Strange Tales #144 [1966] – The Day of the Druid

by

Kirby does layouts for the 12-page SHIELD story in this issue, with Howard Purcell providing finished pencils and Mike Esposito inking. Esposito also inks Kirby on the cover.

The story introduces a new menace, the Druid, who uses magical trappings to disguise his high-tech science weapons. One of those weapons is a giant flying egg full of various weapons, which pursues Nick and Dum-Dum. Couple of good scenes during the chase, including the trademark flying SHIELD car with the flipped wheels (which is also on the cover). It also predicts the use of airbags in cars (were those ever used in practice before 1966?).

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The end of the story takes us back to the SHIELD barbershop, and introduces new recruit Jasper Sitwell, who would become a major player in future issues.

Published 1966

3 thoughts on “Strange Tales #144 [1966] – The Day of the Druid

  1. James Burns

    I would love to see how loose the “layouts” that Kirby did for this. The pages still have a lot of his dynamic power…

    Do pencils exist for this kind of work?

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  2. Bob Post author

    I don’t recall ever seeing any of the layouts for the SHIELD stories, but a handful for DAREDEVIL and the later X-MEN issues have been in the KIRBY COLLECTOR. Generally they seem to have sparser figures, sometimes just about stick figures with labels, but more copious margin notes.

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  3. dave

    As Fury notes, airbags were being “experimented” with by airlines at the time… given Kirby’s reading habits, I’m sure he came across an article in a magazine like Popular Science talking about using them in cars “in the future”… maybe even those flying cars we kept hearing about!

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