Monthly Archives: September 2004

More covers from throughout the years.

STAR SPANGLED COMICS #38, 1944, was from the era when Kirby was in the army, and only did covers for the DC/National books. STAR SPANGLED was still running the Newsboy Legion as the main feature, as it has been since #7, and this is a fun wartime patriotic style cover.

RAWHIDE KID #33, 1963, is the first issue Kirby did just the cover for, after introducing the new Kid in #17. Good western cover.

NOVA #5, 1977, inked by Frank Giacoia, another one of those covers done in that era for non-Kirby characters. I kind of like Nova’s design, it’s very compatable with the Kirby look. The “Earth-Shaker” villain seems a bit ridiculous, though. Looks like good goofy fun, I guess.

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When DC published its first WHO’S WHO series of character profiles in the mid-1980s, they had Kirby pencil the art for most of the characters he created. That ended up being 43 entries. About two-thirds of them were inked by Greg Theakston, with the remainder inked by various others (including one with some rare DC work by Joe Sinnott). Nothing really great in them, maybe, but some nice looking stuff, and the last published versions of most of these characters that Kirby would draw.

#15 had two Kirby pieces. Metron, inked by Theakston, was a bit flat, with just Metron in his Mobius Chair as the main figure.

The other one was Mister Miracle, inked by Dick Giordano, and it’s pretty good. Solid dynamic main figure, some nice backgound figures. The shot of Scott Free without the mask is very nice.

Published May 1986

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There’s probably the unrealized germ of a good idea in the 1970s revival of Sandman, which re-united Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for a one-shot issue, with Mike Royer along inking. Unfortunately, not a lot of it comes out in the final story, which is a hodge-podge of ideas thrown out without any real logic. Or maybe with a kind of dream logic, which might fit the character but doesn’t really make for good reading. Anyway, it has something to do with a group of left-over Axis soldiers from WWII, one of them a Japanese general named “General Electric” who has had his brain replaced by a computer, planning to blow up Washington with some robot dolls called Werblinks, and then being foiled by a red-and-yellow dressed master of dreams who has a whistle which summons Brute and Glob… Well, you get the idea.

I don’t know if the story originated with Simon, who’s credited with the script, or Kirby, whose credit reads “edited and drawn by”. I’m tending to think it was more Simon, since it seems more like his DC work of the era than Kirby’s other books.

The art did work a lot better than the story. The Sandman design is kind of plain, but workable. The othe odd creatures are great, even “General Electric”.

I’m still quite amazed that this one-shot did well enough to spawn an on-going book (with Kirby just on covers for the first few issues, then on pencils for a few after that).

Published Winter 1974

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