Rick Norwood’s COMICS REVUE has been reprinting comic strips for over 20 years now, including one run of Kirby’s long running comic strip, the ones after those included in the 1991 Pure Imagination SKY MASTERS magazine to the end of the strip (before Greg Theakston published THE COMPLETE SKY MASTERS). Daily strips ran in #124 – #142, #144 – #153 and CR SPECIAL #1. Sunday strips ran on the covers (usually front and back, with the front missing the “Scrap Book” footer and sometimes the cut panel) of the odd numbered issues from #145 – #191. The Sundays are still of interest even with the COMPLETE book since it’s still the only colour reprint of those pages, though the quality of the colour varies depending on the printed source. Some of them are excellent, but others are very dark, or have a lot of bleed-through from the other side, or out-of-register colours. And of course all of the issues have a lot of other great strip reprints you won’t find anywhere else.

#183 has the first two strips of the final Sunday storyline, from December 20 and 27, 1959. Astronaut Sky Masters is called in for his new mission. Apparently international playboy and yoga expert Roland Aly has shown he can use his skills to withstand pressures that no human should be able to, something that would be very useful to the space program. Sky is sent to Aly’s private island to learn these techniques.

Dick Ayers was the inker at this point, and doing an excellent job. This is some of favourite Kirby work of the era, lacking a bit of the goofy energy of the monster comics but making up for it with the dense, tight storytelling, detailed art and imaginative ideas.

Published 2001