![\"\"](\"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kinetics\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2012\/11\/Gorgo-pg-12.jpg\" "\\"1-Gorgo")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn panel two, Ditko uses hand gestures toward the dominant third panel, where Gorgo is seen as a full frontal figure surrounded by his human attackers. Panel four is particularly effective as we see in it the creature\u2019s profile, as he rears back to avoid the flung torches.<\/p>\n
The world at that moment had a fixation with such creatures, both in films and comic books. The company then known as Atlas Comics was making the lion\u2019s share of their sales from monster and supernatural stories, and Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby were both working with Stan Lee to produce them. This would change in the late summer of 1961, with the introduction of The Fantastic Four. Although the magazine focused on a team of superheroes, its origin, rooted in a zeitgeist of monsters cast a long shadow over the book\u2019s progress for many months.<\/p>\n
Issue #13 began to take on a more cosmic cast with the introduction of the enigmatic Watcher, a story inked by the aforementioned Steve Ditko. We may notice in the page above, an inking style well suited to the eerie landscapes of Kirby\u2019s intergalactic panoply. Given that, Ditko seems to be having trouble with the Thing\u2019s skin texture throughout the story as seen in fifth panel.<\/p>\n About two years earlier, monsters so pervaded Atlas\u2019 titles, that the editors even inserted them into their fairly successful western titles. Here below is a page from one of my favorite western stories, Kirby and Lee\u2019s Two Gun Kid #58, cover dated February 1961.<\/p>\n In this tall tale, the Kid encounters a huge saurian creature, seemingly out of time. Disappointingly, the beast turns out to be a costumed bison, but the final panel of this page displays a wonderful angle of the faux-reptile. Ably inked by Dick Ayers, Kirby sets up the tableau masterfully, as he shows us the Kid in the preceding panel emerging from a rent in the wood, his body positioned just over the tail of the creature below. The gunfighter\u2019s gesture and pose powerfully accentuate the torque of the monster in the lower panel as it faces the Kid with gaping jaws.<\/p>\n In Rawhide Kid#22, cover dated June 1961, we finally get the real deal, an actual monster in a western setting. While as usual on the run from the law, the Kid takes a dangerous job in Silver mine and is menaced by an underground creature, the Living Totem.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n