JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #81
BETA
$10.95
FALL 2021
cs.
TM & © DC Comi
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THE
Contents Kirby: Beta! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 IN MEMORIAM: STEVE SHERMAN . . 3 INNERVIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (early Lee & Kirby interviews)
ISSUE #81, FALL 2021
C o l l e c t o r
FORMATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 (the maddening mystery of Magneto) BOOM! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 (eclectic bursts of genius!) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 (twice-told Marvel covers) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . . . . 25 BOYDISMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 (“howcome?!”) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 (Simon & Kirby crime comics) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . 38 KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 FORMATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 (Marvel’s mighty... Man-Monster?) GALLERY 2: BEFORE & AFTER . . . 48 RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 (Kamandi’s U.F.O. saga) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 ( Mark Evanier moderates the 2019 Heroes Con panel, with Mike Royer, Jim Amash, and Rand Hoppe) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . 78 Co ver inks: VINCE COLLETTA Co ver color: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: Angry Charlie, Ben Boxer, Darkseid, Dr. Canus, Freedom Fighters, Goody Rickels, Guardian, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Mister Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Oberon, OMAC, Orion, Pyra, Scrapper, Spirit World, Superman, True Life Divorce, Tuftan, TwoDimensional Man, Ugly Mannheim TM & © DC Comics • AIM, Arnim Zola, Avengers, Balder, Blastaar, Blob, Bruce Banner, Bucky, Captain America, Colossus, Daredevil, Diablo, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Dragon-Man, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Forbush Man, Frightful Four, Giant-Man, Goliath, Gorgolla, Gorilla-Man, Green Thing, Hawkeye, Hercules, Hulk, Human Torch, Hydra, Inhumans, Iron, Journey Into Mystery, Juggernaut, Ka-Zar, Kid Colt, Loki, Mad Thinker, Magneto, Man-Monster, Modok, Monsters to Laugh With, Nick Fury, Odin, Professor X, Rawhide Kid, Red Skull, Rick Jones, Ringmaster, Scarlet Witch, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Strange Tales, Sub-Mariner, Taboo, Tana Nile, The Leader, Thor, Wasp, X-Men, Zeus TM & © Marvel Charaters, Inc. • Kiss TM & © KISS Catalog Ltd. • Frankenstein, Wolfman TM & © Universal Studios • Captain Victory, Sky Masters of the Space Force TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Fighting American & Speedboy, Headline Comics TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Lord of Light TM & © Roger Zelazny • The Heap, Sky Wolf TM & © Hillman Periodicals or successor in interest • Jack Ruby story © Esquire Magazine • Archie characters TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. • Drak Pack TM & © Hanna-Barbera Pty. Ltd. • Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Tigger TM & © Walt Disney Productions
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(above) Jack’s experimental photo/collage/watercolor assembly for a featurette in Spirit World #1 (Fall 1971).
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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 28, No. 81, Fall 2021. 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: $13 postpaid US ($19 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $49 Economy US, $72 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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INNERVIEWs
Lee/Kirby: Beta
with thanks to Barry Pearl (http://forbushman.blogspot. com) and Nick Caputo for unearthing this
ED: Where do you get your ideas for story plots? STAN: I just sit down—and think! ED: Have you ever worked for any other company in the past besides Marvel/Atlas/ Timely? STAN: No. ED: How did you get started in comics? STAN: They needed a writer. I started writing captions for a mag. ED: Where did Marvel Comics Group get its name? STAN: Well, there was a book long ago called Marvel. We liked the name so we called it “Marvel.”
From the G. William Jones Film & Video Archive at Southern Methodist University (above) One of Stan Lee’s earliest attempts at becoming a media celebrity—his introduction for the 1966 Marvel Super-Heroes animated television series produced by Grantray-Lawrence. (below) The published cover of Strange Tales Annual #1 was a vast improvement over its beta version.
[This interview, conducted circa Fall 1964, originally appeared in the fanzine Crusader #1 (Winter 1964-65, published by David Castronuovo), long before Stan became the polished media icon he eventually became. Its mimeo cover art (right) was by Vince Colletta.] EDITOR: Before we start, is there anything you’d like to say to fandom? STAN LEE: I love you all! ED: Which Marvel super-hero to do you consider to be your favorite? STAN: Well, really, I like all of them. It’s like your own children—you like all of them.
haven’t got the time.
ED: Do you study any background information for writing stories for your super-heroes? STAN: No, unfortunately, I
ED: Are you planning to bring back Captain Marvel, as you did Captain America, or don’t you have the rights to revise him? STAN: Actually, it’s up for grabs. However, we don’t like copying, and we like to stick to our own work, so probably not. ED: Is there any reason behind the fact that you are always changing the Wasp’s costume? STAN: We really aren’t satisfied yet! ED: Do you consider any one of your heroes to be the worst of the group? STAN: No, not really. ED: Do you mind being interviewed? STAN: No, not if it is by mail. I don’t like to give in-person interviews too much, because it isn’t really fair to other ’zine editors, who could not come to New York for an in-person interview. (Editor’s Note: The above shows one more reason why we are greatly in debt to Stan Lee for letting us interview him. Also, we are very grateful to Vince Colletta for making the interviews possible.) ED: Do you mind it when a satirical strip is done on one of your super-heroes? STAN: No, because it means that they read the comic. ED: Are you planning to start any new super-heroes in the near future? STAN: Of course. One of them will be (censored at Mr.
4
Formations
(right) An extreme close-up of Magneto from X-Men #1, and fine artist Roy Lichtenstein’s painting “Image Duplicator” (1963, Oil and Magna on canvas, 24 × 20 in.), based loosely on Kirby’s panel art. Painting © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
(below) More of the Master of Magnetism from X-Men #1 (color image, Sept. 1963), and his battle with Thor in Journey Into Mystery #109 (Oct. 1964).
DC
artist Carmine Infantino used to lament what he called his “unfinished symphony.” What he meant by that was the interrupted arc of his artistic career, which broke off when he assumed the position as publisher of DC Comics and ceased drawing monthly stories, halting his stylistic development. Jack Kirby had many unfinished symphonies, although of a different kind. His unfinished symphonies were books he started and left prematurely, or which were canceled before they got off the ground. Kirby’s career is littered with such debris, beginning with Captain America, which he left after only ten issues. Military service in World War II took him away from DC’s Sandman, Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion. After he returned, Kirby had a number of horses shot out from under him, largely due to the economic troubles in the comic book industry prevalent during the post-war period. Stuntman, Boys’ Ranch, Boy Explorers, Fighting American, Race to the Moon, and several others were among the casualties. Declining sales, publishing gluts and censorship issues all contributed to these misfires. At DC, Kirby was making a new name for himself with Challengers of the Unknown when a dispute with editor Jack Schiff over agenting fees associated with the Sky Masters newspaper strip led to him losing the strip, which he created. Later in the 1950s, he was taken off Radio Comics’ Double Life of Private Strong and Adventures of the Fly. Two decades later, Kirby experienced one of his gravest disappointments, the premature cancellation of New Gods and its associated Fourth World titles. It was better at Marvel Comics during the Silver Age. Although Jack had a tremendous run on Fantastic Four and Thor, Kirby was forced to
The
Maddening Mystery of
abandon most of the characters he started with collaborator Stan Lee, because Lee needed him to start new strips or to rescue fading features. Kirby was an idea factory and Lee used him as a kind of four-color Johnny Appleseed. I doubt Jack cared when he was taken off Ant-Man. Iron Man was more Stan Lee and Don Heck than it was Jack Kirby, who merely designed the original armor. While The Incredible Hulk was canceled after six issues, Kirby was able to develop the character further in guest appearances, and then later in the revived Hulk feature in Tales to Astonish. Reading these books back in the 1960s, I was really saddened when Kirby left The Avengers, especially after introducing such an intriguing villain in Kang the Conqueror, a futuristic Dr. Doom who was shaping up to be the Avengers’ main antagonist after the death of Zemo. While Kirby was able to complete the character arc for Zemo, he never got to develop Kang any further, which was unfortunate. But the original Avengers consisted of super-heroes Kirby had previously created and would continue to draw occasionally. I think the real tragedy of an unfinished symphony of his 1960s Marvel career was The X-Men. These were original characters, and although the team was designed to be a kind of knock-off of the Fantastic Four, Lee and Kirby gave them significant differences. Stan Lee’s account of the genesis of The X-Men has usually boiled down to a different take on people with powers. “We’re always looking for new super-heroes––not so much for new heroes as for new explanations of how they came about, and I was getting tired of radioactive accidents,” Lee told Leonard Pitts, Jr. “I felt, ‘Why not get some people who were born the way they are, who had mutant powers?’ So we created the X-Men.” It’s impossible to determine if by “we,” Lee meant Marvel Comics as a publisher, or he and Jack Kirby. Lee has consistently claimed that the feature was originally called “The Mutants,” and when publisher
Magneto
by Will Murray
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Martin Goodman shot down that proposed title, he came up with X-Man, the X signifying eXtra power. The important part was coming up with fresh powers. “What powers can I give them that are not in use at the moment?” Lee recalled to The New York Times. “There are mutants in nature, and with all the atomic explosions they’re more likely than ever before.” Despite the many interviews he gave over the years, Jack rarely spoke about the X-Men. But he, too, was consistent when he did, making it sound as if he had created the concept himself. “This was a period when we were experimenting with the atom bomb,” Kirby recalled to Steve Pastis. “People were wondering what the effects would be. Everybody worried ‘Would we all become mutants?’ We played around with this ‘mutation thing’ and I came up with the X-Men, who were associated with radiation and its effects on humanity.” Expanding on this claim, Kirby told James Van Hise, “I created X-Men because of the radiation scare at the time. What I did was give the beneficial side. I always feel there’s hope for the human condition. Sure, I could have made it real scary. We don’t know the connotations of genetics and radiation. We can create radiation, but we don’t know what it’s going to do. I think there’s a possible path through these dangerous courses that will steer us to permanent peace and make new people of us. That’s what I did with the X-Men. They were young people who enjoyed life and had a teacher.” Kirby’s thinking is illuminating. This wasn’t just another version of the F.F. “I did the natural thing there,” he explained to Leonard Pitts. “What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills. So I gave them a teacher, Professor X. Of course, it was the natural thing to do. Instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made the X-Men part of the human race, which they were. Possibly, radiation, if it is beneficial, may create mutants that’ll save us instead of doing us harm. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they’ll help us— and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together.” Stan Lee’s perspective was identical, which shows how difficult it is to separate their individual contributions. “As with all super-hero teams, I had to have an excuse for putting them together,” revealed Lee to Tom DeFalco in Comics Creators on X-Men. “The Fantastic Four were essentially a family, the Avengers were a club. What could the X-Men be that would be different? I figured if they’re teenagers, what’s more natural than a school?” As far as I know, Kirby never talked about the master mutant named Magneto in any interview. So we don’t know his thinking there. Like Kang, the X-Men’s chief opponent was never explored by the team of Lee and Kirby beyond the first dozen or so issues of The X-Men. Mysteriously, Magneto was virtually written out of their series early on. In several interviews, Lee commented that he had plans for Magneto that were never explored. “I always wanted Magneto to turn out to be Professor X’s brother. If I had stayed with the book, that’s what I would have done.” I sometimes think there’s such a thing as Stan Speak, where Stan Lee makes comments and claims ideas that may or may not be exclusively his. The idea of Magneto’s relationship to Professor X might have been a Jack Kirby idea that Lee rejected, or it might have arisen as a possibility during story conferences, where the origins of
a concept may not be so easily remembered by either party. But if one looks through the short run of the Lee and Kirby X-Men, one can see that perhaps it’s not merely a possibility that was never developed, but a plan Jack Kirby was executing on and which either he or Lee or both of them abandoned before it could be explored. Jack Kirby once said it takes about four issues of a comic book to find your characters. This may have been true with Magneto. When first introduced, he was a cipher—a mutant possessing magnetic powers and ambitions of world domination. His mask, based on a Corinthian battle helmet, was striking and provided only a glimpse of his features without revealing any details that would give away his true identity. There is no indication that he and Professor X share a past––at least, not in Stan Lee’s dialogue. The X-Men defeated Magneto in their first mission, but like Dr. Doom, he escapes, leaving intact the potential for his return. With the fourth issue, the master mutant resurfaces, and has gathered around him his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, a counterforce to the X-Men. Here, his schemes take on a new light and his true motivations become clear. When Magneto attempts to take over the tiny Republic of San Marco, Professor X goes into a trance and attempts to contact the malevolent mutant. They meet on what Xavier calls “the mental plane.” Kirby depicts both antagonists in what appears to be their astral forms over and above the earth, where they telepathically have 9
Boom!
Eclectic Bursts of Genius! by Shane Foley
W
ith this issue covering Kirby’s “wildest, most experimental ideas,” his “prodigious imagination,” some of his “unhinged lunacy,” and his “non-stop inventiveness,” most Kirby-ites will have many favorites that immediately spring to mind. Here are some of mine. (There are lots more, of course, but there is a limit, not the least of which is excluding things I’ve written about before.) When compiling my list, some examples immediately suggested others, for reasons that will become clearer as we go along. In the end, I found I could arrange the examples into three lists. All except one item are chronological, but while the third is of random examples, the first two are thematic.
List 1: Personal Transport, Kirby style!
1962 • FANTASTIC FOUR #3: THE FIRST FANTASTI-CAR By any artist’s standards, and particularly after the Atom Horse, this bathtub design is very bland. There are many factors seen in the very early FFs that give me the distinct impression that Kirby initially had little confidence that the FF would be a success— and this bathtub design is one. For example, a few months later, in the same year... 2
1962 • TALES OF SUSPENSE #35: THE SPACE CRAFT IN “ZARKORR” ...Kirby created this spacecraft, for a one-off story. Yet how much more inspired is this craft than the Fantastic Four’s flying car, which would be seen regularly? But then... 3
This list was inspired by once noticing the difference between the vehicles mentioned below for 1974 and 1980. It grew from there.
4 1963 • FANTASTIC FOUR #12: THE SECOND FANTASTI-CAR ...exactly 12 months after FF #3, the F-Car got a face lift—and what a beauty it is, too. Kirby knew by this time that the FF was a huge hit and he let rip with his designs. This redesign is one of the first fruits. What a terrific design this is, based no doubt on some ideas he had read about. We’re unsure if Kirby had real scientific or mechanical knowledge (see page 56!), but he sure knew how to make things look like they would work! 4
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1959 • SKY MASTERS SUNDAY STRIP— SECOND WEEK: THE ATOM HORSE What a brilliant design. Was this based on anything in NASA’s files? Or was it a Kirby original, based, no doubt, on 1950s futuristic designs he’d absorbed over the years? Either way, it’s stunning and set a benchmark for such designs in the future.
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Gallery 1
Beta Redux [next page] Marvel Collector’s Item Classics #19 (1969) Fantastic Four #27 is from June 1964 and MCIC #19, reprinting that story, was from nearly 5 years later. Why, in the middle of a run of reprint covers, is Kirby suddenly doing a new one? This is a lot earlier than a batch of new covers for reprint comics he did about 18 months later (and about which I have a theory). Perhaps Marvel simply couldn’t find a good copy to print—we know for example that Marvel had no copy of the Iron Man story from Tales of Suspense #50 and Tom Brevoort commissioned Don Heck to replicate it. For whatever reason, Jack did a new cover—using the same basic layout, but beefing up the tension and action in accordance with the change in his art style that had pervaded his work in the time since the original was done. And it’s a beauty!
[right] Marvel’s Greatest Comics #77 (1978) What can we say about this piece, which simply reverses the original cover to Fantastic Four #96 (1970), except that (a) it proves Jack’s light-box still worked and (b) he had absolutely no interest in adjusting the reverse image to get the hair of Reed, Sue or Johnny ‘correct’. The only differences I can see between the two, besides the reversal, are a change in the torn curtain, an upgraded telephone and its cord, the deletion of the pipe and cigar, and the lack of dwindling flame on both Johnny figures, with a table added to fill the gap. We could ask the question: Why the need to reverse the original? The masthead/logo certainly did not require it. Perhaps Jack was asked for a new cover and he simply decided to do it this way, rather than try to think of another. After all, if it was an editorial decision, anyone in the office could have light-boxed the original. The new version is signed “J.K./M.R.”, so it’s possible Mike Royer did the light-boxing.
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Twice-told Kirby covers, with commentary by Shane Foley
Tales of Suspense #78 (1966) unused cover layout Presuming this is a genuine 1966 piece (Fury and the robot look like mid-’60s Kirby, but the Cap figure? To me, it looks like Kirby from a decade later—bulkier and less supple. But I’m probably wrong!), we have to assume Jack rejected it himself, since we know he didn’t submit cover layouts for approval. (He’d kept the piece and a collage was pasted right over the top.) So he was not happy with it himself. Good call! Though why did he decide to reverse the viewpoint rather than simply do a better Cap figure? Perhaps because showing the heroes front-on is easier from this angle. Although that Fury figure is perfect...
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BOYDISMS
In 2018, I bumped into Irving Forbush in New York City’s Times Square. I recognized him from my beloved Not Brand Echh comics and we chatted for a while. He told me that after NBE folded, “Stan and Jack, great team that they made, had created a few conundrums that I just couldn’t take anymore!” Irv tried several times to confront the creative pair about the ‘discrepancies’ (as he saw them) he’d read, only to be politely and professionally rebuffed at every turn. I quickly jotted down his words and… well, here, he finally gets his say! Forbush Man: “Lee and Kirby did hundreds, maybe thousands of wonderfully told tales, but some things, I gotta tell you, just don’t add up. And those made me ask then and now...
(above) Marie Severin did this impressive portrait of ol’ Irv in ’73 in watercolor. Thanks to Rob Pistella of comicartfans.com.
“Howcome?!” Ideas that might’ve need a little more thought, as told by Forbush-Man to Jerry Boyd
“Hey Jack and Stan, if Doc Doom can create androids, take over a small country, challenge the FF, and come up with a time machine to boot, howcome he can’t figure out a way to get his face fixed up?!” [Fantastic Four #5, left]
“Howcome four of the Inhumans debuted with masks? They never had secret identities to protect from their fellow Inhumans, right?” [Fantastic Four #46, bottom left]
“Hey Stan, howzabout writing up a story where the mad but brilliant scientist retains the good sense to figure out an antidote before he experiments on himself, like the nut who turned himself into a Gorilla-Man (twice!)?” [Tales to Astonish #30, below]
“Wait a New York minute, guys! If Col. Nick Fury was the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, why’d he always take the toughest missions— solo? Weren’t there other agents he trusted to do 26
(above) Not Brand Echh #1 in ’67 gave us some great times and the first appearance of Forbush Man—art by Kirby!
the job?! Wasn’t he supposed to be like… an administrator? Sheesh!” [Strange Tales #141, right]
“Impressive, Jack! But how can even the great Rawhide Kid and terrific Two-Gun Kid squeeze-off so many shots that fast and that accurately from a six-shooter?!” [Two-Gun Kid #61, bottom right]
Foundations
For a change of pace, here is Simon & Kirby’s “You Can’t Forget A Killer” from Headline Comics #24 (June 1947), with art reconstruction and coloring by Chris Fama. This story wasn’t included in Titan’s S&K reprint volumes. We’ll continue with our next installment of the complete Link Thorne stories next issue.
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A Good Shot...
...Of Jack Ruby?
Incidental Iconography
An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld
O
ne of the more unusual pieces of comic storytelling that Jack Kirby worked on—one that I’ve rarely seen even mentioned— is a partial biography of Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald after he’d been charged with the assassination of President John Kennedy. The piece is unusual for a number of reasons. It ran in the May 1967 issue of Esquire magazine, meaning Jack had created this within a
year of his finishing “The Galactus Trilogy” and “This Man, This Monster” in Fantastic Four. At the time, Esquire’s circulation was about three times that of any Marvel comic, so this would have been Jack’s largest audience in years. Despite being seen by a much wider audience at the time, though, it’s fallen pretty deep into obscurity by comics fans. “Partial biography” is probably overstating the piece’s breadth. It really only covers a two-day period between Ruby learning of Kennedy’s assassination and his murder of Oswald. Kirby is able to cover this period in three pages, although they are at a larger magazine size which afforded more room to work with than a typical comic page. The piece is also heavily footnoted, pulling much of its dialogue from the Warren Commission’s report, although sometimes missing the context that would indicate comments as jokes or having been said ironically. Both the heavy footnotes and the fairly high number of panels per page (even for the larger page size) almost certainly means Jack was working from a more formal script than he’d been using with Stan Lee at the time. Danny Fingeroth has done some digging into who the uncredited writer here was; Esquire’s associate editor at the time, John Berendt, could not recall who specifically he’d hired for that, and the names he did provide to Danny haven’t led to anything definitive so far. But let’s look at Jack’s art (as inked by Chic Stone)—that’s the point of this column after all! While Jack mostly drew fictional characters, this was hardly his first time incorporating a real person’s likeness into a story; he threw in almost a dozen recognizable actors in Fantastic Four #9 alone! So it should come as no surprise 38
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.
there is a story called “The Two-Dimensional Man” in which the hapless protagonist takes a powder that turns him into a comically-drawn “flat man.” The story is full of truly bizarre ideas, and Kirby tackles head-on one quite absurd sequence in which a group of cows about to be transported are turned into flat, two-dimensional creatures and stacked like a pile of newspapers—even though they are still living and breathing. The hero is next up (accidentally) for the treatment, and the reader has time to wonder why if he has ingested the transformational powder via a cup of tea (he has an English butler—it’s the only way Americans drink tea, of course, when given to them by their London-born butler), how it is possible for his clothes to attain the same two-dimensional status as his body. But the story is great fun, and the best thing in an issue which contains an excellent piece by Lou Cameron, who also provides a rare cover. And “The Two-Dimensional Man” is a reminder of how humour was something else that Kirby could do when necessary. The recent death of Mad magazine’s great caricaturist Mort Drucker makes one wonder about the other things that Kirby might have done in this area, given the chance—although he did do humour work for Marvel and Mad imitators.
CONFRONTING THE RIDICULOUS
All readers of this magazine will happily accept praise for the comics medium in general, won’t they? After all, why would anyone be looking at The Jack Kirby Collector if they were not a fan of the medium? But here’s something you may not have heard praised before; the possibility that the medium can (that is, for the duration of a story) make the ridiculous—as opposed to the simply imaginative—surprisingly plausible. In comics, somehow, all things are possible—which they are demonstrably not in other fields. Case in point: Jack Kirby’s work on Fantastic Four—and specifically Mr. Fantastic. The first example of a human being who can stretch and distort his body in astonishing ways was, of course, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, and Cole was well aware of just how silly (and unscientific) the concept was. Cole played his red-clad hero (and idiotic sidekick Woozy Winks) for laughs—in fact, there are those who would argue that Plastic Man was the greatest humour comic book ever produced. But when Kirby and Stan Lee repurposed the notion with Reed Richards, they largely played it straight, and Kirby enthusiasts were persuaded to willingly accept this most ridiculous of superhero powers. However, there is an earlier example in Kirby’s work of something similar in terms of outrageous notions—but on this earlier occasion, it is perfectly clear that he knew it was impossible to take the concept seriously. In DC’s Tales of the Unexpected #24 (April 1958),
GARGOYLES
Writing a column such as this over a long period— which John Morrow has been kind enough to ask me to do—leads to certain problems. For a start, writers such as myself have to avoid an endless stream of encomiums for the subject of the column (in this case, a certain comics illustrator); that would become a little boring after a while, and—apart from anything else—most readers of The Jack Kirby Collector don’t need to be persuaded of the talents of the man whose name is in the masthead. To that end, over the years, I’ve tried to be frank about what even Kirby’s admirers sometimes admit are the missteps of the Master: such as the fact that his amazingly fertile writing imagination (leaving aside his illustrative skills) was wildly undisciplined—and even in his best work, in need of a stern editorial hand such as that provided by Stan Lee (and which was in less evidence in his last DC period). Having said that, one can instantly start to argue with oneself—despite the purple prose and the occasional incoherent plotting, Kirby’s innovations in those final DCs still produced an amazing bushel of concepts and notions which are still in use today, including one which is central to the current DC universe: the godlike super-villain Darkseid. But back to finding something new to look at in the work of Jack Kirby. Examining a typical issue of Atlas/Marvel’s Strange Tales (#74, from April 1960) will remind the reader of what was becoming a typical package of that era: a lead-off Kirby strip followed by back-ups from the likes of Don Heck and Paul Reinman, topped off with an outing from editor Stan Lee’s other heavy hitter, Steve Ditko. In this issue, the Heck and Reinman tales are unexciting, standard stuff—as they so often are in the books of this period. The Ditko closer, “When the Totem Walks”, is one of his most impressive pieces from this period, with a dynamic splash panel that dispenses with the border and uses the white of the page to great effect. But we’re here to talk about Jack Kirby, and the opening story, “Gorgolla! The Living Gargoyle!!” (overuse of exclamation marks was a Stan Lee 40
formations
(above) Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962) contains the cover blurb “Fantasy As You Like It!”, mimicking other Marvel monster comics that year, such as Tales of Suspense #25’s declaration, “A Heart-Pounding Tale Of Fantasy!” (below).
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n 1961, all of America seemed to be monster mad. The trend had begun on television, with the rise of local “Creature Feature” programs which telecast old monster films. Universal Films were among the most popular. Baby Boomer kids ate them up. This led to Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, monster gum cards, and misshapen plastic toys. When the Aurora Plastic Company released a Frankenstein model kit late in 1961 (right), demand was so great they could barely keep up with production. At the then-unbranded comic book company Martin Goodman ran, this monster mania did not go unnoticed. The pages of Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish and other fantasy titles were bursting with monsters of all species, the bigger and brawnier the better. When Goodman instructed editor-writer Stan Lee to package a super-hero title, Lee and artist Jack Kirby threw in a brutish monster for good measure. It worked. The Thing became one of the Fantastic Four’s most popular characters. As the year 1962 drew near, the fad showed no signs of abating. Someone at the future Marvel Comics thought that a book built around a continuing monster might sell, and sell big. Whether it was editor Stan Lee, his top artist Jack Kirby, or publisher Martin Goodman is unclear. All three men were central to the creation and execution of The Incredible Hulk, which hit newsstands on March 1, 1962 with a disappointing thud. Three issues later, the Hulk stood on the precipice of cancellation. “Actually, The Hulk was going to be discontinued after the third issue,”
remembered Kirby. “So in comes these college guys from Columbia or NYU, and they say, ‘The Hulk is the mascot of our dormitory.’ I knew right away we’d got the college crowd–– which we never had before!… I begin to feel, ‘Keep the sunovabitch going!’” The reprieve was brief. The Incredible Hulk was canceled with issue #6 (Kirby left after #5). Reader response to the Fantastic Four’s brutish and brooding Thing seems to have been the initial trigger for the character. “I was trying to think again, ‘What can I do that’s different?’” Lee explained. “I liked the Thing very much, and I thought, ‘What if I get somebody who is a real monster?’ And I remembered in the old movie Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, I had always thought that that monster was the good guy because he didn’t want to hurt anybody, but those idiots with torches were always chasing him up and down the hills…. “So I thought it would be fun to get a monster who is really good but nobody knows it, and they fight him. But then the more I thought about it, I figured it could be dull after awhile just having people chasing a monster. And I remembered Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (right). I thought, why not treat him like Jekyll and Hyde? He’s really a normal man who can’t help turning into a monster. And it would make a very interesting story if, when he needs his monstrous strength the most, the poor guy turns back into a normal man. I could get a lot of story complications.” Jack Kirby remembered it differently. “The Hulk was my creation,” he claimed. “The Hulk was a prime example of the way I had matured. Here is this guy, Bruce Banner, a scientist, an intellectual who would turn into a primitive monster. The Hulk was my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I was borrowing from the classics. The classics are the most powerful stories we have.” Lee and Kirby were children of the Great Depression, the era when
Is He Man or Monster?
Marvel’s Mighty… Man-Monster? 42
by Will Murray
Gallery 2
Before & After
48
Big and small changes made to Kirby’s work, with commentary by John Morrow
Retrospective
(below) Pencils for the cover of Kamandi #30, the start of the “U.F.O. Saga.” Jack’s note “Don’t do lettering” may’ve been to inker D. Bruce Berry, whose lettering wasn’t at the superior level that Mike Royer always reached. (right) A very quick marker sketch of Kamandi’s Prince Tuftan, for a fan.
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hile Kamandi fans don’t meet on an annual basis to bemoan the fact, the consensus is that the tail end of writer/artist/editor Jack Kirby’s run on DC’s Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth is the weakest stretch of stories during the title’s first three years. Affectionately known as “The U.F.O. Saga,” you simply can’t compare it to the high quality of the earlier epics involving a young man’s struggle to survive on a post-apocalyptic Earth (caused by the mysterious “Great Disaster”) where animals (lions, tigers, bears, and more) behave as humans, and humans are now wild, hunted, herded, and placed in zoos. Kamandi #1-29 contain many of the best adventure stories ever written in comics. On its own terms, however, “The U.F.O. Saga” is still a rousing adventure story that oddly veers off course from its original intentions, abruptly shifting to the inevitable “Kamandi in Space” issue, then darting off in a completely different direction, never really crossing a finish line so that it can stand completely on its own. On top of that, five chapters into “The U.F.O. Saga,” the official announcement was made that Kirby was leaving DC to explore new challenges (i.e., return to Marvel Comics), and suddenly it was apparent that Kirby (aided and abetted by inker D. Bruce Berry) wasn’t just struggling to control an unwieldy story—he was losing interest entirely and in the process of moving on. This isn’t an in-depth attempt on my part to re-assess or re-evaluate “The U.F.O. Saga.” This is reassurance that the epic remains a terrific read despite the complications and disappointments. The adventure is nearly fifty years old, and I get as big a kick rereading it now as I did while reading it for the first time as a young teen in 1975, and subsequently many times over the last four-plus decades. Honestly, the only flaws I find with “The U.F.O. Saga”? The art is rushed and there’s no conclusion. But as an adventure story, it’s top-notch. It all begins in Kamandi #30 (June 1975), within a beached Unidentified Flying Object where the last boy on Earth and his mutant friend Ben Boxer are taking a nap (see Kamandi #29 for the “super” reason why much needed rest was required). They had stumbled upon the spacecraft during the night and thought it was an abandoned bunker. But the spacecraft’s owner has returned from its wanderings, discovered the infiltrators, and immediately taken action. Kamandi suddenly awakes to find himself and Ben weightless and floating in a compartment of the U.F.O. The alien, encased in a thick
The U.F.O. Saga
Kamandi #30-35 reflected on by Jim Kingman 54
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SUB-MARINER, SILVER AGE CATALYST he Fantastic Four was a series that from its outset focused on the discord that could occur within the boundaries of a team. The disparate powers they had attained put a stress on the bonds that held them together. By the end of third issue, the group had already broken up. The Thing’s jealous rages in particular were driving a wedge between the members. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, was literally a hot-headed teenager and he had little patience for the bickering. It had gotten so bad that by issue #4, the boy would retreat to a hideout in a Bowery flophouse. 1 It was unlikely that he would have returned home any time soon, had it not been for a chance encounter with a character whose reappearance would accelerate the process of development of an astounding universe of super-beings. With totally good intentions, Johnny would throw the dazed Atlantean derelict into the waters of New York harbor and thereby restore his memory. Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, emerging from the mists of amnesia, would pose an enormous threat to the Fantastic Four and their world. Instead of gratitude, Namor bore only resentment towards Johnny and humanity in general, because in his eyes, they were guilty of destroying his undersea kingdom. The Torch had no choice but to return home and alert his teammates to the danger Namor posed, thereby reuniting the team against a common foe. Without the Sub-Mariner’s emergence and lively interaction with the Fantastic Four, the series could easily have stagnated, had it continued to dwell on the disharmony built into the group from its inception. The charismatic Sub-Mariner first appeared in 1939, as a prominently featured character in Marvel Comics #1. An anti-hero from the get-go, Prince Namor was the bi-racial son of American Naval Captain Leonard McKenzie and the Atlantean princess Fen. His creator, Bill Everett, conceived him as a proud aristocratic being, harkening back to antiquity. “Namor,” after all, is “Roman” spelled backwards. He debuted as a Total War adversary of all surface dwellers. His natural foe was, of course, the Golden Age version of the Human Torch, who was also introduced in the same issue. As elemental adversaries representing fire and water, the Sub-Mariner and the Torch clashed regularly. In Human Torch #5 [above], published in Fall 1941, Namor, under the spell of a treacherous Atlantean woman, developed a Napoleon complex and tried to conquer the world. After causing a good deal of damage as well as putting much of New York under water and probably drowning thou1 59
Mark Evanier
JACK F.A.Q.s
A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby
That’s it.” And I learned a lot from Mike about meeting deadlines.
(right) No inker captures the fluidity of Jack’s work as faithfully as Mike Royer, as evidenced by this pencil sketch Jack bound into his personal volume of Golden Age Captain America comics in the 1960s. (next page, top) Announcement for the May 11-13, 2018 popup exhibit in New York, curated by the Jack Kirby Museum.
(below) Chase Craig, hard at work at Western Publishing in the 1960s.
MARK EVANIER: My name is Mark Evanier. You don’t need to be told that; this is the Jack Kirby panel. Who else would it be, right? And this is Mr. Mike Royer. [applause] This is Mr. Jim Amash. [applause] This is Mr. Rand Hoppe. [applause] Now, for those of you who don’t know who any of us are, Mike was Jack Kirby’s inker from about 1972—.
could make the payments.
ROYER: I got a mortgage from Bank of America on the strength of a letter from Chase Craig at Western Publishing. He said, “We set our clocks by Mike Royer. If we could only get more work out of him.” So they were convinced I
EVANIER: And that was important, because when Jack was doing the New Gods and those books from DC, there was some rooting interest against him in New York, not because they had anything against him personally, but they didn’t like the idea of someone working for the editor in California as opposed to the office in New York.
MIKE ROYER: —in print. But from late ’68. EVANIER: Well, you took over regular inking in... ROYER: We’re gonna start arguing, any minute. [laughter] EVANIER: ...he inked Jack’s stuff for a long time. He did an amazing job of it. There are people still thanking me for my role in salvaging Jack Kirby’s pencils from the person who would have inked them if Mike had not been available. And he did an amazing amount of work—it was not just the fact that he did it well. That would have been enough. In this business, doing it well is a great thing. But he was the most reliable person you could have asked for. Mike has missed in his life, zero deadlines on anything. Were you ever late with anything for anybody? ROYER: No. EVANIER: All right. And that’s not just bragging. I worked for a man named Chase Craig for years, who was the editor at Gold Key/ Western Publishing Company, who did the Dell and Gold Key Comics, the Disney comics, and the Warner Brothers comics, and I asked him one time, “If you had to bet your life on some freelancer turning in the work on time, who would you bet on?” He said, “Two people: Dan Spiegle and Mike Royer. 62
2019 Heroes Con Panel Held Saturday, June 15, 2019 at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. Featuring (left to right) Mike Royer, moderator Mark Evanier, Jim Amash, and Rand Hoppe. Transcribed by Steven Tice, and copy-edited by Mark Evanier and John Morrow.
They didn’t like that Jack could pick his own inker, and they hadn’t picked the person. And they just had the idea that the company created the books. So when Mike took over, they were just waiting for him to fail. They were waiting to be able to say, “We’ve got to get rid of that Royer guy. He can’t meet a deadline and the work’s lousy.” And they were not able to say that, and Jack was very, very happy. And we were very happy to have Mike inking his work also. And Jim Amash is another inker person. He’s done a lot of comics for Archie and other places, and he’s a historian, and a friend of mine, and a friend of the Kirbys, and I just wanted him on the panel because I don’t get to see Jim enough because he doesn’t come to Comic-Con. This is my excuse to see my friend Jim. And this man, Rand Hoppe, he operates the Jack Kirby Research… what’s it called?
of spreading the word of Jack, that as long as I am able to breathe, I will be telling people about this wonderful man who was in my life for not enough years. I work with and have met a lot of incredible people, talented people. I’ve worked with Sid Caesar. I’ve worked with Bob Newhart. Jack Kirby is the most amazing, talented person I have ever met in my life. [applause] As I get older and older, the more I really come to appreciate the privilege it was to be around Jack, and just sit with him and talk about anything—and not just about comics.
RAND HOPPE: Museum and Research Center. EVANIER: The Museum and Research Center, which is doing Herculean work to catalog Jack’s work, to make copies of it. Have you scanned anything interesting here at the convention yet? HOPPE: We’ve scanned two pages. One was a Kamandi page, and I can’t remember the second one.
ROYER: People ask me what it was like inking Jack’s pages, and I can’t remember the nuts and bolts. I had to do three pages a day, letter a whole book in less than two days, and rule the borders, and have three pages of display lettering. What I remember is sitting in the kitchen with Jack and Roz, eating homemade chocolate cake, and drinking milk, and talking about Warner Brothers movies.
EVANIER: And so they are building a library of great scans of Jack’s work, and that’s a wonderful thing. We all feel charged with the idea
EVANIER: Jack liked Warner Brothers movies. Jack’s life was a Warner Brothers movie. ROYER: People have asked me, “What’s the basic difference between Joe Sinnott and Mike Royer?” And I loved Joe Sinnott, since the first work I ever saw when I was a kid was the free Buster Brown comic books. And, if you’re familiar with the dichotomy of the movie studio system in the Golden Age, Joe Sinnott inked Jack Kirby “MGM.” I inked Jack Kirby “Warner Brothers.” EVANIER: That’s a good analogy. One of the interesting things about Jack’s inkers, since we’re talking about inkers: When I first met Jack, which was in July of 1969, I naturally asked him who his favorite inker was. I assumed he would say Joe Sinnott or Frank Giacoia, who I thought were the two best guys who had inked him at that point. And Jack said, “Everybody’s good.” And we actually kind of had a small argument about this—I mean, I didn’t argue with Jack, but there was a difference of opinion. He thought every inker was fine. “Any professional inker can do the job.” Because the thing that interested Jack about the job was telling an exciting story, and he didn’t think even a bad inker, what I would consider a bad inker, could ruin the story. And he also came out of a tradition where, the other guy’s got to make a living. He was a Depression-era kid, and he was very conscious of everyone’s need to make a living. It was always fine, whoever it was. He only asked, ever, at Marvel, for them to replace one inker, and he asked very politely—not demanding this, just, “Could you maybe put him on somebody else,” and that was Dan Adkins, who inked a couple of Captain Americas. So when he took on Mike, initially, the reason he wanted Mike had a lot to do with geography. He wanted someone who worked for him, because Jack would write a book, draw a book, send it off to New York, and never see it again. He was ostensibly the editor, but somebody would letter it there, and it would go to Vince Colletta to ink, and then Colletta handed it in 63
to the DC production department. A man named Nelson Bridwell would erase the pages, and if Nelson said to Vince Colletta, “Gee, you left out the backgrounds. Shouldn’t you put those in?” Vince would say, “No,” and Nelson had no authority to overrule him, because people in the production department were fine with it. Jack was not happy with Colletta for a number of reasons, and they didn’t necessarily relate to what was on the page. It had also to do with him showing the work around at Marvel; Jack didn’t want them to see what he was doing. So he had a meeting with Colletta, and they had some sort of YOUColletta’s ENJOYED THISofPREVIEW, argument. I heard Jack’s version of it. I neverIF heard version it. I don’t know exactly CLICK LINK TOCarmine ORDERInfantino’s THIS what was said, but at the end of that meeting, JackTHE stormed into office ISSUE PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! and said, “I want my own inker. I want my ownIN guy, who works for me, hire this guy, Mike Royer, whom you initially rejected.” Mike went up there and tried to get some work, and they wanted their guy. ROYER: I had lunch with Dick Giordano, the year that Steve [Sherman] and you and I all went back to New York. EVANIER: That was 1970. ROYER: I went into Infantino’s office and I said, “I should be inking Jack. I’m better than Colletta.” And at lunch, Dick Giordano says, “Mike, you’re getting the reputation of being cocky. You said the truth, but…”. [laughter] EVANIER: So they gave in to Jack, figuring, well, maybe Jack will learn a lesson. He’ll stop complaining about our production department. DC’s production department did not like COLLECTOR Jack. Jack did not like their coloring. He madeKIRBY the mistake of telling#81 them that he thought BETA!” Jack’s experimental ideas, characters, and the coloring on the Marvel books was“KIRBY: better than the coloring the DC books. That series (Fighting American, Jimmy Olsen,on Kamandi, and others), early Stan interviews, mysteries the we’ll give was sacrilegious back then, and they really hadLeeitand inJack forKirby him. So they said,behind “Okay, creation of the Hulk and Magneto, ideas that needed more Jack his inker, and his inker will fail. He’llthought, either2019 do Heroes a lousy job of it, or he won’t get the books Con panel (with MARK EVANIER, MIKE ROYER, JIM it AMASH, and RAND HOPPE), a pencil art gallery, done in time, and then we can yank it back, give back to Colletta or whoever we want.” UNUSED JIMMY OLSEN #141 COVER, and more! And Mike, fortunately, didn’t fail. He met every single damned deadline, which was very (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 both told me they difficult—he did a very excellent job. Joe Sinnott and Frank Giacoia were impressed with Mike’s inking, and could not believe that he did it all by himself, and neither one of them could have done the job just in terms of time restraints. Neither of them could letter. And it’s Jack Kirby work. He’s not the easiest guy in the world to ink because he puts a lot of stuff on the pages. Everyone was impressed, and Mike was a hero for that. Now, the thing I wanted to mention, I don’t know that I’ve ever said this to Mike before, is that Mike was the https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_57&products_id=1562
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