Day 21: The Z-Ray!

Like kids grabbing a handful of candy while trick-or-treating Apokoliptian agent Simyan snags a fistful of mini-clones while his partner Mokkari zaps the tiny human replicas with the tranquilizing Z-Ray, which they hope will be as effective with (ahem) larger, more aggressive duplicates.

Yeah, Jack used just about every letter of the alphabet — English and Greek! — to name his myriad devices, whether weapons or whatnot. No doubt his criteria was: As long as it sounds cool and futuristic, it works!

If I may make an aside here, I need to confess I pondered over whether to include such apparently superfluous items as the Z-Ray in this ongoing chronological catalogue of Kirby Fourth World creations. First I considered (self-servingly) I might need to get pretty darn minute to fill 365 daily entries… I mean, c’mon, three hundred and sixty-five!… but then it occurred to me, it’s only proper and respectful of Jack’s creative output to put it all down, to begin to establish an encyclopedia, if you will, down to the nitty-gritty details of his imagination. You may say, “Really, Cooke: A ‘Green K Paralysis Ray’?” But I contend it speaks not only of his ceaseless fertile mind, but also to the actual value of his work. Super-hero accessories are potential merchandising; just ask George “The Source, I mean, Force” Lucas. So maybe, by being exact and as precise as can be, this can be a resource for multiple use — as scholarship, as testament, as inventory — all fit for a King.

6 thoughts on “Day 21: The Z-Ray!

  1. patrick ford

    That is funny, funny stuff, Richard.

    Just wanted to simply add; that is one hell of a nice panel (panel one).

    1. John S.

      Actually, the whole page is quite well done, and the colors add a nice sense of atmosphere to it. Even Colletta’s inks look fairly good. It’s remarkable how inconsistent he was, with the quality of his work varying greatly from issue to issue, page to page, sometimes even panel to panel.

      1. JonBCooke Post author

        I’ll go a step further and say the SPREAD is exceptionally executed and speaks to Jack’s ability to control the direction of our eye, the goal of any competent designer. Sorry for my crude visual notation but here’s the path of my eye, perfectly in service to the narrative. It’s a heckuva difficult feat and indicates the masterful cartoonist was also supreme in his design abilities.

        1. John S.

          I agree with your observations on those page designs, Jon. Whenever people criticized Kirby’s layouts for being too uniform, it’s obvious they were just looking at the grid patterns he used for his basic panel shapes, not the images WITHIN the panel borders, which was what he himself felt was far more important — an opinion corroborated by your diagrams here.

  2. patrick ford

    I wonder if it was about the time of Jimmy Olsen #135 when Kirby had his little chat with Colletta, as described by Evanier:

    “Significantly, when Jack and Vince had an in-person meeting about their working relationship, Colletta offended Kirby with his attitude, which Jack said was along the lines of, ‘Hey, for what this company pays, I just knock it out as fast as I can and you should do the same.'”

    Does anyone else see a very noticeable jump in quality about that time?

    When I look at the books JO #133-134, New Gods #1, Forever People #1, and Mister Miracle #1 all look sloppy compared to what Colletta did after that.
    One thing I’ve noticed studying Colletta’s inks at the Heritage Auction Archives, is Colletta, was a far better inker with a brush than he was with a pen. His penline is dead, almost like a technical pen. Maybe Jon could post a scan here?

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