Daily Archives: June 3, 2005

[Video] BOB episode 15 – “You Can’t Win”

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Posted in Video.

BOB was a short-lived series starring Bob Newhart that ran from 1992 to 1993. During the first season, Newhart played a veteran comic book artist, Bob MaKay, returning to the industry to draw a revival of his character Mad Dog (the comic book angle and most of the supporting cast was dropped for the brief second season before the series was cancelled for good).

The 15th episode, broadcast on January 29, 1993, was titled “You Can’t Win” and had the cast attend a comic industry awards presentation, the fictional “Busters”, and featured several real world comic creators in cameo roles, including Jack Kirby (the others were Sergio Aragones, Bob Kane, Mel Keefer, Mell Lazarus, Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri).

In Kirby’s cameo, he’s introduced as the creator of Captain America by Lazarus and shown, wearing a tuxedo, rising from his seat (with Roz Kirby sitting next to him). Later he’s shown at the podium, with a sign showing his signature and Captain Victory behind him, announcing one of the fictional characters as the winner for best cover artist. The Kirbys are also placed so they can be seen in the background of several shots of the table of the show cast.

Who’s Who – The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #4 [1985]

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Kirby provides a single page for this issue of DC’s character database, his major 1950s project at DC, the Challengers of the Unknown. I like the composition of this one, in particular the figure of Rocky in the foreground and the various creatures they fought in the background.

Karl Kesel inked this piece.

Published 1985

[Video] The Masters of Comic Book Art

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Posted in Video.

This 1987 documentary directed by Ken Viola features interviews with ten comic book artists. Kirby is the third of them, with a one minute introduction by Harlan Ellison followed by four minutes of Kirby talking, with a mix of Kirby artwork and video of Kirby speaking on the screen.

It’s a fun but far too brief interview, very interesting especially for those of us who didn’t get a chance to meet him. He talks about his motivations in coming up with the new and different, things that hadn’t been done in comics before, to generate sales, and the biblical inspirations behind Galactus and the Silver Surfer. As he said, he was “a guy that lives with a lot of questions”, and while he didn’t come up with any answers to the big ones, he explored them in comics better than anyone.

Well worth checking out if you can as probably the most easily available video of Kirby, as well as such odd things as Ditko doing a voice-over about his beliefs over some Mr. A artwork.