Unpublished Kirby-Colletta New Gods #1 Art found!

Incredible, but true!

The missing art from New Gods 1 splash

The missing art from New Gods 1 splash

I know, something of an anti-climax. My point is that Jack Kirby drew, John Costanza lettered and Vince Colletta inked the splash page to New Gods 1 without space for the publishing indicia. At least that what two photocopies in the Museum’s archives indicate. So, more than likely, one of Jack Adler’s production people at DC/National did some photostatting and some paste-up to make room.

I recently found a scan of this very splash from my personal copy of New Gods 1, which I had signed by Jack at the Miami-Con in December 1975. So, for kicks, I took that scan, added the missing art, and did a hasty coloring job.

Thanks again, to Greg Theakston!

4 thoughts on “Unpublished Kirby-Colletta New Gods #1 Art found!

  1. Richard Bensam

    Well done, sir. It really does make a subtle but noticeable difference in the page composition. Once you’ve seen the original, the published version suddenly looks odd even though no one ever noticed anything wrong with it in all these years. But I can’t imagine why anyone in Jack Adler’s office was put to the trouble when it would have been considerably easier (and not much more of a loss) simply to crop out the lower segment of the art. By definition, we’re not talking about a situation where anyone in New York considered Kirby’s pages sacrosanct and not to be tampered with…so why the fussy approach rather than the simpler one? Puzzling…

    Reply
  2. patrick ford

    Aside from my heart skipping a beat…thanks for this. Richard Bensam has it right.
    If only nit-picking fanatics could be in charge of Kirby reprints. This could have been restored. Most of the HUNGER DOGS could be fixed.
    It was great to see Jack’s SPIRIT WORLD, but would it have been too much to ask that Jack’s original introductions for the stories intended for the second issue be restored? A highlight of IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB and SPIRIT WORLD were Jack’s intros by the hosts Warden Frye, and Dr. Maas, but in the SPIRIT WORLD reprint DC took the easy way out and gave us the intros from the Joe Orlando edited comic book versions.

    Reply
  3. Shane Foley

    ..and yet Jack used to leave indicia spaces on Captain America and Tales of Asgard when they were not needed,
    as tho it was a habit he had for every first story page!
    Maybe this means this pic wasn’t originally intended as page 1 of NG 1?
    Or maybe it just means he was even more inspired than usual?!!!???!!!!

    Reply
  4. Drew Dobbs

    Well, I’ll be… I had puzzled before about exactly where the cropping was done on this page and now you’ve made it clear – Thanks! I wouldn’t have guessed that they would have sliced a bit out of the center, of all places. Even as a child, I could usually spot where post production ‘fixes’ had been done, but this odd example is pretty sly. And Mr. Ford WOULD mention Hunger Dogs, which still makes my heart ache, ha ha; I was traveling in Europe when it came out, hotly anticipated, and having bought it at Forbidden Planet in New York, on the way to Europe, I saved it and only finally read it in Morocco, of all places. And then was somewhat disappointed by the obvious production flaws in the finished product. Thanks again.

    Reply

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