Kirby Unleashed

K I R B Y A “KING” KIRBY PORTFOLIO twenty dollars

If you’re viewing a digital version of this publication, PLEASE read this plea from the publisher! his is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE T DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you’re a print subscriber, or you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks—your support allows us to keep producing publications like this one.

If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT, and it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. If that’s the case, here’s what you should do: 1) Go ahead and READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, and see what you think.

2) If you enjoy it enough to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and purchase a legal download of it from our website, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop. We’d love to have you as a regular paid reader.

3) Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. 4) Finally, DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. We offer one complete issue of all our magazines for free downloading at our website, which should be sufficient for you to decide if you want to purchase others. If you enjoy our publications enough to keep downloading them, support our company by paying for the material we produce.

We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard-working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this work. We love what we do, but our editors, authors, and your local comic shop owner, rely on income from this publication to stay in business. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so will ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download.

TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

www.twomorrows.com

KIRBY UNLEASHED KIRBY UNLEASHED, a collection of the artistry of Jack Kirby, originally published by and ©1971 Communicators Unlimited. This edition published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614, 919-449-0344, fax 919-449-0327, e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com, web: www.twomorrows.com. Price: $20.00 per copy.

Compiled and annotated by Steve Sherman and Mark Evanier, with additional material by John Morrow.

Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion and Guardian, Forever People, Mr. Miracle, Oberon, Big Barda, Granny Goodness, Scrapper, San Diego FiveString Mob, OMAC, and Darkseid TM & ©2004 DC Comics. Captain America, Bucky, Red Skull, Agent 13, Sif, Invisible Girl, Karnilla, Watcher, Dr. Doom, Silver Surfer, Hulk, Thing, Machine Man, Galactus, Black Panther, Loki, Warriors Three, and Inhumans TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Popeye TM & ©2004 King Features Syndicate, Inc.; Black Magic, Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Fighting American, Foxhole, Strange World Of Your Dreams, Young Love TM & ©2004 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.

This edition ©2004 TwoMorrows Publishing and the Jack Kirby Estate.

Unless otherwise noted, all artwork contained herein is ©2004 the Jack Kirby Estate. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from TwoMorrows Publishing and the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. Printed in Canada.

FOREWORD

Almost 35 years ago—as the crow flies—Mark Evanier and I became assistants to Jack Kirby. It wasn’t a job we applied for or even thought about, it just happened. Jack had decided to leave Marvel Comics and sign up with DC Comics. Carmine Infantino had been talking to Jack ever since he had been made Editorial Director, and for Jack, at 50 years old, it seemed like a fresh start and a chance to explore some new avenues of storytelling.

Mark and I had been working, so to speak, for Marvelmania International, a licensee of the Marvel characters. Mark was in charge of putting out the monthly magazine and I gathered the information that came in on the little coupons. My job was to create some sort of filing system to retrieve the information for future mailings. This was before computers, so everything was typewritten on 3x5 cards. Talk about time-consuming!

We were also to come up with ideas for new products that could be made either by printing or manufacturing overseas. We had gotten to know Jack pretty well because he was the mainstay for producing Marvelmania artwork. One of the first products we came up with was the Jack Kirby Portfolio produced just before Jack announced that he was leaving Marvel.

Jack’s plan in going to DC was to set up a division on the West Coast to produce all types of magazines—not just comic books. His goal was to hopefully start a production studio that would allow him to create new formats and characters, and hand off the writing and drawing to others. It seemed like a good idea. There was no budget for this from DC, but Jack was certain that once things got rolling, the funds would follow. Would we like to help? As I recall, we said yes.

Now at the time (1970) comic fandom was just starting to gather momentum. Not that there hadn’t been fandom up to then, but it was getting larger and more organized. Shel Dorf had come up to Los Angeles from San Diego to the Marvelmania offices. He invited us to participate in a little convention that he and some fans had planned to hold in the basement of the US Grant hotel in the Gaslamp District, when it still had real gaslamps (just kidding). Today, Comic-Con International as it’s now called requires something like 25 hotels just to hold all the attendees.

The Con has gone through two convention centers, and looks to outgrow the current one.

There were also conventions in New York City, Detroit, Dallas, Chicago and Florida. When Jack would attend these gatherings he would be besieged by fans wanting sketches, which was

impossible to fulfill. Not wanting to disappoint anyone, Jack thought that we should come up with something that we could offer at a reasonable price. Thus was born Communicators Unlimited.

Jack, his son Neal (a recent marketing graduate of the University of Syracuse), Mark and I sat down and tried to decide what we could make that would appeal to everyone. Using our experience from Marvelmania we knew that there were about 10,000 hard core comic fans in the U.S. We also came to the conclusion that a portfolio of Jack’s unseen artwork might be a good idea.

Going through Jack’s storage closet we found a treasure trove of items—artwork from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, unused pencil pages from Marvel stories, and other penciled renderings.

The idea of printing individual pages and a folder seemed expensive and difficult to distribute.

Jack had been impressed with the History of the Comics that Jim Steranko had self-published as a Rolling Stone-sized magazine. What we finally settled on was a biography of Jack with a portfolio of drawings in the center on a higher quality paper. The question was how many, how much, etc. This fell to Mark and myself to figure out.

Fortunately at the time, I was working parttime at a graphics company and had access to a rather new device—an IBM typewriter. This model could change typefaces and justify margins. How unique! Mark and I began interviewing Jack for the the biography part and at the same time trying to decide what artwork to keep and what to leave out—a tough job since we liked it all.

Eventually we settled on the pages to use, and Jack drew up some new art for the portfolio section. We found a local printer who had a fourcolor press. We printed, I believe, 5,000 copies because that is how many it took to get a decent price break. We decided on a retail price of $4.00 and I recall the books ended up costing about $2.00 each to print.

Once Mark and I finished writing the text, I sat down at the IBM and started to set the type, learning the machine as I went along. Mark would come by after the place closed and we would fiddle with everything until we had the margins and the text right. Then Mark took it home, and with stats of the artwork, pasted up the book indicating where the final art would go.

Meanwhile, I had the task of color-separating the interior color art. We couldn’t afford to have Jack color the art and then do the separations from that, so the next best thing was to do fourcolor separations on acetate sheets which the printer could then shoot as individual plates.

Today, of course, you could do it in Photoshop in a

2

matter of hours. Armed with x-acto knife, registration pegs and gray-tone sheets of preprinted dots, I proceeded to cut and paste the shapes, trying to match the different shades of gray to the right color. For example, a 20% gray on the yellow acetate and a 40% gray on the blue acetate might yield a medium green in the final print. Now each little area on the original had to be filled in with the right shape. And there was no way to check the final outcome because, again, we couldn’t afford to print a proof. It was cross your fingers and hope. If we had the finances to have Jack do the coloring it would have really been great, but it was the best we could do at the time.

Our goal was to have a finished book ready for the 1971 San Diego Comic-Con which was held around the middle of July. Once Mark had pastedup the boards and I had finished the color, we took it to the printer.

After a few weeks, we returned with Jack and Roz’s Lincoln and loaded up the trunk with the first batch of finished books. Boxes and boxes were eventually stacked up in the Kirby garage.

Roz was worried that we would never be able to sell all of these books. It was her $10,000 riding on the line.

We had placed ads in The Buyer’s Guide and handed out flyers at a local convention held at the Disneyland Hotel in April of 1971. It was at this convention that we actually sold the first Communicators Unlimited product. It was a set of eight black-and-white reproductions of Jack’s original color renderings of the New Gods and Mr. Miracle. It was meant only as a stop-gap item since we didn’t have the Kirby Unleashed books available for sale. Soon the orders started coming in. We took a few boxes to San Diego in July and sold those as well. We then were hit with something we hadn’t expected. Carmine Infantino called Jack and said (for some reason I still haven’t figured out) that DC wanted to sell the Kirby Unleashed books in their comics. They would run ads in all of their books, handle the shipping, we just had to send him the books—at $2.00 each. So twenty-five-hundred Kirby Unleashed books went east. I have no idea how many DC sold or if they made any money on the deal.

We were left with about less than half of what we started with. The following year, Neal, Jack and I headed to New York for the Seuling Convention with an art display and about 500 books. We sold out. I got about 25 copies and I think Mark got the same. As the orders dwindled down, we were finally left with about a hundred or so copies. Roz was happy. She had made her

INTRODUCTION

To a generation of fans, Kirby Unleashed was a godsend, giving us the most intimate look ever taken at a comics creator up to that point. As Kirby fans, we all saw the ads in DC’s early 1970s comics, but scraping together $4 meant—for me at least—giving up sixteen Jack Kirby comic books. So initially, I passed on it. When I finally got my own copy years later, I saw what I had missed. I learned about the life and career of my favorite comics artist, and got to experience a lot of Kirby art I’d never seen before. It was a bargain at any price, and is long out of print. So when Steve Sherman suggested reprinting it, I jumped at the opportunity.

But how do you improve on perfection? That’s the challenge I faced in attempting to remaster Kirby Unleashed. I didn’t want to jeopardize that feeling of wonderment I got when I first saw a copy, so I decided to remain as faithful as possible to the original, while taking advantage of technology that wasn’t available in 1971. The original art for this book was scattered to the four winds, and tracking it down was a monumental task, but we managed to get scans from either the originals or good photocopies of nearly all the art contained here, resulting in better reproduction than the original. (I always thought the old lady on page one was holding a top hat—it’s a water pitcher!)

As for the design of the book, it worked for me in the 1970s, and I think it still works now. So I followed the road map laid out before me, and only very gingerly tweaked the layouts where I felt it could add to clarity, or where viewing the originals resulted in greater understanding of the art. (An example is the unused Black Magic #12 cover on page 39; a handwritten note at the top of the original says, “Al: This was made up for a weird book—never used—but it would do nicely as revised for crime.” The “Scarface” dialogue is classic Kirby, and not to be missed.)

To present a fuller representation of Jack’s entire career—the book left off at 1971 in the original printing—I decided we needed to add some pages. The extras were used to present some choice items from Jack’s later work, but also to make this remastered version a compilation of many of the obscure Kirby collectibles that have been produced over the years. I’ve included a section detailing the 1970 Jack Kirby Portfolio from Marvelmania (in many ways, the forerunner to Kirby Unleashed). Two black-and-white posters (Silver Surfer and Captain America), released in the mid-1970s, are included here. The 1975 KIRBY museum catalog, produced by David Folkman and Neal Kirby for an exhibition of Jack’s work at the Museum of Cartoon Art in Greenwich, CT, was a scaled-down version of Kirby Unleashed.

However, it included a couple of previously unseen Kirby works, which are added to the mix here.

The expanded color gallery spotlights some of Jack’s best color work, while also representing the four pages that ran in color in the original KU. Tom Ziuko used those original color versions as guides, judiciously varying from them for reasons of color accuracy and to bring out details that weren’t as evident due to the original versions’ low-budget color (look at all the detail we missed in Joe Sinnott’s Fighting American inks on page 25!).

We rescanned the four GODS posters from the original paintings, amazed at how little the Dr. Marten’s dyes Jack used have faded in four decades. And thanks to Steve Sherman preserving the original transparency from the cover image, we can now see what Jack’s watercoloring really looked like (a quality lost due to the murky printing of the original version).

Steve didn’t hesitate when I asked him to write a new Foreword, outlining what was involved in the initial printing of this book and the GODS posters.

Mark Evanier also agreed to update the biography from the original, correcting errors that had crept in initially, and completing the picture of Jack’s career that still had another couple of decades to go when this book was first published. With over thirty years of hindsight, Mark was inclined to completely rewrite the text he wrote in his youth, rather than just update and correct it, but I’m glad we went with authenticity; despite Mark’s concerns, I think his copy still holds up pretty well.

Everything contained here really revolves around those two people: Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman. So I’d like to dedicate this remastered edition of Kirby Unleashed to them. As Jack’s assistants, you helped him turn out some of my favorite comics of all time. You had the jobs every Kirby fan dreamed of (especially me!). And by producing the original Kirby Unleashed—and the GODS poster set, and the earlier Jack Kirby Portfolio for Marvelmania—you did him proud, and made a lot of fans happy in the process.

money back—almost. We hadn’t exactly figured in the cost of postage or the shipping cardboard (or the specially printed envelopes that we made) so she didn’t quite make it all back.

Over time some copies went to dealers. Roz would hand out the remaining copies to visitors. One day I got a call from her saying that a German publisher was interested in distributing the book in Europe. They needed about 10 copies of Kirby Unleashed but she didn’t have any left. Did I? I had about 15 left, so I gave her 10. Of the remaining 5, one was autographed by Jack, which I still have and the other four ended up at a dealer’s table in San Diego in 1989.

Kirby Unleashed had sort of burned us out. Many fans had been requesting posters, so we tried to see what we could put together. Regrettably, Jack’s most popular characters were controlled by either Marvel or DC and they had their own deals for posters. However Jack had done some re-imaged drawings of the Norse Gods prior to leaving Marvel. He had colored them with Dr. Marten’s dyes and they looked pretty spectacular. Jack thought that printing them on a quality paper stock would make great posters. We printed 1000 of each poster and put them in a special envelope printed in blue ink titled Jack Kirby’s Gods. Unfortunately, what the fans wanted were super-heroes, not Norse heroes. Although we sold some to dealers and at conventions, we were left with quite a few. I can recall Roz Kirby jokingly saying that she could always use them as placemats. Over time, though, they have gained collector’s item status. Occasionally a set will turn up on eBay. Until Ray Wyman Jr.’s Art of Jack Kirby was published, Kirby Unleashed served as the main source for biographical information on Jack. I’ve seen copies on eBay for $60 and up. At the 2004 Comic-Con International, John Morrow mentioned that he was still trying to fund the cost of preserving Jack’s photocopies of his pencil artwork. I offhandedly suggested that he reprint Kirby Unleashed. Not one to let a few hurricanes stop him, you hold in your hands, five months later, that selfsame publication. Hopefully this printing of Kirby Unleashed will inspire the next generation of storytellers.

I think Jack would have liked that.

Steve Sherman Los Angeles, CA September 2004

John Morrow Raleigh, NC December 2004

Opposite, l to r: Flyers used to promote KIRBY UNLEASHED (ink assists by Mark Evanier) and the GODS poster set, and the envelope copies were mailed in.

Special thanks to: Shel Dorf, David Folkman, David Hamilton, Robert Katz, Lisa Kirby, Tracy Kirby, Neal Kirby, Jeremy Kirby, Richard Martines, Steve Robertson, David Schwartz, Tod Seisser, Mike Thibodeaux, Ray Wyman, Jr., Bruce Zick, Tom Ziuko, and of course, Mark and Steve.

Above: The ad that ran in early 1970s DC comics; our copy only had 3 paintings!

Right: Cover of the 1975 museum catalog, that was a scaled-down version of KU.

3

THE 1970 MARVELMANIA PORTFOLIO

4

Opposite top: Wraparound cover art for the JACK KIRBY PORTFOLIO from Marvelmania, circa 1970. Jack turned this into a painting in 1979, shown on pages 34-35.

Opposite bottom: An example of Jack’s work with photo collages, which he incorporated into his comics stories in the 1960s and ’70s.

This one appeared as a plate in the Marvelmania portfolio.

Left: Plate from the Marvelmania portfolio that was used to create the envelope art for the set of GODS posters. For copyright reasons, Galactus was modified into a more generic character. Inks by Mike Royer.

5

6

These two pages: Plates from the JACK KIRBY PORTFOLIO released by Marvelmania in 1970, shortly after Kirby announced he was leaving Marvel Comics.

7

Like many of today’s success stories, it all begins with a birthdate on the Lower East Side of New York City. The birthdate was August 28, 1917, and the Kurtzberg family was one more strong. And the growing up period is not entirely atypical, either: Street-fighting, the usual childhood activities, and the burgeoning instinct of self-preservation were all a part of it. And, too, there was the foreshadowing of what was to come—the doodles cluttering every available scrap of paper, the “wasted” afternoons at the movies... the profound interest in stories. That, more than anything else, occupied young Jack’s time.

Schooling was not the best and certainly inadequate in the field of creative writing and art.

Jack Kirby was, then, the student without an official teacher. He learned from anyone who had something to offer, adopting the virtues and making them his own. An early source of art-inspiration, for example, was Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon newspaper strip. Splendidly illustrated, it has served as the model for a majority of today’s panelartists. Some of them have adopted its techniques with little reservations and others, like Kirby, now boast very little of the then-important Raymond influence. He learned techniques, not styles, and then went on to make them his own.

The storytelling sense grew, as well, and it was to be important... for it was most likely what led the youthful Kirby into comics instead of into serious illustration. From the start, his drawing style was never intended to emulate reality or to provide any sort of photographic representation.

Rather, it was to tell exciting, interesting stories— the Kirby conception of anatomy, for example, defies all manner of real physiology. It does, however, perfectly convey the idea of figures in motion. A semi-realistic caricature—realistic to be identifiable and exaggerated for effect.

Remaining sketchbooks from Kirby’s earlier

days are filled with pencil renderings of expertlyformed, carefully-shaded figures and scenes. With such potential, it came as no surprise that Kirby should enroll in the famed Pratt Institute to refine his abilities.

It did, however, come as a surprise when he dropped out the afternoon of his first day at Pratt.

Family financial pressures necessitated such and it wasn’t long before Kirby was searching for practical applications of his talents—those which would be both financially rewarding and selfsatisfying. Earlier attempts at submitting his work to various markets had yielded an endless series of rejection slips from every market from The New Yorker right on down.

Ultimately, Kirby began his career not in comics but in the other media where drawings are used to tell a story: animated cartoons.

As an “in-betweener” at the Max Fleischer studios, Jack worked on Popeye cartoons. After a few months however, labor unrest erupted at the studio and Kirby decided to get out before he found himself on strike and to seek employment elsewhere.

That employment was found at the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate, where he began his stint as a political, gag, and strip cartoonist.

“WELL, YOU GO UP AND GET PLENTY OF SLEEP NOW, AND YOU’LL GROW UP TO BE A BIG G-MAN LIKE ME!” rejected New Yorker cartoon, Jack Kirby, age 14

8

An “In-betweener,” such as Kirby was at Max Fleischer’s studio, fills in the intermediate drawings to complete an action. Above, Jack’s test for the job, utilizing Popeye. Drawings 1, 3 and 5 are by an animator,

showing the extremes of Popeye’s movements. Drawings 2 and 4 by Kirby must complete the action in a smooth fashion so that, when projected, the series will appear as one continuous motion. Drawn in 1935.

“I SUPPOSE YOU KNOW THAT YOU’RE ANNOYING US!” rejected New Yorker cartoon, Jack Kirby, age 14

9

10

Kirby’s editorial cartoons, signed under a variety of names, were syndicated to approximately seven hundred weekly newspapers. From 1936 to 1939, he did these and the strips on the following pages.

11

While working for Lincoln, Kirby produced a huge volume of work, including ongoing strips, panel gags, and “fact” panels. Lincoln was a small

operation with few clients, and some of the strips Kirby created only appeared in a few newspapers while others may not have been published at all.

All were penciled, inked and lettered, and most were written by him and the different styles reflect Kirby’s own experimentation at this stage.

Whereas The Black Buccaneer strived for a “wood-cut” effect, Abdul Jones was more in keeping with the style of contemporary humor strips. Cyclone Burke was among his first ventures into science-fiction. Socko the Seadog, created by a Lincoln co-worker as an obvious Popeye emulation, proved to be Kirby’s most popular strip of the period. And the Lone Rider, done for another syndicate of the time, marked Kirby’s first Western comic strip.

After Lincoln, Kirby worked with Will Eisner and Jerry Iger on an oversize comic, Jumbo, produced out of their large artists’ studio of the time. Under the name of Curt Davis, Kirby did Diary of Dr. Hayward, a science-fiction-based

12

serial. Also in Jumbo, Kirby drew an adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo as Jack Cortez.

Finally, Kirby got into the super-hero line when he went to work for Victor Fox, a notoriously low-paying publisher of comic books.

Fox’s big star was the Blue Beetle, one of the earliest costumed heroes, and Kirby worked on a short-lived newspaper strip of the character and drew other features for the outfit. Given a small drawing board in the shop, Kirby worked next to another new artist in this new field, Bill Everett, who would later create the Sub-Mariner.

Another Fox staffer at the time was a tall writer-artist who worked as the company’s editor for a time. His name was Joe Simon, and he and Jack struck up a good friendship and working relationship. When Simon went off to other companies, he called on Kirby to be his lead artist.

Soon, the two men formed a team which would unleash, for the next decade and a half, a battalion of comic books, stories and characters.

13

14

15

16

CAPTAIN AMERICA, BUCKY and the RED SKULL

17

The partnership of Simon and Kirby was finally formed when Kirby switched over to work for the new Timely Comics Company and ran into Joe Simon for the third time. The Timely line was, then, distinguished only by its two starcharacters: The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner. More stars were needed then, and Jack Kirby set about to create likely prospects, such as Hurricane, Tuk the Cave-Boy, Mercury, the Vision, Red Raven, Comet Pierce and, finally, the character whose creation was to bring the team into prominence—Captain America.

(Moonlighting for another company, they also produced the first full issue of Captain Marvel Adventures.)

Captain America was an immediate success and it was due to the great demand for his adventures that Simon and Kirby began to produce material at a fast pace... one which would gain even greater momentum later. In a short time, they had produced ten issues of their starspangled creation and the basic outlines for a companion book to star Cap’s partner, Bucky, as one of the Young Allies. This was to be the end of their creations for Timely, as it became evident that, despite a deal that promised them a share of the profits, they were not sharing in the gold mine that Captain America had become. Convinced they were being swindled, they decided to go elsewhere.

Simon and Kirby’s profit on Cap was, therefore, limited to a good reputation in the business— good enough to earn them a spot at the Detective Comics company, owners of Superman and Batman. Here, they set about creating new strips and in setting up a shop from which to work.

The four strips on which they worked for DC were all popular and ads for the strips sometimes

“Brooklyn” of the BOY COMMANDOS

featured the Simon and Kirby by-line more prominently than the strip’s title. Their strips were always filled with action, but not dependent on it.

Highlighted by plot twists and humor, they were reflective of the times. Kirby drew upon his own background for settings and characterizations and the audience was very much responsive to it.

The DC editors kept the team busy and their rate of work, very swift at Timely, was now more rapid. They often turned out six pages a day and, when necessary, more than that. This involved doing penciling, lettering and inking— plus scripting; the DC editors were buying scripts from their regular stable of writers for the two, and Simon and Kirby were making gliders out of the scripts and writing their own. More than once, a DC editor would deliver a script to the team and then see its pages drifting out the window as he left.

Sandman and Manhunter, appearing in Adventure Comics, were not created by Simon and Kirby but were, rather, drastically-altered versions of earlier strips. Bearing little or no resemblance to their predecessors, they were both of a super-hero nature and both very well received by the public.

Even more popular, however, were the team’s “kid strips”: The Newsboy Legion and The Boy Commandos. The newsboys, aided by the Guardian, a policeman guised as a super-hero, dwelled in Suicide Slum where they encountered bizarre criminals and, as the war effort grew, Nazi spies as well. They were forever getting into trouble and relying on the Guardian to get them out.

The Boy Commandos, led by Rip Carter, were even more popular than the Newsboy Legion and ended up with their own comic, in addition to appearances in Detective Comics and World’s Finest Comics. They battled the Axis more directly than did the Newsboys, as the Commandos fought in Europe while World War II was in progress.

Finally, Simon and Kirby were called away from the drawing board, into service, and their DC strips were abandoned to others.

Opposite: NEWSBOY LEGION and the GUARDIAN Below: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby—1941

18

19

1943 found Kirby stationed overseas in the Fifth Division, Third Army, commanded by General Patton. Serving as a combat Infantryman, he fought in the campaign at Metz and earned two battle stars and a severe case of frozen feet. While in the army hospital, he kept a steady flow of letters back to the States and his new bride, Rosalind. At left, some of the “V-Mail” (letters reduced in size, photographically for easy handling and

20

paper conservation) he sent back, all profusely illustrated. Above, a sketch done while on the move. Below, a drawing of Mrs. Kirby done, from memory, on the back of a piece of German stationery picked up off a dead enemy soldier. On the opposite page, a charcoal sketch done on the scene in a German bunker. In 1945, he returned to America and reteamed with Joe Simon to work with the newly-formed Harvey Comics Company.

21

STARMAN ZERO, a proposed newspaper strip, done in 1947

22

23

Double-page spread from BOYS’ RANCH

KIRBY GALLERY PAGE 25: FIGHTING AMERICAN was scripted by one of the writers in the Simon and Kirby shop, Jack Oleck, for Crestwood Publications. Oleck was Simon’s brother-in-law and he saw the book as a latter-day Captain America. After a few stories, however, Simon and Kirby had turned it into a tongue-in-cheek hero fighting such incredible opponents as Invisible Irving, Rhode Island Red, Hotsky-Trotsky, Yuscha Liffso Long, DoubleHeader and Super-Khakalovich, Boy Has-Been. Fighting American lasted but a few, memorable issues and is fondly remembered as one of the few truly humorous super-hero spoofs. And it was appropriate that it be done by men lampooning their stock-in-trade.

Inked by Joe Sinnott, lettered by Mike Royer, colored by Tom Ziuko

PAGE 32: GOD as interpreted by Kirby in 1970. This is one of three views of God by Jack done in the early 1970s.

Inked by Mike Royer, colored by Jack Kirby PAGE 33: TRIBES TRILOGY No. 2 is the second in a 1976 three-painting series for a concept about primitive people living during the time of dinosaurs—a precursor to Kirby’s later Devil Dinosaur concept.

Inked and colored by Jack Kirby PAGE 34-35: KIRBY DREAM MACHINE is a painting that began life as the inked cover art for the 1970 Jack Kirby Portfolio from Marvelmania, utilizing Kirby’s graphic technique of rendering complex machinery. He expanded it to a diptych, completing the painting in 1975. The two halves shown here join to make a colossal painting, measuring over five feet wide.

Painted by Jack Kirby

PAGE 26-29: JACK KIRBY’S GODS was a poster set produced by Communicators Unlimited in 1972, reproducing watercolored paintings of four Norse gods done by Kirby in the 1960s. Shown are (in order) Sigurd, Balduur, Heimdall, and Honir.

Inked by Don Heck, colored by Jack Kirby

PAGE 36: THE FOREVER PEOPLE, Vykin the Black, Mark Moonrider, Big Bear, Serifan and Beautiful Dreamer, represent the youth of the war between New Genesis and Apokolips. Hailing from Super-Town, they came to Earth by way of Boom Tube, on their Super-Cycle and brandishing a device called “Mother Box.” Inked by Mike Royer, colored by Tom Ziuko

PAGE 30-31: MAN—MACHINE—MERGER, an outer space composition done in 1971. This piece was also used as the cover of a 1975 museum book detailing an exhibition of Kirby’s work in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Inked by Mike Royer, colored by Tom Ziuko

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

Photo by Vince Davis, 1972.

The Simon and Kirby shop. Left to right: Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Bill Draut, Marvin Stein and letterer Ben Oda, seated. Crestwood Publications, 1949.

37

38

After doing Boy Explorers and Stuntman for Harvey, Simon and Kirby turned to Macfadden Publications where they created the first romance comic book, My Date. From there, they began a line of romance, western, mystery and crime comics for Crestwood Publications. Such titles as Young Romance, Young Love, Black Magic, and Fighting American were packaged for Crestwood by editors Simon and Kirby, and met with great popularity, as did their Boys’ Ranch for Harvey. Later, the team decided to form their own publishing company.

Mainline Publications put out Foxhole, In Love, Police Trap and Bullseye, but distribution difficulties plagued them and they were forced to sell their line to the established Charlton Comics Group.

During this period, the comic book industry had been undergoing massive upheavals and much of the newsstand space was given over to gore-filled horror comics. Simon and Kirby, in a position of

editorial control, released some of their best material at this time, but the industry was not healthy enough to support it. Only slightly before, several publishers had suffered heavy financial losses investing in 3-D comics such as the Captain 3-D book which the team had produced for Harvey.

With public pressure mounting against comics, regardless of content, many fine men were fleeing from the field, and others were finding difficulty securing work.

Simon and Kirby’s staff was generally busy and included, over the years, many of the most-talented craftsmen in the field, some getting their first job from the team.

But, finally, even they had to give in to the reality of an unstable field. As companies failed, Simon and Kirby began to drift apart, and Kirby cast about for work on his own. He not only tried to sell new comic book ideas but made a strong effort to re-enter the newspaper strip field.

Left: A proposed, but unpublished crime title.

Below: An unpublished cover drawn for BLACK MAGIC #12. Simon and Kirby later added handwritten dialogue in an attempt to reuse it for a crime cover.

Opposite page: FIGHTING AMERICAN #1 original art.

39

Unused cover from BLACK MAGIC. Opposite: three covers from Kirby’s comics of the period and one rejected cover, in pencil, for a first issue.

40

41

42

For a time, Kirby assisted his friend and neighbor, Frank Giacoia, on Giacoia’s Civil War strip, Billy Reb and Johnny Yank. But Kirby wanted a strip of his own and prepared samples for many, sometimes in conjunction with various partners. Master Jeremy, which he inked himself, was an all-inclusive war strip. Giacoia helped him out by inking King Masters, a detective strip with a setting in the world of jazz music. Years before, Jack had been asked to succeed the late Alex Raymond on another detective strip, Rip Kirby, but the post went to an artist on the Simon-Kirby staff, John Prentice.

Syndicates took an interest in the adventures of a young boy hired by an eccentric scientist. The name of the boy and the strip was Chip Hardy, and it was inked by Will Elder and Marvin Stein.

At the last minute, however, the syndicate that had accepted the strip changed its mind.

Kirby’s big success in newspaper strips was the outer space feature, Sky Masters of the Space Force. The strip was signed “Kirby and Wood” and the latter name did triple-duty, as it applied to the inker, Wally Wood, and to the two brothers who handled the scripting, Dick and Dave Wood—no relation to Wally. The manned exploration of space was forecast by the strip, which lasted from 1957 to 1959. (Another Kirby-Wood creation, Surf Hunter, sought to do the same thing for undersea exploration but failed to sell.)

By this time, Kirby had returned briefly to DC. He and Simon had sold them Challengers of the Unknown, then gone their separate ways.

Kirby continued it for a time and also drew Green

43

Arrow and House of Mystery for DC, both of which he inked with the help of his wife. He also did some freelance work for the Atlas group, formerly the Timely group.

Soon after, Joe Simon interested the Archie publishers in starting a super-hero line under his editorship. Kirby did his last work with Simon when he helped him on the initial issues of The Fly and The Double Life of Private Strong.

Sky Masters received wide distribution, but its production was beset by legal difficulties, leading Kirby to voluntarily discontinue the strip.

Fortunately, though still far from prosperous, the comic book field was slowly on the way back up.

Opposite page: BULLSEYE, Simon and Kirby’s short-lived Western hero.

44

45

46

47

By 1959, Kirby was doing almost all his work for the company previously known as Timely and/or Atlas, soon to be known as the Marvel Comics Group. Their line at the time consisted of love, western and monster comics, and Kirby was put to work on all three. He drew Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid and, as he had before, found the western setting to be an enjoyable one to draw.

Most of his time however, was spent on the monster books which featured a rather lackluster format typified by such titles as “The Escape of Monsteroso” and “The Creature From Krogarr.” Produced by a small staff, these books were tiresome but their significance was great, for they eventually led to the creation of the Marvel Super-Heroes.

A slight super-hero revival at other companies was leading to renewed reader interest. With nothing to lose, Marvel decided to try a few superheroes. The first Fantastic Four, issued in 1961, marked the beginning. The product of Kirby and Marvel’s editor and head writer, Stan Lee, it was a shaky start but one which aroused interest and considerable fan mail.

The Incredible Hulk

Editor Stan Lee had developed a new method of producing their books. Instead of beginning with a full script, which the artist would then illustrate, they began with an idea which would be discussed in conference between scripter and penciler and then drawn and paced by the artist as he worked. Dialogue and captions would be added afterwards to fit the pictures. This method allowed greater latitude in the artwork, but necessitated that the penciler not only be a competent artist, but, also a good story-man in his own right. Kirby, of course, was. And, the other members of Marvel’s small art staff at the time, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and Dick Ayers, were, also. Lee described the division of labor once by saying, “Some artists, of course, need a more detailed plot than others.

Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean, I’ll just say to Jack, ‘Let’s let the next villain be Dr. Doom’... or I may not even say that.

He may tell me... he just about makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing.”

This technique, combining Kirby’s solid storytelling and Lee’s flashy dialogue, inaugurated the Marvel Super-Hero line.

The Incredible Hulk, a super-hero version of Marvel’s old monster stock-in-trade, received his own magazine and Ant-Man, a costumed scientist from an earlier science-fiction story, took over in Tales to Astonish. Neither of these strips, both drawn by Kirby, were as successful as the Fantastic Four. In fact, The Hulk was dropped after a few issues, but kept around long enough after to become one of Marvel’s biggest stars.

The Thing

The Mighty Thor debuted in Journey Into Mystery and the final issue of Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy introduced Spider-Man, the first of their new heroes not drawn by Kirby. Spider-Man’s beginnings, however, date back to the mid-fifties when Simon and Kirby were devising new characters and trying to sell them to publishers.

Along with Night Fighter, Man of Flame and other proposed heroes who never saw print, they had a projected character named Spiderman, who had progressed as far as cover mock-ups but never sold. Recalling the name, Kirby suggested it to Marvel and, working with Stan Lee, started on the first story. For reasons that remain unclear, production was halted in mid-story and Lee started over, devising a different Spider-Man with artist Steve Ditko.

The Human Torch, revived from the forties as a member of the Fantastic Four, took over Strange Tales, and was soon joined by Ditko’s magician character, Dr. Strange. Marvel’s last monster book, Tales of Suspense, introduced Iron Man. Kirby was too busy at the time to pencil the origin story but he did have time to design the character for Don Heck to draw.

Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos debuted, combining certain elements of the super-hero line with some of Kirby’s own war experiences. Kirby drew several issues, before Dick Ayers began drawing it.

The Avengers and the X-Men were introduced, and with these, as with the other books, Kirby drew the first issues and established the momentum which other artists would, hopefully, keep going. In the early days of Marvel, Kirby had found it necessary to often pencil and plot five or six books a month. Now, with Marvel’s increased popularity, he could cut down his workload, and concentrate mainly on the Fantastic Four, Thor, occasional layouts for other artists, and a newlyrevived version of Captain America. It was in the Fantastic Four that Kirby first drew such popular supporting characters as: Dr. Doom, The Watcher, The Silver Surfer, the Black Panther, Galactus, and the Inhumans.

It was when he cut down on his workload that many noticed a marked improvement in the quality of Kirby’s penciling. In the past, he had often been too rushed to do sufficient backgrounding or to pay very strict attention to detail. His pencils were

tighter now, much more ornate and all the more dynamic. Thor, for example, became a true saga of the gods, with its majestic pageantry, finelydetailed costumes, and awesome landscapes.

Kirby’s many years of working at a feverish rate had trained him well as one of the comic industry’s fastest and, therefore, most prolific artists.

With their peak of popularity being reached in the mid-sixties, the Marvel characters appeared on television in a series of cartoons and were the subject of many articles on the renewed interest in comics. With more and more staffers being added to Marvel’s crew, Kirby was able to take on a few outside assignments, such as a comic strip adaptation of Jack Ruby’s killing of Lee Harvey Oswald (Esquire magazine) and a poster for the “Captain Nice” TV show.

Marvel was no longer the small, closely-knit operation it had been. With so many new artists and writers added to the crew, plus Marvel’s sale to a large conglomerate, Kirby found it less and less necessary to come into the office, or to even involve himself with the design of new characters and books. He could in fact, even relocate in California from New York, and mail his penciled pages to Marvel from 3,000 miles away.

The Silver Surfer

In 1970, after over a hundred issues of Fantastic Four, Marvel’s readers were rather shocked to hear that he had resigned from Marvel to take up an editorial post and to create a new line of comics for National-DC. Kirby had been with Marvel longer than with any other company, and his contributions there had been substantial.

But it was time for a change. Marvel had given him no opportunity in the later years to experiment, and any more characters he would have created would have been pulled away from him. Moreover, the company had been acquired by a conglomerate and its new owners did not seem to even know who Jack Kirby was, let alone what he had contributed to the dynasty they had purchased and what they owed him.

When Carmine Infantino, Editorial Director of National Periodical Publications, offered Kirby a means of escape, he made the inevitable move.

Opposite: An unused cover for THOR #144, still in the penciled stage. Pages 50-51: A discarded THOR sequence still in pencil. Kirby’s notes in the margins are to explain the continuity so that the dialogue may be written afterwards. Page 52: Kirby’s pencils for four pin-up pages of the Inhumans in the 1967 FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL. The lettering by Stan Lee is to designate the copy areas for the letterer.

Page 53: THE WATCHER.

Dr. Doom

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

Kirby served as an editor, writer and artist for National-DC comics, where his first assignment was the revamping of the Jimmy Olsen book. This he proceeded to do by introducing the Galaxy Broadcasting System, new owners of The Daily Planet, and its insidious president, Morgan Edge. To this, he added a revived Newsboy Legion and the Guardian and sent them, along with Olsen and Superman, off on a series of adventures wholly unlike any which had filled the Olsen book before.

More important, was the involvement with the “Fourth World” series, which served as the basis for Kirby’s other DC comics, The New Gods, Forever People, and Mr. Miracle. Each shared the common enemy in the person of Darkseid, the master of Apokolips. For, as part of his new mythology, Kirby created the new worlds of Apokolips and New Genesis, home of an infinite number of new heroes and adversaries. It was a sweeping epic, unlike any

ever done in comics, but the series was cancelled before it reached its conclusion. Only the Mr. Miracle book continued, albeit without following its Fourth World ties until its final issue.

This was followed by Kamandi, The Demon, OMAC and other new innovations. Jack produced some of his finest war comics work in Our Fighting Forces, drawing on his personal war experiences for the Losers stories. In addition, Kirby launched the first of National’s black-and-white comic magazines, Spirit World and In The Days Of The Mob, and had a one-issue reunion with Joe Simon on Sandman. But despite some creatively rewarding work, when his DC contract came up for renewal, Kirby decided to return to the comic company he was most closely associated with in the past.

Opposite: MR. MIRACLE and OBERON This page: DARKSEID and the FOREVER PEOPLE

55

Left: Jack drew a group of comics fans as characters in his JIMMY OLSEN series. Shown here is their first appearance, from the 1971 San Diego Comic-Con program.

Above: “Scrapper” from the NEWSBOY LEGION and JIMMY OLSEN. Below: The initial concept presentation for OMAC. Opposite: Kirby’s female characters from DC and Marvel.

56

57

58

Kirby returned to Marvel in 1975, with editorial, script, and artistic control over his old Captain America, a new Black Panther comic, as well as several new creations: Eternals, Machine Man, and Devil Dinosaur, among other projects. Perhaps the highlight of his mid1970s Marvel period was a Silver Surfer graphic novel, reuniting him one last time with editor Stan Lee. Always searching for a new creative outlet where he could dwarf his past accomplishments, Kirby left Marvel in 1978 to return to his roots in the animation field, creating storyboards and concept art for some of the top animated shows of the time. But comics were his main love, and he helped launch the independent comics movement of the 1980s with work on Captain Victory, Silver Star, and Destroyer Duck, and even got the opportunity to craft a conclusion of sorts to his New Gods series, before finally retiring in 1987.

Jack Kirby passed away on February 6, 1994, leaving behind a legion of fans and ideas, and a creative legacy not likely to ever be matched in the comics field.

As is obvious, it has not been within the scope of this book to encompass all of Kirby’s creations and his many facets. The sampling chosen, however, should be sufficient to demonstrate that Jack Kirby was more than merely a penciler. He was, in fact, a storyteller and innovator, first and foremost. A modern-day Aesop, creating myths and fables for the generations to come.

After over fifty years in the field, he never ceased creating, nor did he show any signs of running out of ideas. As he himself put it: “The audience is always there and the comic book has yet to reach its full potential.”

Opposite: MACHINE MAN drawing that hung in the Kirby household for several years.

Left: SILVER SURFER. This piece and the CAPTAIN AMERICA drawing on the next page were sold as black-and-white posters in the mid-1970s.

59

60

4