Monthly Archives: December 2004

MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #43 offers an almost complete reprint of the story from FF #56 in 1966, including the cover. Joe Sinnott inks, of course. In the main story, Klaw, from the recent Black Panther storyline, returns to attack the FF with new powers and a new costume, hoping to lure in the Panther. He seals off Reed and Ben in the lab while attacking Sue. There’s some great Reed/Ben interplay in their scenes this issue, like Ben asking “How come ya never cook up any gizmos that work better on guys who can stretch?”.

The FF prevail in the end, thanks to a remote assist from T’Challa with a delivery of vibranium.

As all this occurs, the Inhumans remain imprisoned, with Black Bolt becoming injured trying to escape, while Johnny and Wyatt Wingfoot continue their search for the Inhumans with Lockjaw, the teleporting dog. God, I love all these characters introduced in just the previous year of the book.

Unfortunately, this issue removes the last tier of panels from the final page, which set-up the Surfer/Doom storyline, since they were skipping it in this book, having reprinted it in MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION the previous year (which, looking at the dates now, is odd. They were reprinting the second major Surfer story in one book while reprinting the first one in another).

Published 1973

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The first SUPER POWERS mini-series was five issues, with Kirby doing all the covers, plotting the first four and writing and pencilling the last issue. In a bit of an coincidence, when this series came out, Kenner released a line of action figures that had the same eight heroes and four villains that are featured in this book. What are the odds.

In addition to the cover of this issue, Kirby also drew an ad for the series that, kind of reduntantly, appears in the first issue. Both cover and ad are inked by Mike Royer.

I like how the play it coy about who the master villain is in the ad and in this first issue. It’s pretty subtle, that shadowing figure in blue and grey whose minions appear with a loud “Boom”.

I’d be curious to read what Kirby’s actual plot for this issue was. It’s not a bad first issue, given the extended ad nature of the book. Pretty much just Darkseid sending his minions to give extra powers to various Earth villiansThe art by Adrian Gonzales and Pablo Marcos is nice, except that there’s too much of an attempt to make it look like Kirby on the surface elements. Lots of squiqqles and cosmic energy dots, while shades of their own style seem to bubble through at times.

Worth a look, but not too long a look.

Published 1984

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A quick survey of Kirby related releases in 2004. I still have to pick up a few of them, and I don’t get the Marvel Masterworks volumes, but I think I can safely say my personal pick of the year is THE JACK KIRBY READER v2, for its volume and variety of choice material I haven’t read before in a nice format. Second place, and more recommended for casual fans for whom more of it will be new-to-them, is MARVEL VISIONARIES – JACK KIRBY.

Archie’s entry in the Kirby derby was ADVENTURES OF THE FLY. Mostly excellent reproduction, some questionable layout choices, fun late 1950s material.

DC had two entries, finishing up the Kirby runs of two major series, JIMMY OLSEN BY JACK KIRBY v2 and CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN ARCHIVES v2. I prefer the format of the JIMMY OLSEN book, and hope they do more like that in the future. The only semi-concrete Kirby on their future schedule seems to be KAMANDI, in the Archives format.

Greg Theakston’s Pure Imagination published THE JACK KIRBY READER v2, an excellent selection of pre-1960 material from a variety of publishers, showcasing the various genres Kirby worked in nicely. Possibly more books from Theakston will follow in 2005.

Marvel had some nice stuff this year.

In the trivial department, only two new books in the Essential line had any Kirby, both trivial. One cover and an FF crossover issue (#73) in ESSENTIAL DAREDEVIL v2 and several covers and 10 pages of a Namor crossover issue (from TtA #82) in ESSENTIAL IRON MAN v2 (the covers duplicating those already in ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA v1). Next year should be better, with new Thor and FF volumes likely.

The Marvel Masterworks line finally finished re-releasing old volumes (often with some corrections, additions and shuffling from the original printings, plus some being released in softcovers exclusively to Barnes&Noble) and added some new ones. Trivial Kirby content in AVENGERS v4 (one partial cover) and X-MEN v4 (three covers), major Kirby content in FF v7 (everything) and HULK v2 (about half the book in pencils or layouts). Next year should see more FF, Golden Age CAPTAIN AMERICA and maybe more.

Marvel also did a paperback reprint of the MADBOMB storyline from Kirby’s mid-1970s return to CAPTAIN AMERICA. At least a BLACK PANTHER book will follow in this format next year.

The big one from Marvel was MARVEL VISIONARIES – JACK KIRBY, of course. Good format, excellent price, mostly good reproduction, fair story selection. Future volumes in the series will include Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (with some Kirby art in the Lee volume).

Fan publisher TwoMorrows had a good selection, with two tabloid issues of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, a fourth volume of THE COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR reprinting earlier issues and the re-issue of KIRBY UNLEASHED. Also of note from TwoMorrows, ALTER EGO #36 had a section on Joe Simon, with some Kirby art and information, and #39 had a page with some of the DC S&K stuff, including a neat house ad from 1943 touting the team and their various features. I suspect some other fan publications like COMIC BOOK ARTIST or BACK ISSUE might have had some minor Kirby content, but I didn’t get those. Same with any AC Comics publications. Feel free to follow-up with any info on those if you got them. Nothing too minor to warrent a mention.

Also this year, Ronin Ro’s biography of Kirby, TALES TO ASTONISH, was published. Still haven’t read it so no opinion offered. The only Kirby art in it was the cover with detail sections of an early 1970s Kirby drawing that’s been printed in TJKC.

And editing to add a late edition here, THE NEW SMITHSONIAN BOOK OF COMIC BOOK STORIES also came out in 2004, with a black and white reprint of FF #21.

And, I only just found this looking for other Kirby publications, Graphitti Designs did a t-shirt with some Kirby/Royer art, featuring the Galactic Bounty Hunters, which apparently someone might be doing as a series for Dark Horse in the future.

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