WARROO!!!!!
Wow, this is a busy cover. Lots of captions, balloons and figures. Very well rendered, though. That kind of greyscale knockout colouring often used on secondary characters in covers of the era shows off the linework pretty well.
Inked by Dick Ayers (the original Kirby Checklist listed it as Ditko, and I was about to say that sounded wrong, but checked the update in TJKC #32 and saw it was already corrected there, and on the online listing).
Published 1961
In “Where Dwell the Demons” Thor, while searching for Sif in New York, comes across the time funnel surrounding the Atomic Research Center where she vanished. He’s drawn into it as well, where he finds himself battling trollish mutates in a cataclysmic future.
![Thor #163 [1969]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2005/10/Thor-163-1969.jpg)
After freeing Sif, he finds out that all a part of a scheme of old nemesis Pluto, while inside the Center a mysterious being in a cocoon awakes. And setting up future stories in Asgard, Odin is still curious about the origin of Galactus.
Fun stuff, I thought the splash pages in this one were especially well done, including the one of the ruined future landscape.
Colletta inks the cover and 20-page story.
Published 1969
Machine Man continues his battle with Ten-For, who runs out to be craftier than expected, fooling the army into thinking he’s peaceful and Machine Man is violent while waiting for his invasion fleet to arrive. MM gives up on humanity thanks to this ploy, and then ends up as a costume party. Very strange stuff.
![Machine Man #5 [1978]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2005/10/Machine-Man-5-1978.jpg)
Meanwhile, the Autocron fleet gets the message from Ten-For and prepares for their invasion.
Bit of an odd-layout on pages 2-3. They’re meant to be read as a two page spread, but without any of the usual visual cues except a really small unclear arrow, so you almost invariably read the panels in the wrong order. I wonder if part of this was originally meant to be a two-page spread, but then shrunk down and reformatted. Doesn’t seem likely, as the 17-page story length had been standard for quite a while at this point (shrinking page counts had led to such reformatting in some other 1970s work, like an issue of OMAC).
Mike Royer inks the 17-page story, Klaus Janson inks the cover and Kirby writes a text page, “Would You Like a Machine to Fight Your Battles?”.
Published 1978
An early Daredevil cover by Kirby. I like the Owl’s henchmen on this one, more than I like the Owl himself. And gotta love the classic trapdoor trick. Only a blind man would fall for that.
Inked by Colletta.
Published 1964
![Young Romance #20 [v3n8] [1950]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2005/10/Young-Romance-20-v3n8-1950.jpg)
I was just playing around with dropping colours off a scan, and thought this would be a good example to show off that great trademark S&K inking of the early 1950s. Look at that definition on that hand, bursting in from off-panel.
The romance books were riding high at this point, with S&K doing stories in both YOUNG ROMANCE and spin-off YOUNG LOVE (which as an ad in this issue mentions, had just been upgraded to monthly, as YR had a year earlier). This one has a 14-page Simon&Kirby classic, “Hands Off Lucy”.
![Young Romance #20 [v3n8] [1950]a](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2005/10/Young-Romance-20-v3n8-1950a.jpg)
Opening with the usual strong confessional title page, the story begins with a flashback to our hero Lucy as a child, where we see that Caesar was the neighbourhood bully, as well as Lucy’s next-door neighbour. As they got older he tried to ask her out, but she wasn’t interested, until he called one time after a date she planned suddenly cancelled. Of course Caesar is as violent as ever, though not with her, and winds up very possessive of her, especially when an old flame returns to town, and Caesar finally gets his comeuppance as all bullies in comics eventually do.
A very nice story, with really powerful artwork from Kirby. Lots of chances for action thanks to Caesar’s bouts of violence, and great depictions of body language and backgrounds.
Published 1950
More reprints repackaged by Joe Simon from the 1950s Prize series, two 6-pagers by Simon&Kirby, plus one by Mort Meskin.
“Strange Old Bird” from BLACK MAGIC v4#1[#25] (1953) is told by the old caretaker of an apartment building, about an old woman who lived in the building and took care of birds. She tells him the story of the immortal firebird the Phoenix, which turns up in the form of a sick bird she takes care of.
A nice short story, and I like the way Kirby drew the Phoenix (especially compared to the odd non-Kirby new cover where the bird looks like a man in a bird suit).
“Up There” from BLACK MAGIC v2#7[#13] (1952) is a story about a series of test pilots who die in a series of crashes. One of the pilots waiting for his turn sees his wife die of a lingering illness, and then goes up and crashes, with the recording equipment on his plane recording him imagining the ghost of his dead wife, which is then backed up by a photo found in the crash. Not quite sure I got the point of this story, and I’ve seen the basic theme done better, but the splash page is really nice.
Published 1974
Two Kirby reprints in this issue, plus a short note about the monster books in the text pages from Kirby, his last work for Marvel according to the Kirby Checklist. In this piece he talks about working on the story and how they served as an evolutionary step to the Marvel super-heroes of the 1960s, like the rock monsters from “Thorr” showing up in the first Thor story, plus similar ideas in Hulk, X-Men and FF.
“Save Me From the Weed” is reprinted from STRANGE TALES #94 (1962) is this 6-page Kirby/Ayers story. Previously covered in this 1970s reprint. Still one of my favourites of the genre.
“I Fought the Colossus” is a 5-page Kirby/Ditko story from STRANGE TALES #72 (1959). A scientist builds a massive super-intelligent computer that can project the future and guide humanity to paradise. After a few years, the computer secretly builds a giant robot, which everyone assumes is a weapon with which it plans to conquer humanity.
![Monster Menace #2 [1994]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2005/10/Monster-Menace-2-1994.jpg)
The original designer is able to destroy the robot, only to find out after, in an ironic twist, that the robot was actually meant to serve man. But wait, it’s a cookbook! Oh, sorry, that’s another story…
Not one of the best, but the art is nice. Also, world balloon on the first page.
This issue also has an original Ditko cover, with many of the monsters that appeared in the MONSTER MASTERWORKS reprint volume of a few years earlier, plus two Ditko solo reprints.
Published 1994
It’s Mjolnir mania on this Kirby/Ayers cover, with no less than three enchanted hammers. This is a year after Thor was introduced in the title, a few months before Kirby took over drawing the feature full-time. Great buildings on this cover, and that foreground figure of Thor is really nice.
Published 1963
A pretty decent image from this Harvey romance comic, but I have to say that a lot of the Harvey covers are very low-key compared to the covers for the Prize comics (when they weren’t using photo covers). Often the most interesting thing is the background character, like the jeweller sensing an upcoming sale on this one.
Published 1956
I dunno, if that’s supposed to be the Washington Monument, the proportions and perspective seem to be a bit screwed up. On the other hand, Ultimo looks pretty cool, and Iron Man never looks better than when he’s covered in Kirby squiggles.
Al Milgrom inks.
Published 1977