Was Fin Fang Foom coloured orange or green in the first printing of his story in STRANGE TALES #89? I know he’s green on the cover, but can anyone confirm the interior?

Gotten a lot of new hits today (already four times my previous high) thanks to a link on Boingboing, by way of Irregular Orbit, via Video Watchblog, who found the place from Bubblegumfink‘s sidebar (it was pretty funny tracing that back, was wondering how many steps it would take). Welcome all, hope you enjoy looking around, check the links on the sidebar for previous posts, Kirby work in print (in particular check out the Jack Kirby Collector) and be sure to visit the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center.

12 years ago today, Jack Kirby passed away at age 76.

Kirby video on WWII experience at the Kirby Museum.

Kirby videos at TVparty.

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.

I recently started a Ditko weblog to go with this Kirby one, and now that I have enough entries to give a feel for the variety of material I figured I’d announce it officially. I’ll probably only post one or two entries on it a week until I exhaust my supply of material for this weblog.

To keep this on-topic here, this entry is about a Kirby/Ditko collaboration.

Doesn’t look like any more Kirby publications are coming out in 2005, so here’s an overview of what we got, at least 49 separate print items (some quite trivial, of course, but others up to 800 pages of Kirby), up from 17 in 2004 and 8 in 2003, plus 2 major digital publications. Good year, overall, lots of fun stuff. Book of the year, not including the KIRBY COLLECTOR, is probably ESSENTIAL FF v4, but maybe KAMANDI ARCHIVES when I get around to picking it up (and, ahem, at least it pays royalties). Unfortunately we didn’t get the scheduled COMPLETE KIRBY v5, which would have been a contender. Anyone heard an update on that?

And of course 2005 saw the announcement of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, now accepting PayPal donations for future projects and exhibitions, and already hosting a great Kirby checklist, a few stories and a short video.

Some good stuff coming up in 2006 as well. As usual, updates will be posted on the weblog as I get them, and available here, and general Kirby in-print information is kept here.

The most important and essential of the Kirby publications was this trio of issues from TwoMorrows. All the usual great stuff, amazing art finds, pencilled pages, columns and the like, plus they started reprinting some well restored full stories from the S&K days, including some romance, horror and crime in these issues. Look for more of the same in 2006, plus their publication of SILVER STAR from the pencils.

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #42
JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #43
JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

DC only had one Kirby publication this year, but it was major, the first ten issues of KAMANDI in one hardcover volume.

KAMANDI ARCHIVES VOL. 1 HC

AC included a few Kirby short stories in their various reprint anthologies, one or two in each of these issue.

AMERICA’’S GREATEST COMICS #11
AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS #12
AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS #13
BEST OF THE WEST #52

Craig Yoe included a 1950s Kirby story, “The Fourth Dimension is a Many Splattered Thing”, reprinted from the original artwork, in this collection from Fantagraphics.

MODERN ARF VOLUME 1 GN

Marvel of course went to the Kirby reprint well most often in 2005, most importantly for me with some long-awaited additions to their ESSENTIAL line, each collecting over 500 pages of 1960s Kirby, some of it for the first time in decades, in black and white.

ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 4 TPB
ESSENTIAL THOR VOL. 2 TPB

Good Kirby year for those who like Marvel’s hardcover reprints as well, with two FF volumes (bringing it one volume left to the end), some good Thor work, a few previously unreprinted stories in the Golden Age Captain America, plus finishing off the TALES OF SUSPENSE run of Cap and starting his solo series for the Silver Age volume (with some great art in that run, and of course MODOK). And some Iron Man and Doc Strange covers. Add to that the latest variation on Marvel’s reprints, an over 800 page OMNIBUS collecting the FF up to #30.

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: CAPTAIN AMERICA VOL. 2
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: DOCTOR STRANGE VOL. 2
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: GOLDEN AGE ALL-WINNERS COMICS VOL. 1
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: GOLDEN AGE CAPTAIN AMERICA VOL. 1
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 8
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 9
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN VOL. 2
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THOR VOL. 4
FANTASTIC FOUR OMNIBUS Vol. 1 HC

The 1970s Kirby also got a taste of the limelight in two dedicated volumes, including the hard-to-find original tabloid Cap story, with hopefully more to follow (ETERNALS is also likely for 2006).

BLACK PANTHER BY JACK KIRBY v1 TPB
CAPTAIN AMERICA BY JACK KIRBY v2: BICENTENNIAL BATTLES TPB

Kirby also figures into a few mostly non-Kirby collections from Marvel in 2005:

AVENGERS: KANG – TIME AND TIME AGAIN TPB – one story
BEST OF THE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 1 HC – five stories
FANTASTIC FOUR – THE MOVIE TPB – one story
MARVEL VISIONARIES – STAN LEE – three stories
MARVEL WEDDINGS – one story
WHAT IF? CLASSIC VOL. 2 TPB – one story, one other cover

Marvel also mixed a few reprints into their regular comics during the year, either all reprint books (the MILESTONES specials) or mixing new stories with reprint backups (the rest of these). Each of these has one or more Kirby story.

FANTASTIC FOUR: THE WEDDING SPECIAL
GIANT-SIZE INVADERS #2
GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #3
MARVEL MILESTONES: DR STRANGE, SILVER SURFER, SUB-MARINER & THE HULK
MARVEL MILESTONES: DR. DOOM, SUB-MARINER & THE RED SKULL
MARVEL MILESTONES: IRON MAN, ANT-MAN & CAPTAIN AMERICA
MARVEL MILESTONES: VENOM & HERCULES
MARVEL MILESTONES: WOLVERINE, X-MEN & TUK THE CAVE BOY
MARVEL MONSTERS: DEVIL DINOSAUR #1
MARVEL MONSTERS: FIN FANG FOUR #1
MARVEL MONSTERS: MONSTERS ON THE PROWL
MARVEL MONSTERS: WHERE MONSTERS DWELL #1

There was apparently some never followed up on “Dollar Digest” experiment that reprinted some Kirby stuff in small black and white volumes. I never did see them.

AVENGERS: ASSEMBLE DOLLAR DIGEST
FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST FAMILY DOLLAR DIGEST
HULK: HULK SMASH DOLLAR DIGEST
SPIDER-MAN: AMAZING FANTASY DOLLAR DIGEST
X-MEN: CHILDREN OF THE ATOM DOLLAR DIGEST

And a few trivial bits from Marvel:

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE VOL. 1 TPB – five covers
MARVEL VISIONARIES: STEVE DITKO – one cover (SPIDEY #1)
SPIDER-MAN / FANTASTIC FOUR CLASSIC – one cover (SPIDEY #1)

Plus there was MAXIMUM FANTASTIC FOUR, which I don’t know what to make of, except that I’m sure the Evanier introduction was interesting.

On the digital front, for those into that, there was a DVD-ROM volume of every issue of FF, so lots of Kirby there, some not yet ever reprinted, and Greg Theakston released the first two volumes of his COMPLETE KIRBY on CD-ROM, apparently including some comic strip and interview material not found in the print versions. Expect a few more Marvel volumes like that in 2006 and beyond.

There was also a documentary produced about Kirby, related to a film featuring characters he created, but it won’t be released until later. Bootlegs will be discretely accepted, hint hint.

Just a quick note that the just-released DVD of the FF movie (featuring characters created by Jack Kirby) does not have the previously mentioned one hour documentary about Kirby that was mentioned in the most recent KIRBY COLLECTOR. It might show up on some as-yet-unscheduled “special edition”.

88 years ago today, Jacob Kurtzberg was born. I hope to get a special post done later today, but until then I’ve updated the indices of posts over on the sidebar, alphabetical and chronological, so feel free to look at a few random entries among those 445 books with Kirby work.

Real life got in the way of writing what I wanted to for today, so I’ll save that for the first anniversary of this site in a few weeks. Lots of other Kirby stuff to read on the web today, including:

The opening of the Kirby Museum site
Mark Evanier’s thoughts
Kirby rarities at Dial B for Blog
BeaucoupKevin’s thoughts
Nemed House (for you German speakers)
Tom Spurgeon’s thoughts

Been a pretty big year for Kirby work being published, especially from Marvel (you’d almost think Marvel didn’t have to pay for it. Oh, wait…). Time for a quick half-way through the year overview. As usual, links over on the sidebar for the announcement page and links for buying them on-line.

DC’s falling behind on the Kirby train, but they do have a KAMANDI ARCHIVES later this year. Pure Imagination should have another volume of THE COMPLETE JACK KIRBY later this year, too.

TwoMorrows has only had one issue of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR so far, but it was a good one, with lots of 1970s DC artwork, a great article about the Newsboy Legion and a compete S&K crime story. Another should be on the way soon, circa the San Diego Con, and another in the fall. They’ve also been promising a big announcement at San Diego, which might mean more stuff coming out, or something else.

Fantagraphics has a 1950s Harvey short story, “The Fourth Dimension is a Many Splattered Thing”, reprinted from the original artwork, in Craig Yoe’s first anthology of modern art themes in comics, MODERN ARF.

AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS #11 from AC Comics has two 1950s short stories, one inked by Steve Ditko, AC should have some more 1950s reprinted in some upcoming releases.

Marvel’s been quite a bit heavier than it has been in years, and in several different formats.

Two long-awaited books in the ESSENTIAL line of thick black&white books, FF v4 and THOR v2. Great reproduction throughout on the FF book, the THOR one is more hit and miss, sometimes very good, but every now and then it’s obvious that they’re using printed comics or stats prepared for prior reprints as the source. Still some great
material in each book.

1970s material written and drawn by Kirby shows up in two colour tradepaperbacks, one reprinting the early issues of his BLACK PANTHER run and a second volume of his CAPTAIN AMERICA work, this one including the original tabloid.

The MASTERWORKS hardcover line has already had four volumes this year with some Kirby artwork. One has just a few covers (IRON MAN v2) but the others have a lot of Kirby, with FF v8, Golden Age CAPTAIN AMERICA v1 and Silver Age CAPTAIN AMERICA v2.

In addition, in a new format they’ve printed FANTASTIC FOUR OMNIBUS v1, collecting the first 30 issues of FF in one book, with extra material.

Another new format is the MARVEL MILESTONES line of $4 largely random reprint comics. Kirby’s been in four of them:

DR. DOOM, SUB-MARINER AND THE RED SKULL
IRON MAN, ANT-MAN & CAPTAIN AMERICA
VENOM & HERCULES
WOLVERINE & TUK THE CAVE BOY

Obviously not drawing any of the Venom or Wolverine stories, or the Sub-Mariner one for that matter, but at least one of all the rest.

In a similar format, except including a new short story and more thematically coherent, GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #3 has a pair of Kirby stories as examples of early X-Men crossovers (oddly in the wrong order).

A few anthology types with some Kirby content. In order of quantity:
BEST OF THE FANTASTIC FOUR 2005
Five issues, including the otherwise not-in-print #100, about a third of the book

MARVEL VISIONARIES – STAN LEE 2005
Three stories, including the first ever reprint of THOR #179, Kirby’s last issue

MARVEL WEDDINGS 2005
One story, the oft-reprinted (and never well, including here) FF ANNUAL #3

AVENGERS – KANG – TIME AND TIME AGAIN 2005
One story, the otherwise not-in-print THOR #140

And trivially, the Kirby/Ditko cover of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 is
reprinted in these two books:
SPIDER-MAN – FANTASTIC FOUR CLASSIC 2005
MARVEL VISIONARIES – STEVE DITKO 2005

Been modifying the look of the weblog at bit, obviously. Let me know what you think, if anything looks wrong on any browers/systems and anything like that.

Feel free to comment on anything else, too. I see from my counters that I’ve had a decent uptick in visitors in the last few weeks, almost triple the daily hits from the beginning of the month (either that or a lot of spiders/bots). Let me know what kind of stuff you enjoy about the weblog, what kind of stuff you’d like to see more of or less of.