Monthly Archives: September 2004

This issue of THE FOREVER PEOPLE features the title characters trapped by Desaad in an amusement park that he runs, where people are tortured behind the scenes, while their suffering is disguised as amusement park features by Desaad’s machines, so they get to see other people apparently observe their suffering while doing nothing. An interesting middle part to a story.

Darkseid has some interesting scenes in FOREVER PEOPLE. The highlight of this issue is his interaction with Desaad and the scene that begins in the scan below, where he walks out among the crowd, scaring children.

This issue was the first where DC increased the price and page count of their books, adding in reprints. The Kirby books all had golden age S&K reprints, with FOREVER PEOPLE getting Sandman reprints from ADVENTURE, starting with the cover and story for ADVENTURE #85 (1943), “The Unholy Dreams of Gentleman Jack”. It’s an amusing story about a felon who re-creates his jail after being relased, with guards under his employ and rubber bars, and attempts to imprison the Sandman.

Also in here, three Forever People related pin-ups and a Kirby self-portrait introducing the reprints, which appeared in all the Fourth World books, all inked by Colletta.

Published September 1971

The idea of doing a comic continuing themes from the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY film is even stranger than doing an adaptation of the film, but Kirby did it, and it allowed him to draw some interesting science-fiction stories (as well as eventually launching MACHINE MAN).

The 7th issue looked at the giant floating baby that closed out the movie, with another astronaut being transformed by the Monolith. Kirby imagines this “New Seed” as a cosmic explorer, going from planet to planet, observing them in various stages of evolution, finally settling to observe a scene on a dying planet and a pair of lovers struggling against a savage mob.

2001 is a pretty minor Kirby work of the era, as he generally had some interesting ideas but didn’t really stick with them to develop them fully. Still, he did throw in some good images, and was well inked by Mike Royer in this issue (with Frank Giacoia inking the cover).

Published June 1977

Four covers surrounding non-Kirby art, spread over 45 years.

AIRBOY v4#4, May 1947, Simon&Kirby – Bit odd, S&K draw the title character on this issue, while the actual stories they drew in subsequent issues didn’t feature Airboy, but were Flying Fool stories. Nice cover, I like those alligators.

TWO-GUN KID #56, October 1960, inked by Dick Ayers – This is the original Two-Gun Kid, who’d be revamped in a few issues. Ayers inking on Kirby western art is always a treat.

HULK ANNUAL #5, 1976, inked by Jack Abel – Neat to see Kirby drawing a bunch of the old Atlas monsters again, even for just some small figures on a cover.

BOMBAST #1, April 1993, inker unknown – The characters for the Topps Kirbyverse comics were taken from unused character designs that Kirby had done sometime prior, so the covers were taken from those designs are are a bit bland, with just the figures rather than any story-related content. But they still work, with a nice kinetic pose on this Bombast figure and some nice bold solid linework.

Hail Hydra!

Kirby did the cover for this issue, inked by Mike Esposito, and did the layouts for the 12 page Shield story, finished by John Severin, his return to Marvel (he had previously did work at Atlas in the 1950s, including an issue of YELLOW CLAW that he inked over Kirby, and would eventually settle in to do a lot of issues of SGT FURY). Since it is just Kirby layouts, the final product does have more of a Severin look, but there are still a lot of Kirby elements.

I think what we’re meant to learn in this issue is that the minions of Hydra are truly incompetent. They fall for one sucker trap after another in this one, and in one scene they have two dozen guys in green costumes on a sidewalk next to a ridiculous battering ram ship, and one of them says “we must get inside before we’re seen”.

Published September 1965