Category Archives: Superhero

Jack Kirby’s fourth issue of JIMMY OLSEN features the 22-page story “The Saga of the D.N.Aliens”, opening with Superman continuing the fight with the green kryptonite-laced giant Jimmy Olsen clone, while the real Jimmy and the Newsboy Legion look on, and suddenly a new version of the Guardian, the old protector of the original Newsboys, joins the fight.

The heroes aren’t doing too well, until suddenly rescue comes in the unexpected form of a the Scrapper Troopers, miniature duplicates of the feisty brawling Newsboy. Man, those guys at the Project were just goofy, weren’t they? Anyway, returning to the Project, the original Newsboys explain how a dying Jim Harper finally confessed to his identity as the Guardian, and they took a sample to create this new clone, and Superman shows Jimmy around the Project (some pal, keeping all this secret from Jimmy for so long), including the three types of clones, the Normals, the Step-ups and the Aliens, the latter demonstrated by Dubbilex.

Meanwhile, in the Evil Factory, Darkseid’s minions Simyan and Mokkari get dressed down by their master for their inept handling of the situation, and hatch their next agent of destruction from their own out-of-control experiments.

Kirby was really tossing out those ideas with reckless abandon in those early days at DC, even moreso than is normal for him. He even tosses in a collage to illustrate some of the science of DNA being used by the Project.

Vince Colletta inks (with the usual Superman and Jimmy modifications by other hands), and no Kirby cover on this issue

Decent little cover from the Ant-Man days, with Kirby playing around with some of the odd scales and perspectives that the feature called for. I liked the city in the background, too.

Inks by Sol Brodsky.

Published 1963

Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky provide the cover to this issue of ASTONISH, another Giant-Man adventure. Great sense of scale on this one, and I always like Brodsky’s linework.

Published 1964

This cover was Kirby’s return to Thor after five years, and he definitely came back swinging, if you’ll pardon the pun. I wonder if he’d been watching some old Harryhausen movies prior to drawing this?

Disagreement on sources as to the inker here. Kirby Checklist has Mike Esposito, and the GCD, via frequent commenter Nick, has Frank Giacoia. I’m leaning towards Giacoia. Are there any indisputable Esposito inks on 1970s Kirby to compare?

Published 1975