Pure Imagination has a reprint book titled YOUNG LOVE on the schedule now. Since the cover is the same as the book REAL LOVE that was scheduled last year, but evidently never came out, I’ll assume REAL LOVE was cancelled. Still no idea if the contents, should the book ever come out, will duplicate the 1988 Eclipse published book of the same name.
So, it appears the next book from Joe Simon’s on-going deal with Titan Books is going to be a softcover release of FIGHTING AMERICAN. This will be the same material that appeared the recent S&K SUPERHEROES book, presumably the same restorations but at a slightly smaller page size. Great material, and this format should appeal more to the casual fan than the big $40-$50 hardcovers, but I hope we get more from the vast library of unreprinted S&K work soon.
FIGHTING AMERICAN
by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
The complete adventures of the quirky Cold War superhero, launched in 1954 by the creators of Captain America, are presented here in an affordable graphic novel format, with weird and wonderful characters like Yucha Liffso, Jiseppi the Jungle Boy, and Poison Ivan! These are the explosive adventures of the Cold War’s answer to Captain America, by the great comics duo of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby!
Softcover, 7×10, 200pgs, Full Colour $19.95
Diamond Comics – JAN111320
ISBN – 978-0857681157
A bunch of new Marvel books announced for March and beyond. A reprint of CAPTAIN AMERICA #1, looks like it’ll be full of that modern colouring if you’re into that kind of thing. Some Kirby covers in the Avengers and Thing books listed below, and one or two Kirby stories at either the front or back of some collections of Captain America, Thor and the Fantastic Four.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1: 70TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Written by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY
Penciled by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY
Colored by ROB SCHWAGER, ANDRES MOSSA, FABIO D’AURIA, VERONICA GANDINI, NATHAN FAIRBAIRN, MATT MILLA & FABIO D’AURIA
Cover by BRIAN CHING
Variant Cover by JOE SIMON, JACK KIRBY & KAI SPANNUTH
Timely Comics introduces a new hero for a new decade, the man called Captain America! The Wonder Serum creates a Super Soldier to save society and win the war! Plus: Satan’s Murder Mob! Schickegruber’s Sinister Saboteurs! J. Edgar’s Gorgeous G-Girls! Ancient enigmas and modern miracles, and the mysterious life and death of the Red Skull! With a special guest appearance by the president of the United States!
64 PGS./$4.99
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE AVENGERS VOL. 3 TPB
Written by STAN LEE
Penciled by DON HECK
Cover by JACK KIRBY & DEAN WHITE
Man, Thor, Giant-Man and the Wasp with a trio of former super villains, readers thought he’d gone mad. As it turned out, the only thing crazy about the adventures of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was how insanely exciting the lineup of Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch became! With super-sized conflict within the team and colossal menaces without, the drama made every issue a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat extravaganza. Classic stories including battles with Kang the Conqueror, Doctor Doom, Power Man and the Enchantress, and Attuma will prove that the Avengers are the world’s preeminent heroes — while revelations like Captain America’s departure will test the team at its most fundamental level. But it won’t just be Cap’s Kooky Quartet against the world forever. In these pages, you’ll see also the return of Giant-Man and the Wasp, and Hank Pym’s transformation into Goliath! And with the first appearances of the Collector, the Swordsman and the Sons of the Serpent — not to mention the entrance of the Black Widow into the Avengers’ world — there’s no questioning this collection’s a MARVEL MASTERWORKS! Collecting AVENGERS #21-30.
224 PGS./All Ages $24.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5057-2
THING: LIBERTY LEGION PREMIERE HC
Written by ROY THOMAS
Penciled by JOHN BUSCEMA, SAL BUSCEMA, RICH BUCKLER, DICK AYERS, FRANK ROBBINS & DON HECK
Covers by JACK KIRBY
Move over Invaders: It’s the Liberty Legion, America’s home-front super heroes of World War II! Miss America! The Whizzer! Thin Man! Red Raven! And more! But when things get tough, they may need some help from the future in the form of the Thing and the Fantastic Four! When Nazis threaten to rule the world, the heroes scramble to save the day! Featuring the villainy of the Red Skull, Brain Drain, U-Man and more! Collecting INVADERS (1975) #5-6, MARVEL PREMIERE #29-30, FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #11, and MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #20 and ANNUAL #1
168 PGS./$24.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5515-7
Trim size: standard
THOR THE MIGHTY AVENGER VOL. 2 GN-TPB
Written by ROGER LANGRIDGE
Penciled by CHRIS SAMNEE
Cover by CHRIS SAMNEE
Harvey Award-winner Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee continue their epic reimagining of the God of Thunder as Thor tests his might against the strange and powerful Sub-Mariner; uncovers the mystery of why he was thrown from Asgard, but has his efforts sidetracked by the awesome engine of destruction known as Fin Fang Foom; does battle with raging robots; and fights side-by-side with Iron Man, for the very first time! Pick up the book that ComicBook Resources.com says is “quite possibly the best new super-hero title of the year and is exactly what any lover of super heroes should be reading.” Plus: Relive classic early adventures of Thor from the inimitable team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby! Collecting THOR THE MIGHTY AVENGER #5-8 and JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #85-86.
128 PGS./$14.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4122-8
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE LEGACY OF CAPTAIN AMERICA TPB
Written by JOE SIMON, JACK KIRBY, ROY THOMAS, STEVE ENGLEHART, STAN LEE, MARK GRUENWALD & ED BRUBAKER
Penciled by JOE SIMON, JACK KIRBY, SAL BUSCEMA, FRANK ROBBINS, JOHN ROMITA, TOM MORGAN & STEVE EPTING
Cover by MIKE ZECK
Captain America — a hero for the ages, no matter who’s behind the mask! In 1941, watch as Cap and Bucky take on the Red Skull for the first time! Learn the secrets of the men who wore the mask after Cap died! In 1987, witness Johnny Walker become a government-sponsored Cap! And in 2008, see the long-thought-dead Bucky take over as the new Cap! Plus: one young man who donned the mask for only a day! Collecting CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS (1941) #1, WHAT IF? (1977) #4, CAPTAIN AMERICA (1968) #155 and #333, CAPTAIN AMERICA (2005) #34, and material from CAPTAIN AMERICA (1968) #178-183.
136 PGS./$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5092-3
FANTASTIC FOUR: EXTENDED FAMILY TPB
Written by STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS, JOHN BYRNE, STEVE ENGLEHART, WALTER SIMONSON, TOM DEFALCO, DWAYNE MCDUFFIE, CARLOS PACHECO, RAFAEL MARIN & JEPH LOEB
Penciled by JACK KIRBY, JOHN BUSCEMA, RICH BUCKLER, JOHN BYRNE, ART ADAMS, PAUL PELLETIER & STUART IMMONEN
Cover by STEVE EPTING
For decades, Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing have stood together as comics’ first family of super heroes! But even a family of heroes needs help, and the FF have often bolstered their ranks with friends and allies from throughout the Marvel Universe! Crystal! Medusa! Luke Cage! She-Hulk! Ms. Marvel! Spider-Man! Wolverine! Hulk! Ghost Rider! Ant-Man! Black Panther! Storm! Namorita! Witness the debuts of the Fantastic Four’s fill-in members! Collecting FANTASTIC FOUR (1961) #1, #81, #132, #168, #265, #307, #347, #384 and #544; and FANTASTIC FOUR (1998) #42.
232 PGS./$24.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5303-0
Among the stories reprinted in THE BOY COMMANDOS BY JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY #1 [2010] is the never-before-reprinted “A Break For Santa” from DETECTIVE COMICS #71 [1943].
Yes, even dressed as Santa with the rest of the Boy Commandos, Brooklyn isn’t taking off that derby hat. Though I wonder what baseball results he’s looking for around Christmas…
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.
This popped up on Amazon recently, but now there are some details:
THE JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS VOL. 1 STARRING GREEN ARROW HC
Writers: Various
Artist: Jack Kirby
Collects: Stories from REAL FACT COMICS, HOUSE OF MYSTERY, HOUSE OF SECRETS, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, MY GREATEST ADVENTURE, ALL-STAR WESTERN, ADVENTURE COMICS and WORLD’S FINEST COMICS
$49.99 US, 304 pg, on sale July 2011
This should be every bit of Kirby work for DC in the 1950s other than the already twice-reprinted CHALLENGERS run, plus a handful of pages from REAL FACT in the 1940s. Very good stuff, a lot of it never reprinted before.
Probably the last major Kirby publication of the year, DC’s first volume of the S&K classic BOY COMMANDOS is out this week, featuring the early adventures of the team from their debut in Detective through the first two issues of their solo series. Over two-thirds of this book has material never reprinted since it was first published.
Also out recently, THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #55 has the usual selection of art and articles, with an emphasis on Kirby’s Hollywood related material, including his later animation work. Also included is a reprint of “The Thing In The Fog” from BLACK MAGIC #7 [1951].
We’ve also had the usual assortment of Marvel reprints lately, all listed here. Most notably, the last few issues of Kirby’s run on THOR are now available in the hardcover Masterworks series. I think that’s the last of the Silver Age super-hero stuff from Kirby to appear in that format. Still a lot of sci-fi/fantasy, western and romance work to go, of course.
Some people may have had it in advance, but this past week saw the official release of THE SIMON & KIRBY SUPERHEROES 480-page hardcover. Got my copy on Wednesday, and it’s a gorgeous book as you’d expect from the precedent Titan set with THE BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY last year.
A lot of details on the contents of the book from Harry Mendryk over here. Harry did the art restoration for the book, and if you compare this to things like the 1989 Marvel FIGHTING AMERICAN book or the 2004 Archie reprint of THE ADVENTURES OF THE FLY you’ll see the quality of his work. Better than having the original comics, and at a fraction of the price.
Several sites on-line have been given sample stories from the book to share:
Captain 3-D in “The Man From The World Of D”
Stuntman in “Curtain Call For Death”
The Fly in “The Strange New World Of The Fly”
Stuntman in “Rest Camp For Criminals” and Private Strong in “Ultra-Sonic Spies”
The 480-page Titan hardcover THE SIMON & KIRBY SUPERHEROES, featuring Fighting American, Stuntman, The Fly, Captain 3-D, Private Strong, The Black Owl and The Vagabond Prince (and a Neil Gaiman introduction), should be available in comic book stores this Thursday. Hopefully it’ll show up sooner rather than later from other sources (especially since that includes my order…), but it should be everywhere by the end of the month, at least.
If you’re going to be around Vermont’s Center For Cartoon Studies in the next little while, check out the “Mentors and Monsters” art exhibit, featuring art from the collection of Steve Bissette. There’s a Kirby/Ayers original there (see the link for a taste of it), plus work by Jack Davis, Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, Alex Toth, Sam Glanzman, Al Williamson, Bernie Wrightson and others. Exhibit opens Friday, September 3, including a talk by Bissette, and you can also go see it Saturdays until October 16.