Kirby Dynamics

Here’s a great posting sent in by Payton Gauldin.

Leyendecker influenced Kirby’s Cpt. America?

Payton Gauldin:

I did a detailed comparison of WEAPONS OF LIBERTY and CAPTAIN AMERICA #1. I found a detailed history on this piece by C.J. Leyendecker on eBay.

I wonder if Jack and Joe based Cpt. America on the March 2, 1918 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It was printed with a steel color scheme instead of gold and is the closet to their design.

I think the proof that it was the inspiration for Jack is Liberty’s right hand. It’s in a very distinctive Kirby-esque pose. I think Leyendecker is an uncredited influence for Jack.

Here are some links to Payton’s work:

http://cyxodus.tumblr.com/

 http://www.ninjalettering.com/

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I’ll be posting some Special Guest Star posts over the next few days.

Frank Fosco:

Jack’s motion lines and how he puts the effect of motion when the motion passes in front of something. Truly a Kirby original effect. The way he does with a few lines to indicate an object behind the motion makes it like a blur. Just an observation of another Kirby dynamic.

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One other comment on this:

I was hesitant to say this before because I genuinely do feel Stan Lee deserves tremendous credit for the 40-or-so years he spent in California trying to get people to make properties like Spider-man into movies — Lee was a major part of the Marvel publicity machine and that is one big reason these properties are so successful. But I found Lee’s comments here interesting:

Question: But it doesn’t appear for the film itself; and his fans feel he should get that recognition, with the movie exposing his work to a whole new audience.

Stan Lee: I know, but you’re talking to the wrong guy because I have nothing to do with the credits on the movies. I’m credited as one of the executive producers because that’s in my contract. But Jack was not an executive producer. So I don’t know what he’d be credited as. Again I know nothing about that, I have nothing to do with the movie’s credits. You’d have to talk to whoever is the producer of the movie. Is there anything you want to ask me about the documentary because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be talking about.

Again, I do feel Lee deserves some credit for promoting these properties for decades, and this analogy is not perfect, but to me Lee’s comments made me think: what if Paul McCartney was out there answering questions about something like a new Beatles movie based on the song “I am the Walrus.”

Hypothetical scenario: a reporter tells Paul McCartney: “John Lennon is not mentioned in the credits for the Beatles’ I am the Walrus film. His fans feel he should get that recognition, with the movie exposing his work to a whole new audience.”

Could you imagine Paul saying, something like, “I’m credited as one of the executive producers because that’s in my contract. But John was not an executive producer. So I don’t know what he’d be credited as. “

Imagine that. You can’t, right? Because Paul is a class act. He would be furious if somebody put out a Beatles movie, where he’s listed as an Executive Producer, without a John Lennon credit anywhere in the movie, and I guarantee he would take action.

Do I expect Lee to do something like that? Of course not. Stan Lee clearly does not care at all about honoring and promoting the legacy of Jack Kirby.

As it turned out, apparently Jack did get a credit in the film, somewhere (I recently saw Captain America and you’d need a magnifying glass to read the “Based on the Marvel Comic by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby” credit buried after all the actors in the final credit roll), but I think this exchange with Lee shows you that clearly Stan Lee is not interested in whether or not Kirby gets any kind of token credit on something like the Avengers movie. Lee actually finds the reporter’s question annoying; Lee’s there to talk about HIMSELF: his self-produced movie about himself! Is that reporter an idiot for not knowing that?

Sadly, like John Lennon, Jack is no longer with us; I wish both men were here — they both still had a lot of great art and stories in them. Fortunately for Lennon, some of his collaborators are still alive and they continue to give us new insights into John’s life and work.

Unfortuately for Jack Kirby, Stan Lee is one of his only surviving collaborators, and as you can see, Stan Lee finds even being asked about Jack getting credit in a Marvel movie — a nuisance.

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Thanks to Kenn Thomas for passing this along:

Stan Lee On The Jack Kirby ‘Avengers’ Credit Controversy (UPDATE)

I didn’t bring this up before because I posted about 100 questions for Stan on FF # 1, and I saw literally thousands of people discussing this subject online, but is Lee’s statement in his Avengers credit comments true? Lee said that Jack Kirby is “mentioned in every comic book; it says ‘By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.’” Does Marvel really have a credit that says “By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby” on every comic book featuring a property or a character Jack created?

If every Marvel book does not have this Lee/Kirby credit, what on earth is Stan Lee talking about? Does he mean the penciler credit he gave Jack on the 1960s books?

Unless I’m wrong and Marvel is indeed listing Jack and Lee on all of their books with Kirby creations, am I the only one asking this question? Or are we at the point where any non-talking point that comes out of Lee’s mouth is so ridiculous most people don’t even bother taking him seriously any longer.

I haven’t seen a Marvel comic in decades so maybe I’m putting my foot in my mouth, but I thought all the books said “Presented by Stan Lee” in them. Maybe Lee is so used to stealing credit from Jack, Lee thinks he is Jack Kirby, so a Stan Lee credit means a “Stan Lee & Jack Kirby credit ” in his mind?

Again, if Lee is correct and all the new Marvel books are featuring a Jack Kirby creator credit, please send in a few scans so I can share them here.

Here’s a great Stan Lee quote on Jack from the comments section of this post:

Stan Lee: “When you talk about Kirby you really run out of superlatives. Jack was a writer as well as an artist (as many of the legends were). He was incredibly imaginative and he did his most important writing with his drawing. When I say that I mean if I gave Jack a very brief idea of what I wanted for a story, he would run with it . . .

“I would discuss the idea with Jack like that and that was all I had to do. And then Jack would go home and he would draw the story and he would add a million elements that I hadn’t told him about, so he was really writing in pictures and dreaming up ideas along the way.

“And then when I did write the copy (the words, the dialogue and the captions) it was such a joy because all I had to do was look at the illustration that Jack had done and each picture gave me a thousand new ideas ….”

(Comic Book Marketplace magazine, # 61, July 1998, pages 48-49.)

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Thanks to Eric Stephenson for letting me know that the source of this Kirby posting was his weblog. A reader had passed along the text of that posting to me in an email, and I should have made it clear here where Eric’s piece originally came from. In fact, I probably should have just posted a link instead of the whole posting so my apologies for that.

I encourage you to check out Eric’s site. There’s a great mixture of commentary on comics, pop culture, and music all mixed together. I enjoyed seeing another Paul Weller fan out there in cyberspace.

I love looking at the old vinyl record covers. I think the last vinyl album I ever purchased was The Smiths Louder that Bombs back in ’87, then I transitioned for good to CDs (and now MP3s). Seems like yesterday when I picked this up off the shelves of a local record store in College Park, Maryland.

Here’s a photo from Eric’s site of some of those old Marvel reprint books. This looks like my bookshelf back in the late 1970s.

Boy Stan Lee sure did write a lot of books!

I also enjoyed looking at the various posters of some of the Image artists at work at Eric’s site:

I also checked out the Image website. Looks like they have some of the most talented comics professionals in the business working for them. You can see in the coming attractions for next month, they are still cranking out a lot of really high quality product.

Finally, check out this posting on Eric’s site where he re-posted some of his previous comments on Kirby.

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Here’s an Apple Creek Kids comic that ran earlier this week where I used some Kirby crackle. I guess you could call the process on this the Four-”C”s” Characters, Circles, Crackle, and Color.

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Thanks to Kenn Thomas for passing along this link:

Revenge of the God

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Here are a couple Facebook comments on the Ninja Turtle piece from Kandow Eric’s post earlier today.

Mike Cagle: Interesting. But I doubt very much that Kirby really drew that Ninja Turtles piece. It doesn’t loo at all like Kirby to me, it looks like bad fake Kirby. Love the other ones, though!

Hervé Duphot: I don’t think it’s a Kirby’s drawing. The line is to thin and to “hesitating”. It’s in Kirby’s style. And the turtle in the background is too ridiculous.

A few art collectors have suggested to me off the record that Jack may have used an assistant for a handful of pieces that were produced towards the end of his life, so this could be one of them. To me, and maybe I’m wrong, I feel like I do see some of Jack in this piece. If I had to guess I’d say Jack did draw this. Looking closely at the piece, maybe I’m wrong.

If Jack did use an assistant or if Jack’s drawing style had simply changed we’re going to have a couple mysterious pieces of Kirby art like this out there where we may never know 100% for sure what the history behind the piece is.

For example, I don’t think there is any way Jack drew this Captain America piece, unless maybe health was an issue:

It’s also important to note that 99.99% of the Kirby art out there is legit, although I always encourage new art collectors to be very careful before investing a lot of money in any kind of art. That’s just common sense.

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This week I’ll be posting some guest contributions.

By: Kandou Erik

With the upcoming Avengers film, and the Lee/Kirby argument in swing again, I found myself this last month seriously diving into Jack Kirby’s work. I read his biography, “Jack Kirby” King of Comics, written by former Kirby inker and assistant Mark Evanier – which turned out to be a tremendously informative and inspirational book. I was able to get a copy for $10, which is an amazing bargain. I have always loved Kirby’s artwork, but I feel like I appreciate it all the more, having finally seen the history behind his amazing volume of work.

I collect a lot of images from across the net for my own use. I consider it a form of scrap booking. I found myself actively collecting Jack Kirby artwork that I kept running into – and built my own little gallery for it. Visiting Kirby Dynamics, I sent in some of the more original images I had in my collection. I’ve collected many of these images over the years – so please forgive me if they come from a specific site or resource. (When I got most of them, keeping check of where things came from wasn’t an issue at the time.) I would have a hard time guessing where anything actually came from, unless it was really recent. Next post I’ll provide links of the places I most frequented looking for Kirby Artwork.

One of the things that amazed me the most, in searching for these Kirby images, was how many different things, that you wouldn’t expect, ended up being drawn by Kirby.

This piece particularly fascinated me, as Jack Kirby drew the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I knew that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird where fans, and supported Kirby’s fight with Marvel for return of his original artwork. There was even a wonderful TMNT issue, Donatello #1, that featured Jack Kirby, with a magic pencil that made his creations come to life. I’m proud to say I actually have the issue – apparently it’s not that rare (at least when I bought it) – and there was an episode in last decade’s TMNT cartoon show that featured the same story. So I guess the connection is there. Even still, it’s strange to see Kirby doing a piece of art of such contemporary characters that weren’t his own creations. The design of the Turtles is a bit different — though I’d take Kirby Influenced Ninja Turtles over whatever horrible alien-versions are going to appear in the upcoming movie.

Even though it took him away from the comic characters we where more familiar with – Jack Kirby leaving Marvel for a second time was probably one of the best decisions he ever made. He simply wasn’t getting the credit or money due to him, even after all the years he had worked with mainstream publishers. Luckily, when he moved to California, Kirby thought that maybe he’d be able to use his talents in animation – a plan that actually bore fruit during this time, as Jack was able to work in animation, contributing to Ruby Sears and Hannah Barbara cartoons. (Which gave him health benefits – which apparently saved his family from ruin when he had a heart attack. He wouldn’t have been in such a position if he had stayed at Marvel). Working in animation, an industry where artists are largely working behind the scenes, it’s not surprising that many of us didn’t know as well how much Kirby contributed to those animated series. His clean and functional drawing style probably really fit well with animation, where he worked up character designs and ideas for TV shows.

One surprising image I ran into is that of Hawkman. Outside of the Super Friends, it’s obvious the Winged Avenger didn’t get picked up for his own series. I had never seen this piece before – so it makes me wonder how many other series (of notable heroes, and his own original creations) he pitched to animation studios.

With the rise of the comic con, Jack Kirby finally started getting the recognition he deserved. Even though he didn’t always do sketches, the ones he did do and that still survive are really interesting to see. This image here, for the life of me, I don’t know anything about. The Human Torch and the Thing are present in the front, with unknown characters in the back. Who are those other characters? I think this was a commissioned piece of art – so maybe the buyer asked for original characters or something.

Some of Kirby’s most impressive pieces are his painted and colored creations. This image here, featuring the Hulk versus an unknown character riding a monstrous dog-like creature. It’s funny – every time I see images of the Hulk by Kirby, I think that he might had drawn the character more in sketches and commissions that he actually drew in comics. (Steve Ditko and other artists came on board and did a lot of the penciling of the Hulk, after his initial 6 issues.)

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