THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST CRIME COMICS has been the best of the collections I’ve seen so far, because it includes some Simon&Kirby, namely the 14-page story “The Money-Making Machine Swindlers” from JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY #6 [1948].

The reproduction is in black and white from a printed copy, and looks pretty good for that. There are some remnants of the colouring, but light enough that they provide some shading without distracting from the linework.

The story is a confessional type, told by Prisoner 235079, Stella Brady, about how she came to be a guest of the state, your typical story of a young girl looking to escape from the drudgery of working life, witnessing a scam gone wrong involving selling gullible fools a share in a phony counterfeiting machine. Sensing that she can work the scam better, she gets in on the action and helps to set up a hotel owner with a gambling problem as the next mark. Little does she know, crime does not… oh wait, wrong company. Little does she know, justice traps the guilty.

Great little story, some prime S&K from the period when the romance comics were just taking off, with a lot in common with those stories, from the confessional narration to the attention to detail in the various characters and settings, some great storytelling punctuated by moments of sudden violence that S&K excelled at.

September 8, 1958, Jack Kirby launched his syndicated daily comic strip Sky Masters, with Dick and Dave Wood helping out on the writing end and Wallace Wood on the inks. The strip lasted a little over two years (including a year of Sunday pages).

Courtesy of Thomas Ward, here’s a gallery of Sky Masters originals.

Here’s a photo set of 91 Jack Kirby covers from throughout the years.

(Go over here if the embed thing doesn’t work)

And visit the Museum home page for more Kirby birthday links.

Opening up is “I Created Sporr, The Thing That Could Not Die” from TALES OF SUSPENSE #11 [1960], which also provides the Kirby/Ayers cover for this issue. A scientist buys the castle supposedly owned by Doctor Frankenstein in Transylvania (I think someone was mixing their movie monsters there), planning some experiments on growth rays to cure world hunger. Unfortunately, just as he tries his first experiment on an amoeba, the superstitious villagers burst in and take him away, leading the amoeba to grow uncontrollably. Oddly, this was foretold in a local legend about Sporr. Our hero manages to break out of prison, rescue a young boy on crutches and then use his scientific know-how to lure Sporr into some quicksand. Everybody learns their lesson.

These 7-pagers are sometimes a bit unsatisfying in story terms, too quick to really get more than a sketch of events. Still gorgeous, though, and the cover and title page of this story are particular favourites among the Kirby/Ayers stuff, and Sporr’s a great little creature causing havoc on the eastern European landscape.

Next up is “I Am Dragoom! The Flaming Invader” from STRANGE TALES #76 [1960], and from an organic monster we now move to flames. Despite the title, this story is told by sci-fi/horror movie maker Victor Cartwright, who gets no respect, but a great deal of money, for his craft. That all changes when Dragoom, a flaming invader escaped from prison on the planet Vulcan comes to Earth to conquer. Mankind quickly falls to the threat of a ring of flames around the planet, until suddenly Dragoom gets word of some of his fellow creatures, police from Vulcan, arriving on Earth, and flees in fear. All special effects wizardry from Victor, of course.

This one works pretty well. Dragoom’s not that noteworthy, although the panel of him using a city block as a throne is really cool.

And finally, from STRANGE TALES #75 [1960] comes “Taboo! The Thing From the Murky Swamp”. An adventure writer heads down to the Amazon for some new ideas, and ignores local legends about a monster in a forbidden swamp. Never a good idea:

I love that last panel. Silent panels like that aren’t too common in these monster stories, making them all the more striking when they are used.

The creature reveals that it crashed in the swamp while journeying from a distant galaxy, and needed access to all human scientific knowledge to build a new spaceship. The United Nations agrees to this, foolishly as it turns out, since this was all a ruse by Taboo to gather intelligence for an invasion. Joke’s on him, as they planted an H-bomb on the device with the information. Just in case.

I do like that ending. Taboo’s okay, but the real highlight here is the amazon scenery.

Thanks to Tim in the comments. It’s a 14-page story from JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY #6 [1948], “The Money-Making Machine Swindlers”. Never before reprinted, as far as I know.

This story is the third published “extrapolation” from Kirby’s unfinished novel THE HORDE! that Janet Berliner has written and had published (the previous two were “Shadow Of The Falcon” and “The Conversion Of Tegujai Batir“). You can read more about THE HORDE in this article from TJKC #32.

I’m sure people were building lists and trying to keep track of everything Kirby did going back to the 1940s (for all I know the 1930s, depending on how dedicated his mom was), and as fanzines and APAs grew around comics there were more doubt more and more attempts to nail down every detail of his long and varied career, as well as more general publications and price guides documenting that information (since hey, if you want to up the price of something, no better way than to point out Jack Kirby drew it).

As far as I know the first widely available attempt at a comprehensive checklist was Greg Theakston’s attempt in his two volumes of THE JACK KIRBY TREASURY (v1, 1982, Pure Imagination and v2, 1991, Eclipse), which in addition to presenting an extensive biography of Kirby up to 1961 and the dawn of the “Marvel Age” also provided the first two parts of a massive illustrated checklist, A-J and L-S in the two volumes. The third book never did come out, though not for a lack of Theakston publishing books about Kirby. That checklist focused on original material, with issues, dates, story titles and page counts.

Theakston’s list is among the primary sources for the checklist in the back of the 1992 book from Blue Rose Press, ART OF JACK KIRBY. The 24-page checklist compiled by Ray Wyman, Catherine Hohlfield and Robert Crane, also adds in inker credits and reprints, cross-referenced with the original printings, and sets the form used by the checklist to this day.

Not really fitting in this history, but I got AoJK a few years after it came out, and discovered all sorts of Kirby stuff from that checklist, and around 1996 put together a bunch of notes made from that, Theakston’s list, my own collection and various other sources and put together what I confidently called “The Incomplete and Error-Filled Kirby Checklist”, a barebones checklist (book and issue number only) for online distribution in various venues. Around 2500 entries when I started, the spreadsheet I built it on is still the basis of the one I use for the regular posts on this weblog. When I do regular posts on this weblog. I’ll get back to that someday, I promise…

Anyway, that brings us to 1997, when the folks at TwoMorrows decided that their by-then well-established and rapidly expanding magazine THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR wasn’t enough decided to update the Kirby Checklist. Richard Kolkman answered the call, tweaking the format of the previous list and and in short order we got first THE JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST BETA VERSION (Nov. 1997) and then THE JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST 1998 UPDATED EDITION, the first a magazine sized 48-page updating of the checklist, adding many entries and sections on Kirby’s comic strip work, magazines and books with Kirby content, animation work, unpublished work and more, and the second a 108-page digest sized version incorporating additions and corrections made since the first. I vaguely recall at some point there was an electronic version of the checklist that made the rounds to gather corrections and additions, but if there was I no longer have a copy. Anyway, these two also feature an unnamed robot in a pencil drawing by Kirby, who I guess is the Rigellian Recorder tasked with recording Kirby’s output. Ah, the one sent with Thor to explore Ego the Living Planet didn’t know how easy he had it.

That brings us to THE JACK KIRBY 1998 FINAL EDITION, a 100-page comic-book sized version of the index, now closer to complete than ever, especially with the expansion of the extra sections on Kirby in books, magazines, unpublished work and more. And also a list of the story codes used for Kirby’s 1970s work at DC, which provide some interesting information on the order things were done, and some possibly still missing work. Photo cover of Kirby this time around, although our busy Recorder friend (who I just realized could be called Kolk-Man) is on the inside back cover.

But of course, more info pops up, and new books come out, so 2001 saw the now-tabloid sized THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #31 include an 18-page update to the checklist, including a few minor deletions and a lot of additions.

And now comes THE JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST GOLD EDITION, a 132-page book available in print and PDF format, detailing more Kirby than ever before. Same photo cover as the 1998 edition, and our robot pal is safely inside, and this time there’s also a list of what’s in the archives of Kirby’s pencil art copies that has provided such a wealth information on his work process and debate about the quality of various inkers (and scans of many of the pages are available at the Kirby Museum). This should provide all sorts of aid in tracking down Kirby comics and understanding the depth of his career. Of course, there’s no doubt more to be found, and publishers aren’t going to quit printing Kirby any time soon, so updates will be available at the Kirby Museum.

And in the future, well, an update for Kirby’s 100th in 2017 makes sense. Of course, by then kids will probably get all their information in easy to swallow pill form, so the checklist will be a delicious pill imprinted with Kirby-tech. Delivered to you on your home on Mars. By a giant Kirby-designed robot.

But for now, hats off to everyone who contributed to this massive tribute to all facets of Kirby’s career, especially our robot friend Richard Kolkman, and I’m glad to have been a small part of it.