Monthly Archives: January 2005

From the middle of the great run of THOR inked by Bill Everett. It’s a beautiful thing to see the texture that Everett brings to these pencils both in the 20-page story and the cover.

The basic story this time around has Thor returning to Earth and his Don Blake identity, just in time to operate on a a civil rights leader who was shot (somewhere along the line Don Blake seems to have gone from a decent surgeon to the greatest surgeon in the world). In the middle of the operation, the Wrecker manages to escape custody and Blake has to leave the operation for a knock-down fight, returning just in time to finish the operation.

A bit of an oddly written issue, as Thor spends most of the fight lecturing the Wrecker on morality and responsibility, in between the punches and hammer blows.

But the art is a masterpiece of destructive action. There’s one really good scene where the Wrecker sends his crowbar right through a truck, sending the engine flying out the front. Then when he and Thor get to fighting in the city, it’s as powerful as Kirby’s art ever looked. It’s a shame most of this run of THOR has never been reprinted, and probably won’t be for a few more years at least.

Published 1969

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X-MEN – THE EARLY YEARS was a monthly reprint series that ran 17 issues 19 1994/1995, reprinting the first 18 issues of X-MEN (the last issue being double-sized). It had new covers of variable quality, but most issues reprinted the original Kirby covers inside as well. A nice inexpensive way to get the early X-MEN issues before the ESSENTIAL UNCANNY X-MEN book came out in 1999, although some of the colours printed a bit dark here (I think its the same colouring as the glossy paper Masterworks version), obscuring some of the linework.

“Unus the Untouchable” is from X-MEN #8 (1964), inked by Chic Stone. X-MEN is my favourite of the Kirby/Stone collaborations of the period. Very bold, solid work. Anyway, as we open, the X-Men are practicing under acting leader Cyclops’ command, giving the usual oppurtunity to show off their powers (and change Iceman from the snowman look he had up to this point to hismore refined icy look) and for Scott and Jean to mentally whine about how much they love each other but dare not talk about it. Later, Bobby and Hank go out in the world and face the anti-mutant hysteria that abounded in those days after the Beast rescues a boy. That leads Hank to quit the team and become a wrestler, where he encounters another mutant, Unus the Untouchable, who is being scouted by Mastermind for the Brotherhood.

After various plot complications, Hank creates a device which increases Unus’ untouchability, leading everyone to think he’s betrayed the team.

Of course he hasn’t as Unus soon finds out when his powers are now so powerful that he can’t even touch food to eat. He’s restored with a promise to stay in line. Like that’s going to work.

A slight story with a clever twist (okay, it seems a bit hokey now, but only because similar things have been done so much since). The art is a lot of fun, with the practice sequence at the beginning and the wrestling match in the middle standing out, as well as goofy things like Unus with food floating all around him.

This reprints the full 20-page story from the original, as well as the cover, also inked by Stone. It doesn’t have the pin-up of the Beast which appeared in the original.

Published 1994

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One of the flaws in Kirby’s last few years at Marvel was probably the over-use of splash pages, especially given the shrinking page count. This issue of THE ETERNALS is a case in point, with no less than five full-page and one double-page splash in just 17 story pages. Makes for a bit of a slight read, although I’ll happily concede that Kirby put a lot of work into those splashes, and to be fair big concepts deserve big art. It’s more in the context of 17-page stories that it become a problem.

Anyway, this issue continues introducing the major concepts of the series, as members of the three major races of Earth (humans, Deviants and Eternals) witness the coming of a great space-ship of the Celestials. As the defiant Deviant leader Kro flees with his men, Ikaris of the Eternals gives some more background of how the Deviants tried to conquer the planet once before, and were toppled by the Celestials who caused a great flood. Then, Ikaris finds out how to operate the mechanism to bring back his lost friend Ajax and his men, who are the “landing crew” for the Celestials.

At this point the series was still about laying down the groundwork of big ideas and a new mythology, so character unfortunately takes a backseat, even among the handful of Eternals we’d met so far. Later on Kirby would take care of that, once the basics were done.

Royer inks the cover, while Verpoorten inks the interior story, and Kirby also writes a text page while they were waiting for letters complaining about the lack of ties to the Marvel Universe to flood in.

Published 1976

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Two Kirby/Ayers stories in this issue, both reprinted from TALES OF SUSPENSE #24 (1961).

First up is “The Insect Man”, an excellent example of the big monster sub-set of these stories. In this one, a man is sent in a capsule deep into the bowels of the Earth in an experiment to test how astronauts will react to being cut off from humanity. After several days he’s on the verge of cracking when he hears a knocking outside the capsule, which turns out to be a giant insect. He’s taken to the insect city, and given to a young insect as a plaything.

The adult insects then decide to examine him, but he’s able to escape, back to his capsule, which is raised back to the surface. Everyone assumes he was hallucinating, not noticing the giant insect hair that the janitor sweeps out of the capsule.

Kirby has an interesting style of drawing the giant insect men, which look suitably creepy in this story.

Next is the issue is “Beware… The Ticking Clocks”, about a beloved King who has a room filled with elaborate clocks. A rival King hires an assassin, who attempts to kill the good King, but is mysteriously foiled at the last minute in the clock room. The evil King ends up deposed by his people, while the assassin has become a figure on one of the clocks.

A simple enough story, the real highlight is probably the very detailed clocks that Kirby and Ayers drew. Insane monstrosities with dragons, gargoyles, soldiers and the like. Very cool.

Published 1973

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Wow, that has to be the saddest library in the world. Presumably DC at some point intended for this to be the first of a series of matching collections of their various genre series of days gone by. Didn’t work out that way, so just this lonely collection, MYSTERY IN SPACE, of 33 science-fiction stories from the 1940s to the early 1980s.

First up was “Rocket Lanes of Tomorrow”, a 2-page Simon&Kirby feature from REAL FACT COMICS #1 (1946). A nice little filler about the wonderous future of jet-packs, space exploration and trans-world tunnels. Very nice artwork, showing the influence of pulp sci-fi illustrations on Kirby’s early style.

Later in the book is a sample of Kirby’s 1950s work at DC, the 8-page “I Found the City Under the Sea” from MY GREATEST ADVENTURE #15 (1957). In this story, the crew of a fishing boat find a strange tube with a note inside from an oceanographer, Ellery Jones. He detected signs of a civilization under the ocean, and went to explore, finding a massive city.

That panel of the city is nice, very much like a rough form of the odd perspective city-scapes he’d perfect in the 1960s with some of the views of Atlantis or Asgard, and later with New Genesis.

As it turns out, the city is filled with aliens, planning to conquer the surface world, once they can get their hands on an experimental new chemical, aqua-ulium, without which the aliens and their materials vapourize in the atmosphere. They’re just waiting to sink a shipment of the chemical to proceed. With the help of a peaceful alien scientist, Jones is able to escape, finds a way to send out his note in case he fails and then prepares to blow up the alien city.

Back on the fishing ship, they think the note is just fantasy, until suddenly an underwater explosion jolts the ship, and then the note and container dissolve. They check and find out that an approaching ship is in fact carrying a shipment of aqua-ulium.

Very fun story, with some nice Kirby artwork. In particular I liked the alien city, both the city-scape views and some of the interior views, with odd bits of alien sculpture.

Published 1999

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