Monthly Archives: August 2005

Thor and the Recorder are off to confront the Ego, the Living Planet this issue, one of Kirby’s most audacious villains of the era, in a reprint of “Behold, The Living Planet” from THOR #133 (1966). Edited reprint, of course, cutting out the second page of a two-page spread, moving a word balloon over. Still looks good, but the original is spectacular, one of the best of Kirby’s two-pagers.

It’s really a mile-a-minute in this era of Thor, if a Thunder God and an alien archivist fighting against the humanoid anti-bodies of a living planet in the Black Galaxy in order to save Earth from the colonizers of Rigel isn’t enough, there’s also a stop along the way to set up the next story, which has Jane Foster going to interview for a job with someone who turns out to be the High Evolutionary.

The cover is also from #133, but another, clearer face of Ego is in place of the original. Looks like it might have been pasted up and retouched from an interior panel in this or another story.

Also this issue, “Gather, Warriors”, a Tales of Asgard story from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #119 (1965), as the many heroes of Asgard join the quest that Thor and Loki are leading. This story introduces the trio who would become known as the Warriors Three, Hogun the Grim, Frandal the Dashing and of course…

Volstagg the Enormous. Of course he would be the source of comedy gold in future issues of the book, and starts off great in his debut.

Published 1973

88 years ago today, Jacob Kurtzberg was born. I hope to get a special post done later today, but until then I’ve updated the indices of posts over on the sidebar, alphabetical and chronological, so feel free to look at a few random entries among those 445 books with Kirby work.

Real life got in the way of writing what I wanted to for today, so I’ll save that for the first anniversary of this site in a few weeks. Lots of other Kirby stuff to read on the web today, including:

The opening of the Kirby Museum site
Mark Evanier’s thoughts
Kirby rarities at Dial B for Blog
BeaucoupKevin’s thoughts
Nemed House (for you German speakers)
Tom Spurgeon’s thoughts

Following the events of the previous issue, OMAC heads down the subway in pursuit of kidnappers who steal young bodies to sell to the old rich. One of those non-stop action bits with a few weird concepts thrown in. I love that classic style Kirby tech in the medical equipment, and of course OMAC busting through a wall shaking off a crowd of villains is excellent (although the one exclaiming that “He’s a one-man army” seems a bit forced).

D. Bruce Berry inks the cover and the 18-page story. This was in the era of shrinking page counts at DC, so the two-page spread meant for pages 2/3 was shrunk down to a single panel on what was page 4. The original panel that was replaced appears in TJKC #17.

Published 1975