Category Archives: Genre

Black Magic #27 [v4n3] [1953]

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Bob

A pair of Kirby stories, plus a cover, are among the things of note in this issue of the Simon&Kirby edited horror comic from Prize. The cover is for the story “The Cat People”, which opens up the book. In this 6-page story, George Gates goes to visit an old friend after a long time away in Europe, which ended in an extended hospital stay. He then freaks out when his friend’s kids are playing cat’s cradle, and tells the story of his recent time in Spain, when he got lost and was invited to stay the night in the remote cavern home of an old woman and her beautiful daughter. As you’d gather from the title, they turn out to be able to transform into cats, using a spell cast by the original version of the cat’s cradle game. He barely escapes with his life, and not untouched.

A nice little story with an especially well done bit of adventure in the chase scene. This story was reprinted, with some minor art touch-ups in DC’s BLACK MAGIC #2 [1974].

The next story isn’t Kirby, but “A Hole In His Head” is notable as being one of the first stories Steve Ditko drew. He’d go on to do some other noteworthy things.

More Kirby with the 5-page “The Merry Ghosts Of Campbell Castle”, a tale of the Scottish Highlands. Two friends go to Scotland, where one of them wants to write a book about his family, the Clan Campbell. Things spiral out of control as Campbell hears music and then later sees ghosts in the ancestral castle, eventually leading to his demise, and then his friend starts to hear the same music.

I especially like the look of the ghosts in this one, inked in a more delicate style and with far less shadow than the rest of the story (and most of Kirby’s horror work for the title), but still very detailed and expressive.

If you’re interested in BLACK MAGIC, be sure to check out the on-going series of posts on the title over on the S&K Blog, Little Shop of Horrors. Nine posts cover the first 26 issues of the title, the next one should start with this issue and the next few (here’s an earlier post from me on #28)

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Posted in Genre, Horror/Fantasy | Leave a comment

Love Romances #88 [1960] – Cover

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Bob

Kirby wasn’t used much on Marvel’s romance books for his first few years back there in the pre-superhero days, with only a handful of stories and covers in three years. Interestingly, his work in those books actually increased around the time FANTASTIC FOUR launched, and he was a regular on the covers and interiors until the last book was canceled in 1963.

Anyway, this is one of those earlier covers, a pretty attractive little job inked by Vince Colletta.  The various outstretched hands in the mighty Kirby manner are pretty nice.

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Posted in Cover, Genre, Romance | 1 Comment

Captain America #202 [1976]

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Bob

cap202aKirby writes and draws the 17-page story in this issue, “Mad, Mad Dimension”, the middle of the “Night People” storyline.  Cap’s search for the missing Falcon and Leila leads him to the boisterous Texas Jack Muldoon, who saw the Falcon disappear last issue. Muldoon’s been doing his own investigations, leading them to the missing “Zero Street” and the tale of a scientist who had a breakdown but continued his research into interdimensional travel from the asylum.

Meanwhile, in another dimension…

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Sam Wison has been brainwashed by the “Night People”, and at their bidding is battling a giant monster trying to attack the asylum, which is now located on top of an asteroid.  He manages to knock the creature into space, but the Night People plan to open the gateway to Earth and send all the other monsters in the dimension to Earth.  They open up the gateway and Cap leaps through, followed by Texas Jack.

Kirby’s long final run on Cap is pretty fun.  The Falcon’s fight with the monster in this issue is a nice bit of action, but the Cap side of the story is mostly getting characters in place for the big conclusion, and the phone call he has with Sharon Carter is kind of strange.

Kirby also draws the cover, and both the cover and story are inked by Frank Giacoia.

This whole story, and much more, is available in Captain America: Bicentennial Battles.

Posted in Genre, Superhero | Leave a comment

Kid Colt Outlaw #123 [1965] – Cover

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Bob

Kirby’s contributions to the interiors in the Marvel westerns dropped off in early 1963, after all the super-hero books were launched, with just a few short bits after that. He stayed as the artist as most of the covers until mid-1965, though. This is the last issue of KID COLT OUTLAW to have a new Kirby cover, and he went out with a bang, pitting KC against over a dozen fully rendered bad guys.

No agreement on the inker of this one.  Dick Ayers is sometimes credited, but that doesn’t seem to fit.  The GCD entry has apparently had Ayers, Jim Mooney and Carl Hubbell at various times.  Don’t think I know of any credited examples of the latter two inking Kirby to compare, and 1965 seems a bit early for Mooney to be inking at Marvel, since he was artist on Supergirl for a while.

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Posted in Cover, Genre, Western | 9 Comments

Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth! #25 [1975]

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Bob

While there’s a lot of worthwhile stuff in them, I don’t think most people would argue that the second half of Kirby’s 40-issue run on KAMANDI is weaker than the first half, as he had used most of the more exciting ideas and was just going through the motions for a while.  The 20-page “Freak Show” in this issue is a case in point.  Shipwrecked on an island with the recently befriended Flim-Flam and his human “animals”, Kamandi is pleased to reunite once again with Ben Boxer and the other atomic mutant companions of his (Earth A.D. seems to be kind of small, they keep running into each other after a few issues apart).  They encounter various odd and dangerous mutations of sea-life, leading up to the flying sharks featured on the cover, until they finally approach a giant wall that even those monsters won’t go near.

So not one of the more notable issues, mostly moving the pieces around to the next adventure, but some of the creatures are pretty cool.

D. Bruce Berry inks the story and the cover.

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Posted in Genre, Science Fiction | 2 Comments