Minor pair of Kirby reprints in March of next year. The Sandman book is obviously because the character is in the next Spider-Man movie, and just has one Kirby FF. I believe the only Kirby in the USA COMICS collection is from the first issue, the cover and two interior pages.
SPIDER-MAN: SAGA OF THE SANDMAN TPB
Written by STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS, TOM DEFALCO & KURT BUSIEK
Penciled by STEVE DITKO, JACK KIRBY, HERB TRIMPE, ROSS ANDRU, RON WILSON & PAT OLLIFFE
Cover by MARK BROOKS
It was no day at the beach when criminal Flint Marko was mutated into one of Marveldom’s most versatile villains and began a career of kicking sand in our favorite heroes’ faces! Some of the best battles between Sandman, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and the Hulk are collected here in commemoration of his gritty film debut! Collecting AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #4 and #18-19, FANTASTIC FOUR #61, INCREDIBLE HULK #138, MARVEL TEAM-UP #1, MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #86, and UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN #3.
176 PGS. $19.99
ISBN: 0-7851-2497-7
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: GOLDEN AGE USA COMICS VOL. 1
By JACK KIRBY, JOE SIMON, CHARLES NICHOLAS, AL AVISON, PHIL STURM, SYD SHORES, STAN LEE, BASIL WOLVERTON, MIKE ROY, FRANK GIACOIA, AL EADEH, ED WINIARSKI, GEORGE KLEIN, MIKE SEKOWSKY & AL GABRIELE
Cover by JACK KIRBY & JOE SIMON
Marvel proudly presents more Golden Age goodness, collecting issues #1-4 of USA COMICS from 1941. The Defender! Major Liberty! Rockman! Rusty! The original Young Avenger! The origins of the Whizzer, Jack Frost and the Vagabond! Captain Terror turns back a deadly Nazi undersea invasion! Stan “The Man” himself chronicles the historic first meeting of the USA heroes! This hardcover collection remasters and restores these early adventures, some reprinted for the very first time!
280 PGS./Rated A …$59.99
ISBN: 0-7851-2478-0
DC’s officially announced the first of what I think will be four volumes collecting the Fourth World books in order and in colour. And it looks like they’re coming in at a surprisingly low price of just $50 for almost 400 pages each. Looks very promising.
But Omnibus sounds like something the Hairies would drive around in.
JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOL. 1
Written by Jack Kirby; Art and cover by Kirby and Vince Colletta
After co-creating a number of legendary comic book heroes — including The Fantastic Four and The Hulk — legendary writer/artist Jack Kirby came to DC Comics in 1970 to create his magnum opus: four interlocked adventure series that were known collectively as “The Fourth World.”
Now, for the first time, DC collects Kirby’s four series — THE NEW GODS, THE FOREVER PEOPLE, MISTER MIRACLE and SUPERMAN’S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN — in chronological order as they originally appeared. These comics spanned galaxies, from the streets of Metropolis to the far-flung worlds of New Genesis and Apokolips, as cosmic-powered heroes and villains struggled for supremacy.
THE FOURTH WORLD VOL. 1 features the debuts of Orion of the New Gods, the evil Darkseid, super-escape artist Mister Miracle and many others, and features numerous appearances by Superman, from the pages of SUPERMAN’S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN #133-139, FOREVER PEOPLE #1-3, NEW GODS #1-3 and MISTER MIRACLE #1-3!
DC Universe 396pg. Colour $49.99 US
On Sale May 30, 2007
A few things to add to the Kirby release list. Should just be a few mostly trivial entries left to come out this year, bringing the Kirby release count for the year to about 50 entries, a few just a page or two but some containing hundreds of pages never before reprinted and cover a wide cross-section of Kirby’s career and in many formats.
STAN LEE MEETS DR. DOOM #1 is the second of these one-shots to include a Kirby reprint, in this case FF #87. MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE MIGHTY THOR VOL. 5 has some great mid-1960s Kirby, some of it never reprinted in colour before. And apparently MEN OF MYSTERY: CHAMPIONS COLLECTION VOLUME 1 TP came out from AC. Anyone have a description of the Kirby content?
More of the toyline tie-in story pencilled by Kirby. The group of heroes going after the pod of Darkseid that landed in New York consists of Hawkman, the Red Tornado and Green Arrow, and they find the pod in the subway, defended by Kalibak. The pod transports them all 75 million years into the past, where they battle dinosaurs, some of whom also go through the time portal to modern New York where Aquaman and J’onn J’onzz arrive from their mission in England in time to keep them in control.
Another scene setting up the next issue has the team of Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Dr. Fate tracking down another pod to Easter Island, while on Darkseid’s moon base we find out that DeSaad has his own plans to betray Darkseid.
None of the main heroes this time really fit well with Kirby’s style (I do like his version of Dr. Fate in one brief scene, though). Still, there are some nice scenes with Darkseid and DeSaad, and Kirby dinosaurs are always some fun.
Greg Theakston inks the cover and 24-page story.
Published 1985
Two pages of the final Sunday storyline for Sky Masters on the covers of this issue, from January 31 and February 7, 1960. It should be noted that the January 31 strip (shown here) was for some reason missing from the COMPLETE SKY MASTERS book, so I think this is the only place it’s ever been reprinted. Also note that as the COMPLETE book shows much of the art on the February 7 strip was made of images taken from earlier strips, and I’m not sure if that’s the case with the January 31 strip. Quite a few of those are generic enough headshots that they could be, while the meteor scenes at least are probably original.
In any case, in these two weeks the situation goes from bad to worse for our astronauts, as their stranded capsule with only hours of air and no plan for rescue finds itself in the path of a meteor. They abandon ship and are left floating in space, with a slim hope that a ship returning from the moon can intercept them, and Sky trying to teach Falcone the yoga lessons he learned to keep them alive long enough.
Check out H’s long detailed post about Kirby’s 1950s Green Arrow stories over at The Comic Treadmill.
http://www.comictreadmill.com/CTMBlogarchives/2006/2006_Individual/2006_12/001275.php
Kirby drew the cover for this later issue of the Simon&Kirby edited title, as well as two 5-page stories. The shorter length stories generally aren’t my favourites, as they tend to be a bit sketchy in plotting, lacking any real characterization or resolution, although often having a few good images. This pair are typical examples.
First up is “An Eye for an Eye”, which is also the cover image (which pretty much gives away any surprise there was in the ending, although it wasn’t a great mystery. It is a great cover, though). A dying rich man, Roger Parris, refuses permission for his eyes to be transplanted to someone else after he dies, insisting he wouldn’t give up anything without getting full value in return.
After his death his assistant, Philip Stern, forges a note giving permission for the transplant, which the doctor quickly performs. When the police discover the forgery they try to find the assistant, only to find that he’s been moving from place to place, always vanishing shortly after a visit from a man in dark glasses before the police get there. Finally they police find the assistant with his eyes removed, and just catch a glimpse of the mysterious man, who looks like Roger Parris, except with Stern’s blue eyes (miscoloured brown in the last panel).
Obviously no real surprise in the quick ending, and the colouring mistake doesn’t help, but even with that the art does have some moments, none better than that creepy first panel.
Later in the issue is “Alive After Five Thousand Years”, a story about two archaeologists who find mummy in a cave, along with a sacrificial dagger and some scrolls that explain that the body is a man condemned for loving a princess (whose mummy was found the previous year and is in a museum in Cairo) and for stealing the Book of the Dead. The younger archaeologist ignores the warnings of his elder and reads the Book of the Dead scroll, bringing the mummy to life and driving the young man insane.
The police don’t believe the story, but eventually the mummy of the princess also vanishes from the museum, with the guard having been killed with the sacrificial dagger and a handprint identical to the one left by the original mummy’s hand left on the sarcophagus.
Mostly good moody artwork (although a few panels look a bit rushed or poorly inked), but the story does need a few more pages and more of a resolution than it had.
Published 1954
You’d think by 1959 a comic book publisher could have figured out how to put the comics code stamp on a cover without making it look like the book is called GUNSMOKB WESTERN, wouldn’t you?
Anyway, another of Kirby’s covers early on his return to Marvel, featuring two characters he didn’t draw interiors for but drew on a lot of covers. Split covers like this always look a bit cramped, but in this case I like how it emphasizes the tall, lanky look of Earp and the crowding of the group around Kid Colt.
Inking on this one is credited to Chris Rule.
Published 1959
A couple of minor Kirby releases recently. ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA VOL. 3 TPB didn’t use Kirby art on the cover as the solicitation suggested but does include the cover to CAPTAIN AMERICA SPECIAL #2, which uses the art from TALES OF SUSPENSE #74. So there’s a trivial entry for a Kirby checklist, a reprint of a reprint cover as the end of a 500 page book.
Also out recently. MARVEL WESTERNS HC includes the same reprint backups as the various one-shots released earlier this year.