This is Kirby’s final issue of KAMANDI. He didn’t write the last handful at all (and was heavily rescripted on the few before that), so it doesn’t really feel right in the story, and that comes through a bit in the art as well.

Before his encounter with “The Lizard Lords of Los Lorraine”, I did like Kamandi’s battle with a giant parrot in the opening pages, though.

It’s mostly downhill from there, with the new character Arna being a little annoying and a race of lizard men who are pretty blandly designed compared to the earlier animal races. One odd thing is the talking burros, physically unchanged from pre-Great Disaster animals. Horses were always one of the types of animals unchanged, still used as riding animals, in the earlier stories.

Mike Royer was back on the inks for the last few issues, so that was okay, while Joe Kubert drew the cover.

Published 1976

Leaping out of the pages of his origin in the last three issues of 2001 – A SPACE ODYSSEY, X-51 got a new name and his own series in 1978 (though the 2001 connection isn’t mentioned anywhere in #1, despite it being footnote-happy 1970s Marvel, presumably for some sort of trademark or copyright reason).

“Machine Man” opens up with Machine Man rescuing a hiker who somehow wound up hanging on a cliff. I like this page, which is a layout one doesn’t associate with Kirby, but which works nicely here.

It’s a layout that doesn’t work if overused, but it does fit the situation here, and gives a nice feeling of vertigo in the first panel, and danger in the next two.

Anyway, after the events of 2001, Machine Man is walking the Earth, like Cain in Kung Fu. Oddly people don’t seem that shocked by his abilities like flight, extendable arms, superhuman strength and all that, accepting that it’s all experimental equipment he’s wearing. Whatever. He gets a ride from a psychiatrist who asks too many questions, so he takes off, only to be attacked by the army, still under the command of Colonel Kragg.

Fun start to what would be an uneven, but interesting, short-lived series. Royer inks the 17 page story (and really, man, 17 pages of story in a 36 page book? Who thought that was a good idea?), Giacoia inks the cover and Kirby provides a text page about some of the themes of machine sentience he plans to explore in the series.

Published 1978

Before Swamp Thing, before Man-Thing, there was “The Green Thing”. A 13-page Kirby/Ayers cover story in this issue of TALES OF SUSPENSE, featuring a scientist who goes to a remote island to test his serum, which he thinks will increase the intelligence of plants. Not finding the highly developed plant he hopes, he instead tries the serum on a weed, which grows to giant size, gains intelligence and plans to rule the world.

Fortunately, with the remaining serum, the scientist is able to evolve a sample of his original choice, Ignatius Rex (and while checking to see if that was a real plant, all I found were links to websites about this story), which is a more benevolent walking plant. Lucky that worked out.

Hm, giant weed turning its own fibers into a lasso, these are some strange comics.

Published July 1961

That’s a goofy title for a story…

There’s a great Kirby/Esposito cover on this issue, of a scene from the story where Fury and his SHIELD agents fight the Druid and his men.

For the actual story, Kirby just did layouts, with pencils by Don Heck and inks by Esposito. The amount of Kirby art that comes through on the layouts he did on the Fury stories varies depending on the artist, and even within stories. When it’s Heck it comes out fairly well, with a nice splash of SHIELD scientists installing a camera in a Fury life-model-decoy, with the top of its head sliced off. You can see a bit of Kirby in several of the panels of this page:

The story is the usual super-spy fun, with villains sending out giant explosive eggs and attacking, and the SHIELD agents responding with a mix of high-tech weapons and physical force. And I did like the Druid’s men surrendering after he’s been defeated, wondering if they’ll be eligible for unemployment insurance.

Published 1966

This issue of CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN reprints one of the stories from #2 and one from #1, from back in 1958. They look good, except for the fact that they insisted on re-colouring the Challs outfits from the plain purple to a red and yellow combination, and more distracting they colour them with gloves, which looks odd when you have the drawings clearly being of bare hands.

“The Monster Maker” is from #2, and features the Challs going up against a criminal who has gained mental powers to turn thoughts into reality. This is a good excuse for Kirby to draw a giant gorilla, a dragon, a giant horse-riding knight and more.

“The Human Pets” is from #1, and is a goofy story about the Challs being taken captive by a giant alien child. Silly but fun, with a neat looking alien, and some nice Kirby designs on the alien child’s toys.

Marvin Stein inked both these stories, and does a great job. Very clean and crisp line.

Joe Kubert draws a new cover, based on the gorilla scene in the first story.

Published 1973

Steve Ditko inked the cover over Jack Kirby for this issue, while Dick Ayers handled the inks for the lead story, “I Unleashed Shagg upon the World”. This is really one of the weaker Atlas monster stories, with a man finding a hidden lever next to the Sphinx, bringing it to life as the alien conqueror Shagg.

Shagg proceeds to rampage across Europe then onto America, before realizing that his fellow alien conquers aren’t around, and he was re-animated early. So he, um, just reverses everything with his cosmo-gamma electro-magnetic waves, which also makes everyone forget him, and returns to his Sphinx position.

As I said, weak story, but the art is nice, especially the Kirby/Ditko cover. And the rest of the book has some nice Ditko and Heck art.

Published 1960

This is a reprint of the Kirby/Ayers contribution to STRANGE TALES #82. I guess whoever it was who named the monsters was tired that week, so this one just got named “It”. I’m sure he’s mocked at the Atlas Monster reunions by Zzutak, Orrgo and Fin Fang Foom.

The story features another one of those castle owning mad scientists in an unspecified European country, driven mad with jealousy for the recognition given to a rival trying to create some artificial life. I love the bit where It starts to stand but falls. Looks like a monster who had too much to drink, especially given the odd fact that he’s wearing a suit. Anyway, he eventually comes to life thanks to the magical properties of quicksand, but turns out to be useless to a revenge seeking scientist thanks to a pesky respect for life that he got with his sentience. This eventually ends happily thanks to, apparently, the timely intervention of God.

As silly as they are, I love the Atlas monster stories, which always look cool if nothing else.

Okay, it’s not Kirby’s best series (although later issues did have moments of at least near-greatness), but CAPTAIN VICTORY has a bit of a soft spot in my heart as, I believe, the first non-reprint Kirby comic I bought (and among the first half-dozen Kirby books I bought, period). When it came out in late 1981 it had been three years since Kirby had left Marvel to work primarily in animation.

The history of the series is a bit convoluted, and best told in the CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHITE EDITION published by TwoMorrows. Short version, Kirby first did a 17-page first issue for a proposed Kirby Comics line in the late 1970s (and took the name of the lead from an even earlier unused concept, who eventually saw print as Captain Glory). When that fell through he modified it to a 50 page graphic novel, the first of a planned trilogy, partly by adding most of this first issue in front of the original story and continuing on from there. Eventually he was approached by Pacific Comics to launch their line, and split that graphic novel to make the first two issues of the series. Along the way there was also a film treatment written with Steve Sherman.

So, with a history like that, you can imagine why this reads a bit weird. The core of the story is that Victory leads a group of inter-stellar police who are battling against a insect-like race which conquers and invests inhabited planets. They get to one such planet too late, have to destroy it, but the leader of the Insectons, the Lightning Lady, escapes to Earth, where the Rangers follow.

As I said, far from great, but it’s not too bad. Mostly a bit rough in not explaining things. For example, Victory goes up on the bridge during the battle, despite his crew asking him not to, and it seems to be clear that because he’s wearing a “portable command post” on his head (a delightfully ridiculous mass of Kirby-tech) that he doesn’t need to be there. And then he dies three pages later (for the tenth time, apparently, as they have clone replacements), and his troops seem to defeat the enemy fine without him. I’m sure Kirby had a reason that he insisted on staying on the bridge, but he didn’t convey it in the script.

Unlike some, I’m usually a big fan of Kirby’s scripting, but this particular example has most of his weaknesses and few of his strengths. On the other hand, Lightning Lady, Egg Head, insanely huge spaceships and guns, Royer inks, there’s a lot to like, especially when I first read it as a kid (though, unfortunately, it would be years before I read the rest of it, as there weren’t any comic shops nearby. I’m still not certain how I got #1, if it had newsstand distribution or what).

Also in this issue, a brief biography of Kirby, with a photo, two pages of character, equipment and military insignia design, and a backcover of Lightning Lady and her Insectons.