Kirby’s Animation Career, by: Stan Taylor, Part 5

Jack worked for DePatie –Freleng about a year when he got a call from Ruby-Spears, another animation house.  They had pitched an idea for a cartoon called Thundarr the Barbarian, a mix of Conan, and Planet of the Apes.

Mark  Evanier recalls,“ABC was on the fence about buying the show.  Joe Ruby said we had to get more artwork done and Toth (Alex Toth) who designed the main character was not available. I recall saying, ‘Let’s get Jack Kirby.’ So Jack did a bunch of big pieces of artwork, most of which were inked by Alfredo Alcala and that closed the sale with ABC.”

Jack and Alex Toth (rhymes with both) were friends and admirers whose approach to art and storytelling were 180 degrees apart—total opposites. Alex was born in New York 10 years after Jack and spent his early years bouncing between DC Publishing and some of the smaller companies; he had moved to California and found most of his work at Dell Comics and Charlton. He also worked for animators providing production designs and character creations with Space Ghost his most notable creation. To call him curmudgeonly is being nice to curmudgeons. Yet they were good friends and admirers who just couldn’t quite grasp the others genius. Once Alex went to a barbecue over at Jack’s house and spent the day talking with Kirby.  When he left he told a companion that he didn’t know why he went, he and Jack have nothing in common. They would talk for hours at cross-purposes yet reach in many ways the same goal. Toth was cutting and gruff, while Kirby was a teddy bear of a man. Toth was minimalistic while Kirby became more detail obsessive with time. Toth was meticulous and technical, while Jack was spontaneous and free-wheeling. Toth was opinionated and hard to work with while Kirby was always polite and easy going and malleable with others.