One of Simon&Kirby’s non-Captain America covers at Timely, with some cool monsters coming out of the Trunk of Terror. And Hitler, too. The Destroyer is one of those characters who didn’t seem to catch on, though he did last for a while in various wartime books. I think it was the striped pants, makes it hard to take him seriously.
Published 1941
If a lot of the entries in the near future seem familiar, I’m going to be re-posting some of the covers I’d previously including in multi-cover gallery posts so I have a unique URL for each one, and maybe adding a few more detailed comments.
Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta provide the cover for this Marvel romance comic. I really like the movie poster style on this one, with just a hint of what the actual story might be about. A nice change from the exposition and blurb heavy usual style. This is one of my favourite of the roughly two dozen romance covers Kirby did at Marvel.
Update from the comments, the background figure is actually taken from Kirby’s cover to LR #85, and it’s not clear if the foreground figures are original or modified from a Kirby drawing or from elsewhere. Let us know what you think.
Published 1961
Out this week, Marvel Masterworks: Tales to Astonish Vol. 1, a reprint of the first 10 issues of the series from 1959/1960. Eight stories, nine covers by Kirby, plus lots of other interesting stuff.
Go here for more on the book, including previews of many pages.
![Marvel's Greatest Comics #29 [1970]a](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Marvels-Greatest-Comics-29-1970a.jpg)
With this issue MGC went from a general Marvel reprint title to all FF all the time, two stories per issue. Bit of an oddity in the transition, instead of continuing chronologically from where #28 left off (FF #36) this one goes back and reprints FF #12 (which had somehow skipped being reprinted before this) and FF #31 (which had just been reprinted in MGC #23 a year before). The chronological reprints resume next issue.
Anyway, from FF #12 (1963) is “The Incredible Hulk”, first published the same month as HULK #6, the final issue of the series. Apparently there was some confusion going on, as Kirby draws the Hulk with less than the regulation number of fingers and toes throughout the story, perhaps thinking of the Thing.
The story opens with Ben and Alicia walking home from the symphony when Ben is attacked by the army, who for some reason were looking for the Hulk in New York, and obviously had a bad description. The army is called off when a captain realizes the mistake, and later Thunderbolt Ross recruits the FF to destroy the Hulk, who seems to be destroying various missile installations. The FF take the newly redesigned Fantasti-Car to the desert, where they meet Bruce Banner and Rick Jones. Rick is soon taken hostage by the real saboteur, forcing Banner to become the Hulk and try to drive the FF out of the area, leading to the first Hulk/Thing battle, which is unfortunately short and inconclusive thanks to outside interference.
![Marvel's Greatest Comics #29 [1970]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Marvels-Greatest-Comics-29-1970.jpg)
Dick Ayers inks the 23-page story.
“The Mad Menace of the Macabre Mole Man” is a 21-page Kirby/Stone reprint from FF #31 (1964), previously posted on from the original. Still a good story leading up to the best era of FF, although the reproduction of a few pages in this and the first story leaves a lot to be desired.
This issue also has a 6-page “photo album” feature, taking various pin-ups and panels from the history of the FF, with notes from “Sue”. The cover is the Kirby/Ayers cover from FF #12.
Published 1970
A 7-page Kirby/Ayers reprint from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #79 (1962) leads this collection of reprints. This is a variation on the Jekyll/Hyde story, with a brilliant but arrogant scientist developing a serum which makes plants and animals immortal, but also makes them huge and monstrous. When his affections are spurned by a young woman he vows revenge, and tries the serum on himself.
![Fear #6 [1972]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Fear-6-1972.jpg)
For the record, this was originally published the month before HULK #1.
He goes on a cross-country rampage looking for that engineer who he thinks stole his woman, only to eventually fall into a trap, a deep hole constructed by that same engineer, not even realizing that he was being pursued (though you’d think he might have heard from either his old room-mate or teacher, who the monster threatened in pursuit of him, but maybe he actually killed them both between the panels).
Nice short story, both for the variation on the Hulk concept and some of the staging, like the final scene where the monster is falling down the pit.
Published 1972
A pair of 12-page S&K reprint BC stories from 1942 in this issue.
“The Sphinx Speaks” is the third BC story, from DETECTIVE #66 (1942), and opens with a framing sequence set in the future (just as the second BC story has a framing sequence in the past). A thousand years in the future, a reporter is sent to do a story on a recently unearthed mummy. The mummy comes to life, talking like a New Yorker from the 1940s, which means he must have met Brooklyn, and indeed he did. The Commandos were in Egypt, disguised as part of a trading caravan and invading a Nazi-held town.
![Boy Commandos #1 [1973]a](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Boy-Commandos-1-1973a.jpg)
During the attack, Brooklyn hides in the case of a mummy as part of an ambush, which is how the mummy of our framing sequence picked up the story and his accent. Not quite sure what the point of the framing bit was, other than to give S&K something else fanciful to draw, but it was worth it for that
“Heroes Never Die” is from a few months later, one of the stories from BOY COMMANDOS #1 (1942). Rip Carter and the boys find themselves in China, helping in the fight against the Japanese invaders. An old man recognizes Rip as the return of the legendary “White Dragon” from 100 years before, and tells Rip and the boys the story of an American marine who put together a rag-tag bunch of foreigners, including four young boys who resemble the Boy Commandos, and battled against bandits and warlords, finally dying and promising to return in a time of need.
![Boy Commandos #1 [1973]b](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Boy-Commandos-1-1973b.jpg)
The old man, who was the original Captain Carter’s lieutenant, dies after recounting his story, content that the “White Dragon” has returned, and Rip remembers that there was an ancestor of his who sailed across the Pacific and was never heard from again. Like his ancestor, Rip vows to free China, one city at a time.
One of the reasons Boy Commandos is my favourite of the S&K features from DC in the 1940s is the wide variety of stories and locales, and this is a good example.
The splash page claims this is fictionalized but based on a true historical figure, an American marine who was “the Chiang Kai-Shek of his time… who to this day is revered in China as a saint”. Anyone know if there really is such a story, or if this was all made up?
The cover is a modified version of the original BC #1 cover, with the original V-formation planes in the background removed and replaced with various Nazi guns pointing at the Commandos in the foreground.
Published 1973
![Marvel Super Action #8 [1978]b](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Marvel-Super-Action-8-1978b.jpg)
Who knew that George had two brothers who preceded him into the “sci-fix epic” field?
This reprints the story “Cap Goes Wild” from CAPTAIN AMERICA #106 (1968), where some agents of a foreign nation manage to steal the plans for the new and improved Life Model Decoys (LMDs) from SHIELD. Cap fails to stop them, and a SHIELD agent also informs him that the Lucus brothers in Hollywood are making a film with footage showing him shooting an unarmed prisoner during WWII. Cap winds up fighting an LMD version of himself on the set of the Lucus film.
Lots of good random craziness in this issue, as well as some great fights. I like all the little details on the set of the film, weird costumes and creatures, and the full page splash of the LMD creating machine is one of those magnificent Kirby techno-nightmare creations.
![Marvel Super Action #8 [1978]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Marvel-Super-Action-8-1978.jpg)
Frank Giacoia inks the edited-to-18-page story, and the cover, which is flipped left-to-right and slightly touched up for the reprint. Looked pretty interesting, as some of the inking seemed to evoke 1950s Kirby more than his usual late-1960s work.
Published 1978
As previously mentioned TwoMorrows has another book to add to your COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR collection. And Greg Theakston has another book scheduled (I’ll try to get an update on COMPLETE v5), this one of some of Kirby’s earliest work, which was just sampled in the earlier COMPLETE KIRBY v1.
Collected Jack Kirby Collector – Volume 5
Edited by John MorrowReprints JKC #20, 21 & 22 plus 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published!
Kirby fans demanded more, so this fifth volume is a gargantuan 224-page trade paperback, reprinting the sold-out issues #20-22 of The Jack Kirby Collector, the critically-acclaimed magazine for Kirby fans! Included are the “Kirby’s Women,” “Wackiest Work,” and “Villains” issues, featuring three unseen interviews with Jack Kirby, plus new ones with Jack’s daughter LISA KIRBY, and industry pros DAVE STEVENS, GIL KANE, BRUCE TIMM STEVE RUDE, and MIKE MIGNOLA! PLUS: see a complete ten-page unpublished Kirby story still in pencil! Jack’s mind-blowing original pencils to FANTASTIC FOUR #49 (from the fabled Galactus trilogy)! An analysis comparing Kirby’s margin notes to Stan Lee’s dialogue on classic Marvel comics! And a NEW special section with over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including Jack’s uninked pencils from The Demon, Forever People, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Eternals, Captain America, Black Panther, and more! With page after page of rare Kirby art (much in its original pencil form), and a dynamite KIRBY/DAVE STEVENS cover, it’s a celebration of the most prolific creator in comics history: Jack “King” Kirby!
Softcover, 8×11, 224pgs, B&W $25
THE COMIC STRIP JACK KIRBY VOLUME 1 TP
by Jack Kirby
160 pages of Jack Kirby’s earliest work, including the rarest of rare examples of “Your Health Comes First,” “Facts You Never Knew,” editorial cartoons, Socko the Seadog, and the complete Blue Beetle. These are impossible to find, and collected for your reading pleasure in one package. An introduction by Kirby historian Greg Theakston.
Softcover, 8×11, 160pgs, B&W $25
The penultimate chapter of the “Visual Novel” first sees Morgan have Elmo Frye use his powers to erase any film recording of their battle as giants from the previous issue, and then Morgan enters the world of Darius Drumm for their big confrontation. In Drumm’s world, Norma is still being held captive, and there’s an army of pseudo-Drumms who practice his philosophy of “self-denial”. Morgan and Norma are able to take them easily, earning some sarcastic clapping from Drumm:
![Silver Star #5 [1983]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/01/Silver-Star-5-1983.jpg)
Drumm then reveals his ultimate goal is to scour the Earth that spawned his hated father, setting up the big “Angel of Death” finale.
Like all of this series, this issue is kind of uneven. Several clever ideas, a few weird bits of humour that work and a few nice visuals, but other bits fall flat, or don’t quite seem to convey what Kirby was hoping they would.
D. Bruce Berry inks the cover and 20-page story
Remember, TwoMorrows releases the Silver Star Graphite Edition later this year.
Published 1983