2013 – A Kirby Odyssey

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(I know, this is technically a year late, but retro-actively dated. Somehow I forgot to post this at the end of 2013)

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Big year for for Kirby reprints, the book of the year was easily  Titan’s THE SIMON & KIRBY LIBRARY: SCIENCE FICTION, which included some remarkable 1950s work, better than it ever looked. Those Al Williamson inked stories are just amazing. Following very close behind is the IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB collection from DC, which includes the mostly completely unpublished (and hard to find in the places where parts of it were published) second issue with Mike Royer inks. Gorgeous. DC’s second JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS was mostly leftovers, interesting but hardly essential, including a lot of stuff Kirby drew but didn’t write, or only plotted, but there are a few jems in there like Atlas, Manhunter and Dingbats from the 1970s (unfortunately none of the unpublished Dingbats stuff known to exist). There were also two issues of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR in the year, with lots of interesting art.

Marvel has it’s usual large selection of books with some Kirby, ranging from the entire book to a a handful of covers, most of it already reprinted multiple times. Probably the most interesting was the ORIGIN OF THE INHUMANS book, which collects the various issues from the middle of Kirby’s FANTASTIC FOUR run featuring the characters, and the back-ups from THOR.

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