Fred Hembeck, in his Dec 10th entry, has a note from Mark Evanier mentioning that the MavelMania catalog cover Fred had posted last week was, in fact, inked by Kirby himself, and posts a FANTASY MASTERPIECES cover that Kirby inked, as well as the Bullpen hype that specifically mentioned that fact. I’d agree with Fred that it does look a lot like Giacoia’s inks of the period (such as a few of the other issues of FM around that), which I guess just means Giacoia was pretty faithful to Kirby’s pencils.

That reminded me that it was in facted hyped even earlier than that, in this item from FF #45 in 1965, about 8 months before that FM cover:

I think I recall Mark Evanier once posting somewhere that the last full story Kirby inked (as opposed to covers like this and poster/pin-up stuff for MarvelMania) was a western for Marvel in the early 1960s, but I’m not sure which one that would be. Anyone?

The purpose of this weblog is going to be a bit specialized. I hope to eventually write a little something about every Jack Kirby comic, magazine or book in my collection. That currently numbers about 900 items and steadily growing (out of 3000+ items that it could include, but most of those I don’t have are outside my price range, stuff I have reprints of or trivial things like books with just Kirby covers), so that’s probably 3 years if I manage to do one a day, realistically much longer.

No particular reason for this. Just a reason to read a bit of Kirby every day, a reason to do a little bit of fun writing and hopefully get some awareness out there of the length and depth of Kirby’s career.

And if you’ve wandered here and don’t know who Jack Kirby is, stick around and see.

That’s one of Kirby’s self-portraits, naturally, announcing the golden age reprints that backed up his Fourth World books. Inked by Vincent Colletta, so, you know, but still good looking.

Hope you enjoy.

Bob