If I had to come up with of two words that embodied the sixties, they would be “Cosmic Consciousness”. Kirby and Lee’s Fantastic Four, conceived in 1961 at the dawn of the space race, certainly shared in that zeitgeist, but actually ended up in the forefront of the Cosmic movement. The Fantastic Four began their adventures by attempting to journey into space, but, altered by Cosmic Rays they brought space back to earth with them. The team continued to explore intergalactic sci-fi themes in its early years. An intriguing character known as the Watcher was introduced. This benevolent huge headed creature was from a race of beings that could only observe and not interfere. Kirby and Lee toyed with various conventionally villainous bug eyed aliens before bringing us a creature that was so far off the scope of power that he was like unto a god.

Galactus, monstrous consumer of planets was so awesome that the cover announcing his appearance did not even feature him. The cover of Fantastic Four #48, dated May, 1966, showed the shock and awe of our heroes as the Watcher pointed upwards at approaching doom. We could only imagine what could inspire such trepidation.

The story begins in the completion of the previous issue’s tale, as the FF attempt to return to normal life after their encounter with the Inhumans in their Great Refuge. This is not to be. The doorway to weirdness has opened and there is no going back. A small panel at the bottom left of page 7 opens a window to the vista of the infinite cosmos. This is followed by our first view of the Silver Surfer as he zooms towards earth. The camera does not linger. It changes Point of View again to another observer, as the speed trail of the Surfer’s board leads our eye to the nefarious Skrulls who are watching the herald’s approach with dread.

In 1969, Sheldon Feldner contacted Marvel Comics, asking if one of Marvel's artists would be interested in designing costumes for a production of William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar by the University Theatre Company at Santa Cruz at the newly-built Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

26" by 37 1/2" poster gifted to the Museum by Rand Hoppe in 2009.

As luck would have it, the Kirby family had recently moved to California, and Stan Lee recommended that Feldner contact Jack Kirby. Kirby designed the costumes and provided a drawing that was used on posters, handbills and programs at no cost to the students. The poster drawing was rendered onto large two-color posters by Robert Page of the UCSC Art Department. Page also adapted Kirby's color costume designs into black-and-white. Not only were color photographs taken of cast members in their costumes, but black and white photos were taken during the costume production.

In an earlier blog, I discussed the influence that Wallace Wood as an inker might have had on Kirby’s artwork. I suggested that Wood’s powerful style could have caused Kirby to rethink his approach to drawing and influence him in subtle ways that might have been more harmonious to the pairing. While it is interesting to speculate on these matters, it is certainly a revelation to study the different qualities of various inkers on Kirby’s pencils through his career.

Kirby inked his own pencils frequently early on, and throughout his career.

He generally preferred to use a brush, and his line quality varied from a precise fine stroke to bolder swatches of black. Here in the 1953 unpublished cover of “Strange World of Your Dreams, we can see that Kirby was arguably his own best inker.

When he began working for Marvel, Kirby’s page output was too great to spare the time for his personal inking touch. As a result, we have a wide variety of stylistic interpretations of Kirby’s line by other inkers over time. Fortunately, we also have many samples of his pencils, so we can determine who was more or less faithful in their rendering and who weakened or perhaps in some cases reinforced the King’s artistic intention.

Whenever the art of Jack Kirby is discussed, someone will inevitably mention that sometime during the mid to late seventies, his artistic abilities went into steady decline, continuing until his death. It is reasonable to have this opinion and one can certainly point to examples of Kirby’s later art that don’t seem to compare favorably to the work of his prime. I contend however that much of his later work, such as the Silver Star miniseries is infused with an energy and a perspective that more than compensates for any perceived deterioration of artistic technique.

First, let us view an early example of Kirby’s work from the Simon and Kirby run of Captain America, the cover of issue #7. I chose this particular cover because it contains a variation of a pose that Kirby would revisit throughout his career. Cap is swinging across the length of a large space, with his pelvis thrust fore ward and his torso arched. His arms are stretching back holding a rope and his legs are also bent backward to accentuate the arch.

Something very similar to this pose occurs nearly twenty five years later, appearing in Marvel Comics Captain America #103. Note that in the first example, Kirby’s rendering of Cap’s physique is probably one of the closest to an anatomically correct figure that he will ever draw. Cap’s quadriceps muscles for example are more or less where they should be. In the later example, Kirby is drawing far more expressionistically.

The one hundredth issue of The Comic Reader was a double issue with a color cover.

Jack Kirby was asked to contribute a cover, which was to include Captain America, Batman, Superman and Captain Marvel. Kirby drew a piece, which seems to have been rejected for the piece that was published. Without interviewing editor/publisher Paul Levitz or assistant editor Paul Kupperberg, the assumption is that the unused piece had characters from two companies together on the cover, which is traditionally considered unwelcome by their respective rights holders. The used piece has characters controlled at the time by National Periodical Publications, Inc (DC Comics) on the front.

The Comics Reader 100 was published by TCR Publications, New York, New York, USA. August-September 1973.

Color art by Carl GAFFORD.

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