Inked by Al Milgrom. Milgrom inked over a dozen of these 1970s covers, and did did a nice job on most of them. I kind of wish he’d gotten a chance to do a full story, just to see what it would have looked like. This one is nice, except for Luke Cage’s face, which seems off. Still, lots of crackling energy to make up for any other flaws.
Published February 1977
Marvel sometimes, far too infrequently for my liking, throws out a reprint one-shot with some Kirby. Usually tied into some then-current storyline, I think GUNSLINGERS #1 came out around the time of some mini-series that had all of Marvel’s western characters.
Two Kirby stories are reprinted in it, both inked by Dick Ayers. “Beware!! The Terrible Totem!!” is a reprint of RAWHIDE KID #22, a full issue story where the Kid fights a giant walking totem pole. While there’s an undeniable pleasure in the way Kirby draws Totem, it’s just a bit too silly. In fact, the actual western story in here, involving the Kid being chased by lawmen and mine safety issues, were a lot more entertaining, and would have made a far stronger story if the Totem was replaced by a more related obstacle.
The second Kirby story in here is “I Hate the Two-Gun Kid”, a five-pager from TWO-GUN KID #60. The story is pretty straight-forward and cliched, with the Kid (no, another Kid) finding his masked identity blamed for some wrong-doing while trying to do the right thing, thus earning the animosity of pretty blonde schoolmarm Nancy Carter, who utters the title of the story. I think the original printing of this was in the first issue of the Earth-One Two-Gun Kid (masked lawyer Matt Hawk version), so it’s setting up the on-going conflicts.
Kirby’s western comics always show a lot of love for the subject matter, clearly learned through the movies and books on the subject from his youth. Lots of action, great background scenery, and I especially love the way he draws horses.
Published February 2000
This 12 page story is one of four that were intended for SPIRIT WORLD #2 and then published in various DC horror anthology books. This story is inked by Mike Royer, and, though he’s uncredited, written with Mark Evanier (see the article linked to below for details).
“Toxl” is visually the best of those, with some great images, including one of the best two-page spreads I think Kirby ever did. Lot’s of amazing action in here, with the story of Toxl, the leader of a primitive tribe leading a rebellion against a group of technologically advanced conquerors. A little bit of a strange story, but lots of fun to read.
A JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR article on SPIRIT WORLD, including a penciled page from this story and comments by Mark Evanier is available here.
This issue also includes a two page article by Kirby on the topic of UFOs, “They’re Still Up There”, illustrated with four Kirby collages. Fun enough, although I always thought that Kirby’s collages looked to be too much work for stuff he could more effectively do with a pencil, and were never done enough justice by the mediocre printing of the era.
Published October 1972
Inked by Joe Sinnott. Not much to comment on, except that I do love Sinnott’s inking on these 1970s covers. And they sometimes have too many blurbs on the covers…
Published March, 1977
THE DEMON was a bit of an uneven book, but had some clever stories with great artwork (inked by Mike Royer) throughout.
This fourth issue is the first of a two-part story pitting Etrigan against some foes of his master Merlin. As is typical in Demon stories, the more interesting stuff occurs with the Jason Blood and friends (Randu and Harry in this issue) sequences, while the Etrigan segments provide some great action.
One of the interesting concepts that Kirby introduces here is the Kamara, a “Fear-Monster” that feeds on terror while disguising itself in the form of a meek white monkey. Of course, the Moore/Bissette/Totleben team would clearly find some possibilities in that a decade later and use the character in an early issue of their SWAMP THING run.
Published 1972
Published by Harvey Comics, this book has two five page Jack Kirby stories, both inked by Al Williamson. They were originally done circa 1958 for the short lived RACE FOR THE MOON title, and feature the “3 Rocketeers” characters who had appeared in RACE FOR THE MOON #3. This is around the same time that Kirby was doing the Sky Masters comic strip, so clearly space was on his mind in this era. Whereas the comic strip was more of a near-future space race as seen from 1958, the Rocketeers stuff is more fanciful sci-fi, with moonbases, space stations, aliens and journeys to Jupiter.
The first story is “Lunar Goliaths”, which features the Rocketeers of Moon Base 4 pitting their giant boxing robot against a similar robot from a space station, aboard a floating space platform. Those astronauts have too much time on their hands.
![Blast Off #1 [1965]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2004/09/Blast-Off-1-1965.jpg "Blast Off #1 [1965]")
I guess this is like Battlebots 40 years early.
The second story, “The Great Moon Mystery”, is kind of interesting for its connections with 2001 – A Space Odyssey. It features the Rocketeers going off on a rescue mission on the moon, coming across a giant rock spire and being taken on an inter-galactic out-of-body trip, and conclude it was left by an ancient alien race. I know that Clarke’s original short story was published prior to when this would have been written, but I don’t know how many of the elements that this story shares with 2001 were in the original short. And was Clarke’s story common enough that Kirby or whoever else might have written this would be familiar with it?
Williamson in one of those inkers who has a bit of an overpowering style, so while the end result is pleasing, I’m glad that he didn’t ink that much more of Kirby’s work.
The cover of this issue is a rather odd mix of several interior panels.
Published October 1965
Interesting the stuff you get when you pull out a random Kirby book.
GIANT-SIZE CHILLERS #3 (August 1975) reprints “The Monster”, a 7 page story from CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4 (April 1970). The credits have it as written and pencilled by Jack Kirby and inked by John Verpoorten, but that’s really only part of the story.
Part of the background is told in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #13 (reprinted in the third COLLECTED JKC, with a teaser here), in an article that promises more details would probably be in Mark Evanier’s still-upcoming biography of Kirby. In a nutshell, Kirby submitted the original story, was quite proud of it, then someone at Marvel insisted on wholesale changes, which Kirby made, and then Kirby scripted it, and Marvel made yet more changes after that. From the pencil and margin notes photocopies in the article, it was a much better story before the changes. With editorial help like that from Marvel, it’s not surprising that Kirby took the contract DC offered not too long after.
The actual published story is okay, but nothing special. I don’t know if my opinion is weighed down by knowing the background, or by comparing it to the original (which has some much nicer action scenes that are omitted in the final version), but overall it just seems to drift a bit and then just sort of end with a pat moral.
The art is still mostly good, and Verpoorten was a pretty good inker for him (Verpoorten only inked a handful of Kirby covers in that era, he would do some full issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA and ETERNALS when Kirby returned to Marvel). A few of the panels shown in the page above are close to how they looked in the original, and I just love the old-world castle architecture that Kirby does so well so often in his work (stories with Dr. Doom and the Demon being notable examples).
From time to time just to keep up the posting frequency I’ll throw in one of the many books Kirby just did covers for (about 100 at Marvel in the 1970s and maybe twice that in the 1960s, so there’s a lot to choose from). Minimal comments on those, since you can see the Kirby content and the stories they’re wrapped around often aren’t worth re-reading, and aren’t on-topic here anyway. The 70s covers aren’t always Kirby’s strongest art, since he was often clearly working over layouts from New York (and sometimes slightly re-drawn back in New York), but they’re fun, often have the only example of Kirby drawing a particular character, and have some nice inkers (a lot are Sinnott or Giacoia, both great, but there are a few unusual ones).
This one, inked by Joe Sinnott, is kind of fun just because Stilt-Man gives me a bit of a chuckle. As does Black Goliath. I guess this would be the only time Kirby had the dubious honour of drawing either of that pair of winners. And check out that trademark Kirby squiggle on Stilt-Man’s leg. That’s one of the longest of those you’ll see.
Published August 1976
DESTROYER DUCK #1 is a bit of an angry comic. With good reason, given that writer Steve Gerber was engaged in a lawsuit with Marvel regarding another Duck (for which profits from this book were earmarked to support), and Kirby was had his own issues with the company.
But clearly anger works as a motivating force, since this is a really good story. The analogy is obvious enough, with Duke “Destroyer” Duck going on a mission of vengeance on behalf of “The Little Guy”, a talking duck who was exploited, cheated and ultimately killed by the monolithic GodCorp. Kirby’s got an interesting funny animal style that he only had a few chances to use in his career, and this is a nice mix of that and his traditional action art. That works well with the slightly off-kilter, cynical satire of Gerber, who’s rarely been better than he is here.
DESTROYER DUCK is one of the most wholly successful of Kirby’s 1980s books, and well worth picking up. It would be nice to some day see a reprint of the whole series.
The inking on the story is by Alfredo Alcala, and it’s really good. I wouldn’t have thought the combination would work, since Alcala can be a bit of an overpowering inker sometimes, but the end result is very nice, with a bit of an echo of the linework style from the S&K work circa 1950. The cover is inked by Neal Adams.
Published 1982
From KAMANDI #32 (inked by D. Bruce Berry), a nice page that reminds us that despite all he’s gone through, Kamandi is still a kid, as is Tuftan, prince of the Tigers. An exciting issue overall, with all out war between the Tigers and the Gorillas while Dr. Canus gets to know a strange alien being. Because this was a “Giant” issue, Kirby got a few extra pages (23 as opposed to the standard 18 of the time), which really helps the pacing of this. It’s a damn shame that comics of the era got so stingy with the story page counts (going all the way to 17 pages an issue soon after, before that was reversed).
I really like Berry’s inking from this period as well. He started off, a year before this, a bit rough, especially compared to Mike Royer who had the art of inking Kirby perfected, but he had a pretty decent learning curve and managed to maintain the power of Kirby’s pencils.
This is the map that appeared in this issue (click on it for a larger scan), in the middle of the reprint of the first issue. It’s an expanded version of the map from #1, which only had North America and part of South America. Unfortunately, Kirby only got to less than half the world sketched out here. It’s clear that, if circumstances allowed him to stay, he could have done years more on the book. Ah, to see what Kirby would have done with the Orangutan Surfing Civilization…
Also in this issue is a four page profile of Jack Kirby by assistant Steve Sherman, with several photographs.
Published 1975