Doesn’t look like we’ll see any more Kirby releases this year, so here’s the year-end roundup.
Book of the year, not much doubt:
THE SIMON AND KIRBY SUPERHEROES HC
Especially if you don’t have the previous FIGHTING AMERICAN reprint and the other scattered reprints of some of the other material. The presentation in this volume greatly improves on any prior reprint, of course, and there’s a lot of never-reprinted work.
No official word on what’s next for Simon’s publishing deal with Titan, although Amazon is showing both his new autobiography and an affordable paperback edition of FIGHTING AMERICAN in the first half of 2011. Hopefully we’ll get some confirmation on that soon.
TwoMorrows got out two issues of the venerable fanzine:
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #54
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #55
Along with the usual varied selection of articles and artwork, complete story reprints included three stories from Gilberton’s THE WORLD AROUND US #36 [1961] in #54 and “The Thing In The Fog” from BLACK MAGIC #7 [V2N1] [1951] in #55. Next issue promises to have some wild stuff.
Two major Kirby reprint books from DC are second and third place for book of the year:
THE BOY COMMANDOS BY SIMON & KIRBY VOL. 1 HC
THE NEWSBOY LEGION BY SIMON & KIRBY VOL. 1 HC
Lots of classic Simon&Kirby work in those. Just got my copy of the BOY COMMANDOS book, and it looks excellent. There’s a lot more BC to go (and some post-war NL), so hopefully we’ll see more volumes, although first it looks like we’ll get a KIRBY OMNIBUS collection of all of Kirby’s 1950s work for DC other than Challengers of the Unknown.
Also from DC, single 1970s Kirby stories in these collections of other material:
KOBRA: RESURRECTION TPB
SUPERMAN: THE COMING OF ATLAS TPB
And a few volumes of public domain reprints that include some Kirby. The PI book is a re-issue of the old Eclipse collection, and the IDW book includes some 1940s Kirby funny animal work. PI also had a re-issue of the Eclipse REAL LOVE on the schedule, but that seems to be running late.
TEEN-AGED DOPE SLAVES AND REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS TPB [Pure Imagination]
GOLDEN COLLECTION OF KLASSIC KRAZY KOOL KIDS COMICS [IDW]
And that brings us to Marvel, as usual with a wide variety of Kirby reprints in a wide variety of formats.
Most interesting stand-alone book was a hardcover collection of the Thor back-up series Tales of Asgard, although with some very modern colouring. Softcover coming out soon.
THOR: TALES OF ASGARD BY STAN LEE & JACK KIRBY HC
The black and white Essential line is mostly in the 1970s now, so a few books had runs with Kirby on the covers, and Captain America got into the first half of Kirby’s final run on the character:
ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA VOL. 5 TPB
ESSENTIAL AVENGERS VOL. 7 TPB
ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 8 TPB
Hardcover Masterworks line continues. Most noteworthy is that THOR v9 finishes up the Kirby run, and means just about all of Kirby’s silver age super-hero work has been reprinted in that format (with some trivial exceptions like NOT BRAND ECHH). Lots of monsters in the ASTONISH and SUSPENSE books. A few more Vision stories in the GOLDEN AGE MARVEL COMICS volume. Trivial Kirby cover work in the PANTHER and FURY books. None of the 2011 scheduled book so far have Kirby.
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: ATLAS ERA TALES TO ASTONISH VOL. 3 HC
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: BLACK PANTHER VOL. 1 HC (one Kirby cover)
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: ATLAS ERA TALES OF SUSPENSE VOL. 3 HC
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: SGT. FURY VOL. 3 HC (one Kirby cover)
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THOR VOL. 9 HC (final Kirby issues)
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: GOLDEN AGE MARVEL COMICS VOL. 5 HC (Vision)
Softcover Masterworks line continues mostly following the original release order, so lots of Kirby, a few trivial amounts. More of the same in 2011, with some Kirby in 10 of the expected volumes if they don’t shuffle the order.
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 3 TPB
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: CAPTAIN AMERICA VOL. 1 TPB
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: IRON MAN VOL. 1 TPB
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: SILVER SURFER VOL. 1 TPB
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VOL. 4 TPB (one partial cover)
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: DAREDEVIL VOL. 1 TPB (a few covers)
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THOR VOL. 1 TPB
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: SILVER SURFER VOL. 2 TPB
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 4 TPB
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: DOCTOR STRANGE VOL. 1 TPB (some covers)
Every now and then Marvel will stick a reprint in the back of a new comic for whatever reason. These aren’t always announced in advance, so I may have missed some, but
CAPTAIN AMERICA – FOREVER ALLIES #1 (reprints 1965 origin of Captain America)
GORILLA-MAN #2 (reprint from TtA #28)
GORILLA-MAN #3 (reprint from TtA #30)
STEVE ROGERS – SUPER-SOLDIER #1 (reprints 1941 origin of Captain America)
And sometimes their collections will have some small amount of Kirby, either covers or back-up material or part of a theme for the collection:
X-MEN VS. AVENGERS PREMIERE HC
X-MEN VS. FANTASTIC FOUR PREMIERE HC
AVENGERS: I AM AN AVENGER TPB
X-MEN: WE ARE THE X-MEN TPB
THOR VS. HERCULES TPB
THOR: SIEGE AFTERMATH TPB
AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN HC
THOR: IF ASGARD SHOULD PERISH HC (some Kirby covers)
THOR: THE MIGHTY AVENGER VOL. 1 TPB
Expect a lot more in 2011, especially with a number of movies based on Kirby characters coming out. Omnibus hardcovers of the first few years of Thor, the 1960s Captain America and the 1970s Captain America. A lot of other Thor books with some Kirby material.