a few minutes thinking, “I’ve gotta do this.” I called him back. He was a little bothered that I did. I said, “Bruce, I just have to get this off my conscience. Please write down the phone number of the person at DC who has the money for you.” He said, “Okay, I’ll do that.” So he wrote down the phone number and I said, “Bruce, it’s a lot more money than you think.” [snickers from audience] And he said, “Come on. How much could it be?” I said, “How much do you think it is?” “Oh… reprints of comic books? Maybe a hundred dollars or so.” I said, “Bruce, it’s a lot more than that. And you owe it to your family to call up and find out how much it is.” I said, “You’ll never hear from me again. Thank you very much. G’bye.” So three days later I got a call from Bruce Berry. [laughter] They gave him a check for $8500, [audience murmurs] which is probably about what he made inking Jack, all those issues together. And he said, “Okay, I’m going to allow one more part of my comic book history in my life again.” The other thing I wanted to tell you about… and I’m not gonna take a lot of time because we’ve got a lot of panel…

did brilliant work! I just wanted to… MARK: Yeah, he was just not… And if he’d started inking back-up features slowly, he might have turned into one of the best inkers Jack ever had, but he just couldn’t ink 15 pages a week. Nobody could! We’re talking about 15 pages a week. Joe Sinnott and Frank Giacoia both told me that they could not ink 15 pages of Jack a week. It wasn’t humanly possible. And they didn’t even have to letter it. Mike had to letter it, too. Anyway, Friday evening at the Eisner Awards, we presented the Bill Finger Award—you all know what that is—posthumously to E. Nelson Bridwell. I don’t think it has been mentioned adequately in Kirby history how much E. Nelson Bridwell helped Jack Kirby at DC. He was Jack’s biggest champion in the office. He was Jack’s liaison. Nelson was one of the sweetest men in the business and easily—and I don’t mean this lightly—the smartest guy who ever worked in comics. This was a guy who could quote from The Canterbury Tales. I’m serious. He knew everything. He was a walking encyclopedia. If Jack had done the Fantastic Four story about Quasimodo, the computer brain thing, after he met Nelson, I would swear to you he was based on Nelson. But Nelson was that bright and that smart and he was treated… I tell people that around the DC offices he was treated exactly the same way that Alan Brady treated Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. They called him an idiot, a moron… in spite of being smarter than anybody in this whole industry. A lot of the good that came out of Jack’s DC books is owed to Nelson. Sometimes he would tip Jack off on things that Jack wasn’t supposed to know they were doing to his work. Sometimes he’d tip me off. He was one of the people pushing Colletta in New York. Colletta would actually turn his work in to Nelson with pencils un-erased and Nelson had to erase the pencils. And Nelson would go to Colletta and say, “Hey, how about finishing that background before I erase this?” And Colletta would say, “I’m not finishing that background. Just erase the page.” I’m actually going to be finishing my Jack Kirby book real soon and I’ve got a lot of pages in there with stories about Nelson. Nelson helped Jack out so much. He was one of the guys who fought having Jack’s Superman heads and Jimmy Olsen heads redrawn. Fought it like crazy. But he had very little power at that company. I just wanted to get on the record here that we owe that gent a debt. And by the way, we’ve been joined by Mr. Kurt Busiek, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] Kurt, when do you have to leave?

MIKE: Can I interrupt you just a second? When we were talking about D. Bruce Berry… In his own right, as an artist, the man did beautiful work! Very from another period—like the end of the 19th century. As an illustrator, he

KURT BUSIEK: I have to leave about ten of noon. MARK: Okay. I’m gonna stop and do one quick thing here because Kurt has to leave. I want to do a brief photo group shot of everybody on this panel. And if you want to take pictures, you can come up and do that. Then we will resume the panel. [pause as photographer takes group photo] MARK: Back to the panel. Thank you all very much. Let me ask Tracy and Jeremy. Thank you for being with us. We want to try to have Kirby family on this panel from now on. We should have more of ’em here. [applause] Are you, like me, continually amazed by how much Jack’s fame grows? Get closer to the microphones and tell me how in the last few years you’ve noticed the increased interest in Jack’s work—even in what some of us might consider lesser work in some cases. TRACY KIRBY: Well, I’ve seen a real difference, even on a daily basis—never in my life growing up, and even into my early adulthood where I would have friends, or just people that I would be acquainted with or I would get introduced to, and I’d say my last name. Nobody would ever connect my name with who my grandfather was, and now that’s completely changed. Even my daughter at her school—you mention Jack Kirby and now even the kids know who he is. So when you mention the movies and the credit that he’s finally getting on social media and the mainstream movies and television, I just think that’s wonderful. I love the fact that that respect is there, finally, in the broader sense, than just the wonderful people that really know the history and the truth behind where all these comics and all these characters come from. So, to me it’s just been wonderful. I love being able to see my grandfather’s name and presence everywhere, and not just here, but in so many other places. [applause] PAUL S. LEVINE: Your grandfather was wise because what he cared about more than anything was recognition and credit. When I first started to represent him and he and Mark came to my office in 1981—the very first law firm I worked for, straight out of law school— the first thing we talked about was credit, and how important that was to him, even more than money. JEREMY KIRBY: Yeah, it’s been amazing, especially to see all of you here today. It’s extremely touching for everyone to be here with us. The family thinks of the fans—all of you in the audience—as extended family, so it’s wonderful to see everyone here each and every year and to see it grow, and to see more people here with us. It’s just wonderful! My best analogy would be, for the first 20 years of my life, people would see my name and they’d say, “Oh, are you related to the Kirby vacuum people?” [laughter, Tracy concurs] And then the last 20 years of my life, it’s like, “Are you related to that guy that I’m seeing on the Marvel movies, or on the DC movies now?” “Yeah! That’s my grandfather.” It’s been amazing so that’s the change I’m seeing. To have people come up, even on the street and recognize us, my grandfather—it’s been wonderful. MARK: I just realized this. For years, anytime I’ve Googled my name, I would see ads for vacuum cleaners because my name is on so many pages with “Kirby.”

And that’s gone away. I now see ads for Marvel-related toys and things like that. Marvel’s probably using vacuums now to suck up all the money. [laughter] Tracy, you wanted to say something? TRACY: Well, just yesterday I had an opportunity from a wonderful new friend of mine who was able to get my daughter and I through the crowd to... They had a signing at the Marvel booth yesterday to meet the directors and the screenwriters of Endgame, and it was really cool because we got to go. It was just supposed to be a really quick line walk-through and I mentioned, “Oh, by the way, this is my daughter and she’s the great-granddaughter of Jack Kirby.” And then here’s the Russo brothers and the screenwriters and they started thanking me and her and going, “Oh my God! Your grandfather is amazing!” And so to me, that was: “See? You’ve got a pretty cool Great Grandpa!” [laughter] It was pretty neat to see them actually thanking us instead of us going there. So we think it’s awesome. MARK: That’s great. These are things that make me smile. There’s a couple things I’m not allowed to announce about reprints of Jack’s stuff that are coming, that are things you wouldn’t dream they’d do and that never have been done. I just wanted to say you’ll like a lot of it, but… and also with the credit. I can’t talk too much about this: When they went through that lawsuit which you all know occurred, one of the things that everybody on the Kirby side, and all of us who testified for Kirby wanted, was that there was going to be a credit, that no settlement would be made without the proper credit, no matter what the money end of it was. And they held to that. If you look at some of the things Disney has done about Marvel publicity for the last couple years, you will probably come to the conclusion—and you will not be wrong—that there are people there who feel that they’ve got to really remind people Jack was more than just the artist who drew somebody else’s ideas—that he was a co-creator of the characters in every sense of the word “co-creator.” PAUL: Which again reinforces what he thought. I don’t know, obviously, what his thinking was in the ’70s and ’60s when he was working for Marvel, but when he left Marvel and I started representing him in ’81, that was his thinking. And he was, again, extremely wise to predict how important it was going to be. MARK: You may remember that around ’66 or ’67, Marvel put out a book called Fantasy Masterpieces, where they reprinted the early Captain America stories from the 1940s, and they took off the box that said “by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby,” and that was because Mr. 65

(previous page, top) A particularly egregious example of Vince Colletta erasing details, from Thor. (previous page, bottom) Glen Gold (again) recognized that the Nazi on this unused pencil piece matches the one in Mister Miracle #13 (above). So it was originally meant to be a chapter splash for that issue.

(this spread) Kirby was a master of the nine-panel fight scene page, and used it repeatedly throughout his career where appropriate. Shown are examples from (this page clockwise from top) Sgt. Fury #5 (1964), Kamandi #14 (1974), X-Men #17 (layouts only, 1966), and (next page clockwise from top) Fighting American #3 (1954), Two-Gun Kid #62 (1963), Bullseye #6 (1955—granted it’s only 7 panels, but effective just the same), and Tales of Suspense #85 (1967).

Simon had some active litigation against them at that time. But that horrified Jack. He likened it to how, after Khrushchev fell in Russia, they’d written his name out of the history books. He was convinced that the minute he stopped working for Marvel, they would take his name off everything he’d done. It surprised him they didn’t. But he was very concerned about that. He wanted credit for what he had done. I wouldn’t say it was just out of pride. He recognized that money was sometimes linked to credit. That was one of the reasons he wanted it, but he was very proud of his work and he wanted it on there, which was odd because he didn’t sign most of his stuff in the ’50s. Jack’s name appeared nowhere on any of the stuff he did for DC in the ’50s, any Challengers of the Unknown or any of those House of Mystery stories. He could’ve signed them but he didn’t, but he was very proud of his Marvel work which he considered “his” in a way the 1950s DC work wasn’t. PAUL: And when the first Spider-Man movie was announced, he—wisely again—was concerned that he wouldn’t get a credit on the screen when, you know, the idea of making a movie based on a comic book was just being developed.

MARK: And he also felt that his reputation was one of the things he was leaving his family. He wanted them to make some money off his name. JEREMY: The ability to be properly credited is really important because it helps with what you want to do in the future. So, if people just see you as an artist, that’s great, but in a business sense they can hire another artist, but they can’t hire a genius creator. So, to be credited as that creative force, that co-creative force, was very important as it would allow him to do other things in the future. You know, from what he said, that was always something in the back of his mind, something that was very important to him. Because he wanted to do other things and he wanted people to take him seriously, not just as an artist—but if you’re trying to go to Hollywood, or trying to do these other projects, like animation, you really wanted to be known as someone who had this creative mind as well. MARK: Now, during that lawsuit, which we won’t be talking too much about tonight—any more than this—I was limited by request of his attorney to not say much on social media. And, of course, on social media, you find some of the stupidest conspiracy theories known to mortal man. You know, people have the most bizarre… There was a guy on a Facebook forum insisting that Klaus Janson inked the Mister Miracle issues that were credited to Vince Colletta. Klaus Janson was, like, nine at the time or something like that. KURT: That’s why they looked like that. [laughter] MARK: I did not say that. Let the record show… [laughter] When John Morrow transcribes this, make sure you put “abusive” in front of that comment. [laughter] I interviewed Klaus Janson at HeroesCon a couple of months ago and I asked him, “Did you really ink the Mister Miracle issues?” And Klaus said, “That’s ridiculous. I was too young. I wasn’t in comics at the time. I couldn’t have worked on those things.” And the video is on YouTube someplace. And one of the many people who picked up on that theory wrote me and they said, “I don’t understand why Klaus Janson’s lying. It’s obvious that he did it.” [laughter] [Editor’s Note: We’ll have that HeroesCon transcript in TJKC #81, right after next issue’s special double-size Fourth World Companion issue.] One of the people who defended sanity at that time was Kurt Busiek. Kurt is a very great champion of creator’s rights and of the truth. I was very grateful to him for saying some things I was not allowed to say during that period, and bringing some sanity, because he had a reputation. He was very well-trusted, he was very well-respected… KURT: People are very foolish. [laughter] MARK: …and was not seen as some of us are, as a partisan, by those who wish to deny what we’re saying. Kurt, first I want to thank you for those things. How did you feel about taking up the championship of straightening out the truth on all that stuff? KURT: Well, I’m fascinated by comics history and I have a really strong overdeveloped sense of when someone is wrong on the internet. I must fix this! [chuckles] But it annoyed me to read an article on The Beat or wherever else and have somebody respond to it saying that the Kirbys were 68

only doing this for attention, or everybody knew what the deal was back then. I had to point out—I say “had to” because, you know, I felt somebody had to point out—nobody knew what the deal was back then. There was literally no difference between an all-rights sale and a work-for-hire sale legally back then. It didn’t change until the ’70s. So you know, companies didn’t care about the difference because it made no legal difference at that point. I used to get checks from Marvel with the contract on the back that said, “By the way, in case we don’t own this, you transfer all rights to us,” so I know that, from their point of view, they were looking at it as a rights transfer. And a rights transfer is different than a work-made-for-hire. People inside the industry—probably about half of us—know what that difference means, but it’s crucial to the loss of the issues of proper credit and ownership in this material. So I found myself explaining that over and over again, and I will say that I was greatly benefited by the fact that I have been in contact with Mark since about 1981-82, so I had heard him explain this sort of stuff before he was asked to stop explaining this sort of stuff. [laughs] So, I’ve been through Evanier School, and was able to say… MARK: And that’ll get you a job in almost any place in this country. KURT: …I tell you. The hours were long, but the pay was nil. [laughter] I’m not partisan in that I want to see all glory to Jack, or all glory to Stan. I want to see the truth. I want to know the best we can know in terms of who did what. You know, we’ll never know exactly what specific idea came from what guy, all the way down the line. We’ll never be able to know that, but what we can know, I’d like to know. So I love projects like TwoMorrows’ Stuf’ Said book, that digs into that in an historical way, that brings things to light that people wouldn’t have known before. I love Tom Brevoort, on his blog. Tom is a senior Marvel editor. Tom is as fascinated by this stuff as anybody, and he went through the early issues of Fantastic Four saying, you know, “This page is a traditional Kirby layout. This page is the sort of thing, you know, what it looked like after Stan had asked for corrections—this figure’s been moved…” and he’s trying to figure out, “Where are the changes? Where are the thumbprints of the collaboration?” And I eat that stuff up for breakfast. I just love knowing the

details. You know, on the origin of Spider-Man, the idea that it goes back to the Silver Spider and… Otto Binder? Was he the one that…? MARK: Jack Oleck. MARK: Jack Oleck. And being able to see the evidence of roots, it doesn’t do any… the people that just want to wave a flag and say, “My guy did it.” “No, my guy did it,” and you’re saying, “Well look, if you look at the historical record, Sid Jacobson suggested… ”. He was an editor and he suggested the guy have a web gun. So, Sid’s a part of this DNA, Jack Oleck wrote some stuff, Joe Simon was definitely involved… I don’t think they used any of what [C.C.] Beck did. But who knows? Then history has roots going deeper and more complexly than you know! All of those roots, all of those things that we know are part of the development of Spider-Man came to Marvel through Jack Kirby. So, you can’t say, “Well, this stuff happened,” and not say, “Kirby’s the guy who brought Spider-Man to Marvel, in a form that was modified by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee into what we know he is today.” I love knowing that stuff. [laughter] I love writing comics, but I love knowing comics history, and so I will tell people this sort of thing on the internet because it pleases me. [laughter] MARK: We only have Kurt for a few more minutes. I want to ask him, briefly, you did a series for Dynamite Comics [Kirby: Genesis] with Kirby characters. Tell us about it. Were you nervous, excited, inspired? KURT: Yes. [laughs] MARK: What was present on that project that wasn’t on some of your other projects? KURT: The way I would joke about it, and there’s truth in the joke, is: the chance to get to work with Kirby characters that somebody else hadn’t screwed up yet. [laughter] So I get to be the person to screw it up. You know, it combines that inspiration and that nervousness, all in a gag, but it’s all true. When we started working on Kirby: Genesis, I’m pretty sure that the guys

(previous page) Kirby’s cover pencils for the 1975 Miamicon program book. Kirby and Stan Lee appeared together (left), promoting Jack’s return to Marvel Comics. (below) Alex Ross’ variant cover for Kirby: Genesis #2. (bottom row) The ever-insightful Glen Gold has discovered what he calls Jack’s recurring “Lady-goinghmmmm-in-theforeground motif” in many of Kirby’s final 1980s stories. We even found one of the Flash pondering in such a manner. Does anyone recall more of these such instances, prior to the 1980s?

at Dynamite would have been happy if we’d taken the best-known Kirby creator-owned material and just rebuilt that in a polished way. And I wanted as much as I could get my hands on. I went through The Jack Kirby Collector looking for any drawing of anything that was not owned by Marvel or DC or any animation companies. Oh, look! These designs that Jack did for a college play. These are costume designs; we can use them. The Kirby Estate owns these. I built up an image file that was hundreds of pages long of material that we could conceivably use, and we built around that. The Secret City characters: We had the three Secret City characters that Jack had built for those books and we tried to throw out any name or element that was added to it at Topps so that we could go back to the Kirby version. But we felt like we needed one more guy for this, so let’s go into the Kirby files and find somebody whose design sensibility sort of matches these guys and say, “Okay, that’s the fourth one”—the process of looking at characters that were designed for the New Gods but never used, or characters that he designed around the same time as the New Gods, but for other purposes and never used. Just looking at it and saying, “What does this inspire? What does the image suggest?” instead of deciding, “Well, this character looks good in green. He can do plant stuff.” We couldn’t know what Kirby was thinking about when he designed the character, but we could know what the design made us—me and Alex Ross—feel like it might be for, and we tried to stay as close to those visceral inspirations as possible.

step into that. It’s been quite a while since I worked on that book, and even today, I’ll see a new Kirby Collector: “Hey, I don’t know this picture. I don’t know where that came from. Is this somebody… ? Could I have used this guy?!” [laughter] MARK: We’re going to let Kurt get out of here. Would you thank Mr. Kurt Busiek? [applause] KURT: Thank you very much. Sorry to arrive late and leave early but, you know, I am a freelancer. [laughter] MARK: Now! I want to talk about this man to my left here. This is Buzz Dixon, as you know. Buzz and I have known each other for years, and spilled blood on several of the same projects over the years. Buzz, would you tell the story—I love this story—of the first time you met Jack Kirby? BUZZ DIXON: I like to say I became friends with Jack Kirby before I knew he was Jack Kirby, and I’ll explain that. I was working at RubySpears Productions. Steve Gerber was the story editor there—Steve and I were good friends—and we were developing Thundarr the Barbarian for Saturday morning. And Steve was talking to Joe Ruby. He said, “I know a person who’d be a good artist. Let me bring him in and he can sit in on the first production meeting and maybe contribute some ideas.” He did not mention who this person was. So, the day comes for the meeting, I go in the conference room with John Dorman, who was the head of the storyboard department— and as I told Mark before, one of these days, we’ve gotta have a John Dorman panel. John was a wild man!

PAUL: So from the lawyer point of view: you would give a list of these things to [Dynamite publisher] Nick Barrucci, who would give them to me and say, “Here’s the stuff we want to use,” and I’d look at this list of all these different things and I’d go to John’s Kirby Collector, because I have no idea what three quarters of them were, [laughter] and we had to clear them one by one to make sure that yes, indeed, you could do what you wanted to do with them.

MARK: And no one will believe a word of it! [laughter] BUZZ: That’s true. But anyway, John was in the conference room and he was talking to this older man and John didn’t make any introductions. So, I figured, well, we’ll just have group introductions when the meeting starts. So I sit down, we started talking, and… As you know if you’ve been at a convention or any place where creative people are talking, they just start spit-balling ideas and building off of one another. I was really enjoying this guy’s input! You’ve heard the expression, “There was a twinkle in his eye”? This was the only person I have ever met whose eyes literally were twinkling, like sparkles of light going on. One by one the other people came in and nobody introduced anybody else. So, okay, fine, we finally get Joe Ruby to come in and sit down and the meeting starts, and we start kicking ideas around, and I’m really enjoying this older guy’s input. He’s got these great ideas! He would hear something and he would add to it and plus it, and all of a sudden it became five times better than the original suggestion. And he was really nice, a sweet personality to work with. It was… you know the expression: “The person you want in a foxhole with you.” Well, he was definitely the person you would want on a project like this with you. So, the meeting goes on and on and then finally we come to the end and the old guy says, “Well, I’ll go home and I’ll draw up a few of these and I’ll bring ’em back next week.” Steve and I go to our offices to type up our parts of the meeting, what we were gonna be doing—story ideas and whatnot—and I go in Steve’s office and I said, “Steve, this sounds like it’s gonna be a really exciting project but, uh… who’s the old guy? Nobody introduced me.” And Steve said, “That was Jack Kirby.” I go, “That was Jack Kirby?” That’s kind of… It was more like, “That was Jack Kirby??!!!!” [laughter] Because at that time, the internet was just getting started and people weren’t exchanging photographs on it as easily as they do now, and I had never seen a photo of Jack! I knew who he was by reputation. All the caricatures of him that appeared at Marvel were always from behind or with a desk in

KURT: I apologize for that. [laughter] PAUL: It was a pleasure. With all the legal work I do, that was a good one. MARK: And I’d get called in the middle of the night about some character. “Kurt wants to use this one. Where do we find it?” KURT: Well, when I did send in these lists, I would say, “I found this picture in Kirby Collector #X”, or there was a British-published Kirby fanzine. I mean, I always sourced where I found them from because I wanted to know if I was looking at a character that was owned by Hanna-Barbera and simply hadn’t been attributed. I didn’t want to

front of him or something like that, so I never saw a picture of his face. I had no idea it was Jack Kirby I was talking to… It’s a good thing, too, because my contribution to the meeting would have been [Buzz makes a high-pitched babbling sound]. MARK: Someone has to transcribe that. [laughter] BUZZ: But anyway, it was a great chance to meet him, and the more we worked on the project, the more I came to love him. Just a wonderful human being and, on top of that, an incredible artist. One of the joys of my life was that show. I’m gonna build off something Kurt said today, really quick, about how somebody will create something and you try to find the roots of it. We were doing a script where Thundarr and Ariel and Ookla have to get on a raft and cross the river, and Jack was doing all the backgrounds and detail, all the props and vehicles and stuff—supporting monsters and that sort of thing. And Jack saw in the script it said, “Get on a raft,” and he draws this picture of an aircraft carrier deck that’s been torn off the aircraft carrier and put on giant, Sequoia-size logs, to cross the river with. And I took one look at that and said, “Oh, no, Jack. We’re not using that in this script. This is too good to waste as a single shot background detail. We’re gonna build a whole script around this!” And we did “The Treasure of the Moks” based on that. That became the pirate ship that Captain Kordon, the female pirate and her crew used to attack the Mok village, and we got to introduce Ookla’s family, all sorts of things. But that would not have come about if Jack had just done, “Yeah, here’s a raft.” You know, Jack always contributed far more than he needed to contribute and it was always a plus. It was always wonderful. [applause] MARK: One of the reasons I wanted to have Buzz on the panel here is I think there’s a lot of confusion about what Jack did on Thundarr the Barbarian. The aforementioned conspiracy-type people on the internet have come to the conclusion Jack must have written every episode of Thundarr… because he probably could have. But that doesn’t mean he did. They’d be better if he had! [audience snickers] But when we were working on Thundarr—I worked on a couple episodes—the stories originated with Steve Gerber and Buzz and a couple of the rest of us, but we had this volume of ideas that Jack would throw out, as sketches. And I think Jack did this to a certain extent at Marvel. I think there’s an awful lot of elements in comics that Jack did not draw that were taken from his endless pile of ideas. In a lot of the cases he would design the cover for a book before it was drawn and it was so good, he designed the villain, or maybe came up with the idea for the villain. But also, there’s cases where he would just do sketches and things and there’d be an idea that was sitting around, and it couldn’t fit in Fantastic Four so it might turn up in Iron Man. You have to understand, if you knew Jack, you know you couldn’t stop him from doing this. BUZZ: Oh, God, no. MARK: You could not tell him, “Jack we don’t want any more ideas.” He had ideas by the ton. Len Wein and Marv Wolfman frequently told the story, that they took

Jack an idea as a teenager for a super-hero and Jack looked at this thing and told them 15 new ideas, and props, and things, gimmicks the character could use, off the top of his head. He did this. And what he did on Thundarr was he designed a lot of characters. Unfortunately, because of the way animation is done, a lot of those drawings had to be traced or simplified by others for animation purposes, and, of course, for the final rendering, they were drawn by artists who were not Jack’s equal. This was the same problem with Hanna-Barbera where the guys who were working on Alex Toth’s model sheets just plain weren’t as good as Alex Toth, and the designs of the characters were diminished by that. But on Thundarr, Jack would just bring in ideas, throw them out, and if they were fit in as you did, they might inspire a story someplace, but Jack did not write stories. And he did not do storyboards. People think he did storyboards. He did not do storyboards. He was a concept artist. He did drawings; he’d get a script and it’d say, “Here’s three henchmen with a villain,” and Jack would design the three henchmen and the villain. BUZZ: Oh, yeah. It was just incredible the work that would come in. He did three drunken sailors for a Goldie Gold episode, and it was marvelous! [Editor’s Note: They were actually for Roxie’s Raiders.] These guys were hilarious. Go on the website Bristol Board— they’ve got 71

(previous page) Kirby’s aircraft carrier raft from the October 4, 1980 “Treasure of the Moks” episode of Thundarr the Barbarian. (above) Drunken sailors for Roxie’s Raiders. (below) Jack’s character design work on Power Planet, after inking and coloring by other Ruby-Spears artists.

tons of Jack’s work there and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Three drunken sailors, and of course by the time it finally gets on the air, it’s been so sanitized you can scarcely recognize Jack’s input into it. It was just marvelous, though. MARK: Now, at Ruby-Spears you worked with Jack on a lot of development shows that never went anywhere. BUZZ: Yeah. Erik the Roo. None of you have ever heard of Erik the Roo. Erik was a barbarian kangaroo that Jack came up with. [laughter] He was going to co-exist in Thundarr’s world. He’d be just hoppin’ around doin’ his own barbarian things separately from Thundarr.

(above) Destroyer Duck #5 letter column. (below) Destroyer Lawyer fights! (next page, top) Another Kirby animation concept. (next page, bottom) Apparently “Kris” was a demon at Frisbee...

MARK: I worked with Jack on a thing called Animal Hospital. There were quite a few strange ideas. Jack would just come up with all these drawings and people would take them and come up with names for them, or he’d come up with names for them. BUZZ: There was a movie idea that we kicked around for a while called Rip-Off, and the concept was we were going to rip-off every major Hollywood movie ever made. [laughter] We compressed it all into one film and Jack just did a ton of stuff like Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds… you know, just take every movie that was made in the

’80s and cram ’em all together into one thing. MARK: Before we get off of these characters, talk about the way that people at the studio treated Jack. BUZZ: Far better than the people in comics, because Jack was… They recognized Jack as like, this endless source of creativity and inspiration and just incredibly dynamic work. Another thing you probably never heard of was a show called Roxie’s Raiders which was… To be honest, it was a rip-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Roxie was a teenage girl who had inherited a circus, and the Raiders were basically all the guys in the sideshow, who teamed together to help her. And he created this incredible line of characters and incredible adventures and whatnot! This is one of those shows that should have sold in a heartbeat, but it came at a time when there was so much worrying about imitatable violence and stuff like this, and it got squelched because of that. I think they picked Little Clowns of Happytown. [light snickering] No, they loved Jack. And in the Ruby-Spears archives, they’ve got, literally, stacks of artwork this high that, you know, Jack would do the drawings and people would ink them and they would… I think they even had a series, a bubblegum card collection series, based on this stuff. Whoever owns that artwork, whoever owns those characters, they’ve got a goldmine! MARK: They’re still trying to place those characters. Okay, now, we’ve just got a few more minutes. Let’s talk a little bit about Destroyer Duck. Destroyer Duck, as you may know, was originally created… Steve Gerber and Jack created it for a benefit comic to raise money for Steve’s lawsuit about Howard the Duck. Jack drew 20 pages without pay, Alfredo Alcala inked them without pay, Tom Orzechowski lettered them without pay, and so on. That whole book… The people at DC, I talked about earlier, had this idea you couldn’t produce comic books without a big production department. We produced that comic book in my office, in my studio. All production work was done there easily. BUZZ: Pre-digital. MARK: Pre-digital, yes. I did lettering corrections, and we colored it and did everything else except the printing. And Steve wrote the first… I think he wrote the first issue after that. Didn’t you take over with the third one? BUZZ: I contributed to the [fifth] one because Steve… I loved him dearly, but Steve would occasionally have problems meeting deadlines. He needed to give Jack something to draw while he was finishing up the rest of the script and he said, “Can you write a fight scene between Destroyer Lawyer and this villain from the previous book?” So I said, “Sure. I’ll be happy to do that.” So I wrote this scene and all the sound effects, all the fisticuffs in it, were all legal terms. [laughter] Anytime Destroyer Lawyer would land a punch on the villain, it’d be some legal term. MARK: Like, “TORT?” [laughter] BUZZ: Tort, yeah. Things like that. It was two silly pages and I had a lot of fun with it, but my first credit in comics, I wrote a script for Jack Kirby! It’s been downhill ever since. [laughter] MARK: All right. Buzz was one of the many people who

JEREMY: Yeah, I think it’s amazing and it’s wonderful to see, obviously. I just wish that he was around maybe another 10 or 15 years to be able to see it himself. I think that he’d just be… Anyone who met him, you guys, you know how much he loved talking with his fans, and I think for him to have been able to see his name up there and to be able to meet more of you every year, he would have absolutely loved that. I think deep down he knew what would happen, which gives us some solace. He knew that you can’t un-create these creations. You can’t keep them down. They just have a way of getting bigger and bigger every year. So, I really do believe that he knew

supported Jack behind the scenes and in front. You know, we have like a little hall of good guys here that support the Kirby family and Kirby efforts and things like that, and Buzz did an awful lot to help out over the years. Jeremy, Tracy, I guess what I want to ask you about is, are you as happy as I am about the way things have gone with Jack? About his name in the credits and everything of that sort? I’ve told this story. I could not sit through the Marvel movies. I couldn’t go see them. I walked out of X-Men and I was angry. I don’t get very angry, but I walked out of the X-Men movie angry. JEREMY: I was just gonna say that, actually. It’s changed so much over the years. I went to the first X-Men movie and watched it. I was very excited and I was like, “All right, I’m gonna see my grandfather’s name up there,” and it was the very, very, very, very last credit there. MARK: It looked like the bottom line of an eye chart. [laughter] TRACY: Yeah. I mean, honestly, should Jack Kirby have a panel in Hall H? Heck yeah, I think! [applause] I think there should be a major tribute for his name out there, for everybody who attends Comic-Con. I mean, they probably know his name, but will that ever happen? Who knows? But I think that would be awesome. I do think there’s been lots of leaps and bounds with respect to credit—even what’s taking place now with different things. I hope to be working with and helping the new Comic-Con Museum, which is going to have some great year-round exhibits and educational programs down the road for this type of venue, and for the people that really made this industry what it is. So, I really see there’s a great future ahead for the credit and the respect to just continue and grow. 73

it would come. I just wish he was around to see it.

(above) Glen Gold (him again?) made one other curious discovery: “I think Kirby dialogued much of this Not Brand Echh #1 story (left, 1967) and Stan added gags. But this is also the ending of Silver Star (#6, 1984, below). Darius Drumm can’t kill someone with his own face. I’m 100% sure Jack wrote this story.”

TRACY: But it’s also great that there’s people such as yourselves that can help support it. I mean, right now, go visit the Jack Kirby Museum booth here at Comic-Con. All that creative… they’ve got such awesome stuff! Rand, and Tom, and John, bless ’em. These guys that have been doing this for years and have really been developing some amazing archives and exhibits and things for everyone to enjoy on a yearround basis through social media, through the websites, and even through pop-ups! The more we spread the word, the more we keep growing that respect and that credit out there to the general public. I think that matters. [applause] [Mark takes time here to recognize Rand Hoppe and Tom Kraft of the Jack Kirby Museum, and John Morrow of TwoMorrows Publishing. Also, Barry Ira Geller notes preliminary plans for a Lord of Light film.] JEREMY: I just want to say that Thundarr the Barbarian was my absolute favorite cartoon. [laughter] TRACY: There is a Netflix reboot of Thundarr coming out. MARK: They’re talking about Thundarr from time to time. There’s a little legal thing I’m not at liberty to discuss but one of these days, everything Jack did’s gonna be revived. Give me one minute here to say one more thing about Thundarr. A lot of people wonder what Jack did on that show; I should have mentioned this earlier. You sell a Saturday morning show with artwork, big fancy artwork. The original drawings, the concepts, were done by Alex Toth. ABC was considering the show. They said, “We’re not sure yet. We need more artwork.” Mr. Toth was unavailable. I recommended Jack to Joe Ruby, Jack came in, and he did these things. Alfredo Alcala inked the first ones, Roz inked a couple after that, and that helped sell the show, and Jack was attached to it. So, we owe Alex Toth a debt of gratitude for being too busy to continue working on that show... [laughter] There’ll be another Jack Kirby tribute panel, probably in this same room at this same time next year. But if you look at it as you go around the convention, Jack is… everywhere! Thank you all for coming. [applause] H 74

Keep The World of TwoMorrows spinning! Two great ways to help us stay in business!

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2020

Due to the recent pandemic store closings, we’ve adjusted our schedule for 2020 releases. See our website for other ship dates.

RETROFAN #12

RETROFAN #13

RETROFAN #14

BRICKJOURNAL #65

Hollywood interviewer CHRIS MANN goes behind the scenes of TV’s sexy sitcom THREE’S COMPANY—and NANCY MORGAN RITTER, first wife of JOHN RITTER, shares stories about the TV funnyman. Plus: RICK GOLDSCHMIDT’s making of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, RONNIE SCHELL interview, Sheena Queen of the TV Jungle, Dr. Seuss toys, Popeye cartoons, DOCTOR WHO’s 1960s U.S. invasion, & more fun features!

Exclusive interviews with Lost in Space’s MARK GODDARD and MARTA KRISTEN, Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, Hogan’s Heroes’ BOB CRANE, a history of Wham-O’s Frisbee, Twilight Zone and other TV sci-fi anthologies, Who Created Archie Andrews?, oddities from the San Diego Zoo, lava lamps, and more with ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, and SCOTT SHAW! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Holy backstage pass! See rare, behind-thescenes photos of many of your favorite Sixties TV shows! Plus: an unpublished interview with Green Hornet VAN WILLIAMS, Bigfoot on Saturday morning television, WOLFMAN JACK, The Saint, the lean years of Star Trek fandom, the WrestleFest video game, TV tie-in toys no kid would want, and more features from FARINO, MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW, and MICHAEL EURY.

BrickJournal celebrates the holidays with brick sculptor ZIO CHAO, takes a offbeat look at Christmas with our minifigure customizer JARED K. BURKS, and decks the halls with the holiday creations of KOEN ZWANENBURG! Plus: “AFOLs” by cartoonist GREG HYLAND, step-bystep “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and more!

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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 KIRBY’S UNINKED PENCILS NS from the 1960s-1980s EDITIOABLE IL (from photocopies AVA NLY preserved in the KIRBY ARCHIVES). Now in FULLFOR O 5.99 COLOR, it showcases Kirby’s art even better! $1.99-$

DIGITAL

Go online for other issues, and an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all in-stock back issues at HALF-PRICE!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #73

KIRBY COLLECTOR #74

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!

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $5.99

KIRBY COLLECTOR #76

KIRBY COLLECTOR #77

ONE-SHOTS! Kirby’s best (and worst) short spurts on his wildest concepts: ANIMATION IDEAS, DINGBATS, JUSTICE INC., MANHUNTER, ATLAS, PRISONER, and more! Plus MARK EVANIER and our other regular panelists, rare Kirby interview, panels from the 2017 Kirby Centennial celebration, pencil art galleries, and some one-shot surprises! BIG BARDA #1 cover finishes by MIKE ROYER!

FUTUREPAST! Kirby’s “World That Was” from Caveman days to the Wild West, and his “World That’s Here” of Jack’s visions of the future that became reality! TWO COVERS: Bullseye inked by BILL WRAY, and Jack’s unseen Tiger 21 concept art! Plus: interview with ROY THOMAS about Jack, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER moderating the biggest Kirby Tribute Panel of all time, pencil art galleries, and more!

FATHERS & SONS! Odin/Thor, Zeus/ Hercules, Darkseid/Orion, Captain America/ Bucky, and other dysfunctional relationships, unpublished 1994 interview with GIL KANE eulogizing Kirby, tributes from Jack’s creative “sons” in comics (MUMY, PALMIOTTI, QUESADA, VALENTINO, McFARLANE, GAIMAN, & MILLER), MARK EVANIER, 2018 Kirby Tribute Panel, Kirby pencil art gallery, and more!

MONSTERS & BUGS! Jack’s monster-movie influences in The Demon, Forever People, Black Magic, Fantastic Four, Jimmy Olsen, and Atlas monster stories; Kirby’s work with “B” horror film producer CHARLES BAND; interview with “The Goon” creator ERIC POWELL; Kirby’s use of insect characters (especially as villains); MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, Golden Age Kirby story, and a Kirby pencil art gallery!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $5.99

KIRBY COLLECTOR #78

SILVER ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! How Kirby kickstarted the Silver Age and revamped Golden Age characters for the 1960s, the Silver Surfer’s influence, pivotal decisions (good and bad) Jack made throughout his comics career, Kirby pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER and our regular columnists, a classic 1950s story, KIRBY/STEVE RUDE cover (and deluxe silver sleeve) and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (DELUXE EDITION w/ silver sleeve) $12.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

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KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

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 Digital Edition) $12.99

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SPECIAL EDITION

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) $7.99

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

The entire six-issue SILVER STAR run is collected here, reproduced from his uninked PENCIL ART, showing Kirby’s work in its undiluted, raw form! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective! (160-page Digital Edition) $7.99

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) $5.99

Jack Kirby Publications JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST:

CENTENNIAL EDITION

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 LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER) $34.95

ISBN: 978-1-60549-083-0 • Diamond Order Code: JAN181989

KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID (Expanded 2nd Edition)

After achieving the quickest sell-out in TwoMorrows’ history, we’re going back to press for an EXPANDED SECOND EDITION, including minor corrections, and 16 NEW PAGES of “Stuf’ Said” by the creators of the Marvel Universe! This first-of-its-kind examination, completed just days before STAN LEE’s recent passing, looks back at KIRBY & LEE’s own words, in chronological order, from fanzine, magazine, radio, and television interviews, to paint the most comprehensive and enlightening picture of their relationship ever done—why it succeeded, where it deteriorated, and when it eventually failed. Also here are recollections from STEVE DITKO, WALLACE WOOD, JOHN ROMITA SR., and more Marvel Bullpen stalwarts who worked with them both. Compiled, researched, and edited by publisher JOHN MORROW. (This book is issue #75 of the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR.) NOW SHIPPING!

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR VOL. 6

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR VOL. 7

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

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

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

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

(176-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $26.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-094-6 • Diamond Comic Distributors Order Code: MAY192003

JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE

In cooperation with DC COMICS, TwoMorrows compiles a tempestuous trio of never-seen 1970s Kirby projects! These are the final complete, unpublished Jack Kirby stories in existence, presented here for the first time! Included are: Two unused DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales (Kirby’s final Kid Gang group, inked by MIKE ROYER and D. BRUCE BERRY, and newly colored for this book)! TRUELIFE DIVORCE, the abandoned newsstand magazine that was too hot for its time (reproduced from Jack’s pencil art—and as a bonus, we’ve commissioned MIKE ROYER to ink one of the stories)! And SOUL LOVE, the unseen ’70s romance book so funky, even a jive turkey will dig the unretouched inks by VINCE COLLETTA and TONY DeZUNIGA. PLUS: There’s Kirby historian JOHN MORROW’s in-depth examination of why these projects got left back, concept art and uninked pencils from DINGBATS, and a Foreword and Introduction by ’70s Kirby assistants MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN! NOW SHIPPING! (176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-091-5 • Diamond Order Code: JUN191992

KIRBY FIVE-OH!

OLD GODS & NEW: A FOURTH WORLD COMPANION (TJKC #80)

Looks back at JACK KIRBY’s own words, as well as those of assistants MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN, inker MIKE ROYER, and publisher CARMINE INFANTINO, to show how Kirby’s epic came about, where it was going, and how he would’ve ended it before it was cancelled by DC Comics!

ER EISN RD AWAINEE! NOM

(160-page FULL-COLOR TPB) $26.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 • Ships Winter 2021 ISBN: 978-1-60549-098-4

TJKC #50 covers all the best of Kirby’s 50-year career in comics: BEST KIRBY STORIES, COVERS, CHARACTER DESIGNS, UNUSED ART, and profiles of/commentary by the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus a 50-PAGE PENCIL ART GALLERY and a COLOR SECTION! Kirby cover inked by DARWYN COOKE, and introduction by MARK EVANIER.

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

(168-page trade paperback) $24.95 (Digital Edition) $7.99 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: MAR151563

Collector

Comments

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 (Picture yourself taking a minute to write to us!)

[There’s nothing like a worldwide pandemic to throw off a production schedule! I originally had this issue roughed-in back in mid-March, but then bookstores, comics shops, and distributors shut down, and I was forced to set it aside for several months, until it was clear we’d even be able to continue publishing. As of this writing, we’re slowly resuming publication of our magazines, but please consider subscribing, so we can weather any future closings. And one correction I forgot to make: In TJKC #76, page 61, the tall gent in the photo with Jack and Joe Shuster is Superman actor Kirk Alyn, not Jerry Siegel. The delay between issues means we’ve got a backlog of missives to dig through, including only a couple of the kudos we’ve gotten on my Eisner Award-nominated DINGBAT LOVE book:] Words of praise and delight aren’t deep and sincere and florid enough to convey my joy for JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE! I LOVE IT! I loved the PDF digital edition, but the BOOK! The glossy pages for the ‘magazine’! The fold-outs! The beautiful reproduction of the actual pencils... Ever since you alerted me to TRUE LIFE DIVORCE and SOUL LOVE in the KIRBY COLLECTOR years ago, I have hoped for this kind of stand-alone volume—but it’s even better than I dared hope! Thank you so much! I have already suggested to friends and colleagues that this is a book to cherish. No aliens, no super powers, no explosions... but Kirby’s astonishing dynamism and storytelling even makes a husband and wife looking at each other a bit testily for a whole page work. Of course he did, he’s Kirby! Nigel Parkinson, UNITED KINGDOM Really enjoying DINGBAT LOVE. Wow, what a great book! You guys knocked it out of the park. So glad you showed the Dingbats story in pencils as well as inks—that’s probably my favorite part, but the whole book is great. Every thing about this book is perfect—the behind the scenes, the paper you used; the new colors are really nice too. Also glad it’s hardcover! Thanks for putting out such a fun book. Kelly Heinze, Lakewood, CA I thoroughly enjoyed your Monster issue [#77]. I have a soft spot for the old monster

stories as I came to them through the early 1970s Marvel reprint comics. What seems clear to me is that the growth and success of Marvel was because they introduced their early super-heroes in monster tales. There was a big audience for those monster comics who readily bought monster tales with super-heroes in them. Once that audience was hooked, the genius of Stan, Jack, Steve Ditko et al. was in moving that monster audience, along with the romance one, into straight super-hero comics with real human emotions and relationships. That combined audience stayed with super-hero comics into adulthood, instead of moving on to other things. You and I are a testament to that. Even after all these years, TJKC continues to surprise me with new facts or opinions. For example, Dick Ayers’ theory that drawing monster comics was a factor in the evolution of Jack’s drawing style over the next few years. It was not something that had occurred to me before, but very much has the ring of truth to it. It sounds like something you could explore in much more depth in a future issue. I like your various articles about film influences on Jack. Visually, I think Silent Movies may have had more of a lasting impact on his work. F. W. Murnau’s 1926 film version of FAUST seems to have had quite an effect on Jack. When I saw the film I was amazed to see visual scenes which were familiar from reading Jack’s comics: Odin’s giant head appearing in mid-air, Surtur and many other monsters stretching upwards, Loki and Karnilla, etc. It is well worth watching. Kevin Ainsworth, London, UNITED KINGDOM I didn’t see the inking credits for the Silver Surfer side-by-side with the pencils in TJKC #78 (page 58). Michael Thibodeaux provided the inks. Marty Lasick, Lincoln CA We’ve always wondered what happened to Jack Kirby’s Spider-Man sample pages. Robin Snyder just published this Steve Ditko quote: “I always regret I threw away Kirby’s pages on his ‘creation’ of Spider-Man. I could have, should have, had the pages photostatted.” Will Murray, Quincy, MA 78

[Ugghh. I hope someone, somehow rescued these from the trash, and they’ll turn up somewhere, someday. Until then, there’s plenty of early Marvel history to explore. I recently had a fun discussion with Marvel’s Tom Brevoort about the purpose of the Human Torch pin-ups in FF #8-9, which I speculated on in STUF’ SAID as early FF presentation pieces. Tom opined:] I think you’re right that they began life as proposal images, but I think you’re looking in the wrong place as to what they were originally for. At a guess, I would suggest that those boards were designed to pitch the Human Torch series that ultimately ran in STRANGE TALES. Both of those pages seem to reflect ideas that were used in those early Torch stories, and the lack of an FF costume also fits in in that context. And with that, I would guess that the SubMariner pin-up in #11 was for a similar pitch for a Subby series (which didn’t come about at this time). Based on their track record of decades before, a Torch and a Sub-Mariner series were the two lowest-hanging fruits of the FF tree to attempt to spin off. [Which led me to speculate further. Could a Torch series have been proposed BEFORE the idea of doing a group (the FF)? It was always so weird to me how that series was completely disconnected from the FF comic at first. Even if Leiber was writing it instead of Stan, it seems like Stan would’ve made the effort to fix it to be in continuity, not give Johnny a secret identity, etc. (Cause if FF came first with the novel idea of no secret identities, why would a later Torch series have them?) What if a Torch series came first, THEN the idea of FF evolved? And if a pre-FF Torch comeback was first proposed, a pre-FF Subby relaunch may’ve been too. The LOCs also hint about “don’t be surprised to see Captain America return” somewhere, so isn’t it conceivable that the original plan was to bring back those three characters just like they did in the 1950s, Kirby drew those pieces, and then plans changed to do the FF, since JLA was selling well? Tom gave me his take on this:] Looking at those pages—and I’m just working from the small reprise in STUF’ SAID here—I’m pretty certain they were done after FF was a going concern. Here, Kirby is drawing the revised version of the Torch rather than his earlier version. There is something strange going on with the main flying figure, but I don’t think it was changed that significantly. In terms of the difference in the strip, I think that was a choice that just didn’t pan out. Stan and Larry take pains in the first solo Torch story to explain away the kids who knew that Johnny was the Torch, so it isn’t a mistake—it’s

a decision. Perhaps they felt they’d need the secret identity to maintain interest in the series. It was a weird choice either way, with the Torch’s head having to remain on fire even when the rest of him was extinguished. Some of this, I’m sure, is down to the fact that none of this was intended as work for the ages. It was all about selling magazines that month—so whatever worked, worked. I need to take another close look at THOR #153-170 as there are still some anomalies in there. For one thing, as Jack still had an unused TALES OF ASGARD chapter in hand that he recycled into #159, I have to think that the decision to switch to Inhumans wasn’t his. Those short Inhumans stories are all five pages long and in two parts, leading me to think they were originally conceived as 10-11 pagers for a split book, and recycled here. I also wonder if THOR #153 wasn’t initially a 16-page chapter and expanded to 20 after the fact—such juggling could explain why the #157 splash has the number #158 and its production date on it—if those stories were shuffled around from shorter chapters. Tom Brevoort, New York Attached is the handwriting I discovered on the back of the original art to TALES OF SUSPENSE #86, page 8. As far as who wrote it, we can rule out Jack, as it also references titles Jack was not working on at the time this would have been written: based on this issue having a cover date of Feb. 1967, the same as FF #59, which was also published that month, it was probably worked on in August 1966. The first three titles are FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDERMAN, and THOR, the remaining three appear to be STRANGE TALES, TALES OF SUSPENSE, and ASTONISH, though it is difficult to decipher the last title, which is only 13 pages. If this is Stan, he did not include Daredevil, which he was also working on at the time. Also, the list does not include AVENGERS or X-MEN, both of which were assigned to Roy by this time. The calculations to the left appear to be totals of pages times a $12 page rate, resulting in $1,656.00 per month, or $19,872.00 per year (in 1966), which translates to over $150k in 2018 dollars after accounting for inflation. As far as productivity, it suggests that an average of 7 pages per week would have to be scripted/dialogued in order to maintain this level of production. My thought on this footnote to the creative process is that it captures the planning process, and sheds light into how the writer of the calculations was trying to map out productivity and calculate income, which would make sense for Stan to assess, given his workload at the time and his early speaking career and effort to develop his personal brand at that early time. Here’s a tentative list of upcoming themes, so get writing! KIRBY: BETA! Jack’s wildest, most experimental stories and concepts. KIRBY FIRSTS! All the ways Jack was a pioneer in comics and life, by being the first to create or champion characters and concepts!

I’d welcome any insights readers may have on these pages, especially how the income compares to that of the artists that were limited to their artist page rates despite plotting out or co-plotting out the stories. Aldo M. Leiva, Fort Lauderdale, FL The listing of Jack’s Bad Business Decisions (TJKC #78) is easy to say in retrospect. But how was he to know at the time? It’s possible he either had more faith in people than they deserved or didn’t have an overabundance of terrific options at the time. Like Arishem the Celestial, fifty years later we can make our judgment about his choices, but we know how they played out. Jack didn’t. Would other options available back then have necessarily worked out any better? Enjoyed the article about the Challengers and their influence. When I finally got to read Jack’s issues later, yes, they sure seemed like another foursome which followed them five years after. The FF had the advantage of superpowers, more distinctive designs, and contrasting personalities. But, for the art, how astounding to see the brilliance of Jack inked by Wally Wood. Amazing work! I hadn’t considered how DC successfully used them as a template for other adventure teams because I didn’t follow those books. Loved a trio of Kirby photos I’d not seen previously: He and Roz at Disneyland, Jack in front of his copier with framed Fourth World renderings, and the shot of him with the Viking statue. So cool! Wish they were bigger. My favorite item this issue? The small quick Thor head-sketch on page 65. He’s shown smiling and I did the same immediately. Whenever I see an unpublished sketch, even as basic as this one, it’s an unexpected treat (especially if it’s a favorite like Thor). When you first started TJKC, I thought it was fun, but imagined I must’ve seen all of his Marvel work, and beyond, by then. How amusing to be proven so wrong, issue after issue, as you unearthed one treasure after another. Not only are you documenting his accomplishments, for those born too late to experience them firsthand, but you fondly recall them for those who were there, and even to add to them, with unseen photos, art, and background information. I’ve loved some issues more than others, but there’s never been one where I wanted my money back. Plus, it’s especially a treat to read Jack’s own words in interviews, to understand what he was thinking or how he viewed matters. You’ve given us plenty. Thanks for the last twenty-five years, John. Looking forward, as always, to discovering how much more there is to see and know. Joe Frank, Scottsdale, AZ THE MANY WORLDS OF KIRBY! From exploring the depths of Sub-Atomica, to the cosmic expanse of outer space, we boldly go where no Kirby publication has gone before! GOT A THEME IDEA? WRITE US! We treat these themes very loosely, so anything you send could get used.

#79 Credits:

John Morrow, Editor/Designer/etc. THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Nikola Atchine • Jerry Boyd Norris Burroughs • Kurt Busiek Jean Depelley • Buzz Dixon Mark Evanier • Chris Fama Scott Fresina • Shane Foley Barry Forshaw • Glen Gold Rand Hoppe • Michael William Kaluta Tracy Kirby • Jeremy Kirby Sean Kleefeld • Richard Kolkman Tom Kraft • Ted Krasniewski Paul S. Levine • Ed Lute Robert Menzies • Ross Morrison Alex Ross • Mike Royer Steve Sherman • Kendall Whitehouse 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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NEXT ISSUE: OLD GODS & NEW! This companion to DC Comics’ “Fourth World” series looks back at Jack Kirby’s own words, as well as those of MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN, MIKE ROYER, and CARMINE INFANTINO, to determine how it came about, where it was going, and how Kirby would’ve ended it before it was prematurely cancelled by DC Comics! Also examines Kirby’s use of gods in THOR and other strips prior to the Fourth World, how they influenced his DC epic, and affected later series like THE ETERNALS and CAPTAIN VICTORY! #80 is a double-size BOOK (which counts as two issues of your subscription)! Ships Winter 2021!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #23

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WILL MURRAY showcases original Marvel publisher (from 1939-1971) MARTIN GOODMAN, with artifacts by LEE, KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, MANEELY, BUSCEMA, EVERETT, BURGOS, GUSTAVSON, SCHOMBURG, COLAN, ADAMS, STERANKO, and many others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt with more on PETE MORISI, JOHN BROOME, and a cover by DREW FRIEDMAN!

FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA (FCA) Special, with spotlights on KURT SCHAFFENBERGER (Captain Marvel, Ibis the Invincible, Marvel Family, Lois Lane), and ALEX ROSS on his awesome painting of the super-heroes influenced by the original Captain Marvel! Plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT’s “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt” on Superman editor MORT WEISINGER, JOHN BROOME, and more! Cover by SCHAFFENBERGER!

Salute to Golden & Silver Age artist SYD SHORES as he’s remembered by daughter NANCY SHORES KARLEBACH, fellow artist ALLEN BELLMAN, DR. MICHAEL J. VASSALLO, and interviewer RICHARD ARNDT. Plus: mid-1940s “Green Turtle” artist/creator CHU HING profiled by ALEX JAY, JOHN BROOME, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster on MORT WEISINGER Part Two, and more!

WENDY PINI discusses her days as Red Sonja cosplayer, & 40+ years of ELFQUEST! Plus RICHARD PINI on their 48-year marriage and creative partnership! Plus: We have the final installment of our CRAIG YOE interview! GIL KANE’s business partner LARRY KOSTER talks about their adventures together! PABLO MARCOS on his Marvel horror work, HEMBECK, and more! Cover by WENDY PINI.

TIMOTHY TRUMAN discusses his start at the Kubert School, Grimjack with writer JOHN OSTRANDER, and current collaborations with son Benjamin. SCOTT SHAW! talks about early San Diego Comic-Cons and friendship with JACK KIRBY, Captain Carrot, and Flintstones work! Also PATRICK McDONNELL’s favorite MUTTS comic book pastiches, letterer JANICE CHIANG profiled, HEMBECK, and more! TIM TRUMAN cover.

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #25 WORLD OF TWOMORROWS

BACK ISSUE #121

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BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH discusses his new graphic novel MONSTERS, its origin as a 1980s Hulk story, and its evolution into his 300-page magnum opus (includes a gallery of outtakes). Plus part two of our SCOTT SHAW! interview about HannaBarbera licensing material and work with ROY THOMAS on Captain Carrot, KEN MEYER, JR. looks at the great fanzines of 40 years ago, HEMBECK, and more!

Celebrate our 25th anniversary with this retrospective by publisher JOHN MORROW and Comic Book Creator magazine’s JON B. COOKE! Go behind-the-scenes with MICHAEL EURY, ROY THOMAS, GEORGE KHOURY, and a host of other TwoMorrows contributors! Introduction by MARK EVANIER, Foreword by ALEX ROSS, Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ, and a new cover by TOM McWEENEY!

CONAN AND THE BARBARIANS! Celebrating the 50th anniversary of ROY THOMAS and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH’s Conan #1! The Bronze Age Barbarian Boom, Top 50 Marvel Conan stories, Marvel’s Not-Quite Conans (from Kull to Skull), Arak–Son of Thunder, Warlord action figures, GRAY MORROW’s Edge of Chaos, and Conan the Barbarian at Dark Horse Comics. With an unused WINDSOR-SMITH Conan #9 cover.

Celebrates the 40TH ANNIVERSARY of MARV WOLFMAN and GEORGE PÉREZ’s New Teen Titans, featuring a guest editorial by WOLFMAN and a PÉREZ tribute and art gallery! Plus: The New Teen Titans’ 40 GREATEST MOMENTS, the Titans in the media, hero histories of RAVEN, STARFIRE, and the PROTECTOR, and more! With a NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED PÉREZ TITANS COVER from 1981!

SUPERHERO ROMANCE ISSUE! Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark’s many loves, Star Sapphire history, Bronze Age weddings, DeFALCO/ STERN Johnny Storm/Alicia Pro2Pro interview, Elongated Man and Wife, May-December romances, Supergirl’s Secret Marriage, and… Aunt May and Doc Ock?? Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB LAYTON, DENNY O’NEIL, and many more! Cover by DAVE GIBBONS.

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BACK ISSUE #124

HORRIFIC HEROES! With Bronze Age histories of Man-Thing, the Demon, and the Creeper, Atlas/Seaboard’s horrifying heroes, and Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) rides again! Featuring the work of CHRIS CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, ERNIE COLON, MICHAEL GOLDEN, JACK KIRBY, MIKE PLOOG, JAVIER SALTARES, MARK TEXIERA, and more. Man-Thing cover by RUDY NEBRES. (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Nov. 2020

OLD GODS & NEW: A FOURTH WORLD COMPANION (TJKC #80)

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MARK VOGER’s sleigh ride through the history of Christmas! Explores movies (Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life), music (White Christmas, Little St. Nick), TV (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), books (Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol), decor (1950s silver aluminum trees), comics (super-heroes meet Santa), and more! Featuring CHARLES M. SCHULZ, ANDY WILLIAMS and others!

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BRICKJOURNAL #64

Classic LEGO® themes re-imagined! PIET NIEDERHAUSEN’s creations based on the Classic Yellow Castle, CHRIS GIDDENS (originator of Neo-Classic Space theme), and tour the Masterpiece Gallery at Denmark’s LEGO House! Plus: “Bricks in the Middle” by HINKLE and KAY, “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Oct. 2020

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RetroFan: The Pop Culture You Grew Up With! If you love Pop Culture of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, editor MICHAEL EURY’s latest magazine is just for you!

RETROFAN #11 (Now Bi-Monthly!)

Just in time for Halloween, RETROFAN #11 features interviews with Dark Shadows’ Quentin Collins, DAVID SELBY, and the niece of movie Frankenstein Glenn Strange, JULIE ANN REAMS. Plus: KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER, ROD SERLING retrospective, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST, TV’s Adventures of Superman, Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen, QUISP and QUAKE cereals, the Drak Pak and the Monster Squad, scratch model customs, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, and SCOTT SHAW! Edited by MICHAEL EURY. (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 • (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships October 2020

RETROFAN #6

RETROFAN #7

RETROFAN #8

RETROFAN #9

RETROFAN #10

Interviews with MeTV’s crazy creepster SVENGOOLIE and Eddie Munster himself, BUTCH PATRICK! Call on the original Saturday Morning GHOST BUSTERS, with BOB BURNS! Uncover the nutty NAUGAS! Plus: “My Life in the Twilight Zone,” “I Was a Teenage James Bond,” “My Letters to Famous People,” the ARCHIE-DOBIE GILLIS connection, Pinball Hall of Fame, Alien action figures, Rubik’s Cube & more!

With a JACLYN SMITH interview, as we reopen the Charlie’s Angels Casebook, and visit the Guinness World Records’ largest Charlie’s Angels collection. Plus: interview with LARRY STORCH, The Lone Ranger in Hollywood, The Dick Van Dyke Show, a vintage interview with Jonny Quest creator DOUG WILDEY, a visit to the Land of Oz, the ultra-rare Marvel World superhero playset, and more!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with the ’60s grooviest family band THE COWSILLS, and TV’s coolest mom JUNE LOCKHART! Mars Attacks!, MAD Magazine in the ’70s, Flintstones turn 60, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, Honey West, Max Headroom, Popeye Picnic, the Smiley Face fad, & more! With MICHAEL EURY, ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, and SCOTT SHAW!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with ’70s’ Captain America REB BROWN, and Captain Nice (and Knight Rider’s KITT) WILLIAM DANIELS with wife BONNIE BARTLETT! Plus: Coloring Books, Fall Previews for Saturday morning cartoons, The Cyclops movie, actors behind your favorite TV commercial characters, BENNY HILL, the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, 8-track tapes, and more!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Celebrating fifty years of SHAFT, interviews with FAMILY AFFAIR’s KATHY GARVER and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour’s GERI “FAKE JAN” REISCHL, ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH, rare GODZILLA merchandise, Spaghetti Westerns, Saturday morning cartoon preview specials, fake presidential candidates, Spider-Man/The Spider parallels, Stuckey’s, and more fun, fab features!

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RETROFAN #1

RETROFAN #2

RETROFAN #3

RETROFAN #4

RETROFAN #5

LOU FERRIGNO interview, The Phantom in Hollywood, Filmation’s STAR TREK CARTOON, “How I Met LON CHANEY, JR.”, goofy comic Zody the Mod Rob, Mego’s rare ELASTIC HULK toy, RetroTravel to Mount Airy, NC (the real-life Mayberry), interview with BETTY LYNN (“Thelma Lou” of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW), TOM STEWART’s eclectic House of Collectibles, and MR. MICROPHONE!

Horror-hosts ZACHERLEY, VAMPIRA, SEYMOUR, MARVIN, and an interview with our cover-featured ELVIRA! THE GROOVIE GOOLIES, BEWITCHED, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, and THE MUNSTERS! The long-buried Dinosaur Land amusement park! History of BEN COOPER HALLOWEEN COSTUMES, character lunchboxes, superhero VIEW-MASTERS, SINDY (the British Barbie), and more!

Interview with SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE director RICHARD DONNER, IRWIN ALLEN’s sci-fi universe, Saturday morning’s undersea adventures of Aquaman, horror and sci-fi zines of the Sixties and Seventies, Spider-Man and Hulk toilet paper, RetroTravel to METROPOLIS, IL (home of the Superman Celebration), SEAMONKEYS®, FUNNY FACE beverages, Superman/Batman memorabilia, & more!

Interviews with SHAZAM! TV show’s JOHN (Captain Marvel) DAVEY and MICHAEL (Billy Batson) Gray, the GREEN HORNET in Hollywood, remembering monster maker RAY HARRYHAUSEN, the way-out Santa Monica Pacific Ocean Amusement Park, a Star Trek Set Tour, SAM J. JONES on the Spirit movie pilot, British sci-fi TV classic THUNDERBIRDS, Casper & Richie Rich museum, the KING TUT fad, and more!

Interviews with MARK HAMILL & Greatest American Hero’s WILLIAM KATT! Blast off with JASON OF STAR COMMAND! Stop by the MUSEUM OF POPULAR CULTURE! Plus: “The First Time I Met Tarzan,” MAJOR MATT MASON, MOON LANDING MANIA, SNUFFY SMITH AT 100 with cartoonist JOHN ROSE, TV Dinners, Celebrity Crushes, and more fun, fab features!

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