Jack Kirby Collector #85

WINTER 2023

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR EIGHTY-FIVE

JACK KIRBY: ANIMATED

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Contents

THE

JACK KIRBY: ANIMATED! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 JACK FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Mark Evanier’s 1996 interview with Jon B. Cooke

ISSUE #85, WINTER 2023

C o l l e c t o r

STONE AGES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Thing’s rocky evolution INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY. . . . . 24 how a fantastic “4” evolved FOUNDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 another S&K Link Thorne story INNERVIEWS Steve Gerber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Joe Ruby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 John Dorman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Jim Woodring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Tom Minton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Rick Hoberg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 KIRBY OBSCURA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 they loom large KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 one more trip to the cinema INFLUENCEES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Evan Dorkin speaks COLLECTOR COMMENTS. . . . . . . . 78 Front cover inks: EVAN DORKIN Front cover colors: TOM ZIUKO Special thanks to: JON B. COOKE COPYRIGHTS: Captain America, Fantastic Four, Galactus, H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot, Hulk, Journey into Mystery, Magneto, Rawhide Kid, Red Skull, Thing, Thor, Watcher TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Bat-Mite, Big Barda, Darkseid, Granny Goodness, Hawkman, Kalibak, Kamandi, Klik-Klak, Losers, Mr. Miracle, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Sandman, Sandy, Super Friends, Superman, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics • Herculoids, Mindbender, Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Space Ghost, Space Stars, Teen Force TM & © Hanna-Barbera • Beavis and Butt-Head TM & © Viacom International Inc. • Tron TM & © Walt Disney Studios • Planet of the Apes TM & © 20th Century Fox • Popeye TM & © King Features Syndicate • The Soda Thief © Evan Dorkin All other characters, concepts, and related properties shown here are TM & © Ruby-Spears Enterprises, Inc. (or successor in interest), including but not limited to: All American Hero, Animal Hospital, Captain Lightning, Centurions, CHimPS!, Col. Blimp, Cover Girls, Crusher, Dragonflies, Dragonspies, Eagle, Father Crime, Flash-Cat, Four Arms, Future Force, Gemini, Gloria Means, Glowfinger, Goldie Gold and Action Jack, Hassan the Assassin, Heartbreak High, Hidden Harry, Human Slitha, Human Tank, Jake, Lave Man, Little Big Foot, Lost Looee, Metallum, Micromites, Mighty Misfits, Monsteroids, Ookla the Mok, Pie-Eye, Power Planet, Rogue Force, Roxie’s Raiders, Sidney Backstreet, Skanner, Small Kahuna, Street Angels, The Bad Guys, The Outcast, Thundarr the Barbarian, Thunder Dragons, Tiger Shark, Time Angels, Turbo Team, Turbo Teen, Turbo Teens, Undersea Girl, Warriors of Illusion, Yogi Finogi.

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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 29, No. 85, Winter 2023. Published quarterly (he said animatedly) by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $15 postpaid US ($19 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $53 Economy US, $78 International, $19 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

It Started With A Sailor by editor John Morrow

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veryone talks about Jack Kirby’s influence in the comic book field, and rightly so. But it wasn’t until the release of the Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives card set from Comic Images in 1994 that people outside the animation industry started to become aware of Jack’s mark on that field.

Sadly, those minuscule reproductions didn’t do justice to the astounding artwork and funky concepts conveyed in them—and many weren’t even Kirby’s art—so they left that era as more of a passing curiosity to Kirby fans, than a bona fide area for heavy research and discussion.

Let’s change that, shall we?

For his 1996 article back in TJKC #10, Jon Jack Kirby in 1980 at Bay Con 6 in B. Cooke conducted a series of lengthy interSan Francisco. Photo by Clay Geerdes, courtesy of David Miller. views with Jack’s animation cohorts, but only [below] The center image was drawn by Jack circa 1936, while he served as an “in-betweener” a few quotes from each (filling in the missing step between the main animators’ drawings) for the Max Fleischer Studios at the dawn of his career. saw print. Jon’s been the honorary Associate Editor of this mag for years, but for this issue, he dug out those vintage tapes, and ended up as true co-editor this go-round! [Thanks JBC!] This one’s so jam-packed with Jack’s animation work, that at the last minute, I had to jettison a planned Kirby Panel transcript. Don’t worry; it’ll run as soon as space allows.

With so much material to cover, rather than take up space with a lot of wordy captions—since so few details are known about much of the art and concepts here—I’m largely leaving art captionless unless there’s something specificly worth documenting. These amazing art pieces generally speak for themselves anyway.

Now grab a bowl of your favorite sugary breakfast cereal, plop down on your living room floor, and get ready to be entertained like you were on Saturday mornings as a kid— Kirby-style! [And I hope you like this issue’s animation cel-inspired cover, inked by Evan Dorkin!] H

[above] Kirby even influenced Mike Judge for his film Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe.

Find out more: https://www.cbr.com/beavis-and-butt-head-movie-mike-judge-jack-kirby-hands/ [left] The rare limited edition chase card from Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives.

I’m still missing card #35 (“Manfitting Boat”)—anybody got a spare they don’t need?

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Let’s look at some earlier animated shows Jack was involved in, indirectly:

Marvel Superheroes (1966)

Grantray-Lawrence Animation was active from 1954–1968 and founded by Grant Simmons, Ray Patterson (“Grant-Ray”), and Robert L. Lawrence. The Marvel Superheroes cartoon show ran from 1966–1967, with limited animation created from the actual comic books. There were 13 episodes per character, and each episode was comprised of three stories. Most were based on comics by Jack, but he wasn’t paid for the reuse of his art and plots.

CAPTAIN AMERICA

(art/stories reused from Avengers, Tales of Suspense) 1: “The Origin Of Captain America” • “Wreckers Among Us” • “Enter The Red Skull” 2: “The Sentinel And The Spy” • “The Fantastic Origin Of The Red Skull” • “Lest Tyranny Triumph” 3: “Midnight In Greymore Castle” • “If This Be Treason” • “When You Lie Down With Dogs” 4: “Revenge Of Captain America” • “The Trap Is Sprung” • “So Dies A Villain” 5: “Return Of Captain America” • “The Search” • “To Live Again” 6: “Zemo And His Masters Of Evil” • “Zemo Strikes” • “The Fury Of Zemo” 7: “Let The Past Be Gone” • “The Adaptoid” • “The Super Adaptoid” 8: “Coming Of The Swordsman” • “Vengeance Is Ours” • “Emissary Of Destruction” 9: “Bitter Taste Of Defeat” • “Sorcery Triumph” • “The Road Back” 10: “When The Commissar Commands” • “Doorway To Doom” • “Duel Or Die” 11: “The Sleeper Shall Awake” • “Where Walks The Sleeper” • “The Final Sleep” 12: “The Girl From Cap’s Past” • “The Stage Is Set” • “30 Minutes To Live” 13: “The Red Skull Lives” • “He Who Holds The Cosmic Cube” • “The Red Skull Supreme”

INCREDIBLE HULK

(art/stories reused from Incredible Hulk, Avengers, Tales to Astonish) 1: “The Origin Of The Hulk” • “Enter The Gorgon” • “To Be A Man”

Storyboard for the first Thor episode, using Kirby art from Journey Into Mystery #88 (Jan. 1963).

2: “Terror Of The Toadmen” • “Bruce Banner Wanted For Treason” • “Hulk Runs Amok” 3: “A Titan Rides The Train” • “Horde Of The Humanoids” • “Hulk On The Rampage” 4: “Power Of Dr. Banner” • “Where Strides The Behemoth” • “Back From The Dead” 5: “Micro Monsters” • “The Lair Of The Leader” • “To Live Again” 6: “Brawn Against Brain” • “Captured At Last” • “Enter The Chameleon” 7: “Within This Monster Dwells A Man” • “Another World Another Foe” • “The Wisdom Of The Watcher” 8: “The Space Phantom” • “Sting Of The Wasp” • “Exit The Hulk” 9: “Hulk Vs. The Metal Master” • “The Master Tests His Metal” • “Mind Over Metal” 10: “The Ringmaster” • “Captive Of The Circus” • “The Grand Finale” 11: “Enter Tyrannus” • “Beauty And The Beast” • “They Dwell In The Depths” 12: “Terror Of The T-Gun” • “I Against A World” • “Bruce Banner Is The Hulk” 13: “A Man Called Boomerang”

• “Hulk Intervenes” • “Less Than Monster, More Than Man”

MIGHTY THOR

Mr. Hyde” 9: “Every Hand Against Him” • “The Power Of The Thunder God” • “The Power Of Odin” 10: “The Tomorrow Man” • “Return Of Zarko” • “Slave Of Tomorrow Man” 11: “Enter Hercules” • “When Meet Immortals” • “Whom The Gods Would Destroy” 12: “Victory Of Pluto” • “The Verdict Of Zeus” • “Thunder In The Netherworld” 13: “Molto The Lava Man” • “Invasion Of The Lava Men” • “Living Rock”

(art/stories reused from Journey Into Mystery, Avengers, Thor) 1: “Trapped By Loki” • “Vengeance Of Loki” • “Defeat Of Loki” 2: “Chained Evil” • “Sandu Master Of The Supernatural” • “Enchanted Hammer” 3: “Enchantress And The Executioner” • “Giants Walk The Earth” • “Battle Of The Gods” 4: “At The Mercy Of Loki” • “Trail Of The Gods” • “Return To Earth” 5: “The Absorbing Man” • “In My Hands, This Hammer” • “Vengeance Of The Thunder God” 6: “To Kill A Thunder God” • “The Day Of The Destroyer” • “Terror Of The Tomb” 7: “The Gray Gargoyle” • “The Wrath Of Odin” • “Triumph In Stone” 8: “Mysterious Mr. Hyde” This cel looks to have been created • “Revenge Of Mr. Hyde” using art from three different panels • “Thor’s Showdown With from Tales of Suspense #67 (July 1965).

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Fantastic Four (1967–1968)

Following the demise of Grantray-Lawrence, Marvel worked with Hanna-Barbera to produce a Fantastic Four series, which ran for 20 episodes from 1967–1968. Alex Toth did the main character designs, but again, the series used Kirby’s characters and stories, without any compensation to Jack.

Non-Kirby storyboard for the 1967 Fantastic Four series.

1: “Klaws” 2: “Menace Of The Mole Man” 3: “Diablo” 4: “The Red Ghost” 5: “Invasion Of The Super Skrulls” 6: “Three Predictions Of Dr. Doom” 7: “The Way It All Began” 8: “Behold A Distant Star” 9: “Prisoners Of Planet X” 10: “The Mysterious Molecule Man”

11: “Danger In The Depths” 12: “Demon In The Deep” 13: “Return Of The Mole Man” 14: “It Started On Yancy Street” 15: “Galactus” 16: “The Micro World Of Dr. Doom” 17: “Blastaar, The Living Bomb Burst” 18: “The Terrible Tribunal” 19: “Rama-Tut” 20: “The Deadly Director”

The New Fantastic Four (1978–1979) 1: “A Monster Among Us” (based on Fantastic Four #24) 2: “The Phantom Of Film City” 3: “The Mole Man” (based on Fantastic Four #1) 4: “The Olympics Of Space” (based on Fantastic Four #90-93) 5: “Medusa And The Inhumans” (based on Fantastic Four #45) 6: “The Menace Of Magneto” (based on Fantastic Four #102) 7: “Meet Doctor Doom” (based on Fantastic Four #5) 8: “The Impossible Man” (based on Fantastic Four #11) 9: “The Diamond Of Doom” 10: “The Frightful Four” (based on Fantastic Four #36) 11: “Calamity On The Campus” (based on Fantastic Four #35) 12: “The Final Victory Of Dr. Doom” (based on Fantastic Four #10) 13: “Blastaar, The Living Bomb-Burst” (based on Fantastic Four #63)

On the next three pages are Jack’s storyboards from the final episode, “Blastaar, The Living Bomb-Burst”, which originally aired on December 16, 1978.

This time at least, Jack was directly involved, as storyboard artist. Again, his 1960s stories were reused for many episodes, and both Stan Lee and Roy Thomas were involved in writing the new dialogue. Jack was tasked with designing new member H.E.R.B.I.E., although Dave Cockrum reportedly drew several trial versions of the robot before Kirby. The first episode aired September 9, 1978.

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Mark Evanier

JACK F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

[below] Some DePatieFreleng New FF storyboards that were pieced together for Fantastic Four #236’s “new” Lee/Kirby story, without Jack’s knowledge. [next page, top] Jack’s design for H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot.

Mark Evanier interview Conducted by Jon B. Cooke on May 5, 1996 Transcribed and copyedited by John Morrow and Mark Evanier

JON B. COOKE: Did you get Jack involved with animation?

MARK EVANIER: More or less. The first thing Jack did in animation that didn’t date back to working for the Fleischers, was the Fantastic Four cartoon show DePatieFreleng did in 1978. I was working at Hanna-Barbera at the time, and they developed the show initially. Iwao Takamoto was the art director there, and I heard they

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were having artists imitate Kirby’s stuff. I went to Iwao’s office and asked him about it, and I said, “Why don’t you get Jack Kirby to do this artwork?”

Iwao said, “Oh, we’d love it, but he works in New York, doesn’t he?” I said, “Jack’s out here in Thousand Oaks,” and I don’t remember if I gave him Jack’s number, or called Roz and gave her the number, but the next day Roz drove Jack down to the studio and Hanna-Barbera hired Jack to do presentation art for this Fantastic Four show which they were pitching to NBC. NBC accepted the show, and at that point Marvel decided they wanted to do the show with DePatie-Freleng instead of HannaBarbera. There was no contract, just a sort of handshake understanding. What ultimately happened was that a deal was made. DePatie-Freleng had developed a Godzilla show for NBC, and Hanna-Barbera had this Fantastic Four show, so they swapped. Doug Wildey had developed the Godzilla show, and he had the choice of staying at DePatie-Freleng and doing Fantastic Four, or going to Hanna-Barbera and doing Godzilla, at the same time that both studios put in an offer for Jack’s services. So Doug chose to stay with Godzilla and he wound up with an office at Hanna-Barbera right next to mine JON: Was Jack involved in concepts on it? Was H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot his idea?

MARK: The name H.E.R.B.I.E. was not his, he had another name for the robot. I don’t know who came up with the idea of putting in a robot. At that point, the Human Torch had been optioned to Universal; every-

body thinks they took him out because they didn’t want to have a character on fire, but actually it was a legal problem. Universal was developing a TV movie.

But basically, they tried an experiment. Usually in animation, you write a script and then a storyboard artist turns it into a series of panels.

What they tried was having Jack storyboard first and then they’d add the dialogue at a later time, and it didn’t really work. There are a couple of reasons.

One of them was that Jack did not have the experience with storyboards to do that job well. The second problem was that because it would have limited animation, you have to have the right amount of dialogue during a speech, to make up for the fact that they aren’t moving very much. So you can’t really storyboard it and then figure out later how long the dialogue is going to be. It has to be done the other way around. And also, Stan Lee dialogued most of them, and he was not at that point that proficient at writing for animation. So the method really didn’t work. The people on the production staff, mostly a man named Lew Marshall, had to re-storyboard the thing and try to turn this into a real storyboard by animation standards.

There was a lot of wasted effort.

JON: Did Jack work with Stan at all on the Fantastic Four show?

MARK: Oh yeah, absolutely. They probably had a number of meetings, and on the phone. DePatie-Freleng had an office on Van Nuys Boulevard, and Jack probably came in once or twice a week and met with them for an hour or two.

JON: How long did he work at DePatie-Freleng?

MARK: Well, the show lasted one season.

JON: Had he left Marvel by that time?

MARK: I think what happened was, they gave him a leave of absence.

He was ready to leave. Prior to this thing coming into his life, Jack had told me that when his contract was up, he was going to leave Marvel and not go back. They suspended his contract, or otherwise let him out of it, so he could work on that show.

That may have been one of the reasons that he chose to go with DePatie-Freleng as opposed to Godzilla at Hanna-Barbera, because he could fulfill his Marvel contract.

JON: Did Jack come up with the stories himself?

MARK: Most of the stories were adapted from old [comics stories].

My understanding is, they gave him a little synopsis, and he would sketch out the storyboard before any dialogue was written.

JON: Was he giving up on comics at that time, or just giving up on Marvel?

MARK: Well, at that point it was kind of the same thing. His options were DC or Marvel; there were no other publishers out there that could pay him enough; there were really no other publishers out there at that point. He didn’t want to go back to DC. I think he was pretty much giving up on comics.

JON: Do you know the circumstances behind his storyboards being published in Fantastic Four #236 [left]?

MARK: The circumstances were that it was the anniversary issue, and they called Jack and asked him for a brand new story for that issue. He declined. At that point, he wanted nothing to do with Marvel, and for some reason they decided to 9

create a fake Jack Kirby story. They took his storyboards and traced them, without his knowledge or permission.

weren’t getting along with him. I had been asked by Marvel to intervene, to work with Jack on his stuff for Marvel, and I felt that was not their place to be asking me. If Jack wanted to ask me, that would be fine.

JON: And what was his response?

MARK: He was quite upset. He did not feel it was his work, but it was being billed as his. They were not paying him for the work. They had created a Jack Kirby story out of nothing by using his work. His name was being utilized without his permission. On the John Byrne cover, if you look, Stan Lee is in the scene, but there’s a blank spot where Jack had been in there, and Marvel at the last minute decided they didn’t have the right to do that, and they erased him. It was not a very nice thing to do. I think it was done more out of ignorance than malice. I think they just thought, “Hey, we own this material, why can’t we create a Jack Kirby story?”

JON: The relationship was just breaking down.

MARK: Well, yes. He just wasn’t getting along with them. One of the problems was, there were a lot of guys in the office who were just dying to write stories for Jack to draw. But anyway, he didn’t feel he had much of a future at Marvel. He felt he’d kind of gone backwards in his career, and his eyes were starting to bother him a bit at that point. He worried he wasn’t going to be able to keep up the same amount of pages at that rate that he was expected to draw.

At dinner, I didn’t discuss animation. I wasn’t involved that much in animation myself. I was working at Hanna-Barbera doing their comic book line. I had met Iwao because he was my official superior over the artwork I bought; that’s how I knew him.

JON: Before you found that opportunity for Jack at Hanna-Barbera, had you discussed the possibility of him working in animation?

MARK: Not really. It actually didn’t even dawn on me, nor was I really sure what Jack could do in animation. Most animation jobs are done in the studio. You report to work every day, and Jack was not equipped to do that. He couldn’t drive, and he really wasn’t the kind of guy to go to a studio every day. It really didn’t dawn on me.

We had a dinner meeting, which I vaguely recall was just before or after Christmas of 1977. Some things were going on with Jack and his Marvel relationship. He was having a lot of problems with the office back there. He wasn’t getting along with them, and they

JON: Was that a real anxious time for Jack?

MARK: I would think it was. Jack was always very concerned with making a living, and doing his best work. I think he felt after so many years working in the comic book industry, there was no place for him to go. That’s not a happy thing.

JON: Did you introduce Jack to Joe Ruby?

MARK: I think I did. Steve Gerber thinks he did. As far as I know, I did. I was working for Ruby-Spears on a show called Thundarr the Jack’s villains for Roxie’s Raiders.

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Barbarian, which Ruby-Spears was trying to sell to ABC. Alex Toth had done the basic character models on it, and ABC was kind of on the fence. They were leaning toward buying the show, but weren’t sure. Steve basically brought the show to Joe Ruby. I sat in on a couple of meetings discussing ideas. Then Joe Ruby said they need to get some more artwork done, and Toth was not available. I recall I said, “Let’s get Jack Kirby.” I knew Jack had recently at that point finished working for DePatie-Freleng on the Fantastic Four show. So we brought Jack in, and he did a bunch of big pieces of artwork, most of which were inked by Alfredo Alcala—although Roz actually inked one or two of them. They were what closed the sale on the Thundarr show to ABC. And then when the show began, Jack was kind of a designer. He mostly did sketches of the villain of the episode, the incidental characters, machines, whatever, and those drawings were frequently traced over by other artists to simplify them for animation purposes. But sometimes they were used directly.

voice of Thundarr was done by the same actor who did the voice of Tarzan originally. That’s not a coincidence.

ABC said, “Get the guy that did the voice of Tarzan.”

So what happened there was a case of ABC trying to have a little comfort level, by having something that pertained to Tarzan.

JON: How was Jack’s relationship with Joe Ruby?

MARK: Pretty good. I think they got along great. Jack liked Joe tremendously, and vice versa. Jack did quite a bit of work for them over the years. They spoke the same language, and they actually had quite a bit in common. Joe Ruby was a big cigar smoker.

JON: Can you tell me anything about Roxie’s Raiders?

MARK: Steve Gerber and Marty Pasko were the developers. The premise was to do an updated movie serial; a cliffhanger thing. Jack did quite a bit of work on that. That show came very close to selling and being a series, closer than anything else there that never made it. It was based on Doc Savage as I recall. Roxie had this squadron of guys who were all specialists in their fields, and there were some villains, but I don’t remember all that much about it. Everybody on Saturday morning back then tended to do that; look for whatever was hot and copy it, especially in the toy world.

From 1975, Jack presents Chuck Norris with this sketch titled “Karate Chops” (originally published in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1316), and (at left) the Ruby-Spears initial presentation for Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, by Ted Pedersen.

JON: Was that the overwhelming attitude: merchandising first?

MARK: Not at that point. At that point, their goal was to sell a show to a network. One of the problems is, you don’t film pilots for Saturday morning. You do some artwork, you do a presentation, a script, what’s called a bible, but there’s not the time nor money to make up an episode to interest them in buying the series. The selling season for the networks is November, December, January, with the goal of selling the show by February. Then the shows are produced in March, April, May, June, July, August, so they can air in September, and then they’re on for a full year after that. So in December of 1990, you’re pitching shows that will air in Fall of 1991, and stay on the air until Fall of 1992. There’s almost a twoyear lead time there, and when you gamble wrong, you’re stuck with it for a long time. As a result, the network is very conservative in what they buy, and they try to buy something that for some reason is a proven commodity.

At that time, it was the other way around; they’d say, “Look, people are selling an awful lot of G.I. Joe toys, let’s do a military-type show.” It was a reason to believe that moment would be very responsive to that type of material. Also, the network has to sell that show to advertisers before it exists, before the first episode is even finished. That’s why you see shows based on star characters and previously established things. If I can go to an advertiser and say, “I have this new show based on a hit movie,” it gives them something to lock on to. So that’s why they try to go with a pre-sold property, or at least something that is close enough and familiar enough. They want to make sure there’s some element in there that has a successful track record.

In the case of Thundarr, I think there were some toys out at the time that led people to believe the show could be successful.

Filmation had done a successful Tarzan show not long before. The

JON: What you just described sounds very stifling creatively. Was it detrimental to Jack at all?

MARK: I think Jack was enormously happy with his experience at Ruby-Spears. I wasn’t happy with mine, but he was with his, because he was out of comics and was even credited as a TV producer at some point. Television at least had a little more dignity to it. It was kind of a way to say to the comic book business, “You thought you had me trapped, but you didn’t. I found a way out.” And he got paid very well, he got a health plan which was very handy for the family.

It was a little more comfortable venue for him at that particular point. I think that was a better alternative than whatever his options were in comic books.

You’ve got to remember that Jack had not had a lot of creative freedom in comics for some time. The last few years at DC, he had no creative freedom. And at Marvel, he was working in some very narrow areas. Jack would not have chosen to go back to Captain America—that’s what Marvel wanted. I don’t know that he’d have chosen to do Devil Dinosaur, if he had not been asked to do something specifically in that vein. But I also think at that point, he’d reached the point of—not burnout so much, but if he had stayed in comics, there’s a limit to how many times you can start another comic, or another universe. While Jack could’ve done it physically and creatively, I don’t think he was happy to, after a lifetime in comics, still be in roughly the same position. He wanted to feel like he could progress somewhere. So doing the stuff for Ruby-Spears was liberating in that he wasn’t sitting there doing the same thing, trying to please the same marketplace, working with the same restrictions of the pages. Also he was doing a wider variety of material; he was 11

doing funny animal designs. He had to turn in a certain amount of work every week and he could go to Joe Ruby and say, “I have an idea for a series,” and Joe would tell him. “Fine, spend the next two weeks on that,” and Jack would draw these ideas up. Jack liked nothing better than to sit and draw up ideas. And he was treated very nicely by the staff, and just felt that at his age, he was suddenly in a new area. I don’t think he found it creatively stifling. I think it was a new challenge to him.

JON: I’ve got a list of concepts from the Unpublished Archives card set, and none of them were produced that I know of. What other work did he do that was?

MARK: I think he worked on The Centurions and Mr. T. When Jack started working for Ruby-Spears, it was owned by a company called Filmways. About halfway through the time of Thundarr—I can’t tell you exactly—Filmways sold Ruby-Spears to Taft Broadcasting, which also owned Hanna-Barbera. Ruby-Spears was moved across the street from Hanna-Barbera. They basically became sister companies. Jack was on this contract, where he received a certain dollar figure per week to do drawings, and when he was not doing stuff for Ruby-Spears, he was then loaned out to Hanna-Barbera. He did a lot of character designs for Super Friends, even for Scooby-Doo. Most people don’t know Jack worked on Scooby-Doo for a couple of weeks there.

for Ruby-Spears. That was a super-hero show; I think it was based on a toy, I’m not sure. He worked on a show called Lazer Tag Academy. Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandoes, he worked on that. He’s listed on Goldie Gold for character design. I don’t think he designed the main characters; he may’ve done some sketches which led to it.

Some of this stuff gets passed through so many hands, and redrawn and retouched.

He worked on Rambo. Super Friends—there are some Kirby model sheets from Super Friends floating around. They were always stolen out of the files. A lot of comics fans worked in animation, so they’re always swapping Alex Toth and Jack Kirby model sheets, and xeroxes of them.

Ruby-Spears is now no longer affiliated with Hanna-Barbera.

The company was dissolved, and Ruby and Spears formed a new studio from scratch, which is now just barely in business. I think it’s called Ruby-Spears Enterprises now.

JON: What did he draw for it?

MARK: Models, incidentals. What happens on a show is, after a script is done, there’s a model packet for a cartoon show, the regular models for the regular characters. Then every episode has a new villain, a new car that somebody drives, that would have to be designed. So it goes to a model person. Whatever it was, if a writer wrote an episode and the villain had a pet gorilla and a great car, someone had to design the villain, design the gorilla, design the car.

Those are called incidentals or props. Jack worked on The Centurions

JON: Did Jack work on a seasonal schedule?

MARK: He was on a weekly paycheck. Basically what happens is, you have a selling season, like October to February. And then you have a production season, which is like February to October. That would be for networks; Ruby-Spears was also trying to sell shows for syndication and to other venues, and that’s kind of a year-round thing. So they probably had Jack jump back and forth between development, and then when there was no development to do, put him on production. It depends upon the show, and who they were trying to sell to.

If they were trying to sell a super-hero show, they might put Kirby on artwork. If they sold that show and were trying to sell a funny animal show, they might put him on incidentals for the super-hero show. Jack’s name had some value in trying to sell some of those shows, to say, “Hey, we’ve got Jack Kirby.”

JON: It sounds like, at that time of his life, Ruby-Spears was a godsend to him.

MARK: I think it was. If they had not come along, I think another studio, including Hanna-Barbera possibly, would’ve grabbed him.

But Joe Ruby treated him very well. Jack was very grateful for the position, because he didn’t think there was a place for him in comic books for several years there.

JON: Roz has said repeatedly that Jack was a frustrated film director, that he always wanted to direct films. Was he happier being closer to Hollywood at that time, right when the blockbusters were all breaking? Lucas, Spielberg were all going on.

MARK: Well, Jack wanted very much to design a movie. I don’t know if he wanted as much to direct, as he wanted to write one, direct, do everything. He kept envisioning these movies, and he didn’t get anywhere with them. None of them ever materialized.

He’d come up with some concept sketches and things.

JON: Did he have meetings?

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ceiling on it. Jack had been as successful as you could be in the business, and it didn’t take him very far. If you were the most successful guy in the movie business, you’d have millions of dollars. If you’re the most successful guy in the book publishing business, you’d have millions of dollars. If you were the most successful guy in comic books, you were sitting there hoping to get a deal next year from DC or Marvel. It didn’t translate the way it should have into success.

Jack lived long enough, fortunately, to see the business change, the way he always knew it would. Over the years, what astounded me about Jack was his predictions all came true.

Jack was always very good that way. Look how he pre-dated Star Wars. People have made a lot of money following Jack on concepts.

JON: Roz has said she never saw Jack read very much. With all the concepts he was coming out with, he must’ve been voracious.

MARK: No, I don’t think Jack was as big of a reader. I think he read a little. I saw him work his way through the newspaper a lot. I saw him occasionally going through a book or a pulp; he had a lot of old pulps he liked to read. I remember a couple of times bringing him books of old comic strip collections. They put out a collection of Red Barry, the old Will Gould newspaper strip, and Jack said, “Oh, I’ve gotta see that. I love Red Barry.” I got him the book at ComicCon and he devoured it. But I don’t think Jack got a lot of ideas from books. I think he got assimilation. Jack would look at—I don’t know, a picture of a dog, and that suddenly would trigger an entire dog world.

MARK: With a few producers, yeah. I don’t think he talked to any high-class producers. A few people sought him out because they thought they could get him to do a lot of artwork on spec—some lower budget people. He did want to get into movies, and doing the animation brought him a little closer than he otherwise would have.

It enabled him to say, “I’m a TV producer, I’ve left comic books behind.” I’ve always said the business never gave Jack as much as Jack gave the business, and I think there was an enormous pride for him to be able to go to the DC Christmas party or any convention or gathering of comic book people, and basically without being rude or nasty about it, say, “I’m not in this business anymore. I’ve gotten out of it. I’ve gone on to other things; I’m doing TV now.” It’s got to be very frustrating to have been Jack’s age and have as many hits as he had, and be on the same level with a 24-year-old kid who’s imitating your work. The comic book business has always had kind of a glass

JON: Did Jack ever meet George Lucas or Steven Spielberg?

MARK: I don’t know that he ever did.

JON: What was his response to Star Wars?

MARK: Boy. I think he felt that he inspired it, to a certain extent. But I think he also felt flattered to a certain extent. I don’t think he felt angry; I don’t remember any anger, honestly.

[previous page, bottom] Kirby design for the third episode of Challenge of the Superfriends, “Battle at the Earth’s Core”, first airing September 23, 1978. [top] Kirby designs for the Scooby and Scrappy-Doo episode titled “Scooby in Wonderland,” which originally aired on December 20, 1980. [above] Kirby’s villains for Goldie Gold and Action Jack.

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INCIDENTALS [above] Space Ghost’s “Nomads” aired November 7, 1981.

[right] The Teen Force episode “Word Star” first aired September 22, 1981. Below is how the design was simplified for animation.

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Space Stars was a 60-minute Saturday morning animated program block produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and broadcast on NBC from 1981–1982. It included segments for Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Teen Force, Astro and the Space Mutts, and Space Stars Finale. Kirby produced numerous incidental images for secondary characters and backgrounds for these shows. [top] Herculoid’s “Mindbender” aired Nov. 4, 1981.

Also for Hanna-Barbera, Jack drew incidentals for The World’s Greatest Super Friends (“Universe of Evil”, center left, aired October 20, 1979) as well as The New Shmoo (1979–1980), as shown above. [left] Space Stars Finale’s “The Outworlder” aired Nov. 28, 1981. [next page] Undersea Girl, use unknown.

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JON: Did he aspire to Hollywood?

MARK: Oh, he definitely aspired to Hollywood, there’s no question about it. One of the reasons he moved to Southern California—he moved because his daughter had asthma, and Roz had asthma, but he also thought he could get into movies somehow. One of the reasons he went with DC, was because DC was in the movie business.

DC was part of Warner Brothers. One of the powerful lures DC used

to get him was to imply that they might have a little office on the Warner Brothers lot, to develop comics out of there. It just put him an inch closer to the movie business. He definitely wanted to work in the movies.

JON: Did he make any mention of wanting to see the New Gods as a film?

MARK: Yes, he did. Everything Jack did, from 1965 on—even sequences in Thor, he’d say, “These four issues would make a great Thor movie”—he was very focused that way. Some of them were animation projects, some of them were live action, but he definitely saw everything as movies or TV shows.

JON: Why did Jack leave RubySpears?

MARK: Ruby-Spears went from being a very big company to being a very small company. They just sold less and less, and I honestly don’t know the end of it. I think at some point, they may’ve just gotten to a day where they told Jack, “We’re going to put you freelance.

We can’t renew your contract.” It was a studio that went from having four or five shows on the air, to having one.

Even Hanna-Barbera got smaller. When I worked for them in the late 1970s, they would have six or seven shows in production at a given time, and now they have one. The animation business in 1976 or 1978 was controlled by about four studios, that did all the animation on television. Today it’s about thirty. It just became a whole different industry, and Ruby-Spears had about a third of the business at one point.

JON: Was Jack at the time facing retirement? His eyes, his life… when did he leave, around 1986?

MARK: I think it was a kind of filtering out, and rolling back. I don’t know when he left exactly; I was not working with him then.

I sometimes went six months or a year without talking to him. I think he just cut back.

JON: Was the fight with Marvel becoming more all-consuming for him?

MARK: Yeah, the original art fight became very consuming. It was a very ugly period for a lot of people.

JON: He still seemed to be very angry in the 1990 interview in The Comics Journal.

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that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their fault that it did. If it hadn’t been them, it’d been somebody else. And I think they did an enormous service; not so much in respect to the original art. I think Jack could’ve gotten the original art without the Journal crusade. I think he could’ve gotten the same settlement without that. But I think it was very important at that stage of Jack’s life, for Marvel to see the industry rally behind him. I think Marvel needed to be shown graphically that the industry was going to rally behind somebody. If it hadn’t been about the original art, I think it would’ve been about Jack’s credit or something else.

The issue that was involved was that Marvel was now paying new creators residuals, royalties, reprint fees. There was this huge new windfall where creators were now sharing in the success of their comics, and it excluded Jack. People were making money off tracing his panels and calling them covers, and making royalties that he didn’t make. There has been this great creative revolution in the industry; the industry had recognized a lot of creator’s rights, and the necessity to be financially responsible to creators. You couldn’t keep people in comics if you didn’t. One of the reasons that came about was because of Jack Kirby. If Jack had gone along with it, it would’ve been that much harder for creators to get a financial share.

But the rewards had not been distributed properly, because it kind of bypassed Jack. And the original art became the battle over which the thing was fought: “When is Marvel going to treat this man with a little bit of consideration?” And it didn’t have to be the original art; it could’ve been over something else.

I didn’t think it had to be as ugly as it did, but I’m glad it got settled where it did.

MARK: Yeah, he was very angry at that point. Jack was enormously loved, and this is something I came to understand years later.

Jack incurred a lot of animosity from people who I think were just plain jealous of him, and resentful. People who were working for Marvel—and I’m not talking about Marvel management, I mean lower-level people—just resented the fact that he was a presence there, and they couldn’t live up to his standards. That they were working on his characters, making money off his characters, and they felt guilty the same way people who worked on Superman years ago hated Siegel and Shuster. “How dare you make me feel guilty for working on these characters?” And Jack encountered a lot of strange animosity out of left field during that whole original art battle. He was ultimately gratified by the entirety of support he got from the community, but he was very surprised he got the hostility from a couple of strange quarters and strange people. They took it upon themselves, when everybody was praising Kirby, to resent him. It was a very frustrating period for him, and I felt very bad for him. I think the whole thing was handled very badly on many levels.

Marvel handled it badly, I think Jack handled some things badly. I was in a very bizarre position, being advised by Jack’s lawyers to stay out of the battle till he needed it.

I think the whole battle could’ve been over before the Comics Journal even became involved. Once the Journal became involved, it became a much bigger, uglier thing than it had to be. But

JON: Suddenly in 1990 I think, the $75 classic Captain America Comics #1-10 hardcover collection got published, and along came Boys’ Ranch. Did those have anything to do with the original art settlement?

MARK: Those are unconnected. But I think Marvel was enormously polite to Jack after that, because they’d seen how embarrassing it was to oppose him.

JON: Did Jack return to do any animation work after leaving RubySpears?

MARK: I don’t know the full extent of his Ruby-Spears involvement.

I really don’t.

Jack got to a point where he couldn’t really draw his last year or two.

When he did draw, it was more lucrative for him to do drawings for the fan market. Jack had a number of offers for commissions, for very high amounts of money.

JON: So overall, his experience with animation 17

[previous page, top] Some of Kirby’s last produced Ruby-Spears work, for The Centurions: “Let The Games Begin”, first airing October 1, 1986. [previous page, bottom] Sadly blurry repro of one of Jack’s Goldie Gold boards. • [this page] Funny animals, and a compelling villain.

was a positive one?

MARK: I would say so, yes, definitely.

through animation overseas and whatever else has happened, and you see it gets very diminished. You get very disappointed with the finished results, but you figure having Jack Kirby involved certainly increased your odds of doing a good show. H

JON: When you look back at some of that stuff, do you see Jack in there?

MARK: On some of the Thundarrs, yeah, I can see Jack’s designs. If I were told that’s somebody imitating Kirby, I would not be shocked, but yeah, I can see some of Jack’s designs there, absolutely. Some of the villains on Thundarr, especially.

JON: Did you write for Jack on any of those shows?

MARK: I wrote on Goldie Gold, and I wrote on Thundarr.

JON: Did you write for Jack, so to speak? Did you write to his strengths?

MARK: The only thing, on Goldie Gold, I wrote one episode where there was a giant office building above the clouds, and I was thinking of the SHIELD heli-carrier that Jack had designed. I said in the script, “Have Kirby design something like this.” [laughs] Steve Gerber was story editor, and he knew exactly what I meant when he saw what I had written. Jack didn’t do the same design of course, but he did something the same way.

At the time I was writing a script, I didn’t know for sure that it was going to go to Jack. He could be yanked off at a moment’s notice for another project. It was hard enough getting a script approved that Joe Ruby would like, and ABC would like, without putting in Jack Kirby stuff too. But Jack’s presence on those projects made them more exciting. By the time they get on the air, they’ve gone 18

Stone AgeS

[above] A sketch done for Lucasfilm historian Jonathan Rinzler. [below] There was no shortage of Things at Marvel/Atlas prior to Benjamin J. Grimm’s debut in Fantastic Four #1 [top]. [right] The Thing’s first pin-up, from Fantastic Four #2. Very dinosaur-like!

The Rocky Evolution of Sample Headline

the Thing!

ne of the most memorable and enduring characters to emerge out of the early Marvel Universe was Benjamin J. Grimm, better known as the Thing. But he was not a character who was created, so much as discovered—one who rapidly evolved over the course of the first few years of The Fantastic Four.

“In my plot synopsis,” said co-creator Stan Lee, “I asked Jack to draw a big, burly, grotesque creature that I called the Thing. I had no idea how Jack would draw him. I just said, ‘Let’s get a real monster in there.’ But, like so many characters, the Thing just kind of took over.”

In his earliest appearances, the Thing was a brutish man-monster cursed with a sour and sulky personality. Over time, Lee and Kirby pushed away from that original portrayal, in part perhaps because once the Incredible Hulk appeared on the scene less than a year after the FF’s 1961 debut, many readers decried the Hulk as a mere carbon copy of the Thing.

Certainly, the two Marvel monsters displayed similar personalities and speech patterns, including a fondness for the exclamation, “Bah!” Both were ordinary men mutated by radiation into becoming inhuman monsters with superhuman strength.

by Will Murray

Almost from the beginning, Jack Kirby tinkered with the Thing’s outward form. Originally, he resembled a great number of Kirby monsters that had stormed through the pages of Strange Tales and Tales of Suspense. Colorist Stan Goldberg painted the Thing the same brownish-orange tones as many of those lumbering creatures.

Over the course of the first year of The Fantastic Four, the Thing evolved from an animated lump of brownish-orange clay into that of a figure who appeared to have the thick skin of an alligator.

“It takes about four issues to get a superhero’s looks the way he will end up,” explained Kirby. “I took

A ROCK-SOLID DESIGN (EVENTUALLY) While the Hulk retained an outward semblance of his human form, the Thing became a walking lump of misshapen muscle, whose appearance often changed from issue to issue––sometimes panel to panel! His hair and ears disappeared beneath his ugly reptilian hide.

The Thing also lost some digits on his hands and feet after being transformed. The Hulk did not.

“I thought I should do something new with Ben Grimm,” revealed Kirby. “If you’ll notice, the beginnings of Ben Grimm was, he was kind of lumpy. I felt he had the power of a dinosaur and I began to think along those lines. I wanted his skin to look like dinosaur hide.

He kind of looks like your outside patio, or a close-up of dinosaur hide.”

The chief difference distinguishing Marvel’s first heroic monsters is that the Hulk could transform back into Bruce Banner through various means, while Ben Grimm was stuck being the Thing except for the occasional spontaneous reversion, which gave him hope of an eventual cure for his mutated condition.

Grimm hated being the Thing, while the Hulk’s irradiated brain lost all memory of his human identity and at times despised “puny” Bruce Banner as if he were another person entirely.

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beginning to Sol Brodsky, Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott, and others, all interpreted Kirby’s pencils through the filter of their own artistic sensibilities. Because pencilers and inkers did not typically communicate with one another, they were on their own trying to figure out the Thing’s actual structure.

Because of this, it’s difficult to trace the evolution of the Thing from issue to issue, especially after Ayers took over inking with issue #6. Ayers liked to render the Thing as if he was covered in lumpy hide.

But that was not how Jack Kirby penciled the character over the years 1962 and 1963.

INK VS. PENCIL A glimpse of the unadulterated Kirby Thing first appeared on the cover of Fantastic Four #7, which Kirby himself inked. There, the character takes on the beginning of his ultimate form. Only his head is depicted, but it is clearly encased in thick, bony plates of differing shapes.

I once asked Ayers why he didn’t follow Kirby’s pencils faithfully on that character, and this was his response: “Stan put the Thing in there—much to my chagrin. I didn’t like drawing him. When I first started inking the Thing, I had him looking like he was made of mud. Then somebody made him look like he was chiseled little bricks. I could never figure out what he was. To this day, when I draw the Thing, I have these damn squares to contend with.”

Ayers’ solution was to simplify and homogenize the figure, keeping the Thing in line with Kirby’s earliest depictions.

“When I saw it for the first time,” Ayers said in another interview, “it looked like a rug of blocks or something, not even like an alligator, so I made it nice and soft.”

A panel from Fantastic Four #15 survives in pencil form [see next page], showing the so-called “rocky” Thing before Ayers sanded down his hard edges in that issue. The difference is dramatic.

It should be noted that the Steve Ditko-inked Thing of the previous issue differs from the Ayers interpretation. Although it is more impressionistic, the skin pattern shows greater complexity in some panels. This makes it difficult to determine when the more complicated Thing design was introduced

by Kirby. But the cover to FF #13, which was supposedly inked by Don Heck (but looks to me more like Vince Colletta) is definitely the angular version. I’m inclined toward the belief that Kirby introduced his new version of Ben Grimm with issue #12, where he first faces off against the Hulk.

But it might have been earlier. The Thing figure apparently inked by Kirby himself on the cover of #11 is more sharply rendered than the Ayers’ version inside. It’s possible that after the brief reversion to Ben Grimm in FF #11, the new version of the Thing manifested on page 10 of “A Visit with the Fantastic Four.” However, the art is ambiguous, thanks to Dick Ayers’ inking. It may be that Kirby tinkered with the character’s looks until he arrived at a final construction he thought worked. This process probably commenced with FF #7, the first monthly issue. Going monthly may have motivated Kirby to treat the series as one that might last.

the liberty of changing him. At first he looked a little pimply and I felt that was kind of ugly. What I did was give him the skin of a dinosaur. I felt that would add to his power. Dinosaurs had thick plated hides, and of course, that’s what the Thing had.”

Here, Kirby is referring to the group of prehistoric creatures known as Thyreophora, meaning “shield bearers.” Think Stegosaurus or Ankylosaurus, the so-called “armored” dinosaurs which are covered in horny plates called scutes. Modern animals such as turtles and armadillos are also protected by shells which are covered by clusters of scutes, as are alligators and crocodiles, whose scutes are embedded in their thick skin. So when the artist used the term “plate,” he meant scutes. Kirby assistant Steve Sherman once called the Thing’s scutes “scales,” which implies that Kirby also used that term as well. And Mark Evanier recalled FF inker Frank Giacoia’s opinion that the Thing’s outer form suggested a “reptile.”

Stan Lee had the identical understanding. The first time Dick Ayers drew the Thing was for the Human Touch story in Strange Tales #106 (March 1963), “The Threat of the Torrid Twosome.” Under a panel featuring the Thing, Lee scribbled a note to Ayers which said: “scales like reptile—not lines” [above]. Evidently, the artist’s pencil version of the character was not in keeping with the look Kirby had established at that time.

Clearly, the cosmic rays that transformed Ben into the Thing did not turn him into living rock.

Presumably, if one could pry off the assorted scutes, some version of the human Ben Grimm would be uncovered.

Ironically, the first foe the Thing ever battled was a giant rock creature on Monster Isle in Fantastic Four #1. The difference between the two brutes is clear and distinct. One is definitely rocky, and it ain’t the Thing!

A procession of inkers, ranging from George Klein in the

THE REAL DEAL The authentic Thing next surfaces on the cover of FF #18 [left].

Though the interior was finished by Ayers, George Roussos inked the cover and the Thing is again revealed in all his angular glory. This was also the case with the next two issues. Roussos was the inker whom Ayers complained had made the character resemble bricks.

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Not until Russos took over as interior embellisher with FF #21, did readers see the true Kirby Thing in action at last.

A funny thing happened when Roussos inked Dick Ayers’ Human Torch tale in Strange Tales #116, “In the Clutches of the Puppet Master,” which appeared the month after Roussos took over as regular FF inker. Dick Ayers presumably penciled his smooth version of the Thing. Apparently, when Roussos, by now accustomed to Kirby’s version, attacked the job, he basically reworked Ayers’ Thing design, resulting in a bizarrely geometric approach to the character, as if his skin was assembled out of triangular shards of tinted glass. Clearly, this was a salvage job. Subsequent Ayers Torch stories in which the Thing guest-starred depicted a character whose looks varied wildly, depending upon who inked it. This held true as Roussos gave way to Chic Stone and others on The Fantastic Four. No two embellishers interpreted Kirby’s complicated pencils quite the same way.

[right] Kirby-inked Thing from Fantastic Four #7’s cover. [center right] Roussos fixed Ayers’ Thing in Strange Tales #116. [bottom] Ayers’ inked version, vs. Kirby’s pencil rendition in Fantastic Four #15.

[left] Cover to FF #11.

WORDS MATTER During this formative period, Stan Lee shifted his written portrayal of Ben Grimm away from his early bitter anti-hero persona, softening it over time. Although still a tragic figure, the Thing began wisecracking and developing his distinctive personality.

“In the first issue,” Lee revealed, “he was kind of brooding and his style of speech was almost flowery. Then he started to develop a Jimmy Durante personality... started to become a wisecracker. He’s a learned, intelligent man, but it was like he decided he was so ugly, so horrible, that there was no point in trying to sound intelligent. Who would believe he was intelligent?

I totally fell in love with the Thing. He was the most appealing member of the FF to me, the one character who held the group together. He was always a good foil to play against Reed Richards.”

Despite the perpetual Human Torch/Thing feud of the early years, both co-creators came to see the greatest contrast between the Thing and Mr. Fantastic.

“Reed Richards was scholarly, but he was caught in an extraordinary situation,” Kirby pointed out. “Of course he would react in a very scholarly way. He would use his powers as a brainy guy would because Reed Richards is a brain––a very cool character. Ben couldn’t be cool. He had to handle an extreme position. He had a face that was certainly extraordinary. People react to that. You may be a very nice guy, but if you have a monstrous face, you’re going to make a very poor first impression.”

Although Lee insisted that Ben Grimm’s dialogue was inspired

by Jimmy Durante, and appropriated the comedian’s trademark expression, “What a revolting development this is!”, increasingly Jack Kirby became identified with the character, who took to smoking cigars, just like his artistic creator.

“They used to associate me with the Thing!” Kirby stated. “I used to talk like him! The Thing always talked like he came from the lower East Side of New York!… Well, I didn’t realize it myself, but that’s how the dialogue came out!”

Over the years, the artist increasingly came to identify with his creation, telling Leonard Pitts, Jr. in 1986, “Yes, everybody I’ve talked to has compared me to Ben Grimm, and perhaps I’ve got his

temperament. I’ve got his stubbornness, probably, and I suppose if I had his strength, I’d be conservative with it. Ben Grimm is that way.

Ben Grimm has always been conservative with his strength. If he uses his strength, he’ll use it in a justifiable manner––to save somebody, or to help somebody, or to see that fairness grows and evolves and helps people.”

The resemblance was more than one of mere personality, according to Jack’s wife Roz, who recalled, “I remember when he used to draw the Hulk, he would have the expressions on his face. Or the Thing, as he was drawing, he would act out. The expressions all came out on his face, he was acting them out while he was drawing.”

Despite the numerous times scientist Reed Richards studied the Thing in his efforts to restore him to human form, nowhere in the pages of The Fantastic Four was it ever hinted that Ben Grimm had mutated into what was essentially a two-legged armored dinosaur.

Maybe it was just as well, but a clear understanding of Kirby’s intentions illuminates his vision for the character. And the Thing’s fighting name suggests something much more alien than a man-shaped dinosaur.

It’s amusing to consider the possibility that if Kirby had created this character for DC Comics at that time, he would probably have been called something ridiculous like Dino-man. Thank God he wasn’t.

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preted the Thing’s plated armor as if he was encased in a jigsaw of jointed but irregular-fitting flat stones.

“Jack always spotted blacks on the Thing’s body, and while I may have refined them from time to time, I always made sure they defined the readability of that character,” noted Sinnott.

Somewhere along the line, the notion that Ben Grimm was some species of rock-man took hold and never went away. Some have speculated that it was a callback to Ben Grimm’s predecessor in the Challengers of the Unknown, “Rocky” Davis, but Kirby’s own accounts debunk that theory.

THE SINNOTT TOUCH As Kirby’s pencils were embellished by more refined inkers than Ayers and Roussos, such as Frank Giacoia and Joe Sinnott, the ultimate interpretation of the Thing was perfected. The character’s original beetling brow mutated into a horny sub-orbital brow ridge, and his steam-shovel jaw grew increasingly pronounced. His coloring shifted from a muddy brown tinged with orange to a flat orange hue, taking the edge off his menacing physiognomy.

“The original Thing was lumpy looking,” Sinnott told Jim Amash. “By the time I got to inking the FF on a regular basis, Jack had worked out how he wanted the Thing to look. What I did was to reinforce his idea. That’s why I put those little dots on the Thing’s rocks, because it highlighted the rough, stone-like texture of his ‘skin.’”

Although Sinnott ultimately found inking the Thing to be easy, he also acknowledged that it could be time-consuming. “Shading in the rocks took time,” he admitted. “But the key to the Thing is the way you shade the stones, really. Of course, you’ve got to ink him the way Jack penciled him. The way Jack penciled the Thing was a sight to behold. I used to love the way Jack gave the Thing a goofy look now and again. Nobody else ever did that. And the way he walked, he walked like he was stomping. You could feel the weight of the Thing. Nobody else ever did that either.”

Surprisingly, Sinnott’s initial reaction to the more complex Ben Grimm was not a positive one.

“As you know,” he remarked, “the early Thing looked like a lump of loose cement. But I liked that look; I really did. I didn’t like him too hard with the stones. But he did evolve into that.”

Apparently oblivious to Kirby’s actual intention, Sinnott inter-

THE ANIMATED THING For the 1967 Hanna-Barbara Fantastic Four Saturday morning cartoon, artist Alex Toth redesigned Kirby’s Thing, simplifying his segmented skin and giving him huge puffy-looking lips, a feature Kirby rarely delineated. His Thing was ultimately lipless, except where the artist felt the need to improvise.

Asked about the project in 1976, Kirby observed, “Well, it was always interesting to me how they were going to animate the Thing, which I felt was very hard to animate because of the body structure and the make-up of the body, shifting all the plates on those hands. But they did a good job in that particular area. But it was the movement, the general movement of the figure that was bad. It was choppy.”

As a former Fleischer Studios animator, Jack’s thinking would naturally lean in that direction. This comment reveals that years after leaving The Fantastic Four, the artist was still thinking of his alter ego as an armored man-dinosaur.

In 1979, Hanna-Barbara launched a Thing solo show built around teenager Benji Grimm, who smashed two rings together, and so transformed into the adult Thing. The joined rings somehow attracted a barrage of orange rocks, which assembled into a protective shell about the boy. For this cartoon, they recycled the 1967 Toth design, broad lips and all. Had they not, whenever the Thing spoke, it would have necessitated animating his blocky jaw—a more expensive and difficult process.

THE HARD TRUTHS Yet over time, whether through fading memory or repetition by others, even Jack Kirby succumbed to the false premise of a rocky Thing.

“Ben Grimm changed into a rock creature, the Thing!” he recalled in later years. “Now there’s a monster if I ever saw a monster… In fact, if you go back and look at several stories, you’ll always find some kind of strange looking rock creature somewhere!”

Here, Kirby was thinking of the myriad pre-hero Marvel monsters he designed, such as the lead story in Strange Tales #94, “Pildorr, the Plunderer from Outer Space,” which was one of the first Jack Kirby stories inked by Joe Sinnott.

“I think he was a space pirate or something,” Sinnott remembered, “and when I looked at it, I was amazed by the characters.

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To this day, I still think that Pildorr was the prototype for the Thing. Maybe Jack wasn’t conscious of it at the time. But if you ever find that story and look at it, he looked like the original Thing, the lumpy Thing. He was a pirate, he had a patch over one eye, and these great cohorts of his were these monster-looking guys with teeth sticking out all over the place.”

Actually, the Pildorr story was drawn between FF #2 and #3, but could have influenced the evolution of Kirby’s ongoing redesign of the character, as might have “The Two-Headed Thing” in the following issue of Strange Tales, which was drawn prior to FF #3.

Perhaps coincidentally, Sinnott’s first Fantastic Four inking effort involved the Thing going back in time and briefly becoming a pirate like Pildorr. This was the first issue—and the only one for years—in which an inker gave the Thing a noticeably stony look, as if he was constructed from assorted granite bricks.

Adding to Sinnott’s confusion, perhaps, is that weeks after inking Fantastic Four #5, he finished Kirby’s pencils on the first Thor story, “The Stone Men from Saturn!” The Stone Men, who were modeled after the giant heads on Easter Island, were drawn with a roughhewn texture indistinguishable from that of the early Thing.

Few of these pre-hero prototypes were truly rocky, but instead boasted thick crocodile or dinosaur skins.

Many were proto-Things in their outward appearance, but none possessed his unique tragic-comic persona.

THE MAN UNDERNEATH “The Thing was just an ordinary guy,” observed Kirby. “He went to college, and became a flyer and had a conventional background like anybody else. But now he was a Thing. He was a well-adjusted Thing, but still, he had the problem of looking and being like a monster and he had to live with that. At times, of course, that would irritate him. How’d you like to go into a bowling alley and have the ball crumble in your hands? That would be irritating. If I were super-strong, it might not be all beneficial. So the Thing had that problem looking like a monster and having the super-strength. The problem sometimes isn’t the super-villain, it’s your own super-strength. It’s your own irritability. The Thing would go berserk as much as the villain would. He’d smash everything up and I’d feel the same way.”

Yet the character ultimately developed into a very handy one for resolving story situations efficiently and dramatically, as Kirby discovered over the years.

“Ben Grimm is a natural guy,” he explained. “For showy purposes, he’s perfect! He certainly does the things that I wish I could do. He can tear an ashcan up like we do paper. He can rescue people in manners that we can’t. He can rip off the side of a building and maybe get the tenant out because it’s going to explode.

Ben Grimm can do it. Other people it would take many,

many hours, and of course make accidents unavoidable.

What Ben Grimm did was shorten that time and solve the problem quicker than most people did.”

“I told Jack I wanted somebody who turns into a monster,” noted Lee. “And he would be bitter because he’s a monster and couldn’t change back. The other three are able to change back, so it doesn’t affect them.

All these characters have powers they like, but when this guy becomes very powerful, he also becomes grotesque. It was a touch of pathos.”

“The Thing is a cantankerous personality,” agreed Kirby. “But you would be too if you had been irradiated and suddenly from being a respectable college man and a fighter pilot and having a wonderful career, you became some guy that had skin like a dinosaur, and became an entirely different personality.”

I once asked Lee about Kirby’s depiction of the mutated Ben Grimm, and if that was his thinking as well.

“Regarding The Thing,” he said, “I had no preconceived notion of what he’d look like. I just wanted him very ugly and very strong. If Jack thought of him with dinosaur skin, that’s fine with me.”

Treating Ben Grimm like a thinking, feeling human being, not a comicbook creature, became the key to the character’s enduring popularity.

“You take the Thing,” Kirby declared. “He’d knock out fifty guys at a time and win––then maybe he’d sit down and kind of reflect on it: ‘Maybe I hurt somebody or maybe we could have done it some other way.’ Like a human being would think, not like a monster. In other books, the guy would knock out the gangs and that would be the end of it. You would see the guys in jail, and that’s it.”

In this rare instance, once they arrived at a unified approach to the character of Ben Grimm, Lee and Kirby stayed on the same page.

“I began to evolve the FF,” Kirby explained. “I made the Thing a little pimply at first. I felt that the pimples were a little ugly, so I changed him to a different pattern and the pattern became more popular, so I kept it that way and the Thing has been that way ever since.

“No matter what he looked like,” insisted Kirby, “the Thing never changed his personality––he was always a human being despite his physical change. Ben Grimm always remained Ben Grimm. He was a tragedy.

Can you imagine yourself a mutation, never knowing when you were going to change, and what you’d look like to your folks or people that you love? It’s not the heroics––it’s the humanity that counts. I think that’s why readers liked him––that touch of reality.” H [above] The Thing, drawn for fellow artist Don Newton, early 1970s. [previous page] Joe Sinnott’s solo depiction of the two varying styles of The Thing.

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SOURCES:

“An Afternoon with Jack.”

Written and transcribed

by Jerry Boyd. Jack Kirby Collector #38, Spring 2003.

Comic Creators on Fantastic Four. Tom DeFalco. Titan Books, 2005.

“Conversations with Jack & Roz,” Part II. Ray Wyman. Jack Kirby Collector #46, Summer 2006.

“Hour 25 Interview.” J. Michael Straczynski and Larry DiTillo. Jack Kirby Collector #68, Summer 2016.

“In the Days of the Fantastic Four.” James Van Hise. Comics Magazine File Spotlight on Fantastic Four. Heroes Publishing, Inc., 1986.

“Jack F. A. Q. s.” Mark Evanier. Jack Kirby Collector #60, Winter 2013.

“Jack Kirby: Creator.”

James Van Hise. Comics Feature #50, December 1980.

“Jack Kirby Interview.”

Peter Hanson. Jack Kirby Collector #48, Spring 2007.

Monster Masterworks.

Marvel Enterprises, 1990.

“No Ordinary JOE: Mr. Sinnott Speaks.”

Interviewed by Jim Amash. Jack Kirby Collector #38, Spring 2003.

“Stan Lee Looks Back.”

Will Murray. Comic Scene 2000. Volume 3, #1, Spring 2000.

“Superheroes: The Language That Jack Kirby Wrote.” James Van Hise.

Comics Feature #34, March 1985.

“The Inker Who Saved Marvel Comics.” Will Murray. Comics Scene #48, November 1994.

“1986 Kirby Interview.”

Leonard Pitts, Jr. Jack Kirby Collector #66, Fall 2015.

What's Behind...

...The FOur?

Incidental Iconography

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

by Sean Kleefeld

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he New Fantastic Four cartoon from 1978 is largely only remembered from introducing H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot as a replacement for the Human Torch. There were only thirteen episodes in total, and the show has never gotten a proper full release on home video (there were only a few episodes released on VHS, and a Region 2-only DVD of the series was briefly available in 2008), nor has it been made available on any legal streaming platform yet.

The show should be considered more significant, though, because it got Jack Kirby back into the field of animation (which provided him more financial stability and security than comics ever had) after four decades since leaving the Fleischer Studios.

This time, DePatieFreleng was putting together a cartoon based off the Fantastic Four, and The Thing in his short-lived costume (with helmet!), from Fantastic Mark Four #3 (March 1962). Note the whited-out and redrawn shadowed “4”.

Evanier told them that the man who designed the characters in the first place lived only about 30 miles away from their Burbank studios. Thus, Jack was hired to create storyboards for the cartoon, loosely based on the comics he had himself worked on in the early 1960s.

So let’s take a look at how Jack drew the Fantastic Four’s uniform for these cartoons, and compare that against what he had done for the comics. (For the focus of this piece, I’ll be setting aside the initial design considerations like masks that Jack changed before the comics were even published, as shown above for the Thing.)

The first thing I should point out is that the animators were not relying on Jack’s artwork for the specific character designs, only the basic shot compositions. Jack was still largely drawing as if he were working on a comic book, and the animators needed character designs that were easier to animate, so a number of details from the boards didn’t make it onto the animation cels.

Brad Case is credited as the animation director, but I can’t seem to find if he was actually the one who worked up character model sheets for the animators. Regardless, if you do get access to the cartoons themselves and wonder why they look nothing like Jack’s work, that’s why.

While the Fantastic Four’s basic jumpsuit design is pretty straightforward, there were a few details I thought to key in on.

The two I had previously noticed that had changed just within the comics were the “4” chest emblem and the width of the black collar. Except the collar width changed with issue #6, 24

[previous page, center] Reed pinup from Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964). [left] FF uniformity, from (clockwise from top) “The FF vs. the Frightful Four” storyboard (1978), What If? #11 (1978), Fantastic Four #20 unused cover (1963), and Fantastic Four #10 (1963).

and Jack stopped drawing (or the inker stopped correcting) the “4” as having a drop-shadow after #15. Pick up any issue Jack worked on after that, and the collar and “4” look the same, even including the handful of covers he did in the ’70s. His storyboards, then, reflect this as well.

I will note that Jack is pretty inconsistent with drawing the “4”, though. With both the comics and in his storyboards, particularly in long shots, Jack simply writes a “4” with three strokes as if he were making a quick note. In other close-ups, he does tend to give it more weight, but instead of drawing “through” the interior to ensure the interior and exterior outlines remain parallel, he seems to rough-in just the overall exterior shape and drop a triangle inside of it to indicate the ‘hole’ of the number. This frequently leads to very clunky looking symbols, and we only don’t see this in the comics because it’s generally cleaned up by whoever was inking the book.

Regardless, there’s no change to Jack’s approach between the two media, and the only difference is that his storyboards don’t have an inker to tighten things up.

(This is additionally confirmed with Fantastic Four #236, which features a back-up segment wherein Marvel took Jack’s storyboards from a Dr. Doom episode and simply treated them as comic book panels, as shown on page 8 of this issue. A number of inkers were brought in to work over Jack’s storyboards and, despite some jolting disparities in style, the chest symbols are cleanly rendered throughout the piece.)

Another detail that struck me as likely to change would be the height/length of the boots and gloves.

After all, with so many super-heroes whose design was based on a jumpsuit with boots and gloves, you’d think it would be easy to mix up how high the Fantastic Four’s boots came up their leg compared to, say, the Eternals or the Challengers of the Unknown. But here again, Jack is surprisingly consistent. I’m sure the exact measurements are off a bit from image to image, but both throughout his run on the original title and the

storyboards he did later, the boots only ever come up to the bottom of the calf, and the gloves are similarly short.

The only other real details left are the belt and length of the ‘shorts.’

Interestingly, Jack seems to have pretty much always drawn shorts over super-hero leggings such that they come down enough to completely cover the hips and buttocks, somewhat akin to swimwear fashion of the 1950s and ’60s. Any time he needed to indicate the stereotypical underwear-on-the-outside-of-their-leggings super-hero trope, he drew it the same way. The belt, too, has been remarkably consistent, only narrowing slightly from its very first appearance in FF #3.

Now, you might think this all means that Jack really loved his Fantastic Four costume design right out of the gate.

I spent more time in a previous column discussing changes he made to the Silver Surfer! But while Jack did keep the FF uniform incredibly consistent, even after being away from the characters for the better part of a decade, that was only after he’d played with the design enough to land on something he liked. The Fantastic Four are virtually unique in that Jack spent such a long uninterrupted time—nearly ten years— working on them day in and day out. With the other exception being Thor, Jack never worked on any of the characters he was associated with for any long stints.

He was drafted into the Army only two years after starting Captain America, Stan Lee pulled him off titles like The Avengers and The X-Men after a dozen or two issues, all of his Fourth World books were cancelled within two to three years… The Fantastic Four was a daily constant in Jack’s life for the entire 1960s, so it would seem that some of those designs could imprint on his brain with enough repetition!

Of course, after hinting at it a few times here, though, I think I’m going to have to set aside a future installment of “Incidental Iconography” to talk about those design changes Jack made to the FF before the book was even published! H 25

Foundations

Here’s still more of Simon & Kirby’s “Flying Fool” work, “Face In A Storm” from Airboy Comics V4, #10 (Nov. 1947), with art reconstruction and coloring by Chris Fama. Look for the final installment of the complete Link Thorne stories next issue!

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INNERVIEW

A Chat with Steve Gerber Conducted by Jon B. Cooke on April 30, 1996 • Transcribed and copyedited by John Morrow

[Steve Gerber (September 20, 1947–February 10, 2008) is probably best known within comics as the creator of Howard the Duck, but his work for Marvel also included Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown (created with Mary Skrenes), and many other properties. While engaged in a legal battle with Marvel over ownership of Howard the Duck (which made him a vanguard in the fight for creator’s rights), he approached Jack Kirby and several others to donate their services producing the benefit comic Destroyer Duck. This interview took place after Gerber had settled that dispute, wherein he reflects on his experiences with Jack Kirby at the Ruby-Spears animation studio.]

JON B. COOKE: What was your earliest exposure to Kirby’s work?

STEVE GERBER: I really had associated Jack with the few issues of The Fly and Private Strong he did—the revival of The Shield. The Shield stuff I liked quite a bit, actually.

JON: Do you still agree with your Fantastic Four #19 Fan Page letter (October 1963), that you’ve never seen a worse artist combination than Kirby and Ditko?

STEVE: [laughs] Yes. [laughs] They were wonderful separately, and

absolutely awful together. Ditko is one of Kirby’s worst inkers of all time. For two artists who were so wonderful separately, I never thought the combination worked at all.

JON: Did you get a chance to work with Jack at Marvel, when he came back?

STEVE: No, not at Marvel.

JON: You left Marvel in 1978?

STEVE: Yeah, I left a little after he came back. All the stuff he was doing at that time, he was doing alone: Black Panther, Machine Man and all those things.

JON: So you first met Jack when?

STEVE: I think 1979, when he came to Ruby-Spears to work on the Thundarr series.

JON: His job was replacing Alex Toth?

STEVE: Probably not replacing. Alex did the initial designs for the series. I don’t know if Alex was ever contracted to do more than that. It doesn’t work the same way in television that it does in comics. Somebody’ll be brought in to do a particular presentation piece for the network, and that’s the beginning and the end of their job. They may have nothing whatsoever to do with the series after that. I suspect Alex was brought in on a basis like that, so that when he left, he may have gone on to something else altogether.

JON: Did you work closely with Alex?

STEVE: No. I never met Alex.

JON: In your initial concept, what did Alex have to work from for Ookla?

STEVE: Well, I don’t remember exactly the words I used, but I gave a description of the character. He’s about eight feet tall, big and hairy, a little bit like an ape, a little bit like a bear—doesn’t talk, afraid of water, whatever. And I just tried to give an impression of the character, the same way I would describe a character for a comic book artist to draw.

JON: And Alex came back with a really classic Toth-like, quintessential design. How would you characterize your experience working in animation?

STEVE: Oh brother. When I first went to work for Ruby-Spears, a friend of mine named Gordon Kent worked there. He came up to me and said, “Don’t expect it all to be like this.” [laughs] What had happened was, I’d come in and sold the first series I’d ever proposed to anybody. The producers saw it about 85% the same way I did. The network saw it about 85% the way he did, and while we certainly had conflicts with Standards & Practices—anytime you do an action show, that happens—the show basically went very 34

smoothly and turned out a lot like what I had in mind. It never happened again. [laughter] JON: What other shows did you work on?

STEVE: Oh, no! For that very reason, I will never tell you! [laughs] It was five or six years before the next satisfying experience in animation came along, and that was story-editing G.I. Joe. JON: Was Larry Hama involved in the animation side of that?

STEVE: Not really.

He worked very closely with the toy company on the East Coast, but had almost nothing to do with the animation end of it.

JON: What was so gratifying about working on G.I. Joe? STEVE: It was two things. It was a syndicated series, not a network series, so we didn’t have Standards & Practices to deal with. We had an incredibly intelligent producer by the name of Jay Bacal; he was a Harvard graduate, and younger than I was. If anything, he was pushing me to kick at the seams of the envelope a little more. It was some of the best stuff I’d ever

[previous page] Thundarr concept work. [right] Since Steve enjoyed Jack’s 1959 revival of The Shield, he must’ve really loved this Alfredo Alcalainked concept drawing for Ruby-Spears.

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JON: Was it a lot of work?

STEVE: It was a tremendous amount of work. It was day and night… the schedule is very intense; you’re turning out 13 things, and they’ve got to come out weekly. And even though you plan for the production time, it always winds up that while a show’s in production, you eat, sleep, and breathe that show. Which wasn’t so bad on Thundarr and G.I. Joe, but again, in that period in-between… [laughs].

But I was at that office constantly.

JON: Would you do it again?

STEVE: Story-edit another show? Depends on what the show was.

JON: Did you come up with the name Thundarr?

STEVE: Yeah. And Ookla. And Ariel, and I decided to make her Eurasian. It doesn’t fit the racial characteristics at all; I wish we could’ve changed the name, actually. The names of most of the main characters were mine.

JON: Did you fully develop these characters, and give them backgrounds?

STEVE: A little bit.

JON: The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons calls Thundarr “a slave who frees himself and tries to bring justice back into the world.” Is that true?

STEVE: Yeah, that sounds like it came from the [series] bible. We never really did anything in the series; we never got that far. But all of that was contained in the series bible.

JON: Did you write most of the episodes?

STEVE: Oh, no, no, no. I probably wrote a total of maybe five or six of them, over the two seasons.

done in animation; not just my writing, but some of the best stuff I was ever able to get out of writers as well. They really let us run with the thing, and do some stories that were actually stories, and were actually about something.

JON: Was the first one that was shown, “The Secret of the Black Pearl,” the pilot script?

STEVE: That was the pilot script, yes, and I did write that.

JON: Did you have that kind of feeling at all on Thundarr?

STEVE: Yeah, for the first year certainly. But then, I was never really very happy with the voices on Thundarr. So no matter how well the scripts turned out, I always knew I was going to cringe when I saw the film.

JON: Got any Kirby stories to tell about, at the studio?

STEVE: Strangely, no, I really don’t.

JON: Did you go over to Thousand Oaks?

STEVE: Oh yeah, I was over at his house a few times. The Destroyer Duck story, as I told John Morrow [in TJKC #10], is maybe my classic Kirby story. Sitting there sweating, and practically melting in terror.

Jack was always such a perfect gentleman around the office, and Roz was a doll, and doesn’t change. Jack gets a little saltier away from his place of employment. [laughs] But everybody at that studio loved [Roz] too. It was very hard to describe. There was almost this

JON: That was in my drunken college days, and Thundarr is the only animated series I remember really enjoying.

STEVE: It’s better drunk. [laughter] It’s one of those shows—listen, in a way, that’s a compliment. If a show goes well with Scotch and Bourbon or something, that’s okay. Most of the rest of the stuff I did between Thundarr and G.I. Joe is only watchable on L.S.D. [laughter] You can’t even look at it with anything less powerful than that. [laughs] JON: Did it end too soon for you?

STEVE: Yeah, I wish Thundarr had gone on a lot longer. It was really only a season-and-a-half. We only did seven or eight shows the second season. I don’t know why. The network moved it around a lot and it fell victim to the sports schedule in the Fall. It was really Spring before kids had a chance to discover the show. Across the country, Saturday morning shows are pre-empted by football or basketball, and if they come on at all, it’s at 2:00 in the afternoon. The show did not fare well in the ratings, for that reason primarily.

JON: How involved was Jack? Did he come up with any story ideas himself? Or did you plot stories around his style?

STEVE: You know, that probably happened a couple of times. But no, for the most part, television is a lot more compartmentalized.

I would work directly with the writers, and Jack would be working primarily with Joe Ruby, and occasionally with me.

JON: Was it lucrative?

STEVE: Ehh.

[top left] Jack’s design for Thundarr villain Gemini (originally “Janus”) had to be simplified for the animators, as shown above for the pilot episode.

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religious element to the way people regarded him in the studio at that time—almost like the Highfather. [laughs] The artists certainly looked at him that way, and most of the writers were just in awe of him as well.

going on between Jack and Marvel, and Jack and Stan. It was difficult for me later—not so much at that time, because I was mad at all of them too. But later Stan and I kind of reconciled. It was difficult to deal with some of that.

I don’t think Jack ever let his bitterness—and I don’t think you’d even call it bitterness. I don’t think Jack ever let his anger get in the way of his work. What happened, I think, and the reason he stopped… Jack’s later work at Marvel, the second time around, was not terribly inspired. And I think what happened, I think he was working off a contract. I can’t say that for sure, but I don’t think it was just disenchantment with Marvel. I think he was just tired of doing the same stuff, day after day, by that time.

JON: Did you read his 1970s stuff?

STEVE: The New Gods? Yeah, of course.

JON: Do you consider that his best work? What’s your personal favorite?

STEVE: My personal favorite is probably the run on the Fantastic Four, the time with Galactus and Silver Surfer and the Inhumans, that whole string of characters. Probably from issue #40 to issue #60.

JON: You reconciled with Stan before Jack did?

STEVE: Yeah, after the lawsuit was over. And that may’ve just been because I had more opportunities to run into him. Also, because Jack still had that awful ongoing thing about the artwork.

JON: It’s revealing that from 1961–1967, he created such an enormous pantheon of characters and concepts, and then all of a sudden basically just stopped. He was doing very good work, but he wasn’t coming forth with new characters, or new concepts necessarily. It seemed to be somewhat rehashing things. Do you think that was a reflection of his disenchantment at Marvel at the time? When you were working on Destroyer Duck, were you privy to his feelings about “Godcorp,” so to speak?

STEVE: [laughs] We talked a lot about Marvel, yeah. And a lot about Stan. During that period, there was some of the most bitter stuff

JON: How do you feel about being back working at Marvel now? Is it full circle to be back working on Howard the Duck? [Editor’s Note: At the time of this interview, Gerber was about to start work on Spider-Man Team-Up #5 featuring Howard the Duck—and Steve’s infamous Elf with a Gun from his Defenders run.]

STEVE: Well, it’s starting to look like a DNA healing. [laughs] I’ve 37

now. Well, for mainstream comics, Marvel and DC. The companies now have a much more restrictive idea of what can be done in the comic books, than they did 15 or 20 years ago. It seems incredible to say, but it’s true.

But it’s just as true of television or movies, or anything else right now.

JON: Was that the influence of the undergrounds, and counter-culture back then?

STEVE: Yeah, I think it was the influence of how all those people working at that time grew up. Myself and Englehart, McGregor, Moench, and all the rest of them—Skeates and God knows how many others. It just had to do with our personal background.

JON: Do you still read comics?

STEVE: Some, when I see something interesting.

JON: Do you still have a personal enthusiasm for comics?

STEVE: There’s an interesting question.

Umm… yes, and I try not to let anybody know that. [laughter] It’s a detriment to working in the business. [chuckles] I keep it as quiet as possible. H been in and out of Marvel a lot over the years. Right after the lawsuit was settled, I did that Void Indigo book for Epic, and then late ’80s/ early ’90s, I was doing She-Hulk for them, and a mini-series called Foolkiller. I did a Man-Thing story, so I’ve been in and out of there a lot. I have no particular feeling about it at all. It’s an assignment, and it’s going to be fun to do that character again.

[above] Though Alex Toth designed the character Ookla the Mok, Kirby got plenty of experience drawing the Wookie-inspired design. Steve Gerber named Ookla after the University of Southern California (UCLA)! [below] Kirby’s incidental spacecraft design for Thundarr’s 12th episode.

JON: Are you happy to return to him?

STEVE: Umm, yes and no. We’ll see what happens. That one I’ll answer after it’s written. [laughs] It’s been a long time.

JON: Did you become a star at conventions at the time of your Howard the Duck run?

STEVE: Oh sure, back then.

JON: What was that like?

STEVE: Weird. A little silly. The first time someone asked me for my autograph, I had no idea how to respond to it. [laughs] I finally just did it. I’m still embarrassed about it, particularly when people I know ask me to sign a comic book. My skin crawls a little bit. I never let it go to my head, particularly.

JON: Did you let it go to your talent, trying to sneak things in? I remember some stuff in The Defenders; there were a lot of subtexts going on.

STEVE: [laughs] Yes. JON: Is it true comics was one of the most creative fields you could work in?

STEVE: It was true then. It’s less true 38

Joe Ruby: A Real Gem [Joe Ruby (March 30, 1933–August 26, 2020) wore many hats in the animation industry, including writer, producer, and even music editor. He is best known as a co-creator of the animated Scooby-Doo franchise, together with partner Ken Spears. In 1977, they co-founded RubySpears Productions to create animated series for network television and syndication, and made R-S the most successful TV animation company for a period in the 1980s. His hiring of Jack Kirby marked a major turning point in Jack’s life and career.] [top] Upon first seeing Jack’s “Hidden Harry” concept in the Unpublished Archives card set, this mag’s editor thought The King must’ve been slipping when he came up with it.

Aahhh, but I didn’t realize Jack was also pitching toy ideas, which makes a lot more sense for HH!

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke on May 9, 1996 Transcribed and copyedited by John Morrow

So on Thundarr, he did the design work of all the other characters for the series, and then continued to work with us.

JON: Were you aware of Jack Kirby’s reputation beforehand?

JOE: I was very familiar with all of the characters that he had created, but I can’t really remember if I was familiar with him. I probably was, yes.

JON: When he was working for you, was he answering directly to you, or John Dorman, or...?

JOE: He basically answered to me, but John was in the middle. John was the art director on the show, so he would go to John as well. But whatever happened had to come through me at the end, obviously.

JON B. COOKE: When did you first meet Jack?

JOE RUBY: It was in the early 1980s. He did some work for us, and we liked him so much, that we continued to do a lot of work, and we put him on staff for six years.

He was great!

JON: Did you give Jack specific assignments, or did he just go off and create concepts?

JOE: I gave him specific assignments, and he also did other things that he brought me. He was very prolific, as you know. He was uncanny; he would just bring in stuff all the time.

JON: Do you remember how he came to work for you?

JOE: We were doing a show called Thundarr the Barbarian, and we needed someone to design—because in those days, we took a kind of comic book, older-type skew on the show. We wanted someone who really could design great characters. Jack was brought in. I don’t remember exactly, but that’s how it happened.

JON: I’ve been speaking to other people who worked at Ruby-Spears, and they say you and Jack spoke the same language. Were you personal friends?

JOE: We weren’t close personal friends, but we were friends, yeah. When someone works for you for six years, and you see them all the time, you become 39

[this page] Presentation boards for Roxie’s Raiders. [next page, top] Micromites was pitched as both a show and toys, with the ability to mold your own mini-heroes out of clay.

[next page, bottom] Sometimes you just have to keep trying.

The 1984 series Turbo Teen was originally titled “Cary Becomes a Car” on Jack’s concept art.

And as shown here, there was originally a whole group of “Turbo Teens”.

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friends with that person, and his wife Roz, who was very nice. They lived out in Thousand Oaks. But Jack generally would work at home, and come in maybe once or twice a week. We did work very closely, and we did speak the same language. It was just very easy, you know? When I’d say something, he’d know exactly what I wanted, and he’d deliver it. He was terrific.

JON: In the early 1980s, was that the Golden Age of Ruby-Spears?

JOE: Yeah. I think for us it was from the 1980s into the early 1990s. We had so many shows, I can’t even begin to tell you.

We had a huge staff of people, and we did quite a bit of artwork. We would develop toys as well as shows. We were venturing into a lot of things. We sold several toys and other things as well. We had some of the top people in the industry working for us at the time—very creative people.

JON: What were your personal favorites, of the cartoons Ruby-Spears produced?

JOE: Well, I thought Thundarr the Barbarian was one of the best ones we’ve done. We also did Alvin and the Chipmunks, which was a huge success. We did Mr. T… JON: Goldie Gold and Action Jack.

JOE: Yes, those were the originals. The others were

based off known personalities, and there were also the established characters. We did Punky Brewster; Rubik, the Amazing Cube; all the video games at the time, like Dragon’s Lair. We had an hour video game series on, which featured five or six video games we turned into shows.

We did Rambo, that was syndication. We did Centurions, which was a toy show. Sectaurs.

We did Police Academy, Superman, Heathcliff.

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JON: Do you know where the concept of Turbo Teen came from?

JOE: Yeah, that’s was mine. A boy turns into a car. It was kind of a wild one. In those days, they thought I was nuts, but ABC bought it. [laughs] It was a good show. It could be even wilder today.

JON: People have said it was an event when Jack would come into the offices. Did you witness that in the art department, when he would come in on Mondays with his arms full of art boards? Was it an event for you?

JOE: Oh yeah, I always was anxious to see what Jack had. When he’d come into the office, yeah, he had a whole bunch of stuff with him. A lot of artwork, and he would spread out, and we’d have a good time.

Everything was terrific. I always wanted to do a pure Jack Kirby show, where we wouldn’t change things like proportions for animation, and just do his stuff “pure.” But we never were able to.

JON: Can you give me a brief background of Ruby-Spears? How did it begin?

JOE: Well, my partner Ken Spears and I were working for ABC at the time, for Fred Silverman. We go way back; we were writers at Hanna-Barbera, and we also did live-action things. For animation we were writers, and we were at Hanna-Barbera for many years. We got Scooby-Doo off the ground, and then we came to work for CBS, and ABC for Fred Silverman. We created a lot of shows: Captain Caveman, Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt. Then Filmways was looking for a studio, and Peter Roth, who we worked with at ABC, recommended us and put us in business. So we went into business, and Fred gave us a commitment. Fangface was our first show. That’s how we got started, in the very late 1970s.

We were at Filmways a few years, and then we were sold to the Taft Broadcasting Company. We were there through the switch to Great American Broadcasting, for a total of ten years. And then when Turner Broadcasting bought them, they only kept HannaBarbera. They had several other companies, and they dissolved them, us included. And we’ve been independent since then.

JON: Do you remember any specific stories about Jack?

JOE: Not off the top of my head. There was just a lot of stuff we were working on. I’d have to go back and check into the artwork.

JON: Would you characterize any of the unproduced work, or the produced work, as being quintessentially Jack’s ideas? I know the concepts were all worked on by lots of people, but is there anything that comes to mind?

JOE: There’s a few things in the unproduced stuff, that were his stuff, but I’d have to go back and look at it.

JON: The Gargoids? Power Planet? Roxie’s Raiders? Street Angels?

JOE: No. A lot of that stuff was mine. I used to feed him a lot of projects. These were all ideas that we handed out.

JON: And you’re still making presentations and making pitches?

JOE: Yeah. The business has changed quite a bit. In the heyday, the major studios weren’t involved. Warner Brothers and Disney weren’t putting out the shows. The competition has completely gone around. It’s much, much tougher. There’s not as many spots open, and the availability of certain properties, and the monies involved in getting properties—and now you have to try to get partners, and things have changed from a business point of view.

JON: What was Animal Hospital based on?

JOE: We were just trying to make a soap opera.

JON: Jack produced an enormous amount of work at Ruby-Spears, but not much of it got produced. Is that the nature of the business?

JOE: Yes, it’s the business. Obviously, there’s only so many series or shows you can sell, and we were also doing different types of shows.

Some were action, some were comedy which had more cartoony

42

43

Disney designs. I think in the ratio, we would produce ten developments for maybe one or two sales. That’s how it used to go.

one time, we could even present with no artwork, and just one-line concepts, and we’d get development deals. It was quite different than it is today. You’d show the artwork, and you’d give a pitch on what the show was about, and then you’d go to the next one. There were less people in the animation studios, and there were a lot more time slots available to the animation studios. So it wasn’t like you were trying to get into one or two time slots; you were trying to get as many as you could. You literally had to have more presentations to get more development deals, in order to maybe get two or three shows, as opposed to the way it is today. Now it’s very difficult to get on the networks, and the projects have to be more thought out.

JON: Did you notice a change in the environment of selling original ideas, when it moved over to already established characters and properties?

JOE: When the studios started to get the rights to established properties more and more, the networks wanted to go with them. It’s a trend that’s going on even now. The pre-sold property gives them, they think, a leg up, at least coming out of the box. Then you have to make sure you deliver what the expectation level is. And it’s easier to sell ads on properties that are well known, as opposed to something nobody knows anything about.

JON: At the time, was the studio more enthusiastic about the original concepts like Thundarr and Roxie’s Raiders? Was there disillusionment when all the merchandising started coming in, and dominating with things like Rambo?

JOE: Well, from a studio’s point of view, you obviously want to have originals, because you own them. In the early cartoons, most of the concepts came from studios. There was an occasional property that was from the outside. Bugs Bunny was not a property before Warners created it and produced it, as were all the Disney properties. Essentially they created properties. Then, as the business started to get more into television and the merchandising started to hit, people became aware of all this. In that past you couldn’t get the rights to all of this, because why put it on Saturday? There wasn’t enough in it for them, I guess. But when the merchandising hit, the

JON: Was Jack involved in any of the actual presentation meetings?

JOE: I can’t remember. Usually, we went over to the networks with many different presentations, and it was usually myself and an agent who represented us. Sometimes we had artists and writers in, if they came to the studio or it was for a particular project. In those days, we used to present numerous projects. Today, it’s switched and you might only have one or two that you come in with.

JON: Did you lead most of those presentations? Was it a hard sell, or did it depend upon the executives who were there?

JOE: Yes. It depended upon the executives. Again, we would have a lot of artwork, and the premises and concepts pretty well defined.

The series themselves weren’t developed, but the concepts were. At

44

business changed. It really took off, and other properties were available that hadn’t been in the past. We got into bidding wars for these properties. The business changed into that direction.

[this page] Unused “Eagle” super-hero design. [previous page] Presentation piece for Roxie’s Raiders, which came so close to selling, that R-S had Jack do storyboards, a comic book story, and daily newspaper strip samples.

JON: Do you miss the old days?

JOE: Sure! I’d rather have it easy than tough. [laughs] JON: How big did Ruby-Spears get—how many employees during its heyday?

JOE: Well, the thing is, we did the animation overseas, so we can’t count those. We did it in Korea and Japan, and it went later on to the Philippines as well, and Taiwan. Usually the animation crew—when you add the Ink & Paint staff, the camera department and all, that’s usually a huge amount of the employees for an animation studio. So when that’s done overseas, it cuts down quite a bit. We probably had about a hundred or so in that era. But that’s a huge staff, considering you don’t do the animation. Even the layouts were eventually done overseas, but we did the layouts here too, so that added to some of the staff.

JON: So in your history, you never had a film staff?

JOE: Our first year, we had it. At one point, we had our own animators. At that point, we had more than a hundred. When we had to do it here, we had Ink & Paint, animators, layouts.

We probably had several hundred people working for us. But then as we got more shows, there wasn’t enough talent. Suddenly the business started to expand, and there wasn’t enough talent available to do them here, so we had to go overseas. We didn’t have a choice at that point.

JON: How would you compare your studio to, say, Hanna-Barbera at the time? Were you a small studio?

JOE: Well, Hanna-Barbera was the giant. And then Filmation was doing quite a few shows, but we also got quite a few shows. We started our first couple of years with three half-hours and four or five Specials. We were exclusive to ABC for two years. Eventually we had six network shows on for two years, and I forget how many syndicated, 65 half-hours we had: Rambo and The Centurions. One year we were doing several hundred episodes. We got huge; at one point, we were probably doing more production than any other studio for about a year. Then it shifts around as more studios get in, and everything starts to change as the known properties start to get in, and the bidding wars. Finally, the majors got into it, when Disney got into it, and Warner Brothers.

to put out the shows, and by December you’re all finished. So you go back into the development. It’s not a year-round business. We weren’t small by any means. When we had several hundred shows on the air, we were probably the largest, or the second-largest— maybe not in physical size, but in the amount of work. But there was no year-round—even when you did the syndicated stuff, everything breaks in September. There was always downtime, but that downtime was always spent trying to get properties, create properties, and develop them with presentations and sell them.

JON: I’ve heard some people characterize Ruby-Spears as small, and you kept people on year-round. You weren’t in production seasonally, so to speak. During slower times, would Jack be working more on conceptual work?

JOE: Yeah. Well, there’s always a season, and when you deal with a network, you have a development season. In other words, they made their buys somewhere in March or as late as April. Then you rushed

JON: Do you remember any specific concepts that Jack came up with, that were interesting or outrageous?

JOE: He had some outrageous stuff, but I can’t remember. I have the pencil drawings that he did. It’s been a while since I’ve checked them over, but he came up with some outrageous stuff. In fact, he 45

JON: Did he invigorate the studio?

JOE: Yeah! When he came in, all the artists used to go crazy. He was The King. And he was very modest; that’s another thing. He was a very sweet man, very nice. You might think of him as almost being humble, you know?

was probably ahead of his time as well. We did a lot of things we couldn’t sell, because outrageous couldn’t sell in those days. It was more traditional. You had to have a clever concept, but today you’re more outrageous, and there’s not the restrictions. You can come up with something crazy, and you can sell it if it’s “good crazy.” But in those days it was very difficult. Once in a while I’d come out with stuff, just to test the waters, and it’d always get thrown back in.

JON: I’ve talked to John Dorman and a lot of other people who worked at Ruby-Spears, and also people who’d known Jack a long time, and the overall feeling I’m getting is that Ruby-Spears, and you specifically, were a godsend to Jack Kirby, at a time in his life when he was fed up with a career that he gave forty years of his life to, and it gave little back to him. His time at Ruby-Spears was a great time.

He got a health plan out of it, and got paid respectfully.

JOE: I’m pleased to hear that!

JON: When did Jack leave? 1986? Do you know why he left?

JOE: Probably in that area. That was the time we were downsizing, when they were selling to Turner, Great American. We were also downsizing because we couldn’t get original properties going, and especially action/adventure, which was Jack’s forte—although he did funny things, he did comedy. But the name product took over, and action/adventure was very difficult to sell in those days. Also, the syndicated market closed down for a while; it got glutted, and it folded, and there weren’t that many syndicated shows being done for toy companies. There was just nowhere to place those kind of shows.

JON: When did you bestow the title of TV Producer on him? Did you? Was he a Producer?

JOE: I don’t know how, in those days, the credits went. He didn’t actually “produce” in the sense that we produce. A television producer deals with a lot of other things: schedules and scripts and all the different artwork. It’s like making the show go through, you know what I mean? So in that respect, he was more like an art director, you might say, under John Dorman. Dorman was actually the art director, but Jack did the designs, the staging, he did a lot of stuff when he was in production. He’d beef up storyboard stuff.

JON: Did Jack express any frustrations over things not getting produced?

JOE: No, cause a lot of the stuff he did was on the air, but like everybody else... And he was still doing some comic books, to my knowledge. But he never mentioned it to me, at least. He was always upbeat, and loved what he was doing.

JON: Did you give him storyboard assignments? And were they successful?

JOE: As I recall, I did. What he did was terrific. He had great staging.

Sometimes I think they had to adjust things for the mechanics of the beast, but his stuff was good.

JON: How do you remember Jack overall?

JOE: I thought he had a great sense of humor, and he was a positive, enthusiastic guy. And whatever I’d tell him, he’d always say, “Don’t worry. It’ll be done, and it’ll be done right on time and the way you want it.” And he did it. He was a very, very pleasant guy, and he had great stories to tell. He was fun to be with. I like Jack a hell of a lot.

He was a great guy.

JON: In the Jack Kirby Collector, we reproduce copies of Jack’s art from his files that Roz has in Thousand Oaks, and he has sketches of some characters that were not sold. Can we have permission to print them?

JOE: Sure! Just mention that it’s our properties.

JON: Overall, what was Jack’s experience there?

Everyone seems to say that Ruby-Spears was a wonderful place to work, with a lot of creative energy going on. It was fun.

JOE: Yes. We had a lot of stuff going on at the time. We had a huge creative staff, and Jack really spearheaded most of the artwork. And we had other good artists there too, I’ve got to say: Doug Wildey and some of the other guys. But Jack had that unusual style of his, and the dynamics of what he did. And he did everything; he would create characters, he would do layouts for presentation artwork, and would enhance everything. He was the basis for a lot of the stuff. H

[this page] Skanner presentation art. [next page] Storyboards for Roxie’s Raiders.

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INNERVIEW

John Dorman Interview

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke on May 10, 1996 • Transcribed and copyedited by John Morrow [Animation veteran Tom Minton summed up John Dorman (June 29, 1952–January 29, 2011) thusly, following Dorman’s passing: “In addition to being a prolific and experienced creative talent, John Dorman was a near-mythic character with an epic sense of the absurd. He was much more than a storyboard artist or art director, as anyone who worked for him in the early to mid-1980s can attest... John defined ‘intense’ and could be tough to please, but ultimately took the people he believed in more seriously than he did himself.” From storyboard artist to art director, his influence in animation cannot be overstated. Here, he discusses what he did to make Ruby-Spears such a remarkable place to work, and his own experiences with Jack Kirby.]

I didn’t even meet Jack there; my first encounter with him was that he would turn in a finished half-hour storyboard every week—that he wrote while he was drawing it. He wrote it and drew it.

Normally, you had careful scripts, like at DC Comics, where the animation and every scene is figured out. The character is going left to right, with close-up directions. You can almost just follow the directions and do it. Even the visuals are taken care of in the writing. A lot of that is because they had so much product they needed quickly, and there’s not enough storyboard artists, and they had to get other artists that don’t know how to make film, but know how to draw heads, and they know how to draw a close-up. Artists were almost never invited into creative meetings, except to graft a look onto a show, after it had been created.

Jack brought a whole different mentality. He came in and his worked just punched its way right through the wall by saying, “I invent this stuff. I write it. I draw it. I do that all faster than any team has ever done, all by myself.” And by the way, Jack was also producing two finished comics a month at the time: Devil Dinosaur and Machine Man, and a storyboard a week for a half-hour episode, and he would design all the incidental characters too. This normally takes a huge body of people, and he’d do everything all by himself. That’s the thing that was really alarming

John Dorman at Filmation studios in 1979.

Photo by Tom Minton.

JON B. COOKE: When did you first encounter Jack and his work?

JOHN DORMAN: The first time I saw Jack in the industry, was when I worked at DePatie-Freleng. I was hired to draw layouts, and I was supposed to draw storyboards on the Fantastic Four. They said, “You can draw boards, because we only have one board artist, and that’s Jack Kirby.” Now, storyboards are the hardest, most labor-intensive, anonymous, difficult, technically rife portion of animation. It’s a really hard job, so if you can do a half-hour show in five–six weeks, you’re really fast. That’s a very fast artist.

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Airbrush over Kirby’s pencil work.

about Jack when I first encountered his work.

worked in my life, and I was given these ideas by divine inspiration, and I had a lot of coffee—it’s impossible! [laughs] You finally go, “Okay, he’s different. He’s different than anyone I’ve ever met.” So if that’s the way it is, should we teach him the technical aspects of storyboards, or should we just shut up, like it, and then try to get the impact of what he wanted across—keep as much as we can, compose things so that it makes film sense?

Jack would pick the exact middle pose to draw, so you don’t get a start and a stop for storyboards. So you just fix it, you go through and you redo the stuff. You invent a new division; it’s like a laborintensive repairs division, or technical workbook stage. In other words, you’re turning a presentation storyboard… it’s like if the Hulk suddenly signed with the Dallas Cowboys to play quarterback.

All you’d hear the teams talking about was what a problem that one guy is. And he might go, “I’m just gonna pick the ball up and start walking, and we’re not even gonna have plays.” [laughs] And even if the coach says, “No, we have plays now, we’ll throw it.” And he’s like, “No, every time I touch the ball, I’ll just walk to the endzone.” [laughs] Jack was a master of instant gratification. If you put Jack’s work in a room with the work of any ten other artists in the world, everybody’d walk right in the room, right over to Jack’s work and go, “Look at that!” That’s just how it was. After a while, you allow yourself to get consumed in his vigor.

COOKE: Did his storyboards work?

DORMAN: Technically, no. I was supposed to draw what he wouldn’t draw, but he drew everything! He was ahead of schedule; the guy was alarming, I guess is the best word I can use. He drew it like a comic book. Whoever’s reading what he’s drawing, will have the biggest impression. Storyboards are, by and large, a blueprint or inter-office memo which tells you what the story is, in a language that’s not English or Japanese or typewritten or word of mouth.

At that point, you also have to figure out how many characters per scene so you can control the movement, and limit the amount of movement, and don’t call for unnecessary movement. These are things Jack didn’t pay attention to, because his is impact drawing; it gets a lot across, because of the exaggeration.

COOKE: Those restrictions are because of the budgetary limits of animation?

DORMAN: Well, if you have a computer screen that you’re watching, the screen doesn’t change shape while you’re watching it. If you have a long, skinny drawing, you have to take the camera and move it along the drawing to display that. Each screen-sized shape is called a field, and Jack would take four fields to do a close-up of a guy’s eyes. So you’d start on an eye and pan over to the other eye, but when you’re reading it, you go, “I know what he means, but this guy with the eyes is nutty.” But I’d never seen a storyboard guy who would write—take a story idea, and make up a whole show out of it.

It was alarming! He didn’t sketch, he’d just draw stuff, without putting any reminder notes, or tying any strings to his finger.

I ended up inking a lot of Jack’s stuff, finally just going, “Well, what do you do?” I was just overwhelmed with the prolificness, and diversity, and ability, because the guy was really just a remarkable fella. As an artist, if I just never slept and worked as fast as I’ve ever

COOKE: Did you come on to Ruby-Spears as art director, just as Thundarr was exploding?

DORMAN: No, I came on as just a layout artist. I drew storyboards, and then I drew development presentation pieces, and I could ink in stuff, including Jack’s. I found out something unusual about Jack’s art—no matter who inks Jack’s art, it always looks like he penciled it. The only one that altered it at all and could get away with it, was Alfredo Alcala. And his alterations were to make Jack’s anatomy 49

sound. Jack made up anatomy if he didn’t think it had enough punch, and Alfredo made it sound.

like shows. It wasn’t like comics. In TV, it’s prefab. All the creative thought, they thought they could control by committee from afar.

COOKE: From all I’ve heard, Ruby-Spears had a remarkable work environment. You really had some true creative talent going on there.

DORMAN: Joe Ruby is really something. A generous, really nice, kind guy. He’s really thoughtful. I’ve never in my life heard Joe say anything bad about anyone. And he wasn’t jealous or frightened of Jack’s contributions. He also wasn’t surly and one of those jellywink producers who was always looking for a leg up, to see if he can get the moon, and also get you to pay him, too. He would disperse the proper money, and force fairness to happen to you.

Joe also liked doing presentations. He liked going in with more artwork that anyone else. From his days in the networks, he remembered what would knock him out and get him to spend money, so he always wanted to come in and be a super-charged version of that.

No one was afraid to talk to each other, and there was no fear of rank over preferred artists. But none of us could figure out why they were paying copious amounts of money for us to do stuff, that they had no intention whatsoever of even pretending to present, or even pitch to anybody. All the good ideas, and ones that I think would’ve taken off—.

There’s a chain of events that must take place in order for something to end up being done, following the lines of production that can be controlled from afar. [The networks would] rather sacrifice continuity and opportunism for control, and they had their reasons for doing that. All ideas in the animation industry were usually in support of their primetime schedule—committees would concoct shows. What happens is, the network will come to you and say, “Will you do this show, based on this guy who’s under contract on the live action show?” Or if something just happened to be a hit on another network, every network would flood the shows with looka-

COOKE: So was there a conscious effort on Joe Ruby’s part, to foster creativity?

DORMAN: No, he… we got successful after Thundarr happened, and more and more shows started selling. Joe could sell anything, but the problem was, he sold anything. He sold tons of shows, and there was an embarrassment of riches, and an embarrassment of content often.

Joe and Ken used to work at the network at ABC, and then they split to go start this company. Joe got [Steve] Gerber, and they got artists from the animation business, and it takes so many people to make an animated cartoon, that people get really good at some really specific jobs, and they can’t see beyond that. There’s cartoonists that just won’t, or can’t, or don’t design characters, for example.

And they don’t want to learn, they don’t want to design. They feel that by the time their task comes in, it’s been designed, it’s been cleaned up and traced off, and now their job is to add some new thing to this existing thing.

Jack was brought in to draw presentations for the networks.

Before Jack, in getting presentations done, ten people might draw one presentation… but comic book artists are different. They come up with ideas for a comic, write it, draw it, ink it, letter it. Not much has invaded their ideas from the beginning to the end. It doesn’t take so many people to get it done. Animation people, in a nutshell, get “tunnelized” often.

So Jack came in, and could do four or five of these presentation pieces a day, all by himself. I was used to seeing presentations at other companies come through, a couple a week. They’d get everybody in the place to draw, and they’d end up with ten paintings.

Jack’d come in with incredible volumes of work every day. I wasn’t very surprised, because I knew about his work on the Fantastic Four

Thunder Dragons concept art.

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show before, so I wasn’t as alarmed as the other artists. But then what do you do, because all of these things really needed to be colored in, right? How do you finish Jack’s drawings up?

Well, Gerber says there’s an inker out there who’s as fast as Jack. I’m like, “Who?” “Alfredo Alcala.” And my experience with Alcala was to read those Conan comics, and they were just beautiful.

So Alfredo would ink in Jack’s work, but there was a big concern. If Jack does an action drawing, a leg doesn’t necessarily have a knee anymore, for example. And since Jack says so, okay, fine. It’s a good thing he’s not a doctor. [laughs] But Alfredo would ink it in as fast as him, and at Ruby-Spears they had a background department, that could be kept employed all year—half for TV production, and the other half they would concoct shows. [At other studios] whole departments were fired for half a year. So now they could stay on the other half the year, because Jack would draw so fast, and Alfredo would ink so quick, that the whole department could be busy.

So there was a special department that would just do that, because Jack was like a machine. Joe Ruby would talk with Jack about ideas, and he’d bring in any other people involved with it that wanted to be in on it, in case there was anything they wanted to contribute. It was a more friendly, familial thing. You didn’t feel like you were being “need to know” or victimized by this brick and wood and concrete place of worship that other studios had.

All the artists really got along, because there was so much work for everybody, and respect among artists. With the idea of Jack being around, people were starting to write more. We were attracting other artists that had a propensity to be more concoctive.

Steve, because of his writing in comic books, was highly interactive with the artists as a natural way of being. At other studios, if you were an artist and walked up to a writer in the hall, usually they’d snub you. There were heavy class distinctions; there was sort of this contempt for artists.

It flew in the face of the traditional writer’s control of the medium. Steve didn’t do this. Any control Steve wanted was because he didn’t want [anyone] damaging his work. And Steve wouldn’t sit still for writers who were smug, arrogant, and inferior. When he came in, his success was because he was good, and he wasn’t jaded and been taught to be dirty and greedy and double-dealing.

COOKE: Did it invigorate the studio?

DORMAN: Well, they had just started the studio. But yeah, it was the only studio that did a fresh show. And unlike the other producers I had worked for, Joe wouldn’t call for any stock shots, unless it would make it look better, and we had enough so that you couldn’t tell it was stock. Any scene that needed to be in, was gonna go in, and he did everything he could to make that happen. And he had a good story sense. He had real good native instincts about sequencing things, and what timing also worked well with traditional times of commercial placement.

Joe would be at meetings, and network people liked to invade the creative process, because that’s so fun, and sometimes there’s equity if they can get in something. They were all in deep self-loathing over their station in life, and every piece of business they had to conduct reminded them of what they weren’t. [laughs] They were all failed something-elses. Network people would be in meetings with Joe, and they would hurt his feelings, because Joe [was used to] cooperative artists doing great stuff. The writers—he had Steve Gerber, who was great! I really love reading almost anything he does. Joe took a big chance by not taking a guy out of Hollywood who’s a by-the-system, crossed-T’s, dotted-I’s guy, and instead taking a guy who is strictly conceptual. And he got the fastest artist and fastest

COOKE: I remember at the time, Thundarr was the only show I gave any attention to in the 1980s. I didn’t even know Jack was involved, but I thought, “This is fun. Something is happening with this.” Even though it’s arguably derivative of Planet of the Apes…

DORMAN: And Conan! But Thundarr was a big chance for the network to take, because it wasn’t a “me too” knockoff of another show.

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inker in the business. He gave this industry a big shot in the arm. Joe was an honest, conscientious, fair, and generous guy.

Anytime a minor success came in, Joe and Ken gave the maximum of recognition to us. They put us in really great big offices; anything we wanted, we got. Any art equipment we wanted, we got, and we ordered lots! [laughs] At Hanna-Barbera, they had a relative of one of the owners, who sat in a closet in a suit and handed out pencils, and took down who was taking the pencils. [laughs] He asked me what I had in mind to do with this pencil, and I said, “You’re kidding.” [laughs] I’d say, “I’m planning on drawing layouts,” and he’d say, “Well, why do you need two pencils?” [laughs] We stole all the best artists; all the other companies’ artists wanted to work with us, cause we’d pay them more, they got more liberties, and they were around people that truly loved what they were doing.

And Steve bred that type of thing among the writers. It was easy to work with them, cause they weren’t trying to seize authorship over something. It really was special, and Joe and Ken were dispersing money like it was being printed someplace close.

Ken Spears [below], even though he was in charge of production at that company, never acted like he was an expert. He was always excited about doing something new and better. He was always trying to rearrange budgets and work things out, and he always succeeded. Ken was a really fair guy, and he was always kind, and listening, and saw everyone’s side. He’s just one of those guys that, within minutes of meeting him, you really liked him.

We first had a floor with just artists, and then we had a separate building. As the artists got more liberties, we felt we

had to be better than everybody else, and work harder, and then we could do anything we wanted. That last part bugged everybody who wasn’t part of our group, but they were only there from 9-5 anyway, and we were there overnight, often. The artists were so happy about what was happening, and there was just such a general good vibe, that people put in more personal time and energy to see to it that the whole thing kept going.

COOKE: Did you consciously foster that?

DORMAN: Of course! Because we had so many shows, and we were adding artists from the comic book industry. Comic artists were all about instant gratification; they liked first-round knockouts. They didn’t worry that their stuff wouldn’t animate, or their drawing was only good for one pose.

We kept moving to different buildings, different annexes. We had one completely wood house which Cheech and Chong owned.

We worked in there awhile, and then Jack started reporting to me, and getting assignments from me. But you have to understand something about the dynamic of Jack. If Jack comes in, and you go, “Jack, here’s what we need. We’re gonna do a deal with a toy company, and we’re going to do a thing about a guy with a boat that’s the fin of a living iceberg” or something real peculiar for him to draw, you don’t know how he’d handle it. Well, he’d handle it by coming back with a show about another planet. [laughs] He competed with you; he tried to blow you out of the water. And I realized, that’s just how he is. With Jack, what we tried to do was find out what he liked, and accommodate him. You could ask Jack to do one kind of show, and he’d come back with another, and you’d save it and go, “Let’s try to make a show out of this” or you’d use it in another show. Jack thought such big ideas, that he was treated different than I’ve seen any other artist treated. He basically got to come in and do anything he wanted at all times, and he was loved for it.

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Nobody in the animation industry really knew who Jack was, except for some guys who knew what comics were, and anyone who’d encountered him or his work. But having Jack on your side was kind of like having Michael Jordan. Joe would go, “All the other studios are pitching tomorrow, Marvel is pitching, and they’re looking to buy super-hero stuff. Let’s think of some ideas for Jack.” Joe knew that was code for, “Let’s just call Jack and tell him what our situation is,” and his natural competitiveness will go, “Oh, I think I can, overnight, do everything better than Marvel right now,” and he could.

It was like you always knew you were going to win. If something was due tomorrow, we knew he’d come in with something.

Jack came in when we were working on Roxie’s Raiders. They wanted to make sure he got the technicals right on the storyboards, so he was working in the office with me. You can’t teach Jack. What we did was, Jack could do rough character designs, and an animator can come up and do a clean-up of a Jack drawing, and that’s our model for incidental characters in the show.

During the year of production, Jack was real useful for concocting unusual gizmos, and anything you could imagine. The joy Jack had, I think, is he could do whatever he wanted, he got a lot of money, and he was respected for any little thing he did.

COOKE: Joe Ruby said that one of his regrets, was that he didn’t get to produce a “pure Kirby” show. Was that a growing frustration for Jack—that he didn’t get to produce a real “Kirby” show?

DORMAN: We artists didn’t sit around complaining about things we failed at, and our little dreams and stuff like that. Jack would demonstrate with his drawings what he might do if he was given free rein. Jack would bring in ten boards with no sketching, and I knew from personal experience lying on my stomach [trying to ink them], he must’ve used… there was always this open speculation that there must’ve been some secret tool Jack used, [laughs] because our arms got dirtier on his drawings, inking them in. Jim [Woodring] would ink them in too, and we’re very fast. But sometimes me and him and Alfredo couldn’t quite keep up. H

[these pages] When you need superheroes, think Kirby!

Proposal art for Hawkman and Wonder Woman series.

Studio artists prettied her up for the final color presentation board [above].

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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.

look back at what he’d earlier created or—consciously or otherwise—decided to give the reader more bang for their buck. There are perhaps signs of haste in the usually reliable Dick Ayers inking (and even Kirby’s pencils) for this two-part story, but it is still a collectable piece—even if the next Hulk to be created by Jack Kirby was to be distinctly more memorable, and longer lasting.

THE FIRST HULK

Admirers of Jack Kirby—and of Stan Lee’s editorial marshalling of the Atlas/Marvel universe in general—sometimes enjoy a unique pursuit: Tracking down early ideas and notions which were later developed into major character strands of the Marvel universe. Of course, the same process might be followed with The King’s DC Comics work—the post-apocalyptic world of Kamandi, for instance, ruled by clothes-wearing, articulate animals, can be found in embryo in an earlier time-travel story Kirby drew for Harvey comics. But some precursors of later, more famous work demand attention, such as a story that appeared in Journey into Mystery #62 (November 1960): “I Was a Slave of the Living Hulk!”

This two-chapter story, in fact, has nothing to do with the Jekyll and Hyde concept that Kirby and Lee were to come up with for Bruce Banner and his green-skinned alter ego. The earlier Hulk is a truly strange creation.

Its fur-covered appearance suggests nothing so much as the Abominable Snowman, but its midriff and rather ridiculous pointed head are made of metal; it has no face, only a pair of popping eyes. The tale is standard stuff for this era of the Marvel ‘big monster’ books: creature from space lands on Earth, is about to bring about the destruction of the human race, before foiled by a single enterprising human being. Also standard stuff is the fact that the hero here is something of a nobody with a nagging wife—but in this story Lee (or possibly his brother Larry Lieber) avoids the usual cliché of the unimpressed female ending up very impressed indeed by her world-saving partner. However, while this particular Hulk is one of Kirby’s most bizarre creations in terms of its design, there are other things of interest for his admirers. Such are the two pages on which we see the prison planet from which the Hulk has escaped.

In two large panels [next page, top], we are given a panoply of other grotesque creatures sitting around in captivity, and once again we are reminded of how prodigal was Kirby’s imagination—and how reluctant he was to repeat himself. The second panel showing denizens of the prison planet shows them as completely different from those in the preceding page.

Either Kirby couldn’t even be bothered to

TURN OFF THAT TV!

Look at many films from Hollywood in the 1950s and early 1960s, and you will notice a curious repeated theme: A variety of digs at the then-newish medium of television. Many of these casual slights were suggesting (with a degree of accuracy) the moronic nature of much TV programming (so nothing’s changed much, has it?). But the real agenda of the filmmakers was to get people away from the small screens and back to the cinemas they’d deserted for the new medium. Which makes an item by Jack Kirby in Journey into Mystery #73 (August 1961), “What Lurks on Channel X?” particularly interesting, as it seems designed for practically the same purpose: Telling the reader not to watch TV. Of course, the comics medium was on a highway to nowhere if this was the message—if there were disapproving voices about television, there were a lot more about the comics medium which was largely felt to have corrupted American youth (and this anti-comics 54

hysteria even reached across the ocean to Britain—we had questions asked in the Houses of Parliament, and a horror comics ban was enforced which is actually still in place, although— thankfully—there have been no prosecutions in many years). Not that this would have particularly affected Journey into Mystery, as it was published under the auspices of the Comics Code Authority, with all its strict rules as to what could and could not be shown. But then Jack Kirby—who always claimed that his Marvel monsters were not particularly frightening—was underestimating (consciously or otherwise) his gift for the disturbing image. Take the splash page of “What Lurks on Channel X?”, for instance, in which seven truly grotesque and distorted faces leer at the viewer through the rectangle of a TV screen. The story itself is a well-worn one—the invasion through television screens which might have been inspired by Orson Welles’ famous broadcast of H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds, which supposedly panicked the Americans who took it seriously. Here the invasion is fairly easily brushed off, and to be frank, the real reason for reading the slender story is Kirby’s striking artwork (including the usual authoritative inking

by Dick Ayers), giving The King the chance to draw a few more hideous faces— not just the splash panel, but also a strange sequence later in the tale in which a human face transforms into that of a hideous monster. By this stage in the Stan Lee/Larry Lieber/Jack Kirby collaboration, the writers were very much on autopilot, with the same stories appearing again and again with only minimal changes.

But as so often throughout Marvel’s monster period, it’s the artist’s work that makes them worth seeking out. Above all, in fact, for the Kirby aficionado, their principal value lies in the eye-catching splash panels almost always more impressive than the covers (even though the latter were by Kirby).

Whether the book was Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish or Journey into Mystery, Stan Lee’s principal art workhorse always delivered the goods, only occasionally betraying signs of haste. The latter accomplishment is pretty amazing giving that haste was undoubtedly the watchword; even though Kirby was one of the fastest pencilers in the business (as attested to by such specialists as this magazine’s Mark Evanier), he was nevertheless still stretched to the limit by the demands put upon him by Lee and Marvel. Thankfully for us Kirby fans, he was always able to deliver. H 55

innerview

Jim Woodring Interview

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke on May 6, 1996 • Transcribed and copyedited by John Morrow They did a TV show called Thundarr the Barbarian, and he did some of the character design and some of the show design for that. Right after he did that, I started working there, and they tried to find other things for him to do. They gave him a stab at storyboards, without really telling him how to do storyboards, and he just tried to wing it. He did some really innovative things, like he had a close-up of somebody’s face, to the extent that all you could see was their eyes, and the shot called for the camera panning from the left eye to the right eye while about two minutes of dialogue were spoken. [laughs] He just made up his own rules.

JON: Did he come up with the concept for the stories he was storyboarding?

JIM: No, he was given a script, like all the storyboard artists were.

He looked at some other boards, and from his own take on how it was done, he did his. But it was completely unusable. It couldn’t have been done the way he called for it. He didn’t really understand how to do it.

[Jim Woodring is best known in comics for his self-published magazine Jim, and as the creator of his character Frank, who has appeared in a number of short comics and graphic novels, but he’s also an accomplished fine artist and animator. Jon B. Cooke considers him one of “the top five greatest cartoonists alive,” and here he quizzes Woodring about his tenure under friend and art director John Dorman at Ruby-Spears Productions.]

JON: So what was he primarily doing at Ruby-Spears?

JIM: Character design and show ideas. When I started working there, his job was to come up with ideas that might be turned into TV shows. So he would come in every Monday morning with a big thick stack of Crescent board under his arm, on which he had drawn characters and settings and show ideas, and he’d given names to all the shows and all the vehicles and all the characters. They were all really, really imaginative. In fact, there’s a set of Jack Kirby cards

JON B. COOKE: When did you first meet Jack Kirby?

JIM WOODRING: I first met him in 1981, when I started working at Ruby-Spears. He already had been hired when I came aboard.

Based on the eye on her palm, this unnamed female may’ve been a character for—or which morphed into—the unproduced Warriors of Illusion project [next page, bottom].

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JON: Did you ever talk to him about the business?

JIM: Well, I listened to him talk about the business. There was absolutely nothing I had to tell him. His take on the business was pretty personal and idiosyncratic. He didn’t seem to have much awareness about what other people were doing; he was just clued into his work, and some times are better than others. He had that Old World habit of maintaining respect for the office of Editor. He was loathe to say bad things about editors or the people he worked for. When I met him, it was at the very height of that “God Save The King” and “Give Jack Back His Artwork” and all that, and even in the thick of all that, when he had plenty of encouragement to, he never said anything bad about Stan Lee.

out, and that stuff is a lot of the pitch artwork he did for RubySpears. They were quarter sheets of Crescent board, so they were 20" x 30".

JON: Did you color and ink a lot of these?

JIM: Yeah, I did. I inked most of them, and colored a lot of them.

JON: Some of this stuff is outstanding. Like the Warriors of Illusion; did you do the coloring on that?

JIM: I did some of the coloring on that. Most of that was done by a guy named James Gallego.

JON: You were unfamiliar with Jack’s work prior to that?

JIM: Yeah. I was aware of his name, and aware that he was a comic artist, and well regarded. But I couldn’t have told you what he drew, or how he drew.

JON: Was it just Mondays when he’d come in?

JIM: Well, he’d come in Mondays with a big stack of Crescent boards under his arm, and we’d all come in and look at them.

We’d all stand around and laugh, and point at the various things, and try to make him stay and talk and tell us stories.

JON: So you weren’t even aware of his reputation as one of the Marvel guys?

JIM: Not until I’d been working there a couple of weeks. I’d tell people that I ran into, that I was working with him…

JON: Did you go back and look at Jack’s earlier work after meeting him?

JIM: Yeah, I did.

JON: Were they floored?

JIM: A lot of them, yeah.

JON: I seem to perceive an increasingly bizarre sense of humor coming out of him at that point.

Did that permeate his work that you saw?

JIM: Oh yeah, especially toward the end of his tenure there. His work got sort of recklessly crazy.

The one that I really wish I could find is, he did a drawing of a character named Heidi Hogan, which was a bearded lumberjack in a pinafore dress, jumping off a cliff with a propeller beanie. [laughs] It just looked like pure automatic pilot. He must’ve been thinking of something else entirely, and automatically drew

JON: Were they surprised to find out he was working in animation?

JIM: Yeah.

JON: What was your impression of him when you first met him?

JIM: Well, that he was unusual in a good way.

How shall I put it? He didn’t seem to have the kind of adult, pragmatic, hard, dull edge that most other grown-ups did. I think it comes from having such a rich inner life, and putting such value on drawing and imagination, and comics and cartooning. That was his business, that was his life. He just wasn’t a cold-edged pragmatist. He lived for more and better works of fancy.

this nonchalantly insane picture. [laughs] There was another kind of ill-fated project the studio had going called Animal Hospital. I don’t know if he was asked to do it; I suppose he was. He suddenly started coming in with newspaper daily strips. Penciled but not inked, but he had written it, and someone else had lettered it, and it featured all the characters he’d invented for Animal Hospital. It was like five or six days’ worth.

JON: How did he react to the world of Hollywood?

JIM: Well, I only saw him at work. I was never up to his house. He had a professional demeanor; a way of being nice that was genuine, but you also knew it was his work face. So I don’t really have much of an idea of what went on in his mind, or how he felt about anything really, because he was pretty superficial when he was in the office. I know that at Ruby-Spears, at a certain point after he’d done all these drawings and none of them had been made into TV shows, he began to be a little frustrated by that. Because he was doing all this work and coming up with really good ideas, and none of them ever went anywhere.

JON: Did he come up with the Animal Hospital concept?

JIM: No, that was by Joe Ruby, I believe.

JON: What was the genesis for that?

JIM: The desire to create a sophisticated post-primetime TV show 57

for adults, that would have a little bit of raunchiness in it.

JON: So much in cartoons was derived from either merchandising, or some kind of high concept idea. So what was that derived from: Dynasty?

JIM: Yeah, that’s exactly what it was, now that you mention it. That’s that show Joan Collins was on, right? The script that actually got made into an animatic called for a Joan Collins-type temptress. But these dailies, I somehow ended up with one in my possession. It’s got this very weird, stilted humor. He was kind of frozen in time in some ways. When he’d draw policemen, they’d look like a beat cop from 1934 in a modern setting. His sedans would be, like, ’48 Pontiacs.

So his Animal Hospital was anachronistic in the same way. You could just tell it was written by an older guy, whose sensibilities were not rooted in the modern world.

JON: Obviously, artists must have gravitated toward him.

JIM: Whenever he’d leave the building, we’d all go, “God, can you believe we’re working in a place where this little vibrating fireplug of a man comes walking in, and just knocks out these fantastic drawings? And on top of it, he’s a celebrity?

What a weird job. This is great!” We had a sort of skiffle band; we had these instruments we got at a pawn shop, and we’d play sort of improvised rock and roll at the job. I have Jack performing on a Fender Stratocaster on a couple of these tapes. He had no idea how to play it, he’s just hitting it. And also him playing the trumpet; he said he played trumpet in the Boy Scouts, and we played some freeform jazz at the studio.

JON: Was this atmosphere prevalent in the industry?

JIM: No. John Dorman is the guy who’s responsible for this atmosphere.

Jack Kirby would get verbal assignments over the phone directly from Joe Ruby, and he’d sometimes spend several hours at night drawing huge images on illustration board in soft graphite pencil, without ever first doing a blue line rough sketch. Nobody but Jack could pull off such a feat, working at that level. The next morning, Jack and Roz would come to John Dorman’s storyboard unit, wherever we happened to be located. (When I started on staff at Ruby-Spears, Dorman’s unit was on the first floor of their fake Tudor-styled three-story office building, a block or two south of Hanna-Barbera on Cahuenga Blvd.

We were moved into a sort of 1940s stucco bungalow on Barham Blvd. around June of 1984. Then we moved yet again, in October 1985, to a suite of first floor offices just north of a large Nissan car dealership.)

Our unit was responsible for doing production storyboards and for inking and painting any presentation art that Joe Ruby wanted, which Jack Kirby or Gil Kane drew.

I got to paint several of Jack’s enormous presentation pieces over the years, using Dr. Martin’s dyes, thinned with water and applied with either brush or airbrush.

Jack’s stuff was by far more fun to paint and frisket for airbrushing than Gil’s. While Kane’s presentation drawings tended to be complex, cerebral technical marvels, Jack’s were inert, direct, and packed with pure emotion!

Of course, I encountered Jack Kirby many times while working in John Dorman’s unit, sometimes as often as twice a week. Jack always had interesting takes on what was then going on in the world, and he told several of us in Dorman’s group a few staggering tales of his WWII adventures. Above is one photo of me with Jack, made

by Jim Woodring with a lenticular 3-D camera, taken around May or June of 1984.

–Tom Minton, 2022

JON: What was it like inking Jack’s work?

JIM: It was interesting, because every so often I’d catch something that was wrong. Something would start out being a cord from a lamp, and then it would turn out being a division between two walls. [laughs] His line would just change its function. One time, and one time only, I tried to correct something like that.

He’d created an M.C. Escher-type optical illusion, and when I switched that back, it created an obvious glitch that I had to fix, and when I did that it created another one. And I ended up redrawing this entire complicated device, with all kinds of dials and gauges and wires. I spent a couple of hours redrawing this thing, and when I was done, it looked terrible. [laughs] And it was because I tried to fix this one little thing.

JON: You can mess with Jack Kirby! [laughs] JIM: You can’t! The only time I ever saw him erase anything was when he erased great big things. He never changed small details. Sometimes if he had a huge figure in the foreground and he drew it wrong, with the leg extended clear off the page and that was unacceptable, he’d redraw it. But he never erased anything small.

JON: Did you learn anything from him?

JIM: Yeah, I did. I learned the importance of drawing characters with a kind of

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editorial dynamism. How instantaneous impact of a drawing carried a flavor that permeated the whole rest of the experience. They way he would do that, you’d see a picture in your mind that just registered, “Action! There’s something cool going on there. Nice picture!

Look at these dynamic shapes interacting; something’s about to happen!” And that charge stays with you while you cypher out the information. He just knew how to do that. He’d sit down and draw something, and it’s like he’s inventing a new way of drawing every time. He had formulaic ways of doing things, but he had individual approaches to these formulas that he was always coming up with on the spot. [left] Hidden Harry toy idea.

JON: Did you ever talk about art with Jack?

JIM: Yeah, and he was surprisingly uninformed. I seem to remember he liked Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington [Editor’s Note: Both are painters known for their paintings of cowboys and the American West]. He knew nothing at all of Modern Art, as I recall.

[below] Cover Girls, a Charlie’s Angels knock-off.

JON: Do you think he was cognizant of his effect on comic books? Was that discussed at all?

JIM: I think he was, but he would downplay it. Everyone was like, “Gee Jack, I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking to you, the guy who created the modern super-hero comic book,” and he’d go, “Oh, well, they say I did that.” But he obviously concurred.

JON: Do you perceive a subtext to his work at Ruby-Spears? He came from a tough background; do you see that permeating 59

his work?

JIM: I didn’t see anger in his work. I saw anger in his demeanor. I saw weirdness in his work. I didn’t see rage in his work, so much as I saw passion—almost like Jack wished he could be in an asteroid shower or something. Just this wild dynamism in his stuff, it seemed like that was the thing that was most important to him. He didn’t seem to me to be one of these guys who’s inwardly seething. Again, I knew him barely at all, and I knew him later in life. I’m sure he was much different when he was younger.

JON: Do you have any stories to tell about Jack?

JIM: Just the stories of him coming in and playing music with their band. I took a photograph; it’s a 3-D photograph, of him wearing sunglasses and playing a Fender Stratocaster. [laughs] It’s kinda funny.

of the stuff we played. He’d walk in, and we’d go, “Hey Jack, play this!” and we’d give him a guitar or trumpet, and we’d keep playing and he would do the solo. He’d sit around and shoot the breeze.

He told us war stories. He told us stories of growing up tough in Brooklyn; walking across boards from one tenement to another, to escape beatings. His war stories were kind of slightly crazy. There’s one about when he was in Italy, and he was hemmed in by Axis fire, and his commanding officer gives him a boat and tells him to row over to a barn. He said he sat in the barn, and women came out and gave him food, and he described listening to the screams of his comrades as they were slaughtered across the water. I wish I could remember some of his other stories. He talked about driving tanks, and about being an infantryman, and he’d say, “When you’re standing there and you’ve got your gun and the fixed bayonet, and you see ’em coming at you, you think, ‘Boy, I hope all the strategy they taught us was correct.’ And next thing you know, it’s happening; the nightmare is happening!” He said he was drawing all the time. I remember he told me he was drawing a picture and a bomb came in, and mud got splattered all over the picture. And later on, he found out it wasn’t mud; it was like somebody’s head got blown off and splashed on his notebook. “Now some guys would’ve kept that out of morbid curiosity, but I never had any doubts about my feelings on that subject, and I just threw that piece of paper away and never thought about it again.”

JON: What was working for Ruby-Spears like?

JIM: Well, it was great from a salary standpoint, and it was great from the social standpoint. It was an insular company. When the rest of the industry went on strike, we didn’t, because we weren’t a union signatory, but we all made well above union scale. Joe Ruby was the brains guy, and he had these writers, and he depended on them and he worked with them, and they wrote up all the shows and came up with all the ideas. And then the artists, headed by John [Dorman], were housed in a separate part of the building, and ultimately in a different building entirely. It was really good socially; I got to work with the most talented cartoonists I’ve ever met, who’ve all gone on to stellar heights. We had a band and made music, we had Marie Callender pie fights with real pies, we went bowling and had long lunches and made up t-shirts, and antagonized other people in the building. I remember one time Joe Ruby was riding up to the building with Fred Silverman, and when he pulled up to the building, we were standing out in front, picking rocks out of the ornamental flowers in front and throwing them at each other. [laughs] It culminated with somebody getting hit in the forehead and knocked down, and blood all over. [laughs]

JON: Was it obvious he was having a good time when he was talking to you guys?

JIM: I think he was having a pretty good time. I think he just stayed around mostly for professional courtesy. He never really seemed to relax. He seemed to feel that his role there was to be a storyteller, and kind of a visiting celebrity. He’d sit around and talk, and if we

JON: What was the name of your band?

JIM: Bobo Queekly, or the LA Bastards. [laughs] JON: How did you get Jack involved?

JIM: He’d just walk in while we were playing, and we recorded most

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JIM: I don’t think Doug worked on any of those. He did presentations for the studio, but I don’t think he did any of those. Some of them were Jack’s drawings that had been completely redrawn. But the whole effort of producing those cards was orchestrated by John. Not as cards, but as production artwork.

JON: Okay: Power Planet, with Tiger Shark, Crusher, Captain Lightning, and Four-Arms, the free-wheeling farm boy.

JIM: Typically what Jack would do, when he brought in the work, he’d bring in one board like that with the title of the show going across the top, and then the characters and a little description of each under that.

JON: Camouflage Corp.

Warriors of Illusion. The Gargoids.

JIM: Probably for those shows, the basic ideas were come up with

by Joe Ruby, and the titles of the show. Maybe he heard you could do that kind of thing with Jack and get good results. Say, “I’ve got an idea for a show. We’ll call it The Gargoids, with friendly gargoyles.

Now go do it.”

encouraged him, he’d sit around and talk for a long time sometimes.

But he wasn’t just hanging out and conversing with us. He was sort of there as “Jack Kirby” and his job was to entertain us somehow.

But he never tried to teach us anything, really, which is kind of surprising.

JON: What’s the most memorable work you saw of Jack’s?

JIM: It’s hard for me to single out anything, because it was all just like a substance coming out of a tube. All of his drawings had exactly the same level of interest and that incredible skill that he had.

Except for the end, in the Heidi Hogan era—then he started to do just completely crack brain stuff.

Hanging on my wall, I’ve got these three dogs that he drew.

Sometimes when you’re in a rush to get a show out, we needed incidental characters drawn, and Jack would be recruited to draw them.

I think that’s one he did for Rambo. He would occasionally draw dogs or bystanders, things like that. One show needed some dobermans, and this drawing he did was so fantastic that I stole it. [laughs] Hanging up downstairs is these three dogs that look like barking torpedoes with legs. [laughs] These frightening, shark-jawed monsters!

They look nothing like dogs; they’re these nightmare objects.

I think he was most happy when he was just letting his imagination run free, and sharing the fruits of it with people. I think it was a natural state for him to be “on,” and thinking creatively, coming up with crazy, interesting stuff.

JON: So Joe really was thinking of this. Was everything that was being worked on at Ruby-Spears derivative? I see the successes like Thundarr, which seems to me to be based on Planet of the Apes or Conan.

JIM: Yeah, ultimately they were. There was a show called Turbo Teen. [laughs] It was about a kid who, when he got hot, turned into a muscle car. It was kind of based on Knight Rider. It was just the most lamentable show: he’d go, “Oh no, I’m turning into Turbo Teen!” and he’d turn into a car in his bedroom, and have to drive out sideways—all in the show-stopping Ruby-Spears animated style. [laughs] I remember a scene in Turbo Teen where they’re at a dance, and the black kid sidekick sees a car dancing on the dance floor, and in his exuberance shouts, “Get it down, Jack!” Some real authentic teen dialogue. [laughs] JON: Did you work on Roxie’s Raiders?

JIM: I worked on Roxie’s Raiders. So did Jack; Jack did a lot of work on Roxie’s Raiders, and he worked on Goldie Gold. That actually got produced. Goldie Gold was coming to an end when I first started working there. It was about a rich girl who had adventures, I think.

Another Ruby-Spears thing was, do you remember the Rubik’s Cube? Years after that fad was dead, he decided to bring out Rubik, the Amazing Cube. Unbelievable. And then the Mr. T show. It was him and a team of youthful gymnasts who would drive around and solve mysteries. And there’s a group called the Centurions, which was guys in action suits, fighting.

JON: Did you work with Steve Gerber? Did you guys get along?

JIM: Yeah, he worked there when I first started working there, and left shortly thereafter. We were friendly in kind of a remote way. At the time I met him, I was self-publishing Jim, and he sent a copy of it to cat yronwode, who gave me my first review. He was one of the first people who ever took an interest in what I was doing.

JON: If you don’t mind, I’d like to run down a list of concepts I derived from the trading card set. Can you tell me if Jack was involved?

JIM: I’m sure you’ve noticed from looking at those cards, Jack didn’t draw some of them.

JON: Did Jack work on that?

JIM: Yeah, and he worked on a show called Sectaurs. They were like centaurs, but instead of half-man, half-horse, they were half-man, half-insect. [laughs]

JON: Gil Kane did some. Did Doug Wildey work on any?

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JON: Did you contribute conceptually to these cartoons? You confided that you were unhappy working at Ruby-Spears; that overall, you really didn’t want to be there.

JIM: It was excruciating, because I had absolutely no input, other than to do a straight, toe-the-line facilitation of what was being written. I’d get a script, and I’d board it, or I’d have to do character depictions from it, and if I ever tried to get clever and improve things or add things, it was methodically and inevitably stripped out. So I never had a sense that this is my studio and I can contribute to it; that if I had better ideas and did a better job, that the cartoons would be better.

JON: So you stayed for John [Dorman] and you stayed for the money?

JIM: Yep. And I also stayed because it was the kind of a job where I could abuse it terribly. [laughs] I’d arrive at work at 10:00am, and leave at noon and stay home the rest of the day, and work on my own book, and still manage to collect a full salary.

But that’s the thing; the shame of being connected with those cartoons. At the time it was just horrible. I’d look around me at what people were doing. Serious artists were putting it all on the line for the sake of their artwork, and here I was clinging to this loathsome method of support.

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JON: The Amazoids. Street Angels. Dragonspies.

JIM: Street Angels was obviously based on the Guardian Angels.

Dragonspies was a wannabe show, but I can’t remember what it wanted to be. [laughs] My guess is that Joe Ruby said to Jack, “I want you to do a show called Dragonspies. I want a ton of guys riding on big insects, cause we’ve got a toymaker who’s got four million pairs of plastic fly wings that look really good. We can get those practically free and build them into these great toys. So we’re gonna have a TV show based on these wings.”

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:

JON: So merchandising was a consideration in the early 1980s?

JIM: Oh yeah. There was a show where a hamburger would turn into a boat, like Transformers—except it’s food—and I think it was a direct rip-off of these things McDonald’s had already done. So Joe saw these things and said, “Hey, there’s an idea!” and went back and put his whole studio in motion on this McDonald’s toy rip-off. [laughs] H

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Which came first, flies or spies? Doesn’t matter—when you’ve got Gil Kane [top] and Jack Kirby [bottom] involved, either could’ve been a hit.

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Fighting American print silkscreened in Switzerland 23” x 19”

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MORE CINEMATIC KINETICS s a boy growing up in New York, Kirby was an avid moviegoer, who seemed to intuitively understand what made celluloid films flow and come alive in space/time. The young artist was able to escape from the teeming ghetto of Lower Manhattan and enter a world of fantasy where he could be Robin Hood or Zorro in the cinematic fantasy realm. Being young and physically active, he very likely responded first to the way action was depicted. Actors like Douglas Fairbanks [right] exploded onto the screen with muscular swashbuckling vitality, and Kirby could feel the action in his own body as well as being able to transfer that vitality

onto a page. He was able to internalize the gestalt of what made film so compelling. It was the continuity of action that mimicked life itself, and he strove for an acuity for choosing the optimal use of shape and space.

His keen mind and eye were able to deconstruct the fluidity of motion and mentally freeze-frame a fragment of that action in the way that he would later do working as an in-betweener. Although famous for the dynamic depiction of Golden Age Captain America, Kirby unfortunately did little finished work on the 1940s books other than the covers and the splash panels. More than two decades later he broke out with a larger-than-life style, utilizing pages that were generally a series of panels large enough to be mini-screens, but small enough to fit into a series that depicted continuous action. 1 In this sequence from Tales of Suspense #84, Captain America is seen falling from a great height while the waterfront cityscape below rushes up to greet him. In the second panel, he begins to position himself so that he can control his trajectory. Notice that although there are six more or less even-sized panels on the page, each one is a clear and distinct universe of space and motion that follows and completes the continuity of action throughout. In the third panel, we see the surface of the water much closer and Cap realizes that he about to crash into a huge freighter. We then see his body twisting in air with no background to hinder the dynamism of his agility, and finally the last two panels show him landing safely in the river in an explosion of water.

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2 In this page from Tales of Suspense #67 [next page], we see a good deal of cinematic action within the single panoramic first panel. The viewer’s eye first lands on the green clad clump of figures to the left holding Bucky down. The diagonal of a Nazi soldier’s leg and figure emerging from that mass brings attention to the blue clad figure of Captain America. Like many of Kirby’s best panels, the movement of the reader’s eye creates the illusion of movement in space and time. The entire shape/mass of figures is a triangular thrust from left to right that has Captain America virtually exploding

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before seeing anything else. Because of several visual cues such as pillars and balcony railing, we do see the figures in the background, and our eye may even go first to the figures in the middle left, but the huge leering head of the rightward man with the cigarette almost immediately dominates the scene.

However, the frame is so packed with visual information that the eye doesn’t rest on this face, but continues to move, down and leftward to the brown jacketed man, then to the blond head in the lower left corner, and finally up and back to the right where we see the man in the green jacket that we may or may not have spotted earlier. Even more stunningly, that figure leads us further rightward to the row of seated mobsters that takes us back to the huge leering face. This page is wonderfully balanced and gives us a near perfect approximation of cinema, because it compels the viewer to see motion and the passage of time in a single still frame.

5 The last sample is from Our Fighting Forces #151 featuring the Losers. This was a period where many feel that Kirby’s work was stylistically much simpler, with panels often containing fewer figures in a variety of shapes and sizes. He did however begin to do more double-page spreads, and this amazing page shows that the King was still capable of achieving cinematic brilliance when sufficiently inspired to do so. This is a scene so full of action that comes mostly from dramatic tension spread over what is certainly the passage of several moments, and where multiple protagonists are conveying their radically different points of view in linear time.

Because of the pattern of dark clouds in the upper left corner and the shape of the tree branch nearby, we first see the purple clad Nazi crouched on the rock pointing his weapon downward. His position combined with a word balloon cause us to see the truckload

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through the confines of the panel. Cap’s right leg draws the reader’s eye down to the second frame as the focus returns to Bucky diving in order to grab a machine gun. The sound effect lettering in that panel points to Bucky firing the machine gun in panel three. The diagonal of the mid-air gun brings the eye to the fourth panel of Bucky tossing the grenade, and the figure on the floor in that frame takes us to the final shot of Bucky thwacking the Nazi soldier.

Previously, I’ve mentioned that as a ten-year old, I was impressed by the inventiveness of Kirby’s early ’60s work on the Rawhide Kid. The King often began the story with the wandering Kid entering an unfamiliar space, riding into a strange town or going into a bar. 3 In this splash panel from Rawhide Kid #28, all focus is on the Kid entering because all the elements in the composition point to him. It is nearly the equivalent of a camera focusing on a figure and then pulling back to reveal the rest of the room. We actually first see the head of the mustachioed bartender, but almost immediately shift our attention to the Kid because of the golden external structure whose post drops directly to his white hat. The doorway also frames him as he opens the swinging gate whose shape initiates the diagonal progression of customers from the rear to the front of the panel. Kirby makes sure that we view each patron individually, mostly by utilizing the variety of hat shapes. This is another brilliant deep space composition with a distinct background, middle and foreground.

4 This page from Fantastic Four #92 gives a similar effect of left to right and back to front progression in space/time, while using a much more complex composition. Most interesting to me is that we see a fairly wide expanse of background from upper left to center

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they actually are. The Germans occupy nearly the top half of the frame and almost seem to be in a different dimension. The Losers are literally in the underworld, trying to sneak away before they are discovered. The pattern of rock brings the eye down to the forked tree and to Sarge, the prone American with the machine gun. His figure creates a lattice towards the rear of the lower portion of the canvas. Moving rightward, we see the next lattice of Johnny Cloud. The angle of his cap and his gun connect him to the world above, but the diagonal of the rock takes the eye to the closer figure of Captain Storm, who is moving forward as well as to the right. The closest lattice on the far right is that of Gunner. There is a wealth of visual information here that moves in a space/time continuum, snaking from right to left and then curving right again.

Each protagonist embodies a frozen segment of a narrative that spans time as well as space.

Kirby’s genius was the ability to be larger than life… and bigger even than what became the ultimate amplification of life, the Movies. His version of sequential art and continuitybased visual storytelling tapped directly into the Source of vitality in the universe. H

of Nazis behind him at the crest of a ridge. Then miraculously the sweep of the eye begins anew as the Commandant gives orders, and his soldiers are moving forward down and to the left. He and his men know that the Losers are near, but are unaware of how close

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INNERVIEW

Rick Hoberg Interview

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke on May 20, 1996 • Transcribed and copyedited by John Morrow [Rick Hoberg (born 1952) has had a highly successful career as both comic book artist and animator. He began in the mid-1970s working on Tarzan comics for Russ Manning, and later assisted him on the Star Wars comic strip from 1979–1980. Other comics work includes The Invaders, Conan, and What If...? for Marvel Comics, plus All-Star Squadron, Batman, The Brave and the Bold, and others for DC Comics. He’s been active since 1978 as a storyboard artist and model designer for all the major animation studios, and had the privilege of working at Ruby-Spears while Jack Kirby was in their employ.]

[below] A nice example of Gil Kane’s presentation art, for an unknown character. [next page, top] Rick Hoberg retold Thor’s origin in What If? #10. [next page, bottom] Unrealized R-S pitch The Outcast, set in 1990, featuring Jack’s “Slitha”, an “organic engine of destruction.”

between Clint Eastwood and Bugs Bunny. [laughs] He had this New York/Brooklynese accent and he looked like Eastwood in a lot of ways. And he was always willing to pull a joke, but at the same time was always willing to be serious. He was just a wonderful guy. He inspired a lot of people, including Dave Stevens with his Rocketeer work. Many guys you’ll talk to who had any contact with Doug just loved the guy—a great fella.

JON: What year did you get involved in animation?

RICK: 1976. Shortly after I started working with Doug, after nine months or so, I ran off and started working on Star Wars stuff for Marvel, and then came back to work for him. We were working on a show called Godzilla, that’s shown even now on Cartoon Network.

It was partnered with a show called Jana of the Jungle.

Neither one of them were groundbreaking material, but they were a lot of fun to work on, and I know a lot of them won’t admit to it: Will Meugniot worked on it, Dave Stevens worked on it, Bill Wray worked on it. A lot of people in comics ended up working on that show.

JON B. COOKE: When did you first meet Jack?

RICK HOBERG: Oh, I met Jack years before I ever worked with him in the animation industry. I’m pretty sure the San Diego Con was the first time. Jack was always the most congenial of people. He was always willing to tell stories and sit with the fans and talk with them.

JON: Were you at Ruby-Spears before Thundarr started?

Did John Dorman bring you on?

RICK: I came in just after it started. Actually, Jerry Eisenberg and Larry Huber brought me over, and I began working for John Dorman. John was the storyboard supervisor over there.

JON: Your art took some inspiration from Jack?

RICK: Of course. I’m one of those people who in the 1970s subscribed to the three Ks of comics: Kirby, Kubert, and Kane. Jack Kirby is to me the essence of storytelling excellence. His figures literally move on the page.

JON: What were your duties there?

RICK: Layout department, basically. I did character design and layout on Thundarr and Plastic Man. Thundarr was a lot of fun to work on. It was a groundbreaking kind of show. Nothing like it had actually ever been done for Saturday morning, in that it was a real straight adventure show, with no funny animals in it per se. We didn’t have any dog sidekicks or anything like that; the nearest thing you had to it was Ookla the Mok, the big Wookie character. It did pretty well; it ran two seasons. At that time, that was good for an adventure show. At that point, they were looked at as almost kind of a break from the comedy shows. Kids were watching Thundarr.

The real groundbreaker I was involved in over at Marvel was G.I. Joe. It was tremendously successful.

Even though it was syndicated, it was a huge hit, with marvelous ratings. I believe the G.I. Joe show was on for eight or nine years.

JON: How did you get involved in animation?

RICK: I was pulled into it literally by Mark Evanier. He gave my name to Doug Wildey, the creator of Jonny Quest, and Doug was producing a show over at HannaBarbera at the time. I went over to see him and got a job from him right off the bat.

Doug ended up honing my skills better than any other person I’ve worked with. He was marvelous. Just a wonderful human being. One of the most giving teachers I’ve ever worked with. The guy literally had no qualms about sitting down and teaching you something. That relationship continued until he passed away.

We were good friends right up to the end. I saw Doug as a cross

JON: Steve Gerber mentioned being story editor of G.I. Joe as the highlight of his career in animation, along with Thundarr.

RICK: It actually had some very good stories. You had a lot of good writers involved in that: Buzz Dixon and Steve Gerber, Roger Slifer was there. It was the first time comic book people were pulled in big time on the writing end. It didn’t rely on any formula of the time.

It didn’t rely on having to deal with comedy. You could do a comedy episode, but you didn’t have to have a funny animal or comedy relief sidekick. It just relied on the straight character of the heroes involved, and the 66

remember, he was the guy who designed the original Turbo Teen, which when you think about it, seems like a real Jack Kirby concept—a kid turns into a car. Even though I hated working on the show, it was fascinating to see his ideas were still being put forth in animation, and they actually were used in those shows back then.

JON: What do you see as the most “Kirby” of those shows?

RICK: Oh, Thundarr. He did quite a few shows. He did an unproduced knockoff of that She-Ra, Princess of Power thing that they did over at Filmation. He was always coming up with, especially, villain designs.

He did some design work on The Pirates of Dark Water when it was initially put forward. There’s a lot of stuff he worked on.

Jack would do things like design concepts.

Sometimes they’d get painted up, sometimes we’d just ink them. In the end, they’d quite

villains; and the villains were total bad guys, which is something that hadn’t been done a lot. It was quite a good show, and I was happy to be involved. I only stuck around for the first season because there were other shows we were working on, like the Incredible Hulk, and the first Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends show. This led us along to breaking ground for further shows, cause at the time, most of the adventure shows being done were still done in these old vaudevillian-style staging methods, with characters were brought on Stage Left, and exited Stage Right, as opposed to cutting it like Hitchcock or Ford. We were approaching the cutting with a more melodramatic flair.

Jack actually was doing a lot of real fun designs over at Ruby-Spears. Even though some of the shows themselves weren’t particularly designed in that vein, he was always coming up with real energetic and interesting things. As I

often get Gil Kane to do a real nice comp, and they’d get painted from that. Some of those paintings are quite lovely.

JON: Have you seen the trading card set? It’s called Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives, but a good fourth of it is Gil’s work. It’s not factually correct, but it’s still fascinating and beautiful.

RICK: No, I haven’t at this point.

But I think this is why that’s in there. Jack did a lot of the actual designs you’ll see, and Gil Kane ended up doing the compositions they used to help sell the ideas.

Jack would be a conceptual artist, but he’s not the one whose art they would use to sell it. Technically, 67

thing like that. He wanted to give it the feel that we were a little avant garde.

[these pages] Kirby’s art for Future Force.

JON: John has expressed some bewilderment at the copious amount of money that was thrown at these productions, to do presentations and come up with ideas that would never sell.

RICK: Of course, this went on all the time. To be honest, this is one of the reasons I could not sit and work in-house with those guys all the time. I realized there comes a time when you gotta realize you’re an artist making a living, and if you agreed to do this, you have to take the assignment given to you at that particular point. John went insane fighting over some of the crazy stuff we were given. Certainly some of the ideas could be insane and not worth doing, but you have to approach all of them on an equal level. John never could in my mind. This is one of the reasons I couldn’t sit there and let this guy worry me to death, and worry him to death in a lot of ways.

He was a rabble-rouser in a lot of ways, but he was a lot of fun! He’s a

Gil’s stuff is very attractive for that sort of thing. Well, Jack’s was in the old days; it wasn’t highly attractive near the end. It had a very surreal quality to it. I ended up with a couple of pieces that Jack did, that I would compare more to Picasso than to any comics I’ve ever seen. They were highly abstract, beautiful stuff, but not something you would necessarily use to sell anything with. It’s great material and I love the stuff personally; I consider it real fine art.

JON: Mark Evanier said there was another reason for Jack to be there: to serve as an inspiration for the staff.

Sometimes the stuff was so far out that it was totally unusable, but the morale factor was enormous.

RICK: Oh, completely, yes. Totally crazy. It was, because it honestly let the rest of us go a little wild at times, and not worry about constraining ourselves. It’s less so now, but we were in a time during the late 1970s and early ’80s where we were always being put upon by the executives at these companies, to literally watch our asses on the level of how far we should go, how far we should stretch things. We wouldn’t want to insult anybody, or take anything too far. Make sure everything is just conservative enough, they’d be able to sell to the people who are going to buy commercials—the advertisers.

JON: What was it like at Ruby-Spears; was it a special time?

RICK: It was fun. They literally called the place Bastard Central. [laughs] John Dorman especially loved to run a ship that scared the executives a little bit, and keep them on the edge of their seat. John’s literal idea of fun was to screw with the executives and higher-ups, to try to keep everything a little fresh and exciting, and make the rest of us feel we were the “bad boys” over there.

We were not only turning out cool stuff, but causing a little trouble at the same time. That was just the aura; we weren’t literally out there breaking windows or any68

very inspirational guy; Dorman, I always loved working with this guy. I would work for him anytime, cause he’s just a real good guy personally, with a lot of integrity in terms of what he thinks is good. He could literally take pure crapola and give it some body, some weight. And he fought for that all the time.

JON: Can I go down a list of shows, and you tell me what Jack’s involvement was?

RICK: Sure.

JON: Mr. T. RICK: He did character design, the initial designs before they went to animation. As I remember, the final designs were always done by somebody else, but based on what Jack did. These designs were taken right from Jack’s stuff, and traced back and given an ability to animate. That is, they’d take out all the blacks, all the speed lines and stuff, and make it a straight character you could use for animation.

JON: Plastic Man. RICK: I don’t believe Jack had any work there. He may have on incidental characters.

JON: Centurions.

RICK: Design, as far as all the incidentals. The initial characters were based strictly on the toys, the heroes and stuff.

JON: Goldie Gold and Action Jack.

RICK: I remember he pretty much came up with all the basic concepts on that. [Editor’s Note: Perhaps “Action Jack” was named for Jack himself?]

JON: Rambo.

RICK: Pretty much the same thing. He came up with all the incidentals, and a lot of the sidekick characters and villain characters. The only one he wasn’t really involved with was Rambo himself, because that had to be based on the Stallone character.

JON: Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos.

RICK: Same thing, almost exactly.

JON: Sectaurs.

RICK: That’s one I don’t know how much Jack was involved in. From what I remember, he was working around toy designs for models.

JON: Turbo Teen.

RICK: Totally his concept, as far as the look of the show. I don’t think he conceptualized the exact idea, but I’ve seen those original drawings. Many times the writers would kick off the original drawings by saying, “Let’s try to pitch a show about this.” If nothing else, he came up with the total visual work.

JON: Did Joe Ruby have a way of, when the studio would come up with concepts, call it his own?

RICK: Oh, exactly like Hanna-Barbera.

Who do you think were their mentors?

That’s the same methodology. Even to this day, Hanna and Barbera claim to have created Jonny Quest. When they did the comic books for Comico, never did they claim in writing, nor did Doug Wildey, that he 69

created Jonny Quest. He did, it’s no secret, and one to one, I can tell you Doug created it. But to this day, Hanna and Barbera will sit and tell stories about how they came up with the idea. And Joe Ruby and Ken Spears will do the same thing.

JON: Future Force.

RICK: Yeah, I remember that. Jack did quite a few drawings on that, as I remember. Basically, it was a take-off on his Captain Victory series.

JON: How about unproduced stuff: Power Planet.

RICK: I’m not familiar with that. A lot of this work may have passed by me. Jack turned out an immense volume of work. It was just amazing how much this guy had coming out of him. I heard from Roz later, he only worked, like, a couple of hours one day a week to get this stuff out! It’s amazing.

JON: Cassette Man. RICK: [laughs] Never heard of that one!

JON: Beyond character designs, which shows have the most direct translation of what Jack brought in, storytelling-wise?

RICK: Turbo Teen and Thundarr the Barbarian are the two that followed the closest to Jack’s work. Maybe some of the Fantastic Four.

Comic book guys who came into the industry at the time were really good designers, but had very little on the storytelling end. They approached storyboards like comic books, and they didn’t understand the concept of this moving in time and design. So they weren’t able to tell much storywise on these shows, but they’d end up being good character and concept designers. But beyond that, they were not too involved in the shows.

JON: Roxie’s Raiders.

RICK: Yes, that I remember. Boy, I can’t give you much on it.

JON: Except for Animal Hospital, it seems to be the more producible of the stuff. It seemed to be derivative of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it seemed to have a lot of Jack in it.

RICK: Now Animal Hospital; I don’t know how much input he had on that. Jack might’ve done one or two concept things, but we did an animatic for the show. An animatic is literally a storyboard film, when they take a storyboard and just do unmoving frames; it’s like a comic book on film. The finished art is filmed, and sometimes even dialogue is put to it, and they use it to try to sell a cartoon before they actually produce a full episode.

JON: Jack would come in on Mondays with a huge pile of Crescent board, and would show it to the art department, right? Do you think that after a while, it got to be frustrating for Jack, that all these ideas never got produced?

RICK: I don’t really think so. Jack went on with this for a long time, and for all his time in comics, he literally never owned much of what he created. But I never saw much of Jack’s stuff that wasn’t creative and well thought out—and it was stuff he knew he’d never own a piece of. This never held Jack back, plus they treated him like a king over there anyway. Ken and Joe both were always good to him, and they always called him in to talk to him and tell him what a great job he was doing. Jack knew this was really the essence of that job.

I think his reward was that he was getting to do the work. I don’t think he was ever worried about seeing a concept of his done for a

JON: Did they regularly do animatics?

RICK: No, it was very uncommon to do those. I only worked on that one, and one other over at Marvel. [Animal Hospital] was a fun show, a risqué, kind of ribald thing. It came at the time of a spin-off show of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman called America 2-Night. It was much in that vein; it had risqué humor, and was intended for late night programming. So it really didn’t hold back. There was quite a bit of T&A, even if on an animal level.

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television show.

There’s another factor to bring into this, and that’s that these guys were paying him a really tremendous amount of money, compared to what he was paid doing comic books. He and Roz were getting older at that point in their lives, and I truly believe Jack saw this two ways. He could draw any damn thing he wanted to do, and have fun at it, and people were paying him on a really tremendous scale. And he figured, “Hey, if all they want out of me is one day of work for a couple grand a week, I’m going for it.” I think he may’ve been a little burned by the last go-round at Marvel, and he’d had about enough.

I think he got his spirit back a little bit, cause that’s about the same time I remember Captain Victory came out at Pacific, and he created a couple of other things, Destroyer Duck and Silver Star.

JON: Other than in the late 1940s and 1950s, this was the first time he’d come to an office and hung out with

people. Was that invigorating to him, do you think?

RICK: It may’ve been, but he never was there very long that I remember. He didn’t seem to spend much time there. He’d come in, talk for a while, see everybody, then go back home. So it was a good way to socially engage with people, but he had quite a life with Roz, and I don’t think he needed much more than that. And he certainly didn’t have any lack of social interaction.

People would always want to talk to him and come over and see him. Jack loved to tell stories; he was great at that. His World War II stories, you could sit and listen to them for hours at a time. I went over to his house a couple of times with Bill Wray. He would literally spend the whole afternoon just talking and showing you his drawings. Roz would always feed you, and you felt like they never wanted you to leave.

JON: Were you a Kirby fan back in the 1960s?

RICK: Always, always. I don’t think anybody impressed me or influenced me as much as Jack. My artwork more reflects Russ Manning, but storytelling-wise, I think I’m more interested in Jack Kirby’s type of storytelling.

I just think he was a marvelous guy. What’s really wonderful about a lot of those guys, like Doug Wildey and Jack Kirby, was that they had so little ego for the amount of talent they had. It’s unlike a lot of the business today, where most of the people in the business consider themselves true artistes, instead of craftsmen in a way. And I think the work actually suffers for it.

The old guys in the business see themselves as sitting down and doing it every day, and doing their best work every day. That’s different from trying to create “masterpieces.” Of course, on that level, Picasso sat down every day to do his work; he didn’t sit and fret over it or anything like that. I think that’s one of the best things I ever learned from all those guys: Do your work, do it as well as you can, but keep your ego in check, basically. H 71

[left] A late-stage Kirby villain for Power Planet, which shows the decline in Jack’s eyesight (and thus, his penciling ability)—but his wild imagination is still evident. [this spread] One of the final fully-realized presentation pitches Kirby worked on, for Power Planet. Studio artists finished up Jack’s looser pencil work, and gave it a stunning color treatment. [below] Doug Wildey in 1978 (top) and Gil Kane.

Influencees

Evan Dorkin Interview Conducted by Eric Nolen-Weathington in September 2022

[below] A page from Superman and Batman: World’s Funnest, wherein Evan did a masterful job of channeling Kirby in his dialogue. The very Kirbyesque art is by David Mazzucchelli. [next page, top] Kirby’s version of Space Ghost from Space Stars Finale for the 1981 Space Stars show. [next page, bottom] For TwoMorrows’ Kirbyinspired book Streetwise (2000), Even drew his autobiographical story “The Soda Thief!”. Our thanks to Evan for again helping us out, by inking this issue’s cover! [next two pages] Kamandi sketches by Evan (including Klik-Klak!), and a couple of simian-based presentations by Jack.

[Cartoonist Evan Dorkin (born 1965) is best known for his comic books Milk and Cheese and Dork, but his experience runs much further than the printed page. With wife Sarah Dyer, he’s written for such animated series as Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Superman: The Animated Series, and many others. His most celebrated work within mainstream comics is arguably his 2000 one-shot DC comic Superman and Batman: World’s Funnest, which he wrote for a who’s who of comics’ best artists to illustrate. He’s received widespread acclaim for his Eisner Award-winning Beasts of Burden books, and he recently returned to the comics of Bill & Ted with Bill and Ted Are Doomed (2021). He’s currently heavily involved in animation, and Kirby is a never-ending influence on his work, as you’ll see here.]

ERIC: Did you read any of his DC work regularly?

EVAN: I did not. I didn’t like DC when I was a kid, I only collected Marvel.

I would read my friend Clifford’s Atlas comics, my sister’s Harvey and Archie comics, but for some reason I just didn’t take to DC at all. I didn’t start reading DC comics until the ’80s. I came to Kirby’s ’70s DC work even later.

ERIC: As you were starting out drawing, did you ever try to copy his stuff?

EVAN: Oh, of course. Mostly the Fantastic Four, inked

by Joe Sinnott—with absolutely terrible results. [Eric laughs]

ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON: What was your first encounter with Kirby’s work?

EVAN DORKIN: I can’t pinpoint my first exposure to Kirby’s work, but the first Kirby comic I remember buying for myself was Marvel’s Greatest Comics #55, which reprinted the story where the FF fought Thor, Spider-Man, and Daredevil. This was in 1975, and I was ten years old.

ERIC: What elements did you take away from Kirby and incorporate into your own work?

EVAN: Intensity. Energy. Bombast. Mayhem. Action.

Crowds. Costuming. Detail. Huge, wide-open screaming mouths. Monstrously large screaming mouths.

That’s where Milk & Cheese’s mouths came from.

ERIC: Were you old enough to be aware of Kirby’s move from Marvel to DC? EVAN: No, it would have been a few years too early for me. At that time I would have been mostly reading newspaper comics and Tintin, which was running in Children’s Digest magazine.

ERIC: Did you ever meet Kirby in your early days of attending comic conventions? Did you ever show him your comics?

EVAN: I met him when I was a teenager, on line at a con, getting a comic signed. Like most people, I gushed and stammered at him while he signed my copy of The Fantastic Four. I never had an opportunity to show Kirby my work; I wouldn’t have done so even if I had the chance. I did meet Kirby briefly at the San Diego Comic Con after I broke into comics. Bob Schreck introduced me to him in 1992 during his 75th birthday event. I shook hands with him and gushed and stammered just like when I was a kid. [Eric laughs] ERIC: What were some of your favorite cartoons growing up?

EVAN: The old studio cartoon shorts, any Disney cartoons that got shown on The Wonderful World of Disney, Scooby-Doo and all the Saturday Morning junk, the Peanuts and Rankin-Bass specials. Living in Brooklyn meant having access to a lot of TV stations, so I was also a fan of things like Kimba the White Lion, Speed Racer, and The International Animation Festival show on PBS. When I got older, I loved the early syndicated Nelvana specials, Battle of the Planets, and Star Blazers.

I saw Yellow Submarine, The Phantom Tollbooth, and Wizards in the theater. I was into animation as much as comics and monster movies.

ERIC: Did you watch Thundarr the Barbarian? And, like I did, did you watch the credits just to see the names of the comic creators who worked on that show? Were you paying attention to that kind of thing by that point?

72

EVAN: I did. And I always checked the credits, because I was an über-nerd. I had a Star Wars notebook where I’d write down the credits of all the cartoon shorts I watched, which is why names like Willard Bowsky and Seymour Kneital still float in my head to this day. I remember being really excited to recognize the names of comic book creators in the Thundarr credits. I thought they were getting rich, which obviously wasn’t true.

ERIC: Did you ever think of going into animation early on, or were you strictly focused on comics?

EVAN: Comics and cartoons both really put the bite on me. I wanted to draw comics, but sometime around the age of 12 or 13 I got it into my head that I wanted to become an animator. I got my father to get me a subscription to Mike Barrier’s Funnyworld, bought books on animation, and attended weekend and summer animation programs at SVA before going to NYU’s film school for animation and screenwriting. Film school led me to reconsider comics as the better format for how I wanted to tell stories.

ERIC: Your first gig in animation was writing for Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1994. How did that come about?

EVAN: My first gig was actually doing storyboard clean-up on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. I got the job through a friend from NYU. Space Ghost came about because someone had given Mike Lazzo a copy of the Milk & Cheese trade paperback, and he thought I might be able to write decent banter for Zorak and Moltar. I co-wrote a script with Sarah [Dyer, Evan’s spouse], and we ended up writing another twelve or thirteen episodes. We also wrote some Superman episodes during that time, and got to use some Fourth World Kirby characters, which was an absolute blast.

ERIC: My buddy Mike Manley always says that everyone in comics wants to work in animation, and everyone working in animation wants to be making comics. Do you find that to be the case?

EVAN: The grass is always greener, both have pros and cons.

Animators are generally invisible while working on projects seen by large audiences. Comic creators generally have small audiences but everyone who follows their work knows their name. Animation can be exciting, seeing your work onscreen, hearing your dialogue spoken aloud. I miss it but I’m a cartoonist at heart; I prefer the autonomy and control you have in comics. Both are fun, both are a headache, both should pay better.

ERIC: As someone who moves back and forth between mediums, does that variety help you in any way, either artistically or mentally?

EVAN: I don’t differentiate much between them, to be honest.

The parameters are different, of course. Budget plays into what you can accomplish in animation. The only real impact I can think of was when we worked on the “Super Martian Robot Girl” cartoons for Yo Gabba Gabba. I had to draw all the elements very cleanly and simply in order to be animated.

It helped me to simplify my style when needed.

ERIC: At one point you and Sarah pitched a Kamandi series to 73

Adult Swim. Was that while you were working on Welcome to Eltingville? Why Kamandi?

EVAN: We were hired in 2011 by Pete Gerardi at WB specifically to write a Kamandi pitch bible for them. It was some time after Eltingville, almost a decade.

ERIC: What was the basic treatment of the pitch?

Was it fairly true to Kirby’s original stories?

EVAN: It was basically the comic. Where it differed was in tone, because the pitch was commissioned to be aimed at the Adult Swim, which meant adding more humor. We didn’t want to do a parody or spoof, though. Our approach was to push harder on the satirical elements that were already in the comic, and play up the gallows humor of Kirby’s bizarre and deadly post-apocalyptic world. We pitched it as “a mash-up of Kirby, Kerouac, and Cormac McCarthy.” Some of the details and motivations were different, but we wanted everything to

be recognizable, or become recognizable as the series progressed.

For instance, Kamandi doesn’t start off as an action hero. He’s a lonely, out of shape nerd who grew up in an underground bunker with nothing to do but play old video games, watch old TV, and fantasize about girls and the lost world. His only companions are an old dog and the malfunctioning Brother Eye satellite A.I. that has lost touch with the rest of the K-Command bunkers spread across America. Brother Eye takes advantage of Kamandi’s loneliness and frustration to get him on a quest to locate and explore the other bunkers to find if there are any other survivors. One of them, Command A, is where a girl named “Kamanda” supposedly lives.

This provides Kamandi with a quest so he’s not just wandering around the wastelands every week.

Over the course of the first season, teaming with Prince Tuftan, Dr. Canus, Flower, and a Brother Eye robot avatar, Kamandi gets in shape and becomes more like the capable fighter we know from the comic. And over the course of the series, he meets pretty much everyone and everything from the comics. Very little was cut outright, almost all the major and minor characters are in there except for Spirit and Pyra, if I remember correctly. We added a few new characters—there’s a cat assassin named Kitten who would have been a team member. But mostly it was a case of editing and adapting to bring some things more in alignment for a modern audience. We revised the role of the gorilla tribes to avoid the obvious similarities to Planet of the Apes. They end up under the command of our main antagonist, an older survivor named Kommando, a cross between a psychotic Henry Rollins and Bill Paxton’s Chet from Weird Science. We changed the tiger city from being based on ancient Rome to having their society spring from an abandoned Medieval Times dinner theater castle in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

[Eric laughs] That way we got to keep Kirby’s basic concept, as well as the swords and bloodshed, while tying the tiger society’s origin to the ruins of modern America. It’s just as improbable, but it’s less arbitrary, and it gives us some jokes at the expense of the deadly and 74

two of your biggest projects for them are FF related: the Thing miniseries you wrote a while back, and the fairly recent Human Torch story you wrote for Marvel Snapshots #1. How did those projects come about?

EVAN: Dean Haspiel was pitching a Thing project to editor Andy Lis, and they brought me in to flesh it out and script it. I wrote a pitch that was a sort of super-hero-noir, with a doomed romance, a downer ending, and the Frightful Four as a dysfunctional crime outfit, influenced by David Goodis’ novels like Black Friday and Down There. The Torch story happened simply because Kurt Busiek was kind enough to invite us on board.

deadly serious tigers, who are cosplaying a very phony version of the Middle Ages with jousting tournaments, disco parties, and plastic novelty grail goblets. We knew adding more humor to the concept would upset some fans, but we hoped the action and adventure stuff would balance out the jokes. There was going to be a lot of over-thetop Kirby action. A lot of hitting, a lot of battling, a lot of hardship.

A lot of everything.

ERIC: Were there any particular Kirby stories you wanted to adapt?

EVAN: We had several baked into the pitch. The first episode was obviously based on the first issue. We had Tuftan and Dr. Canus’ introduction, the Nuclear People and the whole Tracking Station story, the gorilla Superman cult, and the Sackers storyline. Flower was going to replace Spirit, and become a regular cast member.

We were going to keep Klik-Klak around and give the characters similar mounts at some point. There were also some original episode ideas, like Kamandi getting captured by a human mutant cult who wants to sacrifice him to a Minotaur-like monster who lives inside a labyrinth that was once an Ikea. The mutants all have Ikea-like product names, and they have a lot of trouble assembling their weapons and equipment. [laughter] But most of the bible and pitch was Kirby, including all the stuff from the letters page map. The Orangutan Surfing Society, the Jaguar Sun Cult (and Hotel Chain), the God Watchers… just about everything was in there.

ERIC: Did being a native Brooklynite make it easier for you to find Ben Grimm’s voice? Because it read very naturally.

EVAN: I think so. It’s a pattern I’m familiar with from life, from pop culture, and from the comics. One thing I tried to do on the series, though, was to lose the Brooklynese when I was writing Ben’s inner monologues. My feeling was here’s a guy who went to college and became a test pilot. Test pilots aren’t morons, they don’t talk like the Chester Riley character that originated Ben’s “wotta revoltin’ development!” catchphrase.

Ben downplays his intelligence for various reasons.

I wanted to show that dichotomy inside his head. I tried to keep it subtle. He doesn’t speak like Reed or anything like that, he mainly quits joking around and stops dropping consonants. Someone at Marvel wanted to change that, but Andy and I talked them into letting us run with it. It probably helped that it was a non-canon story and no one really cared about what we were doing.

ERIC: Do you know why it never got picked up?

EVAN: After the Adult Swim passed on the pitch, it made the rounds to some other channels. One response was along the lines of it being too funny for an action series, with too much action for a comedy series. So maybe that killed it. I couldn’t say for certain. We should have just said, “Don’t ask! Just buy it!”, maybe that would have worked. [laughter] We were disappointed, obviously, because we were really happy with it and were asked to work on the series if it got picked up. WB did hire us to do another bible for a Bruce Timm project afterward, and then we wrote and designed a series of Metal Men shorts for DC Nation. So at least that came out of it.

ERIC: Well, I’m glad you did. It just felt right. It’s like when you go off to college, your speech patterns change to fit in with the people around you. But when you go home to visit, you tend to slip back into the local accent.

Last question, if you had to pitch any Kirby creation to a network today, who or what would it be?

EVAN: Etrigan, the Demon. Two-fisted superhero horror. Hot damn. H

ERIC: Now that Adventure Time—which started the year before your Kamandi pitch—is what it became, which in many ways is just a magical version of Kamandi, could a Kamandi cartoon even be done today without seeming redundant?

EVAN: Anything can work if given a shot. A concept might feel familiar, but it’s the execution that makes all the difference. Design can set things apart in a significant way. Attitude, tone, characters, scripting, and dialogue. Worldbuilding. Sense of humor.

Imagination. Emotional honesty. Everything is similar to something, it’s the personal, individual touches that differentiate things. It takes work, imagination, and effort. The same goes for recognizing the potential for a project.

ERIC: Comics-wise, you haven’t done a ton of work for Marvel and DC’s super-hero lines, but 75

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! $1.99-$

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #79

KIRBY COLLECTOR #74

KIRBY COLLECTOR #76

KIRBY COLLECTOR #77

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!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #81

KIRBY COLLECTOR #82

KIRBY COLLECTOR #83

See “THE BIG PICTURE” of how Kirby fits into the grand scheme of things! His creations’ lasting legacy, how his work fights illiteracy, a RARE KIRBY INTERVIEW, inconsistencies in his 1960s MARVEL WORK, editorial changes in his comics, big concepts in OMAC, best DOUBLE-PAGE SPREADS, MARK EVANIER’s 2019 Kirby Tribute Panel, PENCIL ART GALLERY, and a new cover based on OMAC #1!

“KIRBY: BETA!” Jack’s experimental ideas, characters, and series (Fighting American, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, and others), Kirby interview, inspirations for his many “secret societies” (The Project, Habitat, Wakanda), non-superhero genres he explored, 2019 Heroes Con panel (with MARK EVANIER, MIKE ROYER, JIM AMASH, and RAND HOPPE), a pencil art gallery, UNUSED JIMMY OLSEN #141 COVER, and more!

“THE MANY WORLDS OF JACK KIRBY!” From Sub-Atomica to outer space, visit Kirby’s work from World War II, the Fourth World, and hidden worlds of Subterranea, Wakanda, Olympia, Lemuria, Atlantis, the Microverse, and others! Plus, a 2021 Kirby panel, featuring JONATHAN ROSS, NEIL GAIMAN, & MARK EVANIER, a Kirby pencil art gallery from MACHINE MAN, 2001, DEVIL DINOSAUR, & more!

FAMOUS FIRSTS! How JACK KIRBY was a pioneer in all areas of comics: Romance Comics genre, Kid Gangs, double-page spreads, Black heroes, new formats, super-hero satire, and others! With MARK EVANIER and our regular columnists, plus a gallery of Jack’s pencil art from CAPTAIN AMERICA, JIMMY OLSEN, CAPTAIN VICTORY, DESTROYER DUCK, BLACK PANTHER, and more!

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More About Jack Kirby:

KIRBY COLLECTOR #84

STEVE SHERMAN TRIBUTE! Kirby family members, friends, comics creators, and the entertainment industry salute Jack’s assistant (and puppeteer on Men in Black, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and others). MARK EVANIER and Steve recall assisting Kirby, Steve discusses Jack’s Speak-Out Series, Kirby memorabilia from his collection, an interview with wife DIANA MERCER, and Steve’s unseen 1974 KIRBY/ROYER cover!

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ALTER EGO #179

Celebrating the 61st Anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1—’cause we kinda blew right past its 60th—plus a sagacious salute to STAN LEE’s 100th birthday, with never-before-seen highlights—and to FF #1 and #2 inker GEORGE KLEIN! Spotlight on Sub-Mariner in the Bowery in FF #4—plus sensational secrets behind FF #1 and #3! Also: FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, a JACK KIRBY cover, and more! NOW SHIPPING! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

CBA BULLPEN

Collects all seven issues of JON B. COOKE’s little-seen fanzine, published just after the original COMIC BOOK ARTIST ended its TwoMorrows run in 2003. Interviews with GEORGE TUSKA, FRED HEMBECK, TERRY BEATTY, and FRANK BOLLE, an all-star tribute to JACK ABEL, a new feature on JACK KIRBY’s unknown 1960 baseball card art, and a 16-page full-color section! NOW SHIPPING! (176-page TRADE PAPERBACK with COLOR) $24.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-105-9

BACK ISSUE #131

THE KIRBY LEGACY AT DC! Explores Jack Kirby’s post-Fourth World Bronze Age DC characters!

Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, Sandman, and Kirby’s Odd Jobs (Atlas, Manhunter, and more). Plus: the SIMON & KIRBY Reunion That Wasn’t! Featuring BISSETTE, BYRNE, CONWAY, GIBBONS, GOLDEN, GRANT, RUCKA, SEMEIKS, THOMAS, TIMM, WAGNER, and more. Demon cover by KIRBY and MIKE ROYER! NOW SHIPPING! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

Jack Kirby Books ER EISN RD AWAINEE! NOM

OLD GODS & NEW

For its 80th issue, the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR presents a double-sized 50th anniversary celebration of Kirby’s magnum opus! This companion to that “FOURTH WORLD” series (NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, MISTER MIRACLE, and JIMMY OLSEN) 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 determine how it came about, where it was going, and how Kirby would’ve ended it before it was prematurely cancelled by DC Comics! It 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. With an overview of hundreds of Kirby’s creations like BIG BARDA, BOOM TUBES and GRANNY GOODNESS, and postKirby uses of his concepts, no Fourth World fan will want to miss it! Compiled, researched, and edited by JOHN MORROW, with contributions by JON B. COOKE. (160-page FULL-COLOR paperback) $26.95 (Digital Edition) $12.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-098-4 • NOW SHIPPING!

KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID

This EXPANDED SECOND EDITION of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #75 includes 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 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. (176-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $26.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-094-6

JACK KIRBY’s

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR VOL. 6

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

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

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 ER Kirby stories in existence, presented here for the first time! Included are: Two EISN RD AWAINEE! unused DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales (Kirby’s final Kid Gang group, M NO inked by MIKE ROYER and D. BRUCE BERRY, and newly colored for this book)!

TRUE-LIFE 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! (176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-091-5

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST: CENTENNIAL EDITION

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR VOL. 7

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

This final, fully-updated, definitive edition clocks in at DOUBLE the length of the 2008 “Gold Edition,” in a new 270page 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!

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

(256-page LTD. EDITION HARDCOVER) $34.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-083-0

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Comments

(Send us your most animated comments on this issue!)

[For an issue I struggled to get started on, this one sure took on a life of its own—largely due to my pal Jonny B. Cooke coming through with all his 1996 interview tapes. After a whirlwind three-day weekend of nothing but transcribing, it snowballed into a non-stop journey of discovery into Jack’s deep well of creativity. I’ve literally only scratched the surface of the thousands of images and concepts Kirby created, and worked on with others, in the animation industry. I hope this issue does justice to the King’s creative legacy in that field, and introduces new readers to that wonderful material.

And best of all, I finally learned what Hidden Harry was meant for! Now on to letters:] #83—another superlative issue of TJKC! I was thrilled to read the blurb on page 3 about the forthcoming Mainline book. BULLSEYE may be “Kirby Obscura” to TJKC, but to me he is very prominent and very special. I first discovered Jack Kirby with CAPTAIN 3-D #1 (the comic that changed my life), then was thrilled by FIGHTING AMERICAN and the Harvey STUNTMAN reprints.

When my family moved from Pennsylvania to Florida in 1951, I left behind my friends (all comic collectors), TV stations (none in Orlando!), Saturday matinee theaters, and my favorite newsstand. Living in Florida in 1951, I was nearly two miles from any store that sold comics, or any movie house. I was cut off from everything for a year or so until my dad bought me a bicycle.

So when we re-visited my old home town in 1954, the very first thing I did was hit Snyder’s Newsstand. I was rewarded by striking the mother lode. There on the shelves at the same time was RINGO KID #1 (great Joe Maneely stories that have never been reprinted) and BULLSEYE: FRONTIER SCOUT #1! I was thrilled beyond belief! So to ME Jack Kirby is (and forever will be) CAPTAIN 3-D, FIGHTING AMERICAN, STUNTMAN, and BULLSEYE! I can’t wait for the Mainline book!

I love that you are reprinting the “Link Thorne” series. I may be missing one or two of the originals. And the Machlan FIGHTING AMERICAN cover blew me away! As soon as I get a chance, I want to blow that up poster-size for the wall in my comic book room.

Keep up the great work!

Bill Black, Longwood, FL [Bill is, of course, head honcho and reprinter of Golden Age comics at AC Comics, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for making so many scarce old comics available to enjoy again.]

Wow! So here I am turning the last e-page of the digital version of TJKC #83 (sorry, just

couldn’t wait for the physical copy to arrive) and it was well worth the price of admission! You’d think after 83 issues, there wouldn’t be much more you could add to the Jack Kirby mythos—but how wrong I was!

You really struck gold on so many levels in this latest masterpiece!

In no particular order: Just when I thought Mark Evanier’s Jack Kirby Panels had run their course, his recent “COVID” get-together with yourself and Alex Ross was filled with the type of personal Kirby recollections that I live for. At this point, what piques my interest is WHY Jack did the things he did. What got him out of bed in the morning (besides taking a piss) to face down that blank sheet of illustration board staring back at him? You guys provided enough variations of the “to feed his family” story to create a more well-rounded (IMHO) part of Jack’s psyche. I don’t know why I never saw Jack as a part of the “Greatest Generation,” but he was, and I see better how it influenced so much of what he did.

Likewise Will Murray’s “Cosmic Kirby and the God Concept” and your own “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even” article provided a more in-depth look into Kirby’s thinking. Your article underscored in many ways why I’ve always prescribed to the image of Jack being an angry guy—of someone letting his anger work for and motivate him. He certainly ran a risk of letting his treatment in the industry burn a hole through him. But you showed how he got his “revenge” through hard work.

Will Murray’s article, on the other hand, peeled back an unfamiliar layer: Jack Kirby as philosopher and deep thinker!

Whether it was intentional or not, both articles played off each other quite well. And not to be overlooked, Will’s other article “Challenger of the Silver Age” was a great supplement to much of what you wrote in “Don’t Get Mad...”

Rounding things out: great contributions by Shane Foley and Norris Burroughs made for a thoroughly enjoyable 83rd issue!

Well, John, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing or where I’ll be doing it when you reach TJKC #100, but I plan on sticking around to find out!

Gary Picariello, Brindisi, ITALY A great issue—as always. Lots of great stuff to read and think about.

One question: Did you use both versions of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 on purpose, as a test for your readers? Bottom of page 4 is the original (missing man/cop) version, and page 28 is the 78

published version. Just curious. Always nice to see both.

Looking forward to the BEST OF MAINLINE edition—especially since I’ve been wanting to see the “Inky” story in IN LOVE #3 (assuming you get the scans).

Thanks as always for a great publication.

John Libertine, Medfield, MA [Not to worry, John—Chris Fama got the scans, and is hard at work restoring all the Mainline material for our upcoming collection!]

The new issue [#83] was funny and thoughtprovoking. For laughs, it was amusing seeing “Thor” appearing in an old issue of BATMAN. Never ran across it or even heard it mentioned before.

Or seeing “Atlas” battling Hercules in THOR #124. I have it and read it numerous times but didn’t recall it, offhand. Can’t really compare that Atlas and the FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL #1 rendition as he seems hidden behind his battered shield.

Also, enjoyed Rover the Rascal (1947), a Kirby character I never encountered prior. Was it a oneshot strip, or did it continue in NEW DOGS #1?

The biggest laugh, easily, was Mark Evanier quoting Jack on the ’70s SANDMAN assignment: “I’m not having anything to do with this. I can’t stand this.” Can’t blame him.

SANDMAN seemed incredibly juvenile; attempting comedy and failing. Out of all the books in the ’70s to have a welcome Kirby/Wood reunion, that one? Why? Plenty of topics to seriously consider, as well.

What was Jack’s first cosmic character? You went with Galactus. Though mentioned later, I’d think a counter argument could be made for the Watcher (introduced three years earlier). He wasn’t like the space aliens we’d previously seen in the book, such as the Skrulls or the Impossible Man, who seemed traditional or amusing menaces. The Watcher was something else—not necessarily a threat, but a unique being. If he wasn’t garbed in an ancient toga, there would probably be no discussion about it. He was a new concept, with motivations far beyond villainy. Same with Galactus, but he had a cooler costume.

For me, the most cosmic were Jack’s Celestials. So beyond us, they didn’t directly communicate or reveal their true forms under the armor. Unless, that was what they looked like?

The discussion continued about the Challengers of the Unknown being influential.

That does seem to be the case. However, in just acknowledging them for that, the brilliance of the five issues with Kirby/Wood art is potentially

overlooked. Those books were amazing, even by their high standards. Absolute standouts!

Larry Lieber noted Jack was so good, an inker could not ruin his pencils. Well, some came close. They can and did lessen them.

Stan went on to say that he cared more about the inkers than Jack seemed to. Interesting sentiments considering some that seemingly vandalized Jack’s work, with rushed or inappropriate inking, were there for a run, not just a single issue under deadline. FF #21-27 come to mind. It took seven months to discover the inking wasn’t flattering?

In exploring the contention between Jack Kirby and DC editors, you were the first to say it was conjecture.

Even so, some of the numerous examples could have had some factual basis. It’s difficult to know which ones, at this late date, and how they can be established. My question is, why would DC assume Jack was intensely following all their output to see and get steamed by reuse of his themes? Or could they have borrowed and recycled his ideas, not in spite, but because they thought they were sound concepts?

Also, with the work situation tenuous for a while, would Jack be looking to razz DC, or desperately striving to improve his own status in creating successful books to assure him a steady income and thriving work situation?

I don’t dispute that Jack, rightfully so, could have been angry or displeased with his treatment at DC. Or that the editors mentioned could be difficult to deal with and not on his list of favorite people. But Jack got his revenge, if you wish to call it that, by Marvel’s amazing assentation. In building up, not tearing down.

Still, an interesting exploration.

Appreciated all the convention drawings you published. Does anyone have a list of what Jack drew at shows or when the practice ended? (Maybe ’83?)

Were any of the demonstrations videotaped?

Loved the 1977 MARVEL CALENDAR cover too, though far more in pencil form than fully inked. Here, it seems to me, the charm was Jack’s expressive faces, and they were needlessly lost in John Romita’s overpowering inks. Surprising, too, as he did such a nice job, over Jack, on the cover to AVENGERS #23.

Was that the sole instance of Jack drawing Howard the Duck?

Loved the question on page 15: “...what Kirby art is yet to surface?” It’s amazing when some treasure is unearthed without warning, like the recent September 1966 ESQUIRE Marvel super-hero gathering. That was just an astounding gem!

On page 21, Mark Evanier passed along Don Heck’s comment “...that a lot of the Iron Man villains were Jack’s idea.” The visuals? The concepts? Both? And any specific examples cited?

Finally, two corrections: Jack, to my knowledge, was not at the first ’64 con.

It may’ve been the ’66 one you’re thinking of. He did do a Thor sketch for the ’64 program book. The pros in attendance, I believe, were Steve Ditko, Flo Steinberg, and Tom Gill.

Secondly, you mentioned that JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #97 was the first Lee/Kirby Thor story. You Here’s a tentative list of upcoming themes, so start thinking, and get to writing! SEND US YOUR THEME IDEAS! • LAW & ORDER - From Justice Traps the Guilty! and Police Trap to In the Days of The Mob, Terrible Turpin, and OMAC’s Global Peace Agency, we’ll assemble a lineup of Jack’s famous flatfoots and fuzz.

noted, “Larry Lieber was the scripter prior to that.”

Only to a point. Robert Bernstein scripted #92-96.

Plus, while JIM #97 was Stan and Jack’s first solo Thor story, they both worked on AVENGERS #1, featuring Thor, released a month earlier.

Joe Frank, Scottsdale, AZ Just re-reading parts of TJKC #83—and thoroughly engrossed by Will Murray’s current insights and very glad he’s producing so many for TJKC and ALTER EGO. (Your follow-up in “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even” was amazing in its detail. You know all this late ’50s DC stuff? Incredible! You must LOVE research, considering ’STUF SAID, the GODS book, and now this.)

Back to Murray—he writes on page 27: “How Martin Goodman failed to pick up on this trend (that the Challengers template was a big seller) is beyond me... the normally canny copycat publisher failed to realize that a trend had developed.” But did he fail to see it?

After all, he okayed—or instigated—the FANTASTIC FOUR. Why is it not more probable that Goodman did indeed notice the trend and pushed Lee to do FF in a Challengers-ish style? Kirby would have been only too happy with that. Perhaps noting JLA’s success and their own Monster books, Lee & Kirby decided to include superhero-ish and monster elements, but how can we say Goodman failed to see the trend when the FF is started in the exact period that DC’s copycats were also started?

“It was probably from Kirby, not Lee, that Goodman learned that the Challengers represented a major comic book trend...” (also page 27).

OR: It could be that he learned it from sales figures—or whatever it was that he watched to see what was selling.

I think the FF is a sign that Goodman DID see the trend—and hopped on board!

Shane Foley, AUSTRALIA Really enjoyed your article re: Kirby vs. DC (“Don’t Get Mad, Get Even”). You were out on a limb on some of your thoughts, but you admitted so... it’s food for thought as you said. Along that line of thinking: FANTASTIC FOUR revisited Egypt /time travel, like in CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN. FF revisited the “alien child” concept (Infant Terrible) just like in COTU. So yes, you are opening the floodgates.

And thank you for mentioning it was AKU-AKU (and NOT KON-TIKI) in which author Thor Heyerdahl recounted the Easter Island statues. (We first said it was AKU-AKU back in TJKC #14!) Also thanks for the credit on behind-the-scenes research help.

Will Murray supplied two great articles—especially the Cosmic Gods Kirby thoughts. Two things stood out to me re: Murray’s sources.

1) Will lists “The Last Kirby Interview” (TJKC #32), but it is actually called “The Lost Kirby Interview,” from Nov. 8, 1978, and published in a French thesis in 1981.

2) He mentions sourcing a 1989 “Sci-Fi TV” Kirby interview (A video? What is this?). The SYFY television launched in Sept. 1992—this is a mystery.

Richard Kolkman, Fort Wayne, IN • THE KIRBY COLLECTORS - Readers’ stories about what it means to them to be Kirby collectors—from their craziest original art and comics deals, to getting tattoos, Kirby inspired man-caves, and their Holy Grails of collecting!

• Plus: WHAT IFS?, CONSPIRACIES, and more!

79

#85 Credits:

Jon B. Cooke, Co-Editor John Morrow, Co-Editor/Designer/ Proofreader/Art Curator/etc.

THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Alfredo Alcala • Norris Burroughs Comiclink • Jon B. Cooke Evan Dorkin • John Dorman Mark Evanier • Chris Fama Barry Forshaw • Steve Gerber David Hamilton • Ilke Hincer Rick Hoberg Larry Houston • Robert Katz Sean Kleefeld • Richard Kolkman David Miller • Tom Minton Will Murray • Eric Nolen-Weathington Matthias Pfruender • Joe Ruby Steve Sherman • Ken Spears Jim Woodring • Bruce Zick Tom Ziuko and The Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org) If we forgot anyone, please let us know!

Contribute!

The Jack Kirby Collector is put together with submissions from Jack’s fans around the world. We don’t pay for submissions, but if we print art or articles you submit, we’ll send you a free copy of the issue it appears in.

Submit art & articles by mail, or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com

NEXT ISSUE: IT’S VISUAL COMPARISONS! An analysis of unused vs. known Kirby covers and art, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH on his stylizations in CAPTAIN AMERICA’S BICENTENNIAL BATTLES, Kirby’s incorporation of real-life images in his work, WILL MURRAY’s conversations with top pros just after Jack’s passing, unused Mister Miracle cover inked

by WALTER SIMONSON, and more!

TJKC #86 ships May 2023!

Summer 2023 (TJKC #87):

LAW & ORDER! Mike Machlan returns with more stunning cover inks!

TwoMorrows 2023 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com

THE BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S

MAINLINE COMICS

by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY Introduction by JOHN MORROW

In 1954, industry legends JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY founded MAINLINE PUBLICATIONS to publish their own comics during that turbulent era in comics history. The four titles—BULLSEYE, FOXHOLE, POLICE TRAP, and IN LOVE—looked to build off their reputation as hit makers in the Western, War, Crime, and Romance genres, but the 1950s backlash against comics killed any chance at success, and Mainline closed its doors just two years later. For the first time, TwoMorrows Publishing is compiling the best of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline comics work, including all of the stories with S&K art, as well as key tales with contributions

by MORT MESKIN and others. After the company’s dissolution, their partnership ended with Simon leaving comics for advertising, and Kirby taking unused Mainline concepts to both DC and Marvel. This collection bridges the gap between Simon & Kirby’s peak with their 1950s romance comics, and the lows that led to Kirby’s resurgence with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN and the early MARVEL UNIVERSE. With loving art restoration by CHRIS FAMA, and an historical overview by JOHN MORROW to put it all into perspective, the BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S MAINLINE COMICS presents some of the final, and finest, work Joe and Jack ever produced. SHIPS SUMMER 2023!

(256-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-118-9

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

DESTROYER DUCK GRAPHITE EDITION

by JACK KIRBY & STEVE GERBER Introduction by MARK EVANIER

In the 1980s, writer STEVE GERBER was embroiled in a lawsuit against MARVEL COMICS over ownership of his creation HOWARD THE DUCK. To raise funds for legal fees, Gerber asked JACK KIRBY to contribute to a benefit comic titled DESTROYER DUCK. Without hesitation, Kirby (who was in his own dispute with Marvel at the time) donated his services for the first issue, and the duo took aim at their former employer in an outrageous five-issue run. With biting satire and guns blazing, Duke “Destroyer” Duck battled the thinly veiled Godcorp (whose infamous credo was “Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!”), its evil leader Ned Packer and the (literally) spineless Booster Cogburn, Medea (a parody of Daredevil’s Elektra), and more! Now, all five Gerber/Kirby issues are collected—but relettered and reproduced from JACK’S UNBRIDLED, UNINKED PENCIL ART! Also included are select examples of ALFREDO ALCALA’s unique inking style over Kirby on the original issues, Gerber’s script pages, an historical Introduction by MARK EVANIER (co-editor of the original 1980s issues), and an Afterword by BUZZ DIXON (who continued the series after Gerber)! Discover all the hidden jabs you missed when DESTROYER DUCK was first published, and experience page after page of Kirby’s raw pencil art! SHIPS SPRING 2023!

(128-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-117-2

ALTER EGO COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS

By overwhelming demand, editor ROY THOMAS has compiled all the material on the founders of the Marvel Bullpen from three SOLD-OUT ALTER EGO ISSUES—plus OVER 30 NEW PAGES OF CONTENT! There’s the STEVE DITKO ISSUE (#160 with a rare ’60s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL, biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO, and Ditko tributes)! The STAN LEE ISSUE (#161 with ROY THOMAS on his 50+ year relationship with Stan, art by KIRBY, DITKO, MANEELY, EVERETT, SEVERIN, ROMITA, plus tributes from pros and fans)! And the JACK KIRBY ISSUE (#170 with WILL MURRAY on Kirby’s contributions to Iron Man’s creation, Jack’s Captain Marvel/Mr. Scarlet Fawcett work, Kirby in 1960s fanzines, plus STAN LEE and ROY THOMAS on Jack)! Whether you missed these issues, or can’t live without the extensive NEW MATERIAL on DITKO, LEE, and KIRBY, it’s sure to be an AMAZING, ASTONISHING, FANTASTIC tribute to the main men who made Marvel! SHIPS SPRING 2023!

(256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $35.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-116-5

CLIFFHANGER!

CINEMATIC SUPERHEROES OF THE SERIALS: 1941–1952 by CHRISTOPHER IRVING

Hold on tight as historian CHRISTOPHER IRVING explores the origins of the first on-screen superheroes and the comic creators and film-makers who brought them to life. CLIFFHANGER! touches on the early days of the film serial, to its explosion as a juvenile medium of the 1930s and ‘40s. See how the creation of characters like SUPERMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, SPY SMASHER, and CAPTAIN MARVEL dovetailed with the early film adaptations. Along the way, you’ll meet the stuntmen, directors (SPENCER BENNETT, WILLIAM WITNEY, producer SAM KATZMAN), comic book creators (SIEGEL & SHUSTER, SIMON & KIRBY, BOB KANE, C.C. BECK, FRANK FRAZETTA, WILL EISNER), and actors (BUSTER CRABBE, GEORGE REEVES, LORNA GRAY, KANE RICHMOND, KIRK ALYN, DAVE O’BRIEN) who brought them to the silver screen—and how that resonates with today’s cinematic superhero universe. SHIPS SUMMER 2023!

(160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-119-6

BRITMANIA

by MARK VOGER

Remember when long-haired British rock ’n’ rollers made teenage girls swoon — and their parents go crazy?

BRITMANIA plunges into the period when suddenly, America went wild for All Things British. This profusely illustrated full-color hardback, subtitled “The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture,” explores the movies (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, HAVING A WILD WEEKEND), TV (THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR), collectibles (TOYS, GAMES, TRADING CARDS, LUNCH BOXES), comics (real-life Brits in the DC and MARVEL UNIVERSES) and, of course, the music! Written and designed by MARK VOGER (MONSTER MASH, GROOVY, HOLLY JOLLY), BRITMANIA features interviews with members of THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, THE WHO, THE KINKS, HERMAN’S HERMITS, THE YARDBIRDS, THE ANIMALS, THE HOLLIES & more. It’s a gas, gas, gas!

(192-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-115-8 • NOW SHIPPING!

GROOVY also by MARK VOGER

From Woodstock, “The Banana Splits,” and “Sgt. Pepper” to “H.R. Pufnstuf,” Altamont, and “The Partridge Family,” GROOVY is a far-out trip to the era of lava lamps and love beads. This profusely illustrated hardcover book, in psychedelic color, features interviews with icons of grooviness such as PETER MAX, BRIAN WILSON, PETER FONDA, MELANIE, DAVID CASSIDY, members of the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, CREAM, THE DOORS, THE COWSILLS and VANILLA FUDGE; and cast members of groovy TV shows like “The Monkees,” “Laugh-In” and “The Brady Bunch.” Revisit the era’s rock festivals, movies, art, comics and cartoons in this color-saturated pop-culture history!

(192-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-080-9

CHARLTON COMPANION

TEAM-UP COMPANION OUR ARTISTS AT WAR AMERICAN TV COMICS (1940s-1980s)

THE LIFE & ART OF

DAVE COCKRUM

JON B. COOKE’s all-new history of the notorious all-in-one comics company, from the 1940s to the ’70s, with GIORDANO, DITKO, STATON, BYRNE and more!

MICHAEL EURY examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes!

Examines US War comics from EC, DC COMICS, WARREN PUBLISHING, CHARLTON, and more! Featuring KURTZMAN, SEVERIN, DAVIS, WOOD, KUBERT, GLANZMAN, KIRBY, and others!

History of over 300 TV shows and 2000+ comic book adaptations, from well-known series (STAR TREK, PARTRIDGE FAMILY, THE MUNSTERS) to lesser-known shows.

GLEN CADIGAN’s bio of the artist who redesigned the Legion of Super-Heroes and introduced X-Men characters Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Logan!

(272-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $43.95 (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-111-0

(256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-112-7

(160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $27.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-108-0

(192-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $29.95 (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-107-3

(160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $27.95 HC: $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-113-4

REED CRANDALL

Illustrator of the Comics

MIKE GRELL

LIFE IS DRAWING WITHOUT AN ERASER

JOHN SEVERIN

HERO-A-GO-GO!

Documents the life and career of the master Golden Age artist of Captain Marvel Jr. and other classic characters!

(160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-090-8

History of Crandall’s life and career, from Golden Age Quality Comics, to Warren war and horror, Flash Gordon, and beyond!

Career-spanning tribute to the Legion of Super-Heroes & Warlord comics art legend!

Biography of the EC, MARVEL and MAD mainstay, co-creator of American Eagle, and 40+ year CRACKED magazine contributor.

Looks at comics' 1960s CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, and TV's Batman shook a mean cape!

(256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-102-8

(160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $27.95 (Digital Edition) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-088-5

(160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-106-6

(272-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $36.95 (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-073-1

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES

FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER SERIES

documents each decade of comics history!

8 Volumes covering the 1940s-1990s

MAC RABOY

Master of the Comics

TWO-FISTED COMIC ARTIST

TwoMorrows.

The Future of Comics History.

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

New from TwoMorrows!

BACK ISSUE #142

BACK ISSUE #143

BACK ISSUE #144

SUPER ISSUE! Superboy’s Bronze Age adventures, and interviews with GERARD CHRISTOPHER and STACY HAIDUK of the Superboy live-action TV series. Plus: Super Goof, Super Richie (Rich), Super-Dagwood, Super Mario Bros., Frank Thorne’s Far Out Green Super Cool, NICK MEGLIN and JACK DAVIS’ Superfan, and more! Featuring a Superboy and Krypto cover by DAVE COCKRUM! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

A special tribute issue to NEAL ADAMS (1941–2022), celebrating his Bronze Age DC Comics contributions! In-depth Batman and Superman interviews, ‘Green Lantern/Green Arrow’—Fifty Years Later, Neal Adams—Under the Radar, Continuity Associates, a ‘Rough Stuff’ pencil art gallery, Power Records, and more! Re-presenting Adams’ iconic cover art to BATMAN #227.

(Plus: See ALTER EGO #181!)

BRONZE AGE SAVAGE LANDS, starring Ka-Zar in the 1970s! Plus: Turok—Dinosaur Hunter, DON GLUT’s Dagar and Tragg, Annihilus and the Negative Zone, Planet of Vampires, Pat Mills’s Flesh (from 2000AD), and WALTER SIMONSON and MIKE MIGNOLA’s Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure. With CONWAY, GULACY, HAMA, NICIEZA, SEARS, THOMAS, and more! JOHN BUSCEMA cover!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships June 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships March 2023

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #30

KIRBY COLLECTOR #86

KIRBY COLLECTOR #87

RETROFAN #27

BRICKJOURNAL #79

Canadian comic book artist, illustrator, and graphic novelist MICHAEL CHO in a career-spanning interview and art gallery, a 1974 look at JACK ADLER and the DC Comics production department’s process of reprinting Golden Age material, color newspaper tabloid THE FUNNY PAGES examined in depth by its editor RON BARRETT, plus CBC’s usual columns and features, including HEMBECK! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

VISUAL COMPARISONS! Analysis of unused vs. known Kirby covers and art, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH on his stylizations in Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles, Kirby’s incorporation of real-life images in his work, WILL MURRAY’s conversations with top pros just after Jack’s passing, unused Mister Miracle cover inked

by WALTER SIMONSON, and more! Edited

by JOHN MORROW.

LAW & ORDER! Kirby’s lawmen from the Newsboy Legion’s Jim Harper and “Terrible” Turpin, to Western gunfighters, and even future policemen like OMAC and Captain Victory! Also: how a Marvel cop led to the creation of Funky Flashman!

Justice Traps The Guilty and Headline Comics! Plus MARK EVANIER moderating 2022’s Kirby Tribute Panel (with Sin City’s FRANK MILLER). MACHLAN cover inks.

Interview with Captain Kangaroo BOB KEESHAN, The ROCKFORD FILES, teen monster movies, the Kung Fu and BRUCE LEE crazes, JACK KIRBY’s comedy comics, DON DRYSDALE’s TV drop-ins, outrageous toys, Challenge of the Super Friends, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns

by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Create Brick Art with builders ANDREAS LELANDER and JACK ENGLAND! Learn how to build mosaics and sculptures with DEEP SHEN and some of the best Lego builders around the world! Plus: AFOLs by cartoonist GREG HYLAND, step-by step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Spring 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Spring 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Summer 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships June 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2023

2023 RATES

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TwoMorrows.

The Future of Comics History.

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

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All characters TM & © their respective owners.

ALTER EGO #182

An FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) special, behind a breathtaking JERRY ORDWAY cover! Features on Uncle Marvel and the Fawcett Family by P.C. HAMERLINCK, ACG artist KENNETH LANDAU (Commander Battle and The Atomic Sub), and writer LEE GOLDSMITH (Golden Age Green Lantern, Flash, and others). Plus Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt by MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more!

PRINTED IN CHINA

ALTER EGO #181

Special NEAL ADAMS ISSUE, featuring in-depth interviews with Neal by HOWARD CHAYKIN, BRYAN STROUD, and RICHARD ARNDT. Also: a “lost” ADAMS BRAVE & THE BOLD COVER with Batman and Green Arrow, and unseen Adams art and artifacts.

Plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (Plus: See BACK ISSUE #143!)