OBSCURA

by Barry Forshaw

DON’T OPEN THE BOX!

Which do you prefer: Jack Kirby’s work for Marvel or DC Comics? The former, of course, famously produced the Marvel superhero revolution, which continues to rule in terms of cinema adaptations, even today. But his DC work included the remarkable Fourth World series which may have sputtered out inconsequentially, but has proved as prodigious in its influence on both DC’s comics and their various film adaptations—with characters and concepts that are still doing service to this day (e.g. Darkseid), long after Kirby’s death. But let’s go back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the scenario was somewhat different. Before he began the series of Atlas/Marvel monster books that preceded the superhero period, Kirby was turning out a variety of exquisitely drawn fantasy and science-fiction tales for DC editors such as Jack Schiff in House of Secrets, Tales of the Unexpected, My Greatest Adventure, and others until the spectacular falling-out over a variety of issues that led to Kirby upping sticks and moving to the tender care of Stan Lee at DC’s rival—and drawing those gigantic worldtrashing creatures (mostly with inker Dick Ayers). In terms of the dramatic impact of his art, there is no denying the fact that the creatures that Kirby created for such titles as Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense allowed him to blossom in terms of striking, eye-catching creations with scenes that burst out of the panels in a way that was simply not possible in the more constrained environs of DC. However, there are those (including this writer) who actually prefer the DC SF fantasy tales, which largely avoided the deadening repetition that beset the Marvel monster books—each story at DC had a different concept and didn’t simply end up in orgies of building-wrecking destruction and the death of the monstrous marauder. An example? Take “The Thing in the Box” from House of Mystery #61 (April 1957), the splash panel of which looks forward to the Marvel monsters: a gigantic green sea serpent, its mouth grotesquely extended, threatening a boat full of hapless sailors. This is classic Kirby, and not just for the bizarre monster of the kind that he always created so effortlessly—the human figure drawing has all the dynamism that we find in his DC work, such as his master shots of the Challengers of the Unknown Every member of that group was shown in a different energetic pose, and that’s the case with “The Thing in the Box”—but if you were to assume that the eponymous “thing” is the creature in the splash panel, you’d be wrong.

SPOILER ALERT!

Who is the typical reader of The Jack Kirby Collector? Is he or she familiar only with, say, Kirby’s lengthy run on Fantastic Four? Or his earlier work as discussed above?

I’m guessing we have a good mix of both, with a lot of readers like me who love all periods of The King’s career. But here’s another question: if you are reading an article like this, can I assume you are generally familiar with the stories being discussed? All of which is a preamble to my typing those two fateful words “spoiler alert,” as you may care to read the story before reading my following comments. The smallish chest which is dumped in the ocean at the beginning of “The Thing in the Box” issues forth a voice pleading: “N-no captain! Don’t do it! Don’t send me to the bottom! Please--I beg you!” The chest doesn’t look large enough to contain a human being, and the protagonist who retrieves the box from the sea is convinced that its occupant will be drowned. But in the process of retrieving it, there are some vividly demonstrated catastrophes—the green sea serpent mentioned above, and a plague of locusts. But what’s clever about the writing of this piece is that it’s discovered that the released horror is actually coming from a hole being drilled in the box—and the occupant of the container is no less than the legendary Pandora, whose box contains all the terrible evils of the universe. And it’s a particularly canny touch that the anonymous writer of the piece (might Kirby have been involved? Dave Wood?) chooses never to show us the occupant—Pandora is never released (no doubt good news for the world). The consummate skill in delineating this sixpage adventure is bristling with all the elements that would appear in Kirby’s later superhero work along with the giant monsters. But unlike those monsters, the reader is invited to think about what’s going on—and its more complex than Gagoom or Fin Fang Foom simply laying waste to all around them.

KIRBY’S FUTURISTIC CITIES

There is a recurrent theme in the work of Jack Kirby which admirers will be familiar with. It’s the futuristic city, crammed full of vertiginous angles, that makes an appearance in a variety of stories—perhaps the most spectacular version is the splash panel in the Challengers of the Unknown #4 story “The Wizard of Time”, in which the Challs take a trip to the far future. In that case, Kirby’s impeccable pencils were enhanced by the matchless inking