Jack Kirby Collector #90 Preview

SUMMER 2024

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR NO. NINETY

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Contents

THE

WHAT IF KIRBY...?

OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 fifth world fan-fic from the editor INNERVIEW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Kirby & Carmine’s cryptic comments JACK FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Mark Evanier’s 2021 Comic-Con@ home Kirby Tribute Panel, with Paul Levitz and Walter Simonson

ISSUE #90, SUMMER 2024

C o l l e c t o r

ANALYSEZ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 what killed Jack’s masterpiece?

RE-REDUX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 it’s New Gods ’77!

GALLERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 what if Kirby returned to his best work?

INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY. . . . . 34 Jack goes with the Flo ARACH-NITS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Spiderman’s tangled web EYE-SPY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Will Murray’s unseen Spider-Man DITKODATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 who Steve thinks created Spidey FOUNDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 a never-reprinted S&K crime story FANFLIX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 a fan finishes unfinished sagas SKETCHUP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Jack’s other black book KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Jack Kirby, art director KIRBY OBSCURA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 WHAT-IFER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Tom Kraft interviewed COLLECTOR COMMENTS. . . . . . . . 78 Cover inks/color: DAMIAN PICKADOR ZAJKO COPYRIGHTS: AIM, Avengers, Batroc, Bombu, Captain America, Crystal, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Dragon Man, Eternals, Fandral, Fantastic Four, Frightful Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Hulk, Human Torch, Hydra, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Ka-Zar, Mad Thinker, Miss America, Mr. Fantastic, Nick Fury, Puppet Master, Red Ghost, Sandman, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, SubMariner, Thing, Thor, Trickster, Watcher, What If?, Wizard TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Batman, Beautiful Dreamer, Big Barda, Big Bear, Black Magic, Clark Kent, Darkseid, Demon, Dr. Skuba, Forager, Forever People, General Electric, Gork, Granny Goodness, Green Lantern, Guardian, Infinity Man, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Lightray, Mark Moonrider, Mister Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Orion, Sandman, Serifan, Super Powers, Superman, Ugly Mannheim, Vykin, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics. • Haunt of Fear, Weird Science TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc. • Strikeforce, Thundarr TM & © Ruby-Spears Productions. • Bombast, Captain Victory, Copycat, Tribes Trilogy TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Shadow TM & © Conde Nast • Conan TM & © Funcom • Mr. Scarlet TM & © Archie Comics • Lord of Light TM & © Roger Zelazny • 2001: A Space Odyssey TM & © Warner Bros.

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(above) Full-page pencils from What If? #11 (Oct. 1978), featuring Jack, Stan Lee, Sol Brodsky, and Flo Steinberg as the FF. The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 30, No. 90, Summer 2024. Published quarterly (as if!) 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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Innerview

Cryptic Commentaries

A January 31, 1971 interview with Jack Kirby & Carmine Infantino, conducted by Mark Sigal, David Rubin, Paul Hock, and Marc Bigley in the DC offices • This originally appeared in the fanzine Comic & Crypt #5, 1971

[This interview was conducted very early in Jack’s tenure on the Fourth World, and just prior to the ill-fated launch of In The Days of the Mob and Spirit World.]

break to start, and that was the beginning.

C&C: You seem to be best known for [Adam] Strange and The Flash.

Which did you enjoy more?

CARMINE: To tell the truth, I did not like doing westerns, or, strangely enough, The Flash. As for Strange, I enjoyed him at first, but I really liked the Elongated Man. I’m sure this goes for you too, Jack; the ones you’re best known for aren’t the ones you like best.

JACK: The ones I began weren’t the well-known ones. I began Manhunter and Mr. Scarlet, which just faded out. Every strip I did was a challenge, as I’m sure it was to Carmine; but I feel what Carmine is trying to say is that he especially liked one thing, but we couldn’t always do that. We did what they gave us to do.

COMIC & CRYPT: How did you both get started in comics?

CARMINE: I could never do a sci-fi story the way he could.

C&C: But your speed concepts and futuristic cities were amazing.

CARMINE INFANTINO: I got into comics (above) Jack on the day of this interview, and Carmine the same way at his desk around the same early 1970s time period.

Jack did; we were kids of the Depression. Now you gentlemen don’t know the Depression, or what it was about. It was a period when you starved; your family starved. There wasn’t enough food to go around. This was an outlet for us, a field open to us, and like those who went into prizefighting, we went into comics.

CARMINE: Did you see the ones he did?

C&C: But you’re two different types of artists. You can’t—.

CARMINE: This isn’t what I’m trying to say. This is not what I enjoyed the most. I enjoyed the Elongated Man because of the satire in there. Well, let me say something. Back in the early days, there was quite a lot wrong with my drawing, and every once in a while I would go up to this fellow in the city. We’d talk and he’d help me—but the most important thing he helped me do was think, and I feel he was one of the best around. When I went up there, he used to stop his work and look at my stuff and give me suggestions. That person was Jack.

JACK KIRBY: I feel the minority people had a lot of drive and went to entertainment or anywhere energy was involved.

JACK: Well, I’m not going to take credit for that. Carmine was and is a fine artist, but back then Joe Simon and I used to have an apartment up there. All the guys got together and I think we helped each other, actually. That was the main purpose back then, as none of us had a school; we became each others’ school. There were things that Carmine knew that I didn’t. It was an exchange and that’s basically how artists learned back them. We took standards from each other.

C&C: Who did you start off with first?

CARMINE: We both started off with Harry Chesler many years ago.

He was a packager—used to package comics, and he used to cheat you like crazy. You were lucky to get paid at the end of the week. It was more fortunate then, as there was time to begin. Now you either have it or you don’t—but then there were always little outfits where you could begin, learn, and grow.

JACK: Back then I worked for Famous Funnies and I did cowboy stories for one of my earlier jobs. I also was with—.

CARMINE: Yeah! He started that way, and you got nothing for it, but you didn’t care. It was a chance to work, a chance to draw, and that’s all we cared about.

C&C: Were you in a group of independent artists who sold their stories to the publishers?

CARMINE: No, I worked for Harry for a while; then I went to Quality, erasing pages and doing backgrounds.

Those were the days of Lou Fine, and Reed Crandall on Blackhawk, and the genius Jack Cole started on Plastic Man. I used to erase pages all Summer just to get a (right) Splash page from First Love Illustrated #14 (Sept. 1951).

The Grand Comics Database credits the pencils and inks to “John Sink”, which based on the autograph, appears to be a pseudonym for Carmine Infantino. Kirby at some point redrew the woman’s face, so we’re assuming this was a rejected Simon & Kirby Studio job that got reworked and sold to Harvey Publications.

3

C&C: Just what was your relationship with Joe Simon? How did it start?

Batman and Deadman. It was during that story that the second guy at Marvel was slaughtering National. I think his name was Kirby or something, and the gentleman who happened to be in charge at the time asked me if I would care to stop in and help re-organize. We discussed it and I finally did. I thought it would be interesting.

JACK: It started the same way all things did in the industry. Some guys gravitated to each other and Joe Simon and I met, liked each other, and decided to work together.

C&C: Well, you tried the “New Trend” books. They failed, but I read them all and I thought they had possibilities, especially Bat Lash.

C&C: In a lot of your books, you started the sort of panel within a narrative. How did you get the idea for that?

CARMINE: In Bat Lash, what bothered me the most was that I wrote it. I plotted every one of them and Sergio [Aragonés] took it from there and wrote them down. Then Denny [O’Neil] would dialogue them later.

CARMINE: The reason that was done was because we wanted to get as much motion as possible going, so that when you put that little box in with the silhouette of the batter pulling his bat back, in the next panel you had the follow-through, which kept the flow of motion.

C&C: When a friend of mine met [Mort] Weisinger, he was told by him not to go into comics; that it was a dying field. He told him rather to go into painting and to get out of comics.

C&C: But how did you get the idea [for “Strange Sports Stories”]? Was it a brainstorm of yours, or what?

JACK: You should have told him not to knock anything he hasn’t tried.

CARMINE: Well, Julie Schwartz, the editor at the time, told me to go home and make the book look different.

C&C: Was that the type of attitude that was around then?

C&C: Did you enjoy doing that particular series?

CARMINE: No, I think it was a personal attitude.

CARMINE: Yes, I did. Maybe it was the sports angle to it. I could design stadiums and futuristic basketball arenas, and the storyline made you think. Every book was a challenge.

C&C: Has the atmosphere changed? Are new ideas welcome?

JACK: Yes. It’s a different company today. If a company feels that there is an essential need somewhere, they get the right executive to fill that need. In other words, to expedite that need. You use that need to revitalize the company. Comics are in a transition, as far as I see it. I think this is the most interesting time for comics.

JACK: I think you hit on the right gimmick. I feel that sports books are the toughest books to do. To do it in the first place is a challenge.

To do it effectively was an achievement of some kind. I never had the opportunity to do it, but I still feel that it would be a challenge.

CARMINE: I must have penciled a page a day on that stuff. That’s how rough it was, because you had to make sure the action followed through. If you didn’t, the thing didn’t work. It looked terrible. The bat was back and on the next panel, the ball connected. Then the ball moved out. The thing I enjoyed most was when somebody said, “I want it different.”

C&C: How long have you had the idea for the New Gods?

JACK: Well, I guess for several years it’s probably been in the back of my mind, but I’ve never sat down and worked it out, though I’ve always known it’s been there.

C&C: Do [the] Forever People come from the same place as the New Gods?

C&C: We’ve noticed that some comics are featuring covers by you. Do you ever feel like getting back to the drawing board?

JACK: Yes, but they don’t call the things you see the same things that I do. In other words, I would say “great” or “swell,” and you guys would say “cool.” It’s not New Genesis to them, but Supertown.

That’s how they see it. There is, though, a lot more to it than that, and I think you guys are going to find it pretty interesting.

CARMINE: Jack, do you want to answer that for me?

JACK: Well, I feel essentially Carmine will always have the urge, as anyone involved in a creative activity does. I think it’s a matter of circumstances and if Carmine had the opportunity and the time…

C&C: According to sales, the superhero book is on the rocks.

C&C: What led you into becoming Editorial Director?

JACK: I pay attention to the sales occasionally, only because I plot the books, and sometimes the sales are

CARMINE: An accident. I was drawing here. I think I was drawing the 4

Mark Evanier

JACK F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

[next page] Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1950s anti-comics crusade (helped by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency with their 1954 comic book hearings) took down the venerable EC Comics line, as well and Simon & Kirby’s own Mainline Comics company. But what if Jack had ended up at EC (one of the few major companies he never worked for)? Just for fun, I took a couple of unused Simon & Kirby covers of that era, and turned them into EC cover layouts.

Chris Fama ran with it from there, mimicking the Marie Severin-style coloring of the EC line, and relettering the word balloons to match EC’s mechanical Leroy lettering system.

As for what the interior of those books might’ve looked like, you can get a sense of Kirby horror from S&K’s Black Magic stories (although they were never as grisly as EC’s most vivid horror tales). And since Wallace Wood was an EC mainstay, it’s fascinating to imagine what a Sky Masters-style pairing of the two would’ve looked like on EC’s science-fiction titles.

The following panel was broadcast on Comic-Con International’s YouTube channel as a part of Comic-Con@Home.

Featuring Paul Levitz and Walter Simonson, and moderated by Mark Evanier.

2021 Comic-Con International Comic-Con@home Kirby Tribute Panel MARK EVANIER: Good morning, afternoon, or evening.

My name is Mark Evanier. That’s Paul Levitz over there [above center]. That’s Walt Simonson over there [above right]. I’ll tell you a little about them in a minute, but first I want to tell you about a man named Jack Kirby [below].

I assume if you’ve tuned into this podcast, you know who Jack Kirby was. We are here to tell you that he was even more than you think he was. He was an amazing man. Very nice, very kind, very generous. He was the kind of man who, if you were around him, you felt more talented. You just felt more creative, and he inspired an awful lot of people, not just to write and draw comic books, but in all walks of life. I have met in my lifetime actors. I have met painters. I have met dancers. I once met a spot welder who claimed that Jack Kirby was the major influence on his life. [Levitz and Simonson laugh] And I do not think Jack in his life ever even knew what a spot welder did, but something about Jack’s work energized people and made them reach to be better, and he was a very influential person.

Walt Simonson is among a small group of people— actually, it’s not that small—who I could name who I think did wonderful work, and still does, writing and drawing stories that capture some of the same energy that Jack had, that achieved a lot of the same goals, without imitating Jack. Walt, I’ve never seen in your work a swipe from Kirby. I’ve never seen a pose where I thought, “Oh, he’s imitating a Kirby pose” or a Kirby layout, but you still captured the same goal that 8

Transcribed by John Trumbull, and copyedited

by Mark Evanier and John Morrow. You can view the video at: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=3Sii1fFVoC4

Jack strove for of having dynamic, interesting art full of people that you cared about.

And Paul Levitz I’m going to talk more about later, but Paul has held every managerial position you can have in the comic book field. Mostly at DC Comics, where he was part of a regime we’ll talk about, that changed DC Comics and the life of Jack Kirby substantially.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us for this podcast.

Walt, when did you discover Jack Kirby work? And I want to narrow in on The New Gods if we can at some point.

WALTER SIMONSON: Well, my first discovery, really, where I was taken by the work… I saw a couple of comics when I was a kid, the old Marvel monster books for Atlas Comics, but I didn’t know who Jack Kirby was. I don’t know that they were credited.

And I was a freshman in college in 1964 or early ’65.

I was in the dorm room of one of my friends, and they had a very well-read copy of Journey into Mystery, I think it’s #113 [right, Feb. 1965]. It’s the Grey Gargoyle’s return, where Thor gets turned

[above] Detail from John Buscema’s 1956 Helen of Troy work for Dell Comics. [below] Once the three main characters were designed for Thundarr the Barbarian, Jack was recruited to flesh out most of the details of the series for RubySpears animation, circa 1980. [next page] At top is Dick Giordano’s drawing of Carol Fein for a house subscription ad, and at bottom is E. Nelson Bridwell in the DC Comics offices.

from reading it. I was also a big Alberto Giolitti fan without knowing it. I was a big Turok, Son of Stone fan, and he also had drawn a Zorro comic right before Disney took over the franchise. There were a handful of Zorro comics… [Everett Raymond] Kinstler drew a couple, I think. I’ve forgotten who the other artists [were], and Giolitti drew the last one. [“The Challenge of Zorro,” Four-Color #732 (Oct. 1956).] I loved… that was my favorite. I had that one. I loved the drawing. It was rich, liquid inking and drawing. And it wasn’t until years later, I went back and I’m familiar with Turok. I went back and I was looking at it one [day] and I went, “Good lord, I think this is Alberto Giolitti.” And I went and looked it up and I found [that] indeed it was. So I was a fan of lots of different artists with a variety of styles, and I absorbed as much as I could from all those guys at the time.

EVANIER: I should point out to the viewers: First of all, Alberto Giolitti was an Italian artist who did a lot of work for Western Publishing on the Dell and Gold Key comics. People know him probably best for having a long run drawing the Star Trek comic books for them. I should also mention that Paul and Walter are in areas where it is raining, and it is thundering outside the Simonson residence right now, [Simonson laughs] which is appropriate when we’re talking about Thor.

And I should also tell you if you haven’t watched a lot of podcasts, at this very moment, I don’t look like it,

but I’m looking at Walt. If I’m looking at Paul, it looks like I’m looking at Walt and if I’m looking at Walt, it looks like I’m looking at Paul. I actually am paying attention to my guests here. It’s just because of the way cameras work, it’s a little distracting.

Now, Paul, you got into comics [at] what age?

Remind me.

PAUL LEVITZ: Got into as a reader or a professional?

EVANIER: As a reader.

LEVITZ: As a reader, probably around five years old.

EVANIER: Yeah. That’s about where I was. I always tell people that when I was born, the doctor slapped me and I dropped a copy of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, but I was reading actively all that time. When you and I first met, Paul, you were publishing a fanzine called, I think, Et Cetera, and then it became The Comic Reader. I helped you out with that in the basement of your house in Brooklyn in the early ’70s.

LEVITZ: Bless you. I may have offered you a slice of pizza in return. That was the usual pay.

EVANIER: That’s right, yes. And I remember we also were sitting there for a while writing fake letters for letter columns for various comic books. [Simonson laughs] And then you came into management at DC Comics as an assistant editor, and then an editor, and there was a point there when you were in charge of who inked everything and when they had to have it in, and things like that, and eventually you ascended to… now, at one point you were the president, at one point you were the publisher or the other way around, or something like that.

LEVITZ: I had something to do with running the company for a very long time.

EVANIER: Okay.

Now what was your exact position during the time the original New Gods books came out?

LEVITZ: When the New Gods stuff started coming out, I was doing my fanzines. And one of the great treats was that Jack would send in the finished work. This was at the point that it had shifted from Vinnie [Colletta] inking it to Mike Royer, so it was coming in from Jack as a finished package.

10

commerce of his own business, and if he Jenette Kahn, Christopher was getting paid essentially, in his mind, ‘x’ Reeve, & Sol Harrison sort entries for 1978’s Great dollars an hour, he’d give you ‘x’ dollars an Superman Movie contest. hour’s worth of work. If he could get away with doing a little less, maybe he would get away with doing a little less. And that showed in the work, to Jack’s frustration and certainly the frustration of a lot of other people. Certainly Nelson, who was there and had seen the pencils.

But taking the big view of what you were talking about, Mark: When Jenette got to DC, she was a person of terrific creative spirit and terrific personal morality. She was a Rabbi’s daughter—I’ll give her dad a little bit of the credit for the morality—and in her own experience, she’d created a couple of magazines, most importantly something called Dynamite, and felt that she had not gotten a good business deal and ended up suing the company she had created it for, Scholastic, fighting over what her fair share was.

That gave her a lot of sympathy for the creators’ situation. And the industry as a whole, which was very, very small at that moment in the late 1970s—probably 200 creative people, depending on how you define it, maybe a half dozen publishers of comics in America, all clustered around the New York area except for a handful of guys: you and your compatriots out in Los Angeles, doing funny animals for Western—everybody was very disenchanted. It was the period that led to a lot of the experiments that led to the graphic novel.

Things like Gil Kane’s His Name is Savage, Blackmark. Things like Eisner’s own A Contract with God, or they were looking to get honest jobs somewhere else. Because this wasn’t a good living.

Kirby was not just monetary. There were people there who felt that Vince Colletta toned down Kirby’s style, and they didn’t like Kirby’s style. As I’ve told many times, the first time I visited the DC offices with my friend Steve Sherman, Sol Harrison, the production manager, sat us down and said, “You’ve got to get Jack to draw more like Curt Swan.” [Simonson bows his head in disbelief] And when Jack didn’t draw more like Curt Swan, they brought in other people to make his Superman look more like Curt Swan’s. That was an attitude there which I believe that your regime kind of expunged. People’s work did not get wholesale redrawn when you and Dick and Jenette were running the place—and Archie Goodwin and Denny O’Neil. There’s other people [who were] involved in management, we should say, there at various times.

When people get mad at inkers, I think they forget the fact that every time Vince Colletta inked an issue of Thor, Stan Lee said, “Great job, Vinnie! Here’s the next one.” He didn’t sneak in in the middle of the night and steal the pages away to ink. He was assigned to them by his employer. And DC was very happy with what Colletta did inking Jack, and the fact that Jack was not happy with it didn’t matter to them until finally Jack made a fuss… Jack was very cooperative. He wanted to be a good team player.

He also hated the coloring that he got from DC, and he learned early on that that was a dead issue, that the DC coloring department would not tolerate criticism of their work. And so he kind of went along with that. He had to pick the battles he would fight, and that was one he chose not to fight, although he did fight over the coloring of Mister Miracle’s costume.

That was the one battle he won.

Anyway, so now you guys are now remaking DC, trying to make it more creator-friendly, and Jenette is saying, among other things, “Gee, I wish we had Jack Kirby here.” She has looked at the sales figures on the old New Gods books, as you did, and seen… she said, “These should not have been cancelled.” And they immediately reinstated a New Gods project.

I think… was it Don Newton who did the first one, I believe?

[It was initially artist Mike Vosburg, along with writers Gerry Conway and Denny O’Neil, starting with 1st Issue Special #13 (Apr. 1976), before Newton and Conway produced New Gods #12 (July 1977).] And I think somebody kind of realized that… The New Gods, at that stage, The New Gods without Jack Kirby was like The Dick Van Dyke Show without Dick Van Dyke, or something of that sort.

So, tell the story, if you could, about the financial arrangement that was made

EVANIER: And it also wasn’t an industry that looked like it would be around to some people for a long time.

LEVITZ: Absolutely, yeah. A lot of the editors were saying, “Please Lord, let this last until my pension kicks in.”

EVANIER: Let me back up and say a couple of things about Vince Colletta for a second, because I think Vinnie gets a raw deal sometimes. I felt he was the wrong inker for Jack, even when he took his time. I felt he was just the wrong guy stylistically. Walt, in your life you have sometimes been inked by the wrong person.

[Simonson laughs] And I felt that.

But one of the reasons Colletta was eager to grab the Kirby [Fourth World comics], that huge body of work, was that his specialty, romance comics, was dying out.

DC had just cancelled two of their five romance comics and inserted lots of reprints into the others. So Vinnie suddenly had 60 percent less work, or whatever the statistic was.

And secondly, the reason that DC wanted Colletta on inking 12

same stuff. If somebody came to you and said, “Walt, here’s your contract. We want you to pencil 15 pages a week,” you couldn’t have done that, could you?

SIMONSON: Well, I couldn’t do it now. I had an assistant briefly, where I was late on an issue of the Fantastic Four. It had to be done. I had to do it. I work in a series of steps, and I was able to—this was a guy who could draw quite well—I was able to have him do little structure drawings I could lightbox, and then I could do my own stuff as well, and I had one day. And as you may know, if you have one great day, you always think, “Oh, I can have this day again.” And really, there’s no chance you will ever have that day again. And so, there was one day where I got up in the morning, I was at the board by seven. I quit at 1:00 in the morning. I took time out to go to the bathroom and eat dinner, eat food, and by the time I was done that day, I had 14 pages of pencils done.

LEVITZ: Wow. SIMONSON: I will never do that again in my life and I never did it before that. I will never do it again. I know if I really had to crunch it… when I was doing Thor for Marvel… I tend to work with a deadline, the buckshot of the deadline, getting closer to me. If the buckshot’s a good distance away, I’m not working that hard. If the buckshot is coming right up to my rear end, I’m working much harder. And so, I would do, say, four pages of Thor pencils, I could do four pages of Thor inks in a day, but only in the last week, [Evanier laughs] right before it had to be turned in. But not in the regular course of things.

EVANIER: Well, okay. take you to pencil… what deadline would you be comfortable with drawing that story? Twenty pages, let’s say.

[above] Marker sketch done for the 1979 Dallas Comic Con. This was accidentally printed flopped in that event’s program book. [next page] Jack’s design for “Gore” (a riff on “Igor”), the mad scientist’s assistant in the Superfriends episode, “The Superfriends Meet Frankenstein.” He was renamed “Gork” when it aired November 3, 1979 (inset).

SIMONSON: Well, I could certainly… if I sit down and work—and now that I’m old, I don’t work anywhere near as hard as I did when I was younger [Levitz laughs]—but back in the day when I sat down and worked, I could crank out… I mean, I could do a page in a day.

EVANIER: Okay. All right, that’s all I need to know, is a page in a day. Okay.

SIMONSON: I could do that.

EVANIER: Jack was doing three pages a day of that kind of work, generally speaking.

SIMONSON: I mean, that’s more John Byrne’s speed.

John was doing about three pages a day when he was really working on the FF. I’ve done more than a page in a day, but mmm, I’d rather not, because I want to take a little more time on this stuff.

EVANIER: Now, Jack’s deal at DC, for most of the time when he was doing The New Gods and then on to Kamandi, The Demon, and those other books, was 15 pages a week. He occasionally did more, but he had a minimum. He got paid a lump sum, that lump sum presumed he would do 15 pages a week. Plus, he got paid as the editor and writer of the books as well, money he did not get at Marvel for doing essentially most of the 16

SIMONSON: So, two pages in a day would be... that’d be a full day for me.

EVANIER: All right, good. Now Paul… what did I interrupt to ask that question here? [laughs] I’ve lost the train [of thought].

LEVITZ: Well, you know, we had this long feeling about being able to step in and do something that would help Jack.

EVANIER: Yeah.

LEVITZ: And it helped DC as well, because we did get a lot of use out of Darkseid as a character. They were terrific characters, obviously. You know, and I don’t think the money that we paid Jack as royalties on all of that was particularly life-changing. Jack had made a lot of money as an artist…

EVANIER: No, no, it was. It was in the sense that it was the right money for a change. It was something. There was a quote that came around the business. Maybe you said it, or maybe somebody put words into your mouth, at some point at that time. It said, “We just paid Jack more money for Darkseid than Marvel paid him for all the other characters combined,” or something like that.

Do you remember that quote? Did you say that, or…?

LEVITZ: Yeah. I used that line at the time in some fashion or another. But that wasn’t a very high threshold, you know. But that point…

EVANIER: But it was still a principle that your prede-

Re-Redux

New Gods ’77!

by Tom Scioli

[right and next two pages] Tom morphed pages from Eternals #17 (Nov. 1977) to create this loving continuation of Jack’s Fourth World epic—a brilliant glimpse at what it might’ve looked like if Jack were still on New Gods in 1977.

I’m

a Jack Kirby fan, especially of his New Gods and the related 1970s DC comics. I always wanted to read the great epic battle between Darkseid and Orion that was promised in the original comics and in the preview images leading up to the New Gods revival in the ’80s. “The Greatest Comic Ever Written! Armagetto: The Last Battle of the New Gods! The Total Power of Darkseid against the power of total destruction, ORION!” The promotional poster and the cover to the New Gods reprint issue #6 were full of apocalyptic imagery of a final clash between power beings. The eventual big fight in the new chapter in New

Gods Baxter issue #6 “Even Gods Must Die” was well-staged, meaningful, and full of surprises, but it wasn’t the epic slugfest that many fans, myself included, had envisioned.

In Jack’s 1985 Graphic Novel finale The Hunger Dogs, Darkseid and Orion don’t lay a finger on each other. Maybe that’s what Jack had planned all along and the talk of a prophesied final battle between father and son was a deliberate misdirection, so that the twist ending would be a complete shock. In any case, Jack did such a good job selling the idea of a “Last Battle in Armagetto,” that some fans, and even some pros, have created their own versions of what that final clash might have been—see Walter Simonson’s Orion #5.

I’d been doing a lot of thinking about “Even Gods Must Die” and Hunger Dogs as part of my series of “New Gods Sunday School” videos on the Total Recall Show Channel on YouTube. I actually have come to admire the way Kirby subverted expectations with those final New Gods stories, and created a genuinely surprising and profound ending. But the New Gods Superfan in me still wants that big fight, a fight on par with Kirby’s greatest battles, something akin to Thor versus Hercules, or the New Gods’ own tussles between Orion and Kalibak.

Just recently, I was reading Eternals #17 for the umpteenth time. It’s a fun, but forgettable issue of The Eternals, diverging from the much more interesting path the series had been following until editorial interference led it into a more predictable series of slugfests—first with a cosmic-powered Hulk robot, and then with a powerful mummy god named Dromedan. On this re-reading, I was thinking how, with a few adjustments, this battle with Dromedan could be a version of an epic final battle with Darkseid. Perhaps, had New Gods 23

Gallery

HAPPY Returns?

What if things hadn’t ended the way they did for Jack?

Commentary by John Morrow

[right] Eternals #17, page 3 (Nov. 1977) Seeing Tom Scioli’s turn at turning Eternals pages into ones for New Gods got me thinking even further. What if, instead of going to DC Comics in 1970, Jack had stayed at Marvel and been allowed to kill off Thor and the other “old gods” in Ragnarok, and brought in his “new” generation of gods there? Envision replacing Ikaris here with Thor making his last stand—would some version of the Eternals line-up be his next step in the evolution of the gods? [next page] Mister Miracle #18, page 9 (March 1974) While this issue put a bittersweet ending to Jack’s original Fourth World run, what if, instead of bringing back Darkseid & Co. for just this final issue, Jack had been given a reprieve to steer the book back to its roots for a few more issues to build his epic?

Who knows what a revitalized Kirby could’ve done given the chance in 1974... [page 29] OMAC #7, page 17 (Oct. 1975) Instead, Jack shifted his focus to other titles like Kamandi, Our Fighting Forces, and here, OMAC. Once again, just as he was starting to build some momentum with this series... it was over with issue #8. Granted, this time it was because Jack was out the door and on his way back to Marvel Comics. But had the creative environment been better at this point, imagine where he could’ve taken OMAC, potentially officially tieing it in to Kamandi, and starting a potential “Fifth World” at DC.

27

He Went With...

...the Flo!

Incidental Iconography

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

by Sean Kleefeld

B

ack in TJKC #53-54, we looked at how Jack drew both himself and Stan Lee. Given the “what if” theme of this issue, I thought we might round out the Marvel Bullpen he drew in What If? #11 (Oct. 1978) by looking at his depictions of Flo Steinberg and Sol Brodsky. What’s interesting here is that Jack drew this issue in 1978, well over a decade after the versions of the figures he’s representing, so one of the things we’re looking at is not only how well did Jack capture their likenesses, but how well his memory and super-charged imagination seem to have interpreted them.

Let’s start with a little contextual background. Flo moved to New York City and was hired by Stan in 1963. Marvel had started really leaning into their success with the super-hero genre and launched The Avengers and The X-Men. All of the creators Marvel utilized were freelancers; Stan and Flo were the only two people actually on staff at that time. While Sol had done freelance work for Marvel—and its predecessor Timely— dating back to the 1940s, he didn’t come on as Marvel’s full-time production manager until 1964. By 1978, he had been made Vice-President of Operations, but it’s unclear when exactly that promotion happened. (That’s only relevant in that Jack refers to Sol as Marvel’s VP in the story.)

Now, fortunately for Jack, Sol’s appearance didn’t change much over the time Jack knew him. His hairline receded a bit over the years and he gained a little weight, but Sol was a bit stocky to begin with. What this meant is that Jack could draw him based on either a current photo or whenever they last met in person (recall that in 1978, Jack had been living in California for nearly a decade, so he wouldn’t have had frequent in-person interactions with Sol any longer), and however much of Jack’s stylistic abstractions were implemented, they would remove a decade or two of aging with no problem.

Jack’s illustrations of Sol [see below] aren’t particularly detailed. They’re basically all

a stocky guy with wavy hair and a wide nose—which isn’t to say that’s inaccurate, just that Jack ‘painted’ Sol with a rather broad ‘brush.’ Frankly, it’s not that different a depiction of himself in the same issue [above], and it’s primarily the difference in hair that makes it clear to readers which character they’re looking at. (Well, that and the Thing’s rocky hide that Jack sports for much of the issue!)

Flo is handled a bit differently, though. The first noticeable difference between Flo and how Jack depicted her is her hair. Jack drew her with shoulderlength hair throughout the issue, but I don’t believe her hair was ever that long while she was at Marvel.

She did have a simple bob cut when she started [see photo above], but that only came as far down as her chin, and by the following year she had more of an Italian cut. In Robin Green’s Rolling Stone piece from 1971, she notes that Flo had grown her hair long since they last met in 1968 when Flo left Marvel, suggesting that it was short for her entire tenure there.

34

Arach-nits

Spiderman’s Tangled Web

by Richard Kolkman

Joe Simon was born in 1913, Jack Kirby in 1917, Stan Lee in 1922, and Steve Ditko in 1927, so they may have been exposed to any number of these early influences. [right] The rare 1938 Little Giant Movie Funnies #1 (published by Centaur just two months after Superman’s debut in Action Comics #1). It featured Ed Wheelan’s “Spider-Man”, reprinting it from one of his “Minute Movies” newspaper strips originally produced in the 1920s for The George Matthew Adams Service (which would later syndicate Kirby’s own Sky Masters newspaper strip). [below] Movie poster for The Spider’s first movie, 1938’s The Spider’s Web. [right] The Miss America back-up from Blonde Phantom #12 (Winter 1946).

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave.”

Sir Walter Scott—1808

I

t’s important to confer proper credit, where credit is due, because with great creativity, there must also come... great responsibility.

For many years, I subscribed to Steve Ditko’s assertion that a creation exists when it is in physical form—basically, when it exists; ideas notwithstanding.

What is an idea? And do ideas exist? I have an idea for world peace. Did I just create it? Before Thomas Edison “invented” the electric light bulb, others had the idea for artificial lighting without flame or fuel. However, it was Mr. Edison’s creation that shed light in the dark, cobwebbed corners of his Menlo Park lab. Similarly, it is the Ditko/Lee creation of Spider-Man we have celebrated for over six decades—the creation that took hold, and is trademarked.

For this exploration into the origins of SpiderMan, I’m going to adopt Stan Lee’s premise, that the idea is the creation. With that in mind, let us review the earlier spider-people in pulps and comics (and movies and television); for they are the actual creations, according to Stan Lee. The following spider-list is limited to spider/human hybrids with intelligence, and not giant spider monsters. I’m also limited to spider-people I know about. Most all “Tarantulas” and “Black Widows” are excluded from this exploration.

November 11, 1945: “The Spider Boy” [episode #153] of The Shadow radio program features an eccentric character who is described as a “Spider Man” because he is old enough to marry. Best quote: “You’re caught in your own web of insanity.” This episode, scripted by Joe Bates Smith, was later adapted in Shadow Comics V8, #3 in 1948.

Winter 1946: Blonde Phantom #12 (Timely); “Scourge Of The Spiderman” 8p by Bill Finger and Charles Nicholas(?).

March 22, 1946: The Spider Woman Strikes Back.

Sherlock Holmes again faces off against the villain Spider Woman in this Universal film.

1933–1943: The Spider pulp from Popular Publications featured sex and violence stories remembered by Stan Lee from his youth. The Spider punched villains with a spider ring, leaving an indelible mark. Jim Steranko reminds us, “The Spider concept was common in Weird Tales and other horror pulps, not to mention some of the adventure titles, too.”

September 1947: Whiz Comics #89 (Fawcett); “Captain Marvel And The Webs Of Crime” 8p. Otto Binder and C.C. Beck pit the Big Red Cheese against Spider Man.

August 1938: Little Giant Movie Funnies #1 (Centaur); “The Spider-Man” is a reprint from Ed Wheelan’s Minute Movies comic strip (1924– 1935). Gerber’s Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books determined less than 20 copies still exist of this rare comic book.

October 10, 1938: The Spider’s Web 15-part Columbia movie serial begins; based on the pulp character, starring Warren Hull as The Spider.

June 1948: Shadow Comics V8, #3 (Street & Smith); “Spider Boy” 14p. The cover story adapts Joe Bates Smith’s script from a 1945 Shadow radio program. The story was adapted for the comic book by either Bruce Elliott or cover/story artist Bob Powell.

May 1940: Crack Comics #1 “Alias, The Spider” series begins by Paul Gustavson for Quality Comics. Series continues until #30 (Aug. 1943).

May 9, 1941: The Spider Returns 15-part Columbia movie serial revisits the pulp character, and again stars Warren Hull as The Spider.

June 1953: The Hand of Fate #18 (Ace); “Web Of The Spider Woman” 7p, with art by Bill Molno.

1953: Spiderman; Joe Simon creates a logo (17 inches across) for an idea he is determined to develop into a creation. This concept evolves into “The Silver Spider” in tribute to Lev Gleason’s Silver Streak Comics.

December 10, 1943: Spider Woman Universal film pits Sherlock Holmes against Gail Sondergard as Zenobia Dollard, The Spider Woman.

36

the Unseen Spider-Man

eye-spy

by Will Murray

S

ixty years on, it’s impossible to definitively say how the Marvel Universe might have changed had Jack Kirby’s version of Spiderman (Jack’s version had no hyphen) gone forward. Even speculating on a theoretical trajectory for the nascent character is problematic.

The chief reason for this uncertainty is that the first SpiderMan (with hyphen) story went on sale on June 5, 1962, simultaneously with the debuts of the Mighty Thor and Ant-Man. At that point, the Marvel Universe consisted of the Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk, and the Hulk’s title was hanging by a thread. According to Kirby, it was slated to be canceled with issue #3, but was given a reprieve. To safeguard his investment in unpublished Hulk stories, publisher Martin Goodman decreed that henceforth, every issue of The Incredible Hulk would contain two stories instead of a single book-length adventure. This was a precaution in the event he had to cancel the title for good. That way, the inventory could be repurposed as a feature in the only remaining hero-less fantasy magazine, which at that point was Tales of Suspense.

This may partially explain why Tales of Suspense was kept open for a new hero feature until the end of 1962. With the Human Torch solo feature debuting in Strange Tales in July, it was the only place left for the Hulk to land if he lost his own title.

The most likely scenario involving Kirby’s Spiderman would have been a lawsuit from Archie Comics, their longtime rival, over the similarities between The Fly and Spiderman. Both characters had been young orphan boys who found magic rings which transformed them into insect-powered super-heroes. In Adventures of the Fly, young Tommy Troy had been allowed to grow up and become an adult lawyer a year or two before Spider-Man’s debut.

Nevertheless, the parallels would probably not have been ignored, any more than DC Comics had ignored The Double Life of Private Strong, which starred another orphan who grew up to become The Shield, and who possessed some of Superman’s mighty powers. DC attorneys quashed that title quickly. It died with issue #2.

Spiderman might have been cease-and-desisted, which means that Lee and Goodman would have been leery of anything Kirby offered them going forward. Goodman and his former pulp cohort, Archie Comics publisher Louis Silberkliet, were often at odds.

That possibility aside, I doubt that a Kirby Spiderman would have caused Martin Goodman to cancel Amazing Fantasy with issue #15. I believe he had confidence in Jack Kirby that he didn’t have in Steve Ditko, who, up to that point, had never drawn a story for Marvel longer than five pages. Later that year, Ditko did his first long Marvel stories: a lead fantasy tale for Tales of Suspense and the entirety of Incredible Hulk #6. The legend that Goodman originally pulled the plug on Ditko’s Spider-Man because he had no confidence in a teen hero modeled after an arachnid, ignores the inconvenient fact that it was Goodman as publisher who signed off on Amazing Fantasy #15 in the first place, only canceling the title after issue #16 was finalized and ready to go to press. The contents to Amazing Fantasy #16 resurfaced in Amazing Spider-Man #1, with the back-up five-pagers landing in different fantasy titles.

If Spiderman had continued in Amazing Fantasy, it would have been a 13-page lead story. Moreover, had Lee kept Kirby on his version of Spiderman, he would ultimately have taken him off it sooner than later, as he did with Thor, Ant-Man, and Iron Man in the course of events as they unfolded over the 1963–64 period, where Kirby had his hands full juggling so many new features, which included his

revamping of the Two-Gun Kid. It might have affected how Iron Man was rolled out. Perhaps Kirby would have drawn the origin story himself. Perhaps not. Perhaps Iron Man might not have happened at all. But there’s no way of knowing that.

In fact, there’s no way of deducing a lot of things. According to rumor, Martin Goodman was so high on Ant-Man that he considered promoting him into his own magazine as a replacement for the dying Incredible Hulk.

It’s also possible that a Kirby Spiderman—as ultimately happened with Ant-Man—might never have gotten the traction with readers that he did from the start, due to the inherent limitations of being a mere lead feature, and not a hero dominating his own book.

After Kirby had drawn the first few installments, just as he did with every other lead feature in the fantasy magazines, he surely would have abandoned it, sooner or later. The replacement artist would have been either Don Heck, Dick Ayers, or even possibly Ditko himself.

More significantly, perhaps, is the fact that Larry Lieber would likely have scripted it during its formative period. Even though he would have been working from the combination of Kirby and/or Stan Lee springboards, the truth would be that Spiderman would have been a lesser strip in concept and execution.

It’s not impossible, however, that even with those restrictions and conditions, Spiderman might have broken out to be a more significant character, and then awarded his own strip. He might have replaced the Hulk, for example, whose book was canceled at the end of 1962.

Beyond all that, a successful Kirby Spiderman might have drastically affected the great Marvel super-hero roll-out of 1962.

How? Let’s abandon speculation and consider what we do know.

Getting The Job Done

Look at the relevant job numbers, which were in the “V” series.

Job numbers are not supposed to be strictly chronological, but they are believed to be a good indicator of the order in which a project was initiated.

We don’t know the job numbers for the Jack Kirby Spiderman pages because Steve Ditko said he threw them out when he was assigned to take over the strip.

The first published Spider-Man story bore the job number V-789. So we can assume that the Kirby version predates that by a week or two.

The story in The Incredible Hulk #2 carried the job number of V-781.

The first “Thor” story is labeled V-786 and the first “Ant-Man” V-795. The first Human Torch solo story—which was run as the third episode––was V-823.

What does that sequence tell us?

Most likely, the lost Spiderman pages were drawn immediately after Kirby finished Incredible Hulk #2. Then he went on to draw the debut of Thor, more or less while Ditko was reworking Spider-Man. The first Ant-Man story presumably followed that.

All of this activity appears to have been undertaken between the time Kirby drew Fantastic Four #5 (job number V-735) and #6 (V-835). This would have been around March–April 1962.

From Jack Kirby’s perspective, after he had been taken off a feature he had only begun to develop, what did he do next? Thor, a character similar to his Spiderman, in that he was an ordinary 40

DitkoData

Ditko+

by Ross Morrison

Exploring Steve Ditko’s recollections of Spider-Man’s creation © Robin Snyder & Steve Ditko, used with permission.

[For an even more extensive version of this article, including Ditko’s comments beyond his involvement in the creation of Spider-Man, go to: https://comicbookhistorians. com/the-ditko-version-exploringsteve-ditkos-recollections-of-marvelin-the-1960s-by-rosco-m-copyrightrosco-m-2023]

S

[this spread] To imagine what Kirby’s original Spiderman pages might’ve looked like, examine these examples from Strange Tales Annual #2 (Sept. 1963), inked by Steve Ditko.

Picture Jack’s original costume (as recalled, above right, by Ditko) on the figures—it’d clearly have been a very different strip than Ditko’s.

teve Ditko’s earliest recorded accounts of his work at Marvel Comics relate to 1961, the same year in which the publication of Fantastic Four #1, by editor/writer Stan Lee and creator/artist Jack Kirby, initiated the “Marvel Age of Comics.”

At this point in his career, Ditko, aged 34, was already an established freelance artist and had been illustrating short stories for Atlas Comics, a precursor of Marvel, since 1956.

Lee had recognized Ditko’s talent for bringing to life a certain sub-genre of short story that made use of twist endings akin to those in O.Henry’s writing and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone television series. The decision was made to showcase their combined talents in a similarly themed anthology publication entitled Amazing Adult Fantasy. This began with issue #7 (Dec. 1961), being a rebranding of Amazing Adventures. The inclusion of the world “adult” reflected Lee’s intent on

attracting a more sophisticated audience, something he emphasized with a cover blurb which proclaimed it as “the magazine that respects your intelligence.”

Ditko provided the following summary of this period: “In 1961 I was working with Stan Lee (writer/ editor) at Marvel Comics in producing material (stories and art) for Amazing Adventures (which became Amazing Adult Fantasy). Briefly, in regards to our working method, Stan provided the plot ideas. There would be a discussion to clear up anything, consider options and so forth. I would then do the panel/page breakdowns, pencil the visual story continuity and, on a separate piece of paper, provide a very rough panel dialogue, merely as a guide for Stan.

“Stan would provide the finished dialogue for the character, ideas and consistency.”

This process is commonly referred to as the “Marvel Method” of producing comic books.

Various iterations exist, but all involve artists working from a premise/outline as opposed to a full script (in which character dialogue, etc. has been prepared in advance of the illustrations).

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had only just begun to capitalize on the comic-book industry’s super-hero resurgence, and their newest project would bring Ditko into the mix: “For me, the Spider-Man saga began when Stan called me into his office and told me I would be inking Jack Kirby’s pencils on a new Marvel hero, Spiderman.”

Ditko received the first five pages of his assignment, depicting the beginning of an origin story penciled by Kirby. The lack of a hyphenated name was one of many differences between the character appearing in those pages and the ‘Spider-Man’ that is familiar to global audiences today: “The Spiderman pages Stan showed me were nothing like the published character. In fact, the only drawings of Spiderman were on the splash and at the end. At the end, Kirby had the guy leaping at you with a web gun. Aunt 42

in panels. So matching an inker with a penciler is almost impossible because they are two different talents, skills, even in outlook: more imaginative, more realistic, etc.”

to directly transfer story ideas to the page without significant creative input from the illustrator: “A synopsis is a brief storyline, words, abstractions, and so is a part, incomplete, not detailed, not the whole story. A comic book synopsis does not tell/show the what, how and why for every panel and exactly how each character should, must be seen, act, react, in art in every situation.

“The synopsis does not tell/show how to create the visually important, especially in dramatics scenes, in fight scenes, and how they are to be staged, shown, in what way, how many panels etc. and from what visual viewpoint (close-up, long shot, mid-shot, overhead, etc.).”

The pages that Kirby had originally penciled for the new strip, which Ditko had retained, no longer appeared to hold any value: “The Lee/Kirby S-M idea, five art pages, was not a story, no kind of blueprint, but a flawed, failed S-M idea. The potential (acorn, seed) could not be brought to life.”

In an era where the value of original comic art/history was very different to today, those pages would meet a sad fate: “I always regret I threw away Kirby’s pages on his ‘creation’ of Spider-Man. I could have, should have, had the pages photostatted.”

The additional responsibilities (and creative freedom) inherent in the process necessitated a certain type of illustrator:

Working from Lee’s written outline, Steve Ditko commenced conceptualizing/illustrating the fifteen pages of pencils, together with accompanying story notes, for what would become the iconic “Spider-Man” origin tale. His artistic and creative talents would be critical in bringing the story (and Spider-Man himself) into existence:

“…a created synopsis needs an artist—a creative artist. The artist has to collaborate—co-create—by supplying additional ideas and storyline for a publishable story/art creation. The artist has to collaborate with the synopsis writer in providing, in co-creating, the rough equivalent of a full-script, a complete page/panel story idea breakdown. Then, alone, the artist creates the visual story/art continuity. He provides rough panel dialogue, a rough full script for the writer to use, edit and, for the final panel, dialogue.”

“Everything beyond Lee’s synopsis-creation idea needed another hand/mind to make abstractions, some mind/word ideas, into a different, new creation by adding, creating, ideas, executing, to make the necessary physical whole for publication.”

Ditko would even create a new term to describe the artist working under this scenario—the “artist-plus”:

Ditko’s accounts contain numerous references to written story “synopses” prepared by editor/ writer Stan Lee. These contained story/plot ideas that Lee provided as direction and were sometimes “one or two pages” in length’. It appears that none of the documents were retained by Ditko, and their fate was presumably that of the original Kirby Spiderman pages.

Ditko made no reference to Lee preparing the synopses in his presence, though they could incorporate his suggestions from their earlier discussions (e.g.: Ditko’s basic concept of a villain with mechanical arms). Occasionally Lee’s synopses would contain ideas/scenarios that displeased Ditko, e.g.: the use of protagonists of alien/supernatural origin for Spider-Man. Lee’s use of synopses differed from the “full script” method more commonly employed in the comics industry at the time. Comic book artists always made some creative decisions beyond simply drawing pictures, but this particular approach explicitly conferred upon them a portion of the writer’s traditional storytelling responsibility. As Ditko explained it, Lee’s decision to employ synopses meant he “...surrendered his part of the writer’s division of labor as a writer Jack’s further attempts at the wall-crawler were limited, including [above] from of full script, to the artist.” This was Amazing Spider-Man #8 (Jan. 1964), which Marvel’s Tom Brevoort thinks was because a synopsis did not contain originally meant for 1963’s Fantastic Four Annual #1. Other times were [next page] covers for Tales to Astonish #57 (July 1964) and Avengers #11 (Dec. 1964). sufficient detail/directions necessary 44

“With a synopsis, the incomplete storyline material, there is an actual need for more than an illustrator, and even more than an artist. A synopsis must have an artist-plus. An artist-plus has to take what is incomplete, what is partly provided, and add new story ideas, fill in, expand, provided everything else needed to make a complete, whole, work/picture story.

“The artist-plus has to supply rough dialogue for every panel for the writer, dialoguer, to polish, provided better storytelling, continuity, etc.”

In his writings, Ditko expressed no opinion as to whether the use of synopses (under the “Marvel Method”) was any better or worse than that of a full script. He did, however, express dissatisfaction with the extent to which his role as “artist-plus” was acknowledged in this process.

The ‘ideas’ that Ditko would contribute to the origin of SpiderMan included elements that quickly became synonymous with the new character: “Stan’s synopsis to me did not mention any (two) wrist shooters, or hidden belt, or any specific costume or specific spider-like actions. Those are my ideas and creation.”

Here’s a never-reprinted Simon & Kirby story “The Fall of Classy Eddie Bentz—Underworld Snob” from Justice Traps The Guilty #8 (Feb. 1949). Art restoration and color by Christopher Fama.

Notice in panel 2 how Jack references the Lower East Side of New York, where he would’ve been living in 1932.

Foundations

47

WHAT IF KIRBY HAD BECOME MARVEL’S ART DIRECTOR? t some point later in his life, in a Playboy interview [as referenced in 2014 at https://www.digitalspy.com/comics/ a559772/stan-lee-confused-by-jack-kirby-controversy/], Stan Lee claimed that he had once offered Jack Kirby the job of art director for Marvel Comics, “but he said no,” said Lee. “He didn’t want a staff job.” On another occasion in 1998, Lee stated, “The one thing I remember and felt bad about when Jack left was that I had been thinking about—and maybe even talked to him about it—that I wanted to make Jack my partner in a sense; I wanted him to be the art director.” Later in that same statement, Lee said, “It probably

A [below and right] Jack’s layouts, and George Tuska’s final art, for Tales of Suspense #70 (Oct. 1965).

1 wouldn’t have worked out anyway, because I might have disagreed with him about things.” [https://www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/02stanroy.html] One can only get the sense from these statements that there is a good chance that Lee never actually approached Kirby with the offer of a position as art director, but let us imagine that he did and that Kirby had accepted such an offer. What would have happened if Jack Kirby had been overseeing the production of artwork for Marvel in the late ’60s and early ’70s?

In a certain way, Kirby was the de facto art director of Marvel, certainly from the point when it was determined that the company’s foray into a line of super-hero books might be profitable. The fact is that when Kirby returned to Marvel in 1958, the company then called Magazine Management was very close to going out of business. Lee was demoralized as well by the sudden death of his close associate and star artist Joe Maneely on June 8, 1958. In the words of comics scholar 57

Michael Vassallo, “If Jack had arrived looking for work on the following Monday, June 10, he would have found Stan Lee in his office inconsolable, and predicting the soon demise of Goodman’s already tenuous line of eight titles a month.”

Clearly, Kirby had shown up at the right time to help stop the bleeding. As he began to produce a series of comics featuring very vivid and charismatic monsters, the company gradually began to recover.

However, based on existing information, it is difficult to determine for certain where the impetus for the decision to go with super-heroes came from. Publisher Martin Goodman claims that he got the idea of doing super-heroes from seeing the success of National Periodical’s Justice League of America, and told Stan Lee to work on it, but Kirby claims that he presented Lee and Goodman with the notion that super-heroes would be successful. Regardless of that question, the fact is that just a few months after the positive reception of the Fantastic Four with a cover date of November 1961, the company continued in a similar vein with The Incredible Hulk #1 in May of 1962. That was quickly followed

by Kirby’s presentation artwork for Spiderman, and in that same year a hero based on the Norse god Thor and a character called Ant-Man debuted.

Judging from our study of the King’s working methods, it is fair to assume that Kirby had major input into the creation, plotting, and general direction of these books. However, regardless of who created these characters, at the very least Kirby must be credited with their design and the visual trajectory of their stories. In rapid succession, he then did a concept drawing for Iron Man, presented Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, The X-Men, and a team of already existing characters called The Avengers. Almost invariably, the process would have Kirby get the book up-and-running, carrying on for several issues, while introducing supporting characters, villains and plot twists, and then he would usually turn it over to another artist. Often he would do layouts or breakdowns for the artist succeeding him, in order to insure a sense of continuity, as he would do for George Tuska taking over on a run of Captain America in Tales of Suspense #70. 1

2

Among the earliest layouts Kirby did for a Marvel artist were for John Romita on Daredevil #12 and 13. 2 Romita was quoted as saying, “As soon as I saw Jack’s breadowns, I knew exactly what Stan meant by pacing.”

An unused example is at right. 3 If we look at this Captain America page from Tales of Suspense #85, 4 we see how Kirby uses his panels to choreograph a fight scene in a moment-bymoment sequence.

In other words, we see an action in one panel 58

4

3

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.

Journey Into Mystery #60 and Black Magic #29.

vanquished) was the only topic of conversation, with just a grudging mention of the contributions of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. But let’s be more generous: for all their faults, some of these books could be notable value for money.

Take Journey into Mystery #60 (September 1960), which is a positive cornucopia of work by Atlas/Marvel’s two premier artists. The first story is another example of Kirby’s prodigal invention—or perhaps that should be impatience—to avoid repeating himself with his monsters. “Bombu--The Witch Man” is seen on the cover as a 20-foot-tall brown and hairy creature crushing a native hut. But by the time Kirby got round to illustrating the actual tale of a malign witch doctor, Bombu had become the splendid and far more interesting Kirby creation: a witch doctor with a grotesque mask, a tubby diminutive frame, and scaly skin. The splash panel of this tale alone, with Bombu extending his arms in front of cowering natives, is worth the price of admission.

The second piece in the issue, “We Were Trapped With The Silent Monster”, is another rather ordinary Don Heck outing—in this era, the efficient but uninspired Heck was always the artist you would read quickly to get to the next Kirby or Ditko. And that’s exactly what we get in the next piece—double value: Jack Kirby inked by Steve Ditko in the story “I Found The Things From Nowhere.” As so often before, the result of this collaboration of two great illustrators is very different from when, say, Wally Wood embellished Kirby; on a first glance, there are all the fingerprints of Ditko (notably an angular approach to composition), but the dynamic positioning of figures is pure Kirby. The story itself is full of the slack plotting that Stan Lee was responsible for in this era—while the hero appears to tune into an alien invasion, it turns out to be (spoiler alert!) a bizarre transmission of an ant battle in a corner of his garden. Even while reading the tale, readers could be forgiven for wondering why these bizarre creatures don’t look at all like ants—and why their dialogue is English rather than Antish. But the artwork makes the tale worthwhile—as is particularly the case with the final Steve Ditko tale, “I Turned Into A… Martian!”, which is just as individual and visually inventive as he always was. So if you’re still prejudiced about this era, you

VALUE FOR MONEY

It’s been instructive to watch the changing attitude to certain trends in comic book publishing. For instance, for a considerable time, the Batman stories of the 1950s and early 1960s— in which the Caped Crusader took on a variety of aliens and other science-fiction threats—were considered to be a low point in the character’s career, crying out for reinvention (and a return to his roots) courtesy of Carmine Infantino and Neal Adams. To some degree, there was justice in this assessment, but it was a period when science-fiction ruled.

The SF-oriented threats that the Blackhawks, for instance, intermittently encountered, became their daily bread, with the quasimilitary troop being abducted

by Venusians and encountering a variety of otherworldly menaces.

But there was still a lot of invention and fun in those 1950s tales—not to mention the odd story illustrated by the best of the Batman illustrators of the era, Dick Sprang. Similarly, the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee run of giant monsters tales in such books as Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish had long been regarded as a low point in the team’s creativity (though not in terms of sales— the books enjoyed a healthy audience in those years). But for a long time, the perfectly justified criticism of the repetitive nature of the stories (in which a city-crushing monstrosity was routinely 61

What-Ifer

Tom Kraft Interview Conducted by Rand Hoppe in November 2023

[above] Rand Hoppe, Founder of the Jack Kirby Museum [left] and Tom Kraft, President of the Kirby Museum [right] in 2010 in Hoboken, New Jersey, home of the Jack Kirby Museum. (Note: the Museum has no physical exhibit space.) [below, right] Captain America #193, the actual first Jack Kirby comic book Tom purchased in 1975. [next page] The scrapbook Tom assembled his inked and colored drawings of his favorite Jack Kirby characters and two-page comic book spreads in. [below] Coming this summer is Tom’s 208page Jack Kirby’s The Eternals Pencils and Inks Artisan Edition, offering before and after comparisons of Jack’s work on that series.

[Here, Tom Kraft, President of The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center (https://kirbymuseum. org), talks about how he commissioned some of Jack Kirby’s greatest inkers to ink his recreated Jack Kirby pencils to make new comic art to compare pencils to inks. This art, plus a sampling of the Jack Kirby’s Museum’s Kirby Digital Archive, formed the largest online archive of Jack Kirby art, the no longer extant whatifkirby.com. He later conceived and designed the book Jack Kirby: Pencils and Inks, published by IDW, which showcased this comparison. This interview was copy-edited by Mike Cecchini, Rand Hoppe, and Kat King. Tom added additional details and images in December 2023.]

book, Captain America #193, which was when Jack Kirby returned to Marvel. I didn’t even recognize any of the comics. I just happened to be looking at the spinner rack and saw Captain America. At the time, I had only seen Fantastic Four from my friend, so I opened it up and saw Jack Kirby on the page-one splash and I thought, “Oh man, that’s the same guy that did Fantastic Four! I’m gonna buy this!” So I bought it. I still have it!

Later on, George and I would ride our bikes to Empire Comics in Rochester once a week to see if there were any new comics we were looking for. I was only looking for Jack Kirby comics after seeing those Fantastic Four issues.

HOPPE: So you had access to a back-issue comic shop early on! And while this was going on, were you drawing?

KRAFT: I was about 16 or 17 when I started a scrapbook where I would redraw comic art by hand, from scratch.

I’d draw Kirby comic pages at 100% size because that’s what I was looking at. I didn’t know that comic original art was larger or even existed. I had markers, inks, and watercolors, and I would draw and colorize everything like the printed comic. I still have that scrapbook, too.

That’s when I started being obsessed with Jack Kirby and drawing Jack Kirby stuff.

I continued to buy comics, working from the new comics back into DC issues like The New Gods, Kamandi, The Demon, and anything else I could get my hands on. I enjoyed the art in these series more than anything else, and they served as subject matter for my scrapbook.

RAND HOPPE: Tell us how you first became aware of Jack Kirby’s work.

TOM KRAFT: Oh, that’s a long time ago, around 1975.

I was about 15 years old and in high school. A friend of mine was collecting comic books and said I should look at them. He rode his bike to my house and brought about ten issues of The Fantastic Four. There were six or so Fantastic Four issues from the 1960s, like issues #65, 66, 67, and so on.

HOPPE: Do you have any idea how he ended up having old comics?

KRAFT: I’m not sure how he ended up having them, but he really liked comic books. I didn’t like comic books at the time. To me, comic books were Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck, and Archie, not for me. Being about 15, I thought comics were kids’ stuff for eight- or nine- or ten-yearolds. But I had the impression that my friend wanted to show me what comic books could be, so he brought them over. When I saw those Fantastic Four issues, Jack Kirby’s art instantly blew me away. It was like, “I didn’t even think comic books could be like this! You convinced me!”

He was really into war comics, too. He was reading Sgt. Fury, and he liked [offbeat titles like] Swamp Thing.

Later, I would go over to his house, and he’d have stacks of comic books. He used to record the audio from old Star Trek episodes on a little cassette recorder so we could listen to them and read comics.

HOPPE: Did you do any art projects or take any art classes in school, or was that just stuff you were doing at home?

KRAFT: It was home stuff at the beginning, but when I went to high school, we had an art class. I liked comic art very much… but I became more interested in graphic design. So I went to college for graphic design [at Rochester Institute of Technology].

There, I took a lot of art classes, including printmaking and pastels.

HOPPE: I think it’s fair to name-check your friend if you’re up for it.

KRAFT: My friend is George Hammond. We grew up in Rochester, New York. I’ve since sent him a Jack Kirby Museum t-shirt in thanks for getting me into comic books back then.

I started buying comics at a drugstore called Key Drugs. Key Drugs was where my sister worked. A little bit later, maybe around ’77-ish, I started working there too. I went there to buy comic books off the spinner rack. That’s where I bought my first comic 64

HOPPE: So it was R.I.T. where it all happened?

KRAFT: Well, after high school, I went to Monroe Community College and took fine art classes, including oil

painting, drawing, and figure drawing. I earned a two-year associate’s degree, then went to R.I.T. for my Bachelor’s Degree. There, I learned graphic design, including print design, typography, photography, computer graphics, and mechanical production.

every Jack Kirby comic I owned and shoved it in the back of my closet.

At my office, we had dial-up modems we used to get on the internet. One evening, working late, I read on a website that Jack Kirby had died in 1994. And I thought, “Jack Kirby… God, that’s the guy who did all that comic book stuff.” I didn’t even think anybody knew who he was. I just thought he was an artist I liked as a kid. I was surprised that he’d been so prominent in the comics industry.

It got me thinking of grabbing my comic books and looking at them again. So I pulled out the longbox and all the comics were in those old plastic sleeves, which had yellowed and stuck together. They’d been sitting there, for I don’t know how many years without ever being removed. So I went online, learned about mylar sleeves, and bought mylar bags. As I was re-bagging these comics, I looked at them and said, “Wow, this is really great art. Jack Kirby is really, really good.” So that got me back into it.

Then, around 1995, I finally heard about comic conventions.

There was one at Ramapo High School in New York State. What was important about this one was that I saw original art for the first time. There was a dealer who had a Black Panther #3 page for $250.

And I thought, “Wow, that’s really expensive, but I’m going to buy it anyway.” So, I bought my first comic book page there. I was just blown away seeing full-size black-and-white inked Jack Kirby art. I wanted to start collecting comic art.

At that time, there weren’t many comic art collectors or dealers, and it was more word of mouth. Most dealers were just selling comic books. Some would sell a couple of pages here and there but there weren’t many in 1995 or ’96 who just sold comic art. But then I heard about ComicArt-L, a message group of art collectors. I was one of the first to join. The first collector that I reached out to [on there] was Dave Schwartz because I really wanted to get a two-page Kirby art spread. But he told me, “You’re a little bit too late. You should have gotten into comic art five years ago when it was cheap. Now it’s expensive.” I said, ‘Well, how much is a spread generally gonna cost me?’ and he said, “Well, you’re looking at

HOPPE: Was there a point where you were still keeping up with comics, or were other things taking over? Or with Jack Kirby not publishing, you didn’t go back to comics?

KRAFT: I stopped collecting and reading comics when I started college. I didn’t know Kirby’s later comics, Super Powers or Captain Victory. After Kirby left Marvel in 1978, that was it for me. And plus, in college you tend to move away from comic books. Even then, everybody considered a comic book a kid’s thing, and I thought, “Okay, I’m serious now. I’m going to college. I’m taking art. I’m going to be a graphic designer.” I wanted to finish school and establish a career when I got out, so I moved to Boston.

HOPPE: Did you participate in fanzines or go to comic book conventions in high school?

KRAFT: To be honest, I didn’t even know they existed. Back then, you needed to be into the comics scene to know about comic conventions and events. You were unaware if you were just a casual collector like I was.

HOPPE: What kind of work were you doing at the design company?

KRAFT: I started just doing production work. That meant making photostats on a stat camera. I said I’d take any position. They offered the position to me, saying, “This is probably not the right job for you.” Within six months, I was promoted to a design position where I designed print annual reports and collateral under an art director. Then I became an art director, then a creative director, and finally, a part owner of the company, working with a team of creatives and developers building and designing “multimedia” applications and websites.

HOPPE: How did comics and Jack Kirby come back into your life?

KRAFT: From 1985 to 1994, I had nothing to do with comics. I brought them with me to Boston in a comic book longbox that had

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WHAT IF KIRBY ART GALLERY Pencil art recreations by Tom Kraft throughout the gallery.

[next page, bottom] The first version of the What If Kirby website launched in 2001 and was replaced in 2010.

(above) Thor #156, page 1 and Thor #144 unused cover: inks, lettering and titling by Mike Royer.

$2,500 for a spread.” I said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money.

Do you have any?’ He said, “I have a Black Panther #3 spread that I could sell to you for $2,500.” So, I bought it to add to the other Black Panther #3 panel page I bought previously. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to try to complete this whole book.’ So for the next ten years, I tried and tried, but I never completed the book, missing three or four pages. Eventually, I sold or traded all those pages.

HOPPE: You weren’t going to comic shops in Boston at all? Or was it just about the art?

KRAFT: Around that time, I saw The Jack Kirby Collector, so that must have been around ’96, because it came out in ’94. I used to go to this comic shop called Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square. I was trying to fill in all the comics that I had missed… but there was really no place in the Boston area for comic art. So, I would IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, go down to New York City for the shows at the church CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS basement in St. Paul’s. I’d sometimes just drive down ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! for the day.

HOPPE: How did What If Kirby come about?

KRAFT: It’s all thanks to The Jack Kirby Collector, really.

It’s where I saw Jack’s pencils for the first time. The pencils were so beautiful and so powerful. I knew by this point what the original art looked like and its larger size. In 1999, Tod Seisser, a friend and fellow Kirby art collector, owned an almost complete Fourth World issue [in original art]—he was missing one page.

He mentioned to me that he had talked to Kirby inker Mike Royer, who inked the story, about recreating the missing page. Back then, the way you talked to Mike Royer or anybody else was on the phone. For the most KIRBY COLLECTORpart, #90nobody was on the Internet, not much e-mail, no WHAT IF KIRBY... hadn’t been stopped by his rejected Facebook Spider-Man presentation? DC’s abandonment of the Fourthor anything like that. Tod gave me Mike’s World? The ill-fated Speak-Out Series? FREDRIC WERTHAM’s phone number, and I called him. I was really nervous anti-comics crusade? The CIA’s involvement with the Lord of talking to him, like, “Oh my God, I’m talking to this guy Light? Plus a rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other columnists, a classic Simon & Kirby story, pencil art galwho does incredible work and knows Jack Kirby.” By lery, & more! Cover inks by DAMIAN PICKADOR ZAJKO! that time, of course, Jack was gone.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 So I talked to Mike and, because I loved his ink(Digital Edition) $4.99 ing, I thought to myself, “What if I recreate Kirby’s https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_57&products_id=1767

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pencils?” At the time, and to a certain extent now, I didn’t like Vince Colletta’s inking. I didn’t like what he did to Jack’s pencils because I loved [Jack’s] art’s power and graphic nature. Colletta turned the raw power into tiny lines that, to me, took that power away and turned it into smoke. I thought, “What happens if I enlarge some of these pencil images from the Kirby Collector?” I had a computer, and we had scanners at my office at the design agency. So I started scanning the pencil art, enlarging it, and printing out pages at full original art size. I researched the right kind of paper, a two-ply Bristol board. The office had a large light table, so I could recreate the pencils there. Eventually, I got my own large lightbox and scanner at home. I would just trace and redraw the pencils. At first, getting the pencil lines right was challenging because I was trying to be very precise. In time, I realized that was not the best way to do this because Jack penciled quickly. So I learned not to care, meaning I would just stare at a section and see the strokes he did, and then I’d just start penciling it fast instead of trying to draw each line slowly. This gave me the best results.

The Jack Kirby Collector became my resource since they’d publish some of the photocopies of Jack’s pencil art. If there was a page I liked, [I’d recreate the pencils]. It would take hours and hours, days and days to redraw the pencils.

HOPPE: Then you would commission Royer?

KRAFT: Yeah. I had a backlog of three pages I completed.

They were page-one splashes from Thor issues #144, 177, and 166.

I reached out to Mike again and asked him if he was interested in inking them. He said, “Yeah, I haven’t done a re-creation before, and I’ve never done anything like this, but I’d be interested… but you’ve gotta give me a lot of time because I’m working at Disney, and I’m on a schedule, but I can fit this stuff in between things.” I said, ‘I’m not in any rush. You could take as long as you want.’ I guess he took two or three months before I got them back in April 2000. Opening the package, I was