Daily Archives: January 6, 2005

Genre Cover Six-Pack

by

Six great covers from six different genres, all of which Kirby did classic work in for many years.

FOXHOLE #1, 1954. – This is just an amazingly brutal war cover. Very strong concept, amazingly detailed rendering, and very good colour (I’m not sure if Kirby had a hand in the colouring, but the watercolour stuff from the late 1960s and 1970s that he apparently did solo show a similar colour sense to this).

POLICE TRAP #3, 1954. I wonder if an alternate name for this title was POLICE BRUTALITY? Anyway, a nice real-world version of the hard hitting action that Kirby pretty much defined in the super-hero books. Man, all those Mainline books look nice. It would have been interesting to see what they’d have become if the timing was better (as discussed in TJKC #25).

FIRST LOVE ILLUSTRATED #70, 1956. Here’s a nice quiet romance cover, with the usual tension under the surface. I want to draw particular attention on this one to the rendering on the woman’s hair and the flowers.

KID COLT OUTLAW #83, 1959. Unlike some other major western stars of the Marvel/Atlas line, Kid Colt continued on without a Kirby re-design. Kirby did draw a whole bunch of covers for the book (including on GUNSMOKE WESTERN which also featured Kid Colt), though, starting with this one. Inked by Christopher Rule according to the Kirby checklist.

WORLD OF FANTASY #17, 1959. More Rule. A fun science-fantasy scene designed to draw you in. An amusing looking robot, and I like the cape the guy is wearing.

AMAZING FANTASY #15, 1962. Almost certainly the most famous cover-only Kirby book, it’s well known that Steve Ditko did a similar cover solo first, from an angle above the action. Both are great covers, but I prefer this one. It just leaps right out. I do wonder why Spidey is announcing his secret identity to that guy he’s carrying (which is a problem on both versions).

Fantastic Four #101 [1970]

by

The story this issue is”Bedlam In The Baxter Building”. As opposed to “Bedlam AT The Baxter Building”, which was from FF ANNUAL #3. This is of course the second last issue of Kirby’s FF fun, and the last complete story (as #102 begins a continued story).

The issue opens up strong, with some downtime for the FF and Ben showing off some dance moves. And yes, that is Alicia. I’m not sure exactly what happened to her hair in this issue. Anyway, Kirby/Sinnott drawing the Thing dancing. Cool.

Fantastic Four #101 [1970]

There’s another good scene later where Ben is showing off for some kids in a park.

The main story isn’t as good as those scenes, and I think they’d have been better off spending another 17 pages of Ben showing his moves. It’s a trifle involving the Maggia, Marvel’s clever name for an organized crime gang, buying the Baxter Building, evicting the FF, hoping to steal their technology. The Maggia goons manage to defeat the FF rather easily but of course they come back and win in the end. While the plots for the last handful of issues aren’t as good, the action scene are good, and Kirby was still clearly having a lot of fun with scenes like the first one.

Published 1970