Monthly Archives: April 2005

One of the more obscure of his characters Kirby was called upon to illustrate for DC’s first WHO’S WHO series was Crazy Quilt, a villain who first appeared in a few post-war BOY COMMANDOS issues with some different costumes.

From the write-up, he appears to have returned as a semi-regular Batman villain at some point, which I didn’t know, hence Batman and Robin appearing in the drawing rather than the Boy Commandos. It’s a pretty good drawing, although the main image is a bit plain, but the background drawings are nice.

Greg Theakston inked this piece.

Published 1985

One of Kirby’s few full-scripting jobs at Marvel during his longest stay there was the Inhumans half of AMAZING ADVENTURES for the first four issues. In this one, the Inhumans are observed by the Iron Man villain the Mandarin as they attack a digging site too close to the Great Refuge. The Mandarin attacks them and is defeated by Black Bolt, but the attack raises his curiousity about the site, as the Mandarin (who actually sent in a robot version of himself) planned.

The Inhumans finish the excavation, finding an ancient statue containing the Eye of Yin, which the Mandarin wants to use to rule the world, and the Eye comes to life.

This is pretty good, although as people would learn soon enough Kirby had much more imaginative ideas that he was waiting for the right venue to explore at the time.
When I first read this I wondered if maybe Kirby intended the villain to be Doctor Doom originally (did the Mandarin ever use robot doubles before this?) and wasn’t allowed to use the character, who was just given a solo series in the other half-book ASTONISHING TALES.

Chic Stone inks the 10-page story, and does a good job, although I didn’t like it quite as much as some of the work he did when he was briefly inking almost all of Kirby’s output for a few months back in the mid-1960s.

Published 1970

In the middle of the big Inhumans introductory story in this issue, starting with Ben going head-to-head with Black Bolt, being slightly unnerved by Black Bolt’s silence. In the middle of the fight Triton is forced to retreat to the water, where he’s taken prisoner by the Seeker, who also breaks into the Baxter Building to capture the sedated Dragon Man, who he mistakenly thinks might be an Inhuman.

After Black Bolt depletes his energy with one big shot at Ben, Karnak calls up Lockjaw to hold Ben back while they retreat, and of course any scene with both Ben and Lockjaw is worth seeing.

The Inhumans escape, and returning to the Baxter Building the FF see that the Dragon Man was taken and follow the trail to the Seeker’s lair. He gives them a quick and not entirely reliable history of the Inhumans, then the Dragon Man wakes up, enraged, and escapes, with Triton’s water-filled cage collapsing leaving him dying without water.

Some quick mile-a-minute plotting going on here, and lots of new characters being introduced. It’s interesting seeing how minor changes would be made in the Inhumans from one story to the next, really streamlining and improving their looks. Joe Sinnott inks story, on his third issue as regular inker, definitely settling in quickly. The Kirby Checklist lists the cover as Kirby/Giacoia/Sinnott (it’s Black Bolt surrounded by floating heads of the FF and other Inhumans), not sure what the division there is, but Ben’s almost definitely inked by Sinnott, and I’m pretty sure about the rest of the FF too.

Published 1966

Two vintage Kirby stories, plus other neat stuff, in the first issue of this reprint series from a decade ago.

The first Kirby story is “What Lurks on Channel X?” from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #73 (1961), inked by Dick Ayers, previously covered in another reprint from FEAR #5.

Next up is “I Fought the Molten Man-Thing”, 5 pages inked by Steve Ditko, from TALES OF SUSPENSE #7 (1960). It features a pilot, Frank Harper, who loses his nerve after an emergency landing. Taking a tropic vacation to recharge, he witnesses a volcano eruption out of which a creature of lava emerges.

He leads the creature to an airfield, where he puts it straight in the path of a wind-tunnel, where the intense cold forces it back and it retreats to the volcano. Apparently he reasoned that there must have been a creature under the lava that needed extreme heat to survive, and would retreat from the cold. This also restores his self-confidence so he can fly again.

It’s a bit of a quickie, so nothing is really fleshed out, but the Kirby/Ditko combination always looks nice. I especially like the third panel of the page above, with Harper leading the Man-Thing away from the village to the air field. Unfortunately this reprint isn’t from the best source material, so a lot of the finer line-work vanishes. Reportedly Marvel is planning a reprint of the early TALES TO ASTONISH, which would have a lot of nice Kirby and Ditko work, hopefully they’ll be able to reconstruct them better than this (I know some of the original art from that era still exists, I’ve seen a lot of them in auctions, but I don’t know about those specific stories).

Also in this issue, two Ditko solo reprints from the same era, a weird brand-new Ditko pin-up page and a Kyle Baker monster cover.

Published 1993